Ali Dashti was an Iranian rationalist of the twentieth century. Dashti was also an Iranian senator.
Life
Born into a Persian family in Dashti in Bushehr Province, Iran on 31 March 1897. Ali Dashti received a traditionalreligious education. He studied Islamic theology, history, Arabic and Persian grammar, and classical literature in madrasas in Karbala and Najaf. He returned to Iran in 1918 and lived in Shiraz, Isfahan, and finally in Tehran, where he became involved in politics of the day. Rather than becoming a cleric, he became a journalist and published a newspaper in Tehran from 1922 to 1935. He was a member of Majlis at various times between 1928 and 1946. His criticism of allowing the Tudeh party into the cabinet and concessions to the Soviets landed him in prison in 1946. He was appointed a Senator in 1954 until the Islamic revolution in 1979. In 1975 he gave the papers for his book Bist O Seh Sal to professor of Persian and Arabic Frank RC Bagley and asked him to translate it, but not to publish it until after his death. He reiterated this request in 1977 and 1978. Frank RC Bagley kept his promise and, having translated and organised Ali Dashti's papers into a publishable format, the book was printed in 1985. An Iranian newspaper reported Ali Dashti's death in the month of Dey of the Iranian year 1360, i.e. between 22 December 1981 and 20 January 1982.
Writing
In the book 23 Years: A Study of Prophetic Career of Mohammad, Dashti chooses reason over blind faith: Dashti strongly denied the miracles ascribed to Muhammad by the Islamic tradition and rejected the Muslim view that the Quran is the word of God himself. Instead, he favors thorough and skeptical examination of all orthodoxbelief systems. Dashti argues that the Quran contains nothing new in the sense of ideas not already expressed by others. All the moral precepts of the Quran are self-evident and generally acknowledged. The stories in it are taken in identical or slightly modified forms from the lore of the Jews and the Christians, whose rabbis and monks Muhammad had met and consulted on his journeys to Syria, and from memories conserved by the descendants of the peoples of Ad and Thamud. Muhammad reiterated principles which mankind had already conceived in earlier centuries and many places.
Criticism
Criticism on Ali Dashti dates back to the 1940s when Gholamhossein Mosaheb, founder of The Persian Encyclopedia, wrote a book named Ali Dashti's plots. Mosahab has another note on Dashti which he published as an anonymous author in the Shafagh newspaper around the same time.
According to Mossahab, "ever since Reza Pahlavi assumed head of the defense ministry and violated the constitution, Dashti supported him". He indicates Dashti's article in a newspaper back in 1930 where Dashti addresses Reza Pahlavi as a "national symbol". Dashti's alleged role in Reza Pahlavi's assumption of power was so large that the famous poet Mohammad-Taqi Bahar mentions his name in his political poem, "Jomhoori Nameh".
Spying for the British
In the fifth Iranian national assembly, Hassan Modarres presented documents showing Dashti's relations with the British government and the mutual support by the British to help him become a congressman. The documents were published in the "Siasat" newspaper at that time in which the British ambassador was ordering some to financially support Dashti in return for his service. As a result, Dashti's petition to enter the congress was denied by the majority of congressmen.
The book "55"
In 1977, Dashti wrote a book titled "The 55", a sympathetic account of the 55 years of the Pahlavi family's reign. The council of Tehran University nominated Dashti for an honorary Doctoral degree. The reviews were polarized. One of his harsher critics, Ehsan Tabari, wrote: When the Iranian revolution occurred two years later, Dashti published a book named "The Fall Factors", a critical analysis of the Pahlavi dynasty exploring the reasons behind its downfall.
