ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to discuss if, why, and how theology should be used for critique of and resistance to oppression. Shariati understands Islam as an ideology, in the Gramscian sense of a worldview that can demystify oppressive relations and make resistance possible. Shariati claims that concepts such as oppression, justice, and righteous leadership receive their most lucid articulations in Islamic tradition. The first set of reasons centres around the fact that theology, or religious tradition, is the tradition of the poor. A comparison of these writers also brings into focus what traditions can bring to reasoning as an endeavour. A certain stringency of method might be the prerequisite for allowing tradition to exert its resistance, to realise the critical and transformative potential of tradition. Traditions form conditions of thought, which become evident in lingering emphases, directions taken, perspectives adopted, and the specific shape of the solutions to certain intricate problems.
