According to Shariati, the three idols that Muslims pelted with stones during the Hajj pilgrimage represented capitalism, despotism, and religious hypocrisy. He tapped Islamic stories and traditions as fuel for revolutionary fervor, pointing for example, to Hussein’s uprising against Mu’awiya as a symbol of the human struggle for liberation, justice, and salvation: if Hussein could inspire a group of seventy-plus against a massive state, then a small underground revolutionary group of just a few hundred members had no reason to hold back from declaring war on the shah of Iran and the
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