Dr Ali Shariati | Chief MASTERMIND of Iranian Revolution 1979

The multitude succeeded. The Iranian Islamic Revolution and in small brackets Khomeiniism. Khomeiniism is an ideology that's born of Khomeini's writings and his efforts and effectively his governments. But behind that and leading up to that cataclysmic moment, we have the efforts of a very famous ideologue and professor, Ali Shariati. He doesn't live to see the revolution succeed, he dies two years before that. But he is the ideologue who effectively generates the energy and the momentum needed for the youth to actually be galvanized and to join the revolution. So he is the predecessor that makes way for the eventual revolution, revolutionary way. Khomeini makes his followers fully understand his plans for an Islamic Republic. Most see it in simple terms as a permanent end to the Shah and a return to some ancient idea of justice. The only movement close to this one was Ataturk, Nasser's movement, the Arab Ba'athi movement and also King Abdulaziz, his movement. This is a perfect ten on all counts. It's a perfect ten on all counts. Because when you look at the combined effect of Khomeini and Shariati and what they managed to achieve in the end in 79 and beyond 79, because we still live in a post-Khomeini world reality effectively, everything has been transformed in society. Everything about Iranian society and identity has been transformed. The impact is a ten out of ten because as we know from 79 onwards, Iran becomes an ultra-conservative nation. It's a democracy effectively. So the entire system has been changed, the social dimensions have been changed. Everything has changed effectively. We have a new world in Iran. The economic situation, the same thing happens. Everything has changed. The policies of the Shah, which he brought with the white revolution, we're going to look at that following this one, Inshallah. Everything has been changed. In fact, everything has been Islamized. If we say Islam from the perspective of a general precept, it's been Islamized. Particularly speaking the Shia, to our perspective, but Islamized. Khomeini had a system known as Wilayat al-Faqih. We're going to look into that concept a bit later. But to simplify it, it's effectively the Shia version of Khilafah. It's the Shia equivalent to a Khilafah. So I know many Sunnis oftentimes block their ears, Khomeini, Khomeini. But you need to understand, when we say that we've had no Khilafah since 1924, technically speaking, if you include the Shia world, that's not correct. Because what Khomeini establishes is a Shia Khilafah. And there were many movements from the Muslim Sunni perspective who accepted that, and even called for him to be the Khalifa for all the Muslims. We'll get into that later. So technically, we did establish, as a global Muslim community, there was a Khilafah established. But it was known as something else. Again, it's such a powerful movement. The economy has changed. The political landscape completely changed. He introduced a new movement, a new system of governance, under the Wilayat al-Faqih. It's a new system of governance, where the clerics, or the scholarly class, are included in the governorship of the country. And at the very highest level, you have the Ayatollah. So there's a very, very solid system that's put in place, and replaces what was previously there. The sentiments, the aspirations, the references, the language, all of that was driven by religious zeal, fervor, and also conviction. It wasn't just a political movement. It wasn't just another one of those Marxist movements, or nationalistic movements. It was purely, from the foundations up, a religious movement. And so, insofar as Khomeini is a Shia scholar, how much longer for, we don't know. But it's such a powerful moment in history. I think we don't really appreciate, as a younger generation, just how far the boundaries were pushed when Khomeini took power. As I said, there are many Sunni leaders and movements, Ikhwan al-Muslimin, Hizb al-Tahrir, the PLO, and many leaders from these movements who actually congratulated him. And some even came forward to figure out a way to have him as the Khalifa for all the Muslims, despite being Sunni. So it's a very, very, very powerful movement. But in order for us to appreciate this achievement from that perspective, we need to know the building blocks, the fundamentals of this movement, where it begins. And to be able to get that understanding, we need to understand the life and the works of a very central figure, Ali Shariati, this man here. We have to understand who this man was, and what his contribution was to the movement. He was one of the most brilliant intellectuals from the Muslim tradition. Again, I use this term very loosely. When I say Muslim, I mean Islamic, or Islamicate. But one of the most brilliant intellectuals in recent times. One of the most brilliant. And he's able to take ideas from the Western Hemisphere, but remains, you could say, loyal to his own Shia tradition. He doesn't compromise. He finds a way to synthesize and then to elevate the level. But he can also reach the masses, the intellectuals, the young students that he was teaching as a teacher, and the general masses with his writings, his lectures. So he was very, very effective in what he did. And you can almost say that without him, much of the drive and the push that led to the 1979 success would have been perhaps less possible. Only Allah knows. But he's a very central figure, Ali Shariati. So let's look into him a bit more, inshallah. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was a final of the Pahlavid shahs and emperors, actually initiated in 1963 what he called the White Revolution. The White Revolution. And this was a series of socioeconomic and cultural reforms in society to not only bring Iran into the modern world, but also to elevate the industry and to make it more prosperous and more literate people, greater freedom for women, more facilities for the impoverished. So he brought about a revolution in 1963 that was effectively going to revive and bring the nation into the modern world. But against his policy, there was the Red Shia, the Red Shia movement or ideology that was founded by Ali Shariati. So you have the Black Shia and you have the Red Shia strands. He favoured the Red Shia strand and he made this theoretical framework defining what the Black Shia movement was and what the Red Shia movement was. And he called it the Red Shia movement. So you have the White Revolution, which is being resisted by the Red Shia ideology. And then you have the Black clergy, those who are effectively dressing black. But it represents also the Shia administration or the clerical administration. That black, kind of sombre attire represents that class of people. History is written with two colours. It's written in red and in black. Red is the blood of the martyr, those who die for the cause. And black is the ink of the scholars, the intellectuals, those who actually galvanise and mobilise the masses with their writings and their lectures. And the white represents a new page. When you have a revolution, you start again from scratch. A new page, a blank page. So I find it very interesting that these colours were brought into the equation when it comes to Iran and the revolution and utilised and given new significance and new meaning. We want to begin with the red because Ali Shariati gives us a very fascinating intellectual framework by which to work. The more you learn history, the more fascinating things are the correlations. If you could imagine that the principles of the French Revolution somehow inspired, not entirely, but it did inspire the Iranian revolution, at least the beginning stages of it. And we get this from a cultural exchange. So I'm going to get into that now. Because Shariati goes to Paris. Like many of the most influential thinkers in the Muslim world from the 19th century onwards, beginning with Tahtawi, Rifaat Tahtawi. So beginning with his sojourn in Paris for five years, we have many people who leave the Muslim world and go to Paris and other parts of the European world and come back with ideas. Al-Afghani, Abduh and many others follow that trail. We even find people such as Michel Aflaq also follow that trail. So from Iran, one of the most influential people who goes to France is Shariati. And in his time in Paris, he's acquainted with the works of Jean-Paul Sartre and also Frantz Fanon. This is what he takes back with him. He translates the works into Farsi and he begins to distribute this. But there's a twist to what he does because he doesn't take everything that they have to offer. For example, Frantz Fanon in his very famous book Wretched of the Earth this famous book here which was actually based on the colonial resistance movement anti-colonial resistance movement in Algeria where Fanon was actually at the time positioned and working as a clinical psychologist. He was able to learn from this book but also he was corresponding with Fanon. Fanon was alive at the time. He will die a few years later. And the ideas came to him that we can actually take from this. We're also fighting an anti-imperial force in Iran. And while he was in Paris, he was also in touch with many of the guerrilla fighters and the intellectuals from Algeria. So he joined the Algerian National Front and he began to ingratiate himself and immerse himself in that world. So the ideas I took from Fanon was that armed resistance is important in fact necessary to free themselves from the shackles of colonialism. However, Fanon stopped at the point where he says we shouldn't involve religion in it. Religion should not be a part of the struggle because it hinders the efforts. It divides the people. It's divisive and it has certain limitations. Shariati says no. In fact, our greatest strength is religion. This struggle is not noble. It doesn't have that factor that we need to be successful without religion. Religion gives it purpose and meaning. So he takes the ideas of militarism and he takes the Shia perspective when it comes to, for example, dying for a noble cause, becoming a shaheed, becoming somebody who gives his life so others can live. He combines these and comes up with something very different. He also sought to... Initially he was reading into, for example, Marxist theories and many Muslim ideologues at the time were actually borrowing from the Marxists and socialists but after a while he decided that this was not sufficient again because it didn't give the spiritual nourishment needed to be successful. Marxism was a purely materialistic, atheistic movement and as a Muslim nation they could not benefit in the long term by following this sort of Western idea. So he took what was possible and created something very different. His book is effectively, you could say, the Muslim-Iranian equivalent, the Shia equivalent to Karl Marx. So he writes another book and delivers lectures and by this is able to galvanise the youth back in Iran because he returns after five years. He becomes a professor and a very popular lecturer and so his ideas begin to spread like wildfire. Now of course he will be arrested by the secret services but by that time his ideas had already taken root in society and he was already kind of very successful. If I were to describe to somebody who doesn't know anything about Sharia or has no idea who he was or what he stood for or what his significance is I would describe him in the following terms. He is the Iranian revolution's Qutb. Said Qutb and his position when it comes to the movements that follow on later on in the 80s in Egypt and across the Muslim world he is the equivalent to said Qutb but in Iran. He is also the equivalent to Mohammed Iqbal but in Iran. And if you look at the correlations they are very similar correlations here. Very similar correlations. Often times we hear especially those who live in the West the Muslims in the West we like to adorn ourselves with claims such as Islam will be revived from the West the sun will rise from the West. In the early 2000s Islam will be revived from the West. So the Western Muslims will be the ones to revive Islam because they are practicing Islam properly they are more active. I disagree with that. I disagree with that on two counts. The first count being that those who we have witnessed in the last 100 years who have had the most impact in the Muslim world were not from the West. In fact I would challenge anyone to name two people from the West Mohammed Asad and even there he didn't have he was influential he played a supporting role but he didn't lead anything. All of the leaders in the Muslim world in the last 100 years were people who were born and raised in the East perhaps they spent time in the West but they did not come from the West. So there is a pattern there. However there is another thing that also makes sense there is half truth in that statement people who have had very good influence and powerful influence in the East spent time in the West. Most of them spent time in the West. Either as students or as people in exile they had spent time in the West. So what correlates the three people here is that number one they were all born in religious families their fathers were either Imams for example Shariati's father had a seminary and Muhammad Iqbal began his studies studying Islam first and then he was sent to school when his Ustadh recognized intelligence in him told the parents send him to school. So they had a very strong and early exposure to Islamic culture customs, traditions and values. It's good for us to know those of us who want to raise children tomorrow who will insha'Allah have influence in the world and number one they delved all three of them in the written works the written works either as poets or as journalists or as essayists all three of them had a career with a pen at some point but more significantly they had all spent time in Europe studying all three of them. But that was a very kind of transformative experience that they had traveled out of the Muslim world had spent time in the West had seen and studied and learned and had come back to the Muslim world with new ideas some more positive than others but that was very important to see so the idea that Muslims in the West born and raised in the West have the solutions not necessarily so but at the same time there is a truth in saying that perhaps spending time in the West later on in life as an intellectual can give one perhaps the tools maybe the spark needed to make a change back in the East so for example Iqbal he studied in Cambridge as we all know Trinity College he became a barrister then he went to Munich where he got a PhD in metaphysics and philosophy then we have Ali Shariati spent five years in Paris he was able to speak to very influential teachers there he met with Sartre he was able to correspond with Frantz Fanon and many of the other ideologues at the time five years he studied language Persian language he also studied philosophy sociology and history very important topics he got a PhD at the end of it in the resistance struggle so for example he was once arrested for participating in a rally in support of Patrice Lumumba so these are people who are connected to the global struggle he knew what was happening in Congo what was happening in Algeria what was happening in Egypt what was happening of course in Iran so this was an opportunity to grow and to understand the bigger picture how things were being done elsewhere in the Muslim world of course Kotob we all know most people may not know he spent two years in Washington DC he wrote a diary which is now a book of his experiences there they're quite eventful I mean if you have time to read it it's quite interesting he makes a very very cutting critique of western society and norms but he went there to learn to be a teacher he went there to learn to be a teacher another thing is they were both teachers by profession so Kotob comes back after two years and he has a very very bitter taste in his mouth he didn't like what he saw in America many things I mean there are many insights into his experiences there so Shariati does the same thing they all come back home eventually and when all three come back home they don't start a new organisation they join existing organisations these are all insights they learn from scratch they don't have to start a new organisation they just join an organisation that's already on the ground and they push it forward so Sayyid Kotob joins the Muslim Brotherhood so Mohammed Iqbal joins the Indian League and Shariati joins the National Front for Iranian Liberation so they join existing organisations and there they begin to grow and people are pulled in by the message and this is very important because when we think of who's going to revive the Ummah it's not going to necessarily be those who are picking up weapons and I keep repeating this again the pen is really mightier than the sword it's the pen that can push the sword or lift the guns these are the people who are going to generate a revival in the Ummah it's going to be the intellectual class it's going to be the thinkers it's going to be those who are able to persuade large amounts of people and to eventually carry out whatever is necessary for the cause the intellectual class these are the people who are going to drive any change in society they're going to be the ones who drive change in society so I find a lot of importance in literature, history, sociology this is very important for Muslims who need to focus on these kind of things those of us who live in the West have an opportunity that others don't have rather than complaining often times about what's happening about sex, morality, deprivation whatever we want we could actually serve a greater purpose in the West both to the host nations but also to those back home the Muslims back home because we are literally living in an experiment nowhere in time have Muslims been living in non-Muslim nations in such numbers nowhere in time so we're living through an experiment and we have unique insights unique opportunities to understand the traditions the ways of doing things in the West that others back home don't have we can also make advocacy for them so we have so many opportunities that we may not be maximizing on we may not be seeing the opportunities we have at our hands right now but we have opportunities living in the West so the revolution begins in the mind always and I like to think that we still have opportunities to make positive change so Shariati leaves France after three years after five years sorry as a PhD so when he goes back to Iran he is arrested now his arrest and his career as somebody being arrested begins before he even leaves Iran because he was joining public protests he was actually part of those youngsters who wanted to make a change in society and he'll be arrested for that he'll be detained for that eventually he's granted a scholarship to study in Paris which is why he left Iran in 59 and spent five years abroad he's also arrested in Paris but on his way back when he arrives in Iran in 64 he is arrested on the spot and then detained for a couple of weeks but when they release him he's able to be he's recruited for one of the local universities where he begins his you could say professional career and this is where his career catapults because he has now a young audience the future intellectual class the university students and he has the ears so this is where he begins to promulgate and teach his ideas what he thought about Frantz Fanon, Sartre the revolution how we're going to be independent people more importantly he began to criticise the western establishments those who were effectively serving the western interests that's what they were doing they were just here to keep us asleep docile and weak while they serve their masters while puppeteering them what we need is a revolution we need a revolution we need new people who are going to come about who are going to work for the cause of revival and also for the victory and liberation of this nation so he begins to promote this idea he would say things such as you must die so others can live and that this is the way to salvation you will be honoured and you will be raised in the ranks in the next life so he began to really in want of a better word radicalise the youth with his lectures then he travelled to Tehran where he would also give lectures and his lectures became very popular so now beyond the student body you had also the professionals and those who were on a higher economic social strata also following him and listening to him and reading what he was writing and being effectively drawn into his message so he works diligently over the years effectively preparing the grounds for what would eventually become a full-blown revolution by the time he dies it's a full-blown revolution and Khomeini emerges so he is the one who made effectively did all the groundwork galvanising people with his pen organising, calling people getting the students involved getting the youngsters involved getting the patrons involved however he doesn't live to see 47 he doesn't live to see Pakistan established but he is the ideological founder of Pakistan in a similar vein Ali Shariat is the ideological founder of Iran or the Islamic Republic of Iran he is the one who made all the initial ideological arguments for cases so that it was possible for somebody else to come along and drive the movement he was effectively arrested several times SAVAK which is the secret services in Iran the Shah's secret services effectively CIA equivalent to CIA or Mossad in Iran it was SAVAK they were persecuting him for obvious reasons he became dangerous and they arrested him fleeing for his life and safety he left Iran and he went to England Southampton so he came to England but he died a few very shortly thereafter he died now the circumstance of his death has been argued and debated some people say he was poisoned by SAVAK others say he died of a heart failure it's not really it depends on who you ask effectively but he died very shortly thereafter in 77 two years before the revolution became successful so he doesn't live to see the fruit of his ideological work effectively yeah Southampton so interesting and when he dies his body is taken back to the Muslim world but he is buried in Damascus right next to Zainab bint Ali the granddaughter of Muhammad through Ali his granddaughter is buried next to her so that gives you an estimate as to how much people how much reverence he had for him so he's buried next to the granddaughter of Muhammad in Damascus this is a man who's had really a short career because he died at the age of 44 but a tremendous impact in the Muslim world tremendous impact very intelligent man and I really found this interesting it's the idea of the red Shia the red Shia and the black Shia I found it very interesting so his book the red Shia is actually red Shi'ism has been translated into English you can find it readily available he devised the Shia hegemony into two parts one is the red block and one is a black block okay the red block represents you could say the revolutionary arm those that are willing to die for justice if you remember when we talked about the Umayyad politics we mentioned various schools the Khawarij, the Khawarij school the Sunni school, the Shia school and within the Shia school there are two distinctive factors number one the ruler has to be of the Ahlul Bayt that's one thing lineage is very important but secondly he has to fight for justice that's one of the of course things develop later on very differently he had two strands of Shia schools but that was the principal distinctive factor between Sunni and Shia besides being Ahlul Bayt the second one you have to fight tyranny and struggle for justice even if it costs you your life so the red Tashayyah the red Shia movement he revived this idea that it's not good enough to follow the rituals you need to fight so that justice is established in society you need to be able to fight against corrupt tyranny against for example the Shah these are kings and emperors and we follow Imams you need to fight for this to be removed so you can replace it with a righteous ruler somebody who follows the traditions of the Imams so this when we talk of the red Tashayyah we're talking about Karbala as we know that's a central pillar that follows in the Shia tradition Imam Al Hussain he dies for what is right he spills his blood for what is right and this is an exemplary figure for the rest of all the Shia Imams that you have to fight for justice it's not good enough just to be a Muslim you need to be able to fight to reestablish justice and in many ways when you look at often times if you look at the political edge only the political dimensions many people who consider themselves Sunni are actually Shia let me measure my words from a political perspective many people who consider themselves Sunni are actually Shia because when you say for example the Sunni tradition is to be patient is to avoid the greater harm even if it means subduing yourself to a tyrannical leader or government that is a Sunni traditional aspect we can have we are allowed to have corrupt leaders so long as the greater good is achieved by that but somebody may say I don't believe in that we need to have only righteous rulers we need to fight Tawarit well that is exactly what the Shia Shia tradition for the most part stands for it's not good enough just to be a good Muslim you need to fight for the right system and the rightful leaders to be in position justice matters in this theory it's one that is not happy with tyrannical leaders it's willing to make a movement that's going to challenge and in fact change everything it's reformative he also was preaching against Beda'a effectively that came into the Shia tradition we need to go back to the early sources the early traditions the early format of Shia Islam and give up all the Khorafat effectively and all these folklorish practices let's go back to the pristine form of what Shia tradition was let's go back to the first generations also armed struggle so Jihad was now brought back whereas Fanon talked about armed struggle and rebellion and the Marxist talked about armed struggle he talked about Jihad and he actually argued that Islam has everything that all the other movements have all the ingredients are already in Islam we don't need to go and become Marxists or capitalists or socialists or communists everything is in Islam all the good parts are in Islam all we need to do is find and implement we don't have to adapt from somebody else's ideology so armed struggle is covered in Islam it's called Jihad in fact it's even better in Islam because with Islam it doesn't die when you die there is an afterlife you become a Shaheed you become a Muslim so Jihad is central in his ideology it's central and he would talk of for example the sacrifice of those who accompanied Al Hussein at Karbala those who fought with him they were Mujahideen then they were Shuhada so these are the examples we need to follow if we want to become again a successful people and of course it's dynamic and theocratic we just become practicing and we don't talk about politics no, politics is a part of our reality we have to be involved in politics so he wanted to reawaken people to the reality of being involved in events happening around the world particularly in Iran and the political agenda is being set we have to take power no longer accepting the idea that Islam is not political which essentially is a form of secularism when we say Islam is not political what are you saying? Islam doesn't have a political edge it's almost secularizing Islam to just being rituals so now we need to bring it back the entire package of Islam which involves Siyasiyah Jihad and all these things that make a movement dynamic so that is the Red Deshayyo now this is not in the books but I've kind of inferred that the color red could be associated with these movements that was a color often associated with the red peril and he applied it to Shia tradition and ideology so you have red rather than following the red model of the Russians he had a Shia version which is a red Deshayyo now the opposite of that is the black Deshayyo the black Shia block what does that stand for? well he says the Battle of Karbala all the way down to the Battle of Kaldiran in 1514 this is when Sultan Selim I went against Shah Ismail I who founded the Safavid dynasty and had a massive battle that was a point in time when Iran became fully and officially Shia but also majority Shia population there was an exchange perhaps no time for that today but there was an exchange and the Shia tradition became official in Iran from that moment onwards but the reason why he said Kaldiran Kaldiran is a moment in time when there is a distinction between black Shia and red Shia everything before that the people of the Deshayyo used to fight they used to struggle with armed resistance they would give up their lives but up until that moment in time when Selim actually conquered and effectively seclusion and spent the rest of his life writing poetry in effect he gave up the struggle so from that moment onwards the policy was let's just wait for the Imam to arrive let's just wait for the Mahdi to arrive and again from political perspective many Sunnis follow that tradition do nothing the Mahdi will come and fix it so he said no no no this is all part of the lazy conformative Shia tradition designed to keep us asleep effectively so from that moment onwards all the way down to his time he considered all of that effectively what Qutb would have considered Jahiliyya because Qutb also divides time right Ayyam al-Jahiliyya is the Jahili epoch and the Muslim world was in darkness for such a long time we became basically Jahili again so according to his tradition it was red up until the battle of Kaldiran then it became black conformative so that means you don't challenge oppression or oppressive governments you just conform to survive patience and abstinence don't fight just be patient sabr wait for the Imam to arrive wait for the Mahdi to arrive and this is how people were being kept effectively in their place and it was heavily governed by the rulers so effectively he wanted people to move away from this form of manipulative Shia ideology towards a more pragmatic and practical form the red Shia so he actually it's a rhetorical device because this didn't exist in reality red and black but he created a framework and he presented it which one do you want to be in and of course the youth and we want to be champions of virtue rather than being accomplices of vice and immorality which at the time was actually considered basically the white revolution was considered westernization vice immorality so we get this idea and effectively he leaves this behind for others to inherit and to basically fight towards a common cause a noble cause so at the time brother Yusuf after the battle of Kaldiran there were many Shia who were residing in the Ottoman regions empire and there were many Sunnis who were residing in Iran Iran is actually mostly Sunni but following the battle there was a population exchange so the Sunnis who were in Iran were to leave and the Shias in the Ottoman realms were to leave and to go to Iran and so there's a concentration of Shia population now in Iran that's why it became a population that was majority Shia and the state religion was Shia doctrine so that's the moment in time when it became a separation between Sunni and Shia world and Shia doctrine was consolidated at that point onwards so the Safavid empire and Shah Ismail and the Safavid region so his catch phrase or one of the famous pronouncement was you must die so that others can live you must die so others can live be prepared to give your life so others can live so he called people to be shuhada effectively and surprisingly enough there were many many people receptive to this many people, the young people of the establishment to hate this kind of thing, rhetoric by university lecturer an intellectual who's going around radicalizing people and getting them to actually commit to this very powerful message so now I want to paint the image because again it's quite complicated when you look at what happened in Iran often times you will hear the CIA, the MI6 set the Shah up so they betrayed him and then they left him other times you will hear that no the CIA was backing Khomeini he was a CIA asset so he was also being backed then you hear no actually no the USSR at the time the Soviet Union was supporting the Todai party which is where Mossadegh was actually of that party and they sabotaged the Shah's administration so there were many back and forth then you will hear for example what was true and to the French to the British as well and to the Russians because they had oil interests in there but at the same time he was also on a domestic front he was engaged with both the clerical you could say pillar including Khomeini and also those who were socialists the students those who wanted to have a more liberal ideals of the Todai party he reached out to them he wanted to win them over but more so towards the latter part of his career he sided more towards the clerics which is very strange but you will understand why he went towards the clerics so he sided more he allowed them to build masjids he built something like 3,700 mosques he allowed only the clerics from gathering and having political agency so he decided to actually fight one with the other if he had to choose a poison he would rather go for the clerics rather than going with or allowing the communists to take root in Iran so he sided with the clerics but it's a very dirty game it's a very dirty game because he is effectively betrayed by everybody he has a deal with effectively he is the white revolutionary and he is trying to juggle the red and the black which one is more harmful to me and which one can I set up against the other one while at the same time working with America and France to keep the Russians away the foreign enemy so there is a lot of political play at work there and tune in directly from your handset from anywhere in the world enjoy instant access to a growing catalog of on-demand streaming content exclusive to the platform accessible from a variety of devices including desktops, tablets, and cell phones connect instantly with our global community of history enthusiasts via our private community forum to find out more about our online history programs and resources 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