59. “Do you know,” he [əli şəriəti] asks rhetorically, “what the real problem of contemporary Islam is?” His answer is that Islam has consummated an unholy marriage with the khordeh-e bourzhuazi (petty bourgeoisie. In this marriage, the clergy makes religion comfortable for the bazaar and the bazaar makes the world comfortable for the clergy. Just as, in the age of feudalism, Islam justified the power of the landlords, so now, in the age of capitalism, it condones that of the bazaar merchants. He further takes on the clergy for giving themselves fancy new titles such as ayatollah and hojjat al-islam; for hiding from the people the fact that their leaders had been shepherds, craftsmen, and farmers; and for diluting Islam’s radicalism into watered-down paternalism. He concludes that since the ulama have forfeited the task of propagating the true message of Islam, that mission has been passed on to the intelligentsia. “The task at hand,” he declares, “is nothing less than the total liberation of Islam from the clergy and the propertied classes.”