Return to self, according to the intellectuals of this discourse, means the revival of Islamic thought and a return to the Islamic cultural self. The foundations of the discourse of Islamic return to self are Islamic ideology and the reconstruction of religious identity, Islamism, the elevation of Islamic values, internationalism, Islamism, and religious culture. Nowadays, religious approaches, with the aim of countering the secularization of the Islamic world and modernism, are participating in political activities with a more combative stance than before. The growing current of religion, which is moving within the layers of society and politics, has another significant meaning in addition to the religionization of each of the aforementioned components, and that is the practical application of religion in the worldly sphere. This movement aims to transform the sacred aspects of religious concepts into social approaches. That is, with the efforts of religious intellectuals, the sacred and otherworldly aspects of religious concepts are transformed into worldly practical aspects. For this reason, we can explain how Abuzhar, a companion of the Prophet, in the works of Shariati, transforms into a figure with the responsibility of a social reformer and then appears on the theater stage as a dramatic character. According to the research of this paper’s findings, which is based on the theoretical pattern of religious fundamentalism, we can recognize that returning to the Islamic past as a fundamental Islamist movement illustrates itself through dramatic texts (Gabriel Almond et al.). The researchers of this article believe that the fundamentalist movement of "Return to Islamic Self," represented by Ali Shariati, considers itself committed to a kind of Islamic socialist uprising due to facing challenges such as secularism and secular governance. This commitment to manifestations of religious fundamentalism, such as playwriting and staging theater in religious areas like Hosseiniyeh Ershad, is each in some way a product of the process of actualizing religion in this world.
After the introduction of fundamentalist measures into theatrical texts, a serious disorder has occurred in the field of theater, and the theatrical aspects of the text have entered a crisis. Despite the efforts of these thinkers, a return to the fundamental principles of religion, under the title of a return to authentic Islam, does not have significant potential in the field of theater, as ideological and religious specifications prohibit various theoretical approaches. Moreover, since there are no theoretical sources available, the result is nothing but slogan-like works devoid of the ideas of playwriting. The dramatic text, rather than having a dramatic action, turns into a fundamentalist actor. Religious intellectuals, in addition to not adding anything intellectual to the play text theoretically, are considered a destructive force in theater theorizing.