Rereading and interpreting the ideas of leading Muslim thinkers
fateme kamrani; somaye hamidi; Peyman zanganeh
Abstract
Modernism is a type of social life and institution whose primary paradigm is a self-reflective, self-critical wisdom that perpetually evaluates human traditions. This phenomenon originated in the West and spread progressively to other regions. The emergence of this way of thinking in Iran elicited various ...
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Modernism is a type of social life and institution whose primary paradigm is a self-reflective, self-critical wisdom that perpetually evaluates human traditions. This phenomenon originated in the West and spread progressively to other regions. The emergence of this way of thinking in Iran elicited various responses. Some of the intelligentsia attempted to establish a secular and modern order by rejecting traditional and religious values and imitating non-western styles. In contrast, a number of religious intellectuals who flourished primarily in the forties and fifties of the Shamsi calendar opposed this idea and attempted to rely on religious values, correct it with modern ideas compatible with Islam, and prevent the penetration of Western ideas into their culture and civilization. Imam Khomeini, one of the intellectuals of the forties and fifties according to the Shamsi calendar, studied and criticized western humanistic and colonial aspects, while accepting some of its civilizational principles according to Islamic interpretation. Analytical-descriptive methodology is used in this study to examine the effect of Modernism Mindset on Imam Khomeini’s thought, based on three principles of Lacan as a religious intellectual and his desired social-political order. Imam Khomeini's reputation as one of the most influential religious thinkers of the 1940s and 1950s is founded on a critique of the west’s colonial and humanistic aspects. Although he adopts certain intellectual principles of Western civilization in accordance with his religious interpretation, he employs them to create his transcendent sociopolitical order. However, research indicates that Imam Khomeini opposed Shah’s iconoclastic and anti-modern actions, preached the truth, and attempted to reconstruct a political system based on sublime religious values through symbolic action.
Zinat Motahari; Hossein Harsij; Ali AliHosseini
Abstract
This study uses Lacanian metaphor and decolonial rhetoric as the theoretical framework in its analysis of the Iranian principalist intellectual Hassan Azghadi. It proposes that Iran’s modern polity is defined by its dual stance towards modernity at one level and modernization at another. The analysis ...
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This study uses Lacanian metaphor and decolonial rhetoric as the theoretical framework in its analysis of the Iranian principalist intellectual Hassan Azghadi. It proposes that Iran’s modern polity is defined by its dual stance towards modernity at one level and modernization at another. The analysis seeks to answer the question “How does Azghadi’s Rhetoric reproduce the nodal points of the IR’s decoloniality?”. To answer this question, we analyze the decoloniality in Azghadi’s rhetoric by highlighting the use of metaphor in it. According to the decoloniality theory, delinking from the heritage of colonialism necessitates discourse-building. To understand the metaphoricity of Azghadi both as a discourse and as a rhetorical trope at the semantic level, we rely on “conceptual metaphor”, a five-step method developed by Steen (1998). Azghadi’s speech on Islamic Civilization-making is purposively selected for its resonating decolonial content. We contend that “Islamic awakening” is a very broad metaphor that gives coherence to the idea of Islamic civilization-making. Under it, we come to four nodal points: VOCATION, TRANSCENDENCE, ORGANISM, and OTHERIZATION. While the first three construct the nodes of the IR’s decolonial discourse, the last dislocates the rivaling capitalist and fundamentalist discourses. Finally, the minor metaphors under each node are studied based on Steen’s model. In conclusion, we review how these metaphors inspire Azghadi’s audiences for delinking from the liberal epistemology and re-appropriating the Islamic thought system as the cornerstone of their civilization.
