پژوهشنامه علوم سیاسی
سال هفتم شماره 3 (پیاپی 27، تابستان 1391)

The present research is an attempt to elucidate social powers in a literary discursive text called Gulistan. In such elucidation, power and ideology are factors playing an important role in the 7th century society. This study tends to explore strategies and discursive tools resulting in the creation of dominance and inequality in the society and the divulgement of such inequality in language. For such purpose, Michael Halliday’s Theory (Ideational meta-function emphasizing processes and namings) to analyze the text, and Norman Fairclough’s theory to elucidate social aspects in three levels of description, interpretation and explanation and the manner it is related to the text, are used. Finally, a central powerful discourse titled as “Governmental Discourse” is defined. Explaining the role and place of participants in such discourse, it is delineated that to legitimate its presence and consolidate it in the society, governmental discourse gets help from an ideology introducing it as a representative of God and approved by Him.

This paper primarily focuses on the structure of political consciousness of Iranians and the attempt to reconstruct their identity in the modern era. If it is assumed that political Islam has been the dominant collective response to reconstruct their identity in the post 1950s Iran, the main question would be what the role of the actual Text (Quran) is? Political Islam is studied from different perspectives. However, this paper tends to explore the semantic structure of Political Islam from intellectuals’ attempt to return to Quran. As the outcome of an experimental survey with statistical initial methods, the said study will give an image of the number of times the intellectual and political activists have referenced their ideas to the actual verses from Quran in their published literature. The results will then be analyzed, using simple statistical methods, in order to demonstrate a clear overview on the trend of this phenomenon in different periods of intellectualism in Iran.

Recalling Neo-salafi school’s opinions and thoughts and explaining the differences with Wahhabism, traditional Salafi and reformist Salafi school, this paper attempts to study and analyze the effectiveness of Neo-salafism on the thinking trend of Al-Qaida. The main question is what the characteristics of opinions and thoughts by Neo-salafism are that have made it able to establish thinking conformity and coherence in Al-Qaida? How is this information important for analysts of Islamic movements? Is such thinking trend, has brought about some threats to the interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Middle East? The main discussion here is that Al-Qaida’s own thinking-environmental conditions and its theorists in the region along with the influence of foreign elements, have paved the way for Neo-Salafi thoughts to affect Al-Qaida. In other words, a set of internal and external factors in thinking-ideological formation of Al-Qaida has had a significant impact. The summary of the paper implies that Al-Qaida in Arab and Non-Arab Worlds, has been affected directly by Neo-salafi school’s opinions and thoughts and based on teachings by this theological school, has made its practical actions and radical orientation. In other words, if it was not for the deep efficacy of the mentioned organization from the Neo-salafism thinking principles and beliefs, Al-Qaida would never reach to such level of violence in killing innocent people, Muslim or non-Muslim. The author concludes that the formation of Al-Qaeda’s thinking trend is affected by Neo-salafi school’s thoughts and beliefs and such thought takes the interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran into challenge in the region to some great extent.

Shahnameh is the work of Ferdowsi in a tumultuous period. The collapse of political order and the resulting political and social insecurities is counted as the most conspicuous aspect of social life in that period. Composing Shahnameh shall be considered as a conscious effort in line with maintenance of Iranian identity and an attempt to establish social security, political stability and establishment of wise ruling. Shahnameh begins with formation of the rule and goes on with the role of the ruler in the emergence of jobs and division of social work. Throughout the Shahnameh, there is a retelling of actions and fates of kings and the elite, based on which the present paper studies only the features of ruling and politics in Shahnameh by a descriptive method. In other words, there is an attempt to give appropriate answers to these questions: by what perspective does Shahnameh look at politics and government, on what basis is political authority based and how are different kinds of government categorized?

“What role the internet and ICT have in social and political developments of Islamic countries?” this question arises from the rapid spread of internet and ICT, as new kinds of media. This article seeks to analyze the impact of ICT on social movements and social and political actions of civil society in Egypt. Underlying the resource mobilization theory by Charles Tilly, the role and impact of virtual space in the processes of mobilization model (interests, mobilization, organization, power, repression/facilitation, and threat/opportunity) and elements of “repertoire” of social movement, are studied. It is proved that the successful interaction between the virtual space and social movement results from a dynamic accommodation between functions of socio-political groups in real and virtual worlds. Finally, this article reflects the potential perspective in the relationship of internet and social activities in Islamic countries, based on the assumption that the internet interaction pattern helps to emerge and enhance some elements of Tilly’s resource mobilization theory, especially when internet is sympathetic to people’s interests in the real world.

This paper studies the viewpoints of four contemporary Iranian philosophers on the origin and trend of the decline of political thought in the recent Iran. Each thinker is considered as a representative of a school: Reza Davari, as an “Identity-based” thinker, formulates the decline based on the “Worldwide Westernization Crisis”, while Seyed Javad Tabatabei as a modern thinker theorizes the decline theory based on “The Fall of Philosophy and Conditions of Thought Refuse” especially the refuse of political thought. Abdolkarim Soroush as a modern religious thinker studies the decline of Muslims in general and not Iran in particular, while by a radical Nietzschean criticism on the body of religion, Aramesh doust-dar, contrary to Soroush, believes the “historical dominance of religious thought” on the social life of Iranians is the cause of decline. Apparently, Tabatabaei amongst these theorists gives a more comprehensive version of decline theory and makes it the focus of his research project. However, what is common in these thinkers is their ignorance of the realm of praxis that is the social formulation of idea and cessation of theory in the mind and level of abstraction, in a way that some of the said opinions fail to explain at least the events and trends. This article seeks to explain and evaluate the logic and mechanism of these four theories by answering the following question: In what area lies the core density or the driving force for thought refuse. In other words, what are the conditions to establish and extend the nature of thought that is lost in the contemporary Iran? The research method in this paper is the interpretation of the text as well as evaluation of the interpretation validity through deep dialogue with political thinkers including some of the said four thinkers.

The present article seeks to study and review, with scrutiny, the opinions and thoughts in the constellation of ideas by Mehdi Bazargan. Admittedly, the constellation of ideas held by Bazargan may be reviewed and identified in two intellectual stages. In his first stage of thinking, Bazargan holds a maximum consideration of religion and maintains that the Islamic teachings provide for whole human life. From the point of view of this religious intellectual, both theoretical and practical aspects as well as the manner to practice politics and macro-management and even the experimental science may be extracted from religion. In this period, Bazargan has a socio-scientific or, in other words, exogenous and political tendency to religion and tries to make compromises between science and religion. This maximum consideration held by Bazargan undergoes paradigmatic metamorphosis regarding the role of religion in society and government in his last speech titled as "God and Afterlife are the Objectives of Prophetic Mission". As a consequence, Bazargan like secular intellectuals considers the religious thinking as injurious to the worldly life and reduces the role of religion to individual thoughts. To study and criticize opinions by this religious intellectual, we should take into consideration the former and later Bazargan. The methodological approach adopted in this study is a qualitative content analysis method based on which Bazargan's works in these two stages are considered as a trackback of dominant discourse in each era. Findings of this study indicate that the intellectual religious school with a scientific approach preceded by Bazargan fades the religious principles and at last graves it into secularism and religious reductionism because of irreligious consideration and radical emphasis on using positivistic and pragmatic teachings