The challenge tradition and modernity in Iran

With the emergence of nation-state and establishment of modern absolute state in the first Pahlavi dynasty era, a kind of semi- modernity began from the top. Mirza Malkam Khan, Akhundzade and Sayyed Jamal ad-Din Asadabadi emphasized the science as a major factor of modernity. The emphasis on Islamic identity by Sayyed Jamal ad-Din Asadabadi, the emphasis on Iranian identity and then Association of Youth Iran, Kaveh authors, Technocrats, religious intellectuals and left oriented intellectuals in the first and second Pahlavi dynasty show a kind of affinity between intellectual thoughts. Nevertheless, there is no dominant paradigm about Iranian pure thought, Western pure thought and Islamic pure thought in modern Iran. Intellectuals had similar attitudes about issues such as western political philosophy and thought; and the gap between Iran and thought of modernity. They, also, had different views about the meaning of modernity and tradition, modernity factors, the aims of modernity, the results and consequences of modernity, the distinction between the West and the modernity and the effects of modernity and tradition on identity.