Archeology of Idea of Islamic University in Iran

The present paper is an attempt to study the history of the idea of 'Islamic University'. Contrary to what is commonly perceived, the idea of 'Islamic University' existed before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which was put forth for the first time in late 1950s. At least three trends prepared the grounds for the emergence of the idea of 'Islamic University' during this period: first, anti-religious policies of the Pahlavi I and Pahlavi II regimes, particularly the need to infiltrate the religious organizations in order to confront the revolutionary clerics after the 1963 Uprising; second, the issue of Palestine and the need to repair Iran’s Islamic image among Muslim countries to thwart the effects of the regime’s warm relations with the Israeli regime in the course of the Arab-Israeli wars; and third, the emergence of the selfcriticism trend in the West in the post-Second World War era and the necessity of revising modern sciences, which led to the emergence of critical trends against modernity and modern sciences, including traditionalism with the pivotal role of Seyed Hussein Nasr in Iran. As a result of these three trends, the Pahlavi government tried to establish an 'Islamic University', while the revolutionary clerics, led by Imam Khomeini, opposed it for about two decades. The findings of this research also indicate that a kind of transition from political approach to identity approach to persuasion of the idea of 'Islamic University' took place in the pre-Revolution era. In the post-Revolution era, the idea was followed through epistemological approach in search of monotheistic sciences within a new semantic framework reflected in the 1980 Cultural Revolution. However, some of the former mecha- nisms for the follow up of this plan were pursued in the post-Revolution era. The present study was conducted through Foucault’s approach to historical studies focusing on archeological method.