Challenges of Postmodernism to Teachings of Shia Islam and Strategies to Combat Them

Postmodernism is the start of an era which is signified with uncertainty as its main epistemological characteristic. The way the Shia Islamic society faces the challenge of uncertainty manifest itself in different ways. The present article aims to focus on the challenges that postmodernism has created for Shia Islam and proposes strategies to combat these challenges. To this end, the paper enumerates the challenges including the negation of the superior narration, pluralism, historicity of the concept of reality, the relation between language and text, the empowerment of the marginalized, and discusses their positive and negative sides in relation to the Islamic ideology. The paper concludes with a number of strategies proposed to combat the challenges of this era. The aim is to find a proper answer to the question of the advantages and disadvantages of this trend of thought to Islam, and the way we should play our role in a world in which the culturally and religiously marginalized trends of thought are on the rise. The specific conclusion is that the positive aspect of postmodernism, which have somehow been ignored or less valued in our system of thought, can act like a catalyst for Islam in the postmodern world. The major finding of the study is that through making renovation and innovation in some realms of religion, and figuring out new insights with a fresh spiritual substance to rescue mankind from positive and negative nihilism, considering world developments, believing in our capacity, validating others, and shifting our psychological demands to historical ones, we can hope to play a significant role in the postmodern era.