A Comparison between the Discourse of the Contemporary Arab Asharites of the Islamic World and the Asharites of Iranian Kurdistan in terms of Philosophizing (A Historical-Comparative Study)

This paper aims to provide a historical and comparative explanantion and analysis of the discourse of contemporary Asharites of Islamic world and the contemporary Asharite intellectuals of Iranian Kurdistan. For this purpose, a library-documentary, descriptive-analytical, and hitorical-comparative research method was adopted. The findings of the study indicate that the contemporary Islamic theologians such as Taha Abdurrahman, Abu Zaid, Arkoun, al-Jabri and Muhammad Abduh due to their Arabic fanaticism, adopted an anti-Aristotelian attitude and supported a sort of philosophy rooted in religious scripts. Due to their intellectual interactions with the western world, contemporary Arab Asharites of Islam have a more friendly attitude toward philosophy and philosophizing and do not accept traditional Asharites’ disagreements with philosophy. On the other hand, with the exception of Takhti Mardukhi family who due to their family authority have shown interest in philosophy and have even taught philosophy, other contemporary Asharites theologians of Iranian Kurdistan including Musannef Chory, Mahmoud Modarres and Mulla Baqer Balak have not shown any tendency toward philosophy; that is rooted in the conditions dominant on traditional religious seminaries in Kurdistan and lack of interaction with academicians in comparison to other contemporary Asharites in the Islamic world. Only a few of today’s seminarians who have university education are interested in philosophy, but they are still not interested in projecting their views in society.