A Critical Study of “Innate Spirituality” in “Maktab” School of Thought based on Theory of Coherence

Nur Ali Elahi is a contemporary leader of Ahl-e Haqq who introduced the intellectual school of “Maktab,” which is now led by Bahram Elahi. In this school of thought, spirituality is presented under “innate spirituality” as opposed to religions and with the goal of human perfection. The Elahi family justify their approach by saying that I we stick to the traditional spirituality and cult, we have negated God’s justice and mercy, because in the past, prophets and saints brought helpful kinds of spirituality for people of their time, but those are not helpful for modern man. Thus, God’s justice and mercy require the existence of saints who lead people to perfection through true spirituality. One such saint is Nur Ali Elahi who guide people to perfection through a new religion. This research describes the claim by drawing on the method of qualitative content analysis, and it criticizes the claim with the method of critical analysis based on Halliday and Hasan’s theory of coherence. The main question of the paper is what objections could be raised against the claim of “innate spirituality” in “Maktab” school of thought, according to the theory of coherence. On this theory, incoherence in the method of explanation as well as internal and content incoherence are the main problems with the claim of “Maktab.”