نشریه مطالعات اندیشه معاصر مسلمین
پیاپی 4 (پاییز و زمستان 1395)

An accurate understanding of thoughts would be possible when it is studied in the form of studying the currents. The issue of this research is the typology of contemporary Muslim thought that has been made by combining existing typologies with an analytical-critical method. The classification of contemporary thought in four categories: isolated traditional, active traditional, evident modern and hidden modern has considerable capacities. The isolated traditional currents include traditional Shiite jurisprudence currents, Tehran school of wisdom and mysticism, and Salafism. The active traditional currents include Islamization of knowledge, cultural reform, critical rationalism, and traditionalism. The evident modern currents include historical secularism, and epistemic secularism. The hidden modern currents include modern and postmodern currents with Islamic suffixes such as Islamic liberalism, Islamic nationalism, Islamic Marxism, Islamic feminism, as well as neo- Mu'tazilites current and rhetorical interpretation. Meanwhile, the modern currents enjoy predominance in studying the traditional ones as an object either in a sympathetic way or contentious way. The life's continuation of hidden modern currents and some isolated traditional ones, such as Salafism depends on Western political support, and the safe path can only be sought in the active traditional current.

This paper seeks to critically examine the religion's relationship with ethics and politics in the paradigm of "philosophical secularism" by Adel Dahir, a contemporary Arab philosopher and intellectual. The philosophical secularism of Dehir is a philosophical, meta-historical and meta-religious theory about the separation of religion from politics and ethics and nonintervention of religion in worldly affairs and social life. Considering independence of human intellect, Dahir has given priority to normative-practical knowledge over the religious knowledge. The principles and foundations of Dahir's intellectual-philosophical system in the paradigm of philosophical secularism include priority and supremacy of reason on religious sources (rationalism), autonomy, the priority of morality on religion, and, consequently, ethical knowledge on religious knowledge, and priority of epistemology on religious knowledge in social and political life. In this theory, there are two types of secularism: sclerotic secularism and flexible secularism, the first is philosophical and the latter is historical. Philosophical secularism is based on two principles including the analysis of concepts and epistemology, which their explanation paves the way for understanding of philosophical secularism. Daher's methodology is rational, and philosophical secularism aims to counter the paradigm of "Islamism."

The Arkon's thought has a philosophical, literary, sociological, and historical dimensions influenced by the interdisciplinary atmosphere of modern, and more, post-modern human sciences. Saussure's semiotics, Foucault's Archaeological and Genealogy, and Derrida's deconstruction can be considered as the epistemic bases for his thought. His basic question is to explain the causes of the current backwardness of Islamic societies and the progress of the Western world. According to Arkoun, a modest modernity in the Muslim world was formed by the Mu'tazilite in the fourth century AH and before the formation of Western modernity. Investigating the causes of the failure of Islamic modernization and the emancipation of the Islamic world from the current abnormal situation, he presents the project of "critique of Islamic reason"; a project whose purpose, using the above-mentioned methods of human sciences, is to deal with unthinkable and not-thinking of Islamic heritage in order to boom it. By a critical analysis approach, the present research shows that the application of the critique of Islamic reason, due to the adoption of modernist and postmodernist foundations that contradict Islamic foundations, not only does not lead to the boom and revival of religious science, but the only outcome which is produced is the reconstruction of the Islamic heritage based on Western secularism. The definite consequence for the application of this method in the analysis of Islamic heritage is skepticism, relativity, considering the reason cultural, and double languishment of the tradition.

Traditionalism, as a philosophical model for interfaith dialogue, speaks of one root for the religions in the supreme level of religion called “transcendental unity of the religions” and applies the tradition as common sacred and spiritual principles to provide a common ground for interfaith dialogues. According to requisites and expected outcomes of a standard interfaith dialogue which has been presented by Critical Realism, the paper attempts to evaluate this philosophical model of interfaith dialogue. Based on ontological and epistemological system of traditionalism in explaining the plurality of religions, the outcome of the research demonstrates that interfaith dialogue will be directed towards the past, not towards the future. Although it was successful in an interpretation of religion which helps a lot to create a sense of accepting the others, finally this interfaith dialogue is completely dedicated to the elites and will not become the culture of the masses of people

One of the most important issues discussed by scholars during the history of Islamic thought is the controversy over the divine or humanity nature of the Holy Qur'an which has been raised in later periods in a form of a duality of the divine / worldly nature of Quran, and each Muslim intellectual has followed this discussion in a way. Professor Mohammad Shahrur, a contemporary Syrian thinker, is one of the intellectuals who entered this issue from a particular angle and presented a special hermeneutic theory called the "similarity" or "text's stability and content's mobility" theory. Through analyzing the content of this thinker's intellectual project, this paper attempts to formulate the theory of "similarity" and then to analyze and evaluate it. The author believes that the most important applications of similarity's theory are modernization of the text's understanding and conflict with the philosophy of prophet hood. Also, Shahrour in some positions approaches the Gadamerian hermeneutics and he is in common with Soroush in his theory of "theoretical abridgment and expansion of the Shari'ah"'. Therefore, all the critiques on the Gadamerian hermeneutics and Soroush's perspective will also be applied to Shahrur's view.

There are many intellectual and epistemic foundations for Indonesian Muslims. They are politically influenced by overseas cultures. With respect to their different tendencies in the intellectual and social discussions, and their interactions with the Middle East, especially by attending the Hajj and familiarity with the propaganda of Wahhabism, they have turned to different streams and various cultural orientations. Two axes of power called Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama with more than thirty million followers have a great role among Indonesian Muslims. Using both the historical research method and the analysis of the leaders' words, the intellectual and epistemic foundations of each are alluded in this essay. The central question of the research is to know the differences and commonalities of the intellectual and epistemic foundations of both Muhammadiyah movement and Nahdlatul Ulama movement. The new achievements of the research include formulation of these two intellectual axes, identification of their commonalities with other Islamic denominations, as well as explanation of their historical context.