After the revelation of the noble Qur’ān – the guiding book of all – by God onto the noble Prophet (s), some people accepted it while some others denied it. Then, the question that comes to mind regards the backgrounds and sources of the polytheists and opponents’ denial of the qur’ānic verses. In this article, we apply a descriptive-analytical method to inspect the qur’ānic verses in order to respond the abovementioned question. The investigation of the qur’ānic verses reveals that some sources of the denial of the Qur’ān include polytheists’ disbelief, their great contrariness, enmity, and arrogance, their worldly attachments and insistence on the materialist opinions, their denial of the Resurrection Day, and their erroneous values.

Specifying the conceptual identity of intellect and distinguishing it from knowledge, this article addresses ethical perfection as the main goal in the human perfection path. The purpose of this article is to specify the evolutionary interrelationship of intellect and ethics and the outcome of the effects of these two on the perfection of the human from the viewpoint of Islam in general and the narrations of the book Ghurar al-ḥikam in particular. The results of the study reveal that according to Imām ‘Alī’s (a) statements, there is an interrelationship between intellect and ethics, where ethics without intellect is imperfect and intellect without ethics cannot play its role correctly. In this article, first the essential and conceptual differences of intellect and knowledge are given. Then, the mutual evolutionary effects of intellect and ethics on each other and the role of these two in the evolutionary movement of the human are discussed.

Realism is always emphasized in Islam and is considered as one of its essential principles. Accordingly, Islam teaches the human to take into account the realities, and organize and plan his movement and efforts based on them, because without knowing the realities he cannot achieve the ideal goals that bring about his blissfulness. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the nature and consequences of realism in order to step toward obeying the divine commands and consequently, the strengthening of this important element in the human and creating the motivation to grow it as much as possible. This way, the human can ultimately attain his true prosperity and blissfulness. In this study, in which the data is collected through library research, first the nature of realism is specified. Then, its effects as well as the relationships between these effects and their priority will be addressed.

One of the right demands of the Iranian society 42 years after the glorious victory of the Islamic Revolution is the establishment of the pure Islamic values in all spheres of the society, especially in the economic and business decision making arena. The purpose of this study is to identify and explain the factors and principles of customer-orientedness and customer relationship from the viewpoint of the Qur’ān and Nahj al-balāgha. Therefore, this descriptive survey is an applied research project in terms of purpose, and uses library research for data collection. The obtained results led to the identification of 15 factors, which were classified into theoretical and practical principles. The theoretical principles involve right-centeredness, the attainment of the divine satisfaction, the consideration of the customer’s desires, sincerity in transactions, and the agreement of the transaction with the Islamic orders. The practical principles include reasonable profits, observing equity, rational trust in the customer, staying away from underselling, staying away from hoarding, patience, amiability with the customers, providing good services, timely meeting of the customer’s needs, and praying God to grant the grace of serving people.

The way the holy Qur’ān speaks to the human has always posed a question to him – especially the contemporary human. The author of this article believes that the manifestation of this style should be sought via a phenomenon called “the articulateness of the Qur’ān.” According to the linguistic and narrative indications, the “message and intention delivery and presentation” is the essential meaning that lies in the word “articulation,” and this message and intention might be realized through sensory mechanisms such as utterances and sounds (sensory articulation) or intellectual mechanisms (intellectual articulation). The premise of this article is that the expressive revelation is one type of the qur’ānic revelation articulation that ultimately leads to the confirmation of the origination of the exegesis of the Qur’ān from the qur’ānic revelation.

The major premise of intertextuality maintains that there exists no independent text, but rather, texts borrow from and have a close, mutual relationship with each other. According to this concept, any text is derived from the past or concurrent texts, in a way that the new (present) text is a summary of another text or various other texts (which are not present). The purpose of this article is to explore the intertextual presence of the Testaments in the Simāt prayer. The study is descriptive-survey in terms of method and uses library research method to collect data. The findings indicate that the Testaments (the Bible) have an intertextual presence of in the Simāt prayer. This relationship revolves around expressing common concepts and themes; therefore, there exist statements in the Simāt prayer that are similar to some statements in the Testaments. The most frequent intertextual commonality regards Ijtirār (partial rejection) in which the absent text (i.e., the Testaments) is represented in the present text (i.e., Simāt prayer). Moreover, there are some instances of Imtiṣāṣ (negation of the parallel), too.

Mu‘tazila and neo-Mu‘tazila are two rationalist intellectual movements that have paid a special attention to the literary interpretation of the Qur’ān. The Mu‘tazila literary approach to the interpretation of the Qur’ān derived from their theological thought. Teachings such as the belief in the createdness of the Qur’ān, the existence of figurative expressions in the Qur’ān and the applicability of the esoteric interpretation to it, and the belief in the miraculousness of the Qur’ān had an essential role in the formation of the Mu‘tazila literary attitude to the interpretation of the Qur’ān. Nonetheless, these factors were part of the superficial issues in the neo-Mu‘tazila literary approach to the interpretation of the Qur’ān, and this approach followed Western literary criticism methods rather than the theological and doctrinal discussions to evaluate texts. Due to the use of the intellectual sources and principles of various theological sects and the consideration of thoughts based on their effectiveness in answering challenges, the neo-Mu‘tazilaists could not create a robust intellectual system like that of the Mu‘tazilaists that could be used to organize essentially their stances to various issues – including the literary approach to the Qur’ān.

Ethics is the basis of social relations, in a way that when it is absent, the society gets afflicted with spiritual and psychological breaches and downfalls. We cannot separate jurisprudence from ethics. The judicial decree is the legislation by God to regulate the human life, including his acts and essence as well as the other things and matters in his life. The ethical issues are bound to the judicial decree and have jurisprudential burden. God has emphasized amiability in the verses of the noble Qur’ān in various ways. Using imperative structure, He has put it at the same level as important issues such as the prohibition of worshipping non-God, benevolence toward parents, saying prayers, and paying Alms tax. One of the important points in ethical issues is specifying if an act is obligatory, recommended, prohibited, or detestable. This article aims at extracting the judicial decree of the obligation of amiability with others using jurisprudential criteria such as the refinement of the basis of the ruling, the annulment of ineffective attributes, and analogy, as well as the Shī‘a and Sunnī narrations and commentaries.

This article seeks to explore and criticize the exegetes’ stances in the infallibility domain stemming from the verses 3-4 of the Star chapter (Qur’ān 53:3-4). The exegetes’ consensus is that the referent of these verses is the Prophet of Islam (s). However, some of them take the verse as indicating the partial infallibility, but others consider it as expressing the universal verbal infallibility of the Prophet (s). The partial infallibility entails two directions, namely the Qur’ān and divine revelation, and the adaptation of the verse content to the words of the Prophet of Allāh (s) about his vicegerency and Imāmat. Still other exegetes present the reasons for the partial and complete infallibility but do not provide a clear opinion about the theme of the verse. Considering the internal and external indications, the article at hand makes it clear that the implication of these two verses for the universal infallibility is verifiable, and it is in agreement with the principles.

Before Khāja – when theology had not become philosophical in its true sense – theologians attained the solution to the problem of evil from the qur’ānic verses and narrations of Ahl al-Bayt (a). As a result, their solutions were different from the theological theories on evils. The Twelver Shī‘a theologians deemed the evil to emanate from God but did not take this as contradictory to the absolute benevolence of God – which was taken from the Christian theology. In the Twelver Shī‘a theology, God is Wise, and the existence of evils is not unnecessary and is because of the divine wisdom. Therefore, the evils and afflictions of the material world are good, because God compensates evil with the two principles of “Intiṣāf” and “‘Iwaḍ.”

Related to the seventh verse of the Chambers chapter, there is a narration received from two transmission paths, one by Kulaynī in the book Al-Kāfī and the other one in the commentary attributed to ‘Alī b. Ibrāhīm Qumī. In this narration, the word “faith” is introduced as Imām ‘Alī (a), and the words unbelief, wickedness, and rebellion are claimed to be the three first caliphs. Suchlike narrations that regard the inward and esoteric meanings of the qur’ānic verses need to be treated very carefully so that no incorrect narration is attributed to the Infallibles (a) or no narration certainly issued by an Infallible (a) is discarded due to the lack of the necessary attention and investigation. Therefore, in this article we aim at showing that along the textual criticism, the criticism of the chain of transmission of suchlike narrations can be effective in identifying the sound narrations from the unsound ones. Thus, after determining the chain of transmission of the narration, we have explored the transmitters of the chain of transmission, and have shown that the chain of transmission of this narration is weak due to the existence of some famous extremists in it. Then, the content and implication of the narration is examined using the content analysis criteria, and it is found that the content of this narration seriously contradicts the content of some other narrations and the practice of Ahl al-Bayt (a).

The reminding function (reminding the innate knowledge) is one of the main functions of revelation. In order to put this function into practice, the divine prophets and God’s saints used various ways, including explication (explaining the innate covenant, is content, and its qualities), education (teaching religion, worshipping, and prayer), motivation (creating existential moods that cause solicitation and compulsion), and prevention (removing the obstacles against innate disposition).