فصلنامه ثقافتنا
پیاپی 27 (1390)

The current year, according to the supreme leader, is the year of economic jihad. We intend to review the cultural content of this entitlement.The supreme leader in his New Year address said it was not enough to pursue the normal mobility in economic field, rather, “we should have a leap forward” in this connection,which needs a jihad-like morale and will.The economic mobility of any society primarily depends upon cultural infrastructures indeed. Islamic cultural scheme creates inherent motives for the individual and society intheir economic activities. This approach associates economy with ethical and humane values and considers poverty a product of inequality not lack of Divine blessings. Theinstructive school of Islam says that man must be deeply involved in the scene of life for progress and development. Scientists have put forward various factors behindeconomic underdevelopment of the world of Islam. Seyed Mohammad Bagher Sadr believes that Muslims’ alienation from the concept of Istikhlaf (man as the caliph or successor of God on earth) is the cause of their underdevelopment. He is of the opinion that Muslims can put behind underdevelopment only when the Islamic ideals are revivedin their hearts to lead them toward realization of that ‘greatest ideal’.

The author believes that the Islamic meaning of Ummah has lost its significance among the Muslims and Ummah is only used to refer to ethnicity. This interpretation of Ummahhas brought about local and regional ethnic clashes after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the world of Islam. Due to lack of understanding the true meaning of Ummah, the anticolonial movements in the world of Islam have tended to the Western and Eastern schools of thought – instead of the school of Islam – and have pushed Islam out of their cycle of life. The author emphasizes that the concept of Ummah must be re-extracted from the Qoranic texts. He has studied various verses of Qoran and reached this conclusion that Ummah refers to the unity of individuals and societies. This is in sharp contradiction with any disunion and separation of the Islamic societies. In other words, the more we study this concept, the more we will get closer to unity and solidarity.

In this article, the author has talked about the need for developments in contemporary Islamic thoughts due to rapid developments in time. He proceeds with studying thedevelopments in the thoughts of Islamic organizations, parties and personalities. One of the major issues in these developments, according to him, concerns public freedomand human rights. Also, issues related to Islamic authority and government have occupied part of the Islamic thoughts. Islamization of epistemology is one of the major issues thatis to be considered in these developments. In other words, issues related to philosophy, history, sociology, and psychology are chiefly discussed based on Western perspectives and Muslim thinkers are seeking ways to Islamize these sciences. In sum, he has studied the viewpoints of Islam on these sciences. The future of Islamic civilization is also a focus of attention of the contemporary Islamic thought. Islamic thinkers are seeking a response to the question of whether Islamic pattern for life can meet the modern-day standards.The author has continued with the challenges and opportunities before the contemporary Islamic thoughts.

The author, in this article, has given information about the huge number of Arabic manuscripts in Iranian libraries. He is of the opinion that the Arab world and researchers are unaware of this invaluable wealth. He has given examples of research works by the Arab researchers who know nothing about the Arabic manuscripts they have written about. He proves that Arabic manuscripts are more ancient than the copies they have used as sources of their research papers. In the end, the author offers scientific proposals for mutual cooperation among the researchers to prevent creation of the superficial works on written heritage of the Muslims.

This article studies the nature of research works by Orientalists and diversified viewpoints of Muslim researchers on the works by Oriental scientists. The author concludes that pessimistic view of the Muslim scholars toward the Oriental works has deprived them of the chance to use their achievements. To prove his claim, he reviews fairly a work by one of the renowned Orientalists known as Goldzimer and his opinion about the history of Islam. After a brief introduction of this Orientalist, the author focuses his study on a fair judgment without any religious impetus.Goldzimer in his book, Schools of Islamic Interpretation, intends to give a historical perspective of Islam, and continues with such issues as Islamic ideology, Sufism,Islamic sects (Shia, Sunni, Khawarijis) and finally Islamic modernism in India and Egypt. The author reviews Goldzimer’s book and argues his faults and weak points. He criticizes Goldzimer’s understanding about Shia Muslims and his reliance on erroneous interpretations that result from lack of his access to authentic Shia sources.He rejects Goldzimer’s objection to contemporary interpretations on religion and science and proposes conducting a scientific interpretation of the Holy Qoran.

The author has studied the relationship between Islamic movements and nationalistic movements in the Muslim countries. By Islamic movements he refers to sociopoliticaldevelopments under Islamic codes that target Western cultural assaults. The need for counterattacking cultural assaults by the West made these movements give priority toestablishment of Islamic rule and Islamic society. In this sense, they had clashes with laic ethnic movements. This research work distinguishes Islamic movements from the national movements and believes that their agreement is confined to the way of fighting only. The two movements, i.e. Islamic and ethnic, also shared common interests on realization of Islamic and national independent identity. The attention to independence paid by the Islamic movements made the Muslim nations owe their independence to the Islamic movements. The separation between national and Islamic movements can be seen in Egypt, while this separation is absent in Western Arab nations because it has resulted in a sort of unity against colonialism. As in eastern nations of the world of Islam from Iran to Indonesia the strong will to fight against colonialism has united the national and Islamicmovements. After independence, however, the national movement has tended toward laic system of thought. The difference of opinion between the Islamic movements andnational movements in the ruling systems has brought about creation of separate circles of power inside the movements.

This part of Mosiri’s article is about the crisis inside Zionism. The crisis or serious opposition of opinions on future of Zionism and Israel can be seen among the Zionists.The identity crisis and the uncertainty in the historical unity and solidarity of the Zionists are vivid. The Zionists also hold strong opposition on the belief in separation ofreligion from politics and the question of who is a Jew. The emergence of laic Judaism is one of the clear signs of the existence of this crisis. They intend to fight fanatic Jewsand gain more seats inside the cabinet. The decline in birth rate among Jews living in the West, the Jews escaping from the military service inside Israel and the emergence of laic Zionism are the outstanding signs of this crisis. The author is of the opinion that Israel is on the verge of collapse from inside and that, the Palestinians must understand this fact well in their fight against the Zionist regime.