فصلنامه اندیشه نوین دینی
پیاپی 36 (بهار 1393)

Death is the simplest reality of our life. We are born, grow, live and, at last, die; this is a very simple reality. Death may be considered as something destroying life and opposite to life. For this reason, living becomes meaningful and valuable by denial of death. However, death is not merely an end, but it is a meaningful process. It is a process in which by the help of religion, life not only is not destroyed, but also is meaningful. Regardless of death, life would lose its originality. At the level of cognition, death 􀀄brings awareness of the situation􀀅 and in fact, it is a response to the question that what the nature of this world is. And at the level of performance, it demands a particular ethical procedure through which the functions of death would be organized. These functions are all the meaning that life receives by death. If there were not the thought of death, perhaps people would live differently.

Throughout the history, serious questions have been posed on how the apostates should be encountered and in this regard, considerable discussions have been taken place in legal-jurisprudential and theological schools. This implication took a more serious status after issuance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which sees ideological freedom as the natural right of human. Since violent and severe penal reactions regarding the punishment of the apostates has been reported mostly among the followers of divine religions, the majority of the objections have been drawn to the divine religions. However, not only in Islamic Sharia, but also in Jewish and Christian ones, the sin of killing every human being who has not committed human murdering or not caused corruption equal to killing of all human beings and this is the greatest fault. This paper intends to prove that in none of the religions, neither in Islam, nor in the other divine religions, there is unfair punishment and the holiness of the divine prophets is exempted from any stage of violence.

The architect and founder of transcendental Philosophy, sadr ad-Din Muhammad Shirazi, is among the philosophers who has made more attempts to analyze and illustrate the religious concepts. The knowledge of the unseen is a key concept in Muslim􀀇s belief system. Mulla Sadra is the only philosopher who has had a special attention to this concept. Based on the previous philosophers􀀇 principles and reasoning and also reliance on logical principles of his own philosophical school such as essentiality of existence, substantial departure, mental existence, and unity of knowing and the known by which he has explained the upward arc and downward arc for human soul, Mulla Sadra has introduced a philosophico-mystical analysis distinct from the other approaches. Retrieving to the knowledge of the unseen and getting to know its facts which is called the unseen knowledge, this paper intends to analyze this school and to reveal its merits in comparison to other philosophical schools.

The idea of rukn rabe􀀇 in Shiite sect has a particular position so that some of the leaders of this sect have considered it as superiority over the religion􀀇s principles, even over monotheism. Also, they considered it as the basis of the universe and philosophy of creation. The beliefs of the heads of Sheikhieh in illustrating Rukn Rabe􀀇 related to belief system of this sect has some major problems and challenges. Analyzing the concept, position and principles of rukn rabe􀀇 from Sheikhieh􀀇s perspective, this paper intends to investigate its relation to the theory of Niabat (general and particular) in Shiite culture. The results indicate that rukn rabe􀀇 has been a kind of deviation and innovation in Shiite principles and it is radically different from Niabat theory. Meanwhile, it does not enjoy an acceptable reason and foundation.

Mofawwizih was one of the prevalent Shiite sects. Although this sect admits that the prophet Muhammad and Imams were legitimate, they believed that God has created them in the beginning of creation; then delegated the affairs of creation, sustenance and management of the world to them. On the other hand, Shiite sages who were Ibn Arabi􀀇s followers, putting forward the idea of 􀀄Muhamadian Truth􀀅, had been claiming that God has created a creature in the beginning and then created the world from his existence in order to manifest Himself in the world. They have interpreted this first creature as 􀀄Muhammadian Truth􀀅 which was equal to the first wisdomin conceptual systems of peripatetic philosophers. Although these theories have similarities on the first glance, their substantial differences are more evident than their apparent similarities. This study deals with these differences and similarities.

Human role in his own actions is one of the important topics of theological and commentary discussions. Fakhr Razi believes that all of the human actions are attributed to God and he believes that assigning the creation of actions to human causes the negation or weakness of God􀀇s power and sees that the human􀀇s belief and disbelief is due to creation of God. However, he does not go into a strong and solid theory. Sometimes he considered human to be obliged, some other times he has been inclined to accept the human free will and sometimes, by proposing the acquisition theory and drawing distinction between will and creation of God, he has not accepted the responsibility of accepting determinism. Accordingly, he has recognized human as an obliged person to be in a state of option. Using the content analysis method, the author attempts to investigate Fakhr Razi􀀇s viewpoint and believes that his theory causes the weakness of human position, rejects his responsibility, negates the causality principle and also attributes evil creation to God. As for the result of the study, one could point out to the longitudinal relationship of God􀀇s creation and human creation, and belonging of God􀀇s will on the creation of human actions, and also the difference between existential will and Divinely posited will.

The fall of human from heavens to the inferior world and human longing for returning to the world to which he belonged from eternity is among the most fundamental philosophico-mystical issues that could be found in the works of many divine philosophers. Study of the philosophico-mystical works indicates that in the process of decline and fall, various inferences have been drawn by the philosophers that are rooted in their thoughts and perceptions. In order to get to know the distinctions and differences of this mystical subject in two geographic areas of East and West, a comparative study has been taken up on two famous figures of mysticism i.e. Plato, known as the father of the west mysticism and Sheikh Shahaboddin Suhrawardi, the founder of Ishraqi School in the East. Despite of the similarities of thoughts in respect to the stages of the journey towards God, the most important distinction is the fact that Plato􀀇s mysticism is invoked by intellectual patterns and lack of religious bases while Suhrawardi􀀇s mysticism is based on religion and influenced by revelation teachings.

The problem of God􀀇s attributes is among the issues about which the three groups of theologians, sages and Mystics have explanations and illustrations. Before these three groups, the holy Quran has taken these two attributes into account along with others. In this study which is organized based on Mulla Sadra and Imam Khomeini􀀇s viewpoints, it has been inferred that they have regarded attributes as following knowledge. After having a critique of the ideas of Khawjeh Nasir and Sheikh Ash􀀇ari and his followers, Mulla Sadra, with his own theory of 􀀄brief knowledge being at the same time of detailed kashf􀀅 and with an idea different from others􀀇, he has assigned God`s hearing to His knowledge of the things heared, and his vision is assigned to His knowledge of the visible. Therefore, mentioning his particular reasons, Imam Khomeini has proven that the two qualities are separate and independent and attributing them to others is due to negligence in some aspects and directions.

Human soul and powers, their abstraction or lack of abstraction and their relations to each other have provoked wide-ranging discussions since long times ago. Miracle is an equivocal reality from which one side refers to the nature and the other one to metaphysics. Having a brief attitude of peripatetic philosophy about human powers, this study intends to analyze their position in explicating miracle and then to explain it from perspective of transcendental philosophy. In some of his written works, Mulla Sadra has dealt with some powers apart from the agreed powers􀀃which the peripatetic philosophers were agreed on, too. He has mentioned them as the inherent powers of the soul. Attention to the role of these powers will cause fewer problems in explicating the position of miracle.􀀂

In authentic traditions, referring to the verse 􀀄And of my offspring (will there be leaders)? He said: My covenant includeth not wrongdoers􀀅 the infallible imams deny the imamate of any wrongdoers until the day of resurrection. Even those who had been contaminated with idolatry and later on became Muslims are not qualified to reach the position of 􀀄imamate􀀅. In fact, this word of Imam is an allegory of caliphate of the first and second Caliphs who had spent a long time of their life in idolatry. On the contrary, regarding the defense of the Caliphs􀀇 caliphate, the Sunnis􀀇 scholars believe that the imposed derivation covered by the origin of the derivation and its application about the expired person is a virtual application. It is interesting that in addition to accepting the Imam􀀇s reasoning, Shiite fundamentalists believe that derivation is real only when it is covered by the origin. Now, the question is that how it could be possible to accept the imposed derivation when it is covered by the origin, and at the same time to accept the Imam􀀇s reasoning referring to the mentioned verse. This paper intends to propose six viewpoints of the scholars in respect to this question and finally illustrate more on the selected viewpoint.