RESEARCH LETTER OF POLITICAL SCIENSE
Year:2008 | Volume:3 | Issue:1 (9)|Papers Count:7

Ideologization of religion represents one of the important achievements of Ali Shariti, which played a crucial part in the advent of the Islamic Revolution and mobilizing the Iranian masses. This ideological thinking was embraced by religious intellectuals in the first decade after the Islamic Revolution and most of political parties and groups supported such ideological thinking and value-oriented worldview. This paper attempts to examine the effects of such ideologization of religion and its repercussions and side-effects as well as the positions taken by those who object to such an idea. Through an analytical and critical lens, this hypothesis is tested that the idea of ideologization of religion not only does not lead to the domination of dogmatism and fanaticism, but conversely it will cause dynamism, thought perfection and purposeful conduct (praxis).

Surveying the interaction between, secular area and religious world: before Christ, Christian, and the modern times, signifies that secularism in western political thought is a two layer: ideal and real phenomenon. The inner layer, which follows the intellectual meaning of “The political” and other realm, prescribing a clear criterion for political agents; and the layer of inevitable interaction of the two realms. In the other words, the present essay, concentrating on citizenship rights and inevitable practice between the political agents and the others, examines that why and how “The political” is theoretically a problematic controversy in western tradition.

The Almighty God gave dignity to human being regardless of race and religion, so single human nature was formed. This equality in human nature gave rise to his/her equality in political system, resulting in sociopolitical equality for him/her. Such equality is summarized in five aspects as follows: 1- Equality of people in the rulers' eyes, 2- Equality of people in the rulers' conduct, 3- Equality of people and the rulers, 4- Equality in possibilities and opportunities, and 5- Equality among followers of different religions. Two principles of transparency and priority of socially deprived people guarantee the implementation of such inequalities. The only criterion determining seniority of human beings is piety which, as Imam Ali (PBUH) stipulates, would be awarded by God in the Judgment Day. Hence, it would not bring about any privilege in social and political rights. The condition for the legitimacy of inequalities is their fairness. Based on this condition, sociopolitical equalities continue to persist within the framework of just inequalities by passing the following rule: 'People enjoy equal rights to the degree of justice'.

This paper seeks to explore the status of imagination in Islamic political philosophy, referring to the most prominent political philosopher in the Muslim World, Abu Nasr Farabi. Most historians of philosophy have developed history of political philosophy from the perspective of reason and related discussions, ignoring the place of imagination in political philosophy. The roots of such neglect can be traced in the thoughts of founding philosophers in Ancient Greece. In the Greek philosophy, imagination was relegated a low status in the hierarchy of human powers, and such conception was transferred to the Islamic philosophy through Aristotle's translated works. Muslim philosophers, however, resorted to imagination for explaining revelation and other spiritual phenomena from the beginning, since they had found out that such phenomena could not be properly explained with a rationalist approach. As the founder of philosophy in the Islamic period, Farabi attempted, especially in his Thoughts of the Dwellers of Utopia, to link imagination with his political philosophy discussions by developing it. This endeavor resulted in opening a path for the entry of imagination to political philosophy. Farabi's project was important because it focused on those aspects of political life that the Greeks failed to notice, as a number of new research attests to the importance of Farabi's emphasis on the status of imagination in politics.

Generally speaking, the history of thinking in the West can be divided into three grand eras including the pre-modern, modern and postmodern paradigms. The radical and deconstructive character of the postmodern thinking becomes apparent in comparison to the other two aforementioned periods. Hence, using the critical postmodern cognitive foundations, the author seeks to explore different traits of every period as compared to the following ages. On this basis, this hypothesis is tested that the trend of thinking entails five main elements including epistemology, ontology, anthropology, sociology and teleology. Consequently, it is possible to explore the heterogeneous nature of the three periods and its causes by mixing three linear or historical periods with five elements of thinking and the comparison made in this paper.

Quentin Skinner's methodology for understanding political thought has a negative and a positive feature: the negative includes a criticism on the methodology of textual and contextual reading, which has led to illuminating the defects and ambiguities of both and finally underlining their insufficiency in understanding political thoughts. The positive feature is Skinner's own method on the basis of which, for understanding the terminology, concepts and political statements of political thinkers of a particular time, in addition to studying their works and texts and understanding the social and political context of that period, we need to work out their aims and intentions. In order to reach such an understanding, one should go for understanding intellectual currencies and tendencies, arguments and reasons, and questions and answers (in short, the 'linguistic and Political discourse') current at the time.

Religious democracy model possesses significant critical capacity in comparison to other theoretical patterns of political system. Inspired by the teachings of new critical theory and explaining critical capacity of the model of deliberative democracy order as a product of new critical theory, the author explains theoretical proximity and coordination found between deliberative democracy order and religious democracy model. Then he argues for the critical capacity of religious democracy and its higher capacity as compared to deliberative democracy order. This paper is mainly intended to shed a light on the idea of necessity of religious democracy for Muslim nations in the existing conditions of the Muslim World.