JOURNAL OF POLITICAL STUDIES
Year:2010 | Volume:3 | Issue:8|Papers Count:8

Intellectual developments of the Arab world should be analyzed with respect to the sociopolitical challenges the Arab world has experienced ups and downs throughout its long history. By studying this development, we discover the occurrence of triad scholarly approaches: retro respective, secularism and Conformity. Arabic retrospective approach by reference to the religious texts and holly Quran words as its face meaning applies with interpretation avoidance tries to revive Islam with its Arabic heritage without the tendency of applying the rationality of modern western civilization. Arabic secularism, with its various lines of thoughts, proposes the separation of religion from politics and application of western rationality in politics. Arabic conformity approach with having complete faith in Islamic principles tries to provide a flexible interpretation of Islamic principles for their conformity to that of western principles if such necessity arises in order to avoid obsoleteness of principle in mind.

In the last several decades, the Persian Gulf region has become a paramount issue of international security. Various factors, such as energy resources, regional competition and the interest of super powers in the region have been the causes of convergence and/or divergence in the foreign policy of Persian Gulf Countries. Recently, however, a new dimension, Iran’s nuclear activities, has been added to the above referred factors creating a further confliction ground to already existing turbulent region. The purpose of this study is to show how they believe of the United States that Iran hides its real intention of opting for atomic weaponry under the pretext of atomic activity for merely energy production and peaceful use of it has pushed the region into a new security phase. Thus, by accusing Iran’s purpose of nuclear activity to be directed toward obtaining nuclear weaponry, the United States in fact trying to enhance its own and Israel’s interest in the region.

Today, the concept of discourse is used in most of scientific disciplines and approaches such as literature, philosophy, social sciences and political sciences. The theory of discourse is one of the effective and newly arrived theories in the field of social sciences. Social and political scientists have used this theory extensively to analyze political and social structures and phenomena. Thus, it can be seen as a dominant theory in the methodological field in the postmodern era. Therefore, phenomenological knowledge and the reviewing of different dimensions of this theory can help us to understand better the discourse analyses of political and social phenomena. This article attempts to examine the history, thought resources and epistemological bases of this theory, and consider its ability to analyze political and social phenomena and review its criticisms.

The main subject in this research was to compare the level of ethnic and national identity reflected in the Journals of Kurdish students. In this research, 54 Kurdish student journals from the universities of Tehran, Tabriz and Kurdistan are analyzed. Sampling in this research is systematic one and analyzing unit is the whole content of these journals (text, news, photo, title, etc.). Research findings shows that in universities under research, the most attentions are devoted to ethnic identity in contrast to that of national identity.

One of the clear cut characteristics of the Middle East is that its components have similar politico-historical fate. This common fate, to a large extent, has been influenced by the role played by imperialism, religion and common customs and cultures that have left their impact on the political structure of the countries in the region. The un-matching structures of the authoritarian regimes concurrent with the expansion of communications between different political unites are prone to politico-social changes. In order to overcome the crisis some of the political systems of the Middle East have tried to bring about reforms under surface in their political structures.Reforms in the Middle East have a history as old as the region itself but unfortunately these reforms, despite their needs, had neither taken roots nor had followed a forward trend. Having said that, the absence of democracy is one of the important problems of the region which has caught the attention of many experts. Although a lot of efforts have been made to resolve this problem (slow movement towards democracy), unfortunately not much success has been achieved.

Law and legislation are the most important concepts in our time. Now local, national, regional and international institutions claim that they administer and direct behaviors by enacting their own laws. If that is so, then one may pose the question what is law and legislation? Is religious jurisprudence is the same as law? Are Islam’s laws are fixed and unchangeable laws which are applicable in all places and times. What influences do the concepts of place and time have on law and legislation in an Islamic government? These are the questions which are set to be analyzed in the thoughts of Imam Khomeini who himself was a religious jurist and founder of Iran’s present Islamic political system.

In Qajar era and on the eve of the constitutional revolution, we see extensive communications between Iran and the West on the one hand, and emergence of a new social group challenging the clergy, on the other hand. This group consisted of intellectuals who had an important role in introduction of reform thoughts and promoting constitutional revolution in Iranian society. In this article, modernity and its historical background will be reviewed firstly, and then, the standpoints of two prominent secular intellectuals of the time - Mirza FathAli Akhoundzadeh and Mirza Malkam khan Nazemoldowleh - towards modernity and religion will be analyzed.

Development is the most important social welfare indicator due to it’s inclusion of qualitative and quantitative indexes. Development could have positive impact on society if it is sustainable and balanced one. To achieve this end, proper use of all nation’s capacities and potentials is a must requirement to be realized. Only then, one could expect to have structure and function of economic and political development be adapted to the condition and the needs of society. Iran in Shah’s era, with large oil revenue in the period of 1962-79, failed to achieve desired economic and political development. The main reason for this failure was that the model of national development was mostly based on the models employed in developed nations rather than be accommodated to the nation’s internal realities. In other word, not paying enough attention to the level of nation’s capacity and potential not only did not exert a positive role in the nation’s development instead it led to the nation’s undevelopment and also capital embezzlement. Hence, in spite of rising oil revenue and land reform which increased the economic power of the people, however, sustainable growth did not materialized.