JOURNAL OF POLITICAL STUDIES
Year:2016 | Volume:9 | Issue:33 |Papers Count:12

Jalal Al-e Ahmad, acoording to testimony of his stories, articles and his political behavior, has always been involved with Iran and along with his permanent concerns about the culture, politics, economics and society of Iran, he have had "the pain of Iran" and concern of the present and future state of the Iranians. His importantance is more due to publishing political and social two books, "Westernizationization" and "in the service and treason of the intellectuals". He became known as a political thinker by his try to provide a solution to social and political organization. His solution for the treatment of illness of Westernization, is "return to self", which means reaffirming the values, culture, history and religion, opinion and their ideology of Islam. This article tries to consider Jalal Al-Ahmad’ s understanding of the meaning of "Westernization" and tradition as well as his reasons for Return. His undrstandig and reasons has played a key role in shaping the mental space (paradigm) of social thought in the '40s and the 50 for Iranians. The paradigm, after nearly half century since its apearance, still dominates the mind and social space of Iranian.

The Islamic (neo)fundamentalism phenomenon and the resulted violence and terrorism of it are one of the most problematic issues in the global stage of the international relations. This subject is more tangible in the Middle East and Africa. This concern, especially after the recent wave of this current in the framework of the intensified Al-Qaeda and after the emergence of ISIS and Boko Haram was highlighted. This study is about to question the manner and quality of performing verbal violence on the base of the Islamic fundamentalism current. This study aims to find the identity-making, otherness-making and antagonistic bases and the foundations of the verbal (linguistic) violence in the neo-fundamentalist discourse. This subject is done through the case study on two groups that are ISIS and Boko Haram. According to the hypothesis, identity and other have been proposed in the form of a newly-emerged Islamic neo-fundamentalism and in the framework of an extremist, maximal, actionist, antagonistic, negative etc. approach; and, in this regard, some of the tools of verbal violence (in the linguistic and discursive levels) like other-making, chain of equivalence, logic of difference, foregrounding, backgrounding etc. have been used. The theoretical framework of this thesis is synthetic and multifaceted. It is based on a mixture of the literature and methodology of verbal violence, the Essex School discourse analysis and semiology, the ideological square of van Dijk, and van Leeuwen’ s other-making and violence strategies.

The past few decades have witnessed increasing complexity of development and decision-making process in foreign policy. Hence, precise recognition of diverse regional and international phenomena and issues is effective for proper foreign policymaking. This highlights the importance of the role and influence of the institutions that are responsible for theoretical backing of foreign policy. In this regard, think tanks have provided appropriate opportunity to influence the foreign policymaking process of countries. Turkey, as one of the most important and influential countries in the West Asia, has benefited the capacity of think tanks in the field of foreign policymaking, especially after the rise of the AKP to power. However, the issues of the extent to which think tanks are influential in foreign policymaking of this country, especially vis-a-vis the Middle East, need to be researched. Therefore, this paper seeks to answer the question of what role think tanks play in the foreign policymaking of Turkey in regard to the Middle East. To answer this question, the findings of this study gathered through library-documentary method using credible Persian and Latin sources, illustrate that think tanks in Turkey are often used as a tool to justify foreign policymaking of Turkey in the region.

After the ISIS raid to Iraq and Syria, some of the social and political structures of the occupied cities changed and sometimes collapsed. In this time the reaction of people during the occupation and after the liberation was so mixed. This paper by using qualitative descriptive-analytic method seeks to answer this question that how the quality of state function and social forces cleavage are effective on the acceptance and enthusiasm of a community about fundamentalist groups like ISIS? The results of study about Fallujah in Iraq during the occupation and after the liberation, shows that religious cleavage, the society and central state cleavage and the convergence of social groups and non-state actors such as Baath party remnants and al-Qaida terrorist groups, In addition to the weakness or inability of the central state or being failed state, can be the most important reasons that make the perfect background to provided ISIS occupation. Also the criminal history of USA during the occupation in Fallujah on 2004 and USA illegitimacy and its confederates and being puppet about interim Iraqi state, army and other security forces by the people, are the other factors that prepared people to accepting ISIS.

Globalization is the most significant phenomenon that has affected many aspects of human life during recent decades in such a way that one can by no means deny this effect on public life and religious life of man in modern community. On one hand, religion as one of the catalysts affecting action of individuals in the process of development has had vital effects on the process of human development, including tendency and non-tendency towards globalization. Under such circumstances, it is highly important to study typical relation between two concepts of religion as a necessity and reality in human community and globalization as a developing process and to elucidate that religion-oriented life in the age of globalization and the interaction can express position of each of these two concepts versus the other. This article is in pursuit of exploring interaction of these two concepts and the way of religion-based life in the age of globalization.

The Middle East as one of the first regions where civilization occurred is the birth place of four great religions namely Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianise and Islam and rests geographically where Asia, Europe and Africa meet. The location of the Middle East at this junction has through history made it not only a centre through which goods are traded but a region where ideas and disparate thoughts are exchanged. It was expected that following the departure of foreign powers and in view of its vast oil and gas deposits and its other advantages and potentials, the Middle East would find a proper and important place within the existent power structures. However regretfully not only has the Middle East not progressed among a logical path leading to growth, but it has been transformed through increased ethnic, tribal and sectarian tensions to the most important center of instability and political crises and a breeding ground for terrorism. The factors leading to this unfortunate state are numerous and encompass along others the role of exploitation, the ruling regimes, poverty, religion, ethnical and tribal tensions, traditional and cultural issues, and a lack of underlying proper socio-economic and political structures. All of these factors have contributed to the slow level of progress on all levels in the Middle East and in return have been important in the inception and expansion of terrorism.

Middle East area and especially Persian Gulf, during the Cold War for international equations of the United States had a special importance. Existence of oil reserves and Soviet attempts to influence the strategic region were the main reasons for its importance to America. So the United States used different strategies to maintain the region in West Block circuit. But what the United States was considering about in the 70s, was the transfering of power to regional security in the Persian Gulf region, which was designed within the framework of the Nixon Doctrine twin pillar. Nixon Doctrine directly affected the foreign policy of Iran and Saudi Arabia. The present study sought to evaluate and compare the foreign policy of these two countries which are affected by Nixon twin pillar strategy. Accordingly, our main question in this research is surveying the different and similar orientations which the twin pillar policy of Nixon has made for Iran and Saudi Arabia’ s foreign policy. Our hypothesis is that this doctrine leads to an active and reactional policy and security based of Iran and in the West’ s circuit. and although west put Saudi Arabia in west orbit but it is purely financial basis to meet regional security.

The present research has been conducted in 2013, in Tehran with a population of approximately 8. 5 million people. The statistical population included the respondents from three regions of Tehran (north, center and south), 300 each region. To gather the required data, 900 questionnaires have been distributed among the participants and the obtained data has been analyzed by SPSS software. The purpose of this study has been to investigate the impact of social derivation including the indicators such as occupation, living palce, income and employment on the political participation in Iran's presidential election which was held in June 2013. The research findings have indicated that there is an inverse relation between the social derivation of the participants and the extent of their participation. In other words, the higher social derivation leads to a lower political participation and vice versa. It is in contrast to the common opinions in association with the relation between social derivation and political participation.

After 9/11 events, the United States of America and international coalition entered into Afghanistan with the purpose of confronting Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorist groups. In fact, this event enabled the United States to adopt preemptive invasion strategy and take benefit from military forces to confront these fundamentalist and radical groups. Notwithstanding what expected, this big invasion has failed to remove Al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels and they still control certain regions in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Pashtunistan border area. According to the plan presented by Obama’ s cabinet, the American forces and their allies already commenced exiting Afghanistan since 2011 and all foreign troops had to leave Afghanistan by 2014. However, the Americans do not plan to completely leave Afghanistan, but to establish 9 military bases in different regions of Afghanistan and keeping 10, 000 of their troops in that country. The purpose of this study is to study the effect of Afghanistan military occupation on national security of Islamic Republic of Iran. Afghanistan is one of the eastern neighbors of Iran and these two countries have long common borders. Crisis in Afghanistan and presence of foreign troops in the same have significant security effects on Iran, of which the most important one is regional insecurity, which may in turn inflict Iran important security damages. Cooperation and participation of Afghanistan neighbors, including Iran, to fight Taliban and removal of extremism and fundamentalist groups may result in establishment of peace, stability and security in Afghanistan which in turn shall have positive and immediate effects on border regions and the neighbor countries. This study has been conducted in descriptive-analytical method.