secularism

The difference between how people view atheism varies in the world, in the west, Atheism is seen to be a normalised topic which is accepted by many people whereas in the East, heavily criticised. The openness in western societies with the spread of free secular materialistic thought occurred after the Enlightenment period, has pushed people towards the concept of atheism, especially in the younger generation. On the other hand, the East has much harsher rules when dealing with the influx of atheism where some countries believe death by execution is the solution. This pushed them to westernised way of thought where they began to fight Islamic beliefs, and of course under the support and protection of western regimes that they used as tools against Islam, many managed to flee their countries and go to the west as they consider that religion restricts and prevent them from achieving their goals, while atheism makes them free from all values and allows the achievement of freedom, without any restrictions. From here we see that the spread of Atheism in the Muslim countries stems from western atheism. It is thought that the increase of East atheism is due to cultural, intellectual, educational, psychological, political, social, and religious reasons and it is our duty as Muslims to find out why this is and how to solve it from the concept of Islamic beliefs the same way Imam Sadiq would by adopting a logical concept to convince the atheists during their theological debates and arguments. Due to their lack of evidence, it was not long before their theories were being disproved with one example being from the famous British philosopher Anthony flew was a strong advocator for atheism wrote a book called “Thereis a God” in the later days of his life.

In this article, the nature and fundamentals of the theory of "three-layer interpretation of the "Holy Quran" have been studied.First, the theory is defined and comprised three layers: historical, transhistorical and modern.The historical layer has been considered as the understanding of the verses of the Qur'an by Arabs of Hejaz during the holy Prophet (PBUH). To identify such an understanding, one must refer to the promises of those people, the most important of which are the appearance and context of the verses, similar verses, the personality of the Qur'an, the events of that era, the culture and history of those people and the covenants. The transhistorical layer is considered to be an epistemology that is accepted among all human races, achieved by abolishing the temporal-spatial features of the revelation of the Qur'an.The modern layer is the adaptation of the issues, needs and requirements of the present to the same common human knowledge.Some of the most important principles of this theory, which are discussed in this article, : being customary, spoken, gradual, historical ,marginalized on one hand, and the evolution of ethnic requirements, the necessity to resolve the apparent conflict between the Qur'an and science and modernity on the other hand.

A couple of decades before 9/11, after the collapse of USSR, Islam started to be culturally represented as the major “Other” in the West. 9/11 attacks accelerated the movement with the “culture talk” project positioning Islam as the backward culture against which the West and secularism are portrayed as the epitome of progressive liberal civilization/culture. Muslims, however, wrote back to the project. Literature, especially fiction, was found an appropriate media through which Muslims’ voice could be expressed. Robin Yassin Kassab’s The Road from Damascus is a true writing back attempt in order to respond to the hegemonic “othering” of Islam in the West. The narrative actualizes the purpose upending the constructed bifurcation of “the West” versus “Islam”. Being approached from a new perspective, both terms/signs are deconstructed in the novel so that the center/periphery opposition is reversed. In this new structure each term/sign is given new significances challenging the mainstream “imagined identities” of Muslims in the West.

Since the emergence of modernity, and in response to its myriad aspects and potentials, which are constantly unfolding, countless reactions have kept emerging in almost all quarters of the globe. A large variety of anti-modern reactions, the common core of which is perhaps the idea that modernity, in one way or another, is illegitimate, stand out among these responses. According to some of these anti-modern responses, modernity has usurped the characteristics and features of religion, which has been the soul as well as the main shaping force of the pre-modern era and has reproduced it in a corrupted form. Two German-speaking philosophers, Karl Popper and Hans Blumenberg, are among the intellectuals who have defended modernity against the onslaught of anti-modern tendencies. In this paper, I briefly, though critically, compare and contrast the approaches as well as some of the arguments of these two thinkers in defence of modernity.

The uprising of 1920 in Iraq is the most important historical, political and social event of current Iraq in entering the new era. Some of the analyzes under the concept of secularism have introduced this uprising as a national and secular uprising. Another part of the analysis has presented a religious and Islamic analysis of this uprising using the concept of political Islam. In this article, an attempt has been made to show the ineffectiveness of these discourses in analyzing and understanding events such as the 1920 Iraqi uprising by contextualizing the concepts of nationalism, secularism, political Islam and related concepts. From this point of view, the image presented in the form of these analyzes of the 1920 Iraqi uprising is therefore neither secular nor under the concept of political Islam that can be understood, interpreted and analyzed. Even as some are trying to include it under the incompatible concept of Islamic nationalism, they have also suffered a kind of confusion in understanding it. This uprising shows the ineffectiveness of these concepts in understanding the socio-political phenomena of the Islamic world. In this regard, an attempt has been made to show the importance of the 1920 Iraqi uprising in the foundation and deconstruction of the dominant concepts and paradigms in the political field. Also, the power and potential of this uprising in creating new models of politics and governance in the geographical border between concepts and dualities such as secularism and theocracy will be highlighted

The relation between religion and politics is a question of extended background having received a variety of responses. The issue of the epistemological foundations of the issue and the logical possibility of the formation of Islamic politics is, however, a quite recent topic which has drawn the attention of a lot of contemporary analysts. Two main approaches can be distinguished in the field of the Islamic political discourse which believes in the integration of religion and politics. One is the rejection of secular arguments altogether towards deducing the possibility of "Islamic Politics". The other goes beyond the criticism of secularism and talks of the necessity of establishing "Islamic politics". This article deals with the second approach explaining the epistemological foundations of the Islamic politics and introducing the idea of how to make politics accord with religious law. Thus, understanding and practice of politics in a religious society is essentially impossible without reference to its initial foundations. 

This article attempts to study the interactions between the two religious and secular domains in three intellectual periods in the history of Western political philosophy before Christ, in the ecclesiastical period and in the modern era, in which the separation of religion and state in Western political thought is a two-tier phenomenon in theory and practice. In other words, the internal layer of the philosophy seeks to reread and mentally separate political from nonpolitical matters so as to prescribe a just or a relatively not unjust criterion for political actors although, in practice, political actors and the others cannot avoid interacting. Again in other words, this article, while researching the just rights of citizens and the need for interaction and a link between political and nonpolitical actors, shows why and how in order for politics and the like to outline a moral theory that would fit a political theory in practice, cannot avoid separating and distinguishing the two in theory.

The expression of the reality that there is a relationship between the political system and the knowledge type in all societies that contributes to the establishment and continuity of power, guides us to discuss the ideal political knowledge in Iran, appropriate to the Islamic strategic teachings. In other words, Islam has its own requirements impacting all scientific realms including political science. From this viewpoint, the major question is: “What is the strategic requirement of Islam in political realm”? To answer this question, the researcher has tried, using the comparative method, to clarify the differences between the Islamic policy and the secular policy, and then to suggest a new political model. This new model is under the influence of the Islamic teachings from four aspects, namely: first ontological aspect which compares the two-dimensional Islamic viewpoint with the one-dimensional viewpoint of secularism; second, epistemology that compares the software approach of Iranian culture with the hostile one; third, providence that considers salvation as a substitute for hegemonism; and forth, methodology that suggests morality as an alternate for instrumentalism.