First.
Iran's
current rulers are suspicious of
the human sciences for a single
reason: these sciences are
secular. The theocrats expect
the human sciences to use
concepts such as God's will,
spirit and other intra-religious
teachings in their explanations
about human beings and
societies, and since the human
sciences do not comply with
these expectations, the
theocrats and the ulema view
them with distaste.
Nowadays,
economists do not appeal to
God's will to explain the
fluctuating prices of
foodstuffs, for example. But, in
the past, theologians used to
hold forth on the subject of
as'ar (prices) and viewed
them as falling under the
heading of theological matters.
In this day
and age, secular historians
never refer to God's will in
their analyses of the emergence
of prophets; they explore this
phenomenon - without rejecting
or affirming God's intervention
- using earthly, material,
historical, scientific (and
secular) means. It is not
surprising, then, that their
approach does not find favour
with religious people.
Ayatollah
Khomeini used to insist that the
Islamic Revolution of 1979 was
'God's doing'. But this is
clearly an idea that a modern
sociologist cannot digest or
countenance. A well-known
sociologist and University of
Tehran professor once told me
that, after he had delivered a
lengthy talk - using the most
sophisticated methods - about
the factors that had led to the
mobilization of the people in
the 1979 revolution in Iran, a
young cleric had stood up and
told him: "That's all very well,
but our revolution was 'a divine
revolution'." In other words,
it's a whale that can't be
caught in the net of
sociological analyses.
Metaphysicians may be able to
offer a metaphysical explanation
of the 1979 revolution -
alongside scientific ones - on
this basis. But this would by no
means suffice to allay the
concerns of theocrats and the
ulema. They want much more than
this. They are mistrustful of
empirical human sciences and
want to replace them with
transmitted human sciences;
i.e., sciences that are
extracted straight out of
religious texts and present
definitive and truthful
explanations about human beings
and societies. Ayatollah
Javadi-Amoli has been striding
in this realm for quite some
time now. He declares proudly:
On the basis of a single
hadith (calling on people
not to taint their certainty
with doubt), we've been able to
open a vast chapter by the name
of istishab (presumption
of continuity) within the field
of the principles of Islamic
jurisprudence which contains
many subtle and delicate points;
so why shouldn't we be able to
extract the science of
agriculture from a hadith
on the subject of farming, or
extract the science of
shipbuilding from the Koranic
verses about Noah's ship, or
extract sciences about training
and education from other
hadiths, and so on. In fact,
this is precisely the aim and
purpose of the Theorizing
Chairs, which is one of the
Islamic Republic's most amazing
inventions. They want to
formulate theories and to
construct new sciences on this
basis in order to confound
enemies and gladden friends!
It would even
be tolerable if they were
content to stop at this: to have
a group of people construct
transmitted human sciences while
another group of people engages
in empirical and rational human
sciences. But it seems that this
would not suffice to sate the
theocrats' hunger. They want to
drive away the ‘western’ human
sciences altogether and to
establish transmitted human
sciences in their place. And it
is these transmitted human
sciences that are often referred
to as indigenous and Islamic
human sciences.
Second.
Turning the human sciences into
transmitted fields is the last
trench of resistance to
secularization. From the moment
when Greek philosophy arrived in
Islamic lands, it was secular
(non-religious) and it remained
non-religious. Neither its
underlying tenets (such as the
principle of causality) nor its
tangible concerns; neither its
first principles nor its second
principles were derived from
religion. This was precisely why
Islamic jurists and mystics
disliked philosophy. It was a
foreign, unwanted guest. And,
ever so often, they would take
up the cudgels against it. (The
field of theology is, of course,
a different matter from
philosophy.) And the Mu'tazilies,
who constructed an ethics that
was independent of religion
(secular), were never well
received by Muslims as a whole.
'Islamic philosophy' was not a
term that was coined or used by
Muslims; it was concocted by
Orientalists, who were looking
for simple and easy labels for
categorizing Easterners'
achievements.
The
empirical-natural sciences, too,
were secular from birth and
remained secular. But although
the ulema sometimes dreamed of
making philosophy 'Islamic',
they never harboured such ideas
about the natural sciences. No
one spoke of or defended 'an
Islamic astronomy' or 'an
indigenous physics' or 'an
indigenous geology'. But the
human sciences were not so
lucky. The ulema always believed
that these sciences were
treading on their toes and
stealing their thunder. They saw
them as their rivals; especially
'blasphemous' Marxism, which was
ensnaring the country's
youngsters and adding to the
ulemas' suspicions.
It was as a
result of these rivalries,
enmities and suspicions that, in
the course of the Cultural
Revolution of 1980-81, bellows
of self-satisfaction arose,
saying: We have 'Islamic
philosophy'; we don't need the
Western human sciences.
I can still
hear Ayatollah Javadi-Amoli
saying at the Cultural
Revolution Institute: Islamic
philosophy contains virtually
everything that's to be found in
the human sciences.
The reason he
gave for holding this view was
that Avicenna had said that that
men and women are two types of a
single species, not two species
(!) And his other reason was
that metaphysics - not the human
sciences - can explain the
relationship between praying for
rain and precipitation.
These bellows
and claims eventually led to a
number of books being produced
in Qom on 'Islamic
psychology', 'Islamic
sociology', etc. But since the
well of their learning dried up,
they stopped harping on this
idea and left the human sciences
to the experts. In all fairness,
the Cultural Revolution
Institute played a big role in
dampening the flames of those
ignorant bellows and dangerous
claims.
Now,
expressions of scorn for the
human sciences are all the rage
again, but the cause is slightly
different this time: if the
human sciences are secular
(non-religious), then political
science will become secular too.
And it goes without saying that
a secular political science is
just a short step away from a
secular politics. The hue and
cry and bellows that broke out
suddenly after the jailing and
show trial of Saeed Hajjarian is
clear testimony to this
analysis.[1]
A theocratic
state needs a religious politics
and transmitted sciences.
Secular human sciences are
anathema to it. This is why the
Islamic Republic's leader is in
the vanguard of calls for the
indigenization of the human
sciences; that is to say, calls
to turn them into transmitted
sciences. Secular human sciences
clearly undermine the leader's
position and this is why the
circle of the theocratic
leadership's enemies has widened
in his eyes. It now stretches
beyond the masses and the ulema,
beyond believers and
unbelievers, and embraces the
human sciences.
Third.
We must not oppose the ulema in
their bid to formulate and
establish transmitted human
sciences (transmitted
psychology, transmitted
economics, transmitted
history... meaning derived from
religious texts). We must not
declare a priori that their
efforts are futile. Let them try
their luck and grapple with
reality and experience. The
farsighted might sense in
advance that it is a losing
wager and see it as a bid to
shackle thought and to lock up
the bird of wisdom. But surely
it is beneficial enough to have
these people's abilities weighed
on the scale of research and
study? Then, everyone will be
able to judge their progress and
mark them for their efforts. I
am saying this out of goodwill
and without any intention to
belittle their aspirations. But
may I advise the science-sowing
ulema, first, to assign this
work to intelligent and
knowledgeable people and not to
allow in the brawlers and the
bruisers. They must not expect
rain from barren clouds. One or
the other of the greenhorns (in
the Cultural Revolution Council,
etc.), who truly have no talent
other than to scribble inanities
and propagate ignorance, will
squander this project's
slightest shred of credibility.
Secondly, I
advise these science-loving,
science-sowing scholars to
retreat from politics for a
while and to devote themselves
to the serious study of the
philosophy and the history of
science; to educate themselves
in the genesis and development
of knowledge; to witness the
painful birth of knowledge from
the womb of observation,
mathematics, criticism,
reflection,intuition, luck and
good fortune, so that they do
not go out on a limb or expect
to pick the fruits before they
have planted the tree. I advise
them to reflect on the
achievements of other scholars
with modesty and appreciation,
and to wield their scissors with
caution lest they clip the wings
that are essential to the bird
of wisdom's flight.
Thirdly, I
advise them not to flee the
field of competition, but to
promote their transmitted
sciences without robbing other
scholars and sciences of
freedom. For, clearing the field
of rivals before embarking on
the race and declaring oneself
the winner before the starting
pistol has been fired is not in
keeping with chivalry and
learning and will not endear
them to anyone. Iran's universities and seminaries
have nothing to lose from the
testing of rivalry between these
two types of human sciences: the
rational and the empirical
versus the transmitted and the
indigenous. 'Seminary-University
Unity' has been publicized for
years in the Islamic Republic. I
believe that the only chance of
success for this
thus-far-fruitless motto would
be to have these two
institutions assess and review
one another's work, freely and
earnestly; learn from each other
in the process; and distil and
refine one another. Then,
whichever one flees assessment
will have proved its own
failure.
Fourth.
Years of teaching and
research in the philosophy of
the human and the empirical
sciences, and my close and
cherished familiarity with their
many different aspects tells me
that setting out to found
'different
human sciences' - and on
the basis of scripture at that -
demands perilous audacity.
Hence, I want to impart a
technical and scholarly point to
the advocates of indigenous
sciences:
As I
explained at length in The
Hermeneutical Contraction and
Expansion of Religion,
religious knowledge (that is to
say, our collective
understanding of religious
texts) is not independent and
unneedful of the human fields of
knowledge. Hence, even
extracting the tenets of the
human sciences from the Holy
Koran (which is what the Islamic
Republic's leader is calling
for) is only possible with the
help of the independent human
sciences. This vicious circle
can only be broken if we accept
that the human sciences must
precede the religious
interpretation. For example,
studying the history, language
and culture of the Arabs (which
is required for understanding
Islamic teachings correctly) is
only possible through historical
anthropology and sociology,
which are independent of
religion. Heeding this subtle
point shows that the
achievements of the secular
human sciences are by no means
futile and unproductive; in
fact, they serve as an
imperative, golden key for
unlocking religious knowledge.
Ibn-Khaldun,
the trailblazer and founder of
history as a secular science -
who based the understanding of
history not on an understanding
of God's will or on rare and
uncertain miracles but on the
interaction of collective forces
- knew very well that, even when
it comes to understanding
religion, we need to have a
non-religious understanding of
history.
If seminaries
in
Iran
want to construct indigenous
human sciences, my advice to
them is that they should start
with the field of history. In
other words, they should try to
create an 'indigenized science
of history' and test their
method and approach (about human
beings, the world, etc.) in this
field, and present it to others.
If they begin their work with
empirical sciences such as
sociology and economics, they
will only make their task more
difficult. Let them work on
history and judge the extent to
which Avicenna's philosophy or
the narratives of the Kitab
al-Kafi or Ibn-Arabi's
mysticism can help them
understand history and make the
'materialist tenets' of other
people irrelevant. Swimming in
this sea will serve as a
stepping stone to swimming in
other seas.
Translated from the Persian by
Nilou Mobasser
[1]
For more on Hajjarian's
trial see, for example,
http://chronicle.com/article/Social-Science-on-Trial-in-/48949/
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