Hossein Seifzadeh (Ph.D.)
Introduction
This article starts with the following two questions: 1) how to overcome multi-dimensional challenges in Iranian’s transitional politics as a pre-requite? and 2) how to creatively end up with a practical solution to be meaningful to all Iranians?
In challenging side, in addition to miserable economic situation, Iranians suffer from social anomy, cultural sensationalism invigorated by competing ideological populism, and hostile polarization defined in terms of ideological confrontations both within the Islamic Republic politicians and activists in one hand and between the proponents and oppositions of the regime on the other.
In the theoretical domain, there is also a huge gap among intellectuals. In the one hand, Darius Ashouri’s narrative argues Iranian “natural & analytic” language is short of supporting modernity. Accordingly “The challenge of our language in encountering the modern world requires two different ways of thinking and researching: one, about the relation between the modern world and its subscribed languages, and the second, between Persian language in encountering with the challenge of Modernity such as the difference between the spoken and the written language, idiosyncratic mode of natural language,…the context of modern language and …techniques for inventing mechanistic concepts.” Aside to linguistic problem, Aramech Doustdar’s book title is a self-declared statement: “impossibility of the Religious Thinking.
In contradistinction with Doustda’s narrative, and without criticizing Ashouri’s, and in criticism of both traditional and fundamentalists’ narrative, Soroush deems contemplating a new reading of Islam, based upon human rights than human duty, is a workable solution, attending to diverse reading of democracy and bereft of unbounded liberalism. In an interview with daily Sharq, Soroush criticizes secularist democracy and in his lectures deems unbound liberalism as to be in contradistinction with religion. In the interview, referring to Western definition of democracy as:
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