Al-Mutahhari and Contemporary Society:
Islamic thought challenged in front of a new reality
The goal of any "civilization-seeking" society and any "non-backward" society far from contemporary jahiliyya, so to speak, is the existence of a desire related to the creation of individual creativity and societal renaissance and the transmission of vital energy * that serves this goal.
A society of this kind is mobile and it is based on it being a "knowledge-based society" so that the movement can be harmonious and controlled away from a deviation from here, or a defect from there, or disturbance from there.
We currently have a global shift that wants to mix cultures in order to eliminate the privacy of others, and as a way to kill any distinction that creates a single independent personality. We want to say:
There is a desire to mix cultures, not out of natural interaction or automatic convergence, but from the door of "exploitation" and the gate of abolition, and from the entrance to control to benefit, to create a propaganda consumer state that wants to bring down the true self and replace it with a false self serving the "demonic tyrant of capital" freed from Any ethics and principles that guarantee the human condition *
Therefore, the true Islamic character is important as a matter of prevention and parity in front of other civilizations that want to "mix" it is not a matter of historically required and spontaneous cognitive integration, but rather a "malicious mixing" to create a civilizational overthrow and defeat of the human self to make a breakthrough for the individual reality in particular and society in general.
Our guarantee in the face of this attacking reality for us is "education" as a requirement to create a true Islamic character, Quranic knowledge, movement, rationality, conscious, responsible window that seeks to live "them" while the leadership is within the people, and connects its worldly reality with its eschatological future.
Islam is nothing but a religion that searches for the truth, keen on reality, and “Islam” is a language that means “submission.” This explains the fact that the first condition for being a Muslim is the acceptance of realities and facts, and every color of stubbornness, oppression, blind imitation, bias towards one side and self-worship attacks him Islam and its religion because it is contrary to the spirit of truth and reality.
Islam believes that the person who seeks the truth without prejudice or prejudice, and strives to reach it, is excused even if we assume that he has not reached the truth. He also sees that the person who follows the path of obstinacy and obstinacy has no value for his work, even if we assume that he agreed with the truth through imitation, inheritance and the like. And a realistic Muslim - man or woman - is that person who searches for the truth and is attached to it wherever he finds it and with any person, and does not show any fanaticism in acquiring knowledge, so he hastens to him even if he is in the farthest place from this world. And the real Muslim does not consider seeking the truth that is limited to a specific stage of his life, because the greatest example of Muslims has said: “Seeking knowledge is an obligation for every Muslim man and woman.” And he said: “Take wisdom even from an idolater.” He also said: “Wisdom is the believer’s lost property. People of polytheism "(1) He said:" Seek knowledge even in China. "
Islam attacks superficial assumptions and dealing with matters from one side, as well as blind imitation of fathers and mothers, and dependence on inherited Sunnahs, because it is against the spirit of submission and seeking the truth that Islam prompts, which necessitates error and distancing itself from the truth. (2)
The Qur’an denounces those who restrict themselves by imitating their fathers and their followers and not thinking about freeing themselves from this restriction, what is the purpose of the Qur’an from this slander? Its goal is education, meaning that he wants to alert people that the standard and the standard must be what the mind and thinking characterize. Just the action of the fathers, one day I extracted the verses that talk about following and imitation, and I found them very many, and the thing that caught my attention about them is that there is no prophet who called his people to God except for him with this saying: And why do you want to distract us from the traditions of our past fathers? That the people of the prophets were very different in terms of circumstances. So every prophet would ask his people questions that are consistent with the situation of their lives, and he used to face problems specific to his people, but there were common forms that all the prophets faced, which was the calamity of the tradition of fathers and grandfathers, and as we say today, following the traditions and the prophets on the contrary, they were sharpening the minds People and advised them to think, or if their fathers did not reason at all and were not guided (4) "(5)
To be the strong personality within itself through a spirituality that lives the servitude of God Almighty and rejects the slavery of others and proceeds with divine monotheism outside the domain of the individual and into the areas of society and within the local, regional and international political reality.
"If a person believes in God verbally, and his theoretical and actual monotheism is a true one, and his belief is based on logic, inference and origins, then one of the characteristics of this type of faith is the emergence of unity in a person’s soul. And as the sergeants say that the group or plural is the state of meeting in the soul. A person, and if polytheism comes out of a person’s mind, then it comes out of his soul as well.
The expression of this for theoretical monotheism (with regard to the unification of actions that must not be connected together) is the saying of Al-Bari Almighty in the first verse: If there were gods in them except God, they would have spoiled (6)
If the world had more than one ruler, this system would not control the world and would not consider that as a world, and the world would have perished and corrupted. And the rule of this system over the world indicates that there is one ruler who controls it. This is about theoretical unification.
As for practical monotheism, the second verse says: God set an example in which there are intertwined partners, and a man peace with man
It is as if Al-Bari, the Almighty, wants to say: O man, if there are gods who control your soul and you have many worshipers, then you will corrupt the same as the world if there is more than one god in it.
O man, if you are a polytheist in your thinking, then you are a polytheist in your soul, and if you are a polytheist in your soul, then your soul will be cut into parts and you will not be a human at that time, but rather helpless, sick and corrupt.
I have said that this Qur’anic verse expresses practical monotheism with a special and miraculous explication. Let us consider this parable. So, the first effect in a person’s life is a psychological effect, a moral influence, and psychological well-being.
But this psychological integrity, according to the perception of the Holy Quran, is the unity and harmony of the soul.
God, in the life of man, equals the unity of man’s soul, equals psychological harmony, and the man’s escape from the fragmentation of his soul and the appearance of partners in his spirit. The roots of morality in Islam lie here. That is why it was said that everything in Islam stems from monotheism. (7)
This subjective spirituality will be anomalous or alien to reality if it is not based and institutionalized on a Quranic thought, a link between what is divine and what is mundane, human and material, and they are the vision of our professor, the martyr Mortada Mutahhari in the "fourth dimension," which is what we covered in our book, "Chapter of the Discourse in Istathah." Al-Shabab "(8), where we mentioned and said the following:
"Heritage is one of the foundations of a" community mind "that needs a cultural elite movement that believes in a new belief
"An understanding of the sacred"
To install
A renewed community mind
Outside
'Old Society Mind'
Modernity is a title for the present and heritage is a title for the past. This is one of the defining points for the two terms, but there are also those who say that modernity needs to take advantage of the advantages of heritage to make the required renewal.
Heritage and modernity is an old, recurring and developing discussion as well as continuing with Arab reality and extending to the Islamic reality in the shadow of an old and renewed question, as well as the starting point of the cry of the question: Why did Muslims fail and why did others present (9) to Emir Shakib Arslan, and this cry that extends from more than a century to this day represents the biggest concern of the movers in The line of renaissance for the nation and for those who want to make a return to the line of making and perpetuating civilization and leading the world.
This lost and absent project, which questioned the cry of the Muslim Druze prince Al-Arslan, who represents a question that was moved by the movement of reality, Mr. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and his students scattered on the spot of the Islamic world, and with him the movements for change and renaissance in Arab and Islamic reality began from the tyrannical revolution that is conditional on the land of Iran And the revolution of the twentieth in Iraq and the attempts of intelligence-oriented national neighborhoods in Arab geographical locations or launched as a reaction to the failure and fall of the Ottoman imperial project or with the emergence of Turkish nationalism or what is known as the Turanian picnic.
There are three common and well-known dimensions of the problem of heritage and civilization in our Arab and Islamic reality:
The first dimension is "after the past":
There are those who look at modernity and attempts to return to the site of creating a civilized state through the revival of the past !?
The second dimension is "after enrollment":
There are those who move in the opposite line by alienating and isolating this past and joining the European Renaissance projects as an example and a model.
The third dimension is the "compatibility dimension":
Someone is trying to reconcile the two projects?
These are the three dimensions that exist in our Arab reality.
Here we want to talk about the fourth dimension presented by the two professors of the martyr Mortada Mutahhari within his cultural movement with the Islamic reality on the land of Iran.
Where is this fourth dimension? Where is the field of movement from which this dimension starts with the topic of heritage and modernity?
Before all this, let us start as a definition of heritage? We can say that it is the past that continues in the present !? This past moves by influencing reality and heritage as well. It is the accumulation of the stages of time in our Arab and Islamic reality, as it is a lumpy accumulation over time and intertwined between the human condition within the reality of experience and the divine influence represented by religion (10).
From all this definition that we propose and say, let the reader notice that the commonality and link between the overall definition of heritage is "continuity", that is, the existence and existence of heritage in the individual and societal reality, and that may extend to the whole or part of the political system.
With this definition, we will explain what we call the fourth dimension to recreate the civilized situation with the Arab and Islamic reality, which is what we understand from our martyr Mortada Motahari.
It is "after the constant and the variable" presented by our martyr Murtaza Mutahhari, our professor.
The fourth dimension that he introduces by understanding modernity by renewing the “understanding” of the sacred text that is fixed, which is the Holy Qur’an, and creating a “changed” understanding, which is a “unholy” text. Also with this issue we have to add our own vision that we mentioned in my book “Religion Against Religion” (11) “Return To the basis of understanding a sound and deviant extraction mechanism, it will generate and produce for us multiple concepts and understanding of religion through the diversity of perceptions and mental abilities of extraction. "
Renewal in understanding is the fixed mentality of our martyr Murtaza Mutahhari, where "time is evolving and each of its stages has its own requirements (12)".
"In view of the requirements of the age or its demands, the same emergence of new phenomena in this era that results in new demands in it, so we must adapt ourselves to those demands or new phenomena and accept them (13)."
"One of the characteristics of the Islamic religion is that it focused on the basic and fixed needs, doubled their stability and made the changing needs subordinate to them (14)."
Where "the constant is in the principles and principles, and the variable is how those principles and principles are implemented and this is what is subject to the developments of the era (15)" and that one of the characteristics of Islam is that it has made of the variables that change in each age related to the constants that do not undergo any change (16).
And "Islam has constants that it does not attain, no matter how long the evolution of time, and variables that question the conditions of development, although some changes are subordinate rather than constants, so that the reins of matters remains in his hands." And here he means that the leadership of the worldly variable is in the hands of the divine sanctuary (17).
Our martyr Murtaza Mutahhari proceeds to say about the Holy and Holy Quran, "One of the characteristics of this dear book is that it interprets history in the light of mental reasoning (18)."
Here our martyr Murtaza Motahari starts moving the mentality of criticism in heritage through knowledge of history and then eliminating illogical interpretations that contradict with mental logic and the approach of Quranic wisdom and through knowing the basis of existence and foundations of knowledge extraction through Islamic authenticity represented by the sacred and sacred constancy of the Holy Qur’an and Also, the martyr Motahari set out to know the foundations of knowledge extraction through the relationship with the other, and we mean the other here is the West and its knowledge, and here the importance of the role of Mutahhari and his cultural movement on the scene begins, where he set out through understanding that Western other and then understanding the Islamic self with different topics discussed by the martyr Among them are heritage and modernity in a series of many books and lectures, and all this seeks and aims to establish an authentic Islamic belief from which the individual starts to create an authentic Islamic belief society based on the Qur’anic state away from the deviations of the Western other far from the holy Qur’an.
So when our martyr professor Murtaza Mutahhari moves modernity through renewal by understanding the sacred text of the Qur’an, which is "the fixed"
For the industry
"Understanding is variable," which is not sacred.
This is the fourth fixed dimension of Motahariya.
In the other three dimensions (after past, after enrollment, after alignment)
These three dimensions that we mentioned above took Arab researchers and those who are described as intellectuals, enlighteners, or modernists for decades to discuss and where they moved with the three previous dimensions that we mentioned at the beginning of this research, and these dimensions also moved away from the state of stability and affirmation among these intellectuals / enlighteners / modernists !? At its best, it entered the site of the meaningless and meaningless controversy that extended to these people since the start of the talk about heritage and modernity after the military defeat of the national Arab renaissance project that Gamal Abdel Nasser led in 1967.
These modernist Enlightenment intellectuals were overwhelmed !? with useless verbal dialects and without establishing something useful and feasible for Arab reality and without any adoption or commitment from any Arab official system to what they said and say, not to mention the alienation and alienation of these modernist Enlightenment intellectuals !? On the reality of their people and their discussions written in an incomprehensible Talasimic language that do not lead to a result and without any goal, and filling and filling pages with incomprehensible speech for the manufacture of books and heritage reading projects for commercial sale is the only benefit.
These modernist enlightenment intellectuals are demanding "people" to read while they present to them an "argument" without a "goal" and in a talismanic language that is difficult for interpretation and understanding. Therefore, these three dimensions in general did not make a change in the concepts of a society that is essentially alienated and distanced from the reality of the Arab intellectual who posed the question of heritage. And modernity.
What Murtaza Motahari said, what he discussed, and what was proven by the reality of the individual, society and the political system, move with the practical and applied reality, as he succeeded in transferring this "fourth dimension" to places and sites that, on the other hand, failed Arab modernist enlightenment intellectuals by making them with their Arab individual and society and the official Arab system.
Morteza Mutahhari comes out from a classic reality to criticize the Western other in deep detail and compare it with the Islamic authenticity that moves with reading the Qur'anic text philosophically and logically and in line with the fundamentals of Arabic grammar and language for a non-Arabic speaking audience.
This is the fourth dimension of modernity, according to the martyr Motahari. (18)
Raising a new Islamic reality needs new means of education and cognitive construction within the commitment in the "fourth dimension" of our professor Mortada Mutahhari, to create a Quranic knowledge thought that deals with reality and can interact with it without dropping the true Islamic personality committed in the fourth dimension as well as without this aforementioned foreign personality surviving About life and what is going on on earth, we want a "personality" who lives on earth and not a "person" moving in the "mirage fog".
Education needs continuous completion, completion and preparation from the beginning of the human emergence as a child, youth, adulthood, youth and old age. This is all part of the definition of Quranic cognitive education, which was proposed by our martyr Murtaza Mutahhari, who says:
"Education is intended to build the personality of the human being, for the creed with specific goals and comprehensive decisions, which according to the term has a judicial, economic and political system cannot have a special educational system, that is, the doctrine that seeks to implement special moral, political and economic plans among people, is therefore You want it for the people, more generally than the goal being the individual or society, and this is something that should be highlighted in this research.
If the goal is society, then in the end it is necessary to rely on these individuals in implementing these plans in society, and if the goal is the individual, then it is self-evident the importance of educating and educating individuals, and in Islam preserves the authenticity of the individual and society, then there must be a plan and program To build the individual as a precursor to building society and the nation.
Building the personality of the individual is necessary on the one hand that the individual himself is a goal of education, and on the one hand it is a prelude to building a good society. (19)
Education and the creation of the true Islamic character to create the lofty goal of the Islamic faith, which is justice, and it is the maker of stability for the individual and the guarantor of the protection of society, far from the desires of projection and transformational mixing of the manufacture of non-knowledge consumer societies that emigrate to the Holy Qur'an dynamically and fallen in the service of the demon that tyrannize capital in terms of knowledge or out of gullibility.
A person who has a complete social doctrine and a correct thought needs an intellectual and philosophical system, “just as he needs faith,” meaning that he needs a cosmic vision, a special logical analysis and an organized reasoning about world issues, and he also needs faith, that is, he possesses the ability to Creating attachment and love towards higher goals and objectives that transcend private personal goals (20)
"Islam has revolutionized all human affairs and raised the status of some others. It calls, first of all, for an intellectual revolution (not only in science, but also in thought, that is, the cosmic outlook), and a person must have a correct cosmic outlook. On the basis of theoretical and practical monotheism and the knowledge and worship of God, other revolutions must be branches, leaves, and fruits of this tree (the revolution in the cosmic view) .According to the Qur’anic view, the blows directed at Islam were directed at its roots, so the roots must remain intact. ”(21) )
Dr. Adel Reda
Endocrinologist, Diabetologist
Kuwaiti writer on Arab and Islamic affairs.
Margins and sources:
1. Artifacts of Minds: Page 198, Commander of the Faithful.
2. The Universe and Monotheism in the View of God, Mortada Mutahhari, The Prince's House for Culture and Science, Edition
First, 1993-1413, page 29, page 30.
3. The Holy Quran, Surat Al-Zukhruf verse 22.
4- The Holy Quran, Surat Al-Baqara, verse 170.
5. Education and Teaching in Islam, Mortada Mutahhari, Dar Al-Hadi, 1413-1993, ed
First, page 9, page 10.
6- The Holy Quran, Surat Al-Anbiya, verse 22.
7. God in the Life of Man, Mortada Mutahhari, Dar Al-Hadi, 1413-1993 First Edition,
Page 18, page 19.
8. Book on the discourse chapter on awakening youth, Dr. Adel Reda, under printing, 2021.
9. Why are Muslims late and why others have come forward, House Library of Life.
10. See the book Religion Against Religion, by Adel Redha, 2000, State of Kuwait.
11. Ibid, page 65.
12. Islam and the requirements of the times, Murtaza Mutahhari, Islamic Research Academy
1413--1992, p. 146.
13 Ibid, page 172.
14. Same source, p. 172.
15. Ibid, page 176.
16. Same source, page 189.
17 Same source, page 192.
18 Same source, page 194.
19. The book on the separation of discourse in the awakening of youth, Dr. Adel Reda, under printing 2021.
20. Education and Teaching in Islam, Mortada Mutahhari, Dar Al-Hadi, 1431-1993,
First edition, page 9, page 10.
21. The Social Integration of Man, Mortada Mutahhari, Dar Al-Hadi, 1413-1993, first edition, page 51.
22. God in the Life of Man, Mortada Mutahhari, Dar Al-Hadi, 1413-1993, first edition, page 62.
