The contemporary Arab mind in Persian thought

Perhaps the demand of contemporary Iranian thought towards Arab thought was linked by a common bond, which is the Islamic religion, which was the main catalyst for the exchange of culture and thought between the two civilizations, beginning with and through the language. However, in the field of thought and philosophy, it cannot be denied that contemporary Iranian thought has adopted modern Western thought as a reference and building of philosophical fields above the buildings of prominent philosophical schools. Perhaps the influence of this thought is not very different from the influence of modern Arab thought with Western philosophy, and it was preceded by geography. Philosophy, as an intellectual activity, as Robin Collingwood says, is subject to his perceptions of the principle of overlap between groups, as well as to philosophical questions, since it is a construct in which the relationship of the ladder of philosophical forms and patterns intertwine , to form an approach in which philosophies are integrated in time and space. In other words, there is no separate philosophy from its predecessors, in Collingwood’s expression, which began in his article on curriculum with the question “What is the method?” Thus, we saw in all stages of human thought a relative existence of Greek philosophies on which modern concepts were built.The basic philosophical turns in modern Western thought ranged from Kant’s Copernican revolution to the juncture of the Vienna linguistic circle, and beyond, to contemporary thought.

And talking about the influence of Islam is very important, since we see the great influence of Arab thought by the philosophies and ideas of the philosophers of religion in modern Iran. One cannot speak of gratitude, mysticism, and even philosophy of religion by referring exclusively to Western philosophy, Hegel and Kant, and to the symbols of the romantic school Kierkegaard, Bergson, Schleiermacher, and others. Rather, it is necessary to refer to the Iranian approach to this kind of philosophy. This is what Abd al-Jabbar al-Rifai did in his book “On the Philosophy of Religion”, where he compiled research papers on the symbols of contemporary Iranian thought, Soroush, Melkian, Kedior, Burmahmedi and others, along with articles Westerners and critiques of faith and religious experience by Heidegger, Bergson, Kerkegaard, Schleiermacher, and others.
In this regard, we have seen a large number of religious scholars and students of Islamic religious seminaries in the Arab world enthusiastically accept the study of modern philosophies of religion in contemporary Iranian thought in order to open more to the understanding of this mind whose Structure is influenced by overlapping considerations, namely the Islamic religion, gratitude, and the different language of the Quran language. Perhaps the Arab take on Iranian thought is concentrated only in this place, as other aspects of human thought are open to them and are exchanged with Western philosophies that have varied and varied with the multiplicity of historical systems, intellectual structures, sociological conditions, modernity. and postmodern transformations that constituted an explosion in the field of human life in the expression of Muhammad. Shabestari. However, western philosophy was waiting for what would complement it, perhaps in relation to the philosophy of religion, and existential romantic currents in theological philosophies should have completed their results and not settled for faculties and stopped at the western nomenclature of the idea of ​​God. The meanings of the incarnation and the experience of the Christian and Muslim faith alike, to encompass all aspects of miracles, revelations, the idea of ​​resurrection, reward, punishment and other questions of the philosophy of religion. In this regard, we saw a broad Iranian demand for Christian experience, such as the one presented by the Iranian Naima Pour Mohammadi on Surin Kierkegaard’s philosophy, and the Shabestari’s study of the Christian heritage to Islam and the treatment of the requirements of the modernity. The Persian reading of theology was different from the reading of the West itself and was unique in its readings in many cases, which led the Arab thinker to use the Persian experiences as references for his studies on the philosophy of religion and the vision of the modernity.
For his part, Al-Irani believes that the need for neighborhood requires, in addition to religion, his openness to Arab thought, since the challenges facing Iran are those facing the region and vice versa. He began to examine the sources of the Arab failure to meet some of the challenges in the Islamic world. Hence the need for Iran to read the experience of Yemen, Bahrain, and Libya in particular, and for its thinkers not to be satisfied with Kantian and Hegelian theoretical philosophies and research in universities. Although there is an admission by Iranian thinkers to neglect somewhere in demanding a scientific and deep knowledge of the Arab world, intellectually, culturally and socially, the Islamic scene owes much to the Arab world, and what Muslims receive from Iranians are related to the Arabs they receive from them and their perception of Iranian thought.
In an attempt to dismantle the failure of failure, which some Iranian thinkers saw as its causes are mainly due to the ongoing division between Arabs and Muslims in understanding modernity and in criticizing cognitive behavior related to it, the Iranian reached out to the Arab mind in the face of the urgency of crisis conditions in the region and throughout modern history. Arab thought has often been in a “passive” or “receiver” position in the face of globalization problems, for example, and lacks the production of realistic and critical literature, despite its knowledge of the means for a solution. Talking about solutions in any of the sciences requires investigating three pillars on which the theme and its hypotheses are based. Curriculum, theme and resources. These three pillars complement each other and there is no separation between their nodes, so the inference is correct through the fit and consistency of these pillars with each other, otherwise the result will be confusion of concepts. This is what is observed in the works of Muhammad Abed Al-Jabri and Muhammad Arkoun. The difference in the opinions of the two thinkers on the concept of globalization is due to the difference in their approaches, since describing the issue is necessary to find solutions, so without knowing the issue there is no way of knowing the method of its analysis. Thus, we see that the interest of contemporary thinkers and scholars in Iran is focused on the definitions of Arab thought about the phenomenon of globalization and its cultural problems and solutions to face globalization. Some went to seek a comparison between the doctrines of Iranian and Arab thinkers.
In general, the Iranian thinker believes that the Arab mind sees globalization as a Western product in which international institutions, governments and multinational companies play a leading role. In most cases, the Arabs are in the position of “passive” and the West is the “actor” in the Arab mind or in contemporary Arab thought. An example of this is the Arab reactions to Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” theory and Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” … These responses did not add much to the Arab-Islamic intellectual system. Here it is worth highlighting the call of Arab thinkers such as Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, Abdel Wahhab Al-Messiri and Youssef Qaradawi, to take the positive from globalization and address its negatives at the cultural level, since they see that some Arab governments are nothing more than tools for phenomenon of globalization, where authoritarian governments are considered. Arabia is safer for the West than the authority of religion in the region. Arab nationalists and Marxists also criticized globalization, either to preserve identity or to confront imperialism and capitalist culture.
There is an opinion that the Arab absence in the world economy and trade is almost imperceptible to him, and the reason for this is mainly due to the lack of self-sufficiency in these countries. This is due to the negative vision of Arab thought on globalization and the acceptance of its fruits of control and change of Arab values, in addition to spreading the culture of normalization. The important issue in the Arab world is “independence in programs and goals” and not “independence in mechanisms and production.” We see the great influence of Arab thought by Western materialist, postmodern, neo-liberal and capitalist philosophies.
The Maghreb philosophers clashed with material philosophies by referring to the “totalitarian Islamic world” as an alternative to globalization. Here there seems to be a clear vision of how to deal with globalization in the Arab world, but the problem lies in presenting the transcendent Islamic visions in a way that can be implemented in the life of the gathering. Perhaps proper approaches tried to counter the negative view of Arabs’ static attitude towards Western modernity, as Abd al-Ilah Belkziz put forward a renewed theory in which he argued that Arabs, even if they were borrowed from Western modernity and went to They were a reference and primordial source, they abandoned this modernity in its encounter and its historical ordering and the demands of its time. Just as Marxism changed when it was brought from Western Europe to China and the East.
Muhammad Khatami speaks of two theses that explain the pattern of our relationship with the West, the first is the state of resentment and hatred against the West, and the second is the state of fascination and fascination with the West, but he is not going to talk much about a disparity between Persian and Arab thought in this regard, but its study is based on the vision of Islam and the position of Muslims towards Modernity and Western culture in general.
However, Al-Jabri’s study on the structure of the Arab mind may be better and more reliable than the Arab thinker’s view of himself and the other, so that the three powers of which Al-Jabri himself, Despite being a liberal Arab, he could not separate himself in his speech, which embodied his national and Islamic affiliations.
Perhaps many Arab thinkers came to the concept of “common enemy”, but their theses when facing this enemy differed according to the different intellectual structures of each of them and their own epistemological visions. And that difference was clear between Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, Al-Jabri, Arkoun, Muhammad Baqir Al-Sadr, Hassan Hanafi, Nasr Hamid Abu Zeid and many of those who, during their ways of self-criticism, faced a clear dogmatism in fundamentalist thought and fierce intellectual violence.
Sayed Muhammad Al Mahdi, translator of the effects of Muhammad Abed al-Jabri into Farsi, mentioned in an interview with an Iranian newspaper, that despite criticism that al-Jabri treated the philosophy of al-Farabi and Ibn Sina for their Platonic gnosticism and its preference for Moroccan Aristotelian philosophies, Iranian critical thought embraces this type of critical reading. Al-Jabri’s study pays particular attention to his reading of the Arab mind and his critique of the Arab and Islamic mind.
Perhaps the solution to the Arab crisis lies in knowing each other before knowing the other, that is, the Shiite knowledge of the other Sunni and the Sunni knowledge of the other Shiite, to unify the ranks of Muslims, so that the countries of the region rise above the level of the discourse of division and dispersion, and possess in their hands the tools to confront the negative cultural invasion that accompanies the products of modernity; Knowledge and judgment. We are faced with a “false mutual knowledge” that soon fluctuated between penance and denial, making it difficult for us to see ourselves as an integral part of this global modernity, whether by influence or influence.