Anarkis

Apakah semua mahasiswa sepatutnya menjadi anarkis? "Ya, mahasiswa sepatutnya mencabar kekuasaan-kekuasaan dan terlibat dalam sebuah tradisi panjang anarkis". Tapi, apakah maknanya menjadi seorang anarkis? "Anarkis itu cuba mengenalpasti struktur-struktur kuasa. Mereka-lah yang mendesak agar kalangan penguasa menjustifikasikan diri sendiri," sambung Noam Chomksy sewaktu diwawancara Zeit Campus.

Zaidabadi's Shariati

* Mina

With the anniversary of Dr. Ali Shariati’s death, many articles have appeared on various newspapers and sites. Since I never developed any feeling for him, I turned the page to the more interesting subjects. However, there were a few articles I couldn’t resist reading. Among them was Ahmad Zaidabadi’s Why I Praise Shariati. The fact that it had been recommended by Massoud Behnoud on strengthened my urge to read it.

While I generally agree with Zaidabadi, I could not disagree more on what he said about Shariati. Since he has decided not to answer those who make unfavorable comments about Shariati, I feel comfortable to pour my heart out on what I have been keeping pent up there for some thirty years.

I was in university when I become familiar with Shariati along with a few others who had lectures in the Hoseiniyeh Ershad about social and political Islam. I recall one by Hasheminejad titled Revolution and Counterrevolution in Imam Hosein’s Time. One can imagine what sort of crowd a lecture like this would gather. I did not go to any of them simply because I lacked belief not in the religion, but in political religion. Even if I accept that the original intent of most religions was political, still I refuse to give in to the idea that the institution of religion falls into such a depth.

Thought I participated in the demonstrations, and whatever else the intellectual atmosphere of Tehran would consider as oppositional at the time, I avoided certain activities which I simply could in no way bring myself to do, like listening to Soussan or Aghassi, who were very popular among everybody because they were “khalqi” (roughly, “populist”). Their music lacked whatever I needed music to stir in my soul, a sense of harmony and rhythm to balance me in the world I lived in. But with Shariati it was a different story. Not only did he make us more unbalance, as much as I gathered from his incomprehensible ideas, but I was always wary of those who form their deconstructionizing views of Islam in the Sorbonne, while Al-Azhar or Feiziyeh would have been a much suitable place for that kind of inspiration.

In his article, Zaidabadi tries to explain why he admires Shariati. After giving a general background on the Iran of his childhood, by which I think he means the seventies, how rough and corrupt society was in the poor neighborhoods in particular, he says there were two alternatives: one was Marxist materialism which would encourage class hatred. The other was Shariatism. Naturally he chose the latter. Then he argues that what Shariati advocated was the right cause or better, the right issue. He says, “Given the atmosphere of that time, if he would talk of liberalism, whom would he have attracted?” And I agree. This was one of the Shariati’s main problems: to attract. Mr. Zaidabadi probably won’t like to know that thinkers do not say something to attract. Thinkers talk out of conviction; they talk about liberalism because they believe in liberalism and not because there is a good market for liberalism. I agree with Zaidabadi, Shariati’s main attraction to Islam, very likely, was to have a unique commodity; first to write his dissertation on, second to bring back home as a new marketable hybrid.

And what was this hybrid? Bringing the much-delayed reform to the religion, just as was done in Christianity, just as the Calvinists did, for example. With a very good intention, however, he rushed into action. He returned to Iran and started preaching what he was not so sure of, and what he had not studied well. He found some “Abuzarr, who had a sword with which he could meet out love with one its side and death with the other.” He was right of course, he found the right commodity for the market. Kind, gentle, loving Iranians who were frustrated by what was going on would buy his product and many of them would pay dearly for such a weapon.

Somewhere else he says: “Shariati taught me to ask, to search and to have a critical view of life.” Does he mean that Saadi did not? Hafeza and Molavi did not? Kalileh va Demneh did not? Moosh o Gorbeh did not? Even the articles in the news paper and magazines of the time did not? Saedi did not? Mirzadeh Eshghi did not? Iraj Mirza did not? I do not mention the other poets and playwrights or all those foreign writers who were translated.

But above all did not Zaidabadi study physics and biology at school? And maybe a little calculus? Plato and Aristotle? What we know of social and political, psychological and other social and human science are all modeled after scientific laws and are just footnotes to those great old thinkers. That is where we all started to learn how to think, even if we were dismissed for being privileged with having a culture and a way of living which required thinking and encouraged thinking simply to manage our daily lives.

He claims, “Were it not for Shariati’s, I would have turned to violence rather than what I’m now: a liberal, and human right activists.” Mr. Zaidabadi falls into several fallacies in the way he portray his life. The either-or, reductionism, appealing to fear, and hasty generalization embedded in this statement is more akin to George Bush’s arguments before marching to Iraq than what I know of Zaidabadi’s. Many of us are quite decent and care for other human being and did grow up in the same Iran and went to same schools there, and did grow up well without owing any of it to Shariati. Moreover, Shariati’s writings fitted very well into the seventies’ appetite for violence and bloodshed. (See for example, the reference to Abuzarr’s sword.) Let's remember that Shariati's main political interest in France was Franz Fanon, whose chief message was the efficacy of revolutionary violence not so much for smashing an oppressive political system, but to validate the manhood of the oppressed.

Zaidabadi admits that “although Shariati had an exaggerated language and sometimes could lead his audience to idealism…, he makes the Iranian atmosphere gentler and more humane.” Exaggeration, bitterness, anger, sarcasm and worse of all depression, these were all Shariati’s trademarks. None of these traits would produce a healthy atmosphere, but a suffocating one, in which no one would survive. He himself, rest in peace, was its first casualty.

Finally, Zaidabadi writes, “Shariati was the best humanistic and spiritual alternative to the materialism advocated by left and others.” He holds that whatever was not Shariati was materialistic and therefore devoid of spirituality and humanity. I wish to know where he got this ridiculous idea. At best we may say that materialism contradicts idealism (with lots of compromise, of course), but materialism does not necessarily contradict spiritualism or humanism. Materialism advocated by many leftists in no way is a hindrance to the humanism or spirituality. The fact that some people consider poverty as an Omm ol-Khabaes (roughly, "root of evil"), is nothing unique to the leftist or the materialist. The first person who wisely saw the evil in poverty and encouraged his followers to avoid it was our good prophet Zaratoshtra who was the champion of humanity and spirituality. And if it is too ancient for Zaidabadi, I summon Voltaire and the dahri school as witnesses.

But if I may ask our friend Zaidabadi to do us all a favor, since he understood what Shariati said, please, in a language of his own which we all understand well, tell us what Shariati is saying which is so compelling. Here in New York University’s library we have twenty six volumes of Ali Shariati’s collected works. I have read only twelve of them but have looked through all of them. Aside from their being overwhelmingly repetitive, they all have the scattered quality of free association preaching. They do not read well and do not make sense. He bases his arguments on his own newly-minted concepts. And instead of reasoning he makes one assertion after another. Those of us who studied here have learned to read differently and as a result his writings sound either ambiguous or worse, meaningless. But if those who like him and understand him, instead of praising him, try to tell us what he said, they will have done a favor to him and to us as well. His turbulent soul would rest much peacefully.

* http://iranwrites.blogspot.com/2007/08/zaidabadis-shariati.html

In search of hidden dimensions

Geoff Brumfiel*

So far, string theory has defied experiments, but Nima Arkani-Hamed thinks he has found a way to put the idea to the test. Geoff Brumfiel finds out how.

Ask most theorists when they think their calculations will be tested experimentally and you'll be told "decades" or sometimes, more honestly, "never".

But ask Nima Arkani-Hamed, a physicist at Harvard University, and he will give you a far closer date: 2008. That is when the first results from the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, are expected to be released by CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. And if Arkani-Hamed's predictions are correct, then that is when an experiment will detect the first evidence to support string theory — a vision of the cosmos that has never been verified experimentally. "The field is going to turn on what happens at the collider," he says.

Pacing his sparse Harvard office, the 32-year-old physicist drinks no less than six cups of espresso during our hour-and-a-half interview, as he tries to explain why he thinks string theory can now be tested.

String theory emerged in the 1980s as a way to answer questions that still baffle modern physics, such as why is gravity so much weaker than other fundamental forces? By imagining that everything is composed entirely of strings ten billion billion times smaller than atomic nuclei, theoretical physicists were able to create a model of the Universe that unified all fundamental forces into one, and described most of the particles we see today. Unfortunately, these strings are far too small to be detected by even the most powerful particle accelerators. And so, critics say, they are more philosophy than physics.

Arkani-Hamed's ideas have very little to do with strings themselves. Instead, he is hoping to detect the extra dimensions predicted by the theory, which, like the strings, are thought to be vanishingly small. But in 1998, Arkani-Hamed and his colleagues published calculations showing that some of these extra dimensions might be as large as a millimetre (N. Arkani-Hamed, S. Dimopoulos and G. Dvali Phys. Lett. B 429, 263–272; 1998). Such large dimensions, they argued, have escaped detection because everything we know — except for gravity — is confined to the three dimensions of space and one of time. But gravity, they think, might be able to seep into these extra dimensions. This would explain why it seems so weak to us. And, as a result, unexpected variations in gravity could allow researchers to detect the hidden dimensions.

Leaking away

"It was a watershed event in the field," recalls Joe Lykken, a theoretical physicist at Fermilab near Chicago in Illinois. Suddenly, a theory that most thought could never be tested was within experimental reach. Some groups rushed to look for deviations in gravity at small scales. So far, they have nothing to report, but the hope created by Arkani-Hamed's work is enough to win him wide praise. "The word 'genius' is overused, but I think it is easily applicable in the case of Nima," says Savas Dimopoulos, a Stanford theorist and one of Arkani-Hamed's collaborators.

The son of two Iranian physicists, Arkani-Hamed was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up in Boston. After the Iranian revolution of 1979, his family returned to their homeland, but as religious fundamentalists took over the government, his father was forced to go underground and the family eventually had to flee across the border to Turkey. By 1982, Nima was living in Toronto, Canada.

Recalling his early life, Arkani-Hamed says that his time in Iran was largely a positive experience. "The strange thing is that I have mostly wonderful memories," he says. If anything, he adds, it taught him to worry less about what others thought of him. "Given that so many aspects of my life have been unusual, I've never had a problem with feeling different or being different or doing different things."

As a child, Arkani-Hamed loved physics, but he initially disliked almost everything about string theory. "String theory just seemed like abstruse junk to me," he says. "What I really liked was physics that explained things about the world around me."

That changed when he began studying quantum field theory at the University of Toronto. At first, this complex theory — which underlies high-energy physics and much of string theory — seemed too arcane, but as he studied it more carefully, he found a level of order and explanation far beyond anything he had learned before. "Clearly, there was something very deep going on," he says.

It captivated him, and by the time he finished graduate school in 1997, he knew he wanted to try to make string theory experimentally verifiable. He found an ally and mentor in Dimopoulos, who has devoted his career to seeking testable versions of string theory. "We believe that the only way to make progress is to take an idea, and push its consequences to find observations," Dimopoulos says.

These days, in late-night phone calls and frequent e-mails, the two are thinking about what might emerge at the Large Hadron Collider. Their current calculations show that some of the energy created by particle collisions in the machine could escape into extra dimensions, carried off by leaking gravity, if those dimensions are large enough. The result would be an apparent violation of the conservation of energy — a dramatic sign that string theorists are on the right track.

Then again, they might not be. "You can spend ten years of your life and every idea you come up with can be wrong, and that's gratifying in its own way," Arkani-Hamed says. But, he adds, as he reaches his caffeine-fuelled conclusion: "If this thing turned out to be true, it could be the biggest discovery in science in, say, 300 years." // Nature 433, 10 (6 January 2005) | doi:10.1038/433010a; Published online 5 January 2005

* Geoff Brumfiel is Nature's Washington physical sciences correspondent.

From an Existentialist to a Muslim

By Muhammad Legenhausen

I've been asked too many times to explain how I became a Muslim. Nearly every time, I come up with something different. I don't make anything up, but the acceptance of a religion is complicated. It involves emotions, personal history, politics, theology and philosophy and much else, too. So although here I'm focusing on the philosophical factors, don't get the wrong impression that I arrived at Islam as a result of purely philosophical reflection.

I read my first book in philosophy when I was about eleven years old, in around 1964. It was William E Hocking's The Types of Philosophy , which I still think is good. After reading it, I decided right then and there that I wanted to study philosophy. I was brought up a Catholic, and consternation over the teachings of the Church drove me to philosophy as much as anything did. Hocking's idealism and mysticism seemed an appealing way to bring together faith and reason.

In high school, I became an avid reader of Søren Kierkegaard. For my sixteenth birthday, my friends gave me six or seven paperback editions of his works. I also started reading Camus and Sartre, and by the time I graduated, I considered myself to be an existentialist. Tolstoy was another hero, and I filed for conscientious objector status with my draft board as a Catholic pacifist.

Within a year after entering the State University of New York at Albany, I had switched from religious to atheistic existentialism. Sartre and Nietzsche began to loom larger than Kierkegaard. I was disappointed with the lack of a strong opposition to the Vietnam War from the Church leadership, and came to see religious belief as bad faith and an opiate for the masses. I read a bit of Marx, but found Proudhon and Kropotkin more to my liking.

During my last year as a philosophy major at Albany, I took a course on the problem of free will and determinism with Ken Stern, who had studied at Oxford and took an analytic approach to philosophy. The crisp logic and emphasis on clear thinking seemed like a breath of fresh air. I started to read everything I could find by WVO Quine, whether or not I could understand it. At the same time, I found my atheism challenged by TS Eliot. Was his religiosity just another case of bad faith? Not likely, given the profound way he faced up to what we had become in The Wasteland . I tried to keep my head clear by focusing on logic.

I began graduate study in philosophy at Rice University in 1976. When informed in my second year that there would be no graduate courses on modal logic, I invited fellow graduate students to a semester of seminars in which I would discuss the philosophical foundations of modal logic, using articles by Carnap, Church, Scott, Thomason, and others. My interest in philosophical logic motivated the writing of my PhD thesis, Matters of Substance .

I had also become interested in Aristotelian ethics, stimulated by reading Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue . MacIntyre's critique of liberal modernism came at the same time that I had begun studying Islam, sparked by curiosity about the revolution in Iran, and by a number of Muslim students I encountered at Texas Southern University, where I taught philosophy from 1979 to 1989. It seemed to me that MacIntyre's arguments could be used to make a better case for Islam than for Catholicism. MacIntyre was arguing that ethics could only make sense in the context of a tradition that would give substantive content to moral ideals and even to the standards of rationality. Catholicism, however, seemed in a state of perpetual retreat ever since the first onslaughts of modernity; and all too often, the Church seemed to be supporting vestiges of the aristocracy. Islam, on the other hand, seemed vibrant and imbued with an electrifying spirituality, and to be on the side of the oppressed.

My Iranian students introduced me to the work of Allamah Tabataba'i, Shahid Mutahhari, Ali Shari‘ati, and others, but I ran across the works of Seyyed Hossein Nasr in a used bookstore. Although I would not agree to the traditionalism advocated by Nasr, his introduction to the philosophical and mystical traditions in the Islamic world fascinated me. In esoteric Islam, I found that there was not only a variety of philosophical tendencies, such as Illuminationism, Peripateticism, and something called Hikmat al-Muta‘aliyah (transcendental wisdom), but also poetry, art, political ideas, various kinds of rational mysticism, some of which merge into the philosophical tendencies, and criticism of the superficial limitation of Islam to details of rituals and rules.

The features of esoteric Islam I found attractive were particularly prominent among Shi‘ites and Sufis. The Shi‘ites also seemed to have a long history of intense interest in social justice. The source for all these ideas turned out to be ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin of the Prophet Muhammad and first Shi‘ite Imam, (may the peace and blessings of Allah be with Muhammad and with his progeny).

So, I thought that if ever I were to become a Muslim, I should most certainly be a Shi‘ite, as the devotees of Imam ‘Ali are called. My only problem was that I didn't believe in God. I decided to teach a course on the philosophy of religion at TSU in which I would review the claims of the major religions and at the same time, re-examine the arguments for and against the existence of God. This review of the world's religions only intensified my interest in Islam. It seemed to harmonise themes from Judaism and Christianity with attitudes in its mysticism more commonly found in Hindu and Buddhist thought. But the philosophical evaluation of the arguments for the existence of God left me as convinced as ever that none of them were sound.

As for the arguments against the existence of God, it certainly seemed to me beyond credibility that the world should contain any sort of giant mind without a body. Then it occurred to me that the way I was thinking of God was much too limited. What I was rejecting with my atheism was not God but an idol. The Muslim philosophers and Sufis said that God was not a mind, not even a substance, but just pure unadulterated being. Even if I couldn't prove that in addition to the beings of the world there is also Being, I couldn't find any knock down argument against it, either. Why not? William James and the “will to believe” also gave me encouragement.

The character of Imam ‘Ali was a relentless inspiration. He was a persistent defender of the weak and oppressed, a poet, a treasury of practical wisdom, a theologian, a statesman, a paradigm of virtue, courageous, insightful, humble, faithful, patient, and he had a sense of humour. How could he have been wrong about the existence of God? I might make a jumble of the arguments, but he seemed to see the matter with such clarity as to leave no room for doubt. Certainly emulation of such a person would be a noble thing, but such emulation would be far less than noble if there were no god, and so, God must be! These are the sorts of thoughts that occupied me until somehow the “Why not?” of doubt – of thinking that in some sense maybe it could be true that God exists – became “OK, that can be taken as true”, and then “Indeed, God is!” Then, when some American Muslims asked if I were a Muslim after Friday prayers at a mosque in Houston, I recited the Muslim confession of faith: “ Ashhaddu an la ilaha illa Allah, wa ashhaddu an Muhammadan rasul Allah .” (I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and I bear witness that Muhammad is the apostle of Allah.)

I still like the logic chopping of analytic philosophy, and its clever ways of dealing with paradoxes and quandaries. Too often, however, it seems to suffer from a lack of spirit, a lack of profundity, a lack of faith. Of course, there are exceptions; but as a rule, analytic philosophy seems to share many of the vices that pervade contemporary post-industrial society: over-reliance on technical expertise and over-specialisation, over-confidence that science can answer all the questions worth asking.

But I didn't become a Muslim because I converted from analytic to Islamic philosophy, although I did become interested in Islamic philosophy around the time of my conversion. What seems most valuable to me in Islamic philosophy is its spirit, its retention of the idea of the philosopher as the wise man searching for truth and leading a simple life. Islam has its own special, very intense flavour of love that is especially prominent in its ‘ifran (mysticism, gnosis); and if philosophy is love of wisdom, then Islamic philosophy is the expression of this intense mystical love in its yearning for wisdom and direct understanding.

I came to Iran in 1990 and started teaching Western philosophy of religion in the analytic tradition but from my own budding new Muslim's perspective. The first lectures I gave in Tehran have been published in the international journal published in Qom, Al-Tawåíd , starting in 1993. I began with thinkers like Plantinga and Alston for whom religious experience plays an important role. Against them, I argued that religious beliefs are neither properly basic nor justified on the basis of religious experience, and that the rationality of religious belief requires us to provide reasons for belief. At the same time, I argued that the traditional arguments don't work in the present intellectual atmosphere, and that what could be taken at one time as self-evident premises cannot be so taken any longer. Any satisfactory reasons that can be given to justify religious belief today must rely upon rational insight and conscience. These are sufficient to provide certainty for the believer, but they won't convince the unbeliever who stubbornly refuses to admit the need for religious explanations where no other are available. Hence, the rationality of one's faith is to be established not by proving its content by a logical demonstration, but by making plausible the view to which religion invites us.

Currently, I've been studying the writings of William Hocking, again, and finding that they still contain valuable insights that often seem to work better for Islamic than Catholic theology.

Hajj Muhammad Legenhausen is associate professor of philosophy at the Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute in Qom, Iran, and author of Islam and Religious Pluralism (Al-Hoda).

Pour Azghandi tentang Motahhari-Shariati

TEHRAN, (SCIB): “When Shahid Motahari came to know Dr. Shariati in a trip to Mashad, he immediately realized that the youth need his ideas” Dr. Rahim Pour Azghadi told Shahed in an exclusive interview."

"Shahid Motahari was in the heart of disputes over religious intellectualism. He practiced religious intellectualism; however, he never overlooked a pathology of this kind of approach. In fact, he would never totally accept of refute religious intellectualism; but he would examine arguments for and against this approach and was not fearful of speaking out his mind.”

Dr. Pour Azghandi said. “ Master Motahhari would study the benefits of approaching Islam from a religious intellectualist point of view; at the same time he conducted a thorough pathological study of this approach.”

Pour Azghadi was then asked to comment on the relation between Martyr Motahhari and Dr. Shariati.

“The two characters had never had a discussion before Dr. Shariati came to Tehran on an invitation from Master Motahhari.” “ Motahari, however, had been introduced to the thoughts of Shariati during a visit to Mashad. He then invited the Ferdowsi university professor to deliver a lecture in Tehran’s Hosseinieh Ershad. This was when many young Iranians got familiarized with Shariati’s ideas and started reading his books.”

“There were many at that time, who weren’t happy with the way Shariati would dress and appear in public. He would wear a tie and constantly keep his face shaven. There were even attempts a couple of times to stop Shariati from entering the Hosseinieh. But Imam Khumeini knew from Ayyatollah Motahhari that these people’s claims were not true.”

“Hosseinieh Ershad is a historical site for the Islamic revolution. It bears the revolutionary spirit which takes it beyond a simple building,” the university professor commented.

"Martyr Motahhari neither embraced the Islamic clerical school’s extremist point of view concerning Islam, nor did he accept anti-religious intellectual’s approach. What he favored was a moderate point of view. In fact he always called the moderate class, one of the most important social classes. Martyr Motahhari believed in the power of the clergy, Azghandi told Shahed reporter.“

"He was eager to settle the differences people might have had with the clergy. He would always warn clerics against falling into the trap of self-righteousness. He believed the clergy do possess the power to convey an Islamic worldview to people.”

"Motahhari was one to listen to all voices from all groups of people and thinkers and would engage in discussion with all of them, where necessary. He would never suffice to listen to one argument without considering its counter-argument. He was at the same time a religious clergy and a religious intellectual.” Azghandi concluded.

Religion in the public sphere: Religion as a catalyst of rationalization

The centrality of religion to social theory in general and philosophy in particular explains why Jürgen Habermas has dealt with it, in both substantive and creative ways, in all of his work. Indeed, religion can be used as a lens through which to glimpse both the coherence and the transformation of his distinctive theories of social development and his rethinking of the philosophy of reason as a theory of social rationalization.

For Habermas, religion has been a continuous concern precisely because it is related to both the emergence of reason and the development of a public space of reason-giving. Religious ideas, according to Habermas, are never mere irrational speculation. Rather, they possess a form, a grammar or syntax, that unleashes rational insights, even arguments; they contain, not just specific semantic contents about God, but also a particular structure that catalyzes rational argumentation.

We could say that in his earliest, anthropological-philosophical stage, Habermas approaches religion from a predominantly philosophical perspective. But as he undertakes the task of “transforming historical materialism” that will culminate in his magnum opus, The Theory of Communicative Action, there is a shift from philosophy to sociology and, more generally, social theory. With this shift, religion is treated, not as a germinal for philosophical concepts, but instead as the source of the social order. This approach is of course shaped by the work of the classics of sociology: Weber, Durkheim, and even Freud. What is noteworthy about this juncture in Habermas’s writings is that secularization is explained as “pressure for rationalization” from “above,” which meets the force of rationalization from below, from the realm of technical and practical action oriented to instrumentalization. Additionally, secularization here is not simply the process of the profanation of the world—that is, the withdrawal of religious perspectives as worldviews and the privatization of belief—but, perhaps most importantly, religion itself becomes the means for the translation and appropriation of the rational impetus released by its secularization. Here, religion becomes its own secular catalyst, or, rather, secularization itself is the result of religion. This approach will mature in the most elaborate formulation of what Habermas calls the “linguistification of the sacred,” in volume two of The Theory of Communicative Action. There, basing himself on Durkheim and Mead, Habermas shows how ritual practices and religious worldviews release rational imperatives through the establishment of a communicative grammar that conditions how believers can and should interact with each other, and how they relate to the idea of a supreme being. Habermas writes:

worldviews function as a kind of drive belt that transforms the basic religious consensus into the energy of social solidarity and passes it on to social institutions, thus giving them a moral authority.
[. . .] Whereas ritual actions take place at a pregrammatical level, religious worldviews are connected with full-fledged communicative actions.

The thrust of Habermas’s argumentation in this section of The Theory of Communicative Action is to show that religion is the source of the normative binding power of ethical and moral commandments. Yet there is an ambiguity here. While the contents of worldviews may be sublimated into the normative, binding of social systems, it is not entirely clear that the structure, or the grammar, of religious worldviews is itself exhausted. Indeed, in “A Genealogical Analysis of the Cognitive Content of Morality,” Habermas resolves this ambiguity by claiming that the horizontal relationship among believers and the vertical relationship between each believer and God shape the structure of our moral relationship to our neighbour, but now under two corresponding aspects: that of solidarity and that of justice. Here, the grammar of one’s religious relationship to God and the corresponding community of believers are like the exoskeleton of a magnificent species, which, once the religious worldviews contained in them have desiccated under the impact of the forces of secularization, leave behind a casing to be used as a structuring shape for other contents.

In the “postmetaphysical” stage of Habermas’s intellectual itinerary, he turns his attention away from sociology and towards philosophy once again, in particular, political and moral philosophy. Metaphysical thinking, which for Habermas has become untenable by the very logic of philosophical development, is characterized by three aspects: identity thinking, or the philosophy of origins that postulates the correspondence between being and thought; the doctrine of ideas, which becomes the foundation for idealism, which in turn postulates a tension between what is perceived and what can be conceptualized; and a concomitant strong concept of theory, where the bios theoretikos takes on a quasi-sacred character, and where philosophy becomes the path to salvation through dedication to a life of contemplation. By “postmetaphysical” Habermas means the new self-understanding of reason that we are able to obtain after the collapse of the Hegelian idealist system—the historicization of reason, or the de-substantivation that turns it into a procedural rationality, and, above all, its humbling. It is noteworthy that one of the main aspects of the new postmetaphysical constellation is that in the wake of the collapse of metaphysics, philosophy is forced to recognize that it must co-exist with religious practices and language:

Philosophy, even in its postmetaphysical form, will be able neither to replace nor to repress religion as long as religious language is the bearer of semantic content that is inspiring and even indispensable, for this content eludes (for the time being?) the explanatory force of philosophical language and continues to resist translation into reasoning discourses.

In contrast to metaphysical thinking, with its overvaluation of philosophy’s power, and thus its belief that philosophy is itself the voice of the truth of being, postmetaphysical thinking would neither dismiss religion as mere myth, and thus as the other of reason, nor assimilate itself to religion, usurping religious language and contents (as with mystical philosophies, such as that of the later Heidegger, with his call for a God who would save us). In other words, metaphysical thinking either surrendered philosophy to religion or sought to eliminate religion altogether. In contrast, postmetaphysical thinking recognizes that philosophy can neither replace nor dismissively reject religion, for religion continues to articulate a language whose syntax and content elude philosophy, but from which philosophy continues to derive insights into the universal dimensions of human existence.

Since 2001, when he was awarded the Peace Prize by the German Booksellers Association, Habermas has been engaging religion even more directly, deliberately, and consistently. In the speech he gave on the occasion of this prize, for instance, Habermas claims that even moral discourse cannot translate religious language without something being lost: “Secular languages which only eliminate the substance once intended leave irritations. When sin was converted to culpability, and the breaking of divine commands to an offence against human laws, something was lost.” Still, Habermas’s concern with religion is no longer solely philosophical, nor merely socio-theoretical, but has taken on political urgency. Indeed, he now asks whether modern rule of law and constitutional democracies can generate the motivational resources that nourish them and make them durable. In a series of essays, now gathered in Between Naturalism and Religion, as well as in his Europe: The Faltering Project, Habermas argues that as we have become members of a world society (Weltgesellschaft), we have also been forced to adopt a societal “post-secular self-consciousness.” By this term Habermas does not mean that secularization has come to an end, and even less that it has to be reversed. Instead, he now clarifies that secularization refers very specifically to the secularization of state power and to the general dissolution of metaphysical, overarching worldviews (among which religious views are to be counted). Additionally, as members of a world society that has, if not a fully operational, at least an incipient global public sphere, we have been forced to witness the endurance and vitality of religion. As members of this emergent global public sphere, we are also forced to recognize the plurality of forms of secularization. Secularization did not occur in one form, but in a variety of forms and according to different chronologies.

With respect to his preoccupation that “the liberal state depends in the long run on mentalities that it cannot produce from its own resources,” through a critical reading of Rawls, Habermas has begun to translate the postmetaphysical orientation of modern philosophy into a postsecular self-understanding of modern rule of law societies in such a way that religious citizens as well as secular citizens can co-exist, not just by force of a modus vivendi, but out of a sincere mutual respect. “Mutual recognition implies, among other things, that religious and secular citizens are willing to listen and to learn from each other in public debates. The political virtue of treating each other civilly is an expression of distinctive cognitive attitudes.” The cognitive attitudes Habermas is referring to here are the very cognitive competencies that are distinctive of modern, postconventional social agents. Habermas’s recent work on religion, then, is primarily concerned with rescuing for the modern liberal state those motivational and moral resources that it cannot generate or provide itself. At the same time, his recent work is concerned with foregrounding the kind of ethical and moral concerns, preoccupations, and values that can guide us between the Scylla of a society administered from above by the system imperatives of a global economy and political power and the Charybdis of a technological frenzy that places us on the slippery slope of a liberally sanctioned eugenics.

This post is adapted from a longer essay by Eduardo Mendieta, entitled “Rationalization, modernity and secularization,” which will appear in Jürgen Habermas: Key Concepts, Barbara Fultner, ed. (Durham, UK: Acumen Publishing, forthcoming). Mendieta is co-editor of two forthcoming SSRC volumes featuring work by Habermas: Habermas and Religion and The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere.—ed.

>>> http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/11/03/religion-rationalization/

Philosophy Day Raises Questions Before It Begins

By D.D. GUTTENPLAN, The New York Times

LONDON -- The idea was simple: each year, on the third Thursday in November, the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization would hold an international gathering of philosophers for a day of rational discussion and free debate.

But this year, the celebration of World Philosophy Day has been overshadowed by a boycott organized by academics from around the world who say that by holding the event in Tehran, Unesco risks turning its "school of freedom" into a propaganda exercise for a brutal regime.

The first World Philosophy Day, in 2002, was a relatively quiet affair held at Unesco's headquarters in Paris. Moufida Goucha, head of the organization's Human Security, Democracy, and Philosophy Section, told delegates that the goal would be to ensure "debates in which each and every person should feel free to participate according to his or her convictions." Three years later the event had become sufficiently important on the intellectual calendar to be moved out of Paris, first to Chile and then to Morocco, Turkey, Italy and Russia.

Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian philosopher who now teaches at the University of Toronto, still remembers the excitement of debating the question "What is secularism?" at the Istanbul celebrations in 2007, an event he attended a few months after his release from jail in Iran, where he had been arrested because of "his contacts with foreigners."

"I was arrested in Tehran in April 2006 and taken to Evin Prison," he said in a recent interview. Istanbul also saw the publication of "Philosophy: A School of Freedom," a 300-page document by Unesco on the "defense of the teaching of philosophy -- a fertile guarantor of liberty and autonomy."

Accused by the Iranian press of having links to the Central Intelligence Agency and to the Israeli security agency Mossad, Dr. Jahanbegloo had also been charged with bringing Western philosophers including Jürgen Habermas and the late Richard Rorty to Iran in a bid to foment a "velvet revolution." He was released only after an international campaign and Dr. Jahanbegloo, the author of "Reading Gandhi in Tehran," said he said in a recent interview that he considers himself lucky to have escaped with his life.

So when he learned that Unesco had decided to hold this year's World Philosophy Day celebration in Iran, he wrote to the organization's director general, Irina Bokova, urging her to reconsider.

"It is certain that under current conditions a World Philosophy Day could not be held in normal conditions in Iran and that many philosophers would not be able to attend freely," he said.

This spring, after Unesco announced that the meeting would go ahead as planned, Dr. Jahanbegloo and two colleagues from the Italian journal Reset began to organize a boycott.

The politics of boycotts are never simple -- especially when intellectuals are involved. Even the cultural boycott of South Africa, widely cited as helping to bring about the end of apartheid, remains controversial. In recent years the British Association of University Teachers passed -- and then rescinded -- a proposal for an academic boycott of Israel in protest of that country's policies toward the Palestinians. Just last spring a proposal by the Student Senate at the University of California at Berkeley to divest from certain companies that supply the Israeli military divided that campus. And the response to the call to boycott Tehran next month has been far from unanimous.

"Since 2002 Iran has always participated in World Philosophy Day events," said Sue Williams, a spokeswoman for Unesco. "So when Tehran offered to host an event this year, Unesco accepted."

Dr. Jahanbegloo responded: "This is a government which has jailed scores of scholars and writers in the past five years, and where you have a total ban on independent thought and critical thinking." He also pointed to President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's removal of Gholamreza Aavani as director of the Iranian Institute of Philosophy and his replacement by Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, a hardline politician whose daughter is married to the son of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"It's as if they decided to hold a philosophy conference in Berlin in 1938 -- with Goebbels as head of the conference!" Dr. Jahanbegloo said.

Brian Klug, who teaches philosophy at Oxford and is the author of "Being Jewish and Doing Justice," said "As I see it, the reasons that have been given for not going are more like reasons for going: going and giving solidarity to those Iranian intellectuals who are opposed to their government's infringements of human rights. Let the government of Iran be the one that does the boycotting," he said, by "withdrawing invitations or forbidding would-be participants from participating."

"Down the line, this might lay a basis for a public call to boycott the event. But that's down the line."

In July, the German philosopher Otfried Höffe, who had agreed to give the keynote speech in Tehran, announced that he would not be going to Iran. "Such a step requires not just a good, but a very good reason," he told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, pointing to the installation of Mr. Haddad Adel as conference president and "the risk that World Philosophy Day" would be used by Mr. Ahmedinejad "as a propaganda platform. I shouldn't be helping him do that."

But Binesh Hass, an Iranian-Canadian doctoral student at Oxford, wrote on the Guardian Web site that isolating his country further "will only augment the impunity the government feels in the treatment of its people."

Avishai Margalit, a philosophy professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem who also opposes the boycott, told The Wall Street Journal it was unlikely that Iran would allow Israelis to attend. However Unesco insists that all affiliates of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies, including Israel, have been invited to participate. "It is my understanding that nobody has been refused a visa," Ms. Williams of Unesco said.

Even some supporters of the boycott have found the decision a difficult one. "I have a very special personal relationship with Iran," Dr. Höffe said by telephone from his office in Tübingen. "Not only because I have supervised a number of Iranian students, but because I am the only foreign member of the Tehran Academy of Philosophy. In general I try to take part in intercultural discussions. But I wouldn't go to North Korea. And I'd find it profoundly difficult to go to Cuba. With Iran however, as with Israel or China, I think you need to consider each case on its merits."

Dr. Höffe's objection to the official character of the Tehran conference, and the Iranian regime's close control over it, has been echoed by Dr. Habermas, perhaps Germany's most prominent public intellectual. In a e-mail message, Mr. Habermas said he "strongly" opposed "official contacts with representatives of the present government in Iran," but warned "we should not make attempts to intervene in the domestic politics in Iran either."

He said that when the former president Mohammad Khatami was still in office, "I had the opportunity to meet and have discussions with many of my colleagues in Tehran. These encounters filled me with great respect for the sophistication and scholarship of the academic elite of the country."

On Sept. 27, opponents of the Tehran event gathered at the New School for Social Research in New York to plan an Alternative World Philosophy Day conference, to be held online. Meanwhile, there are signs that Unesco is beginning to waver. Ms. Williams, the Unesco spokeswoman, said that the organization had planned an additional special observance of World Philosophy Day this year, to take place at its Paris headquarters on Nov. 18. And while the Tehran conference will go ahead, there will also be events in cities around the world including Mexico City, Tunis and Dakar.

Ms. Williams denied that the apparent downgrading of Tehran had anything to do with the boycott campaign. But Giancarlo Bosetti, editor of Reset and an organizer of the protest, said that it was the New York meeting that had pushed Unesco to act. "They did what they could -- and that was quite a lot," he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times on October 24, 2010

Leadership and Leitkultur

By JÜRGEN HABERMAS

SINCE the end of August Germany has been roiled by waves of political turmoil over integration, multiculturalism and the role of the “Leitkultur,” or guiding national culture. This discourse is in turn reinforcing trends toward increasing xenophobia among the broader population.

These trends have been apparent for many years in studies and survey data that show a quiet but growing hostility to immigrants. Yet it is as though they have only now found a voice: the usual stereotypes are being flushed out of the bars and onto the talk shows, and they are echoed by mainstream politicians who want to capture potential voters who are otherwise drifting off toward the right. Two events have given rise to a mixture of emotions that are no longer easy to locate on the scale from left to right — a book by a board member of Germany’s central bank and a recent speech by the German president.

It all began with the advance release of provocative excerpts from “Germany Does Away With Itself,” a book that argues that the future of Germany is threatened by the wrong kind of immigrants, especially from Muslim countries. In the book, Thilo Sarrazin, a politician from the Social Democratic Party who sat on the Bundesbank board, develops proposals for demographic policies aimed at the Muslim population in Germany. He fuels discrimination against this minority with intelligence research from which he draws false biological conclusions that have gained unusually wide publicity.

In sharp contrast to the initial spontaneous objections from major politicians, these theses have gained popular support. One poll found that more than a third of Germans agreed with Mr. Sarrazin’s prognosis that Germany was becoming “naturally more stupid on average” as a result of immigration from Muslim countries.

After half-hearted responses in the press by a handful of psychologists who left the impression that there might be something to these claims after all, there was a certain shift in mood in the news media and among politicians toward Mr. Sarrazin. It took several weeks for Armin Nassehi, a respected sociologist, to take the pseudoscientific interpretation of the relevant statistics apart in a newspaper article. He demonstrated that Mr. Sarrazin adopted the kind of “naturalizing” interpretation of measured differences in intelligence that had already been scientifically discredited in the United States decades ago.

But this de-emotionalizing introduction of objectivity into the discussion came too late. The poison that Mr. Sarrazin had released by reinforcing cultural hostility to immigrants with genetic arguments seemed to have taken root in popular prejudices. When Mr. Nassehi and Mr. Sarrazin appeared at the House of Literature in Munich, a mob atmosphere developed, with an educated middle-class audience refusing even to listen to objections to Mr. Sarrazin’s arguments.

Amid the controversy, Mr. Sarrazin was forced to resign from the Bundesbank board. But his ouster, combined with the campaign against political correctness started by the right, only helped to strip his controversial arguments of their odious character. Criticism against him was perceived as an overreaction. Hadn’t the outraged chancellor, Angela Merkel, denounced the book without having read it? Wasn’t she now doing an about-face, by telling young members of her Christian Democratic Union party that multiculturalism was dead in Germany? And hadn’t the chairman of the Social Democrats, Sigmar Gabriel, the only prominent politician to counter the substance of Mr. Sarrazin’s claims with astute arguments, met with resistance from within his own party when he proposed expelling the unloved comrade?

The second disturbing media event in recent weeks was the reaction to a speech by the newly elected German president, Christian Wulff. As the premier of Lower Saxony, Mr. Wulff had been the first to appoint a German woman of Turkish origin as a member of his cabinet.

In his speech earlier this month on the anniversary of German unification, he took the liberty of reaffirming the commonplace notion, which former presidents had already affirmed, that not only Christianity and Judaism but “Islam also belongs in Germany.”

After the speech the president received a standing ovation in the Bundestag from the assembled political notables. But the next day the conservative press homed in on his assertion about Islam’s place in Germany. The issue has since prompted a split within his own party, the Christian Democratic Union. It is true that, although the social integration of Turkish guest workers and their descendants has generally been a success in Germany, in some economically depressed areas there continue to be problematic immigrant neighborhoods that seal themselves off from mainstream society. But these problems have been acknowledged and addressed by the German government. The real cause for concern is that, as the Sarrazin and Wulff incidents show, cool-headed politicians are discovering that they can divert the social anxieties of their voters into ethnic aggression against still weaker social groups.

The best example is Bavaria’s premier, Horst Seehofer, who has declared “immigrants from other cultures” to be detrimental and has called for a halt to immigration “from Turkey and Arab countries.” Although statistics show a net outflow of people of Turkish origin, Mr. Seehofer invokes the phobic image of unregulated masses of social parasites crowding into our welfare state networks as a way of building support for his own political aims.

To be sure, the bad habit of stirring up political prejudices is a phenomenon reaching far beyond Germany. In Germany, at least, our government doesn’t, as in the Netherlands, have to rely on the support of a right-wing populist like Geert Wilders. Unlike Switzerland, we don’t have a ban on building minarets. And thecomparative European survey data on hostility toward immigrants do not show extreme numbers for Germany.

But social and political developments in Germany, given its ghastly history, do not necessarily have the same significance as in other countries. So, are there grounds for concern that the “old” mindsets could undergo a revival?

It depends on what we mean by “old.” What we are seeing is not a revival of the mentalities of the 1930s. Instead, it is a rekindling of controversies of the early 1990s, when thousands of refugees arrived from the former Yugoslavia, setting off a debate on asylum seekers. The Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, then endorsed the position that Germany was “not a country of immigration.” At that time hostels for refugees went up in flames and even the Social Democrats gave ground, agreeing in Parliament to a shabby compromise on asylum law.

That dispute was already stimulated by the feeling of an endangered national culture, which had to assert itself as the leitkultur that all newcomers must follow. Yet the controversy of the 1990s was also driven by the fact that Germany had recently reunited and had reached the final stage in an arduous path toward a mentality that provides the necessary underpinning of a liberal understanding of the Constitution.

To the present day, the idea of the leitkultur depends on the misconception that the liberal state should demand more of its immigrants than learning the language of the country and accepting the principles of the Constitution. We had, and apparently still have, to overcome the view that immigrants are supposed to assimilate the “values” of the majority culture and to adopt its “customs.”

That we are experiencing a relapse into this ethnic understanding of our liberal constitution is bad enough. It doesn’t make things any better that today leitkultur is defined not by “German culture” but by religion. With an arrogant appropriation of Judaism — and an incredible disregard for the fate the Jews suffered in Germany — the apologists of the leitkultur now appeal to the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” which distinguishes “us” from the foreigners.

Nevertheless I do not have the impression that the appeals to the leitkultur signal anything more than a rearguard action or that the lapse of an author into the snares of the controversy over nature versus nurture has given enduring and widespread impetus to the more noxious mixture of xenophobia, racist feelings of superiority and social Darwinism. The problems of today have set off the reactions of yesterday — but not those of the day before.

I don’t underestimate the scale of the accumulated nationalistic sentiment, a phenomenon not confined to Germany. But in the light of current events, another trend is of greater concern: the growing preference for unpolitical figures on the political scene, which recalls a dubious trait of German political culture, the rejection of political parties and party politics.

During the parliamentary election of the federal president last summer, Joachim Gauck, the politically inexperienced and non-party-affiliated civil rights campaigner, stood as the opposing candidate to Mr. Wulff, the career politician. Against the majority in the electoral college, Mr. Gauck, a Protestant minister with a history of opposition to the old East German regime, won the hearts of the broader population, and almost won the election.

The same yearning for charismatic figures who stand above the political infighting can be seen in the puzzling popularity of the aristocratic defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who, with not much more than his family background, polished manners and a judicious wardrobe, has managed to overshadow Ms. Merkel’s reputation.

Of even greater concern is the sort of street protests we are now witnessing in Stuttgart, where tens of thousands of people have come out against the federal railway corporation’s plan to demolish the old central train station. The protests that have been continuing for months are reminiscent of the spontaneity of the extraparliamentary opposition of the 1960s. Unlike then, though, today people from all age groups and sectors of the population are taking to the streets. The immediate aim is a conservative one: preserving a familiar world in which politics intervenes as the executive arm of supposed economic progress.

In the background, however, there is a deeper conflict brewing over our country’s understanding of democracy. The state government of Baden-Württemberg, where Stuttgart is located, sees the protests narrowly, as simply a question of whether government is legally permitted to plan such long-term megaprojects. In the midst of the turmoil the president of the Federal Constitutional Court rushed to the project’s defense by arguing that the public had already voted to approve it 15 years ago, and thus had no more say in its execution.

But it has since emerged that the authorities did not, in fact, provide sufficient information at the time, and thus citizens did not have an opportunity to develop an informed opinion on which they could have based their votes. To insist that they should have no further say in the development is to rely on a formalistic understanding of democracy. The question is this: Does participation in democratic procedures have only the functional meaning of silencing a defeated minority, or does it have the deliberative meaning of including the arguments of citizens in the democratic process of opinion- and will-formation?

The motivations underlying each of the three phenomena — the fear of immigrants, attraction to charismatic nonpoliticians and the grass-roots rebellion in Stuttgart — are different. But they meet in the cumulative effect of a growing uneasiness when faced with a self-enclosed and ever more helpless political system. The more the scope for action by national governments shrinks and the more meekly politics submits to what appear to be inevitable economic imperatives, the more people’s trust in a resigned political class diminishes.

The United States has a president with a clear-headed political vision, even if he is embattled and now meets with mixed feelings. What is needed in Europe is a revitalized political class that overcomes its own defeatism with a bit more perspective, resoluteness and cooperative spirit. Democracy depends on the belief of the people that there is some scope left for collectively shaping a challenging future. [The New York Times, 28th Oct 2010]

Jürgen Habermas, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Goethe University in Frankfurt, is the author, most recently, of “Europe: The Faltering Project.” This essay was translated by Ciaran Cronin from the German.

>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/opinion/29Habermas.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Hojatieh Society: 57 Years in the Shadow

By Ardalan Sayami

Advocate of Separation of State and Religion or Ally of Ahmadinejad?

Talking about the Hojatieh Society today and its role in Iran is both easy and difficult. On one hand it is possible to draw parallels between what the government and the Hojatieh are doing, and conclude that the current administration is in fact a "neo-Hojatieh" outfit.

On the other hand however, the idea of separation of state and religion is prominent in the group. Its leaders believe in a "personal religion" and deem the establishment of an Islamic government to be the prerogative of the twelfth Imam. But these views are in contradiction with the political philosophy of the leaders of the Islamic Republic. Under these circumstances, there is a battle raging between three movements which puts the Hojatieh in a more precarious corner.

The issue started with Hossein Shariatmadari's interview with Hamshahri newspaper, when he said, "Hojatieh's battle with Bahaism during the Shah's time was a mistake and the group stopped its activities on orders of imam Khomeini."

In response to this, Mehdi Khazali whose father was once the representative of ayatollah Khomeini in the Hojatieh Society defended the group on September 19, 2010 on his website, which read, "There is no evidence of ayatollah Khomeini confronting the Society and in fact the Society was in line with the imam; and the evidence is that it gave many martyrs in the war to the revolution."

Following this position, Rahe Tudeh publication published a response to Khazali's position by publishing an interview by Ahmadi Taherzadeh that was published in Cheshmandaz magazine. The interview traced the history of Sheikh Mahmoud Halabi from the days prior to the nationalization of the oil industry and the establishment of the Society. Rahe Tudeh concluded that confrontation with the Hojatieh was in line with ayatollah Khomeini.

This resulted in a response by Khazali to both claims, in which he wrote, "The response given by Rahe Tudeh to me strengthens the existence of a conspiracy theory against the Society. It is important to note that, first, they had written that, 'the Imam had given orders for the Society to be set aside!' But where is this order? In fact, many officials of the regime have a history of belonging to the Society. General Salimi, Dr Ali Akbar Velayati, Parvaresh and tens of other wise and intelligent authorities. Second, they refer to the writings of Emadedin Baghi, while he had apologized to Ghaedin Zaman party for his book and while confessing to his mistake had asked for forgiveness from the Society.

The fact of the matter is that he had later realized the inaccuracy of his information and that he had been deceived by the Tudeh Party. Third, Rahe Tudeh has written that Taher Ahmadzadeh had told Imam in a letter that 'the Society was affiliated to the Freemasons and the British Intelligence service1'. This is a beautiful confession because everybody knows that Taherzadeh bent towards leftist and Marxist groups in the beginning of the 1979 revolution. I believe Taherzadeh, Emadedin Baghi, Saeed Imami etc had all been too harsh on the Society while all of them received their due suffering from God. Shariatmadari too should await the same."

Secular Left and Religious Left

The Hojatieh Society is a movement that has attacked by in the rivalries of the leftists in the 1980s and the revolutionaries and clerics. But it has returned to the scene with a new image and definition. During the 80s, they represented American Islam, during 90s they represented reactionary Islam and during the 2000 they were close to Mesbah Yazdi and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mohtashamipour is the critic of the Society during the 90s and 2000s, which is the period when the group was not officially active.

Emadedin Baghi is the critic of the Society in the 80s when the organization was official. Years later, he told ISNA student news agency that, "I think was taken by the post-revolutionary atmosphere of the time and was awestruck by the revolutionary to the point that I defended it in absolute terms and rejected any thought or movement against the revolution without any fair play or ethical standards in writing the book "Dar Shenakhte Hezbe Ghaedin, which also reflected by youthfulness and impressionistic attitude."

Twenty years after the publication of the book "Dar Shenakhte Hezbe Ghaedin" Emaddedin Baghi wrote a self criticism over the book and wrote, "Today, after the period of pressure and crackdown on the Islamic Revolution the views of this group have become clear. These views say that whenever religion entered the realm of politics, faith was hurt, and it caused hurt on others as well."

The history of the Hojatieh has been the history of religious advocacy which during the Shah's time was more concerned with maintaining the traditional religious views and, as it has confessed itself to this. The Hojatieh group viewed itself as the victim of the leftists and its infiltration in religious viewed in the 60s.

So any discussion of the Hojatieh in Iran is not without controversy. On one hand the groups has no license to issue, formally operate while on the other it footprint is everywhere. This is true particularly since Ahmadinejad became president, who has been highlighting the idea of the "return" of the twelfth Imam. Although this group lacks any official status but who does not know of the influence of its believers and supporters behind the scenes and its role in directing major events.

The Society Born out of the Coup

The history of the Society began on the day that the 1953 coup d'etat succeeded and Mahmoud Halabi, who was a supporter of the nationalization of Iran's oil industry, began thinking of doing organizational work among believers in response to the shock caused by one of his associates who had turned to Bahaism, and so Halabi decided to create an anti Bahai society which got the name Hojatieh Society after the 1979 revolution. Seyed Abbas Alavi's turn to Bahaism had had such a strong impact on Halabi that he came to hold Bahaism responsible for every deviation and problem in society and politics.

Halabi's first task was to prepare religious students for fulfilling this task. But his plan was not supported by the clerics of the time, particularly ayatollah Borujerdi. According to the banned Shahrvand journal, Sheikh Mohammad Halabi did not retreat because of this set back and by moving to Tehran formed the first cell of his organization among the Muslim bazaar merchants. In 1956 he created a society called the Anjomane Kheirieh Hojatieh Mahdavie (Hojatieh Charity Organization). Earlier in 1953 Sheikh Mahmoud had claimed that the missing Imam had asked that a group be formed to fight Bahaism, and so this was the response.

Prominent Iranian intellectual Saeed Hajjarian has written, "For two years, the Shah tolerated the Society and Mahmoud Halabi and his associates and even gave Mr. Falsafi the opportunity to propagate against Bahaism on the national sate run radio. But following the destruction of the Hazireh-alGhods mosque by members of the Society in 1955, the Shah stopped them which forced them towards cultural activities and made them focus on influencing schools and the educational system where they built a base for themselves and from where they gradually expanded their activities."

The managing members of the founding board and board of directors of the Hojatieh Society in Mashhad and Tehran were, sheikh Mahmoud Halabi, Mohammad Salehi Azari, seyed Hossein Sajadi, Mohammad Hossein Sajadi, Mohammad Hossein Attar, Gholam-Hossein Haj Mohammad Taghi Bagher, seyed Reza Al Rasool, engineer Hooshmand, Dokhanchi, Hashemi, Dr Abd Khodai (parliament member from Mashhad) and Dr Mohammad Mehdi Poorgol. These individuals held meetings in their houses or those of the supporters of the Society" (Archives of the Center for the Islamic Revolution Documents, code 5327, 60/11/29 number 13.59).

According to the same document, "The organization that Halabi had created constantly grew among the middle religious class so that by the middle of 70s it had grown across Iran and even neighboring countries such as Pakistan and India. By creating the most import religious schools such as Alavi and Nikan, laid the foundation for educating a generation that later became the senior leaders of the Islamic Republic.

Alavi school was managed under the supervision of sheikh Ali-Asqar Karbaschian, popularly known as Alameh. This school was established in 1956 and because of sheikh Ali Asqar Alameh's style of management and the religious content of the school, most conservative families and those affiliated to the religious circles in Tehran tried to send their children this educational center. Many prominent names that emerged after the revolution came from here: Kamal Kharazi, Mahmoud Ghandi, Abdol-Karim Soroosh, Mohammad Nahavandian, Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel, Nejad Hosseinian, Mohammad taghi Banki, Kolahdooz, Javad Vahabi, Mehdi Abrishamchi, Alireza Tashdid, Khamooshi, are the examples."

An interesting point about Hojatieh Society is that despite its religious nature, there were very few clerics. Sheikh Jaafar Shajooni who is among the best known supporters of Ahmadinejad and was then a member of the Hojatieh has said, "Mr. Halabi did not want clerics to enter the Society" (Archives for the Islamic Revolution Documents Center, Mohammad Taghi Falsafi's dossier, index number 1051, pages 2 and 3).

Hojatieh and Other Islamic Organizations

One leadership member of the Hojatieh who does not want his name revealed has told Rooz, "The rapid growth of the organization which was in no way proportionate to the level of threat posed by Bahaism resulted in a response to the society by some senior clerics who desired to create Islamic organizations for the purpose of dominating Islamic organizations in other countries and thus revive the grandeur of the monopoly of ayatollah Borujerdi's days."

By the end of the 1960s, the second generation of graduates of the Hojatieh entered the universities and embarked on activities to modernize and standardize the activities of the Society. So the decade of the 1970s was the period when the Society reformed itself which resulted in more professionalism and a division of work inside it.

After the death of ayatollah Hakim, Hojatieh members moved towards the leadership of ayatollah Khoi. At the same time, revolutionaries gathered around ayatollah Khomeini. This caused a problem for the Society after the 1979 revolution. This member of the Hojatieh Society continues, "Ayatollah Khomeini who was unhappy about the growth of the Hojatieh Society and its prominence in traditional religious circles ended the financial support of the Society.

It is noteworthy that the second article of the charter of the Hojatieh Society specifically bans the group from engaging in political activity and says that it will not accept the responsibility of any of its members' political interference.

Hojatieh and the Period of the Revolution

After the events of September 8, 1978, the Hojatiehs apparently changed their stand on political activism and Halabi announced the very next day that members of the Society had to participate in the national demonstrations across the country.

Mohammad Reza Hakimi has quoted one leadership member of the Society as saying, "The day after September 8th, Mr. Halabi came to our house and in the presence of the managers of the Society said, 'My position has changed and I am now certain that the leftists are not involved and therefore we too must participate in this movement.'"

In explaining the conditions of the early 1980s, this Hojatieh leader says, "Upon his return to Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini had no choice but to stay at the school belonging to the Hojatieh Society. But when he heard the Hojatieh supporters chanting for the speedy return of the missing Imam Mahdi, he ordered the complete closure of the Hojatieh Society despite the opposing view of the senior clerics so that its supporters would then chant, "Oh God, Keep Khomeini till Mahdi's revolution."

But according to Shahrvand, there is also a different narrative on this, which goes like this, "IN the beginning of the (1979) revolution, the supporters of the Hojatieh Society chanted "Mahdi come, Mahdi come," while supporters of ayatollah Khomeini chanted 'Oh God keep Khomeini till the revolution of Mahdi.' What was important is that after the revolution the focus of the Hojatieh switched from Bahais to Marxists.

The social background of the Hojatieh members prior to the revolution which comprised of the middle religious and bazari class, normally opposed the leftists, regardless of whether this was Mir Hossein Mousavi, Kianouri or Tabari. But when the slogan of 'battling world imperialism' enjoyed the upper hand in society and the policies of the country propagated leftist ideas, this focus on the left created a problem for the Society and all the pre-revolutionary differences were gathered under the slogan of 'American Islam.' The Hojatieh Society became the representative of American Islam and thus the supporters of Mr. Khomeini rejected the Society members on this view. Eventually, in a speech on July 12, 1983 ayatollah Khomeini said, 'There is another group whose thesis is that we should let conditions become worse so that Imam Mahdi arrives sooner. But for what reason would the Imam come? He will come to alleviate the conditions. So why should we make things worse? Remove these deviations.'"

Many politicians in those days interpreted this to be against the Hojatieh. The group itself issued a statement and offered an explanation. "Following these statements, it is rumored that what his eminence meant was this Society. While we have not found any such evidence, ... his eminence has in fact approved of the religious and cultural services of the Society. But on direct contact, ... it became clear that indeed this Society was the subject of the remarks. Therefore, the issue was communicated to the founder Mr. Halabi, who said there is no religious necessity to continue the activities and all meetings and programs should be ended" (Kayhan).

After this, the activities of the Hojatieh became legendary. Inside and outside the government a movement was born to purge all those suspecting of membership or supporting the Hojatieh, which also included the universities, educational organization, etc. In addition to the leftists, the Tudeh party associated anybody who it believed was moving against it to the Hojatieh. So anytime a view that was different was presented even at the highest clerical levels, it was immediately labeled to be stemming from the Hojatieh. The masses too had this view of the Hojatieh: "Through the Hojatieh and other secret counter-revolutionary groups which operate under the guise of 'fanatic Islam' there is a strong anti communist and anti Soviet movement, which is openly battling dissident parties and organization, including the Tudeh Party .. " (Nooredin Kianouri, Tudeh Party Publication, February 1982, page 24).

And while the Hojatieh no longer had any formal organization, but they responded to their opponents in an organized fashion and worked against them. They called Tudeh Party members to be Soviet agents, who in return said that the Hojatieh were British agents.

The Philosophy of Government from Hojatieh's Perspective

The Hojatieh Society believes in the creation of an Islamic government only in the presence of Mahdi, the twelfth Shite Imam while at the same time rejecting the notion of an absolute theologian ruler (velayate motlaghe faghih) believing that such a rule belongs to the twelfth Imam. Because of this, many difference developed between the members of this Society and those believed in the rule of the supreme theologian. Members of the Hojatieh at the same time say that they do believe in the rule of the theologian (velayate faghih) and obey religious sources of emulation (marjae taghlid). The difference is over the scope of authority of the theologian and not the theologian himself.

This effective Hojatieh member told Rooz, "the theologian that the Society has in mind is for secondary judgments, not primary ones. Therefore, the establishment of a government is among primary orders and includes only those acts that must be carried out by the missing Imam."

He continues, "Contrary to disseminated propaganda and the speech of Mr. Khomeini in 1981 against Hojatieh Society, they do not believe at all that sin, suffering, pain etc must reach their height to create the conditions for the return of the Imam. Instead, they believe in that the way out of the issue of absence of the Imam is the will of God and His wish, and so is possible only through requests and prayers for this possibility. Therefore, according to their view, noting the sanctity of the living imam equates to doing good and refraining from bad, i.e., encouraging people to pray for the return of the Imam."

"Philosophy is a kind of heresy and the intrusion of Greek philosophy in Islam was a plan that Abbassid caliphs launched for the purpose of confronting the school/followers of Esmat and the efforts against pure Shite thought," he continued.

It is noteworthy that these views of the Hojatieh Society (on philosophy) is pursued today by Mohammad-Reza Hakimi and his disciples who are mostly members of the former Hojatieh Society and are known as the "Separation School."

Hojatieh and the Separation School

One of the activities of the Hojatieh Society, whether during the life of Mahmoud Halabi (until 1997) or after that, has been dealing with the separation school. In the book titled Talayedar Aftab (Vanguards of the Sun), students and friends of Halabi and members of this Society point to the absence of the right conditions, the presence of social crises, preoccupation with battling Bahaism, etc are among the key reasons for the absence of publications on the Separation School and say, "At the first relative available opportunities and the presence of willing minds, the opportunity for publishing those lessons came about and it was possible for the master (i.e., Mohammad-Reza Hakimi) to gradually express the new ideas that he had kept in his heart for years and seldom spoke about. These were the values of the followers of the pure as opposed to the judgments and views of humanity."

This member of Hojatieh continues, "Halabi preferred to use the term moarefe alahie rather than the sensitive separation school."

The Hojatieh After Khomeini

It is said that after the death of ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 and the rise of ayatollah Khamenei to the leadership of the Islamic Republic who had a longer knowledge of members of the Hojatieh, who were from his own hometown, the activities of this group re-emerged again. During his presidency (in 1981), seyed Ali Khamenei also talked about the Hojatieh in a speech and said, "I believe among those who are members of the Hojatieh one can find individuals who are revolutionary, pious, honest, dedicated to the revolution, faithful to the imam and velayat faghih and subservient to the state and the Islamic Republic, just as there are also individuals who are negative, pessimistic, mean, without conviction and naggers. So the Society is comprised of a wide political ideology and revolutionary movement, and therefore is not confined to a specific narrow faction."

In a private interview in 1991, Mohammad-Reza Hakimi had said, "Members of the Society believe that the lost reputation of the Society had to be restored by the supreme leader [i.e., Khamenei], and that those who had defecated the tombstone of Mr. Halabi had to apologize to his spirit."

Mehdi Khazali also believed that ayatollah Khamenei and the Society enjoyed good relations. This is what he wrote on his personal website, "The Hojatieh Society had been created by a divine cleric, and respected theologian ayatollah haj Sheikh Mahmoud Halabi who remains a spiritual Shiite treasure who deservedly awaits the return of the Imam. Mr. Khamenei had issued special personal favorable instructions for the burial ceremony of Mr. Halabi. After him, Mr. Sajadi has been warmly embraced by the leader recently and the number two person at the Society Mr. Madarshahi was a special advisor to ayatollah Khamenei during the latter's presidency. His services to Islam and the revolution are well known to everybody."

Abolghasem Khazali who for years remained the highest person accused of being associated with the Hojatieh while being part of the Islamic republic government had said in an interview years ago, "Those whom I know in the Society desire to be active against Bahaism and the minister of intelligence (Mr. Yunesi) has said that he was ready to accept them."

These efforts by Khazali finally resulted in that Mr. Akbar Mohtashamipour expressly said that Ghadeer Foundation under his management was a "center for activities against the imam and the spread of Hojatieh beliefs," something that Khazali has rejected and instead has always claimed that "despite invitations by Society members, he never became a member of the group."

In Line With Ahmadinejad's Administration?

During the last five years, Mohtashamipour has been advancing the idea of the association between Hojatieh Society and Ahmadinejad's administration claiming that the promises that the administration and particularly Mashai make about the imminent appearance of the missing Imam and Mahdaviat are in fact a "neo-Hojatieh" movement. In 2009, he even told Khabar Online, "I can expressly name the Hojatieh Society to be behind all the sedition activities. The followers of this belief are currently active in foundations and organizations under different names and have influence in many centers and through some individuals who were not allowed to operate by the imam (i.e., ayatollah Khomeini) and whose views are exactly the opposite of the imam's are now active."

Ahmadinejad himself rejected any association with the Society in the first year of his presidency. According to Advar News in 2005 he expressly said that "the label of being a Hojatieh did not stick to him." Furthermore, he even claimed that the group acted in opposition to him. He said that the reason for their opposition to him was because he began his talks with a sentence that they did not like as they did not with anyone to talk of the missing Imam, adding that their goal was to destroy the administration among the public.

A Belief Outside the Administration and Authority?

But a senior member of the Hojatieh Society tells a different story about Ahmadinejad and the group. "The beliefs of the Society have taken shape outside the circles of power while Ahmadinejad cannot survive without it." "The core belief of the Hojatieh Society is that religion is a personal issue and that it should not mingle with politics whereas the administration strives to make religion a government issue and control religion through government," he added.

He continues, "Since Ahmadinejad's administration has come to power, some believe that his extremist views regarding the twelfth Shiite imam have resulted in that his critics who are said to be in line with ayatollah Khomeini's beliefs strive to use Khomeini's opposition to Hojatieh as an excuse to battle the Hojatieh today."

A book published in 2005 and authored by Dr seyed Hossein Sajadi, soon after the ninth presidential elections, the idea that is advanced is that the administration has the same ideology as the Society. In the book, titled "The Decade of Reappearance" Sajadi predicts bloody events to take place in the region such as a coup d'etat in Syria under the command of Safiyani (pp106), his war with the Lebanese Shiite and then an invasion of Iraq (pp 101-102), and finally Syria's joining the American camp and a bloody suppression of the Hezbollah by the US and Israel, followed by the assassination of Saudi leader Malik Abdullah by al-Qaeda (pp131-132).

Following the publication of this book, another book was published in Lebanon titled, "Ahmadinejad and the Forthcoming World revolution" which follows a similar theme.

Abdullah Shahbazi, a prominent historian said this about the book, "When the Decade of Reappearance was published I read it and by looking at its place of publication, i.e., Mashhad, I thought that Sajadi is the same engineer Sajadi who had been a key operator of the Hojatieh Society. But later when I read the life of sheikh Mahmoud Halabi, the founder and leader of the Society on Wikipedia, this suspicion turned into a fact for me. The writer of the book described the most important students of Halabi in these words: 'among his students were seyed Hossein Sajadi, seyed Hassan Eftekharzadeh Sabzevari, Asghar Sadeghi and Javad Madarshahi.'"

Shahbazi believes that Dr seyed Hossein Sajadi, the author of the book is the same person as engineer Sajadi of the 1960s whom he had seen many times during public speeches. After Halabi died, Sajadi became the principal leader of the Hojatieh Society.

But the source that Rooz spoke with said that while Sajadi was the leader of the Society, he was not the author of the Decade of Reappearance. The author used to be inclined towards the Society before the 1979 revolution but after it he was attracted to the leftist religious groups is now a member of the Jamiate Isargaran group in Mashhad and has no links with the Hojatieh. He added that this whole idea of linking Ahmadinejad's administration to the Hojatieh is an effort to weaken the Society.

In Hajarian's view, members of the Hojatieh are mostly educated, middle class individuals and are different from the group that claims the imminent reappearance of the Mahdi who are fundamentalists and regressive.

On July 26, 2010 Resalat newspaper reported that Hojatieh Society had applied for a license to become active again, reformist newspapers had this heading: Application Request from a Friendly Administration. While no names were mentioned in Resalat's initial news, no license has yet been issued. Three names are mentioned as current leaders of the Society: Sajadi, Eftekharzadeh and seyed Hassan Abtahi, while Sajadi seems to enjoy the strongest support. The peripheral view of the group today remains the separation of politics from religion, and the dominance of religion. Perhaps it was no accident that in the first years after Mohammad Khatami came to office some IRGC commanders warned against the rise of secular Islam under the leadership of Nehzate Azadi (Freedom Movement) at the intellectual level and the Hojatieh Society from the religious perspective. This is the same view that is said to prevail today in the corridors of the ministry of intelligence and the office of the president. [Rooz Online]

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