Sharia, Philosophy and Ethics

The central issue of this study is a critical analysis of the epistemological gap between the jurisprudential rulings of the institution of “istibrāʾ” and the psychological-social reality of the bondwoman at the moment of transition from “milk al-yamīn” to “marital union.” In early jurisprudential literature, istibrāʾ was legislated as a protective mechanism for preserving lineage and preventing the commingling of reproductive fluids; however, the fundamental question is how this legal mechanism, within the historical customary context of Islamic slaveholding societies, turned into an instrument for disregarding the psychological agency of the bondwoman and perpetuating proprietary domination even after her exit from slavery. By adopting a “critical jurisprudence” approach and drawing on the discourse theories of Foucault, Bourdieu, and Fairclough (Bourdieu, 1991; Fairclough, 1995; Foucault, 1972), the present study analyzes the narrative of “The Slave-Girl and the King” in Rumi’s Masnavi as a discursive-historical document. The research hypothesis is that patriarchal custom, through a selective rereading of jurisprudential texts, extended the concept of “bodily istibrāʾ” to “psychological istibrāʾ” and thereby kept the subjectivity of the enslaved woman in a state of perpetual suspension. The findings show that the dominant jurisprudential-customary discourse, by disregarding the inner will and consent of the bondwoman, institutionalized a form of “symbolic violence,” the effects of which have continued into the contemporary period in the form of institutional distrust toward women’s testimony in rulings concerning the waiting period and divorce. The proposed solution is a transition from a devotional-formalist approach to a maqāṣid-oriented approach in interpreting the rulings of istibrāʾ and the recognition of “psychological istibrāʾ” as a necessary condition for the validity of marriage.

The relationship between rationality and religiosity has long stood at the center of reflection among Muslim philosophers, theologians, and jurists, and in the contemporary era, due to emerging intellectual and ethical challenges, it has gained even greater significance. This study was conducted with the aim of explaining the role of reason in two domains: understanding Sharia and the formation of ethics, as well as analyzing the relationship between rationality and religiosity. The research employed a descriptive-analytical method based on library research. The statistical population of the study consisted of classical and contemporary Islamic texts in the fields of theology, principles of Islamic jurisprudence, moral philosophy, and the interpretation of religious texts, and the data were analyzed through qualitative content analysis and comparison of viewpoints. The findings indicate that reason plays a fundamental role both as an independent source alongside the Qur’an and Sunnah, particularly in the domain of ethics, and as an instrument for understanding revealed texts and discovering the objectives of Sharia. The theory of rational good and evil, as the theological foundation of this discussion, provides the possibility of rationally evaluating legal rulings and moral values. Moreover, practical reason can contribute to the dynamism of Islamic ethics by deriving general ethical principles from religious sources and applying them to emerging conditions. In this regard, challenges such as the apparent conflict between reason and transmitted revelation, literalist anti-rationalism, and the influence of modern instrumental rationality have continually been subjects of debate and reflection. By analyzing these challenges and drawing on the works of contemporary thinkers, the article concludes that religious rationality finds its meaning not in opposition to religiosity, but in deep integration with it, and that the understanding of Sharia and Islamic ethics would remain incomplete and unstable without the employment of reason. This approach provides the foundation for a rational reading of religion that is both compatible with the requirements of the time and capable of preserving the authenticity and depth of revealed teachings. Furthermore, the proposed model of this study emphasizes a dynamic and reciprocal interaction between reason and revelation; a model in which reason is not merely the servant of transmitted texts, but in some cases also acts as their arbiter and evaluative criterion.

In recent decades, one of the issues that has attracted the attention of philosophers and thinkers in the field of religious studies has been the language of religion, its nature, and the way its content is understood. While Muslim thinkers accept the cognitive character of religious propositions, they differ in their views regarding the quality of their content, particularly with respect to the issue of “right and duty.” Contemporary theistic philosophers, such as Martyr Motahhari, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, and Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, explain religious propositions within a traditional-philosophical framework as duty-oriented, while describing the relationship between “right” and “duty” as one of mutual implication. By contrast, religious reformist thinkers, particularly Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush, maintain that the present age is the age of modern humanity, an age that emphasizes individual rights and inherent dignity; therefore, they regard this period as an era of “right-centeredness.” Accordingly, they call for a reinterpretation of the language of religion in line with right-centeredness. Drawing on modern rationality and transformation in the language of religion, Soroush emphasizes the priority of right over duty and argues that, in order to sustain itself, religion must enter into dialogue with human rights and human-centeredness. In contrast, theistic philosophers, by appealing to revealed theology, regard the priority of duty over right as necessary and define the human being in relation to servitude and divine vicegerency. Using a comparative approach, this article analyzes the anthropological, theological, and epistemological foundations of these two perspectives and demonstrates that the fundamental difference between these two approaches in terms of foundation and method has led to different interpretations of religious concepts in the contemporary era.

The present study was conducted with the aim of analyzing the discourse of democracy in the political-jurisprudential thought of contemporary Shiite scholars. The research method was discourse analysis, and to complement the analysis, limited use was made of some concepts proposed by Laclau and Mouffe, such as the empty signifier, articulation, and hegemonic struggle, as well as some of Fairclough’s tools, including the analysis of vocabulary, metaphors, and intertextuality. Sampling was purposive, and the unit of analysis consisted of discursive propositions found in the scholars’ jurisprudential-political texts; that is, statements and arguments concerning the people, government, legitimacy, law, guardianship, and political participation. The data were collected through documentary and library research, and their analysis was carried out at three levels. To enhance the validity of the study, direct reference to the primary texts, comparison of different viewpoints, and clarification of the analytical process were employed. The findings indicate that the discourse of democracy in the political-jurisprudential thought of contemporary Shiite scholars is an independent, religious, and indigenous discourse that, on the one hand, opposes despotism, concentration of power, and the exclusion of the people, and, on the other hand, demarcates itself from secular democracy and absolute human voluntarism. This discourse seeks to establish a relationship among divine sovereignty, Islamic Sharia, guardianship, justice, and the will of the people. Accordingly, in the thought of the scholars examined, the people are neither merely subjects of the government nor an independent and unconditional source of legitimacy; rather, they constitute a pillar of the realization, continuity, supervision, and efficiency of Islamic government. Therefore, democracy in the thought of Imam Khomeini, Ayatollah Khamenei, Shahid Beheshti, and Shahid Motahhari is formulated as religious democracy; a model in which religion provides direction and values to the political system, while the people function as the agents of its realization, election, participation, and support. This model demonstrates that contemporary Shiite political jurisprudence has been able, in confronting modern concepts such as democracy, participation, and the right to self-determination, to provide a novel and intra-religious interpretation and to represent it within the theoretical and institutional framework of the Islamic Republic.

The question of the nature of the human soul and its relationship with the body is among the most fundamental issues in the history of philosophy, theology, and cognitive science. In contemporary Western philosophy, physicalism has emerged as a dominant view that explains mind and consciousness within the framework of physical processes. In the Islamic world, certain currents of Islamic theology have adopted a corporealist approach to the soul, standing in contrast to the substance dualism prevalent in the Islamic Peripatetic tradition. Physicalist theology, which emerged in the past century within the context of Christian science–religion dialogue, seeks to reconcile religious belief with physicalist explanations of the mind. Using a library-based analytical-comparative method through note-taking from primary and secondary sources in three fields—Western philosophy of mind, physicalist theology, and Islamic study of the soul—this article examines the possibilities, limitations, and implications of such mediation. The findings indicate that physicalist theology can function as a “partial bridge” in this intertraditional dialogue; shared issues such as bodily resurrection, personal identity, embodied moral responsibility, and human unity provide genuine grounds for dialogue, and some of its conceptual tools, such as downward causation and emergence, may prove useful in rethinking Islamic theories of the soul. Nevertheless, fundamental incompatibilities also exist that make complete bridge-building impossible; the Qur’anic concept of the spirit as “amr rabbī” (“an affair of my Lord”), belief in consciousness in the intermediate realm of barzakh, the essential difference between Islamic “subtle corporeality” and modern physicalism, and the fundamental divergence in the epistemic sources and methodologies of each tradition are among these obstacles. The present study concludes that the true value of physicalist theology in this dialogue lies not in resolving the issues, but in opening a space in which the two traditions can engage in more constructive dialogue through a more shared language, epistemic humility, and respect for their fundamental distinctions.

This article analyzes the influence of ancient Iranian intellectual and cultural heritage on Islamic mysticism, particularly in its Iranian form. The central problem addressed in the study is that Islamic mysticism in Iran, while fundamentally grounded in the Qur’an, the Prophetic tradition, monotheism, Islamic law, and the inner spiritual experience of Muslims, developed within a historical and cultural environment that had already produced rich spiritual traditions, sacred symbols, and ethical worldviews before Islam. Using a descriptive-analytical and comparative approach, the article examines concepts and symbols such as light, fire, purity, truth, the opposition between light and darkness, natural elements, spiritual wayfaring, purification of the soul, and the perfect human being. It argues that these elements entered Iranian Islamic mysticism not through direct and unchanged transmission, but through reinterpretation, interiorization, and spiritual re-creation. The findings indicate that light, which was associated with truth and purity in ancient Iranian traditions, was transformed in Islamic mysticism into a symbol of knowledge, divine manifestation, and spiritual presence. Fire, formerly connected with ritual sanctity and purity, became in Persian Sufi literature a metaphor for love, longing, burning, and inner purification. Likewise, the ancient contrast between good and evil or light and darkness was shifted from a cosmic and mythic level to an ethical, psychological, and mystical level, where darkness signified ignorance, ego, and heedlessness, while light represented knowledge, unveiling, and nearness to God. The article further shows that Persian mystical literature, especially Sufi poetry, served as the most important medium for the reconfiguration of this heritage. The study concludes that Iranian Islamic mysticism should be understood as the result of a creative interaction among Islamic revelation, Sufi experience, philosophical wisdom, the Persian language, and the spiritual memory of ancient Iran.

The question of the meaning of life in contemporary Western philosophy has undergone a fundamental transformation in connection with the crises of modernity and the decline of traditional metaphysical explanations. The aim of this study is to provide a comparative examination of the concept of meaning in life within the major currents of contemporary philosophy (analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, and existentialism) and to propose an alternative interpretation based on the philosophy of life developed by Henri Bergson. This study is qualitative in nature and was conducted using descriptive-analytical and comparative methods. Data were collected through documentary and library-based research grounded in philosophical texts and related scholarly studies. The research population consists of the works and perspectives of prominent philosophers in contemporary Western philosophy who have addressed the question of the meaning of life. The sample was purposively selected from the views of René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Albert Camus, together with the writings of Henri Bergson. The research methodology is based on conceptual analysis, comparative evaluation of philosophical perspectives, and critical assessment. Data analysis was conducted through qualitative interpretation of philosophical texts and comparative examination of different philosophical approaches. The findings indicate that contemporary Western philosophy has moved from transcendent and objective conceptions of meaning toward subjective interpretations and ultimately toward the crisis of nihilism. Nevertheless, Bergson’s philosophy, drawing upon the concepts of duration (durée), intuition, and the vital impetus (élan vital), opens a path beyond the impasse between the “discovery” and the “creation” of meaning. From Bergson’s perspective, meaning is located neither in pre-established ends (mechanistic teleology) nor in the absurdity resulting from materialism; rather, it is rooted in the creative dynamism and continuous flux of life itself. In this interpretation, the meaning of life emerges from the inner transcendence of life and from the direct intuition of the creative flow that surpasses mechanical determinism, thereby justifying life as a continuous act of creation.

Fixed Entities (Aʿyān Thābitah), or the immutable realities of contingent beings, constitute one of the fundamental concepts of Ibn ʿArabī’s theoretical mysticism. This doctrine plays a pivotal role in explaining the relationship between unity and multiplicity, the nature of divine knowledge prior to creation, and the mode of manifestation of beings in the world. Using a descriptive-analytical method and drawing upon primary mystical, philosophical, and exegetical sources, the present study examines this concept within Ibn ʿArabī’s intellectual system and subsequently investigates its reinterpretation in the thought of two prominent figures of contemporary Shiʿi philosophy and mysticism, namely Allameh Tabataba’i and Imam Khomeini. The findings indicate that Ibn ʿArabī regarded Fixed Entities as immutable intelligible forms subsisting within divine knowledge. Although they are neither externally existent nor independently created, their effects and determinations become manifest in the realm of concrete existence. While influenced by Ibn ʿArabī, Allameh Tabataba’i approaches the concept from a philosophical perspective grounded in the principality of existence and critiques the doctrine of Fixed Entities, arguing that it implies the precedence of quiddity over existence and attributes acquired knowledge to God. He interprets annihilation (fanāʾ) as the subsistence of the seeker’s fixed entity and maintains that the complete extinction of personal identity would undermine the teleological purpose of the spiritual journey. In contrast, Imam Khomeini, through an integration of mystical and philosophical approaches, interprets Fixed Entities as determinations of the manifestations of the Divine Names within the Plane of Unity (Ḥaḍrat al-Wāḥidiyyah). He identifies the fixed entity of the Perfect Human as the Greatest Name (al-Ism al-Aʿẓam) and the Divine Vicegerent, emphasizing the possibility of reconciling mystical and philosophical perspectives. Accordingly, the disagreement between these two thinkers concerning Fixed Entities and annihilation originates from their differing foundations regarding the principality of existence, divine knowledge, and the relationship between the Divine Essence and Attributes. Nevertheless, each has made a significant contribution to the development and orientation of Shiʿi theoretical mysticism.