In January in 1380, the third country religion research congress was held in Ghadir hall of Ayatallah Khamenei library with the help of country religion research secretariat, at the presence of great number of researchers and intellectuals from seminary and university. At the beginning of the congress after some verses of Quran recited and Iran Islamic Republic honorable anthem played, Haj Hossein Baqeri, panegyrist of the Prophet Mohammad Family, performed a congratulation program on the occasion of Imam Reza’s birth (peace upon him), the eight shining star of guardianship sky.
Then Mohammad Javad Sahebi, the congress secretary, considered the purpose of beholding religion researcher congresses to make religion researchers compatible and coordinated in order to inform receivers: The first congress be held under the issue of religion research impediments, hardships and necessities in 1998, the second behold past year under the issue of new instruments- new suspicions, and of these congresses effects it can be mentioned such institutions for considering questions, suspicions, necessities and try to improve religious researches. The secretary of the Country Religion Research Planning Council added: according to history, our country faced two confrontations, the Arabic-Islamic culture and western new civilization. Islamic culture has compatibilities with Iranian one, so they interact with each other and emerged Islamic-Iranian culture. He said: on one hand, it is 100 years Iranian culture has had a powerful presence in our country, on the other hand during the last 200 years faced western culture which the result were consequences threat religious national identity. And the third congress was to answer these events, their problems and complications.
The secretary of third congress declared sent articles and works to congress: 70 articles and scientific works received by congress which 38 of them published as a book titled “ties between religion and culture in Iran” in two copies. And some articles will be recited in this congress. The other orator in the congress was Hujjat Al-Islam Mahdi HadaviTehrani. Under the issue of “revelation cogitation is the fruit of Iranian and Shia culture interaction” he said: there’s an immoderate rationalism movement which draws all the truth of reason and there’s a falling short movement named “Zaheri” (appearence) which consider no position for understanding and conception and just deem appearance sufficient.
A member of congress scientific group said: these two trends vanished not in history and exist in different forms nowadays even in Islamic civilization and among Muslims. He mentioned Iranian role in emerging Islamic civilization and said: todays there’s a legend says existing a figure named “Farah Izadi” in Iranian culture was the reason Iranian converted to Shia, and they find this conception in Shia and even it said that they themselves create it. He added: they say Shia is the achievement of this and also Imamat emerged on this based. If Shia created by Iranian and made of their thoughts, why Iranian did not find “Farah Izadi” as an Iranian figure and instead found him in an Arabic family?
At the end, he declared Iranian found their freedom seeking and rationalism in Islam and their real meaning in Shia and our revolution is the manifestation of Shia-Islamic culture. The next orator in congress,Hujjat Al-Islam Dr. Ahmad Ahmadi mentioned the difficulty of thought infertility in the country and said: today we are users of our ancestors achievements and we proud of them. But despite last 20 years attempt, we have failed in attracting young folks to religion and even we have influenced vice versa. And the only reason is that we mixed religion reality and human limited wealthto understand religion. Although it is our religion ability which needs to be grown up and if it considered accurately, there’s no differences between the science and religion reality. The member of the Country University General Lessons Study Council said: according to a cultural sociology scientific theory, facing the cosmos, environment and nature, human plays the role a critic and this role distinguishes between human and the other creatures. Accordingly, human being is not satisfied to current situation and always tends to change, evolution, creation and invention, and this feature causes the culture to be appeared. And submitting to stillness, he will be degenerated. There is another theory known as “mimetic” in which culture is as similar as nature, in a way that in nature there are minuscule parts as “gene” and in culture also these “M”s make societies structure.
Dr. Ahmadi indicates: realistic culture account the source of religion and the source of culture as two different bases and believe that religion is a certain truth which is not the human being achievement but culture and civilization are of human accomplishments. People like martyr Motahhari, deceased Shariati, deceased Bazargan and deceased Mofatteh, utilized science to increase human understanding wealth about religion and were successful. But today lack of such figures in religion scientific society causes a great rift between religion and contemporary culture. And we indeed changed as a society with western culture using features.
Then some of the writers of articles went to represent their works. First Seyyed Ahmad HosseiniKazeruni represented his article titled Ashura lessons in Persian literature and culture and accounted Ashura composition in Persian literature belong to the past. He insisted on its agedness and said: poem educations for Ashura composers exposed to them under the conception of praising andexplaining about Imam’s companions. And the influences of Ashura on Persian poets, distinguishes Imam Hossein (peace upon him) movement from the other movements and determines the differences.
Dr. Kazeruni named some of the poets who composed interesting mellifluous poems about Ashura and Imam Hossein (peace upon him) movement such as Hakim NaserKhosroQubadiani, QavamiRazi, SanaeiGhaznavi, Attar Neishaburi, Seif Al-din Farghani, Jalal Al-din Mohammad Molavi, KhajeNaserBokhari, KhajuyeKermani, OhadiMaraghei, Salman Savoji, Shah DaeiShirazi, EbnHesam, Abd Al-Rahman Jami and MohtashamKashani. He said about Ashura composition in Persian literature: although Persian poets always considered Hossein as the right and remembered him as a good person, and while Hossein submissiveness in Iranian poets is clear and manifested but certainly the loftiness of Ashura compositions sorrow is more prominent in Shia poets works, referred to Safavi period so that the outstanding ofsuffering recital in these poets works reached their thorough climax. At the end, he recited some of the Persian poets about Ashura. Next article titled “from cultural translation of religion to cultural religion” represented by Hujjat Al-Islam Dr. Hesam Al-din Ashena. He accounted cultural translation as a result of different theories exposed by a religious open-minded group and declared:
Cultural translation theory included all revitalizing scientific theories represented till now, because included both linear (related to period) revitalizing and widthwise (related to place) revitalization, means revitalization with regard to time and place. Cultural translation required religion translation both in terms of time necessities and being suitable to cultural needs in different cultures. Dr. Ashena named “Shah Vali Allah Dehlavi”, “Mohammad Arkun”, “Dr. AbdolkarimSurush” and “Mohammad MojtahidShabestari” as past and today renowned people in “cultural translation” school and said: unequivocally it could be said Shah Vali Allah Dehlavi founded this collection first, and Dr. Srush put the last stone of this building.
He regarded with tradition theoretic seizing, religion human identity, Hermeneutic, mythology and religion language, religious pluralism, critical rationality and segregating religion lessons and status into innate and widthwise as bases of “cultural translation of religion” and said:
Our society faces separation form religion. This problem related to religious open-minded and immediately they will separate religion tradition, because this problem sourced of Fighh deduction domination from religion. And to solve this problem “Fighh deduction of religion” should be replaced by “cultural deduction of religion”.
At the end, Dr. Ashena explained differences between cultural religion and Fighh religion as follows:
– Fighh religion tends to replace all aspects of society cultural life by religion while cultural religion looks at religion as direct movement and cultural system.
– Fighh religion does not accept change, conversion and innovation but cultural religion changes as a part of society cultural life
– Fighh religion makes limitations and it is compulsory but cultural religion flows in society cultural ground and it is the manifestation of society culture. The result is clergymen will be respected andreferred as a part of society public life.
– Fighh religion methodology constrained to Fighh innate deductions while cultural methodology is compatible to social public methods especially culture study.
Culture role in religious governance was the title of an article recited by Dr. SeyyedYahyaYathrebi. First he mentioned that each governance successfulness and establishment in all societies required special cultural conditions, and said: emerging and successfulness of governance is of cultural necessities need for placing religious governance and is of its successfulness.
Dr. Yathrebinamed some factors which caused Islamic revolution of Iran successfulness and religion governance establishment in our country: religion was the foundation of society culture and thought and Shia clergymen had uncompetitive authority in some aspects. Our people had no rational or conscientious contrast with religion scholars. Our people had no record of violate inhuman behavior from the side of Shia clergymen. All recent century aspirations intermixed with Islam. He regarded with supporters such as faith, piety and being chosen as God’s messenger as principles which exist in religion essence and said: management communications organized in religion governance by qualification instead of power, guidance instead of giving up and imitating, maturity instead of command and notification.
Dr.Yathrebi declared: in my opinion there were three main purposes in our society after revolution: first was organizing the country in all areas, second was preserving and reinforcing virtual values and third was protecting the governance authority and international status..
At the end he said: it should not be ignored the culture role in all governance successfulness and failure. Islamic governance in our country faces this problem. Inequity enhancement, forgetting virtual values, attitude to power, wealth, embezzlement, bribery, prostitution and traffic and all these are the consequences of society culture weakness. Establishing learned and experts association except the government and opposites involved areascan take a step in line with cultural reforming based on its freedom and with the purpose of study and informing. Then Dr. AlirezaShojaeiZand represented his own article titled “societies civilization patterns” and said: explaining aboutsocieties civilizingreasons requires more detailed account and more accurate classification over religions, societies and especially on different situations which exposed this process or will do.
He said about various religions and declared: religions classified into different values. What is concerned as civilization and can be a criterion for various religion categorizing, called “this world location and social growth” of religion. He explained society possible forms in relation with religion: hypothetical form and the greatest one in which there’s no bind to religion in any aspects of individual or social life and there’s no clear effect of religion on individual and collaborative attitudes, approaches and behaviors of that society members. We call this rare type of society as “unreligious society”, possibly some of most civilized societies are of examples. Another form is the popular one, in which individual faith and binding to religion, make a certain distinctive face to social life of that society, and somewhat influences the structure and innate communications. Religious society is the third form, in which has a close relation with religion. This type introduces such society, included tied believers, managed by educations higher that religious ones.
Dr. ShojaeiZand added: intenseness and weakness of societies dependence to religion is an effective essential factor in forming civilization patterns. And civilization is a process in which religion manifestation dominion controlled by custom and step by step marginalizes religion and brings it to individual innate and solitude shrines, and the most important manifestation of this progress is society. He declared: civilization experience study in different societies shows that this process followed different patterns. Dr. ShojaeiZand accounted passive copies of life style, social living models and improvement patterns without manipulation as made and polished by civilized societies and said: this is a path for religious societies to be civilized. And criterions to measure the degree of civilization are based on a certain definition and deduction of religions especially of Islam. And Islam is not indifferent and disinterested about three aspects of goal setting, path choosing, and in action terms, and it has some criterions and claims which are special in some points of view and exposes different results.
Culture: relativity or unity? Was the title of another article represented by Hujjat Al-Islam Mohammad Reza Kashefi. Mentioned researcher evaluated cultural relativism and unity essential in “religion and culture” discussion area and said: that religion claims being global, introduced a culture can be spread all over the world and calls all humans to a same culture regardless of their different races, nationalities, any geographical areas or any traditions.
Kashefi suggested the definition of culture, and said: culture in our opinion defined as human feature or other aspects whichdistinguishhuman being fromanimalsand human goal required to recognize it, and removing his needs in nature dominion, supernatural, his role and other human beings. In other words the foundation of human attitude is about himself, his environment, mortal world and sublime world which based on values, forms his trends and then his behaviors. Culture included three interdependent systems: cognitions and believes system, values and attitudes system, behaviors and deeds, and these are culture constituents. Religion and culture has a close relation because they both deal with human and try to remove his needs in his proportion to nature, supernatural, himself and other humans.
Hujjat Al-IslamKashefi said about cultural relativism or cultural relativity: these two phrases say calling matters good or bad based on a general criterion is not correct but they should appeared in context then evaluated, maybesome thing in a society is good while in another is bad. He declared: cultural relativity differs according to various cultures, because in various cultures, the point under question is cultures real and external variety and abundance. And if somebody does not accept cultural relativity as a manner, undoubtedly he must not claim culture unity. And one of the required aspects for this attitude is religion flexibility and religion fitting in a culture. He believes social political events, Christian behavior expansion and new human theories emergence and extension as the result of relativists reinforcement which followed by cultural relativity in Renaissance and said: cultural relativity sourced in philosophical bases can be followed in dimensions like understanding relativity, believe relativity and values relativity. Then MortezaRohbani represented his own article titled religion and culture. He said: religion trains the way of fighting and successfulness and it is the foundation of history. Great historical successfulness indebted to the culture prepared for related purpose. In other words if cultural grounds prepared, the purpose would be achievable.
He reminded the positive and negative points of Iranians cultural features as wish man seeking, Erfan, dreaming, romanticism, unusual unreal expectations, immoderate thought, lack of reliance on reason, instability in behavior and emotions like a pendulum which moves from a point to another. He defined culture as follows: culture is the result of human fighting against external and internal environment during the history, and in fact it is an essential factor in society failure or successfulness. Then he criticized cultural status and declared: it did not work on culture as expected. If it does now it is weak, uncompletedand does not adapt to current needs. At the end, Rohbani said: religion role can be promising when being religious equipped by new psychological sociological knowledge in principle and make some changes accordingly. Religion custodians can be effective and they should actively play the role of modifier, on condition that be assured of the accuracy of cutting edge cultural fighting plan and method.
The next orator was Mohammad Hossein Esmaeili Sangari who represented his article about “Iranian culture and literature relations with Islam” in Abbasian period, and said: Omavi domination fell down in Shaam (current Damascus) and domination returned to the offspring of Abbas, the Prophet’s uncle. The establisher of Abbasi domination was Abu Al-Abbas Saffah. He killed BaniUmayya’s governors and considered Anbar city of Iraq as his capital. His brother Abu Jafar Al-Mansur came to power after him. He founded Bghdad and transmitted the center of domination there. The Abbasi domination especially was on the shoulder of Iranians, and somehow onShubiya’s who raised to support Alavis and Abbasis. The power of Arabic people decreased in this movement and Iranian eminence increased in the way that Iranian infiltrated in all sections of the government. He mentioned the effects of Abbasi domination on Iranian and declared: people expectation of Arabic and their habits and tradition turned toward Iranians and ancient traditions replaced by new life, modernism and choosing the best things which were common in other nations except Arabic one became usual.
Dr. Esmaeili mentioned free thoughts and believes as the features of this period of time and said: this was the different nations’ conclusion, each of which has its especial believe and religion. Islamic civilization completed in Abbasi period because Iranian Islamic culture required it. He mentioned some Iranian culture and literature compatibilities with Islam at the time and said: dominant climate in Abbasi poem was poet tender nature. Therefore as a result of working in literature, two literary schools emerged in Arabic literature; Baghdadi and Shaam. In fact they accounted as two ways of culture and literary growth.
Dr. Esmaeili reminded: what expanded literature, culture and science was the Abbasi governors and leaders motivation. Scholars, literary figures and translators lived at the time respectively, therefore sciences grew and many philosophical, cultural and scientific works from Greek and India translated voraciously and appeared valuable authorships.Then Ayat Allah Reza Ostadi, a member of congress board said: religion research activities should be directed to religion reinforcement. He added: one of the religion research blights is that the religious thinks that he can research in religion and Quran as the nonreligious but if he takes this way he did against his religion and here he must distinct his way of the nonreligious.
The member of teachers association of Qum seminary declared: there should be supervision on representing the religious and nonreligious researchers’ results. The result of religious researcher should support, reinforce and popularize religion. Possibly the religious research gives something that does not hit religion but affects people religion and hurts it, likewise the religious researcher must avoid to represent his research and it requires being religious.
At the end he said: if in Islam it said that misleading books should not issue, it is accurately logical and is not avoiding religious research freedom. Then Dr. Mohammad TghiFa’ali represented his article about “Islamic Erfan role in Iranian culture”. He mentioned practical aspect of Erfan and said: It should not be persuaded by the theoretical validity of Erfan, but it is necessary to review individual emotional social roles of Sufis and the result will be the last criterion to evaluate Erfan and Sufis. He added: many of major elements like manhood and chivalry, human respect, allegory method, politeness and magnanimity, teaching purity and attention no to appearance, consorting with the disreputable, inviting to group, ignoring the death, curative and change role in literature which exists in Iranian culture formed under the effects of great movement of Sufis and Islamic Erfan. Dr. Fa’ali said:
We should not claim that Erfan remained not a negative effect and the Sufis mislead not, but Erfan history shows many of misleading and divergence with regard to believes and practices. Gnostics and the Sufis remained effects not just in Iran, but the Sufis power is so strong which affected other Muslim lands. The Sufism movement which started from the second century of Hegira and continued to ninth century, not only encompassed fertile auspicious Iran and remained many positive effects, but also influenced other regions and through this Iranian cultural Erfanglobalized and prepared the best grounds for civilization and cultures similarities.
Ms. MasumehTaklu was the next orator in the congress and represented his article titled “Shia relations with Iranian culture”: in words Shia means follower and fan, and in idiomatically refers to the followers and partials of Imam Ali (peace upon him).
She said about Shia in Iran: the more Umavi governors’ cruelty was growing against others except Arabs, and pure Islamic thought of Muhammad (peace upon him) was replacing the Arabic tribal superiority attitude, the more Iranian who saw themselves denied from their rights was tending towards the Prophet offspring (peace upon them) who were the true Islam supporters.
She mentioned that first Shia domination in Iran emerged around the Caspian lake coastlines and declared: Tbarestan Shia in the third century, expanded their dominion to Rey, and opposed to Abbasi governors and army about one century. Undoubtedly the Alavi people affected most of the people in this land and played a great role in issuing Shia religion in a way that after TbarentaniAlavi people, the offspring of fisherman Buye who were of Gilan deprived groups and raised and expanded their power not only to the north of Iran but also to west, center, south and even to the center of Abbasi center of domination, Baghdad and started to change Abbasi governors.
She considered removing dispersion from Iranian Muslim nation as of Islam and Shia works for Iran, and about Iran works for Islam said: Iranians greeted Islam warmly and accepted it and in the way of issuing it avoid not any devotion.
Ms. Taklu regarded culture and science field as the most exciting service fields from the side of Iranians to Islam and Shia. And she named peacefulness, association, isolation and revolution confrontation patterns as Shia cultural political general patterns. And stated Imam Khomeini emergence and his revolutionary interpretation of Shia cultural conceptions caused a change in Shia political attitude and revolutionary discourse dominated, and said:
This did through two forms. First Imam Khomeini represented new interpretations of conceptions like waiting, hiding religion and martyrdom, and prepared the ground of revolutionary thought and mind from the surface of these conceptions. Second he possessed the outstanding position of religious source of authority and his public base, therefore it caused represented new understanding to be issued and popularized by religious open-minded people. He added: all mentioned factors caused revolutionary and fighting pattern domination in Shia political culture and this understanding of Shia culture formed revolutionary oppositional behavior among people during 40 and 50 decades.
She mentioned leadership, religious symbolism, movement and revolution centers and used tactics in revolution by people and revolution slogans as the indicators for relationship between Shia political culture and becoming revolutionary by people. At the end she declared: Shia culture always was the pioneer of the liberating movements all around the world because of possessing human exalted conceptions and avoiding stiffness, superstition and bigotry, and finally it will reach the true inherits and pure Mohammad Islam will dominates in the world by human lifesaver arrival and rescuing oppressed people from being under the yoke of tyrants.
The last orator was Dr. JalilMasudi Far who represented his article about “current religion and culture challenges”, he defined culture as: Culture is the common way of human life, thought and reaction included art, literary, science, philosophy, religion and human creation. Religion is the colocation of believes about human relations to his source of creation and binding to behave according to those believes. He added: religion interact with different cultures in different societies and their bilateral effects lead human to be perfect and even made several challenges.
Dr. Masudi Far numerated religion and political, reasoning and scientism, human rights, freedom and democracy and justice, law domination and moral decrease as the most important discussions in challenges between western culture and religion. And mentioned human rights as today human life important achievements, and said:
Traditional understanding of religion has serious challenges to human rights: on one hand trampling basic human rights on the pretext of religion is very dangerous, so we have to make an agreement between religion and human rights by new understanding of religion. Human rights value in relation between humans and not in relation between God and human. Human rights are something except religion not something against religion. And this nonreligious content does not mean that religious foundation and figures should not help humans to guide them and direct to learning the meaning of being human.
Dr. Masudi Far stated about religion and democracy and religion: democracy is the best way for dominating people and their association in their destiny, and it has less dangers and faults in proportion to other methods and Muslims have to accept this method and undergo its required and results unless they backward from the modern culture. He regarded crimes, traffic, addiction, swindling, cheating, embezzlement, divorce, girls escaping, wondering and prostitution increase are the effects of moral decrease in a society and declared: Religious scholars and organizations should confront this moral crisis and this confrontation is possible just by showing practical morality.
At the end he said: today we need the mixture of intellectual and spiritual. Human society and western culture definitely needs spiritual interpretation of the world and representing moral Erfan face of religion. Intellectual understanding of religion which insists on matters like freedom, democracy, human rights and justice, is the only solution to religion presence in today world and this compatibility between religion and culture can take efficient steps in human perfection way.
It is worth say that a book titled “culture and religion relations in Iran society” included chosen articles from the third religion research congress in two 500 pages copies was of the country religion researcher secretariat publication which gave to the audiences, and the presents showed their satisfaction from the country religion researcher secretariat because of its actions in the ground of representing religion research achievements and they wanted these kinds of congresses to be continued.
