Educational System and Institutions in Persian Civilization: An Historical Description and its Impacts on Present Iran

Persian civilization had its rich culture since the pre-Islamic era. It left its impacts on those areas where the Persian language had adopted like contemporary India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Tajikistan, and the Central Asian States. Its pre and post-Islamic educational system-generated hundreds of scholars which are well-nominated all over the world along with their inventions, philosophies, literature, and poetry. This article highlights an educational system in the Persian civilization since 2500 BC. Educational institutions before the conquest of Islam and post-Islamic changing patterns in it are going to be discussed in this article. There is also a focus upon educational institutions in modern Iran before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 that became the reason for the end of Pehlavi dynasty. Its hypothesis is that the present socio-economic and political development in Iran is a reason to strengthen the educational system that is protecting Persian civilization for centuries. The research is based on theoretically and historically descriptive, analytical, comparative, and qualitative and methods. The data is collected from books, research journals, newspapers, internet interviews, results of different dissertations, and personal visits to Iran in which attending several seminars, workshops, and training classes including visiting several universities and Research Centers in Qom and Tehran

Islamic Revolution and Women’s Issues in Iran in the Aspect of Social Communication

Nowadays the problems of socio-cultural communication covers the gender issue and changes in the role of women in society in particular. Traditionally, the women status in Muslim countries is most vulnerable. Despite this fact, there has emerged such a socio-cultural phenomenon as Islamic feminism in the Middle East. Islamic Revolution was the first time when Iranian women had declared themselves as a social and political force. Imam R. Khomeini used their social activity for his own political purposes. Despite the promises of the revolution leader, first actions of the new government differed from those the citizens expected: most of the rights and freedoms were restricted or eliminated. Iran is currently ranked 148th out of 153 countries on the gender gap index, overtaking only the countries with difficult internal political and economic situation, such as the DRC, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq and Yemen. The article analyzes the changes in the Iranian women status that have occurred in the following areas: civil status, education and science, economic activity, politics, art and sports. The positive measures taken in these spheres indicate that the society is undergoing a process of reconsidering the role of women, and the development of the women empowerment process in Iran will progress.

Henry Corbin’s Oriental Philosophy and Iranian Nativist Ideologies

This paper aims to explore the roots of the nativist discourse among Iranian intellectuals in the 20th century prior to the Islamic Revolution, a discourse based on Eastern authenticity and the felt need for a return to Islamic, Persian, or Asian traditions. This general tendency took various forms among anti- and even pro-regime intellectuals, including severe anti-modernist evaluations of Al-e-Ahmad, Hossein Nasr, Ahmad Fardid, and Ehsan Naraqi. This nativist movement, as some scholars have shown, played a significant role in the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. This paper aims to discuss some philosophical origins of these East-based and anti-West ideologies in the specific interpretation of Henry Corbin of the East/West spiritual split. This paper demonstrates that these ideas, to a considerable extent, stemmed from Corbin’s “Eastern scheme,” based on the authenticity of spiritual illumination. This paper explores how this Oriental philosophy, rooted in ancient Persia and medieval Iranian wisdom, has been used for political purposes through the ideologization of tradition in contemporary Iran. Therefore, it discusses Corbin’s theological scheme’s political and social ramifications to demonstrate the traces of his scheme in the works of a few nativist intellectuals in an ideologized form.

Hizbullah's Changing Identity

<p>Hizbullah’s initial entry into Lebanon’s confessional political system seems contradictory considering the organisation’s perpetual view that this electoral system is corrupt and the very cause of Lebanon’s problems. Hizbullah views this system to have disenfranchised the Shi’a of Lebanon. Since its emergence in the 1980s Hizbullah has shifted from the religiously motivated goal of an Islamic revolution in Lebanon to the more nationalistic and secular project of providing ongoing resistance to Israel. This movement can be explained if we consider two separate facets of Hizbullah’s identity: It’s primordial Shi’a identity, and its identity as a resistance movement. A movement from the former to the latter has taken place. This work argues that Hizbullah has moved away from placing importance on that which defined it primarily as an organisation seeking the advancement of Shi’a to an identity that places more emphasise on its resistance activities against Israel. This latter identity is more instrumentalist in nature. While placing importance on its Shi’a identity was not counter-productive to participating within politics, it did oblige Hizbullah to adopt more idealistic political projects. Therefore, this shift initially allowed Hizbullah to deal more effectively with the pragmatic realities of political life in Lebanon, for which it requires more broad-based cross-communal support. However, recent events in the Middle East have indicated that Hizbullah’s resistance identity may not necessarily guarantee it political success.</p>

Hizbullah's Changing Identity

<p>Hizbullah’s initial entry into Lebanon’s confessional political system seems contradictory considering the organisation’s perpetual view that this electoral system is corrupt and the very cause of Lebanon’s problems. Hizbullah views this system to have disenfranchised the Shi’a of Lebanon. Since its emergence in the 1980s Hizbullah has shifted from the religiously motivated goal of an Islamic revolution in Lebanon to the more nationalistic and secular project of providing ongoing resistance to Israel. This movement can be explained if we consider two separate facets of Hizbullah’s identity: It’s primordial Shi’a identity, and its identity as a resistance movement. A movement from the former to the latter has taken place. This work argues that Hizbullah has moved away from placing importance on that which defined it primarily as an organisation seeking the advancement of Shi’a to an identity that places more emphasise on its resistance activities against Israel. This latter identity is more instrumentalist in nature. While placing importance on its Shi’a identity was not counter-productive to participating within politics, it did oblige Hizbullah to adopt more idealistic political projects. Therefore, this shift initially allowed Hizbullah to deal more effectively with the pragmatic realities of political life in Lebanon, for which it requires more broad-based cross-communal support. However, recent events in the Middle East have indicated that Hizbullah’s resistance identity may not necessarily guarantee it political success.</p>

Femine Body in the Mass Culture of Iran: between Nudity and Marginalization

The author analyses the problems of visualisation and marginalisation of female corporeality in developments of Iranian political and cultural identity from the early modernisation project of the 19th century and the radical modernisation of the 1920s – 1970s to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which changed significantly the vectors and trajectories of the visualisation of the female body in public spaces and the discourse of Iranian culture. The author believes that Iran / Persia in the 19th century belonged to the number of Muslim countries that were under stable European influences. Russia and Great Britain became the main sources of cultural changes. Cultural exchange with these countries stimulated changes in Persian identity. The author analyses the features of corporeality in the visual art of Iran from the Qajars to the Islamic revolution and its mutations during the process of radical Islamisation of the social life inspired by it. The author believes that the early modern project of the Qajars was the first attempt to visualise female corporeality and map in the centre of cultural coordinates which in fact simulated European discourse. The identity project of the Pahlavi period became an attempt to transform and adopt Western concepts to the Iranian national canon. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 marginalised the visual and visible forms of female corporeality, presented earlier in public and cultural spaces. The project of Islamisation inspired subordination of the female body, marginalising attempts to visualise in ways Western intellectuals did it. Modern feminine corporeality in Iranian culture develops as a dichotomy of official religious identity and its secular alternative, represented by the “high” cultural segments of the consumer society. The author analyses how and why Western strategies of visualisation of female corporeality coexist with its religious rejection. It is assumed that the Iranian mass culture assimilated Western practices of visualising femininity, although the official cultural discourse continues to reproduce the canon of the body imagined as predominantly religious construct.

Partnership without Commitments: Features of Russian-Iranian Relations in Recent Decades

The article examines the features of Soviet-Iranian and further Russian-Iranian relations, starting with the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 to the present. The paper reveals the main stages and events in bilateral relations with particular emphasis on bilateral cooperation on the issue of Syria and the consideration of Iran’s interests in this country, including economic ones. The author attempts to determine the grade of the achieved bilateral relations established at soviet times as confrontational, although in the very last years of the existence of the Soviet Union they began to improve. The tendency to improve and intensify relations continued after the collapse of the USSR. However, Russian-Iranian relations at the present stage, on the whole, cannot be characterized as allied. Although in the case of Syria, one can indeed observe their alliance, nevertheless, in general, relations between Russia and Iran keep far from being deep enough, and in a number of cases in recent decades there has been rivalry or even conflict between the two countries, as, for example, in the issuance of Russia’s refusal to supply Iran with air S-300 defense systems. Nevertheless, given the external pressure on both countries, along with the growing attention to traditional values, there is a certain likelihood of expanding and deepening Russian-Iranian relations to the level of allies.

Psychological and Cultural Treatment of Traumatized Subject(s): Reading Laleh Khadivi’s The Walking in Terms of Theories of Trauma

The present study aims to scrutinize the concept of trauma in Laleh khadivi’s work entitled, The Walking. The objective of the study is to examine how Khadivi’s work can be read through theories of trauma. The Freudian notion of trauma focuses on the remaining psychological wounds on subjects’ identity while Alexander’s concept, cultural trauma, concentrates on the cultural outcome of a horrendous event at the collective level. Traumas are not solely private psychological experiences and are restricted to one solitude individual as they can expose themselves as collective experiences. Literary works are valuable properties picturing the results and outcomes of trauma both at its individual and collective level. In the current paper, concepts related to traumas will be defined to examine the characters in Khadivi’s novel. The novel provides a set of chronological events that happened to a minority group during the Iranian revolution. The author chooses her characters of Iranians of Kurdish immigrants. The Walking, reminds us of events happening during 1976 in Iran, after The Islamic Revolution. The article will delineate that characters are psychologically traumatized after the revolution in Iran as well as experiencing cultural trauma during the twentieth century.

Mawlana Mawdudi’s Concept of Political Islam

Syed Abul A'la Mawdudi was a Muslim scholar, ideological thinker, philosopher, jurist and journalist. He worked for the revival of Islam and disseminated his understanding of ‘true Islam’. This paper is categorized into two sections. The first section of this paper aims to explore the concept of Mawlana Mawdudi regarding political Islam and his role as a 20th century Islamic revivalist. The second section deals with critique of Mawlana Wahiduddin Khan on Mawlana Mawdudi’s powerful Islamic ideology. Mawlana Mawdudi viewed Islam as the religion that is all-encompassing and Islamic state as universal that should not be limited to a particular geographical region and Muslims should strive for the establishment of Islamic state through Islamic revolution. In Mawlana Khan’s ‘The Political Interpretation of Islam’, he considered Mawlana Mawdudi’s distinctly political interpretation as problematic.