درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The Lebanese scholar Chibli Mallat, analysing Muḥammad Bāqir al-Ṣadr’s work, affirms that the Iraqi intellectual proposed a completely new comprehensive theory of the Islamic State, focusing on constitutionalism and economics. Following Mallat’s intuition, this paper will focus on the second aspect of al-Ṣadr’s work. It will deal with the use of thematic Quranic exegesis (al- tafsīr al-mawḍūʿī ) in al-Ṣadr’s main work on economics, Iqtiṣādunā. The article will argue that al-Ṣadr’s use of this kind of exegesis is determined by his will to provide a comprehensive understanding of the Islamic vision of economics as a central part of a new Islamic society. Furthermore, the paper will argue that in al-Ṣadr’s work, this new conception of Islamic society is also voted to propose a valid alternative to capitalism and Marxism, both as economic systems and conceptions of society, fighting Western cultural influences and Epistemic colonisation. Henceforth, the article will frame al-Ṣadr’s effort to build a comprehensive critique of Western Epistemic colonisation within the concept of Cultural Hegemony and Counter-hegemony as defined by Asef Bayat and Antonio Gramsci and analyse his endeavours within this framework. To highlight these points, the presentation will provide an overview of the use of al-tafsīr al-mawḍūʿī in a short selection of passages from Iqtiṣādunā, drawing on the methodological framework provided by Gramsci, Bayat, and other scholars.

One of the phrases that has been considered by most commentators with the approach of empirical science is “the darkness of the three (the three veils of darkness)” in the verse (Q.39:6). They have interpreted this combination as the three darknesses of the abdomen, uterus and amnion-chorion. A view has also been put forward by contemporaries, which considers it as the spaces between the abdomen and uterus, the flesh of the uterus and the amnion, the amnion and the fetus, and has considered such an interpretation as an example of the scientific miracle of the Qur’an. In the meantime, another approach can be taken and based on the descriptive-analytical method and with the focus on the interdisciplinary approach, what is the “darkness of the three” is examined. Accordingly, by relying on the symbol of “complete and dense indifference and shapelessness before creation” for “darkness of the three,” this phrase can be considered as the platform for the formation of protein structures (based on genetic information contained in DNA codes), which are the cornerstone of the structure and biological processes of living organisms (without the production of proteins, no biological processes will be formed and no cells and organs will be made). It should be borne in mind that this interpretive possibility is also compatible with the components of the scientific miracle of the Qur’an. 

In theological debates about the creation of human and the theory of evolution, “the theory of creation” means the creation of human at once by the creator of the universe, and “the theory of evolution” means the natural, normal, and gradual creation of human in the evolutionary cycle of life. The question is whether the Qur’an also views human creation as contradictory to his natural and evolutionary genesis. This study shows that the Qur’anic concepts of creation (khalq) and selection (iṣṭifāʾ) based on the contextual analysis of these vocabularies allow for an evolutionary reading of human creation. Creation means the emergence of phenomena in a natural, time-consuming, step-by-step process with the interference of natural laws supported by God’s command. The meaning of the presence of divine command in all stages of creation is the consciousness of all the objects and their components which is effective in the process of creating an organ along with other factors. Also, the concept of selection of Adam suggests that Adam was chosen among his contemporaries as the first modern human being because of his physical and mental superiority, and his creation was not at once, unnatural and unrelated to previous generations. 

One of the remarkable aspects of the holy Qur’an is the use of diverse linguistic methods to convey a particular idea. This study aims to evaluate the commissive act in the Qur’an using Searle's speech act theory, a theory useful in comprehending deeper semantic levels of holy scriptures. The study used a descriptive-analytical method, and the data were analyzed through a qualitative analysis of statistical results to answer the following questions: What linguistic forms does the Qur’an use to represent commissive speech acts? And what themes or topics are included in these commissive speech acts' utterances? First, employing a desk research approach, the Qur’anic verses containing the commissive speech acts were selected based on syntactic, lexical, and semantic criteria. The distinguishing characteristics of each case were then identified, including the discursive structure of the act, the committed person, and the theme of the commitment. Finally, the relationship between the linguistic form and the theme of the speech acts was examined. The findings reveal that the Qur’an expresses commissive speech acts through four linguistic structures: oath, promise (al-wa‘d), threat (al-wa‘īd), and pledge; each includes divine and non-divine conceptions, and each has a unique characteristic. The quantitative comparison of these four shows that “promise” is the most commonly cited sub-speech act, distinguishing it from other linguistic forms. “Threat”, “oath”, and “pledge” are the other most frequently cited sub-speech acts. Moreover, the evaluation of the speech agents and their status as aspects of the situational context reveals that the speech participants are not equal in terms of position and power, which is a decisive factor in the selection of linguistic forms. In all of these cases, the language structures and their intricacies, particularly modality (modal marking), illustrate the relationship between the linguistics style and power dynamics between the participants. The focus of the themes, domain, and frequency differ throughout the four categories mentioned above, with some overlap in certain instances.

This paper seeks to explains the way in which the Qur’ān historically established its identity through its use of asmā’ al-Qur’ān ( al-qur’ān, al-kitāb, al-furqān, and al-dhikr ). In doing so, it combines the analysis of the literary feature and the historical chronology of every single use of asmā’ al-qur’ān terminologies during its formative period. This analysis requires the use of al-tartīb al-nuzūl approach—that of al-Jābiri—integrated with discourse analysis to understand the process of identity building of the Qur’an. According to this study, the Qur’ān language was the tool through which the Qur’ān distributed its power, both explicitly and implicitly. The implicit mechanism manifesting itself as the Qur’ān’s positional play between the traditional shi‘r and earlier scripture in order to influence the Quraish’s psychological state. The explicit mechanism is that it clearly declares itself to be the Arabic scripture ( Qur’ānan arabiyya ). Asmā’ al-Qur’ān plays an important role in both strategies. There would be no better way to gain influence for the Arab community, which valued language and had a strong emotional attachment to it. Even though few believed in it, the identity of the Qur’an had been successfully established through both strategies in its first seven years.

The narration of the life of some of the past tribes who lived after Noah has been mentioned in detail or in summary in the Qur’an. The fate of these tribes has mostly ended in divine punishment, which based of the geographical location, the type of sins of the people, and other reasons, this punishment has had different external manifestations, such as storm, ṣayḥah, sinking into the ground and drowning in water. Since the function of ṣayḥah (which is translated as loud and strong sound) as a destructive force is not as clear as the other punishments mentioned, the main goal of this research is to scientifically explain the function of ṣayḥah as a divine punishment. Due to the semantic similarities of ṣayḥah to sound wave (a type of pressure wave), the proposal here is the correspondence of ṣayḥah to shock wave which can be defined as a strong sound wave with a large amplitude. Recent advances in science have shown that this type of wave has a very high destructive power and has the ability to cause serious damage to living tissues of the body.  In this research, first, the different meanings of the word ṣayḥah have been studied according to Arabic lexicons, and then the verses of the Qur’an related to punishment by ṣayḥah that some past tribes have suffered have been carefully investigated. After studying the possibility of the destruction of the ṣayḥah, both in terms of the Qur’an and the latest developments in physics, as a suggestion for scientific interpretation, shock wave, which is a type of sound waves, has been proposed as a possible example to the punishment by ṣayḥah.

This article examines the beliefs of modern Muslims regarding miracles and supernatural claims. It looks at how modern Muslims have had to interpret most of the miracles mentioned in the Qur’an metaphorically or naturally in order to avoid accusations of error. It also examines the views of Muhammad Asad, who argued that the stories of miracles adopted traditional myths as a site for teaching morals. The article further explores the interpretations of naturalists, who interpret miracles in ways that do not contradict empirical observations of naturalism. Finally, it examines the influence of European and Christian ideas on modernist Muslims, and the silence of modernist commentators on the similarity in their ideas with some Christians who wrote a few generations before them. The conclusion is that modern Muslims have had to interpret miracles in ways that do not contradict empirical observations of naturalism, and that there is no tangible evidence that modernist Muslims have been influenced by the ideas of Europeans or earlier Christians.

Panpsychism in philosophy of mind is the view that mentality is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. The view has a long and venerable history in philosophical traditions -both East and West- and has recently enjoyed a revival in analytic philosophy. Thus, in conjunction with the widely held assumption that fundamental things exist only at the micro-level, panpsychism entails that at least some kinds of micro-level entities have mentality, and that instances of those kinds are found in all things throughout the material universe. We can see something like this in Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy. Mulla Sadra claims that all things enjoy some kind of intelligence and understanding. On the other hand, many verses of the Holy Qur'an either explicitly or implicitly assert the presence of understanding and intelligence in all things. In this article, I will explain all three issues (Panpsychism, Mulla Sadra's view, and relevant verses of the Holy Qur'an), then I will make it clear that Mulla Sadra's view and Qur'anic statements are consistent with at least some versions of the Panpsychism.

Some exegetic comments narrated from early scholars do not relate neither to the Quranic context, nor to lexicographical and linguistic evidences. As a case, such irrelevance can be observed for the verb faraḍa in the verse (Q.24:1), as well as the verse (Q.28:85). Regarding methodology, this research used both traditional lexicographical and linguistic etymological inquiries. The result of the research is the fact that both verses are speaking of the philosophy of the Quranic surahs being revealed gradually in separate parts appropriate to social occasions and the challenges in prophetic era. 

Verse 88 of Surah al-Naml has likened mountains to moving clouds. Although in the previous centuries, most exegetes considered the movement of mountains as one of the pre-resurrection events, new scientific findings in geology and meteorology have brought new aspects of this similarity to scholars. this study aims to present a new understanding about verse 88 of Surah al-Namal and identify the similarities between the movement of mountains and clouds, according to the reference scientific texts in geology and meteorology. The results showed that the similarity of mountains to clouds, in addition to the direction and speed of movement previously specified, is in the mechanism of motion, layers and constituents. Earlier, many exegetes considered the movement of the mountains to be related to the resurrection and did not see it as compatible with the current conditions of the mountains but today, scientific findings show that the movement of mountains in several aspects is like clouds: 1. Mountain movements are influenced by the movement of earth's twenty plates, in different directions including orbital, meridian, combination of the two and ascending. Clouds also show all four side of movement in the atmosphere. 2. The movement of mountains is slow and at a speed of several millimeters or a few centimeters per year, and the movement of clouds is also slow in the sky. 3. The mountains move on the edge of the plates in an upward motion on the edge of the opposite plate, and this phenomenon can be seen in the front clouds of the warm air mass, i.e. the cold air mass creeps upwards at the front. 4. The mountains continue to evolve even as they move with tectonics forces from below and erosion forces from above. Clouds also evolve from above while moving, by converging currents from below and diverging from above.

Proving the miraculous nature of the Qur’an as one of the methods to believe in the Qur’an as a divine text has always attracted the attention of the researchers of the Qur’an; nevertheless, the published efforts on this subject are facing numerous methodological challenges. This research attempts to introduce a new and original method exempt from the challenges of the present methods by utilizing some of the techniques in mathematical sciences, logic and statistics. This scientific case-based method rates the effective parameters in the recognition of scientific miracle for one case. Accordingly, it will calculate the certainty of each case and proceeds to combine the ratings of various cases of scientific miracle to calculate the degree of certainty of the divine nature of the book based on those results. In combining the ratings, a threshold will be determined based on human belief behavior. An advantage of this method is that it is extra-religious, data driven, quantitative, applicable to all texts, and generalizable to the entire content. 

This current study is an attempt for some scientific insights about the verse 45 of Surah Al-kahf. In this verse, God said, “And present to them the example of the life of this world, like water which we send down from the sky, and the vegetation of the earth mingles with it and [then] it becomes broken, scattered by the winds”. In common interpretations, the pronoun in the statement “it becomes broken, scattered by the wind” has been directed to plants not to water. However, in my new approach to interpreting this verse, the pronoun will refer to water, not plants, which is also linguistically acceptable. The purpose of this paper is to show that, despite the common interpretation of this verse, an alternative interpretation can be provided that is both linguistically and scientifically plausible. The results show that based on this new interpretation, it can be said that in this verse, the comparison of the scenario of life in relation to humans to the scenario of water in relation to plants is in good harmony with scientific findings about what happens for water in the plant. When water enters the plant, it can go through two pathways; transpiration or photosynthesis, in both of which a type of breakdown occurs for water. In the first pathway, i.e. transpiration, hydrogen bonds of water molecules are broken so that water is transformed from liquid to gas. In the second pathway, i.e. photosynthesis, the water molecules are broken into oxygen, protons and electrons. The products resulted (water vapor and oxygen) are scattered by external winds. Protons and electrons contribute to the electrochemical potential driving ATP and NADPH formation, or in another words, they are scattered by internal wind. Therefore, it can be said that referring to the phenomena of water breakdown in the plants and then its dispersion, in the verse, is an accurate expression that is also confirmed by science.