Mohammad Ghouchani Responds to Mostafa Malekian

It is not clear which Professor Malekian we are dealing with. From the age of 17 until now (may his life be long), he himself has subscribed to five Malekians: the fundamentalist, the traditionalist, the modernist, the existentialist, and the present-day professor who speaks of the project of “Rationality and Spirituality.” Although he has passed through all these periods, intellectual and theoretical traces from each era undoubtedly remain alive in the professor. / We do not even know what Salafism means in the professor’s definition, so that we might pride ourselves on being characterized by it or distance ourselves from this accusation. To be honest, in understanding the concept of Salafism and the nature of its influence on religious intellectualism, I myself am influenced by Professor Mostafa Malekian!

Farhang-e Emrooz / Behzad Jameh Bozorg: In the past few weeks, the publication of the latest issue of Mehrnameh magazine and the controversies arising from it, as well as the release of an interview with Mostafa Malekian in which he placed Mehrnameh and its editor at the center of attack and criticism, have marked another chapter in the intellectual disputes and the factionalisms stemming from them. What follows are Mohammad Ghouchani’s responses to Farhang-e Emrooz’s questions. Questions that have been posed both under the influence of the recent controversies and in light of certain ambiguities and doubts surrounding his intellectual approach in the publications under his direction in past years. The interview was conducted in written form at Mohammad Ghouchani’s request, and what always occurs in such settings, besides certain misunderstandings and linguistic miscommunications, is the shortcoming of posing follow-up questions and challenging the interviewee on certain claims. This interview is not free of these flaws either.

Mr. Ghouchani! In recent weeks, discussions and criticisms have arisen concerning you personally and Mehrnameh magazine, which, in my opinion, cannot be reduced to a personal quarrel between individuals. What I am speaking of encompasses, rather, a dispute among at least three intellectual currents in the country: the neoliberals, the national leftists, and the religious intellectuals, which, regardless of the fact that they can at times converge on certain points, has today manifested itself in the form of actions and reactions to certain measures taken by Mohammad Ghouchani in Mehrnameh. Hence, these tensions are important not for analyzing the reaction of an individual or group to the content of a magazine and a person, but for understanding the current positions and concerns of the aforementioned currents. Therefore, I intend to examine the roots of some of today’s conflicts together. And to begin, I will start with the intellectual metamorphosis of you yourself, which is claimed by me and, of course, some of your critics as well. What happened to Mohammad Ghouchani, who was once intensely interested in the religious intellectualism current and figures like Abdolkarim Soroush, and whose publications under his direction were largely influenced by the theories of religious intellectuals, that he suddenly spoke of the “end of Soroushism” and drew closer to Seyyed Javad Tabatabai and Reza Davari Ardakani as two poles opposite Soroush in Iran’s intellectual sphere?

What you refer to as “intellectual metamorphosis” is a natural and rational “change” in any human being who reads, thinks, writes, and does not stay in one place, does not become rigid, does not reach stagnation, and does not accept petrifaction. Had I not changed, I would be more deserving of reproach than I am now, when, as you say, I have changed...

But then... My interest in “religious intellectualism” remains steadfast. I still read their works and opinions carefully, learn from them, and publish them. Both in a professional (journalistic) capacity and in an academic (political science) capacity, I believe religious intellectualism is one of the most important and influential (not necessarily the best or most successful) contemporary intellectual currents in Iran. But neither journalism nor scholarship allows me to accept the views of any individual or school—including the religious intellectualism current—without “ifs and buts” and “whys and wherefores.” Perhaps it is necessary here to clarify some terminology:

“Religious intellectualism,” as you and many others see it, encompasses the “Shariati/Soroush” school of thought (with all the differences between the two); but in my view, this restriction is not logical. Undoubtedly, the late Engineer Mehdi Bazargan holds precedence over these two great figures, and in my journalistic record, reflective attention to him is more evident than to any other figure in Iran’s contemporary history. Bazargan is the father of the “pious intellectual” current in Iran’s contemporary history, and I consider the political record of that great man, on the whole, successful; though I do not consider him infallible either. On the other hand, besides Shariati and Soroush and their students, many thinkers from the university and the seminary can be considered under the project of “religious new-thinking/intellectualism,” in addressing whom Mehranameh is a pioneer: the school of thought of Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri is the most important of these, whom we have covered extensively in Mehranameh, as well as the late Ayatollah Salehi Najafabadi, the late Master Ahmad Ghabel, the late martyred Master Morteza Motahhari, and from the younger generation, Mohammad-Ali Ayazi and Emadeddin Baghi... I have heard that friends of “religious intellectualism of the Dr. Shariati and Dr. Soroush type” do not consider these individuals as belonging to the religious intellectualist school and at most call them religious new-thinkers, but are these friends the politburo of religious intellectualism?

Leaving that aside, as you have pointed out, my colleagues and I have repeatedly given recent religious intellectuals the opportunity to present their ideas. From Hamshahri (2000–2003) and the former Shargh (2003–2006) to Ham-Mihan and Etemad-e Melli (2009), Shahrvand-e Emrooz, Mehranameh, and so on... many times, until all domestic media were banned (officially and unofficially) from publishing Dr. Soroush’s views for political and governmental reasons, our pages were at his disposal, and even at the height of the events of 2009, the first volume of Mehranameh was dedicated to a dialogue between Soroush Dabbagh and Ehsan Shariati, and in the same issue, a discourse by Dr. Abdolkarim Soroush on Rumi was published, the publication of which was very risky under those circumstances. Although recently the magazine “Nasim-e Bidari” has also published an article by him and his previous books have been reprinted, which could be a sign of improving conditions, the main obstacle to publishing Dr. Soroush’s views in Iran remains the political-religious content of those articles in critique of governance and religiosity, and the government’s ban on publishing these articles, and nothing more; and had we not been under threat of seizure and closure, despite all the criticisms we have of some of the Master’s religious positions, we would not only not have refrained from publishing and examining them, but would have welcomed them.

Anyway... let us return to your question: “How did we suddenly come to speak of the ‘end of Soroushism’?”

The truth is that it did not happen all at once! My main concern as a high-school student and later as a political science student in the 1990s was reconciling religiosity with the love of freedom. In my view, “religion” is the most important component of “tradition,” and “tradition” is the most important component of Iranian culture—one cannot ignore it—while “freedom” is the most precious social value, even before “justice.” Obviously, there is no need for me to explain the reasons for my own religiosity (as a private matter). Suffice it to say that this concern stemmed both from my family upbringing and from the encounters I had in my surrounding environment. From adolescence, I witnessed the intellectual dispute between Marxism and Islam, and to answer my questions I turned to the views of Shariati and Motahhari, and later Soroush, who in my opinion synthesized the two. Reading newspapers, especially the publications Salam and Kiyan, steered me toward the current of religious intellectualism and the Islamic left wing, because while avoiding leftism, I never wanted to fall into the trap of rightism; hence I gravitated toward the Khomeinist faction of that time, to the point that I published several articles in Salam and one in Kiyan that was a response to Mohammad-Javad Larijani. When I came to Tehran and became a political science student, in addition to my own coursework, I also became a student of religious intellectualism. Wherever Dr. Soroush had a program, I was present. Naturally and consequently, among political parties, I chose the “Organization of the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution of Iran” and, through collaborating with the magazine Asr-e Ma, became a supporter of the organization. It was the heyday of religious intellectualism and Islamic leftism, and although my leftist friends were not on good terms with Soroush and were busy criticizing him, I wanted to bring them together. Then came the Second of Khordad. And the government turned into a laboratory for the ideas of religious intellectualism and the Islamic left. As the Doctor put it, “belief had been put to the test.” Gradually, the contradictions became apparent. The “theory of religious democratic government,” the most important political theory of religious intellectualism, fell into crisis. Despite the fact that a government close to the religious intellectuals had come to power, its coexistence with religious fundamentalists proceeded with great difficulty and hardship, leading to inefficiency and dual sovereignty. Reconciling religion and democracy became difficult, and more serious questions were raised that, in my view, religious intellectualism could not answer. The main rout occurred in 2000, and the first defections from the left wing began. One of Dr. Soroush’s most important students, Akbar Ganji, wrote the “Republican Manifesto,” which, heavily influenced by Dr. Mostafa Malekian, criticized religious intellectualism and the Islamic left and considered them finished. Ganji simultaneously criticized Soroush’s theory of “religious democracy” and Saeed Hajjarian’s strategy of “constitutionalism”... At that time, both Baqi and Ganji were in prison. In the same cell... Because of the connection I had developed with Baqi, I would visit him and, of course, would also see Ganji. It was during those days that Akbar Ganji gave me the first draft of the “Republican Manifesto,” and upon reading it, I realized that one generation of religious intellectualism had reached the end of the road. Although the Republican Manifesto was a derivative treatise, it had the historical significance of the Organization of the People’s Mojahedin’s ideological change manifesto. In my view, Akbar Ganji has realized in recent years outside Iran that that critique was overly radical and has repeatedly defended religiosity and religious intellectuals, but in that treatise he was able to demonstrate Soroush’s contradictions well from a theoretical standpoint. Ganji, under the influence of Malekian—and Malekian perhaps unconsciously under the influence of Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi—had elaborated the same questions the Ayatollah had posed about the Doctor, and instead of becoming a fundamentalist like Mesbah, he had become a modernist like Malekian. The questions were the same, but the answers differed. Both (Mesbah and Malekian) had understood that democracy is in some respects in conflict with religiosity, but one had sided with democracy and the other with religion. At that time, I wrote my opinion to Ganji privately, and I said then that in the transition to democracy you should not see the path as limited to French laïcité; pay attention to the English and American experiences as well. Based on my examination of the views of Ayatollah Motahhari and Ayatollah Montazeri, and also in conversation with Emadeddin Baqi, I did not see the path as limited to these two routes, in which piety had played a central role in the path to modernity. Of course, I also considered these two jurists (Motahhari and Montazeri) too traditionalist to solve the more important dilemma, namely the relationship between modernity and piety. The main rift from which the contradiction between theocracy and democracy also arose, so I did not confine myself to this thinking.

It was around these days that Seyyed Javad Tabatabai returned to Iran after many long years away. Tabatabai had been purged from the university in the first half of the 1370s [1990s], back when the Ministry of Science was still in the hands of the left faction, under pressure from the right wing, and no one uttered a sigh of protest. Tabatabai’s sin was the “redefinition” of political science syllabi, and even though some of the best Islamic-left intellectuals were his students, he was eliminated from the country’s scholarly arena just like that. It was famously said that Tabatabai was a nationalist, a laic, and even a monarchist! (In those days they had not yet accused him of neo-Marxism), but as political science students we knew that Tabatabai was merely a professor of political thought and, as it happened, was well-versed in Islamic thought; as for nationalism, it was merely Tabatabai’s academic attention to “Iranshahr” that was the source of this slander.

In the year 1379 [2000], I had just been released from prison and, thanks to Mohammad Atrianfar, was the editor of the supplement for the Hamshahri newspaper. The turbulences arising from the internal critiques of religious intellectualism also reached the pages of the newspaper. The theoretical crisis of the reformist government compounded the problem. Secular intellectuals, alongside religious fundamentalists, were criticizing religious intellectualism; figures like Ramin Jahanbegloo... Soroush had found new critics beyond the religious: the secularists... But everything was not confined to these two or three factions: apart from a group of (internal) religious intellectuals and specifically the school of Ayatollah Montazeri, the views of Seyyed Hossein Nasr were gradually translated as well, and it became clear that this traditionalist monarchist!!! (an accusation some religious intellectuals leveled at Nasr, and although it seemed accurate, it resembled a political indictment) had not gone entirely astray in understanding modernity either. The writings of Reza Davari Ardakani were also reread, and it became clear that the person assumed to be Soroush’s conservative rival had a clearer relationship with the head of the reformist government; and Seyyed Javad Tabatabai, who spoke of “another modernity,” had returned to Iran. In the year 1381 [2002], introduced by Dr. Alireza Rajaei—who was himself a student of Reza Davari and, unlike Dr. Soroush, who considered him part of the “tribe” of religious intellectualism, had great affection for Davari and Tabatabai—I went to see Seyyed Javad Tabatabai and spoke with him. In that conversation (which was published in the Hamshahri supplement and was Tabatabai’s first interview after returning to Iran), I realized what untruths had been told about him. He was neither a monarchist, nor an Iran-worshipper, nor averse to religion... I do not know to what extent my understanding of Tabatabai was related to him, but I thought the misguided project of reconciling freedom and religion could be pursued through a “conservative liberalism” (a love of freedom attached to tradition). Tabatabai and Montazeri had come from two separate origins: one from within modernity and the other from within tradition. But in my view, a dialogue between them was possible, as follows: “1—An effort to understand (Iranian/Islamic) tradition, 2—Extracting questions from within modernity, 3—And an effort to make fertile a tradition that has become sterile and barren.” [I later wrote these views more concretely in the book Three Islams, a book in which I made Ayatollah Sistani’s experience in Shiite political jurisprudence the focus of my discussion.]

Tabatabai’s endeavor became clearer in the following years. He considered himself not a theorist, prophet, intellectual, or polymath, but a researcher of political thought. When, at the conference for the hundredth anniversary of the Constitutional Revolution (which was organized through the efforts of Ahmad Bourghani, Seyyed Mostafa Tajzadeh, and the Shargh newspaper during my tenure as editor-in-chief), Seyyed Javad Tabatabai took the podium at my insistence and spoke of the importance of Akhund Khorasani in constitutionalist thought, everyone was astonished, and Tajzadeh—who had been Tabatabai’s student at the University of Tehran—whispered softly in my ear: “I thought he would disrupt the conference with his critiques of religion, but Tabatabai has become like Jalal Al-e Ahmad!...” [A comparison by which Tajzadeh undoubtedly intended to praise Tabatabai, but which would again undoubtedly upset Tabatabai to be likened to Jalal!]

Paying attention to Seyyed Javad Tabatabai, however, was not a matter of substituting one “philosophical prophet” for another “philosophical prophet.” In the era of the flourishing of thought during the years 1373–1379 [1994–2000], many messengers gradually emerged, and bringing them together was difficult. It was the age of escape from ideology, and the ideologues were dead.

The 1980s were the decade of the monopoly of intellectualism held by the “Islamic Association of Intellectuals.” The peak of the intellectual conflict was between Soroush and Davari, which, given Soroush’s influence within the ruling establishment at the time, ended to Davari’s detriment. The magazine Keyhan-e Farhangi, run by Soroush’s students, accused Davari of proximity to the Pahlavi court, and Davari was removed from that magazine. But the 1990s and 2000s were the decades of pluralism: Hossein Bashiriyeh was writing new textbooks for political science, the books of Dariush Shayegan and Seyyed Hossein Nasr were being published in Iran, Shayegan and Tabatabai returned to Iran, and greater attention was paid to Dariush Ashouri and Ezzatollah Fooladvand. Even the views of Davari and Dinani were read more widely in these years. Most interesting of all was the internal reckoning within religious intellectualism: Mr. Mostafa Malekian was at the peak of his skepticism toward religious intellectualism and, as he himself has stated, after his years of fundamentalism (1973–1983), years of traditionalism (1984–1988), and years of modernism (1988–1995), he had arrived at years of interest in existentialism (1995–2001). He himself says that from 1995, and in another sense from 1997, he had abandoned religious intellectualism because “I saw the project as unsuccessful, and I still see it as unsuccessful” (Mehrnameh, no. 32, p. 53). Of course, the professor had not yet reached the most recent decade in which he would propose the “Theory of Rationality and Spirituality”; but he was the first person to raise the banner of departure from religious intellectualism. So what wonder is it that a seeker like me should not do likewise, not ask, and in my questioning not grow more certain every day that:

1- Theologically, how has religious intellectualism in practice reached a point where, instead of renewal within religion, it has arrived at revisionism in religion, such that Dr. Soroush Dabbagh speaks of the “non-religious religious intellectual”?! I recall that Dr. Soroush, in his lessons at the Imam Jafar Sadeq Mosque in Tehran’s Aqdasiyeh neighborhood (the texts of which also appear in his early works), was initially a defender of the project of reviving religion and, following the tradition of Mulla Mohsen Fayz Kashani and Hojjat al-Islam Mohammad Ghazali, sought revivalism—just as earlier in Tafarroj-e Son’ he had made clear statements criticizing the theory of development. Then he pinned his hopes on the reform of religion and Sharia and spoke of the theoretical contraction and expansion of Sharia and the evolution of religious knowledge. “Islam” in religious intellectualism has, in practice, been reduced to spirituality in the reading of Dr. Mostafa Malekian—something on the order of Buddhism... It suffices to refer to the views of Dr. Soroush and Dr. Mojtahed Shabestari regarding the Quran. The religion that was supposed to be “reformed” or “revived” (which is itself at risk of Salafism) has now been transformed. I, of course, claim neither expertise in theology nor in religious studies, but from the perspective of the history of political thought, this shift in role from “political religion” in the views of religious intellectualism to “spiritual religion” is noteworthy to me. I have written a detailed report on this in issue 27 of Mehrnameh (December 2012) titled “The Message of Soroush / The Story of Davari,” where the detailed discussion lies... The gist of the matter is this: yes, one can be a “non-religious religious researcher,” but a “non-religious religious intellectual” is a square triangle or a metallic sour grape juice.

2- Socially, it seems that in today’s world, not only religious intellectualism but the very principle of intellectualism is subject to doubt. Intellectuals were the elites of the Enlightenment era who fought against superstitions in the name of pure reason. But in our times, when the humanities have become specialized, a single grand narrative called intellectualism cannot explain the world. Economists, sociologists, political scientists, and legal scholars each possess a skill and a knowledge that cannot be gathered in a single sage polymath. All of them are philosophers of a sort, but their work is not philosophizing; it is research. To achieve freedom and democracy, one cannot refer solely and exclusively to a single intellectual source of emulation. Shariati’s views on the free economy and Soroush’s views on democracy are severely incomplete. Shariati’s understanding of the free economy and class analysis is incorrect, and Soroush’s understanding of the relationship between democracy and freedom is deficient. That Dr. Soroush translates civil society as moral society is, unfortunately, a sign of the inefficacy of theology in understanding politics—even if it is new theology, new kalam, or religious intellectualism. Shariati was, of course, a renowned sociologist, and Soroush a skilled theologian, and both were master orators, but the grand narratives of both are severely flawed, incomplete, and unintelligible.

3- From an epistemological standpoint, the combination of intellectualism and religiosity in the form of the compound “religious intellectualism” is a matter for reflection. One can have a “religious intellectual” (as Mehdi Bazargan, Ebrahim Yazdi, and the Sahabis were), but “religious intellectualism” is an ideological compound whose origins date back to the sixties and seventies [1980s–1990s]. Even Shariati spoke of “religious” intellectualism, and Bazargan and Sahabi also used this expression less frequently. The point is this: if religious intellectualism attends to religion as “faith” (religiosity), it has, in fact, entered the private sphere of individuals, and this is reprehensible both by the decree of reason and by the decree of religious law. How many non-religious intellectuals (such as Dr. Amir Nasser Katouzian) have been observant of Sharia, and how many religious intellectuals are not observant of Sharia (those whom Soroush Dabbagh calls the non-religious religious intellectual)? But if religious intellectualism attends to religion as the science of theology (religious studies), then this profession does not require all these distinctions, and, in principle, science has no relation to ideology. Annemarie Schimmel or Henry Corbin were, in this sense, also religious intellectuals (which, of course, they were not!). A third meaning of religious intellectualism is also possible, and that is religious intellectuals who believe in “political religion.” Obviously, given the acceptance of “political secularism” by religious intellectuals, this meaning—that they seek to establish a religious government—is also ruled out. Thus, the name religious intellectual has become a misnomer. And even expressions like intra-religious and extra-religious are gradually losing their application and will turn into epistemological concepts, and the term mujtahid or religious researcher will be more worthy of intra-religious intellectuals. The category of religious intellectuals is merely a historical category that has become a social identity for some individuals and has no epistemological meaning. Scholars of religion, like sociologists, political scientists, and economists, are one of the branches of the humanities who must employ rational and empirical methods in understanding religion; it does not matter whether they are religious or not, for that is between them and their God. I recall that in that same decade of the seventies [1990s], in a critique by Houshang Golshiri of Bahauddin Khorramshahi’s translation of the Quran, the translator faulted the critic, saying, “What business do you have with the Quran?!” Just as today, Professor Mostafa Malekian attacks Seyyed Javad Tabatabai, saying, “What business does a Marxist have with ‘liberalism and religiosity’?”…

The conclusion is that the meaning of religious intellectualism becomes more historical with each passing day. I have personally raised these concerns twice with Dr. Soroush: once, together with Mr. Atrianfar, at the Serat Publishing office, and another time at Mr. Jalaeipour’s home at a gathering of friends who are religious intellectuals. As is the custom of a great master, Dr. Soroush listened to my words with persistence and grace and offered some points that I found worthy of reflection, but due to the political climate of recent years and his being out of reach for us, these conversations did not continue. I, of course, still consider Dr. Soroush to be among the most intelligent and wisest contemporary thinkers and wish for another dialogue with him. I cherish this wish because I still hold hope for the dawn of Dr. Soroush’s theory of “Neo-Mu’tazilism” and think that from the standpoint of this thought (religious new-thinking), new things can be said. As I gathered from his recent lecture on the relationship between Islam and liberalism, Dr. Soroush himself has also become aware of the limitations of “religious intellectualism,” as he himself said: “Religious intellectualism is not a matter greater than prophethood that it should have reached its seal!” I also emphasize that, as the saying goes, we all stand on the shoulders of religious intellectualism and never deny the role of this current of thought in understanding modernity and religiosity, but even children eventually reach maturity!

In an interview we had last year (which remains unpublished and is preserved with me), you said, “From my childhood and adolescence, I have tried to move beyond finding everything in one person and making him my prophet.” In response to this claim, I would say: it is true that you do not have a prophetic-like relationship with one person; rather, you have chosen multiple prophets for yourself in various domains—for example, a prophetic-like relationship exists between you and Mousa Ghaninejad in the domain of economics. The question is: how can a single, unified intellectual system be born from the combination of these prophets?

It seems you do not believe in the Seal of the Prophets! In any case, I have no prophet other than Muhammad (PBUH) and I read the works of all professors of the humanities. To show you how these views can be reconciled, I will offer a preamble and a few points:

The transition from grand narratives and great ideologies in the realm of thought must not prevent us from falling into contradiction and inaction in the realm of politics. The most important lesson to be learned from the defeat of religious intellectualism is what Richard Rorty teaches us: "The priority of democracy over philosophy." I do not reject any of the theological projects of religious intellectualism, and I even think they should all be continued in academic, religious, seminary, and university circles, but political reform is not contingent upon religious or philosophical reform. In my view, liberalism, not as an ideology but as a method and style of political life (political liberalism), can lead us to freedom in practice. As I have said before in a roundtable for Triangle weekly, I have no insistence on the term liberalism and use it only to approximate the meaning (I have conducted an analytical interview about this with a news agency that has still not agreed to publish it). Perhaps the terms liberty-seeking or free-thinking are more appropriate, but in any case, the acceptance of the institutions of elections, parliament, party politics, the rule of law, the ideal of development, etc., are among the fruits of liberalism. Epistemological, philosophical, and religious liberalism must, of course, be discussed in schools and faculties, but political liberalism is the reality of our daily lives. It is this liberalism that teaches us that democracy cannot be achieved without development. In recent days, an intellectual translator has said that the priority of development over democracy leads to fascism! Interestingly, this concept is derived from the views of this very esteemed translator, who has both translated Richard Rorty's book and edited Fareed Zakaria's book. Yes; freedom is prior to development, but development is prior to democracy, because democracy without development is something akin to pure populism! No liberal has ever spoken of the priority of development over freedom, but everyone accepts the priority of development over democracy. This meaning of democracy and its distinction from freedom must be learned not in theology but in the social sciences. Now, turning to your question, one can consider a wide range of humanities professors in outlining these concepts, of whom Dr. Mousa Ghaninejad is one of the most important, but names such as Dr. Mohammad Tabibian, Dr. Masoud Nili, Dr. Seyyed Javad Tabatabai, Dr. Mahmoud Sariolghalam, Dr. Ahmad Naghibzadeh, Dr. Davoud Firahi, and others among professors of political science and economics must also be taken into account. None of these professors are prophets. They are subject to being superseded every day. Sometimes their students surpass them. In fact, one must pay attention to the theory rather than the professor. In my opinion, someone can speak of freedom who defends the four principles of the rule of law, free economy, individual rights, and cultural tolerance, and anyone who speaks of these concepts can be considered a liberty-seeker and free-thinker (or liberal). It is necessary to note that I do not defend liberalism as an ideology, for liberalism is an ideology for the negation of ideologies. Nor do I defend philosophical liberalism, which may conflict with religiosity. I defend political liberalism (liberal democracy), which is a method and style for resolving political conflicts, and of course, democracy is one component of it, not the whole of it. I have learned the theory of the rule of law in this thought from Seyyed Javad Tabatabai, the theory of the free economy from Mousa Ghaninejad, and its consequence in understanding the importance of the institution of development can, in my view, be learned from Mahmoud Sariolghalam, and of course, the philosophical foundations of this explanation of freedom can be learned from the philosophical views of Professor Dr. Mehdi Haeri Yazdi. Do you think it is impossible to reconcile these four teachers of the humanities (Tabatabai, Ghaninejad, Sariolghalam, and Mehdi Haeri Yazdi)?

Interestingly, Dr. Mostafa Malekian has also recently spoken of liberal democracy as the best form of government, but I cannot accept that all religious intellectuals are liberals in order to accept the professor's invitation to this political coalition. For numerous reasons, I believe that religious intellectuals still defend social democracy; my most important reason is their alliance with economic institutionalists, and, of course, another example from them is Professor Malekian's recent remark that he does not accept Friedrich von Hayek! (Andisheh Pouya, Nowruz 1394) In fact, to the extent that religious intellectuals have spoken of the "spiritual human," they have never pointed to the importance of the "free economy" in the formation of a "free government." Therefore, contrary to the professor's assumption, the "religious intellectualism" current is not liberal, and, of course, Mehregan is not a political party to accept a proposal for a coalition with this or that group!

In a text that Hooman Dorandish recently published online from his conversation with Mostafa Malekian—which, from what was said and left unsaid, one can guess the interview is from months ago—there are noteworthy remarks regarding your intellectual approach and Mehregan magazine, the most important of which is the promotion of Salafism by Mehregan. What connection do you see between this accusation and the content of Mehregan?

In encountering Mr. Mostafa Malekian, there are several problems:

1- It is not clear which Professor Malekian we are encountering. From the age of 17 until now (may he live long), he himself has believed in 5 Malekians: fundamentalist, traditionalist, modernist, existentialist, and the professor of today who speaks of the "Rationality and Spirituality" project. Although he has passed through all these periods, undoubtedly, intellectual and theoretical traces from each period are still alive in the professor. For example, in these very days when that interview was published and Mehregan was accused of Salafism, the professor's latest book, titled "In the Passage of the Wind and the Guardian of the Tulip," has been published in two volumes (Negah-e Moaser, 1394), which contains the professor's talks from years before 1382 but has been printed this year. Some of the book's titles and themes strongly recall the efforts of religious intellectualism. Perhaps for this reason, because the professor has moved beyond this view, the esteemed publisher has written in their introduction: "The epistemological arena in humanities discussions is limited to human conditions and possibilities. With the change of conditions and limitations, the possibility of an epistemological rupture exists, and the professor has not been exempt from this matter." That is, while enthusiasts of the "School of Rationality and Spirituality" are seeking the professor's latest views, a book narrating the professor's rupture is being offered to the market! The publisher's action in chronicling the thought of Professor Malekian is commendable, but if we want to cite the text and speak in the present time, what should we do with all these contradictory propositions? For example, in Mehr 1379, Professor Malekian said in an interview with the state-run Iran newspaper: "Religion is completely compatible with democracy." (Quoted from the book Moshtaqi va Mahjouri: 1385) Does the professor still believe in this statement? Has he not moved beyond it? We do not know...

2- The majority of Dr. Malekian's works, including three books: "A Path to Liberation" (1381), "Moshtaqi va Mahjouri" (1385), and this very book "In the Passage of the Wind and the Guardian of the Tulip" (1394), lack the slightest citation, reference, or referral to the text. An issue that is also evident in his recent interview, where he has not even once referenced a single sentence from me, Emadeddin Baghi, or Seyyed Javad Tabatabai. [The book A Journey in the Sphere of the Soul is a translation and has explanatory and linguistic footnotes instead of references.] In fact, Dr. Malekian's method, like the majority of intellectuals (religious and non-religious), is oratorical, rhetorical, (modern) pulpit-style, and non-research-based. Dr. Shariati and Dr. Soroush (except in specialized works on the philosophy of science) were not ones for citation, and in fact, they were and are like "modern mullahs" (of the pulpit, not the seminary, type). Therefore, it is not clear which sentence and article of mine, and those like me, we should clarify.

3- We do not even know what Salafism means in the Master’s definition, that we might pride ourselves on being characterized by it or deflect this accusation from ourselves. To be honest, in understanding the concept of Salafism and the manner of its influence within religious intellectualism, I myself am indebted to Master Mostafa Malekian! The account of the matter is that the Master, as I have said before, was among the first religious intellectuals to doubt religious intellectualism. The first time Master Malekian, in a conversation with Akbar Ganji (Rah-e No weekly, Tir 1377), stated: “Religious intellectualism is not a clear term, and if we try to clarify it, its impracticability becomes apparent.” Some time later, he also traced the roots of Salafism even within religious intellectualism: “In my view, religious reformers are not necessarily religious modernists, and they can even stand against religious modernists... As it happens, they said we must return to the Salaf, and they wanted to gain access to a pure and pristine source.” (Moshtaqi va Mahjouri, p. 290)

Last year, in two long articles published in the June and July 2014 issues of the Mehrnameh monthly under the title “The Tragedy of Islamic Protestantism,” I also explained this strange paradox of how a relationship is established between religious intellectualism and religious fundamentalism, and how political despotism emerges from religious reform. I discussed how the views of Shariat Sangalaji and even Ahmad Kasravi influenced their opponents, how connections were forged between certain propositions of Ali Shariati and the People’s Mojahedin with the Fadaiyan-e Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood, and how, just as Calvinism emerged from Lutheranism, religious government emerged from religious intellectualism. The master has probably not had the opportunity to study those two lengthy articles, and in reading the unedited roundtable on the Mehr news agency, like others, he has likely contented himself with this headline from me: “Daesh is an intellectual.” This headline was used against me by the fundamentalist Mashregh news agency, and the reformist Jaras website also used it against me, whereas my point in that conversation was nothing other than that the desire for the purity of religion, puritanism, and the dismissal of interpretation from Islam, in Sunni thinkers like Ibn Taymiyyah, initially seemed a blessed and rational endeavor but ultimately ended in catastrophe. The elimination of superstitions is the most important goal of the Salafis, including both Wahhabis and neo-Wahhabis, and this is initially considered an intellectual endeavor. But ultimately, by denying the human aspects of life (which is a mixture of reason and emotion), it leads to the negation of human freedom. For example, Calvin, Abdul Wahhab, Daesh, and the Taliban were all opposed to sculpture and the construction of mausoleums. By exploiting popular sentiments, they argue that building religious symbols with people’s money is not only not the promotion of religion but is polytheism. Religious modernists considered this polytheism and rejected lavish religious architecture. Unaware that by simplifying human life and stripping away artistic and architectural beauties (the Catholic Church was a source of artistic inspiration in the Middle Ages), they impose a kind of coldness on life, such that, in the words of Stefan Zweig, this visual harshness is evident in the streets of Protestant countries compared to Catholic ones. In fact, this one example shows how a correct intention does not lead to a correct result. Another example is the negation of the institution of religion. Religious modernists (Christian and Muslim), by negating the class of religious interpreters, argue that the relationship between people and God must become direct, but ultimately they create a new privileged class that replaces the traditional clergy. The fact that the majority of the Taliban and Daesh members are “engineers” stems from the issue that, in practice, the negation of religious interpretation leads to the negation of the humanities. The same thing that happened with the People’s Mojahedin. The issue of generalizing the interpretation of the Quran seems progressive at first glance, but when the Forqan group emerges from within this current, this paradox becomes interesting: how a form of religious fundamentalism takes shape from the peak of religious modernism. I will write the details of this discussion in a new book, but up to this point in the discussion, I think it is clear that the critique of religious intellectualism is also a critique of Salafism. Fundamentalism is, of course, not exclusive to religion. After the French Revolution, in the name of pure reason and the construction of the Temple of Reason to replace the church during the Robespierre period, a fundamentalism of reason and a secular fundamentalism took shape, while Robespierre was enamored with Rousseau, just as Pol Pot was enamored with Karl Marx. Can such discourses in Mehrnameh (which are at the level of a treatise awaiting publication) be considered the promotion of Salafism? This is not only our view. A moderate and independent thinker like Dr. Davoud Feirahi (a graduate of both the seminary and the university) has recently published two volumes on political jurisprudence. For example, by addressing the complications of Salafism in the religious reform movement and the back-to-the-Quran movement in his recent book (Constitutional Jurisprudence), is Dr. Davoud Feirahi promoting Salafism? In short, my entire point is that Salafism is the adopted child or the unwanted child of religious intellectualism and religious reform.

4- Unfortunately, the master is not immune from the affliction of fundamentalism either. From years ago, and in an explanation worse than the interview under discussion, Master Malekian (whose message, like the muftis and spiritual guides, was placed on the internet through the method of voice recording and withholding the sound) has stated that he does not believe in Islam 2 and Islam 3, and sought to dispel the interviewer’s accusation against him of insulting Islam. Let us grant this... We are not like the master, searching with a lantern for the Islam and atheism of individuals. This is a knife that has cut the master’s hand. But right here lies a problem:

Dividing Islam into 1, 2, and 3 (respectively: 1. the sacred text / 2. interpretation of the sacred text / 3. and acting upon the sacred text) is fundamentally a quest for the pure thing, and it is as if the professor has forgotten that purism is the basis of fundamentalism. Dividing Islam into true Islam and historical Islam is not a new method. Shariatists and Soroushists have said the same. By distinguishing religion from religious knowledge, Dr. Soroush initially tried to confine evolution to religious knowledge, but ultimately moved from the theoretical contraction and expansion of the Sharia to the expansion of prophetic experience. In practice, purism leads either to negationism or to fundamentalism: either the negation of the sacred or the sanctification of the pure... The discourse of the Taliban and ISIS is the same: “Philosophical Islam, jurisprudential Islam, and social Islam are not true Islam. One must return to the original, pure, and unadulterated Islam. One must act as the Prophet and the Companions did. All this jurisprudence and philosophy is a veil over religion.” Just as in the Shia faith, the adherents of the School of Separation say the same, and the School of Separation also transmitted this meaning to the school of religious intellectualism.

5- And again, unfortunately, Professor Mostafa Malekian has forgotten the past phases of his own thoughts. His attack on religious new-thinking is strange because he himself is one of the originators of this term. In those same years when he was rejecting religious intellectualism, he would add: “My suggestion is that we not call it religious intellectualism, but rather call it religious new-thinking or revisionism.” (Longing and Abandonment, p. 114) And who, in the professor’s view, were these religious new-thinkers: “The Islamic intellectual, in the deepest and broadest sense of the word ijtihad, is an advocate of ijtihad and is himself a mujtahid.” (ibid.) Of course, the professor did not reduce ijtihad to jurisprudence, but it is strange that he views religious new-thinkers such as Montazeri, Qabel, Baqi, and Ayazi with negation, denial, and contempt. Truly, can someone like Salehi-Najafabadi, who opened the door to the critique of hadith and narration in the seminary, not be considered an “intellectual,” even in the Western sense of the word?

Mehrnameh is, of course, not an organ of “religious new-thinking,” but simultaneously with criticizing religious intellectualism and showing the symptom of Salafism in its path, it has strived to open a window onto the concept of religious new-thinking. The memorial issues for Ayatollah Montazeri and Ahmad Qabel, as well as dossiers on religious new-thinking in the seminary, have been among these. In the exposition of religious new-thinking, for examining the clash between religiosity and modernity, there is no alternative but “text-reading” (not Salafi text-worship) and “tradition-studies” (in Emadeddin Baqi’s phrasing). First, one must know the text and the tradition, and then examine it with modernity in a comparative (not conformative) manner. Subsequently, it is the society and the individual that chooses one between religiosity and modernity, but in many cases, a balanced proportion between religiosity and modernity can be achieved. Provided that we set aside essentialism and purism. The “essential” of religion is very little but grand. It is not so narrow that nothing can be reconciled with it. Therefore, from the beginning, Islam was more a “state” than a “religion”: that is, with limited principles, it has accommodated and endorsed numerous derivatives. Jurisprudence is not sacred and is changeable from one mujtahid to another, from one source of emulation to another, from one society to another, and from one era to another. How much difference is there between the jurisprudence of Montazeri and the jurisprudence of Sistani, the jurisprudence of Qom and the jurisprudence of Najaf, the jurisprudence of Iranian Shia and the jurisprudence of Lebanese Shia? (I have written articles in Mehrnameh about the School of Qom / School of Najaf / School of Isfahan and the School of Mashhad or Khorasan, which will soon become a book, and in them I have addressed these distinctions.) So, contrary to the view of ISIS and the Taliban, a return to early Islam is fundamentally impossible. If the noble Prophet of Islam were among us, while playing a role in the transformation of the times, he would not act against the times, because even in his own time he did not act against the times. He corrected wrong traditions and would correct them, but he practiced right traditions and would practice them. And this is the very meaning of ijtihad. In this sense, true Islam is nothing other than actual Islam. The ideal Islam is the same as the present Islam. Esoteric and even spiritual Islam neither exists nor is beneficial. Exoteric Islam is identical to spiritual Islam. Reaching the “pure, infallible, pious, ascetic Muslim human” in practice, like communist ideologies, leads us toward promoting the Marxist theory of the new model human.

Promoting ethics, meaning, and piety is good, but human beings naturally also have inclinations toward evil, materialism, and impiety. These human beings must be restrained through education and law. In the past, jurisprudence (fiqh) performed this function, but in practice, it has long since lost its capacities. While refining the principles of jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh) and even engaging in ijtihad in the principles (such as the work Ayatollah Montazeri did regarding the rights of believers, considering the rights of people (haqq al-nas) superior to the rights of believers, and even granting citizenship rights to non-Islamic sects), one must undertake change and transformation in the derivative rulings (furu‘ al-fiqh) and, of course, transform it into law, rather than making jurisprudence the basis for administering society. The process of transforming jurisprudence into law passes through democracy, not dictatorship.

With these descriptions, contrary to Dr. Mostafa Malekian’s view, the work of Ayatollah Montazeri is the very essence of juristic expertise (fiqahat): refining the principles of jurisprudence and transformation in jurisprudence. Ayatollah Khomeini also did this work, and in this respect, his role in the transformation of jurisprudence was so significant that Saeed Hajjarian, in a valuable article, compared the role of the Leader of the Revolution in establishing the absolute state (not totalitarian) with Thomas Hobbes’s view in Western political thought; and this work also drew the attention of traditional jurists. Among them, the late Ayatollah Seyyed Kazem Shariatmadari was the only jurist and mujtahid at the rank of marja‘ al-taqlid, and even among leftist and rightist intellectuals, who, in 1978, addressed the issue of Islamic government from the standpoint of “national sovereignty.” An ijtihad rooted in the tradition of the constitutionalist jurists, and among them, the late Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Reza Golpaygani, for all his traditionalism, defended the private sphere and domain, at least within the institution of the bazaar, and the late Ayatollah Ahmad Azari Qomi, even in the middle period of his thought, criticized the intervention of the state institution in the bazaar, and in that era (the 1980s) was the only one who spoke of the limits of the guardianship of the jurist (velayat-e faqih). Although Azari Qomi later underwent many leftward and rightward transformations. I do not mean that these jurists were liberals, but one can find traces of the thought of freedom and free will in their opinions.

6- Unfortunately, religious intellectuals, while calling themselves liberals, are not liberal either theoretically or practically. They are not liberal practically because they have engaged in criticizing the private sphere of Seyyed Javad Tabatabai and others, and they are not liberal theoretically because they are in pursuit of the pure thing. The impossibility of theoretical liberalism in Professor Malekian has a clear connection with the saturation of practical liberalism in him. Theoretical liberalism is fundamentally based on individual rights, the cornerstone of which, after the right to life, is the right to property. Our traditional jurisprudence, prior to the late Ayatollah Khomeini, was an individualistic jurisprudence founded on the right to property. But our political jurists from the revolutionary period, under the influence of society’s intellectual climate, ignored this foundation of liberalism, and religious intellectualism, in its poverty of political economy theory, fell into the trap of leftist economics (I have examined this meaning in an article titled “The Islamic Leviathan” in Mehrnameh magazine). But if we want to consider a Muslim thinker successful on the scene of liberalism, it is the late Mehdi Haeri Yazdi, whose opinion on the relationship between religion and politics and the theory of the guardianship of the jurist is clear. Haeri, of course, was not among the new thinkers or religious intellectuals and was considered a Muslim philosopher who well understood the importance of the principles of jurisprudence. He saw government as nothing but representation based on the joint ownership of citizens, and for reconciling religion and freedom (and not necessarily socialist democracy and the social contract of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau type), he saw no need for religious reform. More accurately, while acknowledging the necessity of religious reform, he did not consider political reform contingent upon religious reform:

Religious reform is an academic/seminary project that must be entrusted to its practitioners. A religious reformer must know Persian, Arabic, and Western languages, have studied jurisprudence, its principles, and logic, and so on... But political reform can be implemented by accepting political liberalism. Liberalism as a method has no contradiction with religiosity. Just as Akhund Khorasani, Mirza Naini, Ayatollah Shariatmadari, and Ayatollah Dr. Mehdi Haeri Yazdi had accepted its products. Under such conditions, the possibility of religious reform by mujtahids and intellectuals is also better facilitated. In fact, as a student of political science, I submit that the work of reforming religion should be entrusted to the people of religion, and the reform of politics to the people of politics. This does not mean the separation of religion from the state; it is impossible for the religion of Islam to be separated from the state. But the science of politics is separate from the science of theology.

7—There is much to say about Professor Malekian’s interview, and there is no room to address all of it here. But one cannot overlook his unethical treatment of Dr. Seyyed Javad Tabatabai. It cannot be said that Malekian has not read Tabatabai’s works, for in the introduction to Jadal-e Jadid va Qadim (The New and Old Controversy), Tabatabai thanks Malekian for reviewing the work before publication; nor can one forget that Malekian himself first published a chapter of “A Reflection on Iran” in Naqd magazine. Thus, Malekian knows that Tabatabai is not only not a Marxist but is a critic of Marxism. But worst of all is the creation of an intention linking Tabatabai’s secularism and Marxism, which turns into an ideological accusation—and this is the ultimate outcome of religious, spiritual, and esoteric intellectualism that dons the cloak of the people: “The Islamic Society of Intellectuals”!

Another point about this interview is Mehrnameh’s shift from an intellectual magazine to an anti-intellectual one. Of course, I do not believe that Mehrnameh has become an anti-intellectual magazine, but it has certainly suffered many losses from its inception to the present day and continues to do so. At one time, Babak Ahmadi, Soroush Dabbagh, Khashayar Deyhimi, Ezzatollah Fooladvand, Ehsan Shariati, Nasser Fakouhi, and others were regular contributors to Mehrnameh, and figures like Morad Farhadpour and Yousef Abazari also appeared in it periodically. But today, for a long time, not only is there no news of them in Mehrnameh, but a significant portion of those named are also defined as being among Mehrnameh’s adversaries, and Mehrnameh is gradually moving toward fixed writers with a specific, predetermined outlook, such as the very Mr. Emadeddin Baghi claimed by Mr. Malekian. What relation do these losses bear to that alleged anti-intellectual approach?

Mehrnameh is not an intellectual magazine, nor is it an anti-intellectual magazine. It is a monthly journal of the humanities and social sciences that strives to elevate intellectualism to the rank of scholarship, and this is, of course, a difficult task. On the one hand, we avoid becoming an academic journal in the manner of university publications (journals whose majority of authors are a duo: a professor on the verge of promotion + a student completing a thesis), and we also avoid being defined as an intellectual magazine. Each of our dossiers, like a research project, has an initial plan, a hypothesis, and questions, and individuals capable of answering those questions are selected by the editor-in-chief and the relevant editor. No one has a fixed column in Mehrnameh, and all voices have a place in it. In every dossier, there are proponents and opponents. Just look at the list of authors in this very issue 41: Are they limited to supporters of Seyyed Javad Tabatabai or defenders of religious new-thinking? Besides Emadeddin Baghi or Seyyed Javad Tabatabai and Mousa Ghaninejad, do you not encounter the names of Saeed Hajjarian, Morad Saghafi, Hamidreza Jalaeipour, Mahmoud Sariolghalam, Ahmad Naghibzadeh, Ebrahim Yazdi, and others? If the presence of some figures has diminished in Mehrnameh, it has depended more on the subjects of our own dossiers, but newer, more numerous, and more prominent figures and thinkers have also appeared.

Mehrnameh is not an arena for monologue. We have always sought dialogue, and unfortunately, Iranian intellectualism, like other segments of society, does not much welcome dialogue, but humanities professors are among the best companions of Mehrnameh. Professors who shine in the university but are overlooked in society. In the future, Mehrnameh will also strive to be more of a “scholarly” publication than an “intellectual” one, and “issue”-oriented rather than “figure”-oriented.

But let us turn to the controversies surrounding the latest issue of Mehrnameh. The cover of Bijan Jazani with that headline “Terrorist Intellectuals” and blood-stained hands. I do not know to what extent, with knowledge of the possible reactions, this photo and headline involved deliberate, planned sensationalism, but in any case, a headline and photo were sent to the newsstands that met with a strong reaction from the leftist intellectual spectrum in cyberspace. What was truly your intention behind this?

This very headline, photo, and dossier are directly related to your previous question. The majority of the authors of that dossier were leftist friends, but they could not tolerate one headline. A few points about the headline are necessary:

1—Many judged the headline without reading the dossier or the magazine. They even thought that I was the author of an article with this title and took a stance against my article without reading it! Of course, my article, in honor of all this onslaught, will be published in the next issue!

2- I was fully aware of the possible consequences of the headline and raised these consequences in the editorial office, and the colleagues present during the final days of page layout were also more or less aware of the consequences.

3- In my opinion, the headline succeeded in hitting its target. Because, in a Socratic manner, it showed how limited the capacity for accepting criticism is among some left-leaning intellectuals.

4- I will write the main article in Mehregan 42, but in brief: we called the Fada'iyan-e Khalq, and specifically Bijan Jazani's circle, "terrorist intellectuals," not "murderer intellectuals"! Terrorism is murder, but it is not "mere murder"; it is murder for goals that, from the perspective of its perpetrators, are "sacred." Whether we agree or disagree with armed action, whether it is the Fada'iyan-e Islam or the Fada'iyan-e Khalq, the motivation is honorable, not criminal... But our critique is of the method, not the goal. If any method is permissible for any goal, and if all utopianists, or as some say, idealists of the world, set out to implement their ideals and use the method of terror, then, as philosophers say, conflict arises and civil war occurs. So terrorism is not the solution. Therefore, the label of terrorist for Jazani and his group is not only not an insult, but, as I will elaborate in Mehregan 42, it is the very essence of fairness towards them.

Mr. Ghouchani! There is no shortage of criticisms regarding your editorial either. You seem to have a strong interest in constructing intellectual and political schools, which is not inherently bad. But the reality is that these schools you construct in your articles and base your analysis upon are largely abstract. In this recent example, you speak of two schools: the "Institute for Research in Planning and Development" (disciples of the Austrian School) and the "Bureau for Cultural Studies and Research of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance" (devotees of the Frankfurt School). I think you have made a mistake in attributing the Bureau for Cultural Studies and Research to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. You probably meant the Institute for Cultural Studies and Research, which was renamed the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies in 1993. If we validate this point, Farhadpour's presence at this institute is limited to editing two special issues of the quarterly journal Farhang under the titles Phenomenology 1 and Phenomenology 2, and nothing more; therefore, there is not much scent of founding an intellectual school, at least at that juncture. Now, regardless of whether we believe in the self-conscious existence of these two schools or not, your perception of the relationship between the state and such institutions and schools in Iran is very maximalist. To imagine that the government of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani looked with need to the research of, say, the Institute for Research in Planning school and advanced the government's development plans step-by-step according to the research of the disciples of the Austrian School is a bit simplistic. Of course, this is a small side note to that article. The main criticisms of the critique of Yousef Abazari's statements still stand. The general question here is: why do you ignore the concrete world to make the components of journalistic articles fit together?

I am glad that amidst this uproar, you have read that critique critically, but I feel it necessary to point out a few things:

1- A part of this editorial was actually the editorial for the first issue of the Mardom-e Emrooz newspaper, which, due to the newspaper being newly established and dying young, was not much noticed. However, Dr. Abazari told me in a meeting that he saw that critique as one of the most serious critiques of his opinion and is determined to provide an adequate response. We too have been eager for months, and indeed years, for Dr. Abazari's new writings and are proud that Mehregan has, over these years, provided a space for serious discussion about neoliberalism and neo-Marxism. We have even proposed a debate with Dr. Ghaninejad to Dr. Abazari several times, which he has not accepted.

2- Incidentally, I precisely mean that very Center for Cultural Studies and Research of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, whose name appears in the masthead of the first 15 issues of Arghanoon and on its spine, and Mr. Morad Farhadpour had articles in all issues of that journal.

3- I did not say that governments need institutions, but that institutions are influential in shaping the thought of governments. Undoubtedly, the role of research centers such as the Presidential Center for Strategic Research, the Expediency Discernment Council, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Planning and Development, the Faculty of Economics at Allameh Tabataba'i University, the Institute for Religion and Economics, Hosseiniyeh Ershad, the Kiyan Circle, etc., in the ideas and programs of governments cannot be ignored.

4- It is strange that you, as a cyber and print journalist, still consider writing a journalistic article an accusation! Writing articles, especially for cultural magazines and the press, is no different from writing for scientific journals, and you still have not clarified where the oversimplification in the article occurred. This article, of course, is ongoing and will, God willing, become a treatise.

But finally, I would like to add a point to your points:

Mehrnameh is a text, and making extra-textual references to it, as long as they are not documented, is unethical. One can say our words are wrong, but one cannot dismiss Mehrnameh from the field with grand, important words and slander. There is no need for an oath that our critique (and this "our" encompasses a diverse spectrum of Mehrnameh's writers, not all of them) of religious intellectualism and leftist intellectualism is an intellectual critique, not a political one. Mehrnameh has a viewpoint, but it arrives at this viewpoint through dialogue, not monologue. Mehrnameh is an invitation to dialogue...

Source : Farhang Emrooz