Republication of the Seven Articles

The website of Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari wrote in a post on 15 Dey 1395: The seven articles below, which are being republished, are the very ones in which the present writer, with numerous arguments, called into question the validity of jurisprudential ijtihad in political, economic, and social matters in the present age and proposed to the esteemed Marajiʿ of Taqlid that, based on the content of these articles, they personally engage in a debate with their author.

Now that, unfortunately, the gentlemen's refusal has become clear, these articles are once again being presented to the interested public so that they may be subjected to the scrutiny and reflection of the people of insight. If those respected scholars who had declared their readiness to debate with this writer were to critique the content of these articles and send it to this website, their writing will be published in full, without any omission. It should also be mentioned here that some of this writer's critics, in their recent reproaches and addresses directed at me, provided numerous pieces of misinformation that caused me surprise; since one of those pieces of information relates to the distortion of the record of my 18 years of study at the Qom Seminary, I deem it necessary to correct it here. I do not recall having been a seminary pupil of Dr. Rezaei's teacher, namely Ayatollah Sobhani. But what I do recall is that in the advanced lectures on the Principles of Jurisprudence (Usul al-Fiqh) that the late Ayatollah Shariatmadari held at the Hojjatiyeh Mosque in Qom, Mr. Sobhani, Mr. Makarem Shirazi, this writer, and a number of other scholars would sit together and benefit greatly from the late scholar's copious meticulous investigations.

Those seven articles are as follows:

1- Clarifying the Point of Dispute with the Jurists (Part One) (21 January 2014)

2- Clarifying the Point of Dispute with the Jurists (Part Two) (10 February 2014)

3- If 'Daesh' Were to Ask the Jurists (16 July 2014)

4- The Theoretical Foundations of Daesh (21 July 2014)

5- How the Theological and Jurisprudential Foundations Have Collapsed (26 April 2015)

6- That Understanding Which Is Impossible (26 July 2015)

7- Why Has the Era of the Science of Usul and Jurisprudential Ijtihad Come to an End? (10 February 2016)

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Download pdf of all 7 articles "The Seven Articles" in a zip file

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