The History of Islamic Humanities in Contemporary Iran

The purpose of the present research is to study the history of Islamic humanities in contemporary Iran. To this aim, the method of descriptive analysis was used and the results showed that “the concept of Islamic humanities” was first developed by Seyed Jamal through reversing the modernist attempts of Sir Ahmad Khan during the encounter between the Muslim World and the West especially the Indian subcontinent, in terms of the concepts of “decline” and “reform”. Seyed Jamal’s made a smart distinction between “science and development” on the one hand, and “religion and tradition” on the other hand. This concept received attention, and after Arani’s self-initiated perception of Marxism, it led to the controversy between clericalism and left-winged Marxism in Iran. Both abovementioned intellectual traditions assumed the premise that philosophy is the mother of all science so the philosophy of clericalism was divided into atheist and Godly types, and thereafter the concept of Islamic humanities created in the writings of Seyed Jamal revived in encounter with Marxism. This controversy, that was in fact political, received attention once again after the Islamic revolution as a main political concept in the realm of science and entered a new phase with the concept of “cultural revolution”. This concept in terms of social and political issues after Islamic revolution in Iran is associated with some other concepts such as “building knowledge” and “theory making” in humanities as well as “reviving Islamic science and civilization”, “progress and development”, and “entering a new era with the maintenance of Islamic identity”, leading to controversial discussions.