Typology of Intellectual Trends in Iran and the Arab World: First Step for Dialogue

The bitter fact of internal conflicts that the world of Islam is suffering from today has made the majority of thinkers to look for solutions. There is no way but dialogue to solve this complicated status quo. Following a review of the concept of dialogue and some of its specifications, this paper has employed “lived experience” to highlight the importance of Iranian-Arab dialogue and pave the way for its success in generalization of this pattern of dialogue into all other forms of dialogue in Islamic community. Then, pointing to some requirements and prerequisites of such a dialogue, in the first step, the paper has focused on mutual recognition of the two sides and proposed that the intellectual currents in Iran and the Arab world must be analyzed in view of the self and other through five factors of genealogy, situation, intellectual and religious fundamentals, social status and stance vis-à-vis major issues of the Islamic ummah. This needs establishment of a permanent secretariat at one of the institutes trustable to the Muslim thinkers in both Iran and the Arab world.