The foundations of "cosmopolitanism" in Islamic thought from the perspective of Ayatollah Motahhari

Cosmopolitanism is one of the most significant issues in Western political thought during the classical, modern, and contemporary periods, and it has serious adherents as one of the approaches to globalization today. In contrast to globalization, the ideal of cosmopolitan thought is the development of universal moral models or the establishment of global political institutions to establish a  global governance. Although globalization is one of the new topics that was extensively studied in the 1990s and after Ayatollah Motahhari’s martyrdom, and therefore there is no direct reference to it in his works, his thought has a strong capacity to process a theory about the world. According to Ayatollah Motahari, because human societies have a single substance, they can also have a single form; thus, it is possible to establish a “human and monotheistic society.” This article explains the origins of the world from the perspective of Ayatollah Motahhari through a combination of description and analysis. According to Ayatollah Motahhari, the three foundations of worldview are anthropological, sociological, and cosmological. The anthropological foundation is analyzed based on human nature and evolution, the sociological foundation is analyzed based on the independent existence of society and the legitimacy of society, and the cosmological foundation is analyzed based on world unity and world membership. In two respects, Ayatollah Motahari’s perspective differs from other perspectives on the patriotic world: a. introducing some new fundamentals; B. providing a new account of some common ground for the global community. Because some Western thinkers have urged Muslims to study the intellectual legacy of Western philosophers in order to keep up with global trends, the study of the world based on the perspectives of Muslim thinkers is necessary. By explaining the foundations of cosmopolitanism in this article and proposing to investigate the effects and consequences of cosmopolitanism from his perspective, he lays the groundwork for proposing a theory about cosmopolitanism based on Ayatollah Motahhari’s views.