INVESTIGATIONS AND CHALLENGES

Title: INVESTIGATIONS AND CHALLENGES:
Discourses on Current Cultural, Sociopolitical and
Religious Issues
Author: Ghulam-husayn Muharrami
Project supervisor: Translation Unit, Central Office of Research,
Cultural Affairs Department, the Ahl al-Bayt (a) World
Assembly (ABWA)
Translator and typesetter: Mansoor Limba
Editor: Lari A. Allen
Revised by: Badr Shahin
Publisher: ABWA Publishing and Printing Center
First Printing: 2011
All rights reserved.


Publisher’s Foreword—15
Preface—17
CHAPTER 1: Our Responsibility in the Sphere of Culture (Part 1)—21
Responsibility-conscious or right-seeking man—21
The Principle of Balance between Responsibility and Capability—23
The Extent of Capability and Responsibility in the Sight of University and Seminary Professors—24
The Present Cultural and Moral Degeneration—25
Preservation of the Relative Balance between Elements of Guidance and Deviation in Every Age—27
Most of the Great Transformations Owed to the thinkers’ Ideas—29
Importance of the Cultural Revolution—32
The Role of Cultural Movements in the Perpetuity of the Revolution—33
CHAPTER 2: Our Responsibility in the Sphere of Culture (P. 2)—37
An Image of Iran Prior to Bahman 1357 AHS—37
The Most Serious Menace of the Monarchial Reign—38
Imam Khomeini’s (r) strategy in initiating political change—43
The degree of conviction of the officials of the Islamic system to the pristine precepts and values of Islam—45
Program of the Revolution’s enemies—46
The enemy’s infiltration into the executive organs—48
Summary and conclusion—51
CHAPTER 3: Religious Pluralism (Part 1)—53
The great crisis of our age—53
Pluralism, indulgence and negligence: tools at the hands of the crisis-mongers—55
Our heavy responsibility to the youth—56
What pluralists say?—58
A critique of the first proposition of the pluralists—60
The pluralists’ resort to another basis—61
The third attempt to prove pluralism—63
CHAPTER 4: Religious Pluralism (Part 2)—65
Involvement of the psychological factor in the emergence of pluralism—65
The social factor in the emergence of pluralism—66
Assessing the psychological motive in presenting pluralism—67
Assessing the social factor in presenting pluralism—69
historical account of Islam’s treatment of non-Muslims—70
First interpretation of religious pluralism—71
Assessment—72
Second interpretation of religious pluralism—74
Assessing the second interpretation—75
Third interpretation of religious pluralism—77
Assessing the third interpretation of religious pluralism—79
CHAPTER 5: Religious Pluralism (Part 3)—81
A review of the psychological motive in presenting pluralism—81
Explaining the verse, “Should anyone follow a religion other than Islam, it shall never be accepted from him”—82
Our responsibility toward freedom of religion and the ruling on the followers of other religions—84
A psychological point—85
Which philosophical or epistemological foundation can logically lead to pluralism?—87
Explaining pluralism by using the similitude of a prism—89
The theory on the unity of truth in the realm of religious knowledge—91
The difference of the marAji‘ at-taqlId’s religious edicts as nothing to do with pluralism—91
absence of difference in the domain of the essentials and fundamentals of Islam—93
Difference in the domain of the disputable matters in Islam and its explanation—94
Negation of pluralism in the declarative accounts and acceptance of it in ethical and moral issues—95
critique of pluralism in the realm of ethics and moral values—97
moral decrees of Islam as consonant with the true expediencies and corruptions—100
summary—101