Religious pluralism in Iran

Abstract

This article spells out the potential contributions to research about religious pluralism that stem from different perspectives about globalization. The approach challenges the conventional thesis of “the clash of civilizations,” which stresses the importance of challenges that have been raised by extremist and ignores publicly tolerated and moderate perceptions of Islam especially in Iran that have emerged with globalization. When the world of Islam is imagined as a world of fundamentalism and terror, there is no choice except for “the clash of civilizations.” The question examined here is: does the world of Islam – in this case Iran – really take into account fundamentalism as prior discourse? The findings show that despite the many forces in the world beliefs, trends, and attempts to highlight the thesis of “the clash of civilizations,” the people of the world (in this research, high-school students in Tehran, the capital of Iran) mostly recognize the diversity and plurality of other religions and believe that religious pluralism should be taken into consideration as prior discourse in this context. The main focus of this paper concentrates on the micro-level of religious pluralism that depicts personal acceptance of multiple worldviews in religion from Tehranian high-school students' point of view.

Keywords:

• religion
• pluralism
• religious pluralism
• globalization
• tolerance
• Iran

Notes

¹Roland Robertson, ‘Global Millennialism: A Postmodern on Secularization’ in Peter Beyer (ed) Religion, Globalization, and Culture (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden 2007) 9–34.

²E Fuat Keyman, ‘Modernity, Secularism and Islam: The Case of Turkey’ (2007) 24(2) Theory Culture Soc 215.

³Bryan S Turner, ‘Religious Authority and the New Media’ (2007) 24(2) Theory Culture Soc 117.

⁴Peter Beyer, ‘Globalization and the Institutional Modeling of Religions’ in Peter Beyer (ed) Religion, Globalization, and Culture (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden 2007) 167–86 (167).

⁵A Soroush, ‘2009 Official Website of Abdolkarim Soroush’ Retrieved 2009, from Daily Tsite, German Newspaper's Interview with Soroush (March 2009), http://www.drsoroush.com/Persian/Interviews/P-INT-20100220-JonbeshSabzShekastNapazirAst.html

⁶Ole Riis, ‘Religious Pluralism in a Local and Global Perspective: Images of the Prophet Mohammed Seen in a Danish and a Global Context’ in Peter Beyer (ed) Religion, Globalization, and Culture (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden 2007) 431–52.

⁷George van Pelt Campbell, ‘Religion and Phases of Globalization’ in Peter Beyer (ed) Religion, Globalization, and Culture (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden 2007) 281–302 (286).

⁸William A Stahl, ‘Religious Opposition to Globalization’ in Peter Beyer (ed) Religion, Globalization, and Culture (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden 2007) 335–54 (337).

⁹Carlyle Thayer, ‘Radical Islam and Political Terrorism In Southeast Asia’ in Terence Chong (ed) Globalization and its Counter-Forces in Southeast Asia (Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asia Studies 2008).

¹⁰Kamran Daneshjoo, Aftab News (June 2011) <http://www.aftabnews.ir/vdcfjcdytw6dxxa.igiw.html>

¹¹A Soroush (n 5).

¹²M. Khatami, Dialogue of Civilizations (Tehran, Tarhe No. 2009).

¹³Ibid.

¹⁴Professor AbdolKarim Soroush is a well-known Iranian religious philosopher. From the year 2000 onward he has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University teaching Islam and Democracy, Quranic Studies and Philosophy of Islamic Law. Also a scholar in residence at Yale University, he taught Islamic Political Philosophy at Princeton University in the 2002–03 academic year. In 2003–04 he was a visiting scholar at the Wissenschaftkolleg in Berlin.

¹⁵A Soroush, The Straight Paths (Tehran, Serat Publication 1999).

¹⁶Ibid. 2.

¹⁷Ibid. 3.

¹⁸Ibid. 4.

¹⁹Ibid. 18.

²⁰Ibid. 19.

²¹Ibid. 26–27.

²²Ibid. 5.

²³Ibid. 36.

²⁴M a Kadivar, Tradition and Secularism (Tehran, Serat Publication 2003).

²⁵Ibid.

²⁶Ibid.

²⁷J. Sobhani, Religious Pluralism (Ghom, Institute of Imam Sadegh 2006).

²⁸Ibid.

²⁹Jürgen Habermas, ‘Intolerance and Discrimination’ (2003) 1(1) Int J Constitut Law 2.

³⁰Ibid. 3.

³¹Ibid.

³²Manochehr Dorraj, ‘The Crisis of Modernity and Religious Revivalism: A Comparative Study of Islamic Fundamentalism, Jewish Fundamentalism and Liberation Theology’ (1999) 46 Social Compass 225–40 (229).

³³Riis (n 6) 431.