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