Policy-making in Islamic humanities.

The transformation of humanities, aligned with resolving Iran's ecosystem issues and derived from authentic Islamic sources, provides a roadmap for transcendent progress and the formation of an Iranian-Islamic civilization. This transformation is achievable by transitioning the society from a consumer of knowledge to a producer. This transcendental goal requires collective determination, interaction, and collaboration among scholars of Islamic sciences and various humanities disciplines. Establishing guidelines that facilitate achieving this objective is essential.
Step 1: Critical Assessment of Existing Humanities:
The initial step in this transformation appears to be a fair assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of existing humanities scholarship, coupled with an intersubjective agreement among Iranian and Muslim scholars on the necessity of refining scholarly outputs within each humanistic discipline. Scientific advancement is contingent upon the impartial critique of past theories and signifies a vibrant scientific discourse and a progressive societal culture. It is crucial to investigate whether existing knowledge is founded on worldviews and perspectives that disregard truth and settle for realities detached from it, or whether they believe in truth and evaluate realities based on their congruence with it. The latter approach will strive to rectify realities to approximate truth.
The question of the extent to which human knowledge is based on human understanding is also significant. Do the generated descriptions and prescriptions possess the capacity to understand humanity irrespective of geographical environment and historical boundaries, or do they focus on resolving social issues based on the ethnography of the scholar's ecosystem? Perhaps differentiating scholarly outputs and theories based on anthropological boundaries is of paramount importance in determining whether they are locally relevant or globally applicable.
A third relevant question concerns the prescriptions of these sciences. Given the diversity of religions, denominations, and cultures, a crucial question arises: are the prescriptions offered in existing knowledge compatible with the culture, religion, and denominations of peoples other than those who originated the theories? Have the beliefs and convictions of the theory's proponents played a role in their perspectives? Do the theories have the capacity to formally recognize the right to preservation of other ecosystems, religions, and denominations? In any case, the import of humanities theories into countries and among diverse populations worldwide differs from that of natural sciences. Acknowledging this difference necessitates a proper evaluation of imported theories.
Step 2: Re-Examination and Capacity Assessment of Islamic and Iranian Sources:
The re-examination and capacity assessment of Islamic and Iranian sources relevant to the humanities constitutes the second step. Contemporary necessities and questions play a vital role in reinterpreting Islamic sources, especially the Quran, Sunnah, and rational insights. A mind sensitive to contemporary questions facilitates the identification of latent capacities within these sources. In this regard, Islamic sources are akin to nature, where new understandings and novel utilizations are driven by contemporary needs and inquiries. Therefore, natural science knowledge is not limited and confined to the interpretations of ancient scholars, and the acceptance of the unknown by past scientists has been the rationale for the inadequacy of past knowledge and the continuous scientific endeavor on nature throughout centuries.
Islamic sources are similar. It is essential for religious scholars, with their understanding of new issues and demands and the sensitivity these issues bring to their minds and studies, to engage in a renewed reading of revealed sources and rational reflections. However, this level of study is insufficient for producing humanities. These disciplines reach fruition through integration with contemporary ethnographical studies and an understanding of the social and cultural contexts of Muslim communities. Therefore, the new humanities are the product of new studies by religious scholars in collaboration with ethnographers. In the second step, these two studies, along with an assessment of the ecological and source capacities, should complement each other.
Step 3: Agreement on a Common Scientific Language for Critique and Production:
The third step is reaching an agreement on a common scientific language in the methods of critique and production of humanities. It is evident that valid religious knowledge is the product of agreement on scientific extraction and deduction methods. Examining the extent of social sciences' reliance on empirical methods and the possibility of relying solely on this scientific method in critiquing and reforming theories or producing humanities is of considerable importance. Are humanities propositions provable only through empirical methods? Should revealed theories be judged by this epistemological criterion, or is it possible to evaluate this epistemological method by the accepted methods of religious knowledge? Is a synthesis between these methods possible, or are these two methods parallel lines that never intersect? Ultimately, resolving the epistemological issue is one of the most complex steps in critiquing and producing humanities.
Step 4: Prioritizing Critique over Production:
The fourth step is prioritizing the critique of existing humanities over the production of Islamic humanities. It appears that any action in producing humanities is preceded by very clear and transparent critiques of existing humanities outputs, in such a way that the dominant discourse in existing humanities disrupts the peace of mind of the scientific community and convinces them of the necessity of change in the humanities. In this case, the motivation for producing religious knowledge suitable for the Muslim ecosystem increases, and maintaining the status quo becomes unjustifiable.
This issue of the journal includes a methodological discussion to understand the relationship between the principles of deduction in jurisprudence or the principles of extracting content from the Quran. This discussion addresses the possibility of using knowledge production methods in jurisprudence for use in the field of Quranic interpretation. Another article addresses Islamic anthropology and emphasizes the importance of Quranic anthropology in political science. It attempts to explain the extension of accepting the composite identity of humans in political science.
Three other articles relate to the sociology of the Quran. The first article discusses the factors of change and transformation from the Quran's perspective, the second discusses the role of social traditions in sustainable development from the perspective of the Holy Quran, and the third introduces the ideal society from Allameh Tabataba'i's viewpoint. The last article is dedicated to the philosophy of punishment from the perspective of the Holy Quran. We thank the esteemed authors and reviewers of the articles and hope that these discussions will be a step towards producing a Quran-based Islamic humanities discourse. “And success is from God.”