In the Muslim world today, especially concerning Iran’s Islamic Revolution, religious activism has been re-institutionalized and the process of Islamic revivalism emerged as a broad social movement that confronts the challenge of modernism. In most of these countries, many Muslim youths who mostly belong to the middle and lower classes of society, consider Islam as a factor that relieves them from hopelessness and self-alienation and provide a practical model of political, economic and cultural life within the parts of the world dominant by the West. (Murden, ibid.: 253-278)
Still, Islam is a cultural force throughout the Muslim world as well as the Middle East and located in a period when the secular countries following the Western ideologies had no practical gains in the efforts to renovate and modernize their communities. but Islam has established, organized, and strengthened itself through political culture.
The increasing successes of Islamists in gaining chairs of parliaments and political positions in countries such as Turkey, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Sudan certainly pave the way for better relationships between Muslim and Western nations in the future. The case of the Turkish Islamist parliament that opposed the utilization of the country’s resources and lands for attacking Iraq in 2003 or its anti-Zionist activities are clear expressions of that transition.
Nowadays especially in many Muslim countries, the long-term period of blind imitation of Western culture has been superseded by the rejection of the culture. The emergence and development of the political culture of Islamic resistance through the framework of Samuel P. Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” theory was introduced as the heart of Islamic civilization that challenges the Western model. (Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”)
However, this culture clearly and structurally differs from what was called Islamic fundamentalism. The Islamic fundamentalism developed right after the 9/11 attacks when Usamah bin Laden’s movement that predominantly focused on violent trends and militant resistance emerged. This concept became the pretext for extending the United States’ power throughout the world.
The fact is that the unchanging principles and fundamentals of the epistemology of the Islamic Revolution set the background for challenging the discourse of globalism, spreading and developing the culture of liberal democracy and defeating other cultures while constituting power and willingness for interaction with aspects of global multiculturalism. The issue of interaction between Iran’s Islamic Revolution and globalism may differ from the interaction between states and globalism; the states either resist during the process of interaction or being dissolved but the Islamic Republic of Iran arose from a revolution that includes its own epistemological factors and principals. Accordingly, these principals are able to provide the analytical bases and particular perception of issues relating to globalism and therefore strengthening the Islamic Republic of Iran’s power either in standing up against and/or having positive interaction with the process of globalization. This is done in a way that would increase grounds for resistance or even making impacts on some of the universal cultural trends and define a distinguished model of governance, power and political system in utilizing the opportunity of globalization so that the continuance and development of t he Islamic Republic of Iran are guaranteed.
In reality, the challenge that the Islamic Republic of Iran runs into concerning globalization is that on the one hand due to the epistemological structure of the Islamic Revolution the globalization cannot be ignored and on the other hand, the Islamic Revolution may not let its fundamentals i.e., hard and soft security including aspects of economic and political developments, scientific growth, welfare etc. being brought into question. Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic of Iran through three decades have always confronted serious threats that removed the possibility of forming a peaceful atmosphere for creating an ideal society. Opposing the big powers with the Islamic Republic, the war between Iraq and Iran, plots, terrorist activities, cultural raids, nuclear challenges etc. are among these threats. However, since removing the boundaries is one of the most significant features of globalization and drawing historical, intellectual and even geographical lines is not possible for cultures, redefinition of conceptual and objective frameworks for a system derived from the revolution would be necessary.
Likewise, as Giddens states, today's humans are not merely receiving messages and concepts, but also a type of mutual connection and fertility has occurred. Also, from an epistemological perspective, the globalization of culture has significantly affected the fundamentals of modernism. It was assumed that through the frameworks of enlightenment of modernity, creating a humane-universal culture based on rational thoughts is simple and humans could reach salvation under the shadow of scientific consideration, technological accomplishments and developments of self-belief, but globalization has made such assumptions as fruitless. Thus, we may state that globalization through disarranging three concepts of basis, unity and the goal of ethnicity, has challenged the West for creating a unified identity based on European humanity. Accordingly, the rightness of the fundamental motto as well as epistemological aspects of the Islamic Revolution based on which methods other than modernity for creating humanity and its identity are conceived. However, it should be noted that on the other hand, this has challenged the fundamental terms of the Islamic Revolution regarding identity. If defining the term as the possibility of developing an Islamic culture – a world based on pure Islamic thoughts upon which salvation is obtained, then globalization would be a challenge to the concepts of “redemptive Islam” and “universal Islamic culture” through which serious intellectual threats and the soft war would confront the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This is the most important challenge of a country that has been built upon the ideals and ideologies of the Islamic Revolution. It should be noted that globalization simultaneously considers the emergence and flourishment of the “Islamic Resistance” and “Islamic Revolution” as distinguished cultures, cultural resistance and the effort of universal culture. This is the paradoxical point of globalization. In fact, when we look at the issue of globalization (globalizing) as a project we would talk about a hidden power responsible for changing the world, which goes toward the dominance of liberal democracy as a predominant culture of global capitalism. In case we define the matter of globalization as a process, then as the same, it could be a success for the West it also addresses the emergence of Islamic culture.
In this course, political initiatives and governing patterns that the Islamic revivalists accomplished during the 1970s especially due to the success of Iran’s Islamic Revolution developed an Islamic state with the help of Islamic laws and culture that may accept any type of innovation for better administration of matters as well as the people being the real authority within the frameworks of divine rulings. Iran’s Islamic Revolution provided enough power for the exemplification and revival of Islamic thought, political and social culture in managing the affairs of the Muslim communities and therefore presented a unique model in contrast to the social-political model of Western governance. This has led to the strengthening of Islamic culture against the process of globalization of the culture of Western liberal democracy.
Globalization witnesses the spread of the ideas of the Islamic Revolution especially through the Muslim world and that this Revolution inspires a form of resistance against Western injustice and oppressions. The Islamic Republic that had been established on the idea of Iran’s Islamic Revolution gradually turned into an influenced, powerful and strong state in the way of interacting with the world nations but, one of the epistemological challenges that globalization brought for the Islamic Republic is the formation of this theory within the international correlations that “West” is the only winner of the modern world.
A theory that is exposed to structural paradoxes and critical challenges and indicates the triumph of liberal democracy over other ideological types. (Fukuyama, The End of History and Triumph of Liberalism: 3-18) in other words, liberal democracy is no longer a mere ideology; rather it indicates a method of living. We have undermined the dominance of liberal democracy. Therefore, although the portrait of globalization offered by the West seems to be overstated, it should be noted that neo-capitalism, while relying on methods of the globalizing economy and politics, tries to increasingly assimilate the whole world through its unified logic. Indeed, this has met various structural inconsistencies some of which are the economic crisis of capitalism since 2007. Yet, one of the most important obstacles in the way of epistemology is that in coming years the world is being shaped in accordance with two sides i.e., “democracy and Islamism.” The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq by the American army in 2002 and 2003 respectively, was occurred because of such bipolarity and implementation of the method of the clash of civilizations.
Another case of epistemological interactions between globalization and the Islamic Revolution has happened within the arena of intellect. Globalization through the removal of time and space boundaries has made the social relations to experience fluidity and a type of self-awareness with respect to the universe as one place being shaped. In such a perspective, new meanings of humanity would emerge that are not corresponding with traditional and even modern concepts of humanity. Human beings by the means of technological instruments have overcome the geographical places and thus caused their early bright identity to turn into a changing, obscure and manifold one. Therefore, the permanence of identities and new formation of them as obvious and bright, as long as they emanate from territorial basis and learned national customs, would face serious challenges in the era of globalization.
Nevertheless, since the culture that has emanated from Islamic persistence and Islamic Revolution is founded on an eternal epistemological and normative Islamic basis, it certainly would pave the way for strengthening and reconstruction of distinguished Muslim identity; it means even though the time of changing identities of cultural globalization, still the formation of a pure Muslim identity is possible. Even the landscape of “postmodernism” which maintains the cultural and intellectual challenges for globalization and lack of an ideal and ultimate truth, relativism, the existence of linguistic obstacles for understanding and expressing truth and the elimination of para-narrations, is practically contrasted with the epistemological fundamentals of the Islamic Revolution. Spreading such a new viewpoint persuaded some to say that a new type of theology has emerged within which human being is regarded as the central point of the universe but he would neglect his divine vicegerency in order to be considered as an element among other factors of the universe. This vague picture of the position and dignity of secular man in the universe meets conflicting differences with the definition of human being presented by the last modern revolution in the world i.e., the Islamic Revolution. Within the discourse of the Islamic Revolution, a human being with a bright identity would go toward a unified world. Islam would form the basis and existential purpose of human beings and constitutes a community within which personal and social interactions are shaped in accordance with faith, sacrifice and self-devotion; the leader as the head of the community holds the responsibility of leading people towards God. Based on such an understanding of society and man, we may say there is a single truth beyond humans’ perception. Also, there is always an ongoing fight between “we (Islam)” and others with respect to reaching the truth.
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