Contemporary Jurisprudence

Scientific Session of the Institute for Contemporary Jurisprudential Studies on Justice and Public Culture

The 55th session of “Methodology Sundays,” presented by Hujjat al-Islam Dr. Mahdi Shajarian and critiqued by Hujjat al-Islam wal-Muslimeen Hassanali Aliakbarian, addressed the challenges of rationality and religious norms in contemporary society

The “Method on Sundays” session, organized by the Institute for Contemporary Jurisprudential Studies and the Office of Islamic Propagation, took place on Sunday, August 31, 2025. In this specialized session, Dr. Mahdi Shajarian, Assistant Professor in the Social Justice Studies Department at the Institute of Islamic Sciences and Culture, delivered a lecture on “The Impact of the Theory of Justice on the Methodology of Transforming Islamic Knowledge into Public Culture.”
Dr. Shajarian highlighted the significant challenge of the gap between jurisprudential norms, particularly social rulings, and public culture, identifying the differing perspectives on rationality in Islamic jurisprudence as a key factor contributing to this divide. He emphasized the need to move from a “narrow” rationality (aql-e maziq) to an “expansive” rationality (aql-e mowsa‘) capable of issuing rulings on specific cases, which could facilitate the transformation of religious norms into public culture.
Hujjat al-Islam wal-Muslimeen Hassanali Aliakbarian, the session’s critic, offered a differing perspective, stressing that the public should be acquainted with religious norms through explanation and dialogue rather than reconstructing those norms to align with social perceptions.
This session was the fifth in the summer series of “Methodology Sundays” and was held in collaboration with the Office of Islamic Propagation’s Desk for the Development and Empowerment of Islamic Sciences. Read more …

The Method of Transforming Islamic Knowledge into Public Culture with a Focus on the Ministry of Education

Analysis of Challenges and Solutions for Culturalizing Religion in the Education System

Examination of Challenges and Solutions for Culturalizing Religion in Iran’s Education System at the Fifty-Third Session of the “Methodology Sundays” Scientific Series
The scientific session “The Method of Transforming Islamic Knowledge into Public Culture,” in collaboration with the “Development and Empowerment of Islamic Sciences” desk of the Islamic Propagation Office, provided an opportunity to elucidate the theoretical foundations and practical experiences of the Ministry of Education in teaching religious knowledge, while also examining the shortcomings and obstacles in the path of religious education in schools and proposing solutions for improvement.
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The Forty-Ninth Scientific Session of the Institute for Contemporary Jurisprudential Studies

In the forty-ninth scientific session of the series of programs titled “Methodology Sundays,” the specialized session on “The Methodology of Transforming Theoretical Matters into Practical Ones, with Application to Jurisprudential Knowledge” was held virtually, organized by the Institute for Contemporary Jurisprudential Studies in collaboration with the Office for the Development and Empowerment of Islamic Sciences of the Islamic Propagation Office.
In this session, Dr. Seyed Hossein Shahrastani, a faculty member of the Research Institute of Islamic Culture and Art, analyzed the relationship between theory and practice in the history of philosophy, particularly in Islamic philosophy and its contemporary developments. Emphasizing the lack of attention to practical wisdom in the tradition of Islamic philosophy and the need for its redefinition, he explored various dimensions of this topic across four key areas: the integration of philosophy and religious tradition, the theory of credit-based knowledge, the contributions of contemporary philosophers, and the theory of innate disposition (fitra).
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