An-Najah Staff

The Islamic concept that suffered, and still, from the preservation thought became close at hand today to the pliant thought. This thought does not necessarily mean taking from the other without an emending methodology. What is needed is a confidence to refresh people's Islam and a confidence through which the contemporary Islamic theory, that is still being introduced in old and deeply closed forms or as very open to the extent of identification with the others, can be built. At the time when the political industry was a challenge proposing its ideas as a pattern of advancement, it was crucial to look for Islamic ways to cope up with it; adoption, rejection or intersection. However, the confidence method requires the Muslim to deconstruct the Western development into its basics and later to know which ways are more advantageous for relations with it. But as it was a mistake that Islam is to be introduced as a mere moral speculation in face of a complete economical, political and societal system, taking 'ashurah' model as contradiction only was of importance. This research is of eight chapters, six of them are primary chapters, each of which deals with the components of the political development in Islam and the West. Then, establishing the origins of 'ashurah' along with its basic and additional concepts and towards building the Islamic theory of 'ashurah' as a developmental, live and contemporary model capable of facing the forensic and practical challenges. The second chapter argues that the western concept of development suffers from the crisis of its boundedness by the material framework due to the fact that it is interested in the economical stability, satisfaction of needs and the ignorance of all other values or the attempt to secularize and adapt them accordingly. In the third chapter the researcher concludes that any discussion of development in the frame of Islam must be cared for through the cultural and moral field and measuring the degree of its relatedness to the economical field. Most important is that Islamic ideological alternatives are to be grounded to address realism and criticize excursiveness in the subjection of contexts without stopping at the Islamic circle but rather exceeding in putting a method for an Islamic refinement of knowledge. In the fourth chapter, the researcher found that 'ashurah' is a comprehensive extension of the horizontal dimension in which the mind and the revelation conform to one another. As for the vertical dimension, it is extensive and broad in that it does not halt by the political dimensions; it is a life a Muslim runs that begins from his/her weaning and ends in the nation as an inseparable attribute such as faith and praying. The chapter also shows that the position of 'ashurah' among the basic Islamic concepts such as monotheism, justice, freedom, opinion of the majority, religion and succession, is pure and strong since 'ashurah' is the balance formula between the absolute and the relative, the little and the much, the inherent and the social and between the individual and the mass. In short, 'ashurah' is the Islamic safety valve among various values and their requirements or associations. In the fifth chapter, the position of 'ashurah' among the additional concepts emerging from the basic ones like the nation, the legitimacy, the rule, the multiplicity, the majority and the state is that they are concepts that cannot be understood without 'ashurah'. The nation is the bowl around which people's 'shurah' goes whereas legitimacy does not come to pass without an understanding and productive interaction with this 'Ashurah'. The rule is a formula in which the fixed speech of God interacts with the changing human realism with all its implications for which a collective mind cooperates to accomplish it that is regulated by the nation's authority and whose existence is guaranteed by people's consultation and their continuum interaction. However, the state is closer to successiveness and rejection of power or money monopolization. On account of that, the state as a term, from the Islamic point of view, possesses an organizational neutral attribute whose system exists only in people's consultation and in their public interest. As for the majority, it is 'ashurah`s mechanism for determination because changing opinions does not necessarily lead to one comprehensive opinion deterring the nature of the inevitable disagreement among people. From an Islamic point of view, multiplicity affirmed respect to others` privacy and justice towards them as equal to Muslims. The criterion for this is people's 'shurah' which is determinative for their public interest. In the sixth chapter, the researcher found that the imaginative vision of 'ashurah', by virtue of its relationship with the basic Islamic concepts that emerged from it in the policy and rule affairs, has these seven bases: the nation is the source of the decision, the caliphate is a contact, the man is rational and so s/he is free and responsible. Multiplicity within Muslims is a competition in the public interest whereas it is an affirmation of freedom within the non-Muslims which means that the peaceful transmission of power in binding documents and guarantees is possible. In general, we can say that the results of the research are direct not only in building the Islamic 'shurah' theory and showing its position among the Islamic basics for political development, but it was also important in emphasizing its dynamism in the political, societal and interpretative activity. This actually makes it possible to create an Islamic denotative ideological advancement along with a human and honorable life as well as freedom open to the person and to the another.