The present epoch is characterized by a trait over others: the renewed perception of uncertainty. It is the main engine of the current climate where one relentlessly looks for scapegoats to take the blame of the inability to understand. The possibility of analyzing configurations that the current paradigm cannot explain or understand, and which therefore condemns, is a ‘thinking differently’ (Rella, 1987) that leaves anyone displaced. Perhaps it is time to recognize that many of our frameworks of understanding are too rigid, preventing comprehension. Accepting the fact that culture is perpetually in fieri and that it resolves itself in coexisting and conflicting versions that focus on different themes has interesting consequences: it involves the denial of the absolutist claims of the dominant paradigm and, consequently, implies the synchronic coexistence of different structures of meaning. Without this awareness we tend to generalize: for example, we tend to group all Middle East peoples into categories defined a priori as ‘Arabs’, ‘Muslims’ or, worse, ‘Terrorists’, ignoring their diversity and variety. This is a legacy of Orientalism that leads to the analysis of different structures and phenomena using consolidated paradigms of Western culture (Said, 1978). A new inclusive paradigm is needed which should stimulate the knowledge and understanding of a world seems so distant and has so many facets within it. It is a paradigm, moreover, that can take into account the simultaneous presence of contradictory elements and make a new sense out of them. Iranian society is actually trying to do this: its population is able to make different points of view empirically cohabit, even though they are victims of the stereotypes of Western common point of view, being a majority Muslim nation – albeit of a less known branch – and on the borders of the so-called Arab world. It has based its essence on cohabitation, which becomes the founder of the spirit with which over time the Persians have faced the cultural clashes (Huntington, 1996) and that, despite creating uncertainty and misunderstanding at times, is still an example of the union of opposites. Therefore, that Iranian society pushes towards overcoming dichotomies and towards a complex qualitative balance and, through the analysis of the wrong perception that the West has of the Islamic world, we could discover something unexpected: the existence of more dominant paradigms and even more others to be reconstructed.

Coexist with Uncertainty - The ‘Persian Model’ and the Western Vision of the Islamic World / Rahiminia, Dariush. - In: ITALIAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW. - ISSN 2239-8589. - (2020). [10.13136/isr.v10i1.320]

Coexist with Uncertainty - The ‘Persian Model’ and the Western Vision of the Islamic World

Dariush Rahiminia
2020

Abstract

The present epoch is characterized by a trait over others: the renewed perception of uncertainty. It is the main engine of the current climate where one relentlessly looks for scapegoats to take the blame of the inability to understand. The possibility of analyzing configurations that the current paradigm cannot explain or understand, and which therefore condemns, is a ‘thinking differently’ (Rella, 1987) that leaves anyone displaced. Perhaps it is time to recognize that many of our frameworks of understanding are too rigid, preventing comprehension. Accepting the fact that culture is perpetually in fieri and that it resolves itself in coexisting and conflicting versions that focus on different themes has interesting consequences: it involves the denial of the absolutist claims of the dominant paradigm and, consequently, implies the synchronic coexistence of different structures of meaning. Without this awareness we tend to generalize: for example, we tend to group all Middle East peoples into categories defined a priori as ‘Arabs’, ‘Muslims’ or, worse, ‘Terrorists’, ignoring their diversity and variety. This is a legacy of Orientalism that leads to the analysis of different structures and phenomena using consolidated paradigms of Western culture (Said, 1978). A new inclusive paradigm is needed which should stimulate the knowledge and understanding of a world seems so distant and has so many facets within it. It is a paradigm, moreover, that can take into account the simultaneous presence of contradictory elements and make a new sense out of them. Iranian society is actually trying to do this: its population is able to make different points of view empirically cohabit, even though they are victims of the stereotypes of Western common point of view, being a majority Muslim nation – albeit of a less known branch – and on the borders of the so-called Arab world. It has based its essence on cohabitation, which becomes the founder of the spirit with which over time the Persians have faced the cultural clashes (Huntington, 1996) and that, despite creating uncertainty and misunderstanding at times, is still an example of the union of opposites. Therefore, that Iranian society pushes towards overcoming dichotomies and towards a complex qualitative balance and, through the analysis of the wrong perception that the West has of the Islamic world, we could discover something unexpected: the existence of more dominant paradigms and even more others to be reconstructed.
2020
uncertainty, Et/et, Persian model
01 Pubblicazione su rivista::01a Articolo in rivista
Coexist with Uncertainty - The ‘Persian Model’ and the Western Vision of the Islamic World / Rahiminia, Dariush. - In: ITALIAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW. - ISSN 2239-8589. - (2020). [10.13136/isr.v10i1.320]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11573/1411144
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