to report «iusnews»; The text that follows is an edited and supplemented portion of a speech delivered by Mehdi Jamshidi, a faculty member of the Institute for Culture and Islamic Thought, at the commemoration meeting for Allameh Mesbah Yazdi, held on January 14 (24th of Dey) at the Sadra Center for Islamic Humanities Research.
Allameh Mesbah, like a bubbling spring, rose from the parched and cracked bed of society and, in a period when a “highly decisive intellectual and political struggle” had taken shape, played an “unparalleled” and “historic” role. This was while he could have, like many others, chosen silence and avoided grappling with the “state secularism and intellectualist currents.” At that time, young people of the third generation, like myself, who were confronted with “subversive questions” and “foundational challenges,” were earnestly searching for an “intellectual refuge” in order to find “solid and firm answers” and to be “equipped” and “armed” in our confrontations and struggles.
It cannot be denied that there were those who made efforts in this regard and did not prefer comfort and seclusion. Yet, among them, no one was as “industrious” and “productive” as Allameh Mesbah, nor did anyone speak at his level with “argumentation” and “inter-subjectivity.” Now, as I look back, I truly realize that my intellectual possessions and accumulations, and whatever measure of truth and revolutionary identity I possess, all have been due to reliance upon him.
Among the issues that Allameh Mesbah addressed and resolved was the explanation of the existence of “disruptions in the evolutionary movement of the Revolution.” In that period, we clearly felt that the “evolutionary becoming of the Revolution” was facing ups and downs, and that this movement was confronted with certain “crises” and “difficulties.” Yet we could not provide a specific formulation of the problem, let alone succeed in solving it.
It was at this point that the book “Explorations and Challenges” was published in 2000 (1379 in the Iranian calendar), and in its first two lectures he devoted himself to explaining and clarifying this issue. This text, while simple and accessible to the public, contained hidden philosophical depths that only those of insight and contemplation could discern. In any case, he was able to show why the sacred and spiritual movement of the Revolution was afflicted by certain disruptions.
In this work, Allameh Mesbah looked at the issue of disruption from the perspective of “micro” and “agency-based” analysis and argued that, on the one hand, in the very early years of the Revolution’s victory, the peaks of revolutionary thought and personalities who possessed the highest ranks of revolutionary spirit were “martyred,” and in this respect the Revolution was struck by “poverty.” In this arena, the closest and most influential “circle of revolutionary disciples of Imam Khomeini” were eliminated one after another from the scene, and thus the management of the Revolution fell into the hands of forces most of whom were either unfamiliar with the “ideological foundations of the Revolution” or did not have such attachment and sensitivity toward them.
As a result, the Revolution, due to the policies implemented in subsequent years by these very individuals, faced challenges and constraints. In other words, Allameh Mesbah’s argument was that the Revolution, because of the “elimination of its major and central figures,” suffered from a “poverty of committed, history-making agents,” and this “shortage” and “deficiency” disrupted the evolutionary “leaping” and “accelerated” movement of the Revolution. Thus, “structural disruptions” have “agency-based origins,” and it is from this dimension that the Revolution has suffered serious harms and damages. This disruption, which was felt in the past, still exists today and remains a “strategic issue.” Perhaps it can be said that Ayatollah Khamenei’s reference to the necessity of preparing the ground for the “establishment of a young Hezbollah government” is a solution he has considered, at the threshold of the second phase of the Revolution, for such a disruption.
