Language of Religion and Qurʾan According to Imam Khomeini (ra) and Western Philosophers

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PhD, Comparative Exegesis

2 Student of Level IV, the Islamic Seminary of Qom

Abstract

Today, the language of religion is one of the issues in the philosophy of religion in the West that is largely influenced by its applications. For example, when it is said that God spoke to Moses, does it mean that God has a material body that spoke to Moses with a tongue or does it imply something else? In other words, is the language of religion real or is it mysterious and symbolic and has gradually entered the Islamic world. Writers and intellectuals occasionally engage in discussing this topic. And because we are Muslims and our heavenly book is the Holy Quran, we decided to see how the language of our religion, which is the language of the Holy Quran, is reflected in the works, speeches and writings of late Imam Khomeini. The present article is a comparative study of Western philosophers' theories on the language of religion and Imam Khomeini's beliefs about the language of the Qur'an in the fields under discussion. Therefore, I collected Imam Khomeini's views from his scattered and diverse works, which was almost a difficult task, and then organized this discussion. I do admit that there are flaws in this study but the conclusion drawn is that just as Imam Khomeini's statements suggest his being submerged in Islam, they clearly indicate that he was also well-versed in philosophy. He believed that the language of our religion is indicative of the reality. He also believed that people's understanding of the Quran is valid but it is not authoritative.  He considered words to be the subject for the soul of meanings. Therefore, the true meaning of the text and words is considered to be fixed and trans-historical, and its examples are considered to change in the cycle of history.

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