{"id":35651,"date":"2026-02-11T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T11:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/videos\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T08:11:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T07:11:16","slug":"spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi","status":"publish","type":"videos","link":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\/","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual poetry, hermeneutics and theology in contemporary Shi’i Iran: Soroush, Shabestari, Malekian and R\u016bm\u012b"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paper presented at the fifth international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel)<\/a>, held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. Constance Arminjon<\/strong> (EPHE\u2013PSL, chair “Intellectual History of Contemporary Shi’ism”) spoke as part of Theme 1 \u2014 Ethics and aesthetics in Islamic heritage.<\/em><\/p>\n

Summary of the paper<\/h3>\n

In contemporary Iran, “classical” spiritual poetry is not only a heritage that lives on in memory and is venerated near the tombs of \u1e24\u0101fe\u1e93, Sa\u02bfd\u012b and others. It irrigates the theological and even juridical reflections of religious scholars and philosophers of all orientations. On the one hand, they illustrate their arguments by quoting the spiritual poets of the medieval period, most of whom were Sunnis. On the other, some theologians and philosophers draw on the poets to devise innovative propositions for the doctrine of faith as well as for moral theology and for dogmatics.<\/p>\n

Within their ample poetic heritage, these authors give a privileged place to Jal\u0101l al-D\u012bn R\u016bm\u012b (1207\u20131273) and to his Mathnaw\u012b<\/em>. The philosopher \u02bfAbd al-Kar\u012bm Soroush (b. 1945) maintains multiple relations with the poet. Not only are his works on epistemology and on “new theology” (in his own terms) punctuated by abundant quotations from R\u016bm\u012b, but he has edited and taught his works. By combining modern European philosophical hermeneutics and the meditation of R\u016bm\u012b, the theologian Mo\u1e25ammad Mojtahed Shabestari (b. 1936) has striven, since the mid-2000s, to rethink moral theology and dogmatics, including the dogma on the Qur’an. Finally, the philosopher Mo\u1e63\u1e6daf\u0101 Malekian (b. 1956) erects R\u016bm\u012b as a beacon in order to illuminate his questioning on the knowledge of God and his meditation on the place of silence and of the word in moral life.<\/p>\n

Considering the place of spiritual poetry in the religious culture of contemporary Shi’i Iran, this paper aims to analyse the relations established with R\u016bm\u012b by three innovative figures of theology and of the philosophy of religion.<\/p>\n

\nRead the panel synthesis by Hacene Kherchaoui<\/summary>\n
\n

This synthesis was written in the aftermath of the congress by Hacene Kherchaoui<\/strong>, under the Pluriel student-fellowship programme. It covers all four papers of the panel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ethics and aesthetics in Islamic heritage: history, language and philosophy<\/h4>\n

Held on Wednesday 11 February 2026, 12:15\u20132:00 pm, in Hall 1 of the Bishop’s Palace of the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, this panel was chaired by Wasim Salman. It brought together four speakers: Mounia Ait Kabboura (Royal Military College of Saint-Jean, Canada \/ Universit\u00e9 de Sherbrooke, CERC), a historian of philosophy and of contemporary religious studies; Aziz Hilal (Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies, Cairo), doctor in Arabic philosophy and specialist of Andalusian thought (Averroes, al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b); Constance Arminjon (EPHE\u2013PSL, chair “Intellectual History of Contemporary Shi’ism”), historian of contemporary Islamic doctrines and of hermeneutic renewals, joining by videoconference; and Essaid Labib (Chouaib Doukkali University, El Jadida, Morocco), a scholar working at the intersection of philosophy, aesthetics and gender studies. The panel explored the conceptual foundations of the articulation between ethics and aesthetics in classical Islamic thought, through major figures \u2014 Averroes, al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b, R\u016bm\u012b \u2014 and their contemporary receptions. Its coherence rested upon a shared refusal to separate the beautiful, the good and the true, and upon a conception of Islamic heritage as a living space of thought, open to dialogue and reinterpretation.<\/p>\n

Mounia Ait Kabboura and Aziz Hilal converge on an integrated conception of the true, the good and the beautiful. In Averroes, the universal Intellect grounds a cognitive pluralism in which the rigour of demonstration constitutes an aesthetics of logos<\/em> inseparable from an ethics of intellectual responsibility. In al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b, the doctrine of emanation (fay\u1e0d<\/em>) makes beauty not a supplement to the real, but the sensible manifestation of universal harmony: order, proportion and intelligibility are at once ontological criteria and aesthetic criteria. Constance Arminjon, for her part, showed that the spiritual poetry of R\u016bm\u012b actively irrigates the reflection of three contemporary Iranian philosophers \u2014 Soroush, Shabestari and Malekian \u2014 who take hold of it in order to renew moral theology and Shi’i dogmatics. Classical poetry thus becomes a hermeneutic instrument, a mediation between a medieval Sunni heritage and the demands of a contemporary religious thought. Essaid Labib, finally, analysed a passage from Averroes’s commentary on Plato’s Republic<\/em> to show that art \u2014 and music in particular \u2014 becomes there an argument in favour of social and political equality between women and men. Against Renan’s reading, he brought out the beginnings of an inclusive Islamic ethico-aesthetics, mobilising the frameworks of Foucault and of gender studies for a critical rereading of the classical text.<\/p>\n

The exchanges brought three main tensions to light. The first bears on the risk of anachronism: how are we to draw on classical thinkers to shed light on contemporary stakes without reducing their historical complexity? Raised in connection with both Averroes and al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b, this question remained open. The second concerns the internal coherence of al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b’s work: since the doctrine of emanation is absent from several of his treatises, the room questioned the possibility of a truly unified Farabian aesthetics. Finally, Arminjon’s paper gave rise to questions on the representativity of the Shi’i figures studied within today’s Iranian intellectual landscape, and on the institutional status of poetry within theology.<\/p>\n

The main contribution of this panel lies in the way it brings to light an integrated conception of knowledge, of the beautiful and of the good, across several traditions and periods of Islamic thought. By articulating medieval philosophy, mystical poetry and contemporary rereading, it shows the plurality of entries into Islamic heritage and its capacity to feed present-day reflections on pluralism, gender and intercultural dialogue. Its limits lie mainly in the absence of any questioning of the concrete \u2014 artistic and social \u2014 mediations through which these categories may have been embodied in effective practices. The density of Arminjon’s dossier (three authors, several centuries) would have deserved a longer space of discussion. Among the tracks left open: a systematic comparison of the theories of beauty in al-F\u0101r\u0101b\u012b and Averroes, and the study of non-Iranian receptions of mystical poetry in contemporary theological debates.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/details>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"date_tournage":"","lieu":"","nature_evenement":"","vt_type":"Conf\u00e9rence","vt_yt_views":66},"video_collection":[854],"class_list":["post-35651","videos","type-videos","status-publish","hentry","video_collection-congres-de-cordoue-2026"],"date_tournage":"","yoast_head":"\nSpiritual poetry, hermeneutics and theology in contemporary Shi'i Iran: Soroush, Shabestari, Malekian and R\u016bm\u012b - Pluriel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spiritual poetry, hermeneutics and theology in contemporary Shi'i Iran: Soroush, Shabestari, Malekian and R\u016bm\u012b - Pluriel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Paper presented at the fifth international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. Constance Arminjon (EPHE\u2013PSL, chair “Intellectual History of Contemporary Shi’ism”) spoke as part of Theme 1 \u2014 Ethics and aesthetics in Islamic heritage. […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pluriel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-07-25T07:11:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pluriel.fuce.eu\\\/en\\\/videos\\\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pluriel.fuce.eu\\\/en\\\/videos\\\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\\\/\",\"name\":\"Spiritual poetry, hermeneutics and theology in contemporary Shi'i Iran: Soroush, Shabestari, Malekian and R\u016bm\u012b - Pluriel\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pluriel.fuce.eu\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-02-11T11:15:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-07-25T07:11:16+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pluriel.fuce.eu\\\/en\\\/videos\\\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/pluriel.fuce.eu\\\/en\\\/videos\\\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pluriel.fuce.eu\\\/en\\\/videos\\\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pluriel.fuce.eu\\\/?lang=en\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Spiritual poetry, hermeneutics and theology in contemporary Shi’i Iran: Soroush, Shabestari, Malekian and R\u016bm\u012b\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pluriel.fuce.eu\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pluriel.fuce.eu\\\/\",\"name\":\"Pluriel\",\"description\":\"University Platform for Research on Islam\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pluriel.fuce.eu\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Spiritual poetry, hermeneutics and theology in contemporary Shi'i Iran: Soroush, Shabestari, Malekian and R\u016bm\u012b - Pluriel","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Spiritual poetry, hermeneutics and theology in contemporary Shi'i Iran: Soroush, Shabestari, Malekian and R\u016bm\u012b - Pluriel","og_description":"Paper presented at the fifth international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. Constance Arminjon (EPHE\u2013PSL, chair “Intellectual History of Contemporary Shi’ism”) spoke as part of Theme 1 \u2014 Ethics and aesthetics in Islamic heritage. […]","og_url":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\/","og_site_name":"Pluriel","article_modified_time":"2026-07-25T07:11:16+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\/","url":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\/","name":"Spiritual poetry, hermeneutics and theology in contemporary Shi'i Iran: Soroush, Shabestari, Malekian and R\u016bm\u012b - Pluriel","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/#website"},"datePublished":"2026-02-11T11:15:00+00:00","dateModified":"2026-07-25T07:11:16+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/spiritual-poetry-hermeneutics-and-theology-in-contemporary-shii-iran-soroush-shabestari-malekian-and-rumi\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/?lang=en"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Spiritual poetry, hermeneutics and theology in contemporary Shi’i Iran: Soroush, Shabestari, Malekian and R\u016bm\u012b"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/#website","url":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/","name":"Pluriel","description":"University Platform for Research on Islam","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/videos\/35651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/videos"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/videos"}],"acf:term":[{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"chercheur_tag","href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chercheur_tag\/430"},{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"chercheur_tag","href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chercheur_tag\/252"},{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"chercheur_tag","href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chercheur_tag\/768"},{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"chercheur_tag","href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chercheur_tag\/408"},{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"chercheur_tag","href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chercheur_tag\/242"},{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"chercheur_tag","href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chercheur_tag\/248"},{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"chercheur_langues","href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chercheur_langues\/321"},{"embeddable":true,"taxonomy":"chercheur_langues","href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/chercheur_langues\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"video_collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/video_collection?post=35651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}