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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Alternative Sociology: Probing into the Sociological Thought of Allama M. T. Jafari Prologue Rudolf J. Siebert[^1] Professor of Religion and Society Department of Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA Seyed Javad Miri’s book “Alternative Sociology Probing into the Sociological Thought of Allama M. T.

Jafari’’ deals fundamentally with the modern antagonism between the religious and the secular, the sacred and the profane, religious revelation and profane enlightenment, faith and autonomous reason.

Erich Fromm and the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School defined religion as non-authoritarian, non-dogmatic humanistic X-experience, as movement toward Universality and Wholeness, as longing for the totally Other than the horror and terror of nature and history, for perfect justice, for unconditional love, and as the hope, that the murderer shall not triumph over the innocent victim, at least not ultimately.

They defined enlightenment with Sigmund Freud as the attempt to put Ego, where Id is, and as making the Unconscious conscious, as the effort, to free people from their fears, and to make them masters of their fate. Seyed Javad Miri and his great teacher Allama M. T. Jafari stand on the humanistic, scientific side, being at the same time open toward the religious side.

Both humanistic scholars have contributed much in theory and praxis to the prevention of alternative Future I - the entirely administered society, and of alternative Future II - the fully militarized society, and to the arrival of a possible alternative Future III - a free and just society, in which not only personal autonomy and universal, i.e., anamnestic, present, and proleptic solidarity, but also religion and enlightenment would be reconciled.

Seyed Javad Miri, reflects in his new book on the life work of Allama Jafari including mysticism, philosophy, jurisprudence, art, literature natural and social sciences and poetry. He introduces Allama Jafari’s work and its great Iranian wisdom, which reached a climax in Cyrus, and was different from Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome, their mythos, logos, and ethos, the seedbed societies of the Western civilization, into the globalizing modern Occident: Europe and America.

Doing so, he identifies the limits of the present day secular natural and social sciences in understanding and comprehending reality.