Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I POLITICIZING OCCULT ISLAM
- Part II POPULAR SHIʿISM
- 4 Milieu, Childhood, Sanctity and Fame
- 5 From Conceptualization to Officialization of a Religio-political Ideology
- 6 Deficiency and Defectiveness of the Human Mind
- 7 Society Needs the Leadership of Jurists and/or Kings
- 8 Superstitious Education
- 9 Reconfigurating the Necessities of Belief
- 10 Majlesism as an Ideology
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- List of Books in the Series
8 - Superstitious Education
Fogging Minds, Fostering Resignation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I POLITICIZING OCCULT ISLAM
- Part II POPULAR SHIʿISM
- 4 Milieu, Childhood, Sanctity and Fame
- 5 From Conceptualization to Officialization of a Religio-political Ideology
- 6 Deficiency and Defectiveness of the Human Mind
- 7 Society Needs the Leadership of Jurists and/or Kings
- 8 Superstitious Education
- 9 Reconfigurating the Necessities of Belief
- 10 Majlesism as an Ideology
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- List of Books in the Series
Summary
Stupefaction implies a state of insensibility and disconnection with reality. It refers to a condition in which a person's common sense and reason becomes distorted or blunt. Whatever distorts or desensitizes the faculty to reason, rationalize and establish logical causal relations could potentially stupefy and dupe. Inverted or false consciousness may have many roots. The power of superstition to warp the senses is no less potent than hallucinatory or intoxicant substances. Religion-based superstition can provide individuals with a sense of righteousness that normal intoxicants usually do not. Constructing rules and laws based on arbitrary and bizarre conjectures and raising them to the status of religious recommendations, injunctions and necessities of belief deforms the natural thought process of believers, blurring their power of distinction between the real and the unreal. It also harms the appeal of the faith to a growing rational population. This make-believe method of argumentation and explanation produces a false consciousness, which views reason as standing on its head while furnishing its own unpalpable and unrealistic theories. Faced with fiction and fantasy passed off as faith by those who promote it as religion, the pious intent on safeguarding their religiosity and beliefs are forced to distrust reason, as its employment would contradict and undermine the imaginary construction. In this process, reason is portrayed as the enemy of faith.
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- Superstition as Ideology in Iranian PoliticsFrom Majlesi to Ahmadinejad, pp. 238 - 254Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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