Following the Islamic revolution of Iran in 1979, many books have been translated from Persian to Arabic, but most of them were religious, political, or were focusing on Velayet el-faqih and Imam Khomeini's and Ayatollah Khamenei thoughts. Few books have been published in Arabic about the roots of the contemporary religious thought in Iran and the most influential reformist thinkers on both religious and political tracks, except the translated books of the late Iranian thinker Ali Shariati in the early period of the revolution. Among these books translated into Arabic, were the books of the Iranian cleric Sheikh Mortada Motahari, the books of the well known thinker Abdulkarim Soroush, as well as the book of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami "Wave's Beam". 'The Trends of the Religious Contemporary Thought in Iran' is the book of the Iranian researcher Majid Mohammadi that has been published in Arabic to fill the vacuum in the Arabic library, which lacks objective and academic writings on this subject. Since more than a century, the Iranian people are facing intellectual crisis regarding the relation between science and religion, philosophy and revelation, ancient and modern, and between tyranny and freedom. In this long march, reformist thinkers have played a major role in shaping the Islamic mentality, discovering the methodological gaps, and proposing an alternative methodology to discover the intellectual and political crisis' factors. In this book, Mohammadi studies six Islamist thinkers who have contributed to the evolution of the critical religious thought in Iran since the beginning of the twentieth century to present, and that their influence is still active until today. Those thinkers played an important role in the critique and analysis of the contemporary religious thought. The researcher has selected those six thinkers from different periods from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and from distinctive orientations. The author started his study with the cleric Sheikh Mohamad Hussein Al-Naeni(died 1936) who was the thinker of the constitutional movement of Iran in 1903- 1909. He then focused on three thinkers: Sheikh Mortada Motahari, Ali Shariati, and Mehdi Bazergan who have played important roles in shaping the Islamic concepts and mobilizing the public before and during the revolution in Iran. The two other thinkers, Hussein Nasr and Abdulkarim Soroush, are contemporary and each of them represents an opposite trend to the other in terms of philosophy, Sufism or mysticism, religion and Western thought. The author wrote three theoretical introductions on his study methodology, explaining his methods and why he choose those thinkers and these fields of study. Mohammadi said he choose Sheikh Mirza al- Naeni, who is considered one of the most prominent scholars of jurisprudence and its principles, because he was, first, one of the few scholars who were interested in contemporary subjects, not as individual, but as Mujtahid or jurist. And secondly, because the contemporary period, particularly after the Islamic Revolution, where the jurisprudence was considered as a purposeful ideology and also a social program, has not witnessed a pure jurist that presents his theories in this framework. The works of the jurists, following the revolution, are a mix of mystical, philosophical, moral and jurisprudential principles, which merged with social objectives, and also mixed with Western ideas. However these studies have not been deep to the extent required. In the field of philosophical vision, Mohammadi chose Sheikh Mortaza Motahari(1919-1979), because this thinker's philosophical outlook had dominated his mystical - Sufi, or jurisprudential outlook. And because he was one of the religious establishment men, it was natural the predominance of for his jurisprudential view, but his personal desire and his era requirements have pushed him to adopt the philosophical view. The author could have study Motahari's teacher, the scholar Muhammad Hussein Tabatabai (1902- 1982), but he said that Motahari has combined the philosophical orientation of the teacher along with his interest in social and political issues. In the social field, Mohammadi considered Ali Shariati as the most prominent thinker, since he was the more effective one among other thinkers who are covered in this study. Mohammadi believes that the reason behind Shariati influence was due to the modernity of the Humanities academic studies, and the emergence of figures that have studied the principles of sociology as Shariati he has new approaches regarding the sociology of religion. Mohammadi considers that Soroush has used the epistemology and methodology vision in his book, because of his openness on the methodology and the modern philosophy from one hand, and his knowledge of traditional Islamic thought from the other hand. Soroush has aimed to get new answers in new forms, relying on the fact that the religious thought in Iran after the revolution, does not follow the modern era requirements. Bazergan was the most important thinker in Iran who raised scientific and experimental explanations of the religion. Bazergan grew up in a generation that made science its ideology, while the religious thought of this generation has to adapt to the ideas based on experimental sciences. At the Sufi - mystical vision, Mohammadi believes that there was no influential figure in this period, to represent this view and to defend it, so he chose the thinker Hussein Nasr because he tried to display the morale- Sufi spirit of the religion. Remarkably, Mohammadi did not choose Imam Khomeini as one of the most influential thinkers in Iran, during the last century, while his religious - political theory of Velayat e-faqih is still influential in Iran and the Shiite world. There is no doubt that Ayatollah Motahari, as Khomeini's student, expressed in his intellectual, philosophical and religious views, the trend of his teacher, Imam Khomeini and the Islamic Republic, but Motahari was killed at the first year of the revolution in 1979. He was favoring the theory of constitutionalism and believed in a limited authority of the jurist (velayat-e faqih) and the theory of consultative (Shura) of jurists, not the absolute authority of "velayat-e faqih" Khomeini was also known for his Sufi – mystic orientation, but Mohammadi preferred to choose Hussein Nasr to represent this trend. In fact, the theory of velayat-e faqih, which became famous with Khomeini, has been written by a Lebanese scholar during the Safavid era, Sheikh Ali bin Abdul-al Al-Karaki (died 940 H). He was the first Shiite jurist whose writings reflect indicators on the theory of state. He concluded that the jurist is appointed by the Imams and is considered their deputy. However, the first scholar who studied the issue of velayat-e faqih in detail and made it an independent doctrinal issue, was Sheikh Ahmed Al- Naraqi (died 1248 AH), during the Qajarite era. Hence, the importance of Khomeini is still in the implementation of the theory of velayat-e faqih and the founding of the the Islamic Republic in Iran, more than developing the theory itself.
