Rouhani: Significant Costs Were Spent on 'Islamizing' Sciences, but No Results Were Achieved

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani stated that efforts by a group in the country to create 'Islamic sciences' have not been successful despite substantial expenditures, and these views do not have support in society. In a speech on Saturday, March 5, he said, 'Science is science and is not connected to any ideology or way of thinking,' just as 'the division of science into socialist and bourgeois sciences has also failed.' He added, 'Some people in our country spent years trying to create Islamic mathematics, chemistry, and physics; they invested a lot of money, time, and resources, but achieved nothing.' According to Rouhani, this group believes that 'we should not accept new sciences and claimed that we can obtain all the knowledge we need from religious seminaries, thus there is no need for universities.' He also mentioned that another group tried to prove that 'the origin and source of all sciences is Islam and searched for verses and narrations to connect every branch of science to Islam.' After the 1979 revolution in Iran, institutions were established to create 'Islamic sciences,' which Rouhani referred to. While some of these institutions aimed only to create 'religious humanities,' others spoke of 'Islamizing all sciences.' Among these institutions is the 'Academy of Islamic Sciences in Qom,' whose operators believe in the Islamization of all sciences and have discussed the creation of Islamic physics, chemistry, and other 'Islamic sciences.' The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic and his close associates have repeatedly warned in recent years about changing the lifestyle of the Iranian people, identifying 'human sciences' taught in schools and universities as one of the grounds for these changes. Ayatollah Khamenei has also called for a transformation in the curricula of human sciences in educational institutions since 2009, and following his remarks, the fields and curricula of human sciences in Iranian educational institutions have undergone significant changes. For instance, in December 2014, Gholamali Haddad Adel, as the head of the Council for Transformation in Human Sciences, acknowledged that 'the actions taken so far have not yielded the desired results,' but after Ayatollah Khamenei's serious demand for transformation in human sciences in 2009, a new movement in this area began. Rouhani also stated on Saturday that 'unjustified strictness' towards researchers 'must be put aside' and that 'being suspicious' of university professors, researchers, and youth 'is incorrect.' He added, 'If a professor has to censor himself in expressing his opinion, it is clear that we have a problem in our methods.' Rouhani stated, 'If a student wants to attend a seminar abroad, they should not be questioned before and after their attendance, as such discussions do not exist in the world of science, and in specialized fields, we must be able to interact with the world.' His remarks came after the arrest of several environmental activists and the death of Kavous Seyed Emami, a university professor, in prison. The Tehran prosecutor and the spokesperson for the judiciary have accused Seyed Emami and the arrested environmental activists of 'espionage.'