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This article argues that Dialogue among Civilisations can be put forward as a crucial contribution to debates addressing IR’s Eurocentrism. It highlights the blurring of West/non-West, domestic/international, and imperial/post-imperial bifurcations. This is evident in three ways. First, Dialogue among Civilisations needs to be appreciated in Iran’s wider historical context and its multifaceted intellectual heritages. This demonstrates that the idea of the West as distinctly different from the East is problematic because of engagement between Iran and the so-called West. Second, Khatami’s intellectual endeavours are based on a simultaneous engagement with Western political thought, Islamic philosophy, and the idea of Ancient Iran. Finally, the notion itself reflects an internal dialogue whereby Western civilisation along with Islam and Iran’s pre-Islamic heritages are considered integral to Iranian political culture. Furthermore, it is an aspiration for how post-colonial Muslim societies can engage with colonial power while maintaining a post-colonial authenticity. Our contention is that an in-depth understanding of Iran alongside a revisiting of Khatami’s Dialogue among Civilisations can act as a means of bringing the perspective of the ‘other’ into debates on the international and our epistemological and ontological understanding of the West.

InThe Politics of Women's Rights in Iran, Arzoo Osanloo explores how Iranian women understand their rights. After the 1979 revolution, Iranian leaders transformed the state into an Islamic republic. At that time, the country's leaders used a renewed discourse of women's rights to symbolize a shift away from the excesses of Western liberalism. Osanloo reveals that the postrevolutionary republic blended practices of a liberal republic with Islamic principles of equality. Her ethnographic study illustrates how women's claims of rights emerge from a hybrid discourse that draws on both liberal individualism and Islamic ideals. Osanloo takes the reader on a journey through numerous sites where rights are being produced--including Qur'anic reading groups, Tehran's family court, and law offices--as she sheds light on the fluid and constructed nature of women's perceptions of rights. In doing so, Osanloo unravels simplistic dichotomies between so-called liberal, universal rights and insular, local culture.The Politics of Women's Rights in Irancasts light on a contemporary non-Western understanding of the meaning behind liberal rights, and raises questions about the misunderstood relationship between modernity and Islam.

This volume focuses on religion from a trans-cultural and international perspective. Its aim is to open up new perspectives on how religions might coexist peacefully within 21 st century societies and simultaneously contribute to global pacification. Can a religion cope peacefully with the existence of other religions, without having to abandon its own claim to truth, and if so, what already inherent, specific characteristics would have to be emphasized? Or is secular culture the path to convince different religions of a shared ideal of peaceful co-existence? These questions are approached considering the socio-political implications of religions in Asian, African, Latin-American and European contexts. This collection of essays reflects on the entire spectrum of the highly topical and complex academic discussions pertaining to the interrelation of society, state and religion. One example in this collection features the analysis of a secular state engaging in dialog with Muslim communities through a state-moderated communication platform; another article concentrates on the political impact of Christian churches on Nigerian society by means of political advertisement. Moreover, the different concepts of religion in Western societies are considered: one essay argues that in democratic societies it is the state that must guarantee the freedom of religion and thereby provide the basis for a peaceful co-existence between all religions.

The World Parliament of Religions adopted the view that there will not be peace in this world without including peace among religions. Yet, even with the unified force of the world's religions and wisdom traditions, this cannot be accomplished without justice among people. In one way or another, \"unity\" among religions, as based on justice and the will to accept the other's religions and even irreligiosity as means of justice, will not prevail without an internal and external, spiritual, theological, philosophical and practical investigation into the very reasons for religious strife and fanaticism as well as the resources that people, cultures, religions and wisdom traditions might provide to disentangle them from the injustices of their host regimes, and to seek the \"balance\" that leads to a measure of universal fairness among the multiplicity of religious and non-religious expressions of humanity. \"Conviviality\" expresses the depth and breadth of \"living together,\" which itself can be understood as a translation of a central term of Whitehead's philosophy and the process tradition—\"concrescence\" (growing together, becoming concrete)—as it is recently and increasingly used in different discourses to name the concrete community of difference of individuals, cultures, and religions in appreciation of the mutual inclusiveness of their lives. This book seeks to bring together experts from different religious (and non-religious) traditions and spiritual persuasions to suggest ways in which the living wisdom traditions might contribute to, and transform themselves into, a universal conviviality among the people, cultures and religions of this world for a common future. It wishes to test the resources that we can contribute to this concurrent and urgent matter, aware of Whitehead's call for a radical transformation of power and violence in thought and action as, perhaps, the ultimate theory of conflict resolution.