In a Saturday message to a training course on the “Comprehensive System of Islamic Thought and Social Life,” Arafi said the program holds an important place among the transformative plans and programs aimed at developing the seminaries into a “pioneering and leading seminary.”

He said the initiative seeks to familiarize seminarians, particularly those at the intermediate level of study, with the comprehensive system of Islamic thought and the broader framework of religious and revolutionary knowledge.

The program, he added, approaches this body of knowledge through the perspectives of contemporary thinkers in the seminaries and the founders and leaders of the Islamic Revolution, with an emphasis on a civilizational and revolutionary outlook.

Arafi warned that the absence or weakness of such a comprehensive and life-giving perspective among seminarians, teachers and religious scholars represents a serious shortcoming.

Programs such as the Comprehensive System of Islamic Thought, the “Velayat” program and initiatives focused on studying the works of the late scholar and thinker Ayatollah Morteza Motahhari are intended to address this gap, he said.

“Indeed, we have always faced incomplete interpretations, limited readings, non-civilizational approaches and partial and restricted views of Islam and the lofty teachings of Prophet Muhammad and his Ahl-ul-Bayt (peace be upon them),” Arafi said.

He noted, however, that a different approach had emerged in the modern era through the works of figures including Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Martyr Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Allameh Mohammad Hossein Tabatabaei and Martyr Mohammad Baqer al-Sadr, as well as their prominent students and leading scholars of the seminaries.

According to Arafi, these thinkers offered a comprehensive and civilizational interpretation of Islam that was “alive, life-giving and movement-inspiring.”

He said that approach was put into practice through the Islamic Revolution, which created a “new world” and given practical expression to the broader intellectual movement.

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Arafi expressed hope that, under the guidance of Iran’s leadership and senior religious authorities, the intellectual movement would continue to resonate in Iran and around the world.

He also urged clerics and seminary scholars, particularly young seminarians whom he described as the future assets of the seminaries and the Islamic Revolution, to pay greater attention to strategic intellectual issues and transformative programs.

At the same time, he called on them to combine intellectual and epistemic development with field engagement and cultural, social and missionary activities.

The 20-day training course on the “Comprehensive System of Islamic Thought and Social Life” is being held in the northeastern city of Mashhad for selected seminarians.

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Translation by Mohammad Ali Haqshenas