انوار معرفت

The treatise Kasr Asnām al-Jāhiliyyah by Mullā Ṣadrā represents one of the sharpest and most profound philosophical-mystical critiques of anti-rational currents claiming Sufism during the Safavid era. With a critical-educational approach, Mullā Ṣadrā critiques the "idols of ignorance" in his contemporary society, seeking social transformation through their demolition. This research employs thematic analysis with three-level coding (open, axial, selective) on the complete text of the treatise (360 open codes, 10 axial categories, and 1 core theme) to extract a model of "rational education" from this work. The analysis reveals that Mullā Ṣadrā identifies "compound ignorance" (al-jahl al-murakkab) as the root cause of religious prejudices and enumerates five primary epistemological veils: innate deficiency, sin-induced opacity, directional deviation, inherited beliefs, and methodological ignorance. In the crisis-ridden society of the Safavid era, powerful groups claiming Sufism contributed to the spread of these veils. The educational model derived from this treatise consists of three essential pillars: (1) self-purification through Sharia-based asceticism, (2) acquisition of demonstrative and certain knowledge, and (3) identifying and removing the fivefold veils. This model demonstrates that in Ṣadrā's thought, "rational education" is impossible without "moral education" and "religious education," and these three domains interact dialectically to guide the learner toward the ultimate goal: "knowledge of God" and "seeing things as they are." The Ṣadrāian model, with its emphasis on the tripartite interaction of reason, Sharia, and spiritual wayfaring, can serve as an indigenous diagnostic-therapeutic framework in confronting contemporary pseudo-mystical and fundamentalist movements, addressing the epistemological crises of the present age.