Integrating Islamic and conventional human sciences is among the main pursuits of this university. After the victory of the Revolution the founders of ISU
decided to establish a university with the Islamic thoughts integrated into university courses since they perceived the gap between university and Islamic seminaries. The division between universities and Islamic seminary schools had been the main concern of Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, on different occasions emphasized the effect of colonial thinking that strived to divide these two establishments. Time and again, he highlighted the requirement for forging a link between the two in his speeches and testament. Thus, first and foremost, the scientific philosophy of this university underscores courses with balanced content on Islamic as well as conventional human sciences, implementing educational and didactic principles existing in Islamic schools of thought. In such education system, students concurrently gain insight concerning Islamic sciences alongside conventional human sciences.
This approach, the outcome of the emergence of new entities in other disciplines, is the reason for adapting curricula to Islam in the wider dimension where we regard them as interdisciplinary. The nature of these disciplines varies from other universities.
In many universities, particularly those offering majors in human sciences, some Islamic courses are included in the curriculum without being backed by expert opinions, with the false hope that these courses could facilitate the flow of Islamic thoughts in universities. We should note that the curriculum at Imam Sadiq University is different from that of other universities. In fact, the founders of ISU initially aspired to revive the Islamic worldview excellence in modern social life. The establishment of interdisciplinary curricula of the university has culminated in fostering the relation between institutional ideology and religious theory via integrating the Islamic science and modern sciences in practice. The ISU has the edge and distinction through paying due attention to merging these arenas.
One of the most important achievements of Imam Sadiq University in the field of interdisciplinary education is to present an appropriate model of higher education for both the Islamic world and developing countries. The importance of ISU model for higher education is its ability to offer an appropriate and practical solution for interweaving human sciences and Islamic beliefs.
This shows that the experience of ISU in the field of interdisciplinary higher education is one of the perfect examples of localizing academic disciplines in a way that they would be able to cater the real needs of developing communities both in practical and academic fields.
One strong feature of ISU in relation to the developing countries is its considerable attention to their local cultures and needs.
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The fact that establishing new disciplines in this university aims at ending the dominance of western academic tradition and challenging the model of absolute copying of that could help developing countries, especially in the Islamic world, with designing their own special patterns of higher education. It is especially helping them to reach sustainable and comprehensive development in cultural and educational fields.
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