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Abstract
Disputes over the outcome of the June 2009 presidential election in Iran rapidly developed into a contest about the legitimacy of the Islamic state. Far from being a dispute between religious and non-religious forces, the main protagonists in the conflict represented divergent articulations of state–religion relations within an Islamic context. In contrast to the authoritarian legitimisation of an Islamic state, the Islamic reformation discourse is based on secular-democratic articulations of state–religion relations. This article focuses on the ideas of four leading Iranian religious scholars who advocate a secular-democratic conceptualisation of state authority. Disputing the religious validity of divine sovereignty, they promote the principle of popular sovereignty based on Islamic sources and methods. This reformist conceptualisation is rooted in the notion that Islam and the secular-democratic state are complementary.
Acknowledgements
We thank Professor John Keane for his conceptual contribution and Professor Jeffery Haynes as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.
Notes
Norris and Inglehart, Sacred and Secular; Norris and Inglehart, ‘Uneven Secularization’.
We borrow this concept from Ahmet Kuru who proposes that while assertive secularism aims to exclude religion from the socio-political sphere, passive secularism incorporates the public visibility of religion. See Kuru, Secularism and State Policies.
Filali-Ansary, ‘Challenge of Secularization’.
Hashemi, Islam, Secularism.
Bukovansky, Legitimacy and Power; Morgan, Inventing the People; Wootton, Divine Right and Democracy.
Sajo, ‘Preliminaries’, 628.
This does not mean that contemporary Sunni states are more democratic than their Shi'a counterparts. Like other religious issues, the political thought of both the Shi'a and Sunni world have evolved in various political configurations.
Imam Ali's governance (656–661) is considered by the Shi'a as the only legitimate rule in early Islamic history. From a historical point of view, it was the only Shi'ite state headed directly by a Shi'ite religious leader until the formation of the IR of Iran, when religious leaders took direct political control. As El Fadl writes ‘Until recently neither Sunnite nor Shi'ite jurists ever assumed direct rule in the political sphere’. Abou El Fadl, Cohen, and Chasman, Islam and the Challenge.
According to this notion, Shi'ite religious leaders adopted a passive approach to the political sphere. The ‘infallible Imam’ was believed to be the only one who possessed the right to govern. Therefore, for most of Shi'ite history, religious leaders awaited the return of the last Imam.
Kadivar, ‘Theories of State’, 3–4.
Mehdi Haeri Yazdi challenges the political doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih by referring to the very meaning of the term. He argues that Velayat refers to a relationship between custodian and ward. By no means can it be applied to governmental and political issues. He maintains that ‘This relationship is not possible between a person and a group of people’. See Haeri Yazdi, Wisdom and Government.
Khomeini and Algar, Islam and Revolution, 40.
In the Shi'ite school, infallibles refer to 14 specific persons including the Prophet Mohammad, his daughter Fatima and 12 Imams who are descendants of Fatima.
Khomeini and Algar, Islam and Revolution, 62.
Valey-e faqih is the religious title of the Supreme Leader. Actually, ‘Supreme Leader’ is the political tag for the Valey-e Faqih.
Assembly of Experts includes 86 clerics who are directly elected by the public to an eight-year term. According to the Constitution, this assembly is responsible for electing the Supreme Leader. This has been practised just once: when the founder of the IR died on 3 June 1989, the Assembly chose Khamanei as the Supreme Leader on the following day. See Ehteshami and Zweiri, ‘Understanding Iran's Assembly’.
Khomeini, Book of Light, 95, 2006.
Khomeini, Book of Light, 27, 2000.
There is a counter-argument, which asserts that Khomeini's occasional confirmation of the centrality of the subjects’ role proves his subscription to a form of dual-legitimacy. For example, see Goudarzi, Jawan, and Ahmad, ‘Ayatollah Khomeini’, P103–14.
Prior to the reformist era (1997–2005), there were several publication restrictions and these publications were the only channels available for reformists to disseminate their ideas.
Kadivar, ‘Appointive Government’.
Kadivar, ‘Government by Mandate’, 9.
Kadivar, ‘Velayat-e Faqih’, 2002.
Ibid.
Kamrava, Intellectual Revolution, 165.
Kadivar, ‘Velayat-e Faqih’, 2002.
Montazeri was the designated successor of Khomeini. Appointed by the Assembly of Experts on 24 November 1985 and dismissed by Khomeini on 26 March 1989, he was actually the shadow Valey-e Faqih for more than four years.
Akhavi, ‘Thought and Role of Ayatollah’, 647.
Montazeri, 2000, 99–100.
Abdo, ‘Islamic Republic’, 18; Montazeri, 2000, 122–178.
Nasb-e Um, as opposed to Nasb-e Khas (specific appointment) refers to the Godly appointment of certain persons, for example, the Prophet Mohammad and the 12 Imams.
For a detailed discussion of these five scenarios, see Akhavi, ‘Thought and Role of Ayatollah’, 645–66.
Montazeri, 2000, 188–214.
Montazeri, Perspectives, 35–6.
Montazeri, Religious State, 24.
Montazeri, 2000.
‘And those who answer the call of their lord and establish worship, and whose affairs are a matter of counsel, and who spend of what we have bestowed on them’ (Surah 48, Verse 38) (translated by Marmaduke Pickthall).
Montazeri, 2000, 288–90.
Ibid., 2000, 305–26.
Kadivar, ‘God’, 64, 69.
Soroush, ‘Khatami's Practical Hesitation’; Soroush, ‘Soroush's Speech’.
Montazeri, Perspectives, 36.
Kamali, ‘Theory of Expansion’; Soroush, Theoretical Constriction; Vahdat, ‘Islamic Modernity’.
Soroush, Expansion of Prophetic Experience.
Soroush, ‘Substantial and Accidental’.
Discussions centring on Soroush's thought include Soroush, Sadri, and Sadri, Reason, Freedom; Ghamari-Tabrizi, Islam and Dissent; Aliabadi, ‘Abdolkarim Soroush’; and Jahanbakhsh, Islam, Democracy.
Jahanbakhsh, ‘Abdolkarim Soroush’, 21.
Imamate is among the basic principles of Shi'ite school. The 12 Imams are believed to be appointed by God to lead Muslims. This is a fundamental distinguishing feature between Shi'a and Sunni Islam.
Jurisprudence accepts the basic principles of Islam such as monotheism, prophecy of Mohammad and the eternity of the Quran as unchallenged givens. By contrast, theology incorporates the study of god, religion and rational inquiry into the basic principles of religion. Soroush, ‘Analysing the Concept’, 2.
Mottaqi, ‘Soroush's Flourishing Workbook’, 48.
Soroush, ‘Spiritual Guardianship’, 20.
Soroush, Reason, Freedom; Soroush, ‘Shi'a and the Challenges’.
Soroush, ‘Analysing the Concept’, 5–6.
Ibid., 6.
Soroush, ‘Functions and Benefits’, 2–16; Soroush, ‘Minimalist and Maximalist’, 2–9.
Soroush, ‘Analysing the Concept’, 6–7.
Ibid., 7.
Ibid., 10.
Soroush, ‘Shi'a and the Challenges’.
Soroush, ‘Democracy’.
Jahanbakhsh, Islam, Democracy; Soroush, ‘Democracy’.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, an influential Shi'ite theologian, spent 18 years in a Qum seminary. He was appointed Manager of the Islamic Centre in Hamburg in the 1970s and, after the revolution, served as a member of parliament for four years. He decided to eschew politics after his term in parliament, opting to teach at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Tehran until 2006, when he was pressured into retirement.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, Some Thoughts, 77.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, ‘Political Tyranny’.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, ‘Islam Is a Religion’.
Mortazavi and Manouchehri, ‘Religious Reading’.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, ‘Right, Duty, State’; Mojtahed-Shabestari, ‘Critique of Official Reading’.
Kamrava, Intellectual Revolution, 168.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, Faith and Freedom, 34–45; Vahdat, ‘Islamic Modernity’, 215–216.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, Hermeneutics.
Mojtahed-Shabestari and Kiderlen, ‘Interpretation of Quran’.
Hashemi, Islam, Secularism, 10–11.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, ‘Human Rights’; Mortazavi and Manouchehri, ‘Religious Reading’.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, ‘Abstract and Rational’, 8.
Ibid.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, ‘Prophetic Reading’.
Initially, Mojtahed-Shabestari publicised this idea in an article ‘Prophetic Reading of the World’ published by Madraseh quarterly, which was banned following the publication of this article.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, ‘Difficult Path’.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, ‘Practicing a Verse’.
Mojtahed-Shabestari, ‘Abstract and Rational’.
The reformist movement (1997–2005) can be characterised as another political momentum sparked by a similar religious reformation discourse against the authoritarian trend of the Islamic state.
Soroush develops two notions of secularism: ‘political secularism’ and ‘philosophical secularism’. Political secularism refers to the separation of religion from the state. The legitimacy of the government should derive from the people, not from religion or divine right. And the state should be neutral with regard to religious matters. Philosophical secularism refers to a person's world view. In other words, there is neither a God nor a supernatural world. See Soroush, ‘Political Secularism’ and Soroush, ‘Militant Secularism’.