ISLAMIC REVOLUTION STUDIES
Year:2018 | Volume:15 | Issue:54 |Papers Count:10

Delimitation of the “ rights of the nation” in the constitution is an undeniable fact, however, the scope of rights and freedom in the constitutions varies from country to country. The main question of this article is that what is the reason for the difference in the scope of enacting the rights of the nation and the impact of restricting public freedoms on guaranteeing the rights of the citizens? Analyzing the instances of rights and public freedoms in the constitution of Iran and France, this research evaluates the amount of expansion and restriction of public freedoms influenced by different foundations, principles and values in the constitution of each country which does not entail the supremacy of one political system over the other. Moreover, delimiting the scope of legitimacy to enact the rights of the nation in the constitution is a necessary issue for the preservation and protection of public freedoms, since providing unlimited freedom will lead to inflicting damage to others due to the possibility that citizens may violate or abuse these absolute rights or freedoms which will finally lead to impossibility for other individuals to use their legitimate freedoms.

State decree is one of the main instruments in the administration of the Islamic society in the hand of the religious ruler through which the system will have a special power to resolve the social issues of the Muslims. This power will be possible if the expedience is provided. Expedience can mean something against the corruption or the opposite of corruption. As two main fiqhi schools of Imamiyya, schools of Najaf and Qom have different approaches about the function of state decree in repelling corruption or attracting expedience due to different bases and ijtihadi methods. Considering as a criterion the protection of system in the establishment of the state, the school of Najaf believes that the function of state decree must be in repelling the corruption from the system, therefore, state decree will be permitted to be issued if secondary subjects are realized. Due to the belief in absolute Wilayat Faqih, the school of Qom considers the function of state decree in providing public welfare and desirable expedience in addition to repelling corruption which strengthens the state decree to make the Islamic system more efficient.

In recent decades, there has been a growing application of social marketing strategy to promote desired behaviors in the society. Public mobilization during the Holy Defense can be considered as a successful instance of social marketing as well. This research is aimed at explaining the social marketing strategies in mobilizing public forces during the Holy Defense. This research was designed based on “ Grounded Theory” and qualitative analysis of interviews of soldiers and other sources. Based on the findings of the research, the pillars of public mobilization include ideology, leadership, public participation and organization. The social marketing strategies adopted during the Holy Defense for public mobilization include: creating the idea of enthusiastic attendance in the battle fields, strategy of value-based pricing (emphasizing the value of jihad and martyrdom), strategy of person to person and epical advertisement and strategy of massive distribution of Basij bases throughout the country. Successful implementation of these strategies have brought achievements such as enhancement of military-security capabilities, institutionalization of Islamic values, institutionalization of economic discipline and enhancement of political stability of the system.

One of the influential factors on political actions of religious reformists is their origin. Researches indicate that the origin of Shiite and Sunni reformist leaders are completely different. Shiite reformists have originated from Hawza and have been known as religious authorities of the Shiite Muslims. Their obvious example is Mirza Shirazi in Tobacco Boycott and Imam Khomeini in the contemporary age. This is while Sunni reformist leaders have either received their religious studies in universities or have received only academic education. Hasan al-Banna, the founder of Ikhwan al-Muslimin and Mohammad Morsi in contemporary times are two examples of these leaders. The difference in origin have led to differences in the intellectual development and performance of these leaders. Among these differences we can refer to the position of Islamic principles in the arrangement of all reform plans, radicalism or moderation and the extent of influences from non-Islamic thoughts. Along with showing the difference in the origin, this article tries to study the differences in performance and intellectual development of Shiite and Sunni leaders.

In the Age of Occultation, Shiites are categorized into two groups of Akhbaris and Usulis based on the sources and methods they apply in the deduction of religious rulings. Akhbari school was the prevailing thought for two centuries. However, the expansion of Ayatollah Behbahani’ s and his students’ thoughts led to the decline of Ahkbarism. With the victory of Usulis and consequent empowerment of ijtihad, the ground was prepared for the entry of the scholars into politics; the victory of Islamic revolution is a manifestation of this thought. In this age, some evidence is witnessed which are contrary to the Usuli thought. Therefore, this research is aimed at studying the extent of the relation between evidence and the behaviors in Akhbarism during the age of Islamic Revolution. The hypothesis of this research is that there is a relation between the existing evidence and Akhbarism. The expansion of literal approach to the Qur’ an, superficial views, expansion of reference to dreams, confrontation with intellectual sciences, activities of Tafkik school and Hujjatiyya Association are evidences for the reproduction of Akhbarism.

Since its formation in 1948, Israeli regime has paid special attention to Kurdistan of Iraq and was the only country openly supporting the independence process of this region. Based on this, the current research seeks to find the reasons behind this support and strategic cooperation between Kurdistan and Israeli regime despite the absence of formal diplomatic relations and what have been its implications for Iran. From this perspective, this hypothesis can be put forward that Israeli regime intends to secure its political, economic and strategic interests in the region and due to power and influence of Iran, Israel tries to approach Iranian borders to fight Iran’ s regional policies through the independence of Kurdistan and the experience of Iraq. The aims of the research are therefore to answer research questions and find out whether the hypothesis is true or false bases on descriptive analysis and consulting library and electronic sources. The findings of the research indicate an ever increasing expansion of the relations between Israeli regime and the Kurdistan region in different political and economic aspects.

The current study tries to explain the common and distinctive features of two revolutions in Iran and Egypt through a multi-dimensional comparison of revolutionary management, public cause, public mobilization and collective measures to discover the reasons behind the success and failure of these revolutions. Pinpointing the reasons for rise and fall of revolutions in Iran and Egypt can teach lessons to increase the influence of revolution leadership in the future in the Middle East, on the one hand, and decrease the ill-intentioned measures by internal and external forces to thwart the revolutions on the other hand. Furthermore, this comparison indicates that resorting to and application of superficial images of revolutionary leadership and Islamic ideology cannot lead to survival of revolutions in North Africa under different religious, geographical, lingual, ethnic and other conditions in Iran and Egypt; nevertheless, continuation of public mobilization and collective measures in Egypt should be adopted from historical, political, economic and other factors of this country.

Led by Imam Khomeini, Islamic Revolution of Iran is a perfect example of the influence of people in the establishment and continuation of the Islamic system. On the other hand, Ikhwan al-Muslimin in Egypt is an organized movement among the contemporary Islamic movements to implement the ruling of Islam in the form of caliphate. The primary concern of this article is to study the political position of people in the theory of absolute wilayat-e faqih in Imam Khomeini’ s thought and the theory of caliphate in the thought of Ikhwan al-Muslimin. It applies document analysis to indicate that the role of people’ s political participation in the theory of wilayat-e faqih is the objective implementation, supervision and efficiency of divine ruling and its truth originates from the Divine Will. Although God has the absolute ruling in the thought of Ikhwan al-Muslimin, Divine Will plays no role in the legitimacy of the Islamic caliphate and this legitimacy relies on the allegiance of people. Meanwhile, the ruler is merely an agent executing the Divine Will and if the ruler violates the shari’ a, he will lose the obedience of people.

Politics is formed within a discourse based on the dual concepts of hostility and sympathy or antagonistic and agonist relationship with “ other” discourses. Through the definition of politics, discourses determine the identity frontiers between the “ insiders” and “ outsiders” , on the one hand, and define the political conflicts on the other hand. This plays a remarkable role in clarifying the current status of political parties, discourses and dialogues and finally political development and political culture. Based on these preliminary facts, this research tries to study the concept of politics in a determining and important course of contemporary history of Iran i. e. Islamic revolution. Applying discourse theory by Laclau and Mouffet, this research seeks to find what formulations of the concept of politics have been proposed by political discourses in post-revolutionary Iran. To find an answer to this inquiry, two discourses of Islamic liberalism and political Islam, which have found an opportunity to create a system or, in other words, a political discourse within the political system, have been investigated.

The current research is aimed at studying Ayatollah Na’ ini’ s thought in constitutional movement as a theoretical foundation of the Islamic System since he considers the religious system as the only desired political system. When the movement was expropriated, he continued to support it. He believes that constitutionalism restricts the dictatorship and increases the people’ s share in the ruling system. That is why he tries to strengthen the constitutionalism. Based on this and applying descriptive method with document analysis approach, this research tries to find out what relation has existed between the political thought of Ayatollah Na’ ini and the formation of an Islamic ruling system. The answer to this question provided by the authors is that Ayatollah Na’ ini introduced the political system of Shiite Imamate as the desired political system instead of monarchy. For the type of the ruling system and the ruler during the age of occultation, he introduced wali faqih as the ruler.