JOURNAL OF POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ISLAM
Year:2017 | Volume:3 | Issue:13 |Papers Count:6

The concentrated governmental reform programs during the discourse of Pahlavi II (1960s) took place upon a shift of social-economic power and political contour to the newly-emerged class with an ideology conforming to its semantic-propagandistic system as well as monitoring the groups of critics with opposite ideology. This paper, through employing Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, is an attempt to explain the dichotomy of the oppressor-oppressed in Imam Khomeini’s intellectual system and his ideal form of government. Explaining the established government’s words based on religious traditions, Imam Khomeini tried to show how political behaviors of the hegemonic discourse in the society were against the prevailing religious culture. He thus paved the way for a revolutionary movement. He interpreted the genres of the oppressed (majority of the people) and the oppressors (the ruling class) as the two prevailing signs in the context of Iranian society, bipolarized the society based on religious texts and explained the assimilation of the ruling class to the symbols of evil in political and religious system, and embarked on rejecting the ruling rival class. Imam Khomeini then introduced, interpreted and materialized a model of Islamic rule and the leadership of political jurisprudent as a desirable alternative to the existing system.

Khajeh Nezam al-Molk in his book of Siasatnameh has covered an ideological and religious discussion to consolidate the pillars of governance in the reign of Seljuk dynasty. The author of Siasatnameh is highly prejudiced in his book in favor of Shafi’i and Hanafi sects, among the common faiths in the period. He addresses the followers of other faiths and sects with insulting terms such as “people of bad religion” and “people of bad faith”. To exert more influence on his readers and justify his opposition to religious opponents –his political opponents per se – he has included anecdotes according to each subject matter. Dissidence and encountering the opponents in Siasatnameh are the two issues this paper is an attmept to explain, analyze and explain through Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. Discourse analysis studies the way of manifestation and formation of meaning and message of linguistic units in connection with contextual elements. The evolutional survey of discourse analysis leads to critical discourse analysis that has its roots in critical linguistics. In the meantime, the critical approach of Norman Fairclough is the most comprehensive framework for critical discourse analysis. In this paper, we will first explain Khajeh Nezam al-Molk’s thoughts and views vis-à-vis his political opponents through the context and anecdotes, then we will explain and analyze the findings based on Fairclough’s method. The paper is an attempt to find an appropriate response to the question of how Siasatnameh treats its religious opponents. The response to this question has been provided by using Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis method and analyzing the hidden layers of Khajeh Nezam al-Molk’s thoughts.

Hermeneutics, as one of the most important branches of knowledge under human sciences, has its roots in the West. As a newly emerged knowledge in the field of culture, hermeneutics has shown its unremitting influence on some sciences, particularly on interpretive texts of the West, to reserve a highly valuable status for itself in human intellectualism. With respect to the introduction of hermeneutics to the world of Islam, this paper explicates the two subdivisions of philosophical and methodological hermeneutics. Philosophical hermeneutics is interpreter-oriented while methodological hermeneutics is author-oriented. The paper tries to explore the common fundamentals between classic hermeneutics and the interpretive method of the Muslims in understanding religious texts and the religious thought literature. Therefore, the principal question this paper proposes is this: From the two philosophical and methodological hermeneutics, which one is compatible with text interpretation style of Muslims and their thoughts.The findings of the paper show that philosophical hermeneutics is not an appropriate method for interpretation of the sacred texts of the Muslims due to its relativistic approach in interpretation of the texts. Therefore, methodological hermeneutics – for its author-oriented approach – is appropriate for interpretation of the religious texts of the Muslims.

Imam Khomeini, as a founder and reviver of the contemporary doctrine of religious democracy, and as the most influential Shia cleric, could establish a type of government based on the theory of Islamic jurisprudence that possessed the deep-rooted Shia concepts. The Islamic Revolution under his leadership was a great movement with unique intellectual and practical aspects that trespassed all borders of political and religious thinking. This has been always paid due attention by many thinkers and researchers who were interested in analyzing his thoughts and exploring his stances in various periods vis-à-vis important developments and incidents. In the meantime, understanding the codes of conduct and political thoughts of such personalities as Imam Khomeini who have passed away, and consequently discernment of their probable stances on current developments, require review and systematic and methodical analysis of their opinions. This paper is an attempt to adopt a methodical approach to study Imam Khomeini’s manners, code of conduct and political thought, explaining the outstanding points and unique qualities that distinguish him from other great contemporary Shia scholars, to codify a method for reviewing his opinions and his political stances, including his last will. This is to open a way to conduct an in-depth study of his illuminated code of conduct and his thoughts.

The relation between political rationality and such phenomena as uprisings, public resistance, and revolutions is among the lasting questions in political thought and philosophy, particularly during the current period. Undoubtedly the political act based on rationality – as one of the necessities of the society – has been and still is a focus of attention by the political thinkers in the past and at present. However, during the recent centuries, the outbreak of revolutions and public uprisings in various countries have created a new meaning of revolution that associates a sort of extremism and radicalism, things that go counter to rationality. Today, it is supposed that political rationality cannot be juxtaposed with revolution and revolutionary act.However, it seems that being and acting as revolutionary can per se have a completely rational explanation. This paper is an attempt to study the applicability of the theory of political rationality to Imam Khomeini’s governmental thought and practice during the three stages of establishment, stabilization and deep consolidation of the Islamic Revolution. To that end, the paper is an attempt to find an appropriate response to this question: What are the essential components of political rationality in Imam Khomeini’s thoughts and act? The paper tries to gather data from library sources and documents and analyze them based on a descriptive-analytical method.

Freedom has always been an important issue and a focus of attention of societies during the recent centuries. As a Muslim thinker and leader of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini had taken serious stance on freedom. This paper is an attempt to analyze Imam Khomeini’s stance on freedom in his interviews with non-Iranian reporters. The range of interviews includes the period from April 24, 1978 in Najaf and Paris to the last interview by Mohammed Hussein Haekal in Qom in December 1979. The reporters have interviewed some secondary issues related to freedom, particularly the concrete aspects of freedom such as freedom of expression, freedom of women, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, … wherein Imam Khomeini has expressed novel opinions on the issue of freedom. The largest frequency belongs to the questions on freedom of expression and freedom of minorities.The present paper is an attempt to show the origin of freedom in view of Imam Khomeini, especially in connection with monotheistic world outlook on one hand, and the influence of Mulla Sadra’s approach on him on the other hand, to analyze the two forms of freedom. Moreover, we have focused on why freedom of women and freedom of minorities had had the largest frequency among the reporters’ questions.