masoud kaviani; ali shirkhani; Maqsood Ranjbar
Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available Online from 15 January 2024
Abstract
Religious democracy is one of the most important concerns of today's cultured society. This theory was first proposed in the political literature of Iran during the Constitutional ...
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Religious democracy is one of the most important concerns of today's cultured society. This theory was first proposed in the political literature of Iran during the Constitutional Revolution, and after the Islamic Revolution, it was established as a response to the question of the legitimacy of this system (background). However, this theory has always been disputed; while some, insisting on the components of liberal democracy, consider it to be lacking in democratic standards, others consider it to be the best model of democracy due to factors such as participation, people's satisfaction, and division of powers (problem). Martyr Muṭahharī is one of the modernist thinkers who has theorized about religious democracy. Given that he is considered the most important theoretician of the Revolution, it is appropriate to examine the theory of this thinker. The present article aims to critically analyse this theory with the critical analytical method based on Skinner's authorial intentionalism hermeneutics (method), and it specifically seeks to identify the principles on which this theory is based and analyse it critically (question). This theory considers democracy as a method and by emphasizing the possibility of religious democracy, it assigns a supervisory role to the Guardian Jurist (hypothesis). The findings indicate that according to the theory of Martyr Muṭahharī, the issues of freedom and the role of the people in the government are of great importance. However, the position and function of the Guardian Jurist as one of the pillars of religious democracy remains ambiguous (findings).
