Political-Cultural Doctrine of Mirza Malkom Khan

Mirza Malkom Khan is counted as one the most influential enlightened thinkers of Naseri era. His political thought was an integrated expression of the thoughts of Mostesharodoleh and Akhoundzadeh, two exponents of modernization, which he believed that these two thinkers, due to their extremist approaches, could not make their views much acceptable to the political elites and citizens of their time. He tried to correct methodological weakness embedded in the thoughts of the two later thinkers and by doing so expecting to bring about religious reformation necessary for the implementation of western model of modernization which Mostesharodoleh and Akhundzade and his contemporary thinkers tried to achieve but failed. Hence, in this article Malkom Khan's political-cultural doctrine at three levels of strategy, operational and technical are examined with the aim of understanding how he wanted, as one the enlightened personalities prior to the constitutional revolution, to bring about Islamic Protestantism and how his model of religious reformation could appear again and be applied by others in other historical periods.