Monism and Pluralism in Islamic Politics

Unity and plurality have always been rendered as important issues in the history of political ideology, tendency to either one can affect all political fields. In the course of history, various viewpoints have been presented on confrontation between the two key issues. The status of Islamic politics in post-Revolution Iran and its impact on intellectual and political developments in the contemporary world, motivated the author of these lines to study this issue and its consequences in the hope of creating an appropriate theoretical guideline for the progress of the political act. To realize this goal, there should be first found appropriate answers to the quality of relations between monism and pluralism. Islamic politics has placed emphasis on dual necessity of unity and plurality in political life based on certain fundamentals. On this basis, considering unity as a quiddity and plurality as a natural phenomenon, we must present strategies for realization of unity and plurality in the political community. Applying this strategy will pave the way for preparation of required conditions for realization of moderate monism and pluralism, i.e. unity in plurality. Belief in monotheism, belief in the Guardianship of the Islamic jurist, and rights-centrism are among the approaches that can ultimately realize the expected unity in political society. The methodology in this paper is based on an analytical-descriptive and analytical-interpretive method.