The Islamic Unity in Thought and Performance of Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani

Unity, unification, and approximation of Islamic denominations are a reformative legacy of the contemporary history of Islamic societies. While the first manifestations of Islamic approximation and unity can be found in the early and medieval Islamic centuries, they were underscored by elites and scholars of the Islamic world in the contemporary era, with significant contributions from religious-political elites. Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is among the contemporary religious-political elites who exerted tremendous efforts for Islamic unity and unification. This article explores Hashemi Rafsanjani's views and practices regarding the unity and approximation of Islamic denominations before the triumph of the Islamic revolution. The article adopts a descriptive-analytic method and focuses on library studies. While Hashemi had epistemic foundations in mind for the unification and approximation of Islamic denominations, he largely saw approximation as a political project to combat colonial and Western governments. Moreover, the main pivot of Muslim unity for him, like many other religious-political elites particularly since the 1950s, was the problem of Palestine and the Muslim unity to liberate Palestine.