Journal of Islamic Political Studies
Volume:4 Issue: 8, Summer-Autumn 2022

The present article poses questions about the relationship between Allameh Tabatabaʾi’s political philosophy and Islamic revolution and answers them. The method of this article is using library resources and documents, and it uses them to answer the questions. The achievement of the article is that Allameh Tabatabaʾi was the theoretician and one of the founders of Islamic revolution and had a considerable presence in Iran’s political arena as a political activist. Allameh Tabatabaʾi was a thinker with socio-political commitment and responsibility, and would attempt to perform his human, moral, religious and seminary duties. He had also political activities in proportion to his own situation. The present article is an introduction to this issue, and this subject deserves to attract some broad studies and inquiries.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate, firstly, how the Shiite political discourse appeared in the city of Kufa and in the land of Karbala during the era of the first three Imams of Shi’a and, secondly, how, after that, a new knowledge-based discourse emerged in Medina and it could, relying on theoretical potential of the two disciplines of theology and jurisprudence, promote the Shi'a "religious identity" and its "group stability". Finally, in the conclusion, a chain of constructive relations is discussed that helped the discourse of Shi'a to identify and stabilize itself as the most and first important minority within Islam. The paper consists of an introduction, two central parts and a final section.

The present article consists of three sections. The first section considers some dimensions of the discussion on ‘rights’ in the framework of religious thought with the centrality of jurisprudence, and distinguishes four types of rights, defining each of them. This section aims at specifying the central point of the subject of this study. In the framework of jurisprudence, rights – as opposed to obligations – contain benefits for a Muslim, and they have been mentioned inside Shariʿa in a variety of direct or indirect forms through legal or non-legal languages. Sometimes, such rights have not been mentioned in Shariʿa. The latter type constitutes of rights that we may cause them to be confirmed by Shariʿa through some certain mechanisms. In the second section of this study, the nature of the theory of Ibāḥa (literally, ‘permissibility’) and important arguments in this regard have been considered. Our purpose in entering this section was clarifying the mechanisms of confirmation of right of the fourth type. The last section of the article is dedicated to the political results of the theory of ibāḥa from the viewpoint of political rights. In this section, we have discussed in detail that by accepting the theory of ibāḥa, the way is paved for harmonizing the religious world with other worldly realms.

The Shiite political thought experienced new evolutions with the entrance of new concepts and thoughts in the Constitutionalism period. One of those evolutions was the scholars’ effort to explain and describe the conditions and foundations of legitimacy of the right to ‘freedom’ which had little record in the Shiite political thought up to that era. Mirza Muhammad Hussein Naʾini, one of the constitutionalist scholars of that day, attempted to offer a new reading of that concept. Accordingly, the present study uses Skinner’s hermeneutic method to investigate Ayatollah Naʾini’s political thought regarding freedom and answer the following question: “In which practical and ideological ground was Naʾini’s view on freedom formed?” The findings of the study show that the ideological grounds of that thought have been formed by the non-religious texts of the constitutionalist intellectuals on the one hand, and the religious texts of jurists opposing constitutionalism on the other hand. Similarly, its practical ground must be looked for inside the despotism of the Qajar rulers and constitutional revolution. Due to being placed inside such grounds, Naʾini negates despotism in Islam by proposing freedom and conceptual expansion of ḥurriyat (freedom), proving freedom as a divine right of the Muslims from the religious viewpoint. This conceptual reading prepares the round for getting away from inconsistency between freedom and Shariʿa in Naʾini’s political thought.

In the present age, the religious fanaticism among followers of Takfiri Salafism has had a tremendous effect on the sociopolitical evolutions in some Islamic countries. This movement has issued decrees about the exit of Islamic denominations from the realm of Islam and has caused the emergence of numerous violent behaviors in those countries. Thus, understanding the factors for formation of that movement is so important. In this article, we have attempted to deal with the effect of formalism on religious fanaticism in the framework of ‘legal reasoning’ (ijtihād) as the common framework in understanding Islamic texts. The findings of this study show that the factors leading to formation of religious fanaticism in that movement are as follows: formalist legal reasoning; priority of transmitting hadiths over contextual study of them; Takfiri Salafist approach to following religious experts; and formalist understanding of some religious concepts and doctrines such as ‘association with God’s friends’ (walāʾ) and dissociation from God’s enemies (barāʾ), takfīr (excommunication), tyrant (ṭāqūt), tatarrus, jihad and the like.

One of the important discussions in the political thought is the equality or inequality of human beings. Any image about equality can have a variety of effects in people’s political life. Investigating and explaining the view of Islamic thinkers on this subject can be useful, both theoretically and practically, in strategies of the states and Islamic societies. The main questions here are posed as follows: “What is the view presented by Allameh Tabatabaʾi as the Islamic philosopher and commentator of the Quran about the political equality?” and “Are the society members equal from the angel of the nature and from the theoretical viewpoint in political participation, administering the society and political power?” The hypothesis of this article is that the political equality has not been used directly as a topic in Allameh Tabatabaʾi’s works; but considering his system of thoughts and posing the social and political issues, we can extract his views on political thought. Accordingly, the principles of political equality such as the equal basic rights in relation to others and in the relationship between the state and the individuals and equality before law have been accepted.
This study has used the descriptive-analytical method and content analysis to extract Allameh Tabatabaʾi’s views. In the light of citizen rights, people can – considering their equal role in social administration – choose the ruler and the form of ruling through consultation, and can have the right to policy-making and supervising in making legislation and decision-making related to administering the society. People enjoy equal right and equal votes in ruling and administering the society.

The political behavior of Qom seminary during the political era has gained features that organize the actions and reactions of seminaries in the political sphere. The inductive investigation and analysis of the positions and actions in various levels of seminary center during the last century in domestic arena suggests that some features have dominated the political behavior of clergies. These features are as follows: the principle of enforcing the Islamic laws and preventing the anti-religious thoughts and symbols, concern about preserving the independence of the country and non-dominance of foreigners over Muslims’ affairs, nationalism, the clergies’ political endogeneity, idealistic pragmatism, political rationality, priority of theory over practice, obligation-centrism and avoiding politicalism and politicization, people-centrism and belief in people, avoiding radicalism, preserving independence of the seminary, pluralism and respecting others’ views. This article, while presenting arguments and documents related to each item, leads the readers to the framework model of how clerics confront the political affair wherein most of the political behaviors of the seminaries are formed.