The Comparison between “Freedom” in the Idea of Sheykh Fazl ol-Lāh Nouri and Āyat ol-Lāh Mesbāh Yazdi

Freedom has been one of the most important concepts in the last two recent centuries. By the formation of the constitutional movement, this concept turned into one of the axes of political dispute and in this regard, Sheykh Fazl ol-Lāh Nouri, considering his constitutionalist ideology, recognized that against religion. Some decades later, by the formation of juristic and political Islam, one of its important concepts was still “freedom”. Āyat ol-Lāh Mesbāh Yazdi has some reflections upon this concept and the present research deals with this main research: what are the differences and similarities between the perception of Sheykh Fazl ol-Lāh Nouri and Āyat ol-Lāh Mesbāh Yazdi in this regard? The method of research is descriptive-analytic and the results showed that some important instances of freedom such as freedom of speech that was significantly important during the constitutional period, are rejected in the intellectual system of Sheykh Fazl ol-Lāh Nouri and in his view, freedom is manly regarded “in contrast” with religion and “opposite” to that. Āyat ol-Lāh Mesbāh Yazdi recognizes freedom as liberation from devotion to the tyrant and worship of no one except God. Similar to Sheykh Fazl ol-Lāh Nouri, he does not admit freedom in its western and liberal meaning but just accepts it within the framework of Islamic system and in this second point, he is different from Sheykh Fazl ol-Lāh Nouri.