A Thematic Analysis of the Political Standards of the Waiting Society in the Thought of Ayatollah Safi Golpayegani

The waiting (for Imam Mahdi) is a dynamic and valuable concept that is the source of society's movement in different arenas. In this thought, any kind of political movements and actions that agree with standards of Imam Mahdi will be effective in providing the context for the dynamic waiting in the Age of Occultation. This article aims at the thematic analysis of the political characteristics of the waiting society in the age of occultation in the thought of Ayatollah Lotfollah Safi Golpayegani. For this purpose, the qualitative method of thematic analysis and focusing on his statements and books have been used to identify, extract, and network basic themes and organizing and comprehensive themes. Finally, 72 basic themes and 11 organizing themes were identified under four comprehensive themes. The four comprehensive themes include the consensus of those waiting for the establishment of world peace and justice, the governance of the Imamate system in the age of occultation, the guardianship of jurists in the age of occultation, and the waiting as the element of the political and social life of those waiting in the age of occultation. As the aforementioned findings indicate, Ayatollah Safi Golpayegani has analyzed the political standards of the waiting society with a dynamic and active view of the waiting, which is the characteristic of waiting approaches in the era after the Islamic Revolution.