An Attempt to Comprehend the Positions Taken by the Experts of the 1358 Constitution Regarding the Economic System: A Comparative Study of Islamic State Controlled and Free Market Economic Systems

Economic systems, from the perspective of legal origin, are generally of two kinds or a combination of these two; the free market or private ownership system or state-controlled or public ownership system. But the drafters of the 1358 Constitution, speak of a third type of economic system called the Islamic economy. An attempt has been made in the present research, to examine and analyze with an analytical-descriptive approach, the various viewpoints of the drafters of the Constitution regarding these three types of economic systems within the framework of the principles of the Constitution. The main question in the present research is what the experts who played a role in drafting the Constitution thought concerning the economic system of the country and the rules governing it. It seems that free economic competition and private economic freedoms have been minimally accepted by the Council of Experts under the auspices of the government and of Islam.Moreover, the main discourse governing the Assembly of Experts of that period was a type of state-controlled or public ownership economy that was combined also with a form of revolutionary-Islamic economy. For this reason, authors, using the method of genetic interpretation, have called the economic system intended by experts drafting the Constitution as a public ownership system. Economic systems, Socialist economic, private economic, Islamic economic system. The results of this study revealed that, the inference that can be drawn from the discussions of the Assembly of Experts and also the final ratified principles (especially the current Article 44) is that free economic competition and private economic freedoms were minimally accepted within the founding institution. Second, at times, the goals and foundations present in individualistic or collectivist economic systems were expressed differently by the Assembly of Experts; however, they negated these economic systems in their entirety. Third, it can be deduced from the overall discourse of the constitutional legislators that there was no unified, precise, consistent, and clear theory of the concept of an Islamic economy in the Assembly of Experts, and even the term "Islamic economy" was not used in the text of the Constitution. They often confined themselves to mentioning general viewpoints regarding Islamic economy or discussed the economy in Islam or the Islamization of the economy. Fourth, the content of the Constitution should be organized in such a way that by stating fundamental rules and rights, it has the function of being up-to-date and adaptable to customary and contemporary situations and conditions. This is particularly applicable concerning the economic principles of the Constitution.