نشریه علوم سیاسی
سال نهم شماره 4 (پیاپی 36، زمستان 1385)

This paper is a study of international relations according to Shiite jurisprudence. Jurisprudents pointed out that the time of occultation (of Imam Mahdi) is a time of ceasefire and suspension of hostilities because the Primary Jihad is necessary given that the Imam is present. Thus, at the present time when there is no primary jihad, Islamic countries follow their Islamic goals through establishing peaceful relationships and mutual respects. Due to the diversity of thoughts, the relationships among countries may vary. Relationship with Islamic countries is based on the implementation of justice, brotherhood, and self-sacrifice, and those with non-Islamic countries is on mutual respect and peace because Islam favors peace. According to Islam, primary jihad is restricted to specific conditions and if they are not met, war with the infidels cannot be started. But, if Islamic verdicts, and or the rights of Muslim citizens and Islamic lands are violated, all the members of the society should rise against it. This type of jihad is called defensive jihad which has no conditions except the ability to fight and resist against the enemy.

The paper is to study globalization on the basis of analytic-methodic approach and critically evaluate a new method in the methodologies of political studies, which is itself based on the postmodern turn in human sciences, for studying globalization. Though the discourse analysis of globalization, as the sphere of the conflicts of discourses, has the general capability of explaining the new conditions, it cannot distinguish between the right and the wrong discourses due to accepting the never-ending conflicts of discourses. The paper finally tries to study the fate of discursive conflicts from the viewpoint of Islamic philosophy of history.

Globalization is a phenomenon and concept effective on our socio-political life, which has economic, political, cultural, and social implications. It has clear influences in all societies, especially the Iranian one. The present paper, on the basis of a conceptual study of globalization and reformism, deals with the impacts of globalization on the reformist discourse in Iran with respect to political, cultural, and social impacts. This paper claims that the reformist discourse, being influenced by globalization, is to explain its identity with respect the features of globalization and to localize it in the context of Islamic beliefs.

Israel’s attack to Lebanon in January 2006 has a particular significance in history of developments of this country and in the regional equations. This regime repeatedly attacked Lebanon in 1948, 1978, 1982, 1993, and 1996, each time imposing loss of life and properties to the Lebanese people. However, with the rise of Hizbollah in 1982, Israel experienced successive defeats and setbacks in its aggressive attacks. In fact, the victory of Hizbollah in the 2006 war can be considered as the beginning of a new stage in Israel’s relationship with Lebanon and the Islamic world. This paper tries to study the goals behind Israel’s 2006 war on the basis of the other wars.

The main question of the present paper is whether the Islamic countries can form a great Islamic government as a single Islamic entity. The hypothesis, based on a descriptive-analytic method, is that to establish a great Islamic government, the Islamic countries need a huge and absolute transformation in their semantic and cognitive system while maintaining their independence and recognizing the nation-state units.

After the Islamic revolution in Iran, religion turned into a new source of power in the international system. The Islamic revolution with its trans-national ideology challenged the West’s global claims. Since studying the roots of the West’s worries about the Islamic revolution through a mere analysis of ideological challenges is rather misleading, the paper analyzes these worries ideologically and geopolitically.

The political, economic, and cultural life of a country makes it to have moderate relationships with international organizations. The range of the activities of international organizations became so wider that if country decides not to have any interactions with them, it cannot escape from the limitations they impose on it. In this paper, the procedure of the development of Islamic Republic of Iran’s relationship with international organizations is divided into four stages. The first stage started from Behaman 1357 (February 1979) and continued to Aban 1358 (November 1979) and was the continuation of Iran’s limited official relationship. The second stage was the time of confrontation with international organizations, realized in the occupation of USA’s embassy and the imposed war. This stage started from November 1979 and continued till 1988. The next stage, 1988-1997, can be characterized in terms of convergence and peaceful cohabitation with international organizations. In this stage, Iran tried to enter into international organizations and accept the related international realities. The final stage, starting after the rise of Reformists in 1997, is a time when Iran started to play limited roles in international organizations. Successful holding of the Islamic Countries Heads Conference, effective and constructive participation in solving regional and international problems, expanding its relationships with United Nations and related institutions in the light of “Dialogue of Civilizations” are its major characteristics.

After the fall of communism and the resultant mono-polarity of the world, the West needed another enemy for its own internal cohesion. Thus, they defined the Islamic world as a dangerous enemy replacing communism. The Islamic world, because of having a different school of thought and the long animosity with the West, was placed in an antagonistic relationship with the West. Thus, despite the existence of the constructionist approach to the Islamic world among the Western scholars, the essentialist approach to the Islamic world was propagated in the media and the Islamic world was introduced as a unitary whole and a threat to the West. The writer of this paper believes that the West’s antagonism toward the Islamic world as a unitary and dangerous whole is the West’s strategy to continue its domination over the world.

The foreign relations of Iran to other countries, especially to powers which play a significant role in world politics and regional equations, are very important. One of these countries, which was important in the bi-polar world and after that and has announced independent policies, is France. This paper is an attempt to study the political relations of Iran and France 1979-2005 on the basis of the structural variables of the international system and the mental situations of the policy-makers of the two countries.

Terrorism is an important concept in the international arena, which, due to conceptual and referential complexities, is hard to define. The definitions given for terrorism and its dimensions, rather than being based on objectivity and acceptance of the dichotomy of value / reality, are discursive and media products. In such circumstances in which we are facing with meaning crisis in defining terrorism, several basic questions can be posed: What distinguishes terrorism from other forms of violent conflicts? Why are the violent acts of some countries or groups considered as terroristic and those of other countries or groups as anti-terroristic? Why are some groups or individuals sometimes introduced as “freedom fighters” and at other times and other political circumstances, with the same extremist ideology, as “terrorists”? This paper is to explain the main problems of process of conceptualization of terrorism according to official political discourse and scientific-academic discourse.

The relationship between Shura and similar Western concepts in the last century was amongst the most controversial issues in the contemporary Islamic thought. Some of the questions that were put forward in the contemporary political thought include: Is the constitutional political system the same as Islamic Shura? Is it possible to make these two concepts so close to each other that constitutionalism be considered as the modern conception of Shura? Wouldn’t the assimilation of Shura and democracy amount to the reduction of democracy to some of its dimensions? The writer of the present paper studies the development of the concept of Shura at three stages: the second half of the first century (H), third century (H), and the contemporary stage.

The method of the election of rulers and political institutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran is an issue which, so far, has been studied in different ways. Some believe it to have a number of shortcomings as compared to the liberal democratic ones. In the present paper, I evaluate the election system in Iran and compare it the that of the major democratic systems (such as that of the United States, England, and France). It seems that both of the election systems, on the basis of their foundations, have agreed on some conditions for both the elected and the electors in addition to some limitations.

The paper is an overview of the political thought of Averroes, a thinker who is considered as a bridge transferring Islamic sciences to the Christian world. Averroes, whose father and grandfather were mass-prayer Imam, judge, and teacher, was born in the family of Banu Rushd. This scientific and cultural family background encouraged him to study religious sciences. He also attended the educational council at Morocco, where he met Ibn-i Tofeyl. In addition, he worked hard to edit and annotate different works, including those of Aristotle’s. This gave him a good opportunity to organize his own political ideas. In sum, he is considered as a critical thinker, reviver of the Peripatetic School, the great exponent of Aristotle’s works, philosopher, theologian, and jurisprudent who left us numerous works. Elaborating on the epistemological, ontological, and anthropological foundations of his thought, the paper also studies the roots of his thought and the relationship between religion and politics. It also deals with his view of the status of individual and society, different types of government, and the rights and mutual duties of the ruler and the people.

With a pathological approach to the world politics in 20th century, Iqbal considers two types of politics: prophetic politics and Pharaonic politics. Pharaonic politics tries to destroy lives and the world, subjugate people, and replace virtues with knaveries, while the prophetic politics is after mending lives and the world, exonerating people from intellectual and political subjugation and replacing knaveries with virtues. The paper studies these dimensions of Iqbal’s thought.