نشریه سیاست پژوهی ایرانی
پیاپی 2 (زمستان 1393)

The present paper deals with Infallible Imams’ view on the cruel government, in addition to elaborating on the concept of the cruel government. Although before the major Occultation Era the issue of the cruel governor had been under question, the concept has been extensively used in the literature of Shiite jurisprudence since the major Occultation. The way of treating rulers has been one of the greatest concerns of the Shiite jurisprudents in the era such that the question of whether their action was in accordance with Infallible Imams’ will was put forward. Despite the existence of particular principles since the major Occultation Era, the concept of cruel governor has been developed under different circumstances. What is Immaculate Imams’ view on cruel governors? What was their way of conduct toward the rulers of their times and what did they suggest their followers and devotees doing in confrontation with cruel rulers?

Some believe that a religious government during the Occultation Era does not have the necessary legitimacy. The proponents of the idea have presented reasons most of which refer to the absence of the twelfth Imam per se and the existence of narrations that have pictured any uprisings or restorative movements as useless, inefficient and even illegitimate. The present study is aimed at indicating that the absence of the twelfth Imam per se may not be a reason for the illegitimacy of the religious government but a religious government can set the stage for the messianic culture. It will also show that despite the existence of narrations that reject the legitimacy of an uprising during the Occultation Era, there are genuine narrations in the narrative reference books that refer to the legitimacy of the movement. By drawing a comparison between the two categories of narrations, it may be concluded that some of those uprisings, including Imam Khomeini’s uprising that led to an Islamic government, were legitimate in case of having the conditions of an uprising.

Whereas one group of researchers think of Islam as inherently political in their investigating the proportion of Islam to politics, the other group thinks of the political reading of Islam as a new phenomenon that has resulted from the contact between Islamic world and the West and modernity. Either has presented many proofs and documents, and so far none of them has succeeded in convincing the other. However, based on the fuzzy logic, which shows that any proposition can be either true or false, it can be said that while facing politics and power, Islam has invariably taken a position given its own position, and in fact the position has been with particular political proportion. On the other hand, although the political Islam has been conceptually unprecedented, it is not disproportionate to Islam. More importantly, by using a fuzzy set, it can be seen that scholars and religious authorities have always been political to some extent during the Occultation, and the avoidance of politics under the title of dissimulation, stopping the enforcement of religious punishments during the Occultation according to some religious scholars’ jurisprudential opinion, or the establishment of the Islamic Government with jurists’ guardianship and their governance over all pillars of power, all constitute the zero and one of our fuzzy set, which have the least membership in the fuzzy set, and most scholars, authorities and Shiite thoughts fall within zero and one.

Among miscellaneous views on the relationship between people and the state, there are some that believe the state must control the relations between the human and the soul with an educational purpose to bring about prosperity for human beings; a belief, which was developed by Plato in ancient Greek and was explicated and moderated by Farabi on the grounds he set for its development in Islamic thought. In proposing their political views, Plato and Farabi considered education as an essential concept and thought of the state as obliged to make it come true without any limitation. However, of the important questions that are posed to investigate those views is how the human and his needs and abilities are pictured, on the basis of which requirements are taken into account and justified in the form of politico‐educational views to reach perfection. Apparently, that picture shows lack of sureness about humans’ ability to elevate themselves and inequalities among them in using or taking advantage of reason. The purpose of picturing the human being from the standpoint of the thinkers that believe in the involvement of the state in education with a focus on anthropological understanding of the leading pioneers of that view, i.e. Plato and Farabi, is to gain a better appreciation of their politico‐educational measures. A comparative elaboration on the anthropological standpoints of those thinkers and their impact on their politicoeducational views will follow a short introduction to Plato’s and Farabi’s political thoughts and educational prescriptions. This paper will show that the belief in inequality of human beings in using their reason and sensual faculty, distrust in nature and different levels of educability of human beings will necessitate their guidance or control that will result in extremist views on the correction and purification of the human being if followed meticulously.

The present paper, using a descriptive‐analytic method, is aimed at elaborating on the role and socio‐political position of clergymen in the three decades after the Islamic Revolution of Iran. In reply to the question of whether clergymen have had a successful role and sociopolitical position in the three decades after the Islamic Revolution, the results of this study show that the institution of clergymen need to be more and more integrated and structured within the triangular qualification framework (i.e. morality, knowledge of Islam and political knowledge), albeit no impressive strides made in that regard.

Hassan al‐Banna is considered as one of the effective Islamic thinkers for establishing the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. Analyzing his thought with new approaches will open up new horizons for researchers. From the perspective of intellectual reformist movement in the Islamic world to which Hassan al‐Banna belong, the Islamic world is facing multiple crises that result from distance from the pure Islam. The advent of sociological approaches, like Sprigens’ crisis theory, will provide the opportunity to reinterpret his political thought. Based on that approach, the main research questions of this study are what the current major crisis of the Islamic world is from Hassan al‐Banna’s perspective and what solutions to resolve the crisis can be offered based on his political thought. This paper initially analyzes the subjective and objective circumstances that influenced Hassan al‐ Banna’s political thought and then seeks to answer the main research question on the basis of the four stages of Sprigens’ theory of crisis.