Shiite Scholars in the Era of Constitutionalism and the Image of Western Domination

This article is an interdisciplinary study of culture and politics that combines insights from political science and the concept of image in the discipline of culture and communication. Relying on various documents and secondary sources pertaining to the period of constitutional revolution in Iran, this article is an attempt to reconstruct the mental image that the Shiite scholars (Ulama) had of western political systems as well as their own government and society. Western domination and its cultural hegemony seemed to threaten Muslim societies including Iran due to western countries' superiority in science and technology. Perceptions of such an imminent danger created a particular image of the west in the minds of majority of Iranian political elite and Shiite scholars prompting them to join in one way or another the reform movement known as the constitutional movement towards saving Islamic culture and Iran from foreign invasion.