نشریه علوم سیاسی
سال سیزدهم شماره 3 (پیاپی 51، پاییز 1389)

The paper is to identify and elaborate on the differences among the goals behind secular and Islamic governments based on a descriptive, causal and interpretive approach to answer the question that what formal and natural differences these governments have with respect to their goals. The writer tries to prove the thesis that these two types of governments, despite their outward commonalities in goals, each have specific goals and have significant differences in interpreting and clarifying these common goals, with these differences being rooted in their ideational and motivational structures of the culture and civilization governing on them.

The goal of this paper is to critically analyze models of religion and state relationships on the part of religious intellectual movement and to propose an alternative model for the current theoretical model in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Thus, at first, the basic concepts of this research such “critical method”, and “religious intellectualism” are defined and then the theoretical model of religious intellectualism is explained. The goal behind religious intellectual movement is to reconcile religion and modernity. As a result, the writer modifies both to create a new combination. The followers of this model are against the separation of religion from politics and agree upon the separation of religion from state. The paper critically evaluates their theoretical model of religion and state relationships on the basis of various approaches such as the theory of communicative action.

The present paper is typological study of two forms of religion during 1961-1979 on the basis of Georg Simmel’s theory and argues that a new relationship formed between religion and politics during the Islamic revolution. The previous relationship between these two is usually explained in terms of “conservative Islam” and “reformist Islam” according to which the clergy accept the concept of “sultanate” for politics and devise functions apart from the form of religion. On the basis of this form, the two contents of “religion for religion” and “religion for politics” form. However, in the new form of religion, the manner of the clergies’ involvement in political affairs in terms of “political strategies” and “practical solution” moves towards merging the two forms of religion and politics into one and producing the idea of “political Islam” which produces the content of “politics for religion.

The grand Ayatollah Boroujerdi, who led the Shiites in a most critical period in the contemporary history of Iran, made a lot of efforts in the realm of politics and political behavior to maintain the authority and honor of Shiites. Due to his experience in the Constitutional Movement, he preferred cautious actions in politics over thoughtless and hasty actions. As a result, a major part of his efforts focused on cultural activities rather than political acts. But, it should be noted that his political behavior is not completely void of political acts. The paper studies some of his efforts to stop non-Islamic measures of the state such as the promotion of fire-worshipping, parade by hijab-less girls, houses for promotion of women’s hijablessness, changing the official religion, changing the official alphabets, freedom of Bahaism, the execution of Ayatollah Kashani …. Finally, the paper elaborates on his role in the National Oil Movement and his relationships with Fedayeen of Islam.

The objective of the paper is to study the major reason behind Islamic Republic of Iran’s rather uncompromisable atomic energy policy based on a constructionist perspective which proposes a new concept of security through emphasizing on identity and ideational factors. This is not just a kind of physical and material security, but ontological and identificational. To do so, the paper first studies Islamic Republic of Iran’s atomic energy policy and its features, then introduces the concept of ontological security, and finally analyzes the uncompromising policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The paper overviews various variables such as Russia’s necessities in its domestic policy affairs, especially economic policies, the major bases of Iran-Russia relations, the implicit goals behind Russia’s holding the West to ransom through preventing the deploying of ballistic missiles in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and atomic cooperation with Iran. Thus, to provide the theoretical background of the research, which is based on neo-realism and neo-liberalism, the paper will concentrate on explaining Iran-Russia relationships, possible reactions of Russia with respect to Iran’s atomic project and the goals behind Russia’s cooperation with Iran.

The paper is a critical review of “The Foundations of Political Thought in Islam” by Seyyed Sadegh Haghighat. Since the book is introduced as a textbook for political science students by SAMT Publications, it’s review has crucial importance. The paper, first, briefly introduces the book, then evaluates the book regarding form and content, and some cases proposes some modifications.