Intellectualism during constitutional movement, challenges and opportunities

Intellectualism placed religious Christian church supporters against scientific mankind achievements that led to deep challenge among religion, science and politics. This phenomenon and its western characteristics entered Iran during Ghajar dynasty and while confronting Iranian constitutional movement, it had the chance to rule out the society through intellectual ideas and opinions and enjoy the opportunities. In this article, western intellectualism and its specifications described and then its influence on Iranian constitutionalism movement as well as its challenges and opportunities articulated. Given these challenges and opportunities, one can concludes that although intellectuals brought up concepts like the rule of law, freedom, nationalism, etc and thereby helped to constrain Ghajar monarchies and decrease backwardness of the society, but their strong reliance and deep submission to west, lack of public base and most importantly their resistance and opposition toward clergies and Islam, actually formed one of the pillars of constitutionalism movement diversion and finally consolidated colonialism and established Reza Khan totalitarianism.