Intellectuals and Idea of Human Rights (with Emphasis on the Second Pahlavi Era)

“Human rights” is one of the most important achievements of western civilization which could affect the internal law of many countries. In spite of the fact that some states have used human rights as a means of furthering their own interests undermining its ethical function, these rights have been formulated to respect “human dignity”. This paper tries to answer two questions: what is the relationship between intellectuals and the idea of human rights? And the second and main question is that in the second Pahlavi era what were the religious intellectual explanations of human rights? The answer to the first question is that intellectuals were among the most significant social forces who were always concerned with implementing human rights. The answer to the second is that in the second Pahlavi era, religious intellectuals were trying to draw the concepts of human rights from the traditional sources, develop and employ them against the reign of Pahlavi.