A comparative study of Ayatollah Motahhari's views on Jihad and Rawl's views on Humanitarian Wars

Since there appears to be a relationship between Ayatollah Mutahhari’s ‘Jihad’ theory and John Rawls’s Humanitarian War theory, and between their shared social concerns, this study aims at investigating whether the two theories are similar or different in terms of legitimacy of war and the use of force. It seems that humanitarian jihad and liberal humanitarian intervention have a similar genesis, the difference being that the former is prescribed on theological foundations and the latter is founded on ethical liberalism, though the two have similar claims. Can this apparently unprofessed resemblance in permissibility of jihad in Jihad theory of Ayatollah Motahhari – as a Muslim jurist and philosopher - and the justification of war to confront violation of human rights in “The Law of Peoples” as a complement to theory of justice of Rawls – as a Kantian liberal philosopher be considered a significant relationship?