The place of participation in Islamic political thought

Political thinking in Islam is seen as an integrated system with lean and holy teachings and special guidelines to rune social, political and educational affairs of people. Hence, one can see many today social ideas in the narratives and statements by both Shiite and Sunny Islamic thinkers as a benchmark to evaluate and analyze their different attitudes. An idea is citizens’ participation right in society’s macro management that its ongoing record and prevalence in any political system shows its superiority, efficiency and utility. In the same framework, participation theory has a well – established status in Islamic political thinking which indicates the long history of this theory and justifies the necessity to evaluate it in Islamic political jurisprudence. However, one should note that the bilateral nature of participation – consultation in Islam differs from what seen in western democratic systems irrespective of some similarities. In fact, in Islamic thinking, participation – consultation is based on institutionalizing religious enthusiasm in people through mechanisms as “allegiance”, “public supervision”, “the right of advice”, “invitation to wellness”, and “enjoining good and forbidding wrong” recognized as the variables of political participation in its relevant concept in political literature. In present paper, by focusing on analyzing the role of participation in Islamic political thinking in three angels (the origin of participation theory in Islamic resources; reflects of participation in the decrees by Islamic thinkers; and highlighting the legal status of participation in upstream laws), the participation theory is assessed in Islamic political thinking.