Barriers to Modernism in Qom Seminary under the Leadership of Ayatollah Boroujerdi (1946-1961)

Despite the serious confrontation of Iranian seminaries and religious communities against a flood of western modernistic ideas and institutions, the modernistic tendencies increased in Qom seminary, during the leadership of Ayatollah Boroujerdi. Modernists often sought reforms in organization, educational programs and propagation system of seminaries and offered various reform projects to Ayatollah Boroujerdi.Ayatollah Boroujerdi rejected their proposed projects, although he himself was a modernist scholar and had implemented unprecedented modernistic reforms in the seminary. The present paper examines the internal and external barriers to acceptance of modernity and modernization process by some parts of Qom Seminary; the barriers made the modernist leader of Qom seminary uncertain to reform and reform program provided by modernist scholars of seminary being defeated temporarily.