Political Theology of the Idea of Citizenship in the Contemporary Iran

The main core of new citizenship in the west is civil element; the one that founded by Hobbes and strengthened by Locke. Rousseau, in spite of his serious criticism and concentrating on the political, national and especially socioeconomic elements of citizenship, maintained the civil element as the constituent one. Finally, notwithstanding the theoretical conflicts and even contrasts, idea of citizenship could turn out to be the basis of political life in the sphere of western common sense. If we accept that the beginning of development of the idea of new citizenship in Iran was in evolutions led to the constitutional revolution, then we can say that the role of civil element was not noticeable at all. We think that this should be considered according to the rhetorical strategy of opponents of political modernity in Iran. This rhetoric in a sense indicated to the strategy applied by these modernists in the necessary theologico-political war had broken out. Based on belief in civil element or in idea of "the individual possessed unconditional right in the state of nature", political modernity founded on the theological ground itself and exactly this civil element in the face of rigid theologico-political core in Iranian network of common sense was the most conflicting one. In this article, we attempt to analyze the transformations in rhetorical strategy of opponents of political modernity in contemporary Iran on the basis of the mentioned war and examine its consequences for new idea of citizenship in Iran.