The Factors in the Approval of the Supervision of the Board of Mujtahids on Parliamentary Bills by the Intellectual Faction of the First National Consultative Assembly

One of the challenges of the constitutional movement was the drafting and approval of the Constitution. Based on the second article of the amendment to the Constitution, five qualified mujtahids were responsible for legislative processes. During the drafting of the constitution, Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri proposed the supervision of a board of mujtahids. It was approved by the legislators as the second article of the amendment to the constitution. The question is why the intellectual faction of the first National Consultative Assembly, who insisted on the separation of religion from politics and opposed to the interference of mullahs in politics, accepted this article which allowed the supervision of a number of mullahs on parliamentary bills. This paper claims that the intellectual faction did not approve of this supervision, but they accepted it only because they intended to silence the religionists. It argues that the legislators of the intellectual faction were in fact forced to accept the supervision of mullahs on the parliamentary bills since they were under the pressure of the religionists outside and inside the parliament who would have accused them of being Baha’is or atheists if they had showed any disagreement with Nouri’s proposition.