Social Preventive Measures of Islam to Protect the freedom of thought and Speech

The purpose of the present study is to review some social preventive measures in the Islamic Republic of Iran to protect freedom of thought and speech based on the Islamic instructions. The method of study is descriptive analysis and the results showed that Islam has offered special social preventives measures to protect freedom of thought and speech as this subject has widely been taken into consideration in Islamic texts. Furthermore, Islam has also offered some other measures such as rationalism, poverty prevention, extension of free and critical thinking, spread of religious arguments, giving advice to the officials, and the protection of critics in order to decrease likely crimes in this field. Therefore, the above measures should be taken into account before any disciplinary or penal measure in order to protect freedom of thought and speech. It should be noted that the implementation of the preventive measures does not intend to omit penal and disciplinary measures, but rather they should also be definitely used as the last step for those who refuse preventive measures and just follow their own deviated way.