The Relationship Between Secular and Religious Matters in Iranian Public Law: A Historical Reflection from the Constitutional Revolution to the Islamic Republic

The rule of law and liberty are key subjects of legal philosophy that have received serious attention in Iran  since the 1905 Constitutional Revolution. In this connection, the dispute over establishing a relationship between secular and sharia aspects of life and its relevance to achieving individual freedoms has been the subject of Iranian public-law philosophy.This article examines some of the theories that have been formulated on this issue since the Constitutional Revolution, and attempts to critically analyze efforts to establish the rule of law in Iran. The main question of the paper is how have theological and legal theories on the relationship between secular and religious matters developed during the past hundred years in Iran? The main hypothesis of the paper is that jurisprudential theories have evolved from law-sharia dualism to the centrality of sharia law.