Journal of Islamic Political Studies
Volume:4 Issue: 7, Winter-Spring 2022

Feyz Kashani was among the well-known personages in Isfahan school of thought, who has reconciled various tendencies. He was an Akhbari (i.e. traditionalist)2 jurist with gnostic thoughts and philosophical method. Feyz’s perception of politics, as a thinker contemporary to philosophical renaissance of the Isfahan school, was under the influence of his tendencies and noetic,3 philosophical and gnostic system. He considers the universe as the place for manifestation of divine knowledge, and the man as a theosophist being who covers the path towards knowing God. This wayfaring towards God is some kind of politics as well because the goal of politics and religion is the man’s felicity. This article aims at exploring the political thought of one of the most important intellectual figures of Isfahan school, and using the method of analysis of noetic system, we are seeking to investigate types of politics in Feyz Kashani’s view with an emphasis on two treatises entitled Âʾîna Shâhî and Rafʿ al- Fitna. The main question of this article is as follows: “What is the relationship between the gnostic-noetic system and Feyz Kashani’s attitude towards politics, and what has been the effect of this attitude on his typology of politics?” The results we obtained from this study show that Feyz’s noetic system has a direct relation with his political attitude and, accordingly, he maintains that the true politics – which is a type of politics of external state – is dependent on the politics of the soul or the internal state, i.e. the human state. On the basis of the relationship between these two principles, Feyz Kashani offers a typology of politics in proportion to his noetic-gnostic system. He speaks of these two types and five types of politics and state in the practical level. Here, we explain them.

his thought. This article uses a descriptive-analytical method to answer the following questions: “What are the government’s duties in Naʾini’s thought?” and “What innovations has he offered in this regard?” Considering his speeches, here we try to investigate the idea of the duties and jurisdiction of the government in general in two types of government in the thinking system of this constitutionalist jurist: i.e. wilâyatiyya and tamlikiyya. Besides, we attempt to discuss some of the expressions that Naʾini has employed for explaining this discussion, including ‘truth of sultanate’ as well as concepts such as ‘trust’ and ‘endowment’ for explaining the government’s duties. The question on the government’s duties and the scope of its qualifications is a question posed since long ago by political and legal thinkers. Mirza Naʾini has not spoken on this subject independently; however, we may extract some ordered speeches and precise plan from his intellectual system. Since Naʿini would consider constitutionalism as limiting the power, he would attempt not to define unlimited duties for the government. In his view, the government’s duties are restricted to two basic principles. First, protecting domestic order of the country and prohibiting people from transgressing one another’s rights; and second, protecting the frontiers against strangers. Accordingly, for him, we face a government with limited and minimal duties, a government that has no permission to interfere in all affairs. This approach taken by Naʾini is different from many of his predecessors and descendants. Indeed, we see a deep innovation in projecting the issue of the government’s duties in

In the contemporary Iran, the state has undergone important changes in the external reality, and various theories have been proposed for it. Apart from the absolute sultanate that has been dominant in Iran since lo ng ago, there came about an important change in this form of theory of state in the constitutional movement, and the constitutional monarchy became the subject of discussions. Ayatollah Mohammad Hossein Naʾini was among the important personages, in constitutional period, who dealt with the theoretical discussion on the state. Naʾini composed his treatise entitled Tanbîh al-Umma wa Tanzîh al-Milla and took an important step in theorizing on the state and justifying the goals of constitutional movement. However, the main question is as follows: “What is the central axis and the point of focus in Naʾini’s discussion in Tanbîh as one of the most important treatise published in the constitutional period? This article claims that Naʾini’s effort in his Tanbîh is focused on theorizing about the state and his main effort is dedicated to a comprehensive look at the state. To explain the state as he had in mind, Naʾini entered a dialogue about the necessity and nature of the state, types of state, goals and duties of the state, limits of individual’s freedom and power of the state, review of the rival views and identifying the rival state, especially the people’s role in the state. Besides, considering the sophistries posed in this regard and explaining some of the concepts such as freedom and equality have also been proposed in that theory. The present article makes use of descriptive and analytical method to discuss the aforementioned claim and offer a short description of Mirza’s theory of the state.

One of the measures taken with the aim to realize international peace and security and to ease the individuals’ access to a peaceful life is identifying the human right called ‘right to peace’ emphasized in international documents. However, the existence of some rules in Islam that denote the necessity of fighting and jihad with infidels and polytheists has caused an ambiguity: whether the necessity of jihad is in contrast with the non-Muslims’ right to peaceful life or not. The question dealt with in this article is as follows: “Can we extract a general rule or principle from the Quran and the Infallibles’ sunnah as well as the rational foundation to the effect that those who are not to fight Muslims – even if they are non-Muslims – have the right to live in peace?” To answer this question, it seems that we may adduce religious evidences to extract a general rule or principle entitled ‘negation of aggression’ (nafy iʿtidâ) based on which, fighting with those who are not to fight Muslims is aggression and transgressing divine limits, hence forbidden and illicit. Thus, non-Muslims have the right to live with Muslims in a peaceful atmosphere. To evaluate this hypothesis, the present article adduces genuine religious sources and infer from them in the form of one introduction and three chapters – in the process of analyzing the main concepts – the evidences for validity and authority of the rule of ‘negation of aggression’ and its exception in Imamiya jurisprudence.

One of the important issues in social sciences is the question on how a theory is developed in practice. The way a theory can create basic changes in operational milieu is of great importance in political-social theories. The present study aims at investigating how the theory of the jurist’s authority – as a theory of governance in the modern plural and complicated world – can extend to the multilayer and plural operational milieu. The question of the present study is focused on effectiveness of the theory of jurist’s authority on promotion of efficiency of public diplomacy (including important spheres of political activism) as well as religious activism (IRI) in the international system, and answers the question of through what parameters this effectiveness occurs. It seems that the theory of jurist’s authority as the most important part of the religious governance can affect the sphere of public diplomacy through its effective tools and variables. This affects the public diplomacy through “producing operational software and sources of soft power”, “creating common understanding and organizational cooperation of agents”, “creating discourse and institutions”, “desirable imaging and giving credit”, and “enjoying attraction in messaging and creating common understanding among nations

Numerous factors such as political struggles, economic decline, colonialism, and anti-civilizational ideas lead to frigidity of scientism spirit and backwardness in technological development in the Islamic world. Despite such an experience, compensating the scientific backwaters requires transcending the shortcuts and discovering the unknown ways that may accelerate the scientific growth and development of the Islamic world. Readiness for frontier technologies is one of the ways for compensating the past for going towards the civilizational development in material dimensions. However, two questions arise as follows: “What is the situation of this readiness in Islamic countries?” and “How do conditions such as political stability affect that situation?” To answer these new questions, to which less attention has been paid in governance of development in Islamic world, we used the empirical data, while providing conceptual and theoretical explanations. The results of the comparative analysis showed that the aforementioned index has no ideal situation in most Islamic countries, and compared to other countries, this gap is much wider. Similarly, correspondence of those data with the condition of political stability showed that severe political instability is a factor coexisting with the abovementioned critical situation. Thus, the hypothesis of the study was compiled as follows: “Limiting the severe political crisis requires readiness for acquiring frontier technologies; however, it is not enough and creation of other factors such as establishment of developing state in continuing movement towards technological development must be considered as well.”