نشریه علوم سیاسی
سال بیست و پنجم شماره 4 (پیاپی 100، زمستان 1401)

Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi was the founder of a major intellectual school within the Maturidi Hanafi denomination in the Indian Subcontinent. The school is known as the Barelvi School, having more followers than its rivals in India. It has even spread to Africa and Europe. However, apartment from Ahmed Raza Khan’s beliefs, which distinguish him from the rival school of Deobandi, his political positions are very controversial. Some people believe that he was an agent of the British colonists, and others take his positions as signs of his foresight. This article studies his most important political fatwas, which can be viewed as Ahmed Raza Khan’s political jurisprudence, trying to decode the real grounds on which such fatwas were issued. We tackle five main fatwas issued by Ahmed Raza Khan on the land of Islam and the land of disbelief, non-cooperation (tark muwalat), caliphate movement, Indian National Congress, and two-nation theory. We show that Ahmed Raza’s positions on all of these issues were contrary to those of the majority of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent. It seems that his political positions were more influenced by rivalries with Deobandis (leaders of political movements in India at the time) than being rooted in his jurisprudential thoughts.

The formation of strategic changes in regional domains can be attributed mainly to technological advancements and geopolitical transformations. The need for knowledge of security issues in a strategic context indicates that any sign of a regional crisis could lead to the rise of security threats. Recent developments over the past decade have demonstrated that the world order has encountered significant geopolitical changes that have altered the regional balance. In this line, the main question of the present article is: What are the signs of crisis and chaos in world politics? What components have affected it? And how could it be handled? Moreover, the present research poses the hypothesis that encountering regional and geopolitical threats in the age of crisis and chaotic politics requires mechanisms of geopolitical turns to control the regional context. The hypothesis is tested in terms of Richard Haass’s theory of dangerous decades and chaotic politics. Haass believes that many emerging regional crises arise from the puzzle of declining world order. To encounter the strategic threats of the new age, countries like Iran need to deploy the mechanisms of geopolitical turn in their regional contexts. It is predicted that the multilateral maneuvers of Asian actors like Iran, China, Russia, and Turkey will not remain limited to the security context. For further establishment, it will tend towards increased diplomatic and economic interactions as well as exchanges of human forces. In this new operational context, the actors need to prepare their domestic environment for the new processes.

Intelligence activities are necessary for every government. However, since they may involve religiously illegitimate behaviors, they pose a challenge to an Islamic political system that is based on Sharia. This is why the issue has drawn the attention of scholars in the field of jurisprudence, particularly the issues of Islamic governance, ideal administration of the society, and efficiency of the Islamic government. The present study is conducted in terms of political jurisprudence, drawing upon the descriptive-analytical method and the methodology of ijtihad. It seeks to account for the Sharia-based legitimacy of intelligent agents in Islamic jurisprudence and the efficiency of the Islamic government in overcoming its adversaries in intelligence matters to achieve the Islamic objectives in governance. To be sure, agents involved in intelligence activities may be committed to Sharia-based, rational, or commonsensical regulations such as justice, protection of the order, maximal conformity to Sharia, conformity to collective reason, moderation, realization of religious objectives, exigencies, and protection of the lives of Muslims. Assuming that intelligence operations in the Islamic government are intended as means of overcoming the enemies and protecting the Islamic system, this research distinguishes the apparently illegitimate acts of intelligence agents into individual and governmental acts and highlights the primacy of refraining from committing anti-Sharia behaviors. Moreover, it shows that individual and governmental anti-Sharia practices are acceptable only if they fall under general jurisprudential principles and criteria, serving the ultimate purposes of Sharia.

The present article studies the application of public diplomacy by the Supreme Leader of Iran in the Islamic awakening movement. Public diplomacy is the process in which a country makes contact with the people of other countries to introduce its ideas and learn about their ideas and national ideals, introduce certain institutions, culture, and norms, and explain the objectives of its policies. In the course of the Islamic awakening movement, the Supreme Leader of Iran used public diplomacy. Drawing on the descriptive-analytical method based on the statements, letters, and sermons by the Supreme Leader, the present study shows that he always addresses the elites and masses of people in the Islamic world to introduce the ideals and values of the Islamic Revolution. This kind of traditional public diplomacy established discourses at crucial moments of history, particularly during the Islamic awakening since 2011, and was realized by directly addressing Muslims in the region, giving instructions to elites and reference groups, sending letters to the youths, holding international assemblies, and intelligently using the cyber space.

The Sassanid era marked a significant turning point in the history of Iran. This period witnessed the establishment of an authoritarian political system that was based on the unity of religion and government, resulting in the formation of a distinct political and intellectual system shaped by a fusion of nationality and religion. The present study aims to examine the key features of Zoroastrian-Sassanid political thought, focusing primarily on essays written during the Sassanid period or early Islamic centuries under the influence of the Zoroastrian-Sassanid tradition, which dealt with political and monarchical themes. The basic characteristics of the political thought in the texts of this era were studied by drawing upon the descriptive-analytical as well as textual method in terms of religiosity and politics, social hierarchy and universal order, and Farre Kiyani (Farvahar) and the monarchial seed. The main texts under study include Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan, Ardashir’s covenant, Letter of Tansar, and Kar-Namag i Anushirvan. The results of the study show that the Zoroastrian-Sassanid political thought is derived from an intellectual system in which humans and the human society are inextricably connected to the universe and universal order. For this reason, the political system is obligated to apply religion and its rulings as the supreme manifestation of the order and laws of the universe. In conformity to the universal order, it is inevitable for the human society to involve hierarchies and piety. The society is symbolized by the king. The king must represent the beliefs and values of Mazdayasna both in terms of lineage and in terms of act and character

The variety of disputes and conflicts in the social life results in a wide range of approaches for conflict resolution in every field. In the meanwhile, settling political disputes is focused on a more limited range of solutions and the role of the political system as the decision-making party in such disputes. Given the effective role of political systems in conflict resolution and considering the limitations of the traditional approaches to a closed range of indexes for dispute resolution, the present study focuses on identifying newer approaches to settling political conflicts, which go beyond the traditional models. The method of this research is descriptive and analytical. It focuses on identifying new approaches to dispute resolution. The findings of the study, which are derived and formulated in an interdisciplinary manner, are examples of major novel approaches to conflict resolution, including analytical, compromise, moral, problem-solving, interactive, subjective, mutual reaction and response, human needs, and asymmetric approaches. These approaches can apply to political disputes.

The present research is about the pragmatics of the discourse of commitment and the problem of autonomy in the paintings of 1960s and 1970s in Iran, particularly the institutes that produced such a discourse. The method of research is qualitative content analysis. We answer the following main question: How did the discourse of commitment from the perspectives from the viewpoints of Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Norman Fairclough affect the visual language of Iranian painting in 1960s and 1970s? The findings indicate the factors the contributed to the formation of this discourse of commitment in the paintings of those decades. According to the discourse of commitment that was prevalent then, the main visual elements of a committed autonomous painting is as follows: the paintings were often figurative (formalist) and narrative (content-centered); the content and form were visible separately; formalistic innovation was not accepted in the forms of the paintings; they were easy to understand by laypeople; masses of people were encouraged to cut off the hands of the corrupt regime and imperialism, particularly America, from the public wealth of the country, which was accompanied by communication of concepts such as fight against injustice, pursuit of justice, pursuit of Islam, return to oneself, autonomy, nativism, etc.; all those concepts were against the Pahlavi regime, and the central node for religious groups was Islamism, and for leftist groups was populism

The objective of this research is to examine the political implications of human development in the context of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Utilizing the descriptive and analytical method, this article explores the definition of human development and proposes a specific formulation that highlights the connection between human development and political concepts within secondary characteristics. Following a conceptual analysis of human development, the article delves into its secondary characteristics to demonstrate how it ensues political implications. The study also includes an exploration of the relationship between human development, governance, and human security. Through a case study of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which stands out as a unique government in West Asia in terms of human development indexes, the research findings reveal that the evolution of the concept of human development has led to significant advancements across various fields