نشریه علوم سیاسی
سال نهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 33، بهار 1385)

Security is an essential need for individuals and societies. This paper tries to study security in the Quran and its dimensions including security establishing factors, security threats, and the definition of security. Then, the paper concentrates on the types of security in regards with subject, content, and conception. At the end, the security models such as secure city and secure establishments are presented.

Security is an issue which has always been under consideration from the long past, with there being many disagreements over its concept in different times due to various conceptual and attitudinal differences existing in those times. These attitudes which formed the discourses of those times or arose from those discourses often formed on the basis of the interests of individuals, groups, or peoples. Thus, one may conclude that, in the same way the Bedouin Arabs defined security according to their interests, the Prophet, too, had a conception of security in line with the goals and interests of Islam, on the basis of which he could establish a security guaranteeing peace for all Muslims in a short time. To establish security, the Prophet carried on plans which were successful in the short and long run. These plans, apart from establishing security in the society, helped expand his religion, too. To study the Prophet’s security discourse, this paper will first present the concept of security and the related existing discourses. Afterwards, it will focus on his security approaches in two parts. The first part will concentrate on his endeavors to establish security in Mecca before the Hegira and the second on the Prophet’s plans to establish security in Medina and after setting up his government

One of the goals of any government is guaranteeing the security of the citizens. Studying national security from the viewpoint of the infallible Imams, especially those who held the government of their societies, like Imam Ali, can be very informative and helpful. Security was one of the most important concerns of Imam Ali and, as a result, he took important security, military, and political measures. This paper is a study of some of these measures.

This paper studies the status and relationship of justice with security. In this framework, the paper first does a phenomenological study of security to understand the constituents and equilibrium center of security. Then, it concentrates on a phenomenological study of justice to discover its possible relationship with security. Finally, the paper studies the relationship between justice and security and its role in balancing security.

It is widely held that Shiite political thought is based on justice and Sunnite political thought on security. However, a careful investigation of Sunnite political texts reveals that justice was a concern for the Sunnite scholars, too. The present paper is to do a content analysis of the signification of the concept of justice and security in Sunnite thought. The results show that in the ancient Iranian thought, too, justice is important, but here justice is equal to the security of governor and government; in other words, when it is said that governor should be just and the vassals should be secure, it means that the governor should be secure and the vassals should be just. In fact, by vassals’ justice it is meant that they should obey sultan. As result, it is clear that this justice applies to the time of the stability of power and governor has no need to justice in order to attain power because the concept of justice and domination do not converge on one point.

The basic question of the present paper is which of the freedom and security has priority over the other. The answer is if by priority the temporal priority of one over the other is meant, then the question is posed wrongly; and if a status priority is meant, the paper argues that political freedom has status priority over national security. With freedom, security can be attained, but security does not necessarily lead to freedom. In my point of view, the strategies for converging security and freedom are democratic regimes, political establishments, rational and just legislation, and the basic role of education.

Seyyed Qutb is known as one of the intellectual leaders of the contemporary Islamist movements. For these movements, his writings provided the intellectual foods which included a deep hatred towards the Western culture, re-establishing society on the basis of Islamic Sharia, and resorting to Jihad for overthrowing governments that do not behave according to Sharia.

Modernism in the Islamic methods of change is among the most important issues in the Islamic thought. The most important priorities of modernism in the methods of change are proposing Islamic alternatives, renovating Islamic methods of change, freedoms, and rights, difference, interrelationships and dialogue, democracy, plurality and relationship with others, relationship with the West and Islamization of knowledge. Islamic thought thrived outstandingly in the 80s and attained balance once more. Facing with the problem of state, movements in the Islamic world, the formation of research institutes about the epistemological domains of Islamic thought, special journals in the field of Islamic thought, and the emergence of a new generation of Muslim thinkers form the foundation of the emergence of new Islamic thought. Fighh [jurisprudence] and Osul [The Principles], the Quran and Tafsir [interpretation], and the Islamic thought behind the Islamic revolution constitute the most important cultural grounds of the Islamic thought. The most important features of the new Islamic thought include relationship with the time, movement toward modernism, review and critique, forethought, and moderation. In addition, human rights, public freedoms, government, state, political Fighh, Islamic knowledge, Ijtihad in Fighh and modernism in the contemporary Islamic culture and civilization are the most important challenges of the new Islamic thought.