سید علی لطیفی

The main concern of this article is to explain political thought of Mohammad Ismail Mahallati within a conceptual and methodological approach and the application of the theory of constitutional government in the analysis of the interaction between religion and government. The main question of this article is how Mahallati finds the crisis of the political order in the Qajar period and what ideal prescription does he offer to get out of it? In this regard, the author by descriptive-analytical method, uses the theoretical framework of Thomas Spragens in the book “Understanding Political Theory “to explain the hypothesis of the article. The crisis of tyranny arising from the disregard for the necessities of the Shari'a forms the main hypothesis of the text, and in such historical circumstances the political thought of Mahallati has matured. Mahallati believes the ideal model is Imams government, so, due to a realistic view in the absence of Imams, the solution in anti-authoritarianism in building power is reforming the government based on reducing the authoritarian rule and establishing a constitutional government.

The occurrence of the Islamic Revolution in the “Age of Information” and the development of rational relations based on materialism have surprised the world due to its soft power. Hence, in this research, we sought to clarify “what identity threats may expose the true structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the risk of infiltration and influence of any foreign culture or their domination?”In response to this question, we must say that the foundations of soft power in the Islamic Republic of Iran are based on components such as Shiite Islamism, Iranian nationalism, independence, fighting with the global arrogance, and revolutionism, which form the power structure in the Islamic Republic of Iran and have associated with many successes both inside and outside the country. However, in some cases, due to the failure of building the macro-policies based on those components and the one-dimensional and non-systematic attitude toward these components, which are defined around the central axis of Shi ̓a Islamism, they turn into anti-agent and threatening factors. In this research, we tried to identify and examine such potential and actual threats based on the software resources adapted from the theoretical framework relying on the theory of threat in the field of security using a descriptive-analytical method according to views and ideas of the Majesty Imam Khomeini (PBUH) and the Supreme Leader as the leaders of the Islamic Republic.

Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi is one of Neo-Sadraic philosophers among influential political personalities in contemporary Iran, representing theories within philosophical realm and political thinking. In this paper, we are going to find an answer to the question of what relationship there is between epistemological viewpoints of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi and his political thoughts, (question). To do so, using analytical-descriptive technique based on text-to-text interpretation of Leo Straus. We will show that generally his political thoughts and specifically his theories about government are based on epistemology having four layers, namely, experimental insight, intellectual insight, intuitive insight, and revelational insight (methodology). And it is according to this very epistemological thought that his political thinking has an elitist form (hypothesis). In this paper, first three cases of types of knowledge, value of knowledge, and tools of knowledge from Mesbah Yazdi’s viewpoint have been addressed, and then his political thoughts have been briefly represented. We conclude that the relationship between epistemology and political thoughts of Mesbah Yazdi is of constructive kind, that is, his political thinking has an epistemological base.

Recognition of major keywords in Imam Khomeini's thoughts is an important path to completely know the intellectual-political collection of the structure which he legally and institutionally built after the revolution of 1979 and left for us. "Ommah" is one of those keywords with religious essence and Islamic feature that came to the political thinking of Islamic thinkers specifically the great leader of our Islamic revolution. The investigation of theoretical and practical works of Imam Khomeini indicates that the word "Ommah" has been able to compete with conceptual changes of the day such as nation and nationalism in addition to maintaining its validity and Quranic origin. In fact, it has reproduced itself employing the instrument of Ejtehad, adjusting itself to the conditions of time and place in Imam Khomeini's thoughts. The present research tried to study Imam Khomeini's attitude employing descriptive-analytical technique and library method. By studying the terminology used by Imam Khomeini, it is concluded that the concept of "nation" is a marginal one, in relation with the concept of "Ommah" In fact, Imam Khomeini has not negated nationalism with the meaning of national authority in his comments, but he has negated ethnicity and clanship and their undesirable impact as the factors of separation among Islamic Ommah.