religion and politics

SUBJECT & OBJECTIVES : The objective of the article is to provide evidence on the impact of mysticism on the Islamic Republic of Iran through the figure, thought, and legacy of Imam Khomeini. To achieve this, the article discusses the relationship between the political thought of Imam Khomeini and his mystical and philosophical views on society and life. METHOD & FINDING : The descriptive-analytical method is used to state the role and impact of mysticism on the Islamic Revolution by analyzing and comparing Imam Khomeini’s texts and speeches on the topic. Imam Khomeini was a devoted scholar who brought Islamic mysticism to the public realm of discussion, both within the religious seminary system and in the public arena of institutional discussions around the formation of the Islamic Republic. CONCLUSION : Imam Khomeini revolutionized the clerical attitude towards politics and proved that religion was still relevant as an ideology capable of building a Modern society. His success in mobilizing his followers went beyond as he achieved this in a historical moment where the discourse of Westernization posed a threat to Iranians. Also, conveyed the revolutionary movement in a unique language featuring connotations of martyrdom, justice, freedom, and political and sociocultural independence. He emphasized the need to revitalize religion through the guidance of jurists and clerics while referencing the mystical traditions of Islam, which highlight its universality and transcendental importance.

This article attempts to study the interactions between the two religious and secular domains in three intellectual periods in the history of Western political philosophy before Christ, in the ecclesiastical period and in the modern era, in which the separation of religion and state in Western political thought is a two-tier phenomenon in theory and practice. In other words, the internal layer of the philosophy seeks to reread and mentally separate political from nonpolitical matters so as to prescribe a just or a relatively not unjust criterion for political actors although, in practice, political actors and the others cannot avoid interacting. Again in other words, this article, while researching the just rights of citizens and the need for interaction and a link between political and nonpolitical actors, shows why and how in order for politics and the like to outline a moral theory that would fit a political theory in practice, cannot avoid separating and distinguishing the two in theory.