The Issue of Freedom in the Discourses of Principlists and Reformists
Subject Areas : Iranian Political Research
Sayyed Abolfazl
Hosseini‐Zade
1
(MA graduate in political sciences )
Sayyed Mohammad Ali
Hosseini‐Zade
2
( Assistant professor of political sciences, Shahid Beheshti University,Tehran)
Keywords: freedom, Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, principlist, reformist ,
Abstract :
The present paper answers the following questions: What readings do the political discourses of Principlism and Reformism present about freedom, how do they differ and why does the scope of freedom in either one of the two perspectives seem different? What is the position of freedom in Imam Khomeini’s political discourse? In the post‐revolutionary Iran, it was the jurisprudential political discourse that could gain the upper hand in presenting its own interpretation of freedom and was accepted by the majority of people, and after its division into the two political discourses of principlism and reformism, it demonstrated two different readings of the issue of freedom. The first hypothesis and answer by the present paper is that the division depends on the perspective that each of the camps may have on the concept of republic. The perspective, which gives more color to Islamism and Divine legitimacy in the phrase Islamic Republic, naturally pays more attention to the authority of an appointed ruling jurist; in some way, that perspective considers religion as the cornerstone and freedom as resulting from it, and interprets freedom within the framework of Islamic canon law. Contrarily, the other perspective, which seeks to highlight the republic in the phrase, naturally focuses more on the meaning and concept of freedom and deems freedom fundamental and even it explicates the popularity of the canon law on the basis of freedom.
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