An Investigation into the Relationship between Religion and Democracy in Religious Modernism; Case Study of Mehdi Bazargan

Subject Areas :

Mohammad Taghi Ghezelsofla ¹ (Department of Political Science, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran.)
pooneh ghasempour ² (Department of Political Science, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran)
Mehrdad Khoram Nasr ³ (Department of Political Science, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran.)

Received: 2017-07-26 Accepted : 2017-09-18 Published : 2017-09-23

Keywords: Islamic Revolution, Islam, Politics, democracy, Mehdi Bazargan, Religious Modernism,

Abstract :

The relation between religion and politics, the essence and also the manner of stablishing an idealistic government has always been one of the main issues in contemporary thought in Iran. Some assume the religion completely separated from politics, but some else assume the politics exactly as same as religion. But democracy and the possibility or impossibility of it’s stablishment as an idealistic example of government in Iranian society has been one of the remarkable issues for intellectuals. Mehdi Bazargan had exposed a special attend to this issue as one of the Iranian Religious Modernists. He could be considered as one of the people who have persisted in possibility of stablishing democracy in a modern and religion centered society. The main question of the article is that “What is the Bazargan’s approach to democracy with considering the Cognitive-Political basics extracted from Religious Modernism?” In response to the question and by using Content Analysis, we will study the two different Bazargan’s point of view to democracy in the primary and subsequent periods of Islamic revolution. The research shows that the first Bazargan is concentrated on the religion based democracy and his recent thought defends the wisdom based democracy, Thus, we see a kind of revision in his democratic thought. This article is written in the Religious Modernism frame work and Analytical and Descriptive methods.