Download or read book Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran written by Shahrough Akhavi and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1980-01-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indispensable for understanding the recent conflicts in Iran, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran provides a political history of the fluctuating relationships between the Islamic clergy and Iranian government since 1925. How different factions of the clergy, or ulama first lost and then regained a powerful position in Iran is the subject of this book. Akhavi analyzes how various factions within the clergy have responded to the government's efforts to encourage modernization and secularization, giving particular attention to the changes in the madrasahs, or theological colleges. He examines the main themes of the AyatullaH Khymayni's book, Islamic Government, and concludes by examining the alignments among the clergy in the past that indicate how they may develop in the future.
Download or read book Islamic Law and Governance in Contemporary Iran written by Mehran Tamadonfar and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-05-20 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The current rise of Islamism throughout the Muslim world, Islamists’ demand for the establishment of Islamic states, and their destabilizing impact on regional and global orders have raised important questions about the origins of Islamism and the nature of an Islamic state. Beginning with the Iranian revolution of the late 1970s and the establishment of the Islamic Republic to today’s rise of ISIS to prominence, it has become increasingly apparent that Islamism is a major global force in the twenty-first century that demands acknowledgment and answers. As a highly-integrated belief system, the Islamic worldview rejects secularism and accounts for a prominent role for religion in the politics and laws of Muslim societies. Islam is primarily a legal framework that covers all aspects of Muslims’ individual and communal lives. In this sense, the Islamic state is a logical instrument for managing Muslim societies. Even moderate Muslims who genuinely, but not necessarily vociferously, challenge the extremists’ strategies are not dismissive of the political role of Islam and the viability of an Islamic state. However, sectarian and scholastic schisms within Islam that date back to the prophet’s demise do undermine any possibility of consensus about the legal, institutional, and policy parameters of the Islamic state. Within its Shi’a sectarian limitations, this book attempts to offer some answers to questions about the nature of the Islamic state. Nearly four decades of experience with the Islamic Republic of Iran offers us some insights into such a state’s accomplishments, potentials, and challenges. While the Islamic worldview offers a general framework for governance, this framework is in dire need of modification to be applicable to modern societies. As Iranians have learned, in the realm of practical politics, transcending the restrictive precepts of Islam is the most viable strategy for building a functional Islamic state. Indeed, Islam does provide both doctrinal and practical instruments for transcending these restrictions. This pursuit of pragmatism could potentially offer impressive strategies for governance as long as sectarian, scholastic, and autocratic proclivities of authorities do not derail the rights of the public and their demand for an orderly management of their societies.
Download or read book Religious Statecraft written by Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1979 revolution, scholars and policy makers alike have tended to see Iranian political actors as religiously driven—dedicated to overturning the international order in line with a theologically prescribed outlook. This provocative book argues that such views have the link between religious ideology and political order in Iran backwards. Religious Statecraft examines the politics of Islam, rather than political Islam, to achieve a new understanding of Iranian politics and its ideological contradictions. Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar traces half a century of shifting Islamist doctrines against the backdrop of Iran’s factional and international politics, demonstrating that religious narratives in Iran can change rapidly, frequently, and dramatically in accordance with elites’ threat perceptions. He argues that the Islamists’ gambit to capture the state depended on attaining a monopoly over the use of religious narratives. Tabaar explains how competing political actors strategically develop and deploy Shi’a-inspired ideologies to gain credibility, constrain political rivals, and raise mass support. He also challenges readers to rethink conventional wisdom regarding the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, the U.S. embassy hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq War, the Green Movement, nuclear politics, and U.S.–Iran relations. Based on a micro-level analysis of postrevolutionary Iranian media and recently declassified documents as well as theological journals and political memoirs, Religious Statecraft constructs a new picture of Iranian politics in which power drives Islamist ideology.
Download or read book Iran written by Nikki R. Keddie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1983. This book brings together the best of Professor Keddie's articles on Iran both published and newly written and spans almost two decades. Long before the current religious-political alliance in Iran startled the world and toppled the Shah, Prof.Keddie undertook a series of studies that reveal the social, economic, doctrinal and political roots of what she was the first to call the 'Religious-Radical' alliance in Iran.
Download or read book Shia Islam and Politics written by Jon Armajani and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-05-20 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that ever since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, which established a Shia Islamic government in Iran, that country’s religious and political leaders have used Shia Islam as a crucial way of expanding Iran’s objectives in the Middle East and beyond. Since 1979, Iran’s religious and political leaders have been concerned about Iran’s security in the face of the hostility and expansionism of the United States and other western countries, and the threats from powerful neighboring Sunni leaders and countries. While Iran’s government has attempted to align itself with Shia Muslims in various countries, such as Iraq and Lebanon, against American and Sunni expansionism, the Iranian government has attempted to religiously nourish and politically mobilize those Shias as a matter of principle, not only because of the Iranian government’s desires to protect Iran from external threats. The book analyzes Shia Islam and politics in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon which have among the largest proportional Shia populations in the Middle East and are vibrant centers of Shia intellectual life. The book's clear and jargon-free approach make it especially accessible for students and general readers who would like an introduction to the book's topics.
Download or read book The Mantle of the Prophet written by Roy P. Mottahedeh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.
Download or read book Social Media in Iran written by David M. Faris and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2015-11-20 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social Media in Iran is the first book to tell the complex story of how and why the Iranian people—including women, homosexuals, dissidents, artists, and even state actors—use social media technology, and in doing so create a contentious environment wherein new identities and realities are constructed. Drawing together emerging and established scholars in communication, culture, and media studies, this volume considers the role of social media in Iranian society, particularly the time during and after the controversial 2009 presidential election, a watershed moment in the postrevolutionary history of Iran. While regional specialists may find studies on specific themes useful, the aim of this volume is to provide broad narratives of actor-based conceptions of media technology, an approach that focuses on the experiential and social networking processes of digital practices in the information era extended beyond cultural specificities. Students and scholars of regional and media studies will find this volume rich with empirical and theoretical insights on the subject of how technologies shape political and everyday life.
Download or read book Democracy in Modern Iran written by Ali Mirsepassi and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2011-10 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New perspectives on Iran's relationship to democracy Can Islamic societies embrace democracy? In Democracy in Modern Iran, Ali Mirsepassi maintains that it is possible, demonstrating that Islam is not inherently hostile to the idea of democracy. Rather, he provides new perspective on how such a political and social transformation could take place, arguing that the key to understanding the integration of Islam and democracy lies in concrete social institutions rather than pre-conceived ideas, the every day experiences rather than abstract theories. Mirsepassi, an Iranian native, provides a rare inside look into the country, offering a deep understanding of how Islamic countries like Iran and Iraq can and will embrace democracy. Democracy in Modern Iran challenges readers to think about Islam and democracy critically and in a far more nuanced way than is done in black-and-white dichotomies of Islam vs. Democracy, or Iran vs. the West. This essential volume contributes important insights to current discussions, creating a more complex conception of modernity in the Eastern world and, with it, Mirsepassi offers to a broad Western audience a more accurate, less clichéd vision of Iran’s political reality.
Download or read book Children of Paradise written by Laura Secor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The drama that shaped today’s Iran, from the Revolution to the present day. In 1979, seemingly overnight—moving at a clip some thirty years faster than the rest of the world—Iran became the first revolutionary theocracy in modern times. Since then, the country has been largely a black box to the West, a sinister presence looming over the horizon. But inside Iran, a breathtaking drama has unfolded since then, as religious thinkers, political operatives, poets, journalists, and activists have imagined and reimagined what Iran should be. They have drawn as deeply on the traditions of the West as of the East and have acted upon their beliefs with urgency and passion, frequently staking their lives for them. With more than a decade of experience reporting on, researching, and writing about Iran, Laura Secor narrates this unprecedented history as a story of individuals caught up in the slipstream of their time, seizing and wielding ideas powerful enough to shift its course as they wrestle with their country’s apparatus of violent repression as well as its rich and often tragic history. Essential reading at this moment when the fates of our countries have never been more entwined, Children of Paradise will stand as a classic of political reporting; an indelible portrait of a nation and its people striving for change.
Download or read book Post Revolutionary Politics in Iran written by David Menashri and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Islamic revolution in Iran, revolutionary leaders had to compromise their ideology. The Iranian ship of state continues to drift in search of an equilibrium between revolutionary convictions and the demands of governance, between religion and state, and Islam and the West.
Download or read book Iran and the Surrounding World written by Nikki R. Keddie and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These essays examine Iran’s place in the world--its relations and cultural interactions with its immediate neighbors and with empires and superpowers from the beginning of the Safavid period in 1501 to the present day. The book provides important historical background on recent political and social developments in Iran and on its contemporary foreign relations. The topics explored include Iranian influence abroad on political organization, religion, literature, art, and diplomacy, as well as Iran's absorption of foreign influences in these areas. A special focus is the prevailing political culture of Iran throughout its early modern and contemporary periods. The authors combine approaches from history, political science, anthropology, international relations, and culturalstudies. Some essays address Iran’s interactions with various Arab and Turkic ethnicities in the region stretching from India to Egypt. Others examine its relations with the West during the Qajar and Pahlavi eras, women's issues, culture inside Iran during the Islamic Republic, and the Shi`ite theocracy of Iran as compared with other Muslim states.
Download or read book Islam and Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran written by Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2008-04-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iranian revolution of 1979 overhauled not only the foundations of Iranian society, religion and politics, but also our understanding of the role of religion in modern government. Here Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi takes us on an enlightening journey, showing that the revolution unintentionally opened up the public sphere to competing interpretations of Islam. Far from being the exclusive preserve of high-ranking seminarians as before, in contemporary Iran lay theologians, intellectuals, lawyers and social activists are active and influential interlocutors in debates on the meaning of Islam.A key figure is philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush, a leading force behind Iran's pro-democracy movement and vocal critic of the state. Through a close reading of Soroush's writings, and by tracing the links between Muslim intellectual critique and the realpolitik of postrevolutionary power struggles, Ghamari-Tabrizi offers nothing less than a pathbreaking reassessment of the Iranian revolution. With powerful insights, 'Islam and Dissent' is essential for an understanding of the Muslim world today, as of the new relationships between religion, politics and democracy visible across the globe.Islam and politics a very important topic, especially re. Iran. Soroush is a key figure in Iran, and in Middle East generally. This title is recommended by star academics in the field of Islam and politics.
Download or read book The Iranian Metaphysicals written by Alireza Doostdar and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do the occult sciences, séances with the souls of the dead, and appeals to saintly powers have to do with rationality? Since the late nineteenth century, modernizing intellectuals, religious leaders, and statesmen in Iran have attempted to curtail many such practices as "superstitious," instead encouraging the development of rational religious sensibilities and dispositions. However, far from diminishing the diverse methods through which Iranians engage with the immaterial realm, these rationalizing processes have multiplied the possibilities for metaphysical experimentation. The Iranian Metaphysicals examines these experiments and their transformations over the past century. Drawing on years of ethnographic and archival research, Alireza Doostdar shows that metaphysical experimentation lies at the center of some of the most influential intellectual and religious movements in modern Iran. These forms of exploration have not only produced a plurality of rational orientations toward metaphysical phenomena but have also fundamentally shaped what is understood as orthodox Shi‘i Islam, including the forms of Islamic rationality at the heart of projects for building and sustaining an Islamic Republic. Delving into frequently neglected aspects of Iranian spirituality, politics, and intellectual inquiry, The Iranian Metaphysicals challenges widely held assumptions about Islam, rationality, and the relationship between science and religion.
Download or read book Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran written by Shahrough Akhavi and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1980-06-30 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indispensable for understanding the recent conflicts in Iran, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran provides a political history of the fluctuating relationships between the Islamic clergy and Iranian government since 1925. How different factions of the clergy, or ulama first lost and then regained a powerful position in Iran is the subject of this book. Akhavi analyzes how various factions within the clergy have responded to the government's efforts to encourage modernization and secularization, giving particular attention to the changes in the madrasahs, or theological colleges. He examines the main themes of the AyatullaH Khymayni's book, Islamic Government, and concludes by examining the alignments among the clergy in the past that indicate how they may develop in the future.
Download or read book Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran written by Abbas Milani and published by Lynne Rienner Pub. This book was released on 2015 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the relative calm apparent in Iran today, there is unmistakable evidence of political, social, and cultural ferment stirring beneath the surface. The authors of Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran¿a unique group of scholars, activists, and artists¿explore that unrest and its challenge to the legitimacy and stability of the present authoritarian regime. Ranging from political theory to music, from human rights law to social media, their contributions reveal the tenacious and continually evolving forces that are at work resisting the status quo.
Download or read book Women and Politics in Iran Veiling Unveiling and Reveiling written by Hamideh Sedghi and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why were urban women veiled in the early 1900s, unveiled from 1936 to 1979, and reveiled after the 1979 revolution? This question forms the basis of Hamideh Sedghi's original and unprecedented contribution to politics and Middle Eastern studies. Using primary and secondary sources, Sedghi offers new knowledge on women's agency in relation to state power. In this rigorous analysis she places contention over women at the centre of the political struggle between secular and religious forces and demonstrates that control over women's identities, sexuality, and labor has been central to the consolidation of state power. Sedghi links politics and culture with economics to present an integrated analysis of the private and public lives of different classes of women and their modes of resistance to state power.
Download or read book Iran written by Abbas Amanat and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterfully researched and compelling history of Iran from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first
