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A short history of liberalism in contemporary Iran

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Abstract

The present article explores how liberalism and modern thoughts entered Iran and how they influenced political thought and institutions in contemporary Iran. It also briefly considers how Iran’s traditional religious and historical discourse addressed modernity and liberal constitutional theories that were distinct from its own. During most of the past 150 years, the traditional discourse regarded modernity and liberalism to be “the other.” Some of these thinkers rejected modernity and liberalism entirely, others attempted to discriminate between good and bad elements of modernity and liberalism, and took account of the good, while rejecting the bad. A few adopted both liberalism and modernity wholeheartedly. Each of these assessments generated new or revised strands of political thought in Iran. In the end, liberalism failed to attract sufficient support to sustain itself, but indirectly affected Iranian politics through refinements in earlier traditional and religious political discourse and by placing Iran’s governance on constitutional foundations.

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Notes

  1. A written constitution was first adopted in 1906. It was significantly amended in 1907, and that law remained in place until 1979, albeit with other modifications in 1911, 1925, 1948, and 1965.

  2. - Modernity refers to the elements of a “modern” society. Modernity, as used here, refers to the historical period between the fifteenth century and the twentieth century. There are six elements of modernity: scientific, technological, political, philosophical, and aesthetic modernity. Technological modernity entered Persia through the Persian-Russian conflicts. Cultural, philosophical, aesthetic, political and ideological dimension of modernity entered Iran shortly after after the Persian-Russia war. The nonscientific and nontechnological aspects of modernity largely refer to liberal concepts and thoughts that were used in the Western world. These, as indicated in this paper, had significant effects on the thoughts, writings, and speeches of Iranian thinkers.

  3. For further reading refer to: Abdul’Hadi Haeri (1935–1993) .2006.pp 308,309.

  4. A pansor is an especially influential philosopher that provides part of the motivation and direction for reform. In his role as a potential pansor, Adamiyat suggests:: “Oh, people of Iran! If you were aware of freedom and human rights, you would not have consented to slavery and cruelty, you would have sought knowledge, and opened freemasonry lodges and councils. You are greater in number and power than the despot, you only lack unity and uniformity"(Akhundzade 1979: 61).

  5. For further reading, refer to Gholam Hossein Zargarinejad (1999: 323, 527).

  6. The details of the negotiations that produced the constitution and the process that led to the establishment of constitutional congress are beyond the scope of this paper. Several sources are available in English, as with Poulson (2005: ch. 7–8), Axworthy (2008, ch. 6), and Hunter (2015, ch. 1). An English translation of the constitution of 1906 and its 1907 amendments can be found at https://fis-iran.org/en/resources/legaldoc/iranconstitution.

  7. For further reading refer to Mohamad Ali Hosseinizade (1970-….), 2008, pp 105–120. Shahryar Zarshenas (1965-…), 2007, vol 2, pp. 63–143.

  8. An English translation of Iran’s 1979 constitution can be found at: https://www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/ir/ir001en.pdf. A short discussion of its history and another translation can be found in Ramazani (1980).

  9. Thanks are due to one of the editors of this journal for numerous helpful suggestions that helped to bring the current paper into publishable form.

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  1. Department of Political Thought, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    Aref Barkhordari

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Barkhordari, A. A short history of liberalism in contemporary Iran. Const Polit Econ 33, 200–216 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-021-09343-9

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