The concept of Islamic republic in Iran

Abstract

One of the fundamental consequences of Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979, which gave birth to the Islamic Republic of Iran, was the name and the nature of the new regime, since not only was a republican form of government new in Iran’s centuries-old history, but also the idea of creating an Islamic government was most revolutionary, especially within the Shiite school of Islam. Although the idea of Islamic republic preceded the Islamic Revolution since it was adopted as the official name by the regimes in Pakistan and Mauritania in 1947 and 1960, respectively, its implementation in Iran had at least one critically unique feature; to wit, the guardianship of the Islamic jurist, or velayat-e faqih. Being formulated by Ayatollah Khomeini during his exile years in Najaf in late 1960s as an alternative to the absolute Pahlavi monarchy, it basically delegated the implementation and the protection of the “revolutionary ideals” to a high-ranking Shiite scholar. Velayat-e faqih became the backbone of the Islamic Republic’s constitution in 1979, and it was rapidly institutionalized as a massive body called bayt-e rahberi or the House of the Leader. This chapter discusses the process and the context in which Khomeini developed this theory in pre-revolutionary Iran, as it also investigates how it turned into one of the principle themes of the debates around religion and state relations in the post-revolutionary period.