The Position of Superstition and Anti-Superstition in Iran’s Political Thought with an Emphasis on the Qajar Era

Abstract

During Qajar era, superstition and anti-superstition have had great impact on Iran's thought. Superstitious context as an irrational process and major obstacle to the growth of thought in Iran, exhorted the society towards subjectivist and reductionist approach. Rational intellectuals, on the other hand, endeavored to erode superstitious trends for pushing the society towards rationality and development. This article with a qualitative historical and analytical methodology and through collecting the library data tries to answer the question that how superstitious culture had influenced the thought of Iran during the Qajar period? The hypothesis of the research is that the culture of superstition and irrationality through subjectivism and reductionism influenced the thought of Iran during Qajar era, which in its turn led to the intellectual despotism and consequently to the political tyranny. Based on the Giddens conception of the interaction between structure and agency, the article concludes that the contextual factors notably the superstitious culture led to the despotic mindset of Iranian rulers during Qajar period.