To loosen and bind: Khomeini, Rafsanjani, and supplementary governance in the Islamic Republic

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite attention to Khomeini’s Guardianship of the Jurist (1970) and to Sunni iterations of maṣlaḥa, there is a dearth of Western scholarship on what Iranian scholars and journalists recognize as indispensable to governance in the Islamic Republic. With a comparative approach to modern perceptions of maṣlaḥa from inside and outside Iran, this article reveals a new perspective on how the outcome of debates in the earliest years of the Islamic Republic between the parliament and the Guardian Council went against the grain of traditional discussions on reconciling new laws with the shari‘a’s principles. Using academic literature, Sunni and Shi‘i jurisprudence, and, most significantly, one of Ayatullah Hashemi Rafsanjani’s (d. 2017) final interviews, this article shows that in these debates, Rafsanjani invoked the welfare of the state and national interest using the traditionally legal and limited concept of maṣlaḥa to justify new laws. Khomeini, on the other hand, re-imagined maṣlaḥa as necessary for Islamic Republic’s existence. Curiously, Khomeini’s re-imagining bears unexpected parallels with Jacques Derrida’s ‘supplement’, which, unlike maṣlaḥa, maintained human existence while the latter maintained political existence. Both maṣlaḥa and the supplement, however, provide a means and explanation for the defence of political and human existence during a real or perceived crisis.