Islamic Republic of Iran, an Islamic Popular System (1)

The existence of rule and government in human social life is a natural need and is one of the most important issues that man has noticed since the beginning.
On the importance and necessity of government it’s enough to say that through a few thousand years of human history there has been no society that has survived without any kind of government one way or another. Government has been the main discussion of the political circles and many of the religions and intellectual movements.
One of the important propaganda axes of some western media against the Islamic Republic of Iran’s system is the claim that the government is undemocratic and no fair election is held in the country.
West has always introduced its liberal democracy as the best model to rule the society.
Liberal democracy may have been successful in a few domains of human society and current life; yet undoubtedly it has been thoroughly unable to tackle many problems of man and it has even added to the problems and aggravated many of them.
Especially the quick increase in moral, social and political crises in west has revealed that human’s problems cannot be solved through democracy on the basis of humanist thoughts.
The western man’s involvement in moral and social crises is the result of humanist school of thought ruling in the past few centuries in western societies. On the other hand, human’s quest for a better system of government has not been blocked.
Two decades ago Francis Fukuyama the American theorist considered capitalism as the end of history and introduced the west liberalist system as the best ruling model.
However not only many of western and eastern philosophers, but also Fukuyama himself has admitted the falsity of his idea.
Three major kinds of governance have been known in the world. Some countries are ruled according to a person’s, a family’s or a tribe’s will which is called tyranny or dictatorship. Western democracy is dominant in some other countries whose source of legitimacy is the people’s will. Another kind of government which is enacted in the Islamic Republic of Iran is called religious democracy or better said “religious popular rule”. Religious popular rule is remarkable in the world, for it has challenged Fukuyama’s theory of “end of history” about dominance and hegemony of liberalism and its due ruling system. That’s the reason why westerns have tried their best to show the Islamic Republic system as insufficient.
In these series, we try to mention the differences between western democracy and religious democracy (popular religious rule) and introduce democratic bodies and separation of branches of power in the Islamic Republic of Iran. We also try to prove that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the most popular and efficient systems in the world. Before we go on to discuss the characteristics of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s system, first of all it is necessary to make clear the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nature and its achievements for the human society. We start our discussion by a definition of “revolution”. Islamic philosophers have described revolution as follows:
Revolution is a fundamental change in all social, economic, legal and particularly political domains compared to what was firm and consistent before the revolution. These changes are always caused by the overthrow of the ruling system and often include violent acts, damages and bloodshed.
Martyr Ayatollah Morteza Motahari, as one of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s theorists, describes the revolution as follows: “Revolution is rebellion and disobedience of the people of an area or a land against the existing ruling regime to create the pleasant arrangement. Accordingly he considers two things to be as the root cause of revolution: one is the people’s discontent and with the existing condition and another is the attempt to reach a desirable and ideal condition. Thus there are both negation and approval in any revolution: the negation of the existing condition and the approval of the favorite condition.
Are all revolutions materialistic or is it possible to have revolutions with human and spiritual nature? There are several theories about this: some believe although the entire world’s social revolutions may have different forms in appearance, their nature is the same and that nature is economic and materialistic. In other words, all of the revolutions are staged by the oppressed people against power and wealth owners. Some revolutions may of course have their roots in the economic and material polarization of the society; although the division of the society into two poor and rich poles is not the essential condition for a revolution. A revolution may spring from mere human, liberal and political factors.
Professor Motahhari considered a third nature besides the first and second one mentioned above. He believes revolution can have ideological nature in addition to its economic and political nature. It means that those who believe in the same faith and religion and are seriously dependant on its spiritual values, protest when find their beliefs are being threatened.
Such people’s revolution does not have anything to do with their being full or hungry or their having political freedom or not. Therefore, Martyr Motahhari divides revolutions into three categories in terms of incentives and occurrence: First, economic and materialistic revolutions whose goal is naturally to reach to a society where there is no trace of class difference such as Russian Revolution in 1917. Second, liberating revolutions whose mere ideal is to free people from the yoke of oppression. For instance, French Revolution is of this type in which people rose up against tyranny. The third kind of revolution aims to revive the trampled ideals and forgotten values.
Now the question is raised as what kind of revolution is the Islamic Revolution of Iran? Has it stemmed from class differences? Does it have liberation nature? Or had it been created for religion and in the name of God? There are several theories about this. Analysts try to adapt Iran’s revolution with their own theory. Each of them gives evidence from the Islamic Revolution and claims that the revolution is compatible with their theory.
One claims the revolution to be economic and materialistic, another considers it to be political and liberal and the third one believes it to be ideological. Some of the philosophers have proven that the Islamic Republic of Iran has not been one-sided, rather all of these three aspects exist in it; therefore, this revolution has come true by all of these three factors.
But which these factors is more prominent and outstanding?