Constitutional movement is a turning point in the contemporary history of Iran that has left deep impacts on the political and social developments of this country. It was a source of ...
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Constitutional movement is a turning point in the contemporary history of Iran that has left deep impacts on the political and social developments of this country. It was a source of large scale and lasting intellectual challenges that have extended to modern-day Iran. One such challenge was the type of confrontation with a despotic royal regime. The Western-oriented constitutionalists, living under the big banner of Western development, introduced a translation-based theory of Constitutional Movement as a substitute for the despotic rule. Ulema, however, had done nothing more than theoretically rejecting legitimacy of governments run by a non-infallible figure or those unauthorized by an infallible authority. They had proposed no positive action as a replacement for the theory of substitution. It was after the Tobacco Movement and the ensuing political atmosphere that Ulema (Muslim scholars) tried to introduce – in an evolutionary understanding – a positive plan for constraining the despotic rule in a way to force it comply with the local requirements. Therefore, they proposed the political system of the Department of Justice or House of Justice (Adalat Khaneh) against the theory of translation-based Constitutional Movement. With a glance at the history of public combats under the leadership of the Ulema ever since the early days of the House of Justice movement up to the final days of public protests before the UK Embassy at the same time with a sit-in by Ulema in Qom, it is clearly understood that the movement’s leaders had come to the conclusion that it was impossible to meet the rights of the nation and to safeguard religion based on individual approaches and that there should be a specific pattern of action to meet these goals.
