Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T14:46:00.448Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Liberation without Liberalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2020

Hussein Banai
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington
Get access

Summary

This chapter explores the implications stemming from the advent of the Islamic Republic for liberal-thought practices inside Iran. Specifically, it seeks to clarify the differences between liberal objections to all varieties of religious governance and Islamic modernist-cum-reformist efforts to reconcile monistic doctrines with pluralistic realities. The latter cohort’s appropriation of some aspects of liberal thinking – by the Liberation Movement of Iran (LMI) in 1970-80 and by religious reformists after the election of Mohammad Khatami in 1997 – has obscured significant substantive differences between these visions, allowing for incoherent labels such as “Islamic liberalism”. Efforts to make the Islamic Republic more democratic or to advance a pluralistic vision of political Islam, however much progressive in the context of their times and political possibilities, nonetheless are substantially different in depth and scope from liberal-constitutional principles and visions of progress championed by advocates of political liberalism around the globe and inside Iran. Curiously, these differences have largely been downplayed, if not altogether overlooked, in political studies of post-revolutionary Islamic modernism and reformist thought. This chapter examines these differences and offers an explanation for their combined impact on liberal political thought in contemporary Iranian intellectual discourses.

Type
Chapter
Information
Hidden Liberalism
Burdened Visions of Progress in Modern Iran
, pp. 102 - 141
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×