Iran 40 years after victory of the Islamic Revolution (11)

We discussed some highlights of the speech of Leader of the Islamic Revolution at Imam Reza's shrine in Mashhad on the occasion of the Iranian New Year on March 21, 2018. Today we will talk about religious popular rule as an important point stressed by the Leader.

The Islamic Revolution emerged on the basis of goals and ideals which were originated in the religious and national beliefs of the Iranian people. One of the main ideals was development, progress and perfection in different fields.

In view of this, one of the most prominent aspects of development has been the political development. After the victory of the Islamic Revolution, political development was manifested in the form of religious popular rule. The system of religious popular rule shows that political development has been established on certain criteria such as people's satisfaction, legality and high position of divine values.

Political development is indeed among the prerequisites of religious popular rule. According to the historical evidence, human beings tried to gain progress and development in various domains. These efforts led to improvement in inhabitation, nutrition, and later on formation of city-states. Alongside social, economic and cultural progress in different communities, the issue of political development was also paid great attention to. Some institutions were shaped for enforcement of law and power and specific mechanisms were designed to administer various affairs in communities.

Political development began since the very inception of primitive communities, but it was accelerated and somehow set the ground for development in other domains. Thus, academic courses and fields were designed and the principles of statesmanship and governance were attached importance like other fields of study. The speed of political development in communities has changed with social, economic and historical variants.

In Iran, the real and lasting move toward political development can be seen in the post-revolution era in the form of endeavour to internalize religious popular rule. The expansion of popular rule and internalization of principles of democracy- in its real sense rather than the western sense- begins in the mind and belief of the people. Despotism and totalitarianism had affected the Iranian people for so long that they bore a very negative view of rulers and politicians.

As a matter of fact, like many nations in the world, it was like a lump in the throat of the Iranian people to see a true relation between the government and the nation. Many of the previous efforts to found organizations for improvement of this relation had failed and the rule of people was hardly experienced since the rulers, at least for the past several centuries, were the mercenaries of foreign powers who attached no importance for the interests of their nation.

Many historians considered cultural and ethnic variety and sectarian differences as the top reasons for lack of political development in Iran. However, the Islamic political thoughts proved the opposite. The cultural, ethnic and sectarian varieties not only didn't create rifts in the Iranian society, but they cemented the grounds of political consistency. In many historical junctures, different ethnicities and religious sects hand-in-hand rushed to save the country from the foreign occupation and interference while the rulers and politicians were perplexed what to decide and what to do. Next time we will discuss more on the issue.