Political Authority and Legitimacy from Naraghi's Perspective Journal Article

Machine summary:

From the beginning and throughout history, due to respecting the legal rights of the people, emphasizing the implementation of the social commands of religion, and being concerned with keeping the institution of power safe from harms, abnormalities, and corruption, Shia Islam has not considered every individual worthy of governing the people. 2 This intellectual and theoretical movement in Shia jurisprudence gradually reached a point where the renowned jurist, Mawla Ahmad Naraqi, dedicated a treatise in (Awa'id al-Ayyam) to discussing Wilayat al-Faqih, and precisely formulated and established the Shia political theory regarding the legitimacy of government in a clear and manifest way. In Mi'raj al-Sa'ada, some categories have been investigated in such a way that they seem to complete certain aspects of Naraqi's theory in political jurisprudence, such as: the position of the people in the political structure, the role of the people in the legitimacy of government, the social and cultural effects of legitimate authority, and so on. Naraqi's attention and emphasis on the instrumental identity of power and its true and correct application toward serving the people and expanding divine-human values in society, as well as avoiding the sinning of society and corruption, clarifies his perspective regarding the ways that lead to the legitimacy of authority. )18 In political science terminology: (Legitimacy or rightfulness is the oneness and uniqueness of how leaders and rulers of a society attain power in accordance with the theories and beliefs of everyone or the majority of the people in a specific time and place.