Abstract:
To date, numerous efforts have been made to establish the validity of a religious theory for democracy. Some, like Mirza Na'ini, by relying on areas devoid of explicit texts, were able to provide such validity for the right to exercise power based on the will and vote of the people. Others have attempted to lay a foundation for democracy by discovering the sources of rights production in Islamic jurisprudence. Ayatollah Mehdi Haeri is among the jurists who, relying on those same traditional jurisprudential teachings, was able to innovate a formula based on which an individual takes precedence over the state, and governance originates from the will and desire of the people before it acquires a divine aspect. For this reason, he sought to provide an analysis different from his contemporary jurists regarding the nature of the office of government. By defining this office as an 'agency' (wakalat)—as opposed to 'guardianship' (wilayat) and supervision—he viewed government as stemming from the will and desire of the people (the principals), and through a jurisprudential analogy of 'common ownership' (milkiyat-e musha'), he validated the public will in the construction of the state. Does jurisprudence possess such capacity, and what are the implications of such an analysis? These are the questions this article seeks to answer.
Machine summary:
However, Haeri attempted to provide such an answer based on the "common ownership of citizens," which itself was considered a critique of the social contract theory, especially Rousseau's reading of it.
1. Pillars of the Common Ownership of Citizens His theory, which is discussed in detail in the book "Hikmat va Hokumat," possesses important pillars that are briefly mentioned below: 1- Governance means the art of statecraft, management, and thought in the administration and regulation of the internal and external affairs of the country; it is considered one of the branches of wisdom and practical reason, and it does not mean command, monarchy, and sovereignty over subordinates, or guardianship and tutelage.
Although some of Ayatollah Haeri's ideas, such as the "incompatibility of Sharia and government," exist in the works of some religious intellectuals like Soroush and Mojtahed Shabestari, and also the "non-political nature of the position of imamate" exists in Sufi interpretations of the views of Mulla Sadra and Ghazali, it seems that his most important achievement, which justifies the foundation of the modern state in traditional jurisprudence, is the discussion of the social contract, which has similarities with Rousseau's theory in this regard.
From the first perspective, critiques have been leveled against him 1 that are not the focus of this treatise; because the axis of our discussions is not the Wilayat al-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist), but what is important is the second perspective, namely the re-reading of the modern state in religious thought, which is referred to below: 1- The theory of communal ownership has been mostly presented within the framework of a traditional view of politics and government.
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