Law, State, and Society in Modern Iran PDF Download

Author: H. Enayat
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137282029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Using a 'Historical Institutionalist' approach, this book sheds light on a relatively understudied dimension of state-building in early twentieth century Iran, namely the quest for judicial reform and the rule of law from the 1906 Constitutional Revolution to the end of Reza Shah's rule in 1941.

Author: Darius M Rejali
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
What does the practice of torture presuppose about human beings and human society? How does one explain a society in which institutional torture persists despite massive changes in government and class structure? What, indeed, are the social foundations of modern torture? In Culture and Modernity, Darius M. Rejali investigates torture in Iran in order to understand and critically reconsider the politics and psychology of modern torture. In a world in which one out of every three governments uses torture, Rejali points to a common past, one shared by Iranians and non-Iranians alike, that supports this practice.“My aim,” Rejali writes, “is to use the study of torture, and of punishment more generally, to unearth deep and important assumptions about society, history, politics, and the ‘good life' that I believe underpin the life of a torturer.”Exploring the four principle explanations of modern torture—those offered by human rights activists, modernization theorists, state terrorist theorists such as Noam Chomsky, and post-structuralists, especially Michel Foucault—Rejali asks, “Do the accounts of political violence that we have developed over the past century have any real… explanatory or even moral significance… in today's world, or are they just consolations in the face of events we cannot fully understand?” His answers lead him to reconsider how Middle Eastern and European history are written and move him to question cherished assumptions about state formation, modernization, and postmodernism. Torture and Modernity is a deeply unsettling book—it contains not only graphic verbal passages, but an extensive photographic essay—yet it is intended to serve as a guide to rethinking current attitudes and reshaping political policies. How people are punished necessarily invokes conceptions of what human beings are and what they might become. A work such as this offers an understanding of what it means to “become modern,” and it is only when this notion of modernity is made manifest and analyzed that one can firmly grasp the prospects for a world without torture.

Author: H. Enayat
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137282029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Using a 'Historical Institutionalist' approach, this book sheds light on a relatively understudied dimension of state-building in early twentieth century Iran, namely the quest for judicial reform and the rule of law from the 1906 Constitutional Revolution to the end of Reza Shah's rule in 1941.

Author: Stephanie Cronin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134413882
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
The articles in this volume collectively present a picture of Iran under Riza Shah in all its complexity, in darker as well as lighter shades, highlighting the era's debt to the past as well as its legacy to the future.

Author: Homa Katouzian
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134430957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
This book contains the most detailed and comprehensive statement of Homa Katouzian's theory of arbitrary state and society in Iran, and its applications to Iranian history and politics, both modern and traditional. Every chapter is a study of its own specific topics while being firmly a part of the whole argument. The discussions include close comparisons with the history of Europe to demonstrate the diversities of the logic and sociology of Iranian history from their European counterparts. Being the first modern theory of Iranian history, it is highly regarded by Iranian historians and social scientists, especially as it has helped to resolve many of the anomalies resulting from the application of traditional theories.

Author: Mehran Tamadonfar
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498507573
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
The current rise of Islamism throughout the Muslim world, Islamists’ demand for the establishment of Islamic states, and their destabilizing impact on regional and global orders have raised important questions about the origins of Islamism and the nature of an Islamic state. Beginning with the Iranian revolution of the late 1970s and the establishment of the Islamic Republic to today’s rise of ISIS to prominence, it has become increasingly apparent that Islamism is a major global force in the twenty-first century that demands acknowledgment and answers. As a highly-integrated belief system, the Islamic worldview rejects secularism and accounts for a prominent role for religion in the politics and laws of Muslim societies. Islam is primarily a legal framework that covers all aspects of Muslims’ individual and communal lives. In this sense, the Islamic state is a logical instrument for managing Muslim societies. Even moderate Muslims who genuinely, but not necessarily vociferously, challenge the extremists’ strategies are not dismissive of the political role of Islam and the viability of an Islamic state. However, sectarian and scholastic schisms within Islam that date back to the prophet’s demise do undermine any possibility of consensus about the legal, institutional, and policy parameters of the Islamic state. Within its Shi’a sectarian limitations, this book attempts to offer some answers to questions about the nature of the Islamic state. Nearly four decades of experience with the Islamic Republic of Iran offers us some insights into such a state’s accomplishments, potentials, and challenges. While the Islamic worldview offers a general framework for governance, this framework is in dire need of modification to be applicable to modern societies. As Iranians have learned, in the realm of practical politics, transcending the restrictive precepts of Islam is the most viable strategy for building a functional Islamic state. Indeed, Islam does provide both doctrinal and practical instruments for transcending these restrictions. This pursuit of pragmatism could potentially offer impressive strategies for governance as long as sectarian, scholastic, and autocratic proclivities of authorities do not derail the rights of the public and their demand for an orderly management of their societies.

Author: Homa Katouzian
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Seeking to explain the background to Iran's almost continuous adherence to one party rule, Homa Katouzian offers a theoretical framework for the study of the country's history. His approach provides insights into the present situation in the country.

Author: Hadi Enayat
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108481427
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
After Iran's 1979 Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini denounced the secular legal system of the Pahlavis and pledged his commitment to distinctly Islamic conceptions of law and justice: the application of both the shariʿa and the rule of law (hākemiyat-e qānun) became major ideological pillars of the Islamic Republic. This precipitated the Islamization of the legal system, the judiciary and the courts, a process which still continues today and is the subject of intense ideological and political contestation. The Rule of Law in Iran is the first comprehensive analysis of judicial and legal institutions of the Islamic Republic of Iran in their social, political and historical contexts. Scholars and practitioners of law, many with experience of working in Iran, shed light on how the rule of law has fared across a variety of areas, from criminal law to labour law, family law, minority rights, policing, the legal profession, the visual and performing arts, trade law, and medicine.

Author: Ali Gheissari
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195396960
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
In this book, Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr look at the political history of Iran in the modern era, and offer an in-depth analysis of the prospects for democracy to flourish there. After having produced the only successful Islamist challenge to the state, a revolution, and an Islamic Republic, Iran is now poised to produce a genuine and indigenous democratic movement in the Muslim world. Democracy in Iran is neither a sudden development nor a western import, and Gheissari and Nasr seek to understand why democracy failed to grow roots and lost ground to an autocratic Iranian state.

Author: Behzad Yaghmaian
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791452127
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A multi-level insider's look at the changes transforming contemporary Iran.