The term Islamic republic has been used in different ways. Some Muslim religious leaders have used it as the name for a theoretical form of Islamic theocratic government enforcing sharia, or laws compatible with sharia. The term has also been used for a sovereign state taking a compromise position between a purely Islamic caliphate and a secular, nationalist republic — neither an Islamic monarchy nor secular republic. In other cases it is used merely as a symbol of cultural identity.
Special Clerical Court, or Special Court for Clerics is a special Iranian judicial system for prosecuting crimes, both ordinary and political, committed by Islamic clerics and scholars. The Special Clerical Court can defrock and disbar Islamic jurists, give sentences of imprisonment, corporal punishment, execution, etc. The court functions independently of the regular Iranian judicial framework, with its own security and prison systems, "generally secret and confidential" cases, proceedings and procedures, and is accountable only to the Supreme Leader of Iran,. The most senior Islamic politician to be prosecuted and sentenced to prison since the Iranian Revolution was Abdollah Nouri who was sentenced to five years in prison for political and religious dissent by the court in 1999.
The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran is the supreme law of Iran. It was adopted by referendum on 2 and 3 December 1979, and went into force replacing the Constitution of 1906. It has been amended once, on 28 July 1989. The constitution was originally made up of 175 articles in twelve chapters, but amended in 1989 to 177 article in fourteen chapters.
In Islamic Law, tazir refers to punishment for offenses at the discretion of the judge (Qadi) or ruler of the state. It is one of three major types of punishments or sanctions under Sharia Islamic law — hadd, qisas and ta'zir. The punishments for the Hadd offenses are fixed by the Qur'an or Hadith, qisas allow equal retaliation in cases of intentional bodily harm, while ta'zir refers to punishments applied to the other offenses for which no punishment is specified in the Qur'an or the Hadith or is not punishable under either qisas or hudud.
Islamic Government, or Islamic Government: Jurist's Guradianship is a book by the Iranian Shi'i Muslim cleric/jurist, and revolutionary, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. First published in 1970, it is perhaps the most influential document written in modern times in support of theocratic rule.
Qisas or Qiṣāṣ is an Islamic term interpreted to mean "retaliation in kind", "eye for an eye", or retributive justice.
Diya in Islamic law, is the financial compensation paid to the victim or heirs of a victim in the cases of murder, bodily harm or property damage by mistake. It is an alternative punishment to qisas. In Arabic, the word means both blood money and ransom, and it is spelled sometimes as diyah or diyeh.
The Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist is a concept in Twelver Shia Islamic law which holds that until the reappearance of the "infallible Imam", at least some of the "religious and social affairs" of the Muslim world should be administered by righteous Shi'i jurists (Faqīh). Shia disagree over whose "religious and social affairs" are to be administered and what those affairs are.
Islamic Revolutionary Court is a special system of courts in the Islamic Republic of Iran designed to try those suspected of crimes such as smuggling, blaspheming, inciting violence or trying to overthrow the Islamic government. The court started its work after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Traditionally, the practice of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamism in the nation of Iran has referred to various forms of Shi'i Islamic religious revivalism that seek a return to the original texts and the inspiration of the original believers of Islam, including the elimination of foreign, non-Islamic ideas and practices from Iran's society, economy and political system; It is often contrasted with other strains of Islamic thought, such as traditionalism, quietism and modernism. In Iran, Islamic fundamentalism and Islamism is primarily associated with the thought and practice of the leader of the Islamic Revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ("Khomeinism"), but may also involve figures such as Fazlullah Nouri, Navvab Safavi, and successors of Khomeini.
Khomeinism refers to the religious and political ideas of the leader of the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini. Khomeinism may also refer to the ideology of the clerical class which has ruled Islamic Republic of Iran founded by Khomeini, after his death. It can also be used to refer to the radicalization of segments of the Twelver Shia populations of Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, and the Iranian government's recruitment of Shia minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Africa. The word Khomeinist and Khomeinists, derived from Khomeinism, are also used to describe members of Iran's clerical rulers and differentiate them from regular Shia Muslim clerics.
Sheikh Fazlollah bin Abbas Mazindarani, also known as Fazlollah Noori, was a major figure in Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911) as a Twelver Shia Muslim scholar and politically connected mullah of the court of Iran's Shah. Originally a supporter of the constitution, he turned against it after the supporting constitution shah died and was replaced by one opposing the constitution. He was hanged as a traitor in 1909 by a court of the constitutionalist government for "sowing corruption and sedition on earth".
From the Imperial Pahlavi dynasty, through the Islamic Revolution (1979), to the era of the Islamic Republic of Iran, government treatment of Iranian citizens' rights has been criticized by Iranians, international human rights activists, writers, and NGOs. While the monarchy under the rule of the shahs was widely attacked by most Western watchdog organizations for having an abysmal human rights record, the government of the Islamic Republic which succeeded it is considered still worse by many.
The Persian Constitutional Revolution, also known as the Constitutional Revolution of Iran, took place between 1905 and 1911 during the Qajar dynasty. The revolution led to the establishment of a parliament in Persia (Iran), and has been called an "epoch-making episode in the modern history of Persia".
Casualties of the Iranian Revolution refers to those who lost their lives during the Iranian Revolution. Observers differ on how many people died during the Iranian Revolution. The Islamic government uses the figure of 60,000 killed; in reference to this figure, the military historian Spencer C. Tucker notes that "Khomeini's regime grossly overstated the revolution's death toll for propaganda purposes". The sociologist Charles Kurzman, drawing on later more detailed records from the Islamic Republic, believes the number was closer to 2,000-3,000.
The Imperial State of Iran, the government of Iran during the Pahlavi dynasty, lasted from 1925 to 1979. During that time two monarchs — Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — employed secret police, torture, and executions to stifle political dissent but this is what has been mentioned and emphasized by foreign press in order to criticize the regime which was in power in Iran and their intention according to Mohammadreza Shah was nothing but "jealousy" and the intention to bring back Iran to the old ages of darkness and poverty and it was also at the time obvious that because of the improvement of the country, the western powers could not handle this progress in Iran and saw this improvement as a threat for their manipulation in the third-world countries like Iran at that time. The Pahlavi dynasty has sometimes been described as a "royal dictatorship", or "one-man rule". According to one history of the use of torture by the state in Iran, abuse of prisoners varied at times during the Pahlavi reign.
The ideology of the Iranian Revolution has been called a "complex combination" of Pan-Islamism, political populism, and Shia Islamic "religious radicalism"; "a struggle against paganism, oppression, and empire. Perhaps the most important of the diverse ideological interpretation of Islam within the grand alliance that led to the 1979 revolution were Khomeinism, Ali Shariati’s Islamic-left ideology, Mehdi Bazargan’s liberal-democratic Islam. Less powerful were the socialist guerrilla groups of Islamic and secular variants, and the secular constitutionalism in socialist and nationalist forms. Contributors to the ideology also included Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, who formulated the idea of Gharbzadegi—that Western culture must be rejected and fought as was a plague or an intoxication that alienated Muslims from their roots and identity.
Sharia means Islamic law based on age-old concepts. Since the early Islamic states of the eighth and ninth centuries, Sharia always existed alongside other normative systems.
The Islamic Republic of Iran was founded after the 1979 overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty by the Islamic Revolution, and its legal code is based on Islamic law or sharia, although many aspects of civil law have been retained, and it is integrated into a civil law legal system. According to the constitution of the Islamic Republic, the judiciary in Iran "is an independent power". The entire legal system—"from the Supreme Court to regional courts, all the way down to local and revolutionary courts"—is under the purview of the Ministry of Justice, but in addition to a Minister of Justice and head of the Supreme Court, there is also a separate appointed Head of the Judiciary. Parliamentary bills pertaining to the constitution are vetted by the Council of Guardians.
Shia Islamism is the usage of Shia Islam in politics. Most study and reporting on Islamism has been focused on Sunni Islamist movements. Shia Islamism, a previously very small ideology, was boosted after the Iranian Revolution led by Ruhollah Khomeini, whose Shia Islamist policies became known as Khomeinism.
