Suchergebnisse

Ayatollah Montazeri was a Khomeinist who came to regret being Khomeini's unabashed protegé. Though he has never abandoned the doctrine of velayat-e faqih, he has sought to reconceptualize it by furnishing it with democratic principles. In this, he has not been credible, although he has managed to portray himself as a reformer among some Iranian activists who themselves have credible reformist credentials, such as Akbar Ganji. But other reformists believe that the principles of the mandate of the jurist permit authoritarian abuses. And those among them who seek a mujtahid's support for overthrowing that doctrine would prefer to turn to the writings of Ayatollah Dr. Mehdi Ha'iri (d. 1999).

According to S. N. Elsenstadt, Institutions are Those Processes and structures, together with the associated set of regulative principles, that arrange human activities in a community "into definite organizational patterns from the point of view of some of the perennial, basic problems of any society or ordered social life." From this perspective, the social dimension of the concept of social institutions is seen in terms of its "institutional spheres," which include family and kinship, education, economics, politics, culture, and stratification. To this list may be added those approaches in psychology in which the unit of analysis is the group, community, or society.Because the subject of "Social Institutions" covers such a vast domain, it will be necessary to focus upon only certain entries of the EIr in this domain. However, before proceeding, it is worth noting that some 150 articles in the first seven volumes may be classified under "social institutions," including the subsections of articles.

One of the most important arenas of the ferment in contemporary Arab social thought is Egypt. Egyptian writers have been contributing to a rapidly growing body of literature on state and society. Its themes include methodological issues, the nature of the ideal Islamic society; the elite–mass gap; the state's role in public life; the appropriate model for socioeconomic development; and the social bases of Islamist movements.

The concept known in Shiᶜite jurisprudence aswilāYat al-faqīhhas been interpreted in various and contending ways over the course of time. In order for us to examine these differences, we need to establish a few points. First, although the Qurᵓanic revelation bears principally on issues of morality and piety, early Muslims deemed it essential to relate these issues to practical matters in the exercise of authority. Second, rulership in the Islamic community(ummah)was a prerogative of the Prophet, whose mode of governance was to blend the approximately six hundred verses of the scripture that dealt with social affairs with the customary law(ᶜurf)of Western Arabia. After the Prophet's death, it was necessary to add to this mix a third ingredient, namely, the interpretation, by those knowledgable in the law, of how the Prophet would have met unanticipated contingencies.