RELIGION 377S / AMES 288S / POLSCI 379S / HISTORY 265S
Religion and Politics in Post-Revolutionary Iran
Fall 2025 Seminar
Tu/Th 4:40-5:55 pm, Venue: Allen 226
Mohsen Kadivar, Ph.D.

Course Description:
Debates on religion and politics in post-revolutionary Iran – whether in Iranian, Middle Eastern, or Western settings – are among the most pressing global issues in recent decades. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been one of the most controversial regimes since its inception. This course will narrate a fair and balanced story of more than four decades of religion and politics in Iran. It will explore a select sample of questions from political, sociological, and historical perspectives. Some key themes that will be analyzed in this course are answers to these questions:
What is the relationship between religion and politics in general and Islam and politics in particular? What are the major characteristics of Islamic political theology and ethics? What are the major stages of Shi’ite Islam and politics? What did happen in Iran between the two revolutions (1905 and 1979)? What does ‘political Islam’ or ‘Islamism’ mean? What was Khomeini’s political thought? What are the major characteristics of the Iranian Constitution (1979, with the amendment of 1986)? What does theocracy do with secularism and democracy? What is the role of elections in a quasi-democratic regime? How did regime expediency secularize the administration? What is the relationship between civil law and Islamic law (sharia)?
What is the role of religion (Shi’ite Islam) in Iranian politics and economics? What are the major differences between Iranian Muslim fundamentalists, traditionalists, and reformists? Why did the Islamic Republic of Iran go back and forth between a competitive electoral and a non-competitive electoral authoritarian regime? What is the situation of human rights, freedom, and justice in Iran? What are the major gender discriminations and women’s demands? What are the major religious and ethnic discriminations, and what are these minorities’ demands?
What are the major dimensions of Iranian foreign policy, especially concerning the US and Europe, Russia and China, the nuclear deal, and the Middle East crisis, especially the Israel-Palestine conflict? What is the role of the Revolutionary Guards in Iranian politics, economics, and socio-cultural affairs? What are the major aspects of Khomeini’s and Khamenei’s administrations? What will be the future of the Islamic Republic of Iran?
The course is organized into five thematic sections. It begins with a brief overview of the relationship between religion and politics in Iran. The second section offers an intellectual history of the Islamic Republic. We then examine the concept of the “sacred as secular” and explore the dynamics of secularization within a theocratic system. The fourth section addresses the question of governance in the name of Islam, focusing on theology and theocratic rule in the Islamic Republic. The final section turns to the revolt against theocracy: the Mahsa Movement and the feminist uprising against theocracy in Iran.
Iran is a multicultural society with linguistic, ethnic, sub-national, and religious diversity. Women’s movements, as well as the social mobility of the middle class in contemporary Iran, have been very dynamic. This course will focus on these cultural diversities, their relationship to each other, and the effect of these diversities on the contemporary politics of Iran and Iranian identity. The course will also critically examine the concepts of identity, diversity, and power in the discourse of the Islamic Republic.