Philosophy and Politics – Critical Explorations
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Philosophy and Politics – Critical Explorations Volume 5 Series Editors David M. Rasmussen, Boston College, USA Alessandro Ferrara, University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, Italy Editorial Board Abdullahi An-Na’im, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law, Emory University, USA Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale University, USA Robert Audi, O’Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, USA Seyla Benhabib, Eugene Meyer Professor for Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University, USA Samuel Freeman, Avalon Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania, USA Jürgen Habermas, Professor Emeritus, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany Axel Honneth, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany and Columbia University, New York, USA Erin Kelly, Professor of Philosophy, Tufts University, USA Charles Larmore, W. Duncan MacMillan Family Professor in the Humanities, Brown University, USA Frank Michelman, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, USA Tong Shijun, Professor of Philosophy, East China Normal University, China Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, USA The purpose of Philosophy and Politics – Critical Explorations is to publish high quality volumes that reflect original research pursued at the juncture of philosophy and politics. Over the past 20 years new important areas of inquiry at the crossroads of philosophy and politics have undergone impressive developments or have emerged anew. Among these, new approaches to human rights, transitional justice, religion and politics and especially the challenges of a post-secular society, global justice, public reason, global constitutionalism, multiple democracies, political lib- eralism and deliberative democracy can be included. Philosophy and Politics – Critical Explorations addresses each and any of these interrelated yet distinct fields as valuable manuscripts and proposal become available, with the aim of both being the forum where single breakthrough studies in one specific subject can be pub- lished and at the same time the areas of overlap and the intersecting themes across the various areas can be composed in the coherent image of a highly dynamic disci- plinary continent. Some of the studies published are bold theoretical explorations of one specific theme, and thus primarily addressed to specialists, whereas others are suitable for a broader readership and possibly for wide adoption in graduate courses. The series includes monographs focusing on a specific topic, as well as collections of articles covering a theme or collections of articles by one author. Contributions to this series come from scholars on every continent and from a variety of scholarly orientations. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13508 Meysam Badamchi Post-Islamist Political Theory Iranian Intellectuals and Political Liberalism in Dialogue Meysam Badamchi Istanbul Şehir University, Center for Modern Turkish Studies Istanbul, Turkey ISSN 2352-8370 ISSN 2352-8389 (electronic) Philosophy and Politics – Critical Explorations ISBN 978-3-319-59491-0 ISBN 978-3-319-59492-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-59492-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943320 © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Preface and Acknowledgments When the Arab Spring started six years back, many of us felt we were witnessing a historic moment of democratic transition in Muslim-majority countries, one which would change the face of the Middle East—a region traumatized by the experience of western colonialism in its recent history—in a positive way. Just a few years later, however, the original optimism of the Arab Spring has faded away as the Middle East seems more than ever fated to being ruled either by dictators or extremist- jihadist Islamists. In Turkey, too, a country which had emerged as the favored model of Muslim democracy and Arab revolution, the future of its democracy seems less promising than before. These days, more than ever, the Muslim-majority world needs democratic aspirations, both in theory and practice, in which a commitment to Islamic values is married to genuine faith in democracy and human rights. I hope this book can make a small contribution to reaching such an aim. June of 2009, when the Green Movement in Iran had started just a couple of months before the Arab uprisings, coincided with the time I was about to submit my PhD research proposal to LUISS University in Rome. Although I was already con- sidering the applicability of contemporary Anglo-American liberal political theory to Muslim-majority societies as my postgraduate thesis, the new movements in the region made me even more eager to pursue such research. Surprisingly, however, after I started to review the literature on liberalism and Islam, I noticed that the mainstream literature on Rawls either neglects the Muslim-majority context or assumes that the Rawlsian brand of political liberalism is mostly irrelevant to Middle Eastern countries, which lack a dominant liberal-democratic culture of the western type. This book argues against such an assumption through a project which started with my PhD at LUISS University but has subsequently developed much further, including when I was a postdoctoral research fellow at Istanbul Şehir University. Chapters 2 and 6 heavily draw on my PhD dissertation, while Chaps. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 are new. I hope I have been able to show how Rawlsian political philosophy, when placed in a serious dialogue with the political thought of post- Islamist Iranian intellectuals, can help inspire democratization in Iran, the Arab world, and Turkey. v vi Preface and Acknowledgments In pursuing this project, I received support and inspiration from so many people at different times and places that I cannot mention them all here. My serious involve- ment with Rawls is indebted to the network of Rawlsian scholars at the Center for Ethics and Global Politics in LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome, including Sebastiano Maffettone, Daniele Santoro, Aakash Singh Rathure, Gianfanco Pellegrino, Rafaelle Marchetti, Ingirid Salvatore, Domenico Melidoro, and others. While a PhD student in LUISS, I also enjoyed working with Will Kymlicka at the Forum for Philosophy and Public Policy in Queen’s University for a couple of months, to whom my current status as a political theory scholar is much indebted. For my research in both Italy and Canada, I received a three-year PhD scholarship from the Italian Ministry of Education. An important part of this book was written when I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Modern Turkish Studies (Modern Türkiye Çalışmaları Merkezi) in Istanbul Şehir University. Two years of this fellowship, from September 2013 to August 2015, was granted by a TÜBİTAK (the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) scholarship for non-Turkish citizens, coded 2216. Here, I would like to thank Ümit Cizre, Burhanettin Duran, and especially Muzaffer Şenel for providing me with full access to the center’s facilities to pursue my research during this period. An earlier version of Chap. 2 was published in Philosophy & Social Criticism (by SAGE Publications Ltd, Vol. 41, No 7, 2015) entitled “Political liberalism for post-Islamist, Muslim-majority societies.” A draft of the same article was presented in an online political philosophy reading group in Farsi on October 2013, for which I need to thank the participants, including Armin Khameh, for their critical discussions. A much earlier draft of Chap. 4 was presented at the Seventh Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of Persianate Societies, held on 8–11 September 2015, in Mimar Sinan University of Istanbul. Here, I would like to thank the organizers of the conference as well as Daryoush Mohammadpour and Bahman Zakipour for their discussions. A version of Chap. 5 was presented at one of the Philosophy Talks seminars held by Istanbul Şehir University’s Department of Philosophy on 13 November 2014. I would like to thank