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 liberalism 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 published 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.

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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 the participants of the seminar, especially Mustafa Yaylali, Ishak Arslan, Ahmet Okumuş, and Berdal Aral, for their critical discussions. I also thank Abolfazl Morshedi for the separate debate we had on Tabatabai’s social and political thought, especially his theory of edrakat-e etebari. Except for the sections on “Haeri’s Meta-Ethics,” “A Comparative Note on Mojtahed Shabestari and Haeri Yazdi,” and “Rethinking General Will,” Chap. 6 is completely derived from an article I published in Iranian Studies, Vol. 47, No. 4, July 2014, entitled “Reasonableness, rationality and government: the liberal political thought of Mehdi Haeri Yazdi.” My special thanks go to Mohammad Fadel, Rahim Nobahar, and Ahmad Hashemi for the critical conversations we had on the initial draft of this chapter before and during the time I was a visiting PhD researcher at Queens’ University, Kingston. Preface and Acknowledgments vii

Except for the section “The Social Ethos of Spiritual Intellectuals,” a version of Chap. 7 was published in an issue of Analytica Iranica, Vol. VIII, Summer 2016, on the history of Persian political thought entitled “Between truth and democracy: Mostafa Malekian’s political theory reconsidered.” An early draft of the same paper was presented at a seminar at Istanbul Düşünce Evi (IDE) on 21 May 2015. This chapter partially includes material already published in Radiozamaneh’s Persian website on Malekian’s social and political thought. I wish to thank the editor of the special issue of Analytica Iranica, Rasoul Namazi; the organizers of the IDE seminar, Halil Ibrahim Yenigün and Ertuğrul Zengin; and radio Zamaneh’s chief editor, Mohammad Reza Nikfar, for their comments. Devrim Kabasakal Badamchi and Karim Sadek independently read and commented on an earlier version of Chap. 8, helping me to improve my arguments. A draft of this chapter was presented at Islamism in the Post-Arab Spring World Conference held by Istanbul Düşünce Evi (IDE) on 24–26 October 2014, as well as a seminar held by Marmara University’s International Relations Center for Research and Application (MURCIR) on 7 April 2014. I would like to thank Muzaffer Şenel and Erhan Dogan for organizing the Marmara seminar, as well as their discussions. My English editor, Jerry Spring, who carefully read and commented through the whole text deserves my gratitude. I also appreciate the separate exchanges I had on the philosophical ideas of Iranian intellectuals with Mohammad Mobasheri, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Ahmad Sadri, Mahmoud Sadri, Yaser Mirdamadi, Akbar Ganji, Arash Naraghi, Soroush Dabbagh, Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, Reza Alijani, Andrew March, and others whom I may forget to name here. I should also mention the scientific committee and organizers of the annual Reset Istanbul Seminars at Bilgi University, including Giancarlo Bosetti, Nina zu Fürstenbergand, David M. Rasmussen, Alessandro Ferrara, and Volker Kaul, among others, who have provided me and many other young scholars and students a platform where we could discuss different dimensions of our projects with political theorists and scientists from around the globe. I would also like to express my gratitude to David M. Rasmussen and Alessandro Ferrara, the editors of Philosophy and Politics: Critical Explorations series in Springer, for their kind support for publishing this book. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers at Springer for their very valuable comments and suggestions. I cannot end this acknowledgment without expressing my deep gratitude to my parents Hamidreza Badamchi and Marziyeh Seif because, without their enthusiasm, this book would never have been finished. My wife, Devrim Kabasakal Badamchi, supported me both intellectually and emotionally during the seven years of hard work on this project and deserves special appreciation. I dedicate this book jointly to her and our 3-year-old daughter Lilya.

Istanbul, Turkey Meysam Badamchi February 2017 Note on Transliteration

In Persian transliterations, I follow a simplified version of the scheme suggested by Iranian Studies journal, where the diacritical mark (ā) for long vowels is omitted (so I write ab, rather than āb) and (’) and (‘) for medial hamze and ayn are not employed (so I write Haeri instead of Ha’eri and An-Naim instead of An-Na‘im). I also avoid using the diphthong (ow) (so I write roshan instead of rowshan). No (w) is used (so I transcribe velayat rather than welayat), and the final (h) is omitted (so I write Azade instead of Azadeh). Throughout the text, all Persian to English translations are my own unless otherwise stated. For the translation of technical Persian terms into English, I have benefitted from a variety of online and print sources including Farhang-e Estelahat-e Falsafe va Kalam-e Eslami, edited by Seyyed Mohammad Mousavi and Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Tehran: Nashr-e Sohravardi, 2008), and Farhang-e Huquqi, edited by Masoud Al-Zafar Samimikia and Foruz Azarfar (Tehran: Dashtestan, 2004). Non-English technical terms are all in italics.

ix Contents

1 Introduction �� 1 1.1 Conceptualizing Post-Islamist Political Theory �� 1 1.2 A Note on Method �� 9 Bibliography �� 13 2 Political Liberalism for Post-Islamist, Muslim-Majority Societies �� 17 2.1 Part I: Rawlsian Conceptions of Justification and Universal Inclusion of the Reasonable �� 23 2.1.1 Political Constructivism �� 23 2.1.2 Wide Reflective Equilibrium in Post-Islamist Muslim Majority Societies �� 27 2.1.3 Public Reasoning, Declaration and Conjecture �� 28 2.2 Part II: Stability of Political Liberalism in Post-Islamist Muslim-Majority Societies �� 32 2.2.1 Fusion of Overlapping Consensus and Modus Vivendi �� 32 Bibliography �� 36 3 Why and How Political Liberals Need to Persuade Muslims: Ferrara and March’s Interpretations of Conjecture �� 41 3.1 Ferrara, Reflexive Pluralism and Conjecture �� 42 3.2 March: Conjecture as Justificatory Comparative Political Theory �� 45 3.3 The Role of Islamic Jurisprudence in March’s Methodology of Conjecture �� 48 3.4 Post-Islamist Intellectuals and March’s Treatment of Jurisprudence �� 53 Bibliography �� 60

xi xii Contents

4 An Unorthodox, Islamic, Full Justification for Liberal Citizenship: The Case of Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari �� 63 4.1 Post-Islamism Versus Jurisprudential Reading of Islam �� 64 4.2 Faith, Free Will, and Freedom of Conscience �� 67 4.3 Justice of Political Jurisprudence, Revisionary Hermeneutics, and the Secular State �� 70 4.4 A Comparative Note on Soroush and Mojtahed Shabestari �� 79 4.5 Conclusion and Some Critical Remarks �� 85 Bibliography �� 89 5 Between Contractarianism and Islamic State: A Post-Islamist Reading of Mohammad Hossein Tabatabai’s Theory of Justice �� 95 5.1 Artificial Conceptions Theory (Edrakat-e Etebari) �� 97 5.2 The Artificial Conception of UtilizationEstekhdam ( ) �� 100 5.3 A Post-Islamist, Liberal Reading of M. H. Tabatabai: The Social Contract and the Role of Religion in Stability �� 103 5.4 M. H. Tabatabai’s Contratarianism Versus Rawls’s Contractualism: A Comparative Note �� 107 5.5 M. H. Tabatabai Between Contractarianism and Islamic State: The Role of Colonialism �� 114 Bibliography �� 119 6 Reasonableness, Rationality and Government: Mehdi Haeri Yazdi’s Hekmat va Hokumat �� 123 6.1 Reasonableness and Rationality in Rawls’s Political Liberalism �� 125 6.2 The Priority of Islamic Philosophy Over Islamic Jurisprudence �� 127 6.3 Government as the Agency of Joint Private Owners �� 133 6.4 Individualism Versus Collectivism: Criticizing Rousseau �� 136 6.5 Voluntariness of Sharia Versus Coerciveness of the State �� 138 6.6 Haeri’s Meta-Ethics �� 140 6.7 A Comparative Note on Mojtahed Shabestari and Haeri Yazdi �� 142 6.8 Concluding Remarks: Rethinking General Will �� 144 Bibliography �� 146 7 Between Truth and Democracy: Mostafa Malekian’s Spiritual Intellectualism �� 149 7.1 Spirituality: Religiosity Within the Boundaries of Critical Rationality �� 150 7.2 The Social Ethos of Spiritual Citizens �� 156 7.3 A Theory of Political Toleration �� 163 7.4 Political Liberalism and the Critique of Malekian’s Idea of Toleration �� 168 Bibliography �� 174 Contents xiii

8 Guardianship, Basic Liberties and Reform: A Post-Islamist Critique of Iran’s Post-revolutionary Constitution �� 179 8.1 Rawls’s Argument for the Constitutional Protection of Basic Liberties �� 180 8.2 How Guardianship of the Jurist Was Entered into Iran’s Constitution: A Historical Note �� 185 8.3 Non-equality Between Jurists and Non-Jurists, and the Insufficient Protection of Liberties �� 188 8.4 An-Naim on Jurisprudence, Constitutionalism and the Secular State �� 193 8.5 Public Reason and the Prospect for Post-Islamist Constitutional Reform �� 198 Bibliography �� 203

Index �� 207 Author Biography

Meysam Badamchi has a BA in physics from Tehran University and a master’s in philosophy of science from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. Dr. Badamchi earned his PhD from LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome in 2012, with a dissertation entitled “Political Liberalism for Muslim Majority Societies.” Since September 2013, Badamchi has been a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Modern Turkish Studies at Şehir University in Istanbul, for two years granted by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). His fields of research include contemporary political theory in Anglo-American and Muslim traditions, political liberalism, multiculturalism, and nationalism as extended to Muslim-majority context, Iranian and Turkish political thought, and Iranian and Turkish politics. Some of Dr. Badamchi’s recent publications in peer- reviewed journals include “Political liberalism for post-Islamist, Muslim-majority societies” (Philosophy & Social Criticism, Vol. 41, No 7, 2015) and “Reasonableness, rationality and government: the liberal political thought of Mehdi Haeri Yazdi” (Iranian Studies, Vol. 47, Issue 4, 2014). He has also translated Will Kymlicka’s Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (OUP, 2002) from English into Persian (Tehran: Negah-e Moaser, 2017) under the author’s supervision—in collaboration with Mohammad Mobasheri—and participates in BBC Persian TV programs as a freelance analyst on Turkish and Iranian politics. Badamchi is also a writer for a variety of Iranian websites in the diaspora.