Islamic Dissent in Iran’s Full-fledged Islamic Revolutionary State

Abstract

In this chapter, I will approach political dissent relationally, drawing on insights gained from the recent theoretical innovations in the field of political sociology (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001; Tilly 2006). That is, dissent will be examined as adversary relations between sets of contending actors. In the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), various state institutions, such as the Guardian Council, the Special Court of Clergy, the Islamic Revolution Court and various Election Supervisory Boards, typically constitute one side of these adversary relations. Actors on the other side of those relations range from some rival state institutions, such as the Majlis (Parliament) and the Government (the Executive Branch), to dissident mujtahids and lay religious intellectuals to officially banned but tolerated political groups such as the Freedom Movement of Iran (Nehzat-e Azadi-ye Iran). The relational perspective adopted in this chapter also conceives of political dissent as a form of contentious politics, that is, a series of public, collective and consequential claim-making transactions between claimants and their targets. Such claims are considered consequential because, if realized, they will impinge on the interests of at least one of the parties to the contentious interaction other than the claim-makers. They are political because the state is involved as targets, initiators of claims or third parties (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001: 5; Tarrow and Tilly 2007: 438; Tilly 2008b: 5).