Social Analysis of the Thought of Compromise and Conflict: Comparing the Development of the Political Thought of Imam Khomeini and the Late Halabi with Spriggans' Approach

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors
1 Hadith Center of Wilayat, Faculty of Culture, Imam Hussein (AS) University
2 Faculty of Culture, Imam Hussein (AS) Comprehensive University
10.22084/rjir.2026.31278.3945
Abstract
Purpose: Since the years before the constitution, many political movements have been formed to solve the backwardness and dependency of the Iranian political system. The justice movement, the constitutional movement, the rise of the Pahlavis, or the movement to nationalize the oil industry were among those responses. However, whether the Pahlavi monarchy itself was the crisis and part of the problem was a matter of dispute among various political and intellectual currents. The Iranian independence movement led by Imam Khomeini sought the main problem in the nature of the Pahlavi monarchy, and considered the solution to other problems to be its elimination and the rise of a popular and Islamic political system. In contrast, Ayatollah Halabi was in agreement with the Pahlavis, and considered the main problem to be the influence and spread of the Baha'i faith. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, there was intense opposition between the followers of the Imam's movement and the Hojjatiya Association. Research Method: Using the theory and method of Thomas Spriggans, the present study attempts to theoretically organize the stages of problematization, etiology, idealism, and solution-analysis in a comparative analysis in the production of political thought.

Findings: According to the research findings, the main contradiction in the political thought produced by the Hojjatiya Association with the Imam's movement is the analysis of the intellect and the observation of disorder at the reduced social level in the 1930s, as opposed to the structural analysis and the feeling of disorder at the macro-political level by the Imam, which led to a deep and consequential gap between his intellectual foundations and subsequent actions with the character of revolutionary Islam.
Keywords


Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 16 February 2026