page_title: Religious intellectualism in Iran
section_title: Secularization of religion
hierarchical_section_title: Religious intellectualism in Iran / Secularization of religion
caption_attribution_description: Depicted person&#58; &#32;Muhammad Iqbal&#32;– poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement
context_page_description: Religious intellectualism in Iran reached its apogee during the Persian Constitutional Revolution. The process involved philosophers, sociologists, political scientists and cultural theorists.
context_section_description: Abdolkarim Soroush believed that secularism is not fundamental to modernity and it is the Western case of modernity that is secular. According to Soroush secularism can be in two domains: in the mind and in social institutions. A secular mind cannot possibly be religious. However, it is possible to reconcile secular institutions with a religious society. He also put forward the idea of "minimal secularization".
  Saeed Hajjarian allegedly showed the supremacy of politics as such over any religious norm when he said that the survival of the Islamic Republic was paramount and that no religious ritual should stand in its way. This kind of decision, he states, means that politics are more important than religion and that this acknowledges the secularization of religion. In this context, he argues, it is possible to reassess velayat faqih and to reject its supremacy within the political field in Iran.
  In brief, Iranian religious intellectuals distinguish various kinds of secularism:
  political secularism
  philosophical secularism
  social secularism
  They only accept "political secularism" and reject the two others. According to Iranian scholars, political secularism has two major pillars. One pillar is the question of legitimacy and the other consists of the political system’s neutrality towards religious and theoretical schools. They have argued that the system’s legitimacy hinges on justice, not on any particular type of religion, and the acceptance of the system comes from the people.
caption: Iqbal had significant influence on Iranian intellectualism.
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