Javad Tabatabai
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Javad Tabatabai Is born in Tabriz in 1945. He is Professor Emeritus and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Tehran. After pursuing studies in theology, law and philosophy, he earned his PhD (Doctorat d’État) in political philosophy from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, with a dissertation on Hegel’s political philosophy. He has been a guest fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, as well as at the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University. Dr Tabatabai has published a dozen books on the history of political ideas in Europe and Iran. On 14 July 1995, he was decorated as a Knight of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques.
In this project, we will attempt to study the two Iranian revolutions of 1905 and 1979. The former led the country out of its long middle age, making Iran the first Muslim country to institute a rule of law; while the latter was an attempt to purge all of the former’s accomplishments. These two revolutions, in spite of their diversity and influences taken from the English Glorious Revolution, as well as the French Revolution of 1789 and the 1917 Soviet Revolution, just to name a few, remain two interpretations of Islam. These very interpretations are two approaches of Islamic countries to modernity. However, Iran, through its Constitutional Revolution, made an unprecedented attempt to open up to modernity by a legal reading of Islam; whilst the Islamic Revolution made Islam into an ideology of combat against modernity.
