Religious Democracy

Abstract

This paper reviews and evaluates three salient interpretations of religious democracy among contemporary Iranian political thinkers. Based on their theoretical frameworks, these interpretations have been: 1) Precedence of religion over democracy, 2) Precedence of democracy over religion; 3) Equal importance of religion and democracy. The description of each interpretation is firstly based on original texts and then their content has been evaluated using logical axioms and objective facts. The main finding of this paper clarifies that the third interpretation, despite some theoretical challenges, has more logical capacity and is more consistent in comparison with the two other competing interpretations.