Saeed Hajjarian - Research Works and Viewpoints

Research Works and Viewpoints

According to author Abbas Milani, Hajjarian argued that domination of politics by clerics was wrong, but could be gradually eroded by "mobilizing the masses and using them as bargaining chips with Iran's rulers." His strategy for the reform movement has been described by another journalist as extending the reformists "reach by triangulating between the mass movement they represented and the autocratic state with which they shared power. He coined the phrase that would define the reformists’ strategy: `Pressure from below, negotiation at the top.`”

Sa’eed Hajjarian finds a way of combating the predominance of Valiyat al-faqih (rule of the Islamic jurist) by underlining the de facto secularization of religion by the Leader of the Islamic Republic, Khomeini. He allegedly showed the supremacy of politics as such over any religious norm when he said that the interests of the Islamic Republic are paramount in Islam and that zakat, salah, hajj, and everything else in Islam, are subordinant. 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.