Introduction

Abstract

This chapter includes an overview of several theoretical approaches to post-Islamism, centered on Asef Bayat’s initial approach to post-Islamism, focusing on the ideas of various scholars working in the field, such as Mojtaba Mahdavi, Adolkarim Soroush, Abolghasem Fanaei and Farzin Vahdat. I conclude that post-Islamism can be considered as a gradual process through which certain Muslims have adopted a more reasonable interpretation of Islam as a comprehensive doctrine, to use Rawls’ terminology. Put this way, post-Islamism can be read as a socio-political situation where a significant number of individuals in a Muslim society interpret Islam in a politically reasonable way. This implies that some accounts of Islamist political theory are unreasonable because they refuse to abide by the terms of mutual social cooperation and respect, and reject even a weak version of the burdens of judgment. On the note on method, I argue that what distinguishes this book from most scholarship in Iranian studies is that it deals with the projects of intellectuals primarily from a normative and comparative perspective as the concept is understood by analytical philosophers.