Ma`rifat Hoghoughi

The dominant liberal reading of human rights discourse constitutes a normative framework for constraining political authority and safeguarding fundamental individual freedoms, serving as a priori condition for the legitimacy of democratic systems. Within this paradigm, fundamental rights operate as pre-political constraints upon the will of the majority and, through emphasis on abstract individualism, delineate the boundaries of public authority. In contrast, religious democracy, while accepting the principle of public participation in determining political destiny, defines the legitimacy of power in structural connection with the rules of Sharia and the ethical purposes of politics. Despite apparent convergence in affirming human dignity and the necessity of limiting power, these two normative-legal systems exhibit fundamental divergences in anthropological foundations (individualism versus ethical collectivism), epistemological premises (secular rationality versus revelatory knowledge), and ethical orientations (unconstrained liberty versus duty-centered ethics), giving rise to persistent theoretical and practical tensions in the domains of legal-institutional design and public policy-making. The present study, employing a descriptive-analytical method and critical-jurisprudential approach, examines the theoretical foundations of these tensions and assesses the feasibility of an integrative model reconciling human rights with religious democracy. Findings indicate that abstract individualism and the depoliticization of human rights in the liberal interpretation lead to erosion of collective identity and diminution of meaningful political participation; conversely, Islamic political jurisprudence, through the structural linkage of right and duty, the teleological orientation of politics, and analysis of historical cycles of power, provides the theoretical capacity for reconstructing this relationship. Accordingly, the model of “responsible citizenship” is proposed as a conceptual construct for balancing individual dignity and public good, capable of serving as the basis for critical indigenization of human rights and deepening religious democracy within the legal system of the Islamic Republic of Iran.