The Islamic Republic of Iran‟s alleged pursuit of nuclear missile capabilities is proving in-creasingly problematic for the international community, which places the country in a sig-nificant position in world politics. In turn, the world‟s attention towards the thirty-year-old Republic established by the late Ayatollah Khomeini has resurged. The Republic of Iran based on Ayatollah Khomeini‟s interpretation of Islam has long stood in the spotlight of both public and scholastic scrutiny, particularly due to its perceivably radical manoeuvres on the international stage. However, as the focus of these scrutinizing views has been the Iranian unwillingness to subdue and conform to western norms, the issue of the „Islamicness‟ of the Republic has been overlooked. Hence, this thesis seeks to draw further attention to this question - whether Iran can truly be regarded as an Islamic State - in order to ensure a deeper and more accurate under-standing of the Republic of Iran. The purpose of this paper is thus to investigate and re-flect on the theory of Islamic governance promoted by Ayatollah Khomeini and the politi-cal system of the Islamic Republic through the prism of Islamic history. The theory of the Islamic State and the Shia Islamic leadership has been and continues to be central in Aya-tollah Khomeini‟s and the Islamic Republic‟s official rhetoric, being claimed as the sole foundation of the „new‟ Iranian system. In consequence, this paper delves into the Islamic theory of State and the concept of the Imamate in order to critically analyze Ayatollah Khomeini‟s theory and the Islamic Republic. This is aimed at yielding a conclusion whether Iran is justly labeled an Islamic State. By performing this norm-fulfilling analysis of the subject in question reliant on a qualitative data collection, the thesis has found that the correlation between the two theories of Islam-ic governance is one of considerable disputability. The paper has, based on the investigated material, been able to conclude that the Islamic Republic of Iran holds a political structure lent from non-Islamic sources, but that its personnel and political field of contest can still be considered Islamic. What the paper has thus revealed is that Khomeini‟s reasoning con-stitutes a novel and unique form of Islamic fundamentalism formed in conjuncture with political ideas of modern and non-Islamic nature. Hence, the results of the study suggests that the Islamic Republic of Iran is in need of serious reconsideration as the Iranian model of Islamic governance remains a source of contention because of the significant deviations from what it claims as its sole basis. / Den Islamiska Republiken Irans påstådda strävan att uppnå kärnvapen kapacitet har visat sig vara ett stort problem för det internationella samfundet, vilket har gett landet en bety-dande position i världspolitiken. Detta har i sin tur medfört att Iran återigen har fått värl-dens uppmärksamhet riktat mot sig, endast trettio år efter Ayatollah Khomeinis upprättan-de av den Islamiska Republiken. Irans statsskick, som uteslutet bygger på Ayatollah Kho-meinis egen tolkning av Islam, har länge stått i fokus för både offentlig och akademisk granskning, i synnerhet på grund av dess tillsynes radikala manövrar på den internationella scenen. Men eftersom fokuset för denna granskning har varit Irans ovilja att rätta sig efter västerländska normer så har frågan om Irans Islamiska natur förbisetts. Utifrån detta så ämnar denna uppsats att uppmärksamma och belysa frågan om Iran verkli-gen kan betraktas som en islamisk stat, vilken är en nödvändighet för en djupare och mer korrekt förståelse av landet. Syftet med denna studie är således att undersöka och reflektera över teorin om Islamiskt styre som Ayatollah Khomeini främjar och hans senare republik genom att jämföra dessa med deras påstådda grundpelare: Islamisk statsteori och dess le-darskap. Islamisk statsteori och det shia Islamska ledarskapet har alltid varit centralt i Aya-tollah Khomeinis och den Islamiska Republikens officiella retorik, där de hävdas vara den enda inspirationen för Irans statsskick. Detta är dock något som denna uppsats ifrågasätter, och den har därav undersökt Islamisk statsteori och dess ledarskap för att i sin tur kritiskt granska Ayatollah Khomeinis teori och den Islamska Republiken Iran. Denna studie har därav gett upphov till en slutsats om Iran är rättvist märkt ‟en Islamisk stat‟. Denna studie har genom att utföra en norm-uppfyllande analys av ämnet i fråga, vilande på en kvalitativ datainsamling, funnit endast en vag korrelation mellan de två modellerna för Islamiskt styre. Baserat på det undersökta materialet så har studien kunnat konstatera att Iran har en politisk struktur som lånats från icke-islamiska källor, men att dess aktörer och politiska ‟spel‟ trots det är av en islamisk natur. Vad som därav har påvisats i denna uppsats är att Ayatollah Khomeinis teori och stat utgör en ny och unik form av Islamisk fundamen-talism som skapats i konjunktur med moderna och icke-islamiska idéer. Resultaten av den-na undersökning indikerar på så vis att den Islamiska Republiken Iran är i behov av en om-prövning i förhållande till dess Islamiska natur, vilket är speciellt tydligt då Iran visar prov på betydande avvikelser från dess påstådda grundpelare.

La Révolution Islamique de 1979 met fin à la monarchie constitutionnelle puis au ministère public en tentant de remédier aux difficultés récurrentes rencontrées par le système judiciaire depuis le début du siècle. Les institutions, furent complètement remaniées, dans l’intérêt du nouveau régime et afin de mettre en place, en rénovant le lien historique entre religions et institutions, une version politisée de l’Islam. Les révolutionnaires, insuffisamment préparés, manquant d’expérience et de connaissances, constatèrent l’échec des nouvelles politiques en matière judiciaire. Le ministère public était indispensable à l’exécution des missions régaliennes de maintien de la sécurité intérieure et de l’ordre public ainsi qu’au fonctionnement de la justice. Cette institution, présente sous des formes archaïques depuis l’antiquité et modernisée lors de la Révolution Constitutionnelle du début du XXème siècle, fut rétablie en 2002. / The Islamic Revolution of 1979 broke up the constitutional monarchy then disbanded the public prosecution institution to make an attempt to solve the chronic issues encountered by the judicial system since the beginning of the century. The institutional system was entirely overhauled, in the interest of the new system and in the purpose to establish a new model integrating the historical link between religion and institutions with a political kind of Islam. The revolutionaries, barely prepared, lacking of experience and knowledge, noticed the failure of the new judicial politics. The public prosecution was essential to the fulfillment of the regalian functions, including the maintenance of public order and domestic security, along with the functioning of justice. This institution, existing under varied shapes since antiquity and modernized in the beginning of the century with the constitutional Revolution, has been restored in 2002.

This thesis delineates the transformation of Iran’s so-called post-revolutionary ‘religious intellectuals’ (rowshanfekran-e dini) from ideological legitimators within the political class of the newly-established theocratic-populist regime to internal critics whose revised vision for the politico-religious order coalesced and converged with the growing disillusionment and frustration of the ‘Islamic left’, a constellation of political forces within the governing elite of the Islamic Republic, that following the death of Ayatollah Khomeini increasingly felt itself marginalised and on the outskirts of power. The historical evolution of this complex, quasi-institutionalised and routinized network, encompassing theologians, jurists, political strategists and journalists, which rose to prominence in the course of the 1990s, and its critical engagement with the ruling political theology of the ‘guardianship of the jurist’, the supremacy of Islamic jurisprudence, political Islamism and all forms of ‘revolutionary’ and ‘utopian’ political and social transformation, are scrutinised in detail. In this vein, the thesis examines the various issues provoked by the rowshanfekran-e dini’s strategic deployment and translation of the concepts and ideas of a number of Western thinkers, several of which played a pivotal role in the assault on the ideological foundations of Soviet-style communism in the 1950s and 1960s. It then moves to show how this network of intellectuals and politicos following the election of Mohammad Khatami to the presidency in May 1997 sought to disseminate their ideas at the popular level by means of the press and numerous party and political periodicals, and thereby achieve ideological and political hegemony. The thesis proceeds to demonstrate the intimate connection between the project of ‘religious intellectualism’ and elite-defined notions of ‘democracy’, ‘electoral participation’, ‘reform’ and ‘political development’ as part of an effort to accumulate symbolic capital and assert their intellectual and moral leadership of the polity.