e insufficient to protect individual liberties. Historian Irving Brant (p. 3) noted that ôas a charter of freedom [the Constitution] was woefully deficient. By oversight and underestimate, great gaps were left in the protective armor against governmental oppression and the tyranny of popular majorities.ö
Ending ôthe tyranny of the minorityö was the object of the Iranian Revolution two centuries later. The revolutionaries objected to the despotic government of the Shah, and their leaders were Islamic clerics. They derived their legitimacy from their roles as interpreters and teachers of Islam in a country comprised almost entirely of Muslims. Once the revolutionaries took power, not surprisingly, they created a constitution based on those tenets.
The leaders of the Iranian Revolution adopted the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran on October 24, 1979, and it took effect December 3, 1979. (It has been amended once, in 1989). The Constitution begins with a passage from the Koran about justice. The preamble offers the purpose of the Constitution, and differentiates this Islamic revolution from previous reform movements. ô[T]he Constitution provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the Revolution at home and abroad.ö The introduction also includes a brief history of the Iranian Revolution.
Throughout the introduction, the framers make it clear that this government will be different than the previous regime. Since the Iranian revolutionaries had based their revolt on Islam, the framers rejected secular government. Logically, then, they would build a government based on Islamic principles. ôThe mission of the Constitution is to realize the ideological objectives of the movement and to create conditions conducive to the development of man in accordance with the noble and universal values of Islam.ö
The heart of the document can be found in Chapter III, entitled ôThe Rights of t...