Journal of Historical Research, Law and Policy

This article examines the status, rights, and legal-religious foundations surrounding political and ideological opposition in an Islamic government, drawing on jurisprudential principles, historical precedents, and constitutional interpretations. It argues that Islamic governance does not inherently reject dissent but instead evaluates it through a multilayered framework that distinguishes peaceful critique from destabilizing rebellion and internal belief from harmful public action. By analyzing classical jurisprudence, including distinctions between belief and conduct, as well as modern legal approaches to due process, national security, and media regulation, the study demonstrates that political and ideological opponents occupy a recognized and protected space within Islamic political thought. Historical models—particularly the governance of Imam Ali—serve as foundational examples illustrating tolerance toward critique, the primacy of justice, and the ethical obligation to preserve human dignity even in the presence of disagreement. The article further outlines the rights afforded to opponents, including freedom of expression, participation, belief, conscience, and access to fair legal procedures, while also highlighting the boundaries imposed to prevent harm, sedition, or foreign exploitation. Through this integrated examination, the study shows that Islamic political jurisprudence provides a balanced and coherent system that safeguards legitimate dissent while upholding communal welfare and ethical governance. The findings contribute to contemporary discussions on Islamic political theory, offering a nuanced understanding of how opposition is conceptualized within a governance structure rooted in divine sovereignty and moral accountability.

This article examines the legal-religious status, rights, and regulatory mechanisms governing doctrinal opponents within an Islamic governmental framework. Drawing directly on classical jurisprudence, constitutional principles, and historical precedent, the study distinguishes between internal belief, peaceful doctrinal dissent, intellectual heterodoxy, religious minority identity, and doctrinal subversion that evolves into tangible harm. By analyzing how Islamic law differentiates between belief and behavior, the article demonstrates that internal conviction remains inviolable, while intervention is warranted only when doctrinal activities manifest in incitement, deception, violence, or organized destabilization. The typology developed in this study identifies several categories of doctrinal opponents and clarifies the rights owed to each, including safety, dignity, property rights, due process, and freedom of private belief and worship. Historical models, particularly from the governance of Imam Ali and Imam Hasan, provide practical demonstrations of tolerance toward peaceful dissenters and proportionate intervention against violent doctrinal actors. Building on these foundations, the article proposes a rights-based model for doctrinal opposition in contemporary Islamic governance. This model balances the protection of conscience and civil liberties with the state’s duty to safeguard social order and national stability. It emphasizes procedural justice, proportionality, ethical governance, and accountability as essential components of a legitimate legal response to doctrinal dissent. The study concludes that Islamic governance contains a deeply rooted and principled framework for managing doctrinal plurality—one that can meet modern challenges while remaining faithful to its jurisprudential and ethical heritage.

 This study aims to analyze how judges and defendants in Iranian criminal courts use linguistic process types to construct, negotiate, and resist institutional power within courtroom discourse. This mixed-method investigation examined over 4,500 linguistic units extracted from official transcripts of twenty criminal court hearings in Iran. The dataset included diverse case types such as financial crime, theft, assault, and document forgery. Using the analytical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics, each clause was coded for material, mental, relational, verbal, behavioral, and existential processes, while speaker identity (judge or defendant) was recorded. A Critical Discourse Analysis lens guided the interpretive examination of how linguistic choices enacted power and resistance. Two independent coders achieved an inter-coder agreement rate of 85%. Quantitative analysis included frequency distributions and chi-square tests to assess significant differences in process usage across institutional roles. Inferential statistics revealed significant differences between judges and defendants in their use of material, mental, relational, and verbal processes (p < 0.05), demonstrating systematic divergence in linguistic strategies shaped by institutional authority and role expectations. Behavioral and existential processes showed no statistically significant differences (p > 0.05). Judges predominantly utilized material and verbal processes, indicating a discourse style oriented toward action, evidence, and narrative control. Defendants relied significantly more on mental and relational processes, signaling attempts to foreground intention, perception, and identity as forms of discursive resistance within the institutional setting. Courtroom interaction in Iranian criminal courts reflects structured linguistic asymmetries that embody institutional power and individual resistance. The patterned use of process types by judges and defendants reveals how legal authority is enacted through discourse and how defendants strategically mobilize linguistic resources to negotiate identity, intention, and culpability. These findings highlight the central role of language in shaping the administration of justice and the dynamics of courtroom communication.

 The criminal statute of limitations is one of the important institutions of modern criminal law and is recognized as a mechanism for extinguishing the public claim or halting the execution of ta‘zir punishments. The present study, aiming to identify the theoretical foundations and practical effects of this institution in the two prominent legal systems of Iran (based on Imamiyyah jurisprudence and the Islamic Penal Code of 2013) and the United States (based on the common-law system, the Federal Constitution, and state legislation), has been conducted using a descriptive–analytical method and a comparative approach. The findings indicate that in the Iranian legal system, the statute of limitations is recognized solely for ta‘zir offenses and encompasses three categories: the limitation of complaint, limitation of prosecution, and limitation of enforcement of punishment (Articles 105 to 113 of the Islamic Penal Code). In contrast, in the United States, the criminal statute of limitations is primarily regulated at the state level and, as a rule, does not apply to serious federal crimes (such as intentional homicide, treason, terrorism, and genocide), but for lesser and mid-level offenses, it is set between 3 and 10 years (and sometimes longer). The most important similarity between the two systems is the decisive role of the prosecutor in initiating or terminating prosecution and the shared emphasis on “public interest” and “legal certainty.” The major differences include: (a) the jurisprudential–religious foundations in Iran versus the customary and case-law foundations in the United States; (b) the non-applicability of the statute of limitations to hudud, qisas, and diyat in Iran versus its non-applicability to most serious federal crimes in the United States; and (c) the comparatively longer judicial process in Iran, resulting in a greater impact of the statute of limitations on reducing case backlogs. The results of the study suggest that the institution of the criminal statute of limitations, while preserving the rights of the accused and preventing excessive delays in adjudication, can help reduce the prison population, increase the efficiency of the criminal justice system, and contribute to situational crime prevention. It is recommended that the Iranian legislature, inspired by the U.S. experience, expand the discretionary authority of prosecutors in applying the statute of limitations and adopt shorter limitation periods for minor economic and environmental offenses.

The purpose of this descriptive–analytical study is to explain the legal foundations of Iran’s criminal policy in dealing with economic disruptors and to answer the question of whether the criminal sanctions derived from these foundations possess the necessary effectiveness to prevent and confront such offenses. Economic crimes are among the phenomena of the modern world that—due to their direct impact on increasing delinquency in society and on the economic stability and security of the market—have gained particular importance. Beyond this, the preservation of moral values, justice, and the rule of law is also grounded in economic security. These types of offenses are of such importance that the Iranian criminal legislator, as the first and most effective means of prevention and confrontation, has enacted legal provisions to address them. The offense of disrupting the economic system includes 30 criminal instances, thoroughly addressed in the Law on the Punishment of Disruptors of the Economic System of the Country. Criminal policy seeks to control delinquency and prevent criminal phenomena, and its purpose in the economic sphere is to combat economic corruption and prevent its negative consequences for individuals and the system. Governments, through policymaking and the enactment of various laws, have sought to establish economic stability as the most fundamental component of security. However, Iran’s legislative policy in this domain, which is based on intimidation and punitive severity, cannot be regarded as an effective criminal policy for curbing delinquency—particularly corruption—in the economic system.

It is evident that when public and civil-development projects intersect with private ownership, the implementing authority is obligated to pay the value of the property that falls within the designated project area. However, in certain cases, the implementation of urban projects leads to a decrease in the value of properties located adjacent to these projects, even though ownership of the affected properties continues uninterrupted. Under this assumption, and despite the fact that no direct encroachment upon the property has occurred, the question arises as to whether the municipality or the project executor bears liability for compensating the resulting damages. The data for this study were collected through note-taking from legal and jurisprudential books and articles, as well as from statutes related to the subject. Regarding the damages inflicted upon owners of properties adjacent to municipal projects, the final clause of Article 11 of the Civil Liability Act has been invoked by opponents of municipal liability as grounds for exempting municipalities from compensation, based on the belief that such actions fall under the exercise of public authority (a subject that has been examined and analyzed in a separate article). However, both from a jurisprudential perspective—where the principles of la-zarar (no harm) and itlaf (destruction), especially the principle governing constructive destruction (talf-e hokmi), recognize the necessity of compensation—and from the explicit provisions of the later statute, the “Law on the Acquisition of Land and Real Property for the Implementation of Public, Civil, and Military Programs of the Government,” enacted on February 6, 1980, which refers to the “assessment of damages” alongside “payment of property value,” the recognition of compensation within positive law is evident. This research examines the various dimensions of this issue.

The purpose of this study is to examine the rights and obligations of publishers and creators of literary and artistic works, as well as the manner in which others may utilize such works in Islamic jurisprudence, law, judicial practice, and the legal systems of Egypt and France. The research method is descriptive-analytical and is based on library sources. The findings indicate that imprévision, or “unforeseen contingencies,” is the most significant concept related to the effects of unexpected circumstances on contractual obligations in French law. Although, as a general rule, intervention in a contract on the basis of changed circumstances has traditionally not been accepted in French statutory law or judicial practice, there has been a legislative tendency toward recognizing the possibility of contract modification in specific, exceptional circumstances—though not as a general principle—through the enactment of temporary and special statutes (e.g., see imprévision doctrine discussions in French scholarship; Dupont, 2016). Moreover, in the Egyptian legal system, judicial adjustment of contracts—including publishing contracts—has been explicitly recognized by the legislature, and the legal scholars and judicial practice of that country, following the legislator, have acknowledged judicial modification on the basis of the aforementioned theories (see comparative analyses in Egyptian civil law; Al-Sanhouri, 1990).

The rapid rise of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology has reshaped global financial systems while simultaneously creating unprecedented opportunities for criminal exploitation. This narrative review examines the criminological dimensions of crypto-crime by analyzing the technological characteristics of decentralized digital assets, offender motivations, behavioural patterns and the systemic challenges faced by law enforcement. The article identifies major typologies of blockchain-enabled crime—including money laundering, fraud, ransomware, darknet transactions, unauthorized mining and exchange breaches—and demonstrates how offenders leverage anonymity, transactional speed and jurisdictional ambiguity to facilitate illicit activity. Through a criminological lens, the review explores how rational decision-making, opportunity structures and transnational collaboration shape offender behaviour in digital environments. The analysis also highlights significant obstacles to detection and prosecution, such as evidentiary limitations, privacy-enhancing technologies, cross-chain obfuscation, inconsistent regulatory frameworks, smart contract complexity and the lack of harmonized global standards. In response to these challenges, the review outlines key policy frameworks and enforcement strategies, including advancements in blockchain forensics, AI-based transaction tracing, AML/CFT regulations, licensing regimes for digital asset service providers, FATF-aligned international standards, cross-border investigative mechanisms and the development of specialized cybercrime units. The review concludes that addressing crypto-crime requires a multidisciplinary, globally coordinated approach that integrates technological innovation, legal reform and enhanced institutional capacity. As blockchain ecosystems continue to evolve, the complexity and scale of digital criminality will increase, making comprehensive, forward-looking strategies essential for effective governance and crime prevention.