In his idea of public reason, John Rawls argues that using religious jargon and arguments in public sphere has to be restricted to the demands of reasonableness. Rawls argues that a kind of secularism or separation of state/state institutions and church/church institutions, is necessary to make a reasonable consensus over principles of justice in a pluralistic society.
Contrary to this Rawlsian demand, Islamic republic of Iran as a theocratic state usually appeals to different religious arguments in order to legitimize his deeds and delegitimize its critics. For such an aim, history of Islam becomes a very useful object in the hand of politicians. The only things which has to be done to achieve such goal is to reconstruct and reinterpret history of shia Islam and the life of the prophet and infallible Imams in favor of particular ideology of the state. In such ideological reading, the characters and acts of Shia Imams and their opponents
is reconstructed in the light of the characters and acts of leaders of Islamic republic of Iran and their opponents. The world becomes divides into black and white, anti-Islamic republic devils and pro-state angels.
On TV and state newspapers, the leaders of the regime become similar to Imam Ali, the first infallible Imam of Shia, and the opposition leaders of green pro-democratic movement, Mousavi and Karubi, are criticized as being like Talha, Zubeir or Aisha, the enemies to Ali's legitimate and divine right to govern people. Mesbah Yazdi, the theorist of ahmadinejad's movement, is one of the main figures who usually interprets history in this way.
Using religious history in this way is nothing than instrumentalizing religion, leading in long run to unfaithfulness and distrust toward sacred texts. Hence such a reading from history is immoral.
Separation of state and church and restricting religious vocabulary in public sphere to the demands of reasonableness, as Rawls and Tocqueville correctly argue, utilizes religious people by prohibiting of instrumentalization of their faith by the power-looking politicians.
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