ABSTRACT
The political-religious debate was specific to the polemic phase of leaving religion, and it marked the entry of Iranian society into that phase. This debate was pursued with unprecedented intensity, and the sudden appearance of the "new religious thinkers" who wanted to conciliate Islam and democracy gave it a previously unsuspected content. Religion could only be understood in the perspective of modernity, itself the result of a process of leaving religion. The defenders of political religion, the regime's leaders, the clergy, and religious conservatives fear less the antireligion camp than that of the new Muslim thinkers. Believing and practicing Muslims, it was difficult for them to imagine life without religion; yet their opening toward the future prevented them from enclosing themselves completely in the ancient way of thinking. Enclosed in despotism and violence, religion was undoubtedly the first victim of a political system that turned ideological Islam into the instrument of repression of the social organization.
