ABSTRACT
The main purpose of chapter four is to reconstruct the questions and answers which addressed the aim of freedom during the first constitutional period as well as the second one. It shows that freedom in the following four realms were of particular importance to Iranian constitutionalists: freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, freedom of work and commerce, and freedom of thought and lifestyle. The chapter also argues that for most thinkers of the time, freedom was instrumentally valuable, and therefore ‘the right to be wrong’, even if it harmed no one, was never defended by them. Such a right would include the right to assemble for fruitless affairs, the right to utter blasphemous or void words, the right to conduct harmless ‘haram’ jobs or trades, and the right to hold wrong beliefs. Nonetheless, in practice, freedom turned into chaos and license in both the first and in the second constitutional periods. This fact has been acknowledged not only by opponents of mashrūṭah, but also by constitutionalists; the point of difference is that, for the latter group, chaos and violations of boundaries, especially in the first constitutional period, originated from anti-constitutionalist conspiracies and incitements which aimed to defame mashrūṭah.
