Islamic Republic

An Islamic republic is the name given to several states in countries ruled by Islamic laws, including the Islamic Republics of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mauritania. Pakistan first adopted the title under the constitution of 1956. Mauritania adopted it on 28 November 1958. Iran adopted it after the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty. Afghanistan adopted it in 1992 (in 1996–2001 the Taliban was ruling as an Islamic emirate (monarchy)) upon Jamiat-e Islami seizing capital Kabul from the Communists. Despite the similar name the countries differ greatly in their governments and laws.

The term "Islamic republic" has come to mean several different things, some contradictory to others. To some Muslim religious leaders in the Middle East and Africa who advocate it, an Islamic republic is a state under a particular Islamic form of government. They see it as a compromise between a purely Islamic caliphate, and secular nationalism and republicanism. In their conception of the Islamic republic, the penal code of the state is required to be compatible with some or all laws of Sharia, and the state may not be a monarchy as many Middle Eastern states are presently.

Two months after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the new government held the Iranian Islamic Republic referendum on the 10th and 11th of Farvadin (30th and 31 March) to change the Pahlavi dynasty into an Islamic Republic. On 12 Farvadin, it was announced that 98.2 percent of the Iranian voters wanted to establish the "Islamic Republic".

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