Religious Secularity: A Theological Challenge to the Islamic State (Religion and Global Politics)

Using Iran as a case study, Ghobadzadeh investigates the paradoxes of the Islamic state ideal. He develops the seemingly oxymoronic term "religious secularity" and uses it to describe the Islamic quest for a democratic secular state.

Naser Ghobadzadeh is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Justice, the Australian Catholic University (ACU). Researching the intersection of religion and politics, his interests lie in the study of Islamic political theology, secularism, state-religion-society relations, and Middle East and Iranian politics.

He holds a Ph.D. (University of Sydney, 2012) and an M.A. in Political Science (Shahid Beheshti University, Iran 2001). He has also worked as editor-in-chief of the foreign policy service at the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA), communication officer with the UNDP and head of the Information Resource Centre (IRC), UNICEF office in Tehran. Naser has authored two books in Persian language, including A Study of People's Divergence from the Ruling System (2002) and The Caspian Sea: Legal regime, neighbouring countries and US policies (2005). His articles have been published in internationally refereed journals such as Democratization, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Commonwealth & Comparative Politics and Discourse.