Rethinking the Puzzled Relationship between Music and Islam in Contemporary Iran

This paper provides the context and the reasons behind the perpetually ambiguous status of 'music' in Islam. It employs a developed poststructuralist discourses analysis method. It looks at the standing points of both Khomeini and Khamenei-as leaders of the Islamic Revolution of Iran-as well as the practice of popular music in Iran in the shade of such religious practices. The paper would then reveal the political nature of fiqh in contemporary Iran. From one side it causes a very fluid religious account on everyday life while from the other side it is a secularised political practice that amends the religion according to the mundane. As a matter of fact, there is no clear reference to 'music' in earlier Islamic texts, as a term. Music has been contextualised with several other practices and the verdicts are addressing the associating practice rather than the music itself. This discursive confusion-as a result of transmission into capitalism-has shown itself in different situations that determines how interpretation of terms defines and represents the socially constituted reality behind them.