The Conceptual and Operational Model of the Political System of Ṭāghūt in the Holy Quran from the Perspectives of ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabā’ī and Martyr Imam Khamenei

The concept of ṭāghūt is one of the central concepts in the epistemic system of the Holy Quran, bearing a direct relation to monotheism, divine authority, and the political–social order of human society. In numerous verses, the Holy Quran links faith with the rejection of ṭāghūt and presents this rejection as a condition for attaining guidance. In the Quranic thought of Ayatollah Khamenei, ṭāghūt does not merely denote an oppressive individual or an unjust ruler; rather, it signifies a system of domination in which political, economic, and cultural powers are organized toward the negation of divine sovereignty and the consolidation of non-divine authority. From this perspective, the opposition between divine authority and ṭāghūtī authority constitutes one of the fundamental axes for understanding the Quranic social order, while the struggle against ṭāghūt is presented as one of the foundational aims of the prophetic missions. Inspired by the analytical framework of ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabā’ī and Ayatullah Khamenei’s Quranic thought and employing the method of thematic analysis of Quranic verses, the present study examines the concept of ṭāghūt in the Holy Quran and extracts its components at four levels: foundations, structure, function, and consequences. The findings indicate that the ṭāghūtī system in the Quran is grounded in the denial of divine sovereignty, the formation of networks of arrogant power, the production of false legitimacies, the distortion of truth, and the exploitation of the masses. Ultimately, such a system leads to the spread of corruption and to moral and social collapse. Accordingly, in the logic of the Quran, ṭāghūt is not merely an individual or a historical phenomenon, but rather a structural pattern of domination that stands in fundamental opposition to the system of divine authority.