interpretation, they reasonably resort to collective interpretation with the aim to arrive at the most sufficient, yet authentic, interpretation( the idea of potentially collective interpretation ).

The above assumptions and premises together led them to choose a democratic procedure for determining the appropriate rules of social cooperation, as defined by the inherited Islamic laws. Hence, the explication phase of religious democracy from a Shia Islamic perspective can be defined as a procedure in which the common concern of a society with a majority of Shia Muslims is interpreted with recourse to a reliable technique of interpretation of inherited Islamic laws through the participation of all Shia adults with potentially equal eligibility. In this phase, religious democracy is majoritarian grounding its justification in the rational priority of the understanding of many qualified participants over a few qualified figures. The idea of leadership or vilayah al- faqih is the manifestation of the explication phase of religious democracy at the highest level. The supreme leader in an islamic democracy is elected for guarding the common concern of the community and ensuring the healthy functioning of its political institutions. He is, thus, the ultimate source of legitimacy of the political institutions of religious democracy.

Having undergone the explication phase, Muslims face a considerable room in social interactions where they can find no established law amongst the inherited Islamic laws. The affirmation of the availability of a realm of non- established laws in Islam lies in the fact that in the era of the appearance of Islam and the establishment of Islamic laws, Islamic society, like other societies, was experiencing a pre- modem and a simple stage of social life when the management of public affairs needed a few laws not very complex and expanded. Hence, in modem times when every aspect of social interaction is in need of complex and expanded sets of laws and regulations, Islamic society should legislate a large amount of laws and regulations, which are absent in the inherited collection of Islamic laws( the fact of a realm of non- established laws ).

A question immediately arises as whether individual preferences are to be considered when legislation in this realm is conducted, or it is again the common good that should lead the legislation. It is the assumption of this paper that in the realm of non- established laws the idea of ' the initial situation of freedom' of individuals prevails, dictating the value of individual preferences. A forceful source of this idea is an Islamic tradition