Allegations regarding Hassan Rouhani's plagiarism were first raised in 2013 when it was claimed that he had probably "lifted" sentences from a book by Afghan author, Mohammad Hashim Kamali. Glasgow Caledonian University, Rouhani's graduation school, argued that the sentences were both cited properly. The issue was raised again amid 2017 Iranian presidential election when a student campaign claimed that they had for the first time investigated Rouhani's whole thesis using plagiarism detection tool iThenticate and that chapters one through four of Rouhani's thesis had been plagiarized at least 39%, 43%, 40% and 82%, respectively. Ayatollah Ali Akbar Kalantari, a member of Assembly of Experts, Shiraz University faculty member and one of the alleged victims, said that "major segments" of Chapter 4 of Rouhani's thesis had been translated from his book without being referenced.
Sadegh Zibakalam, reformist political science professor at University of Tehran, accused Rouhani's rival of politicizing the case right before the elections. Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi, head of Iranian Parliament's Commission on Education and Research, said that he had found major plagiarisms in chapter 4 of Rouhani's thesis and that the case would be investigated in Education and Research Commission. 50 student-run organizations as well as Shiraz University faculty professors asked Ali Akbar Kalantari to prosecute the case in separate letters.
Background
According to the Telegraph in 2013, Hassan Rouhani had apparently plagiarized from a book by Afghan author, Mohammad Hashim Kamali. Glasgow Caledonian University said that they had found references to the mentioned book, both within the main body and the bibliography. After the allegations were raised by the western media, Glasgow Caledonian University published the abstracts of Rouhani's Master and PhD thesis. According to Foreign Policy, the sentences "...it leaves room for flexibility in the evaluation of its injunctions...The Qur’an is not specific on the precise value of its injunctions, and it leaves open the possibility that a command in the Qur’an may sometimes imply an obligation, a recommendation or a mere permissibility" and "As a characteristic feature of Qur’anic legislation, it may be stated here that commands and prohibitions in the Qur’an are expressed in a variety of forms which are often open to interpretation and ijtihad" which are found in Rouahni's thesis dated July 1998, were "lifted" from the work by Hashem Kamali first published in 1991:
Sayed Hassan Amin, Rouhani's doctoral thesis supervisor, denied the allegations in an interview with BBC Persian and said that there was "no doubt about the authenticity of the thesis."
2017 presidential election
The allegations were raised again by state news agencies amid the 2017 Iran presidential election.
Student campaign
A group of Iranian students based in Iran and the United States formed a campaign investigating the case. The campaign published the results of their investigation on their website and on Twitter. The nongovernmental organization Justice and Transparency Watch (DAAD) founded in 2015 by "a group of then-parliamentarians and conservative political figures" is described on the campaign's website as the backer of the campaign. According to the group, plagiarism detection tool iThenticate was used for the analysis of the thesis and the results reportedly showed that chapters one through four of Rouhani's thesis have been plagiarized at least 39%, 43%, 40% and 82%, respectively. According to Keivan Ebrahimi, Iranian PhD student at Iowa State University and a member of the campaign, most parts of the Rouhani's thesis are copied from the works by Ebrahim Kalantari, Ziauddin Sardar, Noel James Coulson, Hamid Enayat, Wael Hallaq, Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi, Patrick Bannerman, Mohammad Hashim Kamali and William Montgomery Watt. In response to a question in this regard, Rouhani said that he had graduated from an international credible university and that he had not achieved his degree in exchange for land.
Alef website published the final result of the investigations referring to the student campaign's website, Rouhanithesis. According to the word count results the whole thesis was consisted of 101500 words with 16700, 11000, 9400, 5400, 3000, 2250, 2075 and 1600 words being copied from the works by Ali Akbar Kalantari, Ahmad Hassan, Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Seyyed Abbas Salehi, Jom'e Meqdadi, Wael Hallaq, Chibli Mallat and Morteza Motahhari, respectively.