Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari (Persian: محمد مجتهد شبستری; born 1936 in Shabestar, Iran) is an Iranian philosopher, theologian, hermeneutist and former professor at University of Tehran.

He was influenced by Ruhollah Khomeini's idea that "Islamic ethics was not limited" to "personal relationships", but should be "reflected in the state and its form of government.

[4] During the period he spent in Hamburg, Shabestari strongly supported the Christian-Islamic dialogue and extended the mosque’s scope of influence by opening it up to all Muslims.

Although Shabestari has made a modest contribution to the introduction and application of modern hermeneutics to traditional Shiite theology and jurisprudence, and thus to the proposition of variability of religious knowledge, his most significant contribution seems to be his authoritative commentary on the essentially limited nature of religious knowledge and rules, and thus the necessity of complementing it with extra-religious sources.

[7] Shabestari argues that distinguishing the eternal (values), from the changeable (instances and applications) in religion needs a kind of knowledge that is not, itself, contained in the rules developed in Islamic jurisprudence (Fiqh).

[4] Since the early 1990s, he has been increasingly active in publishing articles in liberal daily papers and magazines in which he argues for a new, more critical approach to religion.