Abdolkarim Soroush

Abdolkarim Soroush (‫ ( ﻋﺒﺪاﻟﻜﺮﻳﻢ ﺳﺮوش‬listen ) Persian

pronunciation: [æbdolkæriːm soruːʃ]; born Hossein Haj Faraj
Abdolkarim Soroush
Dabbagh (born 1945; Persian: ‫)ﺣﺴﻴﻦ ﺣﺎج ﻓﺮج دﺑﺎغ‬, is an
Iranian Islamic thinker, reformer, Rumi scholar, public
intellectual, and a former professor of philosophy at the
University of Tehran and Imam Khomeini International
University [1] He is arguably the most influential figure in the
religious intellectual movement of Iran. Soroush is currently
a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland in College
Park, MD. He was also affiliated with other prestigious
institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia,
the Leiden-based International Institute as a visiting
professor[2] for the Study of Islam in the Modern World
(ISIM) and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. He was named Born Hossein Haj Faraj Dabbagh
by TIME as one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 16 December 1945
2005, and by Prospect magazine as one of the most Tehran, Iran
influential intellectuals in the world in 2008.[3] Soroush's
ideas, founded on Relativism, prompted both supporters and Era 21st century Philosophy
critics to compare his role in reforming Islam to that of Region Western Philosophy
Martin Luther in reforming Christianity.[4][5] Islamic Philosophy
School Irfan, Islam, Religious
intellectualism, Persian literature
Contents Main Philosophy of Religion
interests Social and political philosophy
Biography
Philosophy Influences
Distinction between "religion" and our Karl Popper, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad
"understanding of religion" Balkhi-Rumi
Religious "belief" and religious "faith"
Soroush's political theory
Religious democracy
Reception
Attacks
Research interests
Awards and honors
Selected works
Academic studies
See also
References
External links
Biography
Abdolkarim Soroush was born in Tehran in 1945. Upon finishing high school, Soroush began studying
pharmacy after passing the national entrance exams of Iran. After completing his degree, he soon left Iran
for London in order to continue his studies and to become familiar with the modern world.

It was after receiving a master's degree in analytical chemistry from University of London that he went to
Chelsea College, (a constituent college of the University of London which was merged with two other
constituent colleges: Queen Elizabeth College and Kings College in 1985) for studying history and
philosophy of science. After the revolution, Soroush returned to Iran and there he published his book
Knowledge and Value (Danesh va Arzesh), the writing of which he had completed in England. He then went
to Tehran's Teacher Training College where he was appointed the director of the newly established Islamic
Culture Group. While in Tehran, Soroush established studies in both history and the philosophy of science.

A year later, all universities were shut down, and a new body was formed by the name of the Cultural
Revolution Committee comprising seven members, including Abdulkarim Soroush, all of whom were
appointed directly by Ayatollah Khomeini. Soroush's joining of the Cultural Revolution committee has been
criticized on two sides. He has been accused by orthodox critics of preventing the Islamization of human
sciences and by the opposition of the Islamic Republic regime of Iran to involvement in the dismissal of
teachers.

Soroush rejected the opposition accusation. There is not an independent historical research on Soroush's role
in events which led to the Cultural Revolution and also his membership and his role in the Cultural
Revolution committee. He has welcomed of such study in his interview with Professor Forough
Jahanbakhsh - inquiring into modern Iranian intellectual history.[6]

In 1983, owing to certain differences which emerged between him and the management of the Teacher
Training College, he secured a transfer to the Institute for Cultural Research and Studies where he has been
serving as a research member of staff until today. He submitted his resignation from membership in the
Cultural Revolution Council to Imam Khomeini and has since held no official position within the ruling
system of Iran, except occasionally as an advisor to certain government bodies. His principal position has
been that of a researcher in the Institute for Cultural Research and Studies.

During the 90s, Soroush gradually became more critical of the political role played by the Iranian clergy.
The monthly magazine that he cofounded, Kiyan, soon became the most visible forum in post-revolution
Iran for religious intellectualism. In this magazine he published his most controversial articles on religious
pluralism, hermeneutics, tolerance, clericalism, etc. The magazine was clamped down in 1998 among with
many other magazines and newspapers by the direct order of the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.
About a thousand audio tapes of speeches by Soroush on various social, political, religious and literary
subjects delivered all over the world are widely in circulation in Iran and elsewhere. Soon, he not only
became subject to harassment and state censorship, but also lost his job and security. His public lectures at
universities in Iran are often disrupted by hardline Ansar-e-Hizbullah vigilante groups who see his
intellectual endeavours as being mainly motivated by anti-regime politics rather than theology per se.

From the year 2000 Abdulkarim Soroush has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University teaching Rumi
poetry and philosophy, Islam and Democracy, Quranic Studies and Philosophy of Islamic Law. Also a
scholar in residence in Yale University, he taught Islamic Political Philosophy at Princeton University in the
2002-3 academic year. From 2003-4 he served as a visiting scholar at the Wissenschaftkolleg in Berlin. He
spent the fall semester of 2007 at Columbia University and the spring semester of 2008 at Georgetown
University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs as a visiting scholar. In the winter of
2012, he was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago teaching Intellectual and Religious History of
Modern Iran.
Philosophy
Soroush is primarily interested in the philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, the philosophical system
of Molana Jalaleddin Balkhi (Rumi) and comparative philosophy. He is a world expert on Rumi and Persian
Sufi poetry.

The philosophy of Abdolkarim Soroush can be summarized as follows:[7]

Distinction between "religion" and our "understanding of religion".

Distinction between "essential" and "accidental" aspects of religion.
Distinction between "minimalist" and "maximalist" interpretation of Islam.
Distinction between values and morals that are considered internal in respect to Islam and
those that are external.
Distinction between Religious "belief" and Religious "faith".
Distinction between religion as an ideology/identity and religion of truth.

Distinction between "religion" and our "understanding of religion"

Soroush's main contribution to Islamic philosophy is that he maintains that one should distinguish between
religious as divinely revealed and the interpretation of religion or religious knowledge which is based on
socio-historical factors. At Oxford, Soroush was heavily influenced by Iranian philosopher Komeil Sadeghi,
to whom he has dedicated one of his books Expansion of Prophetic Experience.

Soroush's main thesis, entitled The Theoretical Contraction and Expansion of Shari'a separates religion per
se from religious knowledge. The former, the essence of religion, is perceived as beyond human reach,
eternal and divine. The latter, religious knowledge, is a sincere and authentic but finite, limited, and fallible
form of human knowledge.[1] (https://web.archive.org/web/20060713222849/http://www.kadivar.com/Htm/
English/Reviews/reform.htm)

Religious "belief" and religious "faith"

Faith cannot be compulsory. As he told one interviewer, "True believers must embrace their faith of their
own free will - not because it was imposed, or inherited, or part of the dominant local culture. To become a
believer under pressure or coercion isn't true belief.`"[8] This also means that the believer "must ... remain
free to leave his faith."[9]

Soroush's political theory

Soroush's political theory is in line with the modern tradition from Locke to the framers of the American
constitution. It portrays human beings as weak and susceptible to temptation, even predation. As such, they
need a vigilant and transparent form of government. He believes that the assumption of innate goodness of
mankind, shared by radical Utopians from anarchists to Islamic fundamentalists underestimates the staying
power of social evil and discounts the necessity of a government of checks and balances to compensate for
the weaknesses of human nature.[2] (https://web.archive.org/web/20060713222849/http://www.kadivar.co
m/Htm/English/Reviews/reform.htm)

Soroush's political philosophy, as well, remains close to the heart of the liberal tradition, ever championing
the basic values of reason, liberty, freedom, and democracy. They are perceived as "primary values," as
independent virtues, not handmaidens of political maxims and religious dogma. Soroush entwines these
basic values and beliefs in a rich tapestry of Islamic primary sources, literature, and poetry.[3] (https://web.a
rchive.org/web/20060713222849/http://www.kadivar.com/Htm/English/Reviews/reform.htm)

Religious democracy

Soroush introduced his own definition of the term Religious democracy which is now a topic in
contemporary Iranian philosophy and means that the values of religion play a role in the public arena in a
society populated by religious people. Religious democracy falls within the framework of modern rationality
and has identifiable elements. It is in this way that we have a plurality of democracies in the international
community. "Religious democracy" is a subject of intense research in Iranian intellectual circles.

Democracy where coincides with certain things, it can be secular or religious. Hence, what alters the hue
and color of democracy is a society’s specific characteristics and elements. Religious democracy is an
example of how democratic values can exist in a different cultural elaboration than what is usually known
before.[10] But, in a secular society, some other characteristic is deemed important and focused on, and that
becomes the basis for democracy.

In fact relativistic liberalism and democracy are not identical since democracy is not violated when a faith is
embraced, it is violated when a particular belief is imposed or disbelief is punished.

We do not have one democracy but many democracies in history. We have a plurality of democracies in the
international community. What emerged was that a democracy prevailed in different eras depending on the
conditions of the time.[11]

Reception
In 2008, in an online open poll, Soroush was voted the 7th topmost intellectual person in the world on the
list of Top 100 Public Intellectuals by Prospect Magazine (UK) and Foreign Policy (United States).[12]

Attacks

Soroush's ideas have met with strong opposition from conservative elements in the Islamic Republic. Both
he and his audiences were assaulted by Ansar-e Hezbollah vigilantes in the mid-1990s. A law imposing
penalties on anyone associating with enemies of the Islamic republic is thought by his allies to have been at
least in part provoked by some of Soroush's lectures and foreign affiliations.[13]

According to the journalist Robin Wright:

Over the next year, he lost his three senior academic appointments, including a deanship. Other
public appearances, including his Thursday lectures, were banned. He was forbidden to publish
new articles. He was summoned for several long `interviews` by Iranian intelligence officials.
His travel was restricted, then his passport confiscated.[13]

At the celebration of the sixteenth anniversary of the American embassy seizure in 1995, Wright found that
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei "devoted more time berating Soroush...than condemning the United
States or Israel." [14]

Research interests
 Persian literature
Philosophy of science
Iranian philosophy
Eastern philosophy
Theology
Islamic philosophy

Awards and honors

2004 Erasmus Prize[15]
2005 Time 100 most influential people[16]
2008 Prospect magazine's 7 of 100 most influential intellectuals in the world.[17]
2009 Foreign Policy magazine's 45 of 100 world's elite intellectuals[18]
2010 Foreign Policy magazine's 40 of 100 top global thinkers[19]

Selected works
Dialectical Antagonism (in Persian), Tehran 1978
Philosophy of History (in Persian), Tehran 1978
What is Science, what is Philosophy (in Persian), 11th ed. Tehran 1992
The Restless Nature of the Universe (in Persian and Turkish), reprint Tehran 1980
Satanic Ideology (in Persian), 5th ed. Tehran 1994
Knowledge and Value (in Persian)
Observing the Created: Lectures in Ethics and Human Sciences (in Persian), 3rd ed. Tehran
1994
The Theoretical Contraction and Expansion of Religion: The Theory of Evolution of Religious
Knowledge (in Persian), 3rd ed. Tehran 1994
Lectures in the Philosophy of Social Sciences: Hermeneutics in Social Sciences (in Persian),
Tehran 1995
Sagaciousness, Intellectualism and Pietism (in Persian), Tehran 1991
The Characteristic of the Pious: A Commentary on Imam Ali's Lecture About the Pious (in
Persian), 4th ed. Tehran 1996
The Tale of the Lords of Sagacity (in Persian), 3rd ed. Tehran 1996
Wisdom and Livelihood: A Commentary on Imam Ali's Letter to Imam Hasan (in Persian), 2nd
ed. Tehran 1994
Sturdier than Ideology (in Persian), Tehran 1994
The Evolution and Devolution of Religious Knowledge in: Kurzman, Ch. (ed.): Liberal Islam,
Oxford 1998
Political Letters (2 volumes), 1999 (Persian).
Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam, Essential writings of Adbolkarim Soroush,
translated, edited with a critical introduction by M. Sadri and A. Sadri, Oxford 2000.
Intellectualism and Religious Conviction (in Persian)
The World we live (in Persian and Turkish)
The Tale of Love and Servitude (in Persian)
The definitive edition of Rumi's Mathnavi (in Persian), 1996
Tolerance and Governance (in Persian), 1997
 Straight Paths, An Essay on religious Pluralism (in Persian), 1998
Expansion of Prophetic Experience (in Persian), 1999

Academic studies
Ashk P. Dahlén, Islamic Law, Epistemology and Modernity. Legal Philosophy in Contemporary
Iran, Routledge, 2003. (Several chapters devoted to Soroush)

See also
Intellectual Movements in Iran
Religious Intellectualism in Iran

References
1. Iran Newspaper (http://www.iran-newspaper.com/1383/831117/html/horizon.htm) Archived (htt
ps://web.archive.org/web/20090622101917/http://www.iran-newspaper.com/1383/831117/html/
horizon.htm) June 22, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
2. https://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2009/09-184.html
3. Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2009/09-184.html)
4. Middle East Contemporary Survey ... - Google Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=E6
H6GAzdrXcC&pg=PA297&dq=Soroush+Luther&hl=en&ei=3pwYTaLkGYTwsgaI2OSFDQ&sa=
X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Soroush%20Lu
ther&f=false)
5. An introduction to Islam - Google Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=yU3uAAAAMAAJ
&q=Soroush+Luther&dq=Soroush+Luther&hl=en&ei=3pwYTaLkGYTwsgaI2OSFDQ&sa=X&oi
=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA)
6. Jahanbakhsh, Forough, Islam, Democracy and Religious Modernism in Iran, 1953-2000: From
Bazargan to Soroush, Brill, 2001, p.145
7. Dr. Soroush (http://www.drsoroush.com/Persian/On_DrSoroush/On_13851013_Paya.html)
8. Wright, Robin, Dreams and Shadows : the Future of the Middle East, Penguin Press, 2008,
p.268
9. Islam and Liberal Democracy. Two Visions of Reformation (http://www.drsoroush.com/English/
On_DrSoroush/E-CMO-19960400-1.html), by Robin Wright, Journal of Democracy, 7.2 (1996)
64-75
10. http://www.humanrights.dk/news/conference_article/
11. AbdolKarim Soroush :: ‫( ﻋﺒﺪاﻟﮑﺮﻳﻢ ﺳﺮوش‬http://www.drsoroush.com/English/Interviews/E-INT-2
0031200-1.htm)
12. "Archived copy" (https://web.archive.org/web/20090930143349/http://www.prospectmagazine.c
o.uk/prospect-100-intellectuals/). Archived from the original (http://www.prospectmagazine.co.u
k/prospect-100-intellectuals/) on 2009-09-30. Retrieved 2010-02-19.
13. The Last Great Revolution by Robin Wright c2000, p.57
14. Wright, Robin, Dreams and Shadows : the Future of the Middle East, Penguin Press, 2008,
p.291-2
15. Stichting Praemium Erasmianum (http://www.erasmusprijs.org/eng/index.cfm?paginaID=35&ite
m_ID=14)
16. The 2005 TIME 100: Abdolkarim Soroush (http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/2005/time100/
scientists/100soroush.html)
17. Intellectuals—the results « Prospect Magazine (http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2008/07/in
tellectualstheresults/) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20090930160551/http://www.pros
pectmagazine.co.uk/2008/07/intellectualstheresults/) 2009-09-30 at the Wayback Machine
18. "Foreign Policy's First Annual List of the 100 Top Global Thinkers" (https://web.archive.org/we
b/20141022065340/http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/30/the_fp_top_100_global_t
hinkers?page=0,27). ForeignPolicy.com. Archived from the original (https://foreignpolicy.com/ar
ticles/2009/11/30/the_fp_top_100_global_thinkers?page=0,27) on 2014-10-22. Retrieved
2017-03-05.
19. Foreign Policy's Second Annual List of the 100 Top Global Thinkers | Foreign Policy (https://for
eignpolicy.com/articles/2010/11/29/the_fp_top_100_global_thinkers?page=0,32) Archived (http
s://web.archive.org/web/20120210003643/http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/11/29/the
_fp_top_100_global_thinkers?page=0,32) 2012-02-10 at the Wayback Machine

External links
Abdolkarim Soroush's Official Site (http://www.drsoroush.com/)
Abdolkarim Soroush Speech at George Washington University, Nov. 2015 (https://www.youtub
e.com/watch?v=Us9WEQi3I2o) (Video)
Abdolkarim Soroush; Iran's Democratic Voice - Time Magazine (http://www.drsoroush.com/Eng
lish/News_Archive/E-NWS-20050418-Time_Magazine.html)
Seraj - Dedicated to coverage and analysis of the ideas of Abdolkarim Soroush (http://www.ser
aj.org)
A traditional critique of Abdolkarim Soroush's work. (http://cis-ca.org/kalam/2004/2004-articles.
htm#JTF)

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