Abdolkarim Soroush

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Soroush lecturing in Sharif University, October 2006

Abdolkarim Soroush (Persian: عبدالكريم سروش ) or Abdulkarim Soroush (1945 - ) is a leading Iranian thinker, philosopher, reformer and Rumi scholar. He is a well-known figure in religious intellectual movement in Iran.

1 Biography
2 Philosophy of Abdolkarim Soroush
3 Quotes by Soroush
4 Research interests
5 Awards and honors
6 Selected works
7 See also
8 External links
9 References

[edit] 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.

Soroush went to Chelsea College, for studying history and philosophy of science, spending the next five and a half years there. He has had no official training in any of the Islamic sciences, Arabic or other related field in Iran or in a Western Universities. During these years, confrontation between the people and the Shah's regime was gradually becoming more serious, and political gatherings of Iranians in America and Europe, and Britain in particular, were on the increase. Soroush, too, was thus drawn into the field.

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. Soroush was a ardent follower of Khomeini and was a leading critic of dissedents and dissident groups, both religious and nationalists who spoke against Khomeini. It was for this reason that he held many government positions under Khomeini.

A year later, all universities were shut down, and a new body was formed by the name of the Cultural Revolution Institute comprising seven members, including AbdulKarim Soroush, all of whom were appointed directly by Ayatollah Khomeini. The purpose of this institute was to bring about the re-opening of the universities and total restructuring of the syllabi to suit the new regimes policies and philosophy.

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. It was not until after Khomeini's death that he submitted his resignation from membership in the Cultural Revolution Council 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 ever 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 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.

From the year 2000 onwards Abdulkarim Soroush has been a Visiting Professor in 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. For 2003-4 he will be a visiting scholar in the Wissenschaftkolleg in Berlin.

[edit] Philosophy of Abdolkarim Soroush

Soroush is primarily interested in the philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, the philosophical system of Mowlana 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^[1]:

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.

[edit] Distinction between "religion" and our "understanding of religion"

Soroush 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.

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]

[edit] Soroush's political theory

Soroush's political theory is in line with the modern tradition from Hobbes to the framers of the American constitution. It portrays human beings are 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]

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]

[edit] Religious democracy

Soroush introduced 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. ^[2] 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 from ancient Greece to today. 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. ^[3]

[edit] Quotes by Soroush

"Has this country (Iran) gone so far so that a teacher takes his life into his own hands when attending class or an academic meeting? Does this country need the likes of Galileo and Giordano Bruno?" (appeared in an open letter from Dr Soroush to President Hashemi Rafsanjani after the latest incident of Amir Kabir University)^[4]

[edit] Research interests

[edit] Awards and honors

Erasmus Prize (2004)
Time Magazine List of most influential people (2005)

[edit] 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

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

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