Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush. Translated and edited, with a critical introduction by Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 236 pages.)

Abstract

While the public role of intellectuals in North America, and perhaps in the
West more generally, is declining, one may hazard to say that their role
remains significant in the Muslim world, judging by the number of intellectuals
who have been censored in Muslim societies. Iran, in particular,
has a strong tradition of public intellectuals, the latest of whom is
Abdolkarim Soroush, a vocal critic of the post-revolutionary clerical
regime. An official in the early years of post-revolutionary Iran, he has
subsequently been harassed and censored for arguing that secularism is the best way to guard against the abuse of power. Since Soroush has
quickly gained a following both inside and outside Iran, the editors are to
be commended for editing and translating his wide-ranging ideas and
making them accessible to the English reading public.
The editors’ introduction contextualizes Soroush’s work by locating
him within a current of Iranian enlightened-religious intellectuals, and,
more generally, in a current of Muslim reformist thought that includes the
likes of Muhammad Iqbal and Ali Shariati. Chapter 1, an interview with
Soroush, reveals the major influences on the development of his thought,
while the remaining 11 chapters are a collection of his essays, lectures,
and speeches. Most of this material consists of lectures that he delivered
in the early 1990s. Chapters 2, 4, and 6-9 represent the core of his ideas
on the limits of religious knowledge, secularism, and the mutual dependence
of freedom and critical reason. The remaining chapters nicely
round out the book with topics ranging from a defense of critical reason,
science, and freedom to the differences between the educational model of
the traditional religious seminary versus the modern university.
Chapter 2 presents Soroush’s theory of the contraction and expansion
of religious knowledge. Here, he makes the controversial (at least in the
post-revolutionary Iranian context) argument that while religion and
sacred scriptures may be flawless and constant, the interpreters of religion
are not. Hence, Soroush argues that traditional Islamic knowledge needs
to be treated like any other branch of knowledge, “as incomplete, impure,
insufficient, and culture-bound” (p. 32) ...