Abdolkarim Soroush

One of the valuable things about Hans Küng's Der Islam (2004) is that he mentions a number of contemporary Muslim thinkers who are trying to define new Islamic approaches to contemporary challenges. One of those he mention in this regard is the Iranian expatriate Adkolkarim Soroush, who was profiled in this article: Iran's leading reformist intellectual tries to reconcile religious duties and human rights by Laura Secor Boston Globe 03/14/04.

If Iran's democratic reform movement has a house intellectual, it's Abdolkarim Soroush. A small, soft-spoken philosopher with fiercely expressive eyebrows, Soroush specializes in mysticism, Sufi poetry, Islamic theology, chemistry, pharmacology, and the philosophy of science. Although he once worked for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's revolutionary government, he now advances a powerful argument for democracy and human rights - and he does so drawing not only on John Stuart Mill and John Rawls, but also on the deepest intellectual traditions of Shi'ite Islam. Religion must remain aloof from governance, he is fond of saying, not because religion is false and would corrupt politics, but because religion is true and politics corrupts it.

Secor's article is a reminder of the kind of goals that motivated most supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini's revolutionary movement in 1979. And she talks a bit about Soroush's approach to Islam:

In '92, Soroush established the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Science. It was Iran's first program of its kind. At the same time, his philosophical writings on Islam and democracy began to circulate through an eclectic intellectual journal called Kiyan. In these writings, Soroush directly challenged the political power of the clerics, even advocating that they cease working for pay so that they would no longer be corrupted by worldly interests. "They must remain lovers rather than dealers of religion," he explains in an e-mail. With these and other writings, Soroush became a professor with a following.

She gives an example of how he uses the theology of the Mu'tazilites as a way to look at Islam in a democratic perspective:

The Mu'tazilites, who drew on ancient Greek philosophical sources, believed that the Qu'ran was a created text, rather than an eternal one - meaning that it was situated in the moment of its historical creation and could conceivably have been different, had external circumstances been different. Most intriguingly, the Mu'tazilites believed justice did not derive from God but guided God's actions. Therefore an action was not good or bad because God commanded or forbade it; God commanded or forbade it because it was good or bad. What this meant was that morality stood independent of God and in fact inhered in the actions themselves. It could be apprehended with reason, even by someone ignorant of God's injunctions. Soroush calls this vision of justice "moral secularism."

Though the Mu'tazilites produced the official doctrine of the Baghdad caliphate from 765 through 848, they were unpopular elitists who resorted to violent repression. When they were displaced by the orthodox Ash'arites, who held reason to be subservient to revelation, the Mu'tazilites went into near-permanent eclipse. Sunni Muslims embraced the Ash'arite view and came to see Mu'tazilite ideas as heretical. But the often subterranean Mu'tazilate influence became woven into the theology of the Persian Shi'ites and the Yemeni Zaydis.

And Secor gives us a glimpse of how Soroush's view of Islam and government avoids both theocracy and secularism:

Soroush believes that religious institutions and political ones should be kept separate. Doing so will allow religious life to truly flourish, because it will be chosen rather than imposed. But if this sounds like Western-style liberal secularism, it isn't. Rather, Soroush envisions what he calls a democratic religious society. Its goal is the freedom of believers to practice and live by their faith without compulsion - but also without the "profanity" that pervades Western secular life.

Shari'ah law provides the Islamic framework for moral living, and Soroush does not seem prepared to do away with it, although he is clear that scripture should never form the sole basis of legislation. Indeed, Soroush sees Shari'ah as a form of religious knowledge rather than an article of religious faith. And so, in his view, it should be subject to rational discussion and adjustment.

Superficially, Soroush's approach may sound more compatible with conservative American views. For instance, he is emphatic in condemning homosexuality as immoral. But in fact, he represents a democratizing trend in Islam, and his approach provides a very different perspective on the religion than the dogmatic "Islam is violent and evil" view that many Christian and secular conservatives take of it.

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