Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam

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) ...