Abdolkarim Soroush is one of the most well-known reformist voices of Islam. That’s why he is called “the Martin Luther of Islam”, and in 2005 the American magazine Time included him in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In that Time issue, Scott MacLeod described Soroush as Iran’s democratic voice: “He is a dangerous man, as far as Iran’s ruling mullahs are concerned. A Muslim activist during Ayatullah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution against the U.S.-backed Shah, the philosopher, 60, is the leading intellectual force behind the Islamic republic’s pro-democracy movement. Drawing from both Western and Islamic sources, Soroush has laid the foundations for Islamic pluralism by challenging Khomeini’s claim that Iran’s mullahs have a God-given right to govern. Soroush counters that because religion is bound to be interpreted by man, it is inevitably open to differing earthly interpretations. Since 9/11, his writings have been central to the global debate over Islam’s compatibility with democracy. Soroush, a devout Muslim born into a working-class Tehran household, has braved constant death threats while authoring books and giving speeches across Iran. He keeps a collection of shirts shredded during attacks on him by pro-regime militants”.

Born in southern Tehran in 1945 (1324 A. H.), Soroush graduated in mathematics. After completing a subsequent degree in pharmacy and spending two years in the army rendering the national compulsory service, he left for London, where he graduated in Analytical Chemistry. He then studied History and Philosophy of Science at the Chelsea College and spent five years in England, where his speeches were regularly transcribed and produced into pamphlets or books. The first book by Soroush, published in Iran while he was still in London, was the “Dialectical Antagonism”, a collection of several lectures given in London. At the same time he authored “The Restless Nature of the World” (nahad-e na-aram-e jahan) , appreciated also by Imam Khomeini. When the Revolution began, Soroush returned to Iran and there he published his book “Knowledge and Value” (Danesh va Arzesh). At the Tehran Teacher Training College he was appointed director of the newly established Islamic Culture Group. In 1983 (1362 A.H.), he secured a transfer to the Institute for Cultural Research and Studies where he has been serving as a research member of staff till date. In the same year Soroush resigned from the Cultural Revolution Council, whose members were all appointed directly by 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 co-founded, Kiyan, soon became the most visible forum ever of religious intellectualism. In this magazine he published his most controversial articles on religious pluralism, hermeneutics, tolerance and clericalism. The magazine was closed down in 1998 among many other magazines and newspapers by the direct order of the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic. However, 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 were often disrupted by hardline Ansar-e-Hizbullah vigilante groups.

From the year 2000 onwards Abdulkarim Soroush has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University where he has taught Islam and Democracy, Quranic Studies and Philosophy of Islamic Law. In addition, he was a scholar in residence at Yale University, and has also taught Islamic Political Philosophy at Princeton University in the 2002-3 academic year. In 2003-4 he was visiting scholar at the Wissenschatftkolleg in Berlin. Soroush’s main contribution to Islamic philosophy is that he maintains that one should distinguish between religion as divinely revealed and the interpretation of religion or religious knowledge, which is based on socio-historical factors. Soroush is primarily interested in philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, in the philosophical system of Moulana Rumi and in comparative philosophy.

“If Iran’s democratic reform movement has a house intellectual, it’s Abdolkarim Soroush”, wrote The Boston Globe in 2004: “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”. “One of the achievements of the reform movement” once Soroush said “is that people realize that they can be democrats and remain faithful Muslims”.