Abstract
One of the most distinguished and controversial thinkers in today's Iran,Abdol Karim Soroush has been the butt of both sides of the Iranian divide. Conservatives accuse him of 'extremism' in his attacks on the clergy and in his challenge to traditional interpretations of Islam as well as the main pillar of the post-revolutionary government, the Velayat-e-Faqih.
Reformers, particularly those 'liberals' who would prefer to see the replacement of the present system of government by a wholly secular system, accuse him of not going far enough in this direction and so reinforcing the hold of the clerics. Though he has argued the separation of Church and State if either is to prosper, he remains a committed Muslim who sees the necessity of reform in a society where religion still plays so large a part in the life of the majority of the population. Those familiar with the arguments of the Protestant Reformation will find what Soroush says on the necessity of reform and the end of religious 'tyranny',for instance, unremarkable.
For the authorities in Iran, however, it is another matter (Index 4/1996, 'God is not dead'). Between 1996 and 1999, Soroush was effectively prevented from teaching at the university — his classes were violently disrupted by members of the extremist Ansar-e Hezbollah; he and his family received death threats from the same source; his passport was withdrawn, most journals closed their pages to him and he was unable to work at the university, finally losing his job in 1998. Today, he is working at the Middle East Center in Harvard, Massachusetts. JVH