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сAbdoIkarim Sorush and the Secularization of Islamic Thought in Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Afshin Matin-asgari
Afshin Matin-asgari*
Affiliation:
Department of History, UCLA
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Extract

…a necessary prerequisite to democratization of religious government is to make religious thought more flexible by elevating the role of ‘reason’ in it; and that is not individual but collective reason, arising from the participation of all and benefiting from humanity's experiences; and this is possible only through democratic means.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is seriously challenged by a secularizing intellectual force from within. It may seem ironic for such a movement to appear in a clerical-dominated regime, initially thought by many to embody the victory of religion and tradition over secularism and modernization. But the Iranian revolution came in the wake of at least a century of exposure to secular ideas and institutions, an experience whose impact continued to be discerned during and after the revolution by observers who could see beyond the rhetoric of Islamism.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 1-2 , Spring Winter 1997 , pp. 95 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1997

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Amir Arsalan Afkhami, Kamran Aghai, Abbas Amant, Iran Bayat, H. E. Chehabi, Shahrokh Haghighi, Nasrin Hakami, Nikki R. Keddie, Afshin Marashi and the anonymous reviewer and editors of Iranian Studies for their help and comments which have improved this article.

References

1. Sorush, сAbdolkarim, Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhi [More Corpulent than Ideology] (Tehran: Serat, 1994), 280Google Scholar.

2. For examples of this kind of scholarship in the 1980s see Abrahamian, Ervand, The Iranian Mojahedin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Binder, Leonard, Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Keddie, Nikki R., Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; and Zubaida, Sami, Islam: The People and the State (London and New York: Routledge, 1989Google Scholar).

3. Ness, Peter H. Van, ed., Spirituality and the Secular Quest (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996)Google Scholar, Introduction. See also the entries on “Secularism” in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (1994), The Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition (1997), and The Harper Collins Dictionary of Religion (1995).

4. See, for example, Los Angeles Times, 30 December 1995; Le Monde diplomatique, June 1995; Foreign Affairs 74, no. 6 (November-December 1995); and MESA Newsletter 18, no. 1 (February 1996): 13. In academia, the French apparently discovered Sorush first. Yann Richard mentions him in “Clercs et intellectuels dans la republique islamique d'Iran” in Kepel, Gilles and Richard, Yann, Intellectuels et militants de I'lslam contemporain (Paris: Éditions du seuil, 1990), 29–70Google Scholar. In English see Mehrzad Boroujerdi, “The Encounter of Post-Revolutionary Thought in Iran with Hegel, Heidegger, and Popper” in Mardin, Serif, ed., Cultural Transitions in the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 236–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While not focused on Sorush, this study discussed some of his main ideas in the context of a current debate in Iran between “Popperians” and “Heideggerians.” Vakili's, Valla Debating Religion and Politics in Iran: The Political Thought of Abdolkarim Sorush (New York: Council on Foreign Relation, 1996)Google Scholar is a lucid pamphlet-length introduction, but it focuses only on Sorush's political ideas without tracing their development in the context of Iran's religious and political culture.

5. Inconsistent biographical information is given in Boroujerdi, “Encounter,” 238, Vakili, Debating Religion and Politics, 8–9 and Richard, “Clercs et intellectuels,” 51. Sorush's early anti-Marxist polemics are found in his Tażād-e diālektīkī [Dialectical Contradiction] (Tehran: Hekmat, 1979); сElm chīst, falsafeh chīst? [What is Science, What is Philosophy?] (Tehran: Serat, 1979); and Īdeɔolozhī-ye shaytanl [Satanic Ideology], first published in 1981. For continuing accusations against Sorush see, for example, Iran Times, 19 January 1996 and Kiyān 6, no. 2 (1996): 58.

6. Most mid-twentieth-century attempts at synthesizing Islam with modern science and philosophy, such as Bazargan's application of the laws of thermodynamics to theology and social relations, remained unimpressive oddities. In light of the developments discussed below, Tabatabaɔi's efforts appear to have been more fruitful, as he proposed to counter Marxism and materialism with a philosophy of Islamic “realism,” based on the tradition of Shiɔi rationalistic theosophy. This line was followed by Motahhari, who taught at Tehran University's faculty of theology in the 195Os-60s and produced a large and influential body of work, dealing with topics ranging as wide as women's rights, nationalism, Marxism and the clergy's social position and authority. See Chehabi, H. E., Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran Under the Shah and Khomeini (New York: Cornell University Press, 1990Google Scholar); Dabashi, Hamid, Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

7. Early conflict between Islamist radicals and moderates was symbolized in the break between Shariсati and Motahhari in Hosaynieh-ye Ershad, the country's leading institute for the propagation of modernist Islam. Antagonisms ran deeper through the 1970s, after an attempted takeover of the Mojahedin organization by a Marxist-Leninist faction. See Abrahamian, Ervand, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar and idem, The Iranian Mojahedin. Many of Khomeini's radical pronouncements in the immediate prerevolutionary period are found in Khomeini, Ruhollah, Kalām-e emām, vol. 13 (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1983)Google Scholar. See also Keddie, Nikki R., Iran and the Muslim World: Resistance and Revolution (New York: New York University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Matin-asgari, Afshin, “Iran: Religious Revolution or Structural Realignment in State Formation?” South Asia Bulletin 15, no. 1 (1995): 91–97Google Scholar.

8. By the late 1980s, the political authority claimed for the ruling jurist had become absolute (velāyat-e moṭlaqeh-ye faqīh), allowing him to suspend even the very “pillars” of religious practice, such as prayers. See Akhavi, Shahrough, “Contending Discourses in Shiсi Law on the Doctrine of Wilāyat al-Faqīh,” Iranian Studies 29, nos. 3–4 (1996): 229–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abrahamian, Khomeinism.

9. Sorush, сAbdolkarim, Dānesh va arzesh [Knowledge and Value] (Tehran: Yaran, 1980), 185–86Google Scholar, 192–95, 279; see also his Īdeɔolozhī-ye shayṭānī.

10. Widespread discontent, including anti-government riots in Tehran and other cities throughout the 1990s, has been reported by international media and even the Iranian press. See the special report on Iran in The Economist, 18–24 January 1997; Shirely, Edward G., “Is Iran's Present Algeria's Future?” in Foreign Affairs 14, no. 3 (May-June 1995): 28–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the Iranian press, for example, an editorial, by сAbbas Abdaɔi, in the Tehran daily Salām analyzed the emergence of a new economic class replacing the one overthrown by the revolution; see Salām, 14 May 1995, reprinted in Kayhān (London), 1 June 1995. In February 1996, President Rafsanjani's economic advisor announced that the average income of the richest ten percent of the population is over 27 times that of the poorest. In the same month, President Rafsanjani called for urgent attention to the problem of “poverty” in post-revolutionary Iran. See Iran Times, 1 March 1996. For a new cautious trend questioning the official conduct of the Iran-Iraq war see the Tehran quarterly Goftogū 3, no. 10 (Winter 1995): 89–90.

11. Kiyān 5, no. 26 (August-September 1995): 46–49.

12. Kiyān 5–6, nos. 24–35 (1995–97).

13. сAbdolkarim Sorush, ād-e nāɔārām-e jahān [The Restless Nature of the Universe] (Tehran: Serat, n.d.), 8. While this book has no publication date, the preface to its second edition is dated 1398 (lunar = 1978).

14. Ibid. On Sadra see Watt, W. Montgomery, Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985Google Scholar); Fakhry, Majid, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New York … London: Columbia University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; and Hossein, Nasr Seyyed, “The Metaphysics of Sadr al-Din Shirazi and Islamic Philosophy in Qajar Iran,” in Bosworth, Edmund and Hillenbrand, Carole, Qājār Iran: Political, Social and Cultural Change, 1800–1925 (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 1992): 177–98Google Scholar.

15. Nahād-e nāɔārām, 25, 33–36. “Transsubstantial motion” for ḥarakat-e jawharī is used by Dabashi, Theology of Dissent, 185, and Nasr, “Metaphysics,” 189.

16. Nahād-e nāɔārām, 46–47. A good introduction to Hegelian and Process Theology is found in Stanley J. Gernz and Roger E. Olson, Twentieth-Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 31–39, 130—44. Sorush has a similar and very positive reading of Hegel, and particularly of his dialectic, in Tażādd-e diālektīkī, ?>1-AA—a view he contradicts later in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 356.

17. Nahād-e nāɔāram, 47–57.

18. For more recent references to Sadra's authority see, for example, Sorush, сAbdolkarim, “Ẕehnīyat-e moshavvash, hovlyat-e moshavvash” [Confused Consciousness, Confused Identity], Kiyān 6, no. 30 (1996): 4–9Google Scholar.

19. Abundant examples are found, from Nahād-e nā'āram to the more recent collections of articles and lectures in Kiyān, Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī and Qeṣṣeh-ye arbāb-e maсrefat [The Story of the Masters of Knowledge] (Tehran: Serat, 1994).

20. сAbdolkarim Sorush, сElm chīst? falsafeh chīst? and Dānesh va arzesh.

21. Sorush, Qeṣṣeh-ye arbāb-e maсrefat, 192–93; idem, Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhl, 235.

22. Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 157–69, 285–91.

23. Sorush, сAbdolkarim, “Akhlāq, zībāshenāsī va сerfān” [Ethics, Esthetics, and Mysticism], Kiyān 6, no. 34 (1997): 14–19Google Scholar.

24. “Pārādoks-e īdeṭolozhl-ye modernīzm” [The Paradox of Modernist Ideology] in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 347–64.

25. Sorush, сAbdolkarim, “Khadamāt va ḥasanāt-e dīn” [Services and Benefits of Religion], Kiyān 5, no. 27 (1995): 2–16Google Scholar.

26. Sorush, сAbdolkarim, “Maсishat va fażīlat” [Sustenance and Virtue] in Kiyān 5, no. 25 (1995): 2–11Google Scholar.

27. Ibid., 8–10.

28. “Ẕehnīyat-e moshavvash, hovvīyat-e moshavvash,” 4–9. See also Sorush, , “Āzādī chūn ravesh” [Freedom as method] Kiyān 7, no. 37 (1997): 6–13Google Scholar.

29. “Īdeɔolozhī chīst?” [What is Ideology?] in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 79–96.

30. “Farbeh tar az Īdeɔolozhī” in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 95–155.

31. Ibid., 155–69, on the rationality of religious belief and God's existence; 194–96 on the historicity of religion.

32. “Khadamāt va ḥasanāt-e dīn,” 4–5.

33. Sorush, сAbdolkarim, “Īdeɔolozhī va dīn-e donyavī” [Ideology and Secular Religion], Kiyān 6, no. 31 (1996): 2–11Google Scholar.

34. “Taqlīd va taḥqīq dar solūk-e dāneshjūɔī” [Imitation and Research in Student Ways] in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 1–20. Note that Sorush also rejects the Akhbari school, according to which Twelver Shiсis had to strictly follow the traditions (akhbār) of the Imams only (ibid., 142).

35. Sorush, Qeṣṣeh-ye aṣḥāb-e maсrefat, 38–47.

36. The above summary of Sorush's positions is from his article, “Qabż va basṭ-e teɔorīk-e sharīсat” [Theoretical Contraction and Expansion of the sharīсd] in Kayhāne farhangī 7, no. 73 (1990): 12–19.

37. For a summary of the 1980s debate on the sharūсa see Boroujerdi, “Post-Revolutionary Thought.” For a defense of “dynamic jurisprudence” see Faiz, Alireza, “Rāhī ke ejtehād va feqh dar pīsh dārand” in Kayhān-e farhangī 12, no. 121 (1995): 29–31Google Scholar.

38. “Enteẓārāt-e dāneshgāh az ḥawzeh” [The University's Expectations of the Seminary] in Farbeh tar az īde'olozhī, 21—43.

39. “Taqlīd va taḥqiq” in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 12–19; see also ibid., 353–64.

40. “Maсīshat va fażīlat” in Kiyān 5, no. 25 (1995): 2–11.

41. Ibid., 3.

42. Ibid., 6.

43. Ibid., 4. On Mandeville see Wootton, David, Divine Right and Democracy: An Anthology of Political Writing in Stuart England (London: Penguin, 1986)Google Scholar.

44. сAbdolkarim Sorush, “Rīsheh dar āb ast” [The root is in the Water] in Kiyān 5, no. 29 (1995): 12, 15.

50. “Mosalmānī va ābādānī, kaferl va kamroshdī” [Muslim Belief and Development, Non-belief and Underdevelopment] in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 295–335.

46. Ibid., 330–35; Or: ”. .. the West is not a monolithic entity that can be totally condemned or exonerated; it encompasses a variety of values and ideas which must be investigated individually;” quoted in “Rīsheh dar āb ast,” 16.

47. “Maсīshat va fażīlat,” 10.

48. “Ẕehnīyat-e moshavvash,” 7–8.

49. Ibid., 6.

50. Ibid., 8–9.

51. Ibid., 9.

52. Sorush, сAbdolkarim, “Taḥlīl-e mafhūm-e ḥokūmat-e dīnī” [Analyzing the Concept of Religious Government] in Kiyān 6, no. 32 (1996): 2–13Google Scholar.

53. Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 49–52. See also “Maсnā va mabnā-ye sekūlārīzm” [The Meaning and Basis of Secularism] in Kiyān 5, no. 26 (1995): 4–13, where Sorush contrasts juridical theories of government, such as velāyat-e faqīh, to secular ones based on rights and choice.

54. “Ḥokūmat-e demokrātīk-e dīnī” [Democratic Religious Government] in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 273–83; Sorush repeats the argument that all governments, including religious ones, are human constructions in “Maсnā va mabnā-ye sekūlārīzm.“

55. “Bāvar-e dīnī, dāvar-e dīnī” in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 77–78.

56. Similar views were expressed by the Egyptian Sunni jurist сAli сAbd al-Raziq (d. 1966), who, based on careful references to the Qurɔan and the Prophet's tradition, argued that the caliphate had been a secondary institution, never mentioned in the Qurɔan or clearly spelled out in the traditions. Muslims were therefore free to choose whatever form of government best served their needs. See Binder, Islamic Liberalism, Chapter 4.

57. “Taḥlīl-e mafhūm-e ḥokūmat-e dīnī,” 11. See also “Dīn va āzādī” [Religion and Freedom], Kiyān 6, no. 33 (1996): 42–51.

58. Sorush, for example, in “Ḥokūmat-e demokrātīk-e dīnī.” On contradictions in the concept of a “democratic religious government” see Saqafi, Morad, “Nawandīshān-e dīnī va moсżal-e jāmeсeh-ye madanī,” Goftogū, no. 15 (1997): 114–20Google Scholar. On the possibility of an Iranian government similar to Europe's Christian Democratic models see Kazem сAlamdari, “Entekhābātī keh Īrān rā takān dād” in Nīmrūz, 13 June 1997.

66. “Taḥlīl-e mafhūm-e ḥokūmat-e dīnī,” 6, 11.

60. Behruz Emdadi Asl, “Az ranjī keh mībarīm” in Chashmandāz, no. 11 (1993): 2–22 and Masсud Behnud, “Az āzādī-ye aḥzāb natarsīm” in Ādīneh 10, no. 107 (1995): 8–11. This was also an open issue in campaigns for election to the fifth postrevolutionary parliament (Majlis) in 1995–96. See Iran Times, 9 and 16 February 1996.

61. See Aziz Al-Azmeh, Islam and Modernities (London and New York: Verso, 1993), 90–92. Famous examples of medieval Persian political texts are Nezam al-Molk, Siyāsatnāmeh (Tehran: Jibi, 1992) and Kaykavus b. Eskandar b. Qabus, The Qabus Nama, trans. Ruben Levy (London: Cresset Press, 1951).

62. “Dīn va āzādī,” 44; and “Ḥokūmat-e demokrātīk-e dīnī” in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 281–83. Elsewhere, Sorush defines “democracy” as the “ensemble of institutions aiming to minimize errors in the political administration of society by maximizing public participation and reducing the role of personality in political decision making.” See “Arkān-e farhangī-ye demokrāsī” [The Cultural Foundations of Democracy] in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 269–72.

63. “Arkān-e farhangī-ye demokrāsī” in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī, 270.

64. See Sorush's comments in “Taḥlīl-e mafhūm-e ḥokūmat-e dīnī,” 13; and the interview with Mohammad-Javad Larijani in Kiyān 6, no. 30 (1996): 16–23. See also Judith Miller, “Faces of Fundamentalism,” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 6 (November-December 1994): 123–42 and Hudson, Michael, “Obstacles to Democratization in the Middle East,” Contention 5, no. 2 (Winter 1996): 81–106Google Scholar.

65. “сAql va āzādī” in Farbeh tar az īdeɔolozhī.

66. For a similar approach from a Christian perspective see Barbour, Ian, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures, 1989–1991, vol. 1 (New York: Harper Colllins Publishers, 1990)Google Scholar. More recent references to Sadra are found in Sorush, “Ẕehnīyat-e moshavvash,” 4–10.

67. Sorush, сAbdolkarim, “Ḥorrīyat va rūḥānīyat” [Freedom and Clericalism], Kiyān 5, no. 24 (1995): 8Google Scholar.

68. Ibid., 7–8. According to Sorush, “all those who make a living from (knowledge or practice) of religion belong to the clergy.” Ibid., 2. This was not an accurate definition since it could include, for example, a university professor making a living by teaching religion. See the response to Sorush's article by Motahhari, сAli, “Ostād Moṭahharī va ḥall-e moshkel-e sāzmān-e rūḥānīyat” [Master Motahhari and Solving the Problem of the Clergy's Organization] in Kiyān 5, no. 25 (1995): 12–15Google Scholar.

69. See Kiyān 6, nos. 25–26 (1996). Khamenehɔs comments are quoted in Iran Times, 22 September 1996. For Sorush's answers see his “Maсīshat va fażīlat” in Kiyān 6, no. 25 (1996): 2–11.

70. Iran Times, 27 October 1995; Kiyān 5, no. 25 (June-July 1995): 58, 61.

71. Iran Times, 3 November 1995.

72. Nlmruz, 5–11 January 1996.

73. Kiyān 6, nos. 30–32 (1996); a synopsis of Sorush's 1996 lectures abroad is given in Kiyān 6, no. 31 (1996): 42–44.

74. Kiyān 6, no. 33 (1996): 62–66.

75. Kiyān 7, no. 37 (1997): 52–53. S8 1. Amanat, A., “The Study of History in Post-Revolutionary Iran: Nostalgia, Illusion or Historical Awareness?” Iranian Studies 22, no. 4 (1989): 3–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar