For more than two decades,
Abdulkarim Soroush has been Iran’s
leading public intellectual. Deeply
versed in Islamic theology and
mysticism, he was chosen by Ayatollah
Khomeini to “Islamicize” Iran’s
universities, only to eventually turn
against the theocratic state. He paid a
price for his dissidence. Vigilantes and
other government-supported elements
disrupted his widely attended lectures
in Iran, beat him and reportedly nearly
assassinated him. In a country where
intellectuals are often treated like
rock stars, Soroush has been venerated
and reviled for his outspoken support of
religious pluralism and democracy. Now
he has taken one crucial step further.
Shuttling from university to university
in Europe and the U.S., Soroush is
sending shock waves through Iran’s
clerical establishment.
The
recent controversy began about eight
months ago, after Soroush spoke with a
Dutch reporter about one of Islam’s most
sensitive issues: the divine origin of
the Koran. Muslims have long believed
that their holy book was transmitted
word for word by God through the Prophet
Muhammad. In the interview, however,
Soroush made explicit his alternative
belief that the Koran was a “prophetic
experience.” He told me that the prophet
“was at the same time the receiver and
the producer of the Koran or, if you
will, the subject and the object of the
revelation.” Soroush said that “when you
read the Koran, you have to feel that a
human being is speaking to you, i.e. the
words, images, rules and regulations and
the like all are coming from a human
mind.” He added, “This mind, of course,
is special in the sense that it is
imbued with divinity and inspired by
God.”
As Soroush’s words spread
thanks to the Internet, Iran’s grand
ayatollahs entered the battlefield. In
their rebuttal, the clerics pointed to
the Koranic verses that state “this is a
book we have sent down to you (O
Muhammad).” They ask, Don’t these verses
imply that God is the revealer and
Muhammad the receiver? They also point
out that there were times when Muhammad
waited impatiently for the revelation to
come to him and that in more than 300
cases the prophet is commanded to tell
his people to do one thing or another.
This demonstrates, the argument goes,
that the commands are coming from
elsewhere rather than from the heart or
the mind of the prophet himself.
Soroush, in turn, responds by saying
that the prophet was no parrot. Rather,
Soroush told me, he was like a bee who
produces honey itself, even though the
mechanism for making the honey is placed
in him by God. This is “the example the
Koran itself sets,” says Soroush, citing
the Koran: “And your Lord inspired to
the bee: take for yourself among the
mountains, houses . . . then eat from
all the fruits . . . there emerges from
their bellies a drink . . . in which
there is healing for people.”
Soroush has been described as a Muslim
Luther, but unlike the Protestant
reformer, he is no literalist about holy
books. His work more closely resembles
that of the 19th-century German scholars
who tried to understand the Bible in its
original context. Case in point: when a
verse in the Koran or a saying
attributed to Muhammad refers to cutting
off a thief’s hand or stoning to death
for adultery, it only tells us the
working rules and regulations of the
prophet’s era. Today’s Muslims are not
obliged to follow in these footsteps if
they have more humane means at their
disposal.
Soroush’s latest views
have not endeared him to the powerful
conservative wing of Iran’s
establishment. Some have accused him of
heresy, which is punishable by death.
There have been demonstrations by
clerics in Qom, the religious capital of
Iran, against his recent work. But
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, unexpectedly warned against
feeding the controversy. He said those
who are employing “philosophy or
pseudo-philosophy” to “pervert the
nation’s mind” should not be dealt with
“by declaring apostasy and anger” but
rather countered with the “religious
truths” that will falsify their
arguments.
In Iran today, many
opponents of the government advocate the
creation of a secular state. Soroush
himself supports the separation of
mosque and state, but for the sake of
religion. He seeks freedom of religion,
not freedom from religion. Thus he
speaks for a different — and potentially
more effective — agenda. The medieval
Islamic mystic Rumi once wrote that “an
old love may only be dissolved by a new
one.” In a deeply religious society,
whose leaders have justified their hold
on power as a divine duty, it may take a
religious counterargument to push the
society toward pluralism and democracy.
Soroush challenges those who claim to
speak for Islam, and does so on their
own terms.
Mohammad
Ayatollahi Tabaar is an adjunct lecturer
at the Elliott School of International
Affairs at George Washington University.
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