AbdolKarim Soroush :: عبدالكريم سروش

By Laura Secor, IF IRAN’S DEMOCRATIC REFORM movement has a house intellectual, it’s Abdolkarim Soroush. A small, soft-spoken philosopher with fiercely expressive eyebrows, Soroush specializes in mysticism, Sufi poetry, Islamic theology, chemistry, pharmacology, and the philosophy of science. Although he once worked for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolutionary government, he now advances a powerful argument for […]

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: ANTI-THEOCRATIC SHIA IN IRAQ THREATEN MULLAHS IN TEHRAN; U.S. CAN’T AFFORD TO WAIT FOR IMMINENT DANGER TO PREEMPT; PUTIN’S KREMLIN HAS TOO MUCH POWER; TOUGH U.S. STANCE HAS GIVEN NEW LIFE TO NPT; UNRAVELING KHAN NETWORK PROVES NORTH KOREA SEEKS HEU BOMB Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor to U.S. President George Bush, sat […]

D+C Development and Coopeartaion 2/2004 By Katajun Amirpur Conservative mullahs continue to hold political sway in Iran but they are no longer in control of the interpretation of religious rules. Today, open-minded theologians are working on a liberal interpretation of Islam, which is attracting attention even beyond Iran’s borders. The most prominent of the new […]

By: Forough Jahanbakhsh  There has been no major revolution in modern history without intellectuals; conversely there has been no major counterrevolutionary movement without intellectuals. —Edward Said, Presentations of the Intellectual Intellectual history is an elusive subject. How does one define it? What issues exactly does it address? Who is an intellectual? When and where exactly […]

I debated whether this was indeed the right forum to place this post. Though not about architecture, the interview with Abdolkarim Soroush entitled “Responsibilities of the Muslim Intellectual in the 21st Century”, deals with Islam and Modernity. This is really the basis for many of the discussions taking place today in the ArchNet Discussion Forum, […]

Encounter (Radio National)  Sunday 28/09/2003 Summary: Next week, the new library of Alexandria in Egypt will host a meeting that could be critical to the future of Islam. Muslim religious authorities, government and community leaders from Islamic communities around the world and Muslim scholars of Islam will gather there to dialogue about social justice, democracy […]

National Catholic Reporter  The Independent Newsweekly September 12, 2003 Pluralism conference report; A conversation with Fr. Roger Haight; The Sant’Egidio conference; Slovakia preview By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.   At a four-day summit of religious pluralists, or theologians who believe that all the world’s great religions are valid paths of salvation, I was especially struck […]