The Emancipatory Promise of Religious Intellectualism

This article is the second part of a two-part series, the first part of which we previously republished on Sedanet under the title “The Ethics of Religious Intellectualism.” The research and writing of these two articles began approximately six years ago, and the electronic version of the second part was published online about five and a half years ago, on October 4, 2011 (one month after the publication of the first part), where it remains available under the same title.

The Emancipatory Promise of Religious Intellectualism [1]

Mohammad Mahdi Mojahedi [2]

Truth is silent and calm, error is grating and clamorous; truth is noble and forbearing, error is self-sufficient and conceited; truth is humble and unassuming, error is obstinate and quarrelsome; truth is modest and demure, error is reckless and boastful.

A. Woodward [3]

The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. It is denied again and again, but ultimately it will be heard. This is one of the few things that makes us optimistic about the future of humankind.

S. Freud [4]

Introduction:

The present writing is an article continuing “The Ethics of Religious Intellectualism.” In this article, by examining the difference between religious intellectualism and non-religious intellectualism, I will attempt to reformulate and examine the question I posed in “The Ethics of Religious Intellectualism” [5] anew and from a different angle. The central question of this article is: “How can the project of religious intellectualism sustain its emancipatory effect in Iranian society?” [6]

Emancipation is a two-level concept, meaning it refers both to emancipation in the sense of liberation from error and dogmatism at the epistemic level, and to the socio-political preconditions of emancipatory endeavors. Thus, at the epistemic level, an endeavor committed to the principles, methods, and ethics of critical dialogue in the public sphere for discovering and eliminating error is the most important emancipatory action. However, commitment to these principles and methods, and the formation of such dialogue on a broad scale across a society, requires the provision of certain conditions. Fraser’s theory of justice [7] can be seen as an articulation of these very conditions. According to its latest formulation, Fraser’s theory of justice comprises these three pillars: first, the transformation of relations that keep the economy in the grip of political power; second, the transformation of relations that contravene justice, social protection, and the equitable distribution of resources; and third, emancipation. [8]

Emancipation in this sense bears no relation to dogmatic thinking, but is rather the condition for liberation from it. Here, following Fraser, I take emancipation to refer to the endeavor to realize the conditions of autonomy and [9] independence [10] in the exercise of the right to self-determination. [11] Emancipation rests, among other things, on the right to recognition of identity-forming affiliations, such as belonging to a particular religious faith. [12] Emancipation itself, of course, goes far beyond the right to recognition [13], but it also encompasses it.

The question posed at the beginning of the article has gained importance today because it seems that the three commitments of religious intellectualism sometimes become entangled with one another in significant instances. These three commitments, which I described in “The Ethics of Religious Intellectualism” and another formulation of which will follow in the first section of this article, are, in brief: truth-seeking, political critique, and religious observance.

Examining the reasons why these conflicts have become more apparent today than ever before lies beyond the scope of this article. However, one of the most important causes that can be conjectured in this regard relates to the accelerating pace of political, social, and cultural developments in Iran in recent years. These accelerating developments have transformed certain questions, which were not yet pressing or urgent, into lively and challenging ones. These developments have also signified formidable crossings at the epistemological and cultural levels among the audience of religious intellectuals—crossings that have brought with them a set of new understandings, beliefs, and attachments, replacing some previous ones. Many of those prior understandings, beliefs, and attachments had prevented certain incompatibilities between the roles of religious intellectualism and many of its rival and alternative programs from becoming apparent. Now, however, the speed and general direction of these changes demand that all intellectual-political programs, including religious intellectualism, address the ever-renewing problems of their reference society with greater agility.

It is clear that for the program of religious intellectualism to maintain its emancipatory impact, it is compelled, especially given the changing contexts of its reference society, to continually bring its threefold roles into balance and equilibrium with one another. This article proposes that for religious intellectualism to bring these roles into balance and equilibrium, it must take at least two important steps more firmly than before: first, utilizing the achievements of the empirical humanities and social sciences regarding political and social transformation in societies similar to Iran; and second, based on the first step, reformulating its agenda to adjust the epistemological asymmetry[14] in its program, particularly in terms of prioritizing the issues and subjects it analyzes and critiques. I have explained the epistemological asymmetry present in the program of religious intellectualism in “The Ethics of Religious Intellectualism.” By this asymmetry, I mean, in brief, the program’s focus on the critique of religious tradition and, conversely, its failure to take seriously the critique of modernity, especially its political and ethical technologies. This asymmetry has caused the importance and priority of critiquing modern political technologies, such as democracy, to be overlooked, while in some instances, the critique of the content of religious beliefs has become inflated.

We will begin examining the main question of this article by posing another question in the first part: “What is the difference between religious intellectualism and non-religious intellectualism?” But to address this question, we must first ask: “What is intellectualism?”

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What is Intellectualism?

Intellectualism in a transitional society is the title of an emancipatory program: emancipation from the closures of an existing political and social life toward the expanses of a more prosperous and ethical political and social life, in which right and duty, as well as freedom and justice, have found a more balanced relationship with one another. Although this specification of meaning has a normative dimension, it is an abstraction from the dynamics of various intellectual programs in contemporary transitional societies.

Intellectualism in our time in Iran is an emancipatory endeavor within the scope of relations among the spheres of politics, economy, society, and culture, which has, in particular, the rectification of two principal relations at the core of its objectives: one, the relation between right and duty, and the other, the relation between freedom and justice. Other unbalanced and defective relations that have disfigured Iranian society and made the lives of Iranians difficult can almost all be referred back to these two relations. But rectifying these two principal relations is not, for intellectuals, merely an academic pursuit or necessarily a theological and/or disinterested philosophical speculation. Intellectuals may, in this context, also engage in philosophy or religious speculation, but it is the emancipatory aspect of their program that distinguishes them from an academic, a philosophy instructor, or a seminary new-thinker. This emancipation is a component that constitutes the ethical dimension of the intellectual program, a dimension that can be referred to as the intellectual mission, a mission that is as political as it is ethical: a more ethical life depends on liberation from the unjust closures that threaten and limit the scope of a person's moral agency in a given society and deprive them of the possibility of self-creation [15] or at least self-flourishing [16] and even self-realization, [17] and consequently, the possibility of self-governance. [18] Grappling with these unjust closures is directly interpreted as a challenge to the established political order that safeguards these closures and finds its survival indebted to their durability and continuity. Therefore, the political nature of the intellectual program is not one of the optional choices of this program, but rather a necessity that is both constitutive and definitive of all varieties of intellectual programs.

The difference between the future state toward which an intellectual summons their audience and the current transitional society is usually formulated in terms of the opposition between modernity and tradition, an opposition which, the more time passes in philosophical-political, sociological, ethical, and historical studies concerning the relation between tradition and modernity, increasingly speaks of the continuity of tradition and modernity rather than their rupture. [19] The shattering of the myth of a single, globalizing, universal modernity has become the prelude to an easier understanding and reception of this robust reality that instead of modernity, we have modernities, and each of these modernities is the direct offspring of a tradition, a tradition that embeds its characteristics, like genetic codes, deep within the being of the modernity it births and creates and adorns it in its own form and image, although there are always midwives involved who sometimes claim credit not only for the birth but also for the formation and development of modernities. It has now become evident that the relation between tradition and modernity is not that rupture-laden relation which the self-appointed midwives once arrogantly claimed. Modernities arise from within traditions, but they never sever ties with them. Semantic and historical bonds, just like genetic codes, distinguish modernities from one another by linking them to various traditions. Modernity, therefore, can always be read with an implied possessive, that is, the modernity of a specific tradition, for example, the modernity of the French tradition, the modernity of the Russian tradition, the modernity of the Japanese tradition, the modernity of the Indian tradition, and the like, although these genetic differences never reach a point where the fundamental and typifying commonalities of modernity are entirely absent from some of these experiences of modernity.

In our time, some analysts and observers sometimes formulate the ideals of intellectualism solely in terms of the pursuit of technologies such as democracy and the legal and juridical systems and institutions of human rights. But it must be noted that the current systems of human rights, as well as the various experienced forms of democracy, are merely technologies that possess instrumental, not intrinsic, value, and their desirability is mediated by the desirability of the values that, for now, seem, on balance, to be secured more easily, cheaply, and comprehensively through the application of these political and legal tools. Therefore, intellectualism should not be considered a program whose ultimate values are the establishment of democratic systems and human rights arrangements. Hence, intellectuals simultaneously place the critique of realized models of democracy and human rights on their agenda and strive to ensure that the struggle for liberation from the grip of the closures of the unjust systems of a given society does not result in falling into the snare of the closures of certain democratic models and human rights systems. It is this dual critical distancing (from the transitional state of a particular tradition and also from the realized models of modernity) that guarantees the emancipatory aspect of intellectual programs; otherwise, in the absence of this mutual critique of tradition and modernity, intellectuals are easily susceptible to metamorphosing into ideologues who feel no duty other than negating other ideologies and affirming a substitute ideology. Ideologues who go by any route to expose all the injustices of a particular transitional tradition, but do not cast even a half-glance at the injustices of the experiences of modernity; and, of course, vice versa.

The critique of religion and religiosity, a common aspect of religious and non-religious intellectualism:

Intellectualism is a macro-program under which various programs can be traced. In many transitional societies, the tree of the intellectual program has two main and fruitful branches: religious intellectualism and non-religious intellectualism. Each of these two branches can, in turn, have many branches and leaves of internal diversity. The business of intellectualism in transitional societies is intertwined with the problem of power and its critique. Part of the emancipatory critique that intellectuals undertake targets the political, cultural, and social closures of a society. But in a society with a religious government, the intellectual program inevitably becomes, for this very reason, a highly political program that, of course, also strives in the critique of religious knowledge and culture. In such a society, intellectuals, whether religious or non-religious, engage, among other things, in the critique of public and political culture (and one of its most important aspects, namely religious culture and thought). Therefore, non-religious intellectualism and religious intellectualism cannot be distinguished from one another based on the object of their critique (that is, what they critique). In other words, the ranges of topics discussed and critically examined by both, if not identical, at least overlap greatly in most cases. For example, in our country, the critique of religion and religiosity, as well as the clergy, both before and after the Islamic Revolution, has been a field of critique that has jointly attracted religious and non-religious intellectuals. For instance, after the revolution, religious intellectuals such as Mehdi Bazargan, Habibollah Peyman, Abdolkarim Soroush, Mohsen Kadivar, Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, and the early Mostafa Malekian have critiqued religion, religiosity, and/or the institution of the clergy, as have intellectuals who do not fall within the circle of religious intellectuals, such as Aramesh Doustdar, the later Mostafa Malekian, and Mohammad Reza Nikfar.[20]

Nor can the aspiration for truth-seeking be denied to one and attributed to another. Truth-seeking at the level of motive and intention is difficult to identify; at the level of behavior and action, it is also contingent upon a posteriori critique and examination of each individual’s commitment to a truth-seeking ethos and their observance of the methods of criticism and inquiry. Yet even with a focus on ethos and method, one cannot distinguish between religious and non-religious intellectuals. By commitment to a truth-seeking ethos, I mean traits such as openness to criticism, which is not limited merely to the capacity for being criticized, but also includes offering oneself up for criticism, readiness for humble, patient, and eager dialogue in order to discover and correct error, and the like. By observance of the methods of criticism and inquiry, I mean, in brief, adherence to the formal and substantive principles of methodology and to logical and epistemological rigor. Religious and non-religious intellectuals cannot be distinguished from one another based on the critical methods they employ. Each of these two groups of intellectuals utilizes a variety of methods that, in many instances, are identical or broadly overlapping with the methods used by the other group.

Religious and non-religious intellectuals are equally susceptible to abandoning or adopting the principles and standards of truth-seeking. One cannot accept, for instance, that religious intellectuals, by virtue of their religious attachments, are more prone to deviating from the standards of truth-seeking than non-religious intellectuals, for from the opposing side an equally potent claim can be advanced: that non-religious intellectuals, by virtue of their attachment to the negation of religion or their attachment to a non-religious ideology, are exposed to precisely the same degree of deviation from the standards of truth-seeking. In reality, what threatens truth-seeking is not attachment to this religion or that non-religious ideology. Who is entirely free from some kind and degree of such attachments? What threatens truth-seeking is a lack of commitment to the standards of criticizability and a sense of self-sufficiency from submitting one’s own views to criticism, as well as a failure to participate constructively in critical dialogue within the public sphere. In this regard, neither of these two groups of intellectuals can necessarily be deemed more truth-averse or more truth-receptive than the other.

An alternative definition for religious intellectuals is that they think about reconciling religion and modernity solely within the framework of social betterment, and that religiosity and/or the concern for its expansion and promotion does not necessarily hold a central and independent place in their program, whereas non-religious intellectuals fundamentally have no interest in forging such a reconciliation and are entirely preoccupied with modernity.[21] In the author’s view, this is not a suitable definition, and based on it one cannot distinguish between the program of religious intellectualism and its alternative and rival programs. This definition is open to criticism on at least three grounds.

First, it equates the part of the religious intellectualism program that concerns the reciprocal and balanced critique of tradition and modernity with the entire program of religious intellectualism, thereby committing the fallacy of confusing the essential with the accidental; second, this definition lacks the logical condition of any such definition, which is that it must exclude others. This definition does not exclude others because, for example, it even encompasses Seyyed Javad Tabatabai, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Morad Farhadpour, Babak Ahmadi, Dariush Ashouri, Dariush Shayegan, and Ehsan Naraghi, even though none of them has considered themselves a religious intellectual; some of them either do not grant any existence to religious intellectualism, or consider it conceptually and referentially impossible, or deem its era to be over, or explicitly demarcate themselves from it, or at the very least, none of them are counted among religious intellectuals (whether in the general perception and among their audiences, by other non-religious intellectuals, or by religious intellectuals). Third, this alternative definition of religious intellectualism offers an a priori definition and does not take into account the historical as well as the living and present representatives of religious intellectualism. The reality is that all prominent religious intellectuals, from pioneers such as Seyyed Jamal al-Din Asadabadi and Muhammad Iqbal Lahori to Yadollah Sahabi, Mehdi Bazargan, Ali Shariati, Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Abdolkarim Soroush, and Habibollah Peyman, have all clearly been devoted to religious piety or faith and did not approach it merely from the angle of reconciling it with modernity solely with regard to (and only within the limits of) social interests. They have kept the concern for salvation, felicity, the good, liberation, and truth through religious piety or faith, alongside the other two components of religious intellectualism (as will be explained), at the center of their program. Among the historical pioneers of this current, one can point, for example, to Muhammad Iqbal Lahori and Ali Shariati, who were not only deeply devoted to religion but also saw the reconstruction of Islamic culture in the face of modernity as a path to liberation. Iqbal Lahori's statements on this matter are very explicit in the vast majority of his poetic and prose works and are easily found, both in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam [22] and in his volumes of poetry, especially in “The Secrets of the Self,” “The Mysteries of Selflessness,” “Javid Nama,” “What Should Then Be Done O People of the East?,” and “The Gift of Hijaz.” [23]

As a more recent example of this kind, it is fitting to pay attention to the recent statements and writings of Abdolkarim Soroush, and particularly his important lecture on the identity-thinking of religious intellectualism. The importance of this lecture lies especially in the fact that, prior to it, he had rarely spoken with such explicitness about the commitment and obligation of religious intellectuals to preserving religious identity alongside religious truth. [24] In this important lecture, he explicitly considers the commitment of religious intellectuals to religious identity as parallel and equivalent to their commitment to religious beliefs and truth, and regards these two as defining and inseparable components of religious intellectualism.

“Religious intellectualism is attached to two things: one is religious identity and the other is religious truth. [...] What I mean is that religious intellectualism is, firstly, attached to that worldview which the Prophet of Islam introduced, that God and monotheism he taught, and that experience he bequeathed to us—an experience through which we can not only know but also see that this world is alive with divine life. Religious intellectualism is attached to this and loves to make everyone share in this experience, just as the Prophet was. [...] The Prophet said: see the world this way, understand it this way, know it this way. This language is a language that is the source of mutual understanding and empathy among them. We cannot easily set aside such a collection. Religious intellectualism is also attached to identity [...].” [25]

What distinguishes religious intellectualism from non-religious intellectualism?

But all this aside, what remains by reference to which we can formulate the distinction between religious and non-religious intellectuals? Preliminarily, to clarify the question, we must once again briefly return to defining what we mean by intellectualism: intellectualism is an emancipatory program. This emancipatory character both explains the political dimension of the intellectual program and reveals its truth-seeking dimension. Their critique of unjust power relations has a moral and truth-seeking foundation and is aimed at transforming unjust relations in a given society. Changing these relations is the primary goal of intellectuals. The emancipatory promise of intellectualism depends on changing these very relations. But in the course of changing these relations, the intellectual must remain committed to truth and the ethics of truth-seeking. That is, on the one hand, the emancipatory promise of the religious intellectual program arises from the fact that intellectuals continuously critique the unjust relations that support and arise from existing power relations, and they direct this critique simultaneously at tradition, modernity, and postmodernity. And on the other hand, the emancipatory promise of this program requires that intellectuals observe the ethics of truth-seeking. If these are the general descriptions of intellectualism, then what is the distinctive characteristic of religious intellectualism?

What distinguishes religious intellectuals from their non-religious counterparts more than any other factor is that religious intellectuals are not only not indifferent to the search for a religious-and-transcendental meaning for life, and the pursuit of the good, felicity, and salvation through religion or religious faith, but they consider it a part of their intellectual program or one of its main regulative principles. This religious sensibility entails, among other things, taking seriously the social dimension of the presence of historical religiosity and a critical commitment to its implications. When a society in transition, which is the audience of an intellectual program, is a society where religiosity is one of its most important identity-giving components and institutionalized historical religiosity is interwoven with the fabric of its social texture, it is clear that the concern for the search for meaning and the attainment of the good, felicity, and salvation through religion or religious faith cannot be ignored or treated with indifference in that society. This is a concern that, over the course of history, has shaped many collective memories, built institutions, and accumulated considerable social capital, so much so that any dialogue and mutual understanding without reference to its linguistic and conceptual components is almost entirely impossible in virtually any field. But the attachment of religious intellectuals to religion is not solely for this reason. They are in search of a truth that religious identity carries and with which one can become acquainted through the critical enhancement of religious identity. Therefore, religious intellectuals are sensitive to this religious identity and its preservation, expansion, and critical enhancement, and consider it an inseparable part of their emancipatory program.[26] It is the critical attention to religious tradition that prevents religious intellectualism from transforming into ideology or eulogy and imitation, and in this way, the critical ethics of religious intellectualism must cast its shadow over its various aspects and protect it from turning into a merely pragmatist program; otherwise, no meaningful difference remains between the business of religious intellectualism on the one hand, and the propagandistic and apologetic aspect of the clergy's business, as well as religious or non-religious political-ideological preoccupations, on the other.

In fact, if, in determining what is meant by religious intellectualism, one overlooks religious intellectuals’ affirmative emphasis on religious identity, their religious belonging, their search for a religious-transcendental meaning for life, and their aspiration for the good, felicity, and salvation through religion or religious faith, then at the conceptual level the descriptor “religious” in the compound “religious intellectualism” is practically nothing more than a pleonasm—and not a redundant pleonasm but a distorting and detrimental one. Moreover, if we also consider the historical and social presence of religious intellectuals, their personal conduct, and their intellectual and political programs, the search for meaning, salvation, felicity, and the good through religion or religious faith has always been present among them, both in their personal conduct and in their intellectual programs. If we remove this component, what remains of the determination of the meaning of religious intellectualism, as logicians say, may be inclusive of all instances but does not exclude others. If those two components, in logicians’ terms, express the genus of religious intellectualism, this one delimits its differentia. In other words, by removing this component from religious intellectualism and limiting ourselves to the other two—that is, truth-seeking through the mutual critique of tradition and modernity, and political transformation—intellectuals such as Dariush Ashouri, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Aramesh Dustdar, Morad Farhadpour, Seyyed Javad Tabatabai, the later Mostafa Malekian, Mohammad-Reza Nikfar, and many other intellectuals who do not consider themselves religious intellectuals (and some even deem religious intellectualism impossible) would also fall under the heading of religious intellectualism. As noted, adding the qualification that the subject and object of religious intellectuals’ critical and enlightening inquiry is religion and religiosity does not in the slightest help remedy this shortcoming, for the subject and object of non-religious intellectuals’ inquiries is also religion and religiosity.

At the same time, it must also be emphasized that intellectuals’ recourse to religion and their religious concerns are always accompanied by a critical approach. They must necessarily take seriously the social and psychological roles of religiosity and its identity dimension, and not lose sight of the ritual-ceremonial aspect of religiosity as a repository of technologies for spiritual flourishing and the alleviation of pains and sufferings; otherwise, their program will have no meaningful difference from that of non-religious intellectuals.

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The Difficulties of the Religious Intellectualism Program

It is clear that in any analysis of the religious intellectualism program, all three of its constitutive components must be considered together. The emancipatory promise of the religious intellectualism program requires bringing these three components into balance in the equation of religious intellectualism: political transformation, truth-seeking, and religious practice. Political transformation must not be reduced to its most superficial meanings, that is, for example, to the transformation of a political regime. Political transformation in its deeper layers, as many political philosophers, including Nancy Fraser, have argued, rests on at least two difficult, simultaneous, and coordinated transformations in power relations: one is the transformation of the relations that keep the economy in the grip of political power holders, and the other is the transformation of relations contrary to justice, social protection, and the equitable distribution of resources. The history of political philosophy and political transformations in the West shows how complex and difficult it has been to strike a balance between these two paths of transformation, and it remains an open road, an ununtied knot, and an unfinished path. These are the two processes that constitute political transformation, and political transformation is only one of the three components of the religious intellectualism program. These two processes can be considered, respectively, equivalent to two corresponding processes in intellectual programs in contemporary Muslim societies: one, balancing the relationship between freedom and justice, and the other, balancing the relationship between right and duty. Religious intellectualism must not only reflect upon these two processes and the balance between them as two constitutive components of political transformation, but must also harmonize them with the other two components of the religious intellectualism program, namely truth-seeking and religious practice.

As the history of religious intellectualism in the Islamic world attests, striking a balance among these three components has, of course, never been an easy task or a cheap ambition, but for various reasons, it has become more difficult by the day. One of the active fault lines in this context has always been the source of extensive tensions between the truth-seeking aspiration and the religious commitment of the religious intellectualism project. Another fault line can be identified through the numerous and persistent tensions between the truth-seeking aspiration and the demand for political transformation. The guiding question of the “Ethics of Religious Intellectualism” was: how can one strike a balance and equilibrium among the three components of the emancipatory role of religious intellectualism? The two proposals I put forward in “The Ethics of Religious Intellectualism,” and which I will introduce further here, address precisely these two fault lines and the tensions arising from them.

A. Truth-Seeking and the Critique of Religiosity

An example of the tensions arising from the first fault line can be found in critiques that, from the standpoint of religious intellectualism (and in order to purge religiosity of error, extravagance, and superstition), challenge the authenticity, reliability, authority, and soundness of certain religious knowledge, beliefs, and rites and rituals. These critiques can be considered radical critiques stemming from the truth-seeking aspiration. These critiques are sometimes advanced in a scholarly manner and sometimes in a popular one. Regardless of the strengths and weaknesses of the critiques published in this field so far, let us temporarily assume that one can put forward strong critiques and thereby demonstrate that a portion of the religious knowledge and beliefs of the general Shia populace are baseless knowledge and beliefs that are entirely erroneous, extravagant, and superstitious. Furthermore, let us assume that one can simultaneously put forward strong critiques and demonstrate that the widely established beliefs about the role of religiosity in the prevalence, containment, and justification of political and social violence, accepted among many of our people and a group of our elites, are entirely incorrect. Now, let us imagine a religious intellectual who finds himself in a specific situation, a situation that requires him to speak and write to his audience about only one of these two truths. The question is whether one can find criteria by which a religious intellectual can prioritize the presentation of certain truths over others and, for instance, determine which truth’s presentation would further his emancipatory project more in that specific situation, and which other truth’s presentation has, at the very least, only slight relevance to his emancipatory project and does little to advance it. In the absence of such a criterion, the religious intellectual in question, in the hypothetical situation above, can only present one of the two truths by drawing lots, or arbitrarily prefer one over the other.

But if there are arguments that, in the hypothetical situation above, could help a religious intellectual prioritize among the truths they wish to share with their audience, then the same criteria could also be useful in any other situation for prioritizing the truths they want to put forward. The author does not believe that these criteria are pre-fabricated and ready-made. However, the proposal of this article is that a more serious and greater attention to theories of political and social change regarding the mechanisms of transformation in transitional societies similar to our own (such as Turkey) could be very effective here. For instance, one of the achievements of a number of later generations of theories of political and social change has been that an accepted hypothesis concerning the primacy of cultural changes (including demystification) over political changes has been refuted, and another hypothesis has replaced it, according to which the degree of democratization and the opening up of the capacity to accept human rights in recent decades shows no significant dependence on the degree of religiosity or the superstitious nature of religiosity in a given society.[27] In light of such an achievement, no priority remains for the critique of many religious superstitions for religious intellectuals, or even non-religious ones. This judgment, of course, does not mean prescribing adherence to superstitions of any kind, whether religious or non-religious. Superstition is a branch of ignorance. The point is not at all that superstitions should be endorsed or treated in the same way as non-superstitious knowledge. The point here is that in the program of religious intellectualism, when all three of its pillars are attended to simultaneously, criteria must be introduced by which the subjects of the critical program of religious intellectualism can be prioritized. This prioritization is one of the strategies for resolving the conflict among the requirements of the three pillars of this program. The point is that if some critiques have greater emancipatory value according to these criteria, and some have less, the first category can/should be prioritized over the second.

As is clear, this proposal in this context is, firstly, regulatory and not content-based, and secondly, conditional. This proposal is regulatory, meaning it does not imply that because this or that statement is incorrect, or weak, or jeopardizes the faith and security of believers, or because it is a radical critique, it should therefore not be put forward. Rather, the claim is that such critiques, in comparison with other critiques that could be advanced, even in their strongest form, do not contribute much to the program of religious intellectualism in its entirety (which consists of three components). Moreover, this proposal is conditional, meaning it is put forward assuming the condition that such critiques, firstly, necessitate an elitist religiosity that is of no use for intellectual work in the public sphere, and secondly, many empirical and comparative studies have refuted the claim that such critiques can make a significant contribution to political and social change in late transitional societies, although many other benefits may lie within them. Now, if the results of these refuting studies are themselves refuted by further studies, and the same hypothesis can be reasonably revived—that, as it happens, the emancipatory potential of religious intellectualism, more than and prior to advancing any other critique, depends on prioritizing the critique of religious superstitions—then, of course, this path must undoubtedly be pursued even more vigorously than before.

On the other hand, the truth-seeking passion might be considered the explanation for prioritizing these critiques. But it should be noted that the truth-seeking passion in itself says nothing about prioritizing and ordering the importance of the subjects under criticism. On the other hand, a measured, demystified religiosity, and a religiosity that leads to spiritual experiences of union (epistemic religiosity and experiential religiosity, in Abdolkarim Soroush’s terms), has always been an elitist religiosity, belonging to the elite or the elite of the elite. That is to say, for the project of religious intellectualism, which is a project in the public sphere and not an elitist project, it also holds no priority to aim toward a highly elitist religiosity and to ignore the public functions of religiosity as part of culture and identity, and from that same elitist position to critique the cultural and identity-based religiosity of the mass of believers. This statement does not contradict the pursuit of a critical study of religion whose audience is a very small percentage of the intellectual elite of society. Such a critical study of religion is, of course, always very blessed for a very small group of the elite and can provide them with both scholarly enjoyment and spiritual benefit. The point is that such a critical study of religion can hardly be considered a meaningfully prioritized part of the program of religious intellectualism in Iranian society, because while it is a difficult and painstaking critique, its results are less useful for the goals of religious intellectualism in the public sphere.

An important point that must be considered here is that the beliefs of the common people stem, among other things, from official and unofficial propaganda and educational systems that usually, through uncritical methods and by targeting the psyche of their audience, drive them toward adopting certain beliefs. Regardless of this, the majority of the common people’s beliefs are subject to non-epistemic causes and did not come through reasoning that they might be dispelled by reasoning. As Romain Rolland said,

“The loss of faith, just like faith itself, often resembles the welling up of a kind spring or a sudden flash. Reason has no part in it: the slightest occasion is enough—a word, a silence, or the toll of a bell. One is walking along, immersed in one’s dreams, expecting nothing at all. Suddenly, one’s world is turned upside down. All around is ruin. One is alone. One no longer believes in anything.”[28]

This is more or less a description of the state of faith and faithlessness for many people, at least when they have not left everything to custom, habit, and imitation. In this way, the most important target group for the critical discussions of religious intellectuals about religiosity is the elite, a part of whom, in a society with a religious government, are of course the religious elite in power. The common people lack the stamina, desire, opportunity, and capacity for critical discussions. The elite in power, too, usually no longer have an ear for such critiques. Religious intellectuals must, with clarity and utmost seriousness, address their critiques of religion and religiosity to that group of seminary and university elites who have still maintained their readiness for critical discussion about religion and its affairs. Addressing these elites also requires presenting these discussions at a scholarly-research level. At the same time, the question of how to prioritize among the subjects that should be critically explored within the framework of the religious intellectualism program still remains.

It might also be argued: is it not the case that the distinctive characteristic of religious intellectuals is precisely their sensitivity to the search for meaning, goodness, happiness, and salvation through religion or religious faith, in such a way that they are not only not indifferent to this search, but consider it part of their intellectual program or its regulative principle? If so, then they must devote themselves to purifying religion of superstitions and eliminating erroneous, extravagant, baseless, and unfounded ideas and beliefs, in order to elevate the religiosity of believers, in Abdolkarim Soroush's words, from the level of a common, livelihood-oriented, and even scholarly religiosity to the level of a knowledge-oriented and experience-oriented religiosity. In response, one can say it is clear that the sensitivity of religious intellectualism to the search for meaning, goodness, happiness, and salvation through religion or religious faith is not simply reducible to an elitist critique of the content of the religious beliefs of the general faithful. Moreover, typically none of these three levels of religiosity, as ideal types, are practiced in their pure form in the world of religiosity, and the faithful typically practice a combination of greater or lesser degrees of each of these three types of religiosity. Thus, one can only speak of raising or lowering the concentration of this or that level of religiosity in the lives of the faithful. Furthermore, none of the four virtues of the search for meaning, goodness, happiness, and salvation are the monopoly of experience-oriented or knowledge-oriented believers. Neither the early founders of Islamic religiosity, nor even the mystics themselves and many Muslim philosophers, held such an approach and attitude toward the common religiosity of the masses, and they did not necessarily see their lives as alien to salvation, happiness, goodness, and meaning.

Each of us probably knows examples of believers who show not the slightest trace of mystical experiences or philosophical profundities in the domain of religiosity, yet have cleansed their souls of impurities, are chaste, of pure character, and liberated, possessing a heart as mirror-like and pure as described in these verses by Khaqani Shirvani:

If you wish your heart to become like a mirror,

Remove ten things from within your breast:

Greed, deceit, avarice, forbidden things, and backbiting,

Malice, envy, pride, hypocrisy, and rancor.

Conversely, each of us perhaps knows people about whom others, and/or they themselves, harbor a suspicion of inner illuminations and/or a rational, critical, truth-seeking conduct, yet the flames of all or some of these afflictions and vices blaze forth from certain of their behaviors, speech, and deeds. As Abdolkarim Soroush says,

"We must think of the product and fruit of religiosity, which is living morally, behaving morally. What use is it if a person's mind is full of polemical and theological points, but in practice they cannot reap their fruits and become a human being possessed of human perfections? This is a point which, if one forgets, one has lost and forfeited the essence of religiosity."[29]

The matter of the search for meaning, goodness, happiness, and salvation through religion or religious faith can hardly be reduced to the application of the methods or theories of theoretical or philosophical mysticism in understanding and critiquing customary, cultural, and/or historical religiosity. As Mawlana Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi (Rumi) says,

In untying knots, you have become a master;

Consider a few more knots untied.

Consider the knot untied, O you who have reached the end,

It is a hard knot on an empty purse.

×××

The knot that is tight upon our throats,

So that you may know whether you are base or fortunate,

Solve this problem, if you are human;

Spend your breath on this, if you are a true human.

Moreover, if the program of religious intellectualism had only this single aspect, the problem of conflict among its roles would not fundamentally arise. The problem, as mentioned, is how to reconcile this role with other roles in advancing an emancipatory program.

B. Political Transformation and Truth-Seeking

The very point we made in paragraph (a) regarding the possibility and necessity of prioritizing the agenda of religious intellectualism can be raised here, verbatim, concerning the relationship between truth-seeking and political transformation. But here, in addition to the need for due attention to the achievements of the empirical humanities and social sciences, the current epistemological asymmetry of this program must also be addressed. [30]  The program of religious intellectualism is one that, if stripped of its balanced and reciprocal critique of tradition and modernity, can easily become susceptible to self-destruction, for in that case it mutates into a kind of ideology and dogmatism whose task is either the negation of modernity and turning a blind eye to the closures of tradition, or the reverse; in either case, no trace of emancipation remains in it.

The mainstream of intellectuals' criticisms is directed entirely at the past and present of religiosity and religious government. At least when we compare such critiques with the critiques that religious intellectuals make of modern political and social technologies and of secularism, a kind of epistemological asymmetry clearly comes into view. For instance, the emphasis on the historicity of human rights and democracy, and demonstrating the implications of their historicity, should receive as much attention in the program of religious intellectualism as religious intellectuals have devoted to the historicity of the formation of religious beliefs. In this regard, a severe asymmetry is evident. It is as if democracy, human rights, and secularism are devoid of history, and only religiosity is woven from the fabric of history and geography. It is clear that this is a shortcoming imposed upon religious intellectuals by the asymmetrical field of action in the country. In post-revolutionary Iran, modernity and its technologies have been reviled from dawn to dusk, but there has been no one to reveal the closures of tradition. Addressing this shortcoming has been a task that both religious and non-religious intellectuals have undertaken with clarity and courage, especially after the revolution, and of course, they pay a heavy price for it. But now that neither the sphere of action nor the scope of the audience is any longer confined to the borders of Iran, now that the questions of the transitional period have intensified and gazes are turned toward the future, now that religious intellectuals have generally, whether reluctantly or willingly, gone into exile, and now that the conventional borders of the nation-state cannot block the penetration of the global waves of modernity—waves that, in Hafez's words, are carefree and "nocturnal," such that if you block every path, they "come by another way"—now the time has come for the critical horizon of religious intellectualism to transcend the boundaries of local and national exigencies and to participate in the global discourses of the critique of modernity, the critique of democracy, human rights, and secularism. For example, the critique of power relations and society from a post-secular perspective has today gained much currency and flourishing in universities and among public intellectuals in the West, yet it is utterly absent among our religious and non-religious intellectuals. I leave a fuller exposition of this point to a separate article.

The program of religious intellectualism in Iran can learn a great deal in this respect from some of its counterparts in the region, particularly in Turkey. It seems that religious intellectualism in Iran, in order to pursue its emancipatory program, must inevitably step onto new terrains, terrains it has hitherto trodden less.

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[1] I wish to thank the friends and colleagues who shared their views with me on the early drafts of this article and assisted me in developing its current form with their critiques and suggestions. Ali Paya and Ali Fanaei provided very valuable and detailed critiques and suggestions in the margins of the initial drafts of this article, from which I greatly benefited in improving the text. Mohsen Kadivar and Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari shared their important views on the subject and content of this text with me in written form, which I utilized. I benefited from the valuable marginal notes of Dariush Mohammadpour and Yaser Mirdamadi to express my intent more clearly in certain important instances. Seyyed Sadegh Haghighat, Seyyed Ali Mirmousavi, and Soroush Dabbagh also read the early drafts of the article and discussed it with me. These fruitful conversations were also effective in developing this article into its current form. I am deeply grateful to all of them. Nevertheless, the responsibility for the current form and content of this text rests entirely with the author.

[2] Researcher at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge.

[3] I have taken inspiration for this interpretation from a sentence in the following source:

205. Woodward, A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, An Essay on Slavery, Cincinnati, Applegate & Co., 1853, p. 205.

The translation of the original sentence is: "Truth is silent and still, error is clamorous and noisy; truth is noble and forbearing, error is self-sufficient and conceited; truth is humble and unpretentious, error is obstinate and quarrelsome; truth is modest and bashful, error is brazen and boastful."

This book is available in full-text and online through numerous internet databases.

[4] S. Freud, “The Future of an Illusion,” (Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1927), Complete Psychological Works of S. Freud, James Strachey (ed. and trans.), London, Hogarth Press, 1961, Vol. XXI pp. 53.

[5] Mohammad Mehdi Mojahedi, “The Ethics of Religious Intellectualism,” 3 September 2011

[6] In this article, as in “The Ethics of Religious Intellectualism,” we consider the intellectual history of religious intellectualism as a grand intellectual-political program as it has historically and socially materialized, and we take the term religious intellectualism as a designative title to refer to this intellectual-political program, which first emerged and took shape and identity not by its name but by its problems, its functional characteristics, its methods, its difficulties and complexities, and the like—that is, by its epistemological, political, sociological, and historical specificities—and then the dispute over its naming ensued. Thus, we do not approach the study of this intellectual-political phenomenon through methods of linguistic analysis here. These linguistic methods have no access to political and social reality and can perpetually spin a self-sufficient, closed cycle of concepts without ever colliding with any external reality.

Hence, this article, like “The Ethics of Religious Intellectualism,” is free from and independent of the nomenclatural disputes over what to call this intellectual-political program. Whether attributing religiosity to intellectualism creates a combination of mutually exclusive parts is not a discussion that can be settled at the level of analyzing words and terms. Of course, contradictions can be found in almost all minor or grand intellectual-political programs, whether internal contradictions—for instance, within and/or among their values and goals—or external contradictions—for example, between their values and goals on the one hand and their consequences on the other. But examining these contradictions requires looking at the programs themselves as they have been externally realized, that is, the critique and analysis of their intellectual and cultural products, a task that these two articles have attempted to carry out regarding the religious intellectualism program. This is not something that can be achieved through linguistic analyses and the addition and subtraction of terms and titles. Therefore, if some esteemed readers prefer alternative expressions such as religious enlightenment or religious new-thinking and the like over the expression religious intellectualism, they may substitute their preferred expression for religious intellectualism throughout these two articles and rest assured that they will still find the discussions of these two articles independent of the change and substitution of these expressions.

[7] Nancy Fraser

[8] Emancipation

[9] Self-determination

[10] Independence

[11] It should be noted that the early Nancy Fraser, roughly until 2010, did not admit emancipation into the core of her political philosophy, nor did she place it on a par with the other two components of her theory of justice—namely, liberation from the domination of political power over the economy, and the protection and provision of social justice. It was thereafter that, noting the inadequacy of these two axes, she gradually added this third axis, emancipation, to her intellectual program concerning justice and ethics in the realm of politics and society. In one of her latest works, the product of an intellectual interview with Amrita Chhachhi, she provides a clear and comprehensive account of the evolution of her theory of justice centered on her recent attention to emancipation:

Amrita Chhachhi, “Nancy Fraser,” Development and Change, January 2011, 42(1): 297–314.

[12] Unfortunately, in Persian translations, “emancipation” has been rendered as equivalent to both liberation and emancipation. For example, “liberation theology” has been translated as “emancipatory theology.” The astute reader is certainly aware that these two “emancipations” share only a verbal similarity. On the other hand, the early Habermas also spoke of emancipatory knowledge. The emancipation in this article is unrelated to what is known as emancipation in the Habermasian literature.

[13] Recognition

[14] Epistemological asymmetry

[15] Self-creation

[16] Self-fulfilment

[17] Self-realisation

[18] Autonomy

[19] One of the most central questions addressed by theories of rupture and continuity between tradition(s) and modernity/ies is the relationship between traditional rationality/ies and modern rationality/ies. In one of his most recent lectures, Abdolkarim Soroush, invoking a postmodern stance, speaks of different and diverse rationalities that are not necessarily compatible with one another. In his view, for instance, a certain form of religiosity may not be rational within one of these frameworks, yet be entirely rational within another. With significant differences in epistemological foundations, arguments with similar consequences can also be found in the views of philosophers of religion within Reformed Epistemology, such as Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga. You can find this statement by Abdolkarim Soroush, particularly in the final minutes of his lecture, here:

Abdolkarim Soroush, “Muslims and Secular Liberal Democracy,” Conference: Islamic Newthinking - In Honor of Nasr Abu Zayd, Essen, Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, 28th June, 2011, http://www.kulturwissenschaften.de/home/islamicnewthinking.html.

[20] To consider some other viewpoints on this subject, you may refer to the following sources, among others:

-Roundtable on Religious New-Thinking with Soroush Dabbagh and Ata Hoodashtian, Pargar, BBC Persian Television,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/world/2011/09/110901_ptv_pargar_68.shtml

-Soroush Dabbagh, Religious Intellectualism and Metallic Verjuice?!

http://soroushdabagh.com/pdf/163.pdf

-Ata Hoodashtian, Religious Intellectualism, Continuation of the Discussion on BBC’s Pargar Program, Gooya News,

http://news.gooya.com/politics/archives/2011/09/127926.php

[21] This is my account of an alternative position in defining religious intellectualism, which Yaser Mirdamadi shared with me after reading the first draft of this article.

[22] Mohammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Kazi Publications, 1999.

This book contains the edited text of seven lectures delivered by Muhammad Iqbal Lahori in 1928. To read the book, you may refer to this address, among others:

http://www.allamaiqbal.com/works/prose/english/reconstruction/

[23] To find the complete and searchable text of his poetry collections, you can, among other sources, refer to this address:

http://ganjoor.net/iqbal/

[24] As I demonstrated in the article on the ethics of religious intellectualism, Abdolkarim Soroush's views in this area have undergone considerable contraction and expansion. I had shown these changes in one of the footnotes of that article, and because of its complete relevance to this article, I am republishing that note here:

The distinction between Islam-as-truth and Islam-as-identity is a distinction proposed by Abdolkarim Soroush in his works (for example, see his first formulation of this distinction in his lecture entitled "Islam-as-Truth, Islam-as-Identity" dated October 23, 1997). Until recently, this distinction for him clearly implied the superiority of religious truth over religious identity and placed religious intellectualism in the ranks of those concerned with religious truth, considering this to be constitutive of intellectualism. Approximately nine years after that lecture, in an interview dated August 16, 2006, he emphasizes: "The religious intellectual is concerned with religious truth more than with religious identity. Identity is for the clergy. The Islam of religious intellectuals is the Islam of truth. And identity is secondary to it. The religious intellectual must, above all, attend to faith, religious experience, various religious interpretations, and providing the practical possibility for these." However, in the same interview, traces of doubt about this distinction and judgment become apparent: "In my opinion, a third way can be imagined and realized in practice, and that is a balance between the truth-oriented and identity-oriented aspects of religion. If this balance is lost, we end up either with fundamentalism or with Sufism, which is a kind of dominance of truth over identity." (Emphasis not in the original text)

(http://www.drsoroush.com/Persian/Interviews/P-INT-13850525-Mosahebeh.html)

These traces of doubt have become more pronounced and prominent from that date until now, to the extent that in one of his most recent lectures, dated June 29, 2011, while placing a strong emphasis on the importance of religious identity and the identity-related aspects of religiosity, he has even considered the concern for religious identity as one of the defining components of religious intellectualism and has described "religious intellectuals as thinkers who have a religious affiliation, meaning their hearts are devoted to the truth and identity of religion, yet at the same time they are not clerics."

(http://www.drsoroush.com/Persian/By_DrSoroush/P-NWS-13900418-

GoftemaneHoghoogheBasharDarAndisheDini.html).

This trajectory of evolution in his views could be a sign that even for him, that distinction and its normative implication have gradually faded over time.

[25] To see the source of this quotation and a more detailed quote from him in this regard, refer to note number 26 of this same article.

[26] Abdolkarim Soroush's recent views in this area are very explicit, clear, and illuminating. See: Abdolkarim Soroush, The Religious Intellectual; An Unfinished Project, Nedaye Azadi, Thursday, August 31, 2011, http://nedayeazadi.org/reports_cur.php?id=510. He states clearly in this regard:

"Religious intellectuals are those who have a religious interest, meaning their hearts are devoted both to religious identity and to religious truth. [...] The late Mr. Shariati, the late Mr. Bazargan, the late Iqbal Lahori, Seyyed Jamal, and many figures great and small that we have had in our own history in Iran or in the Islamic world and the Arab world. These were people whose attachment to religion, their purity, their piety, their knowledge, and their role-playing were in no way less than that of the clerics. [...] There exists a group [i.e., religious intellectuals] who do not earn their livelihood from religion but have a strong religious attachment [...] Religious intellectualism is attached to two things: one is religious identity and the other is religious truth [...].

The Prophet of Islam did not merely devote himself to teaching a set of truths; he also wanted to bring a new identity into the world. He wanted to establish a new entity, a party, a new community that would be distinct from others. This matter was also among his goals. That is, he endeavored to lay the foundations of a culture and civilization, to nurture those who would be the servants of this culture, and to distinguish his own account from other cultures. Not necessarily to be hostile toward them, of course, but to be distinct from others [...]. In religious precepts, the story is not only that we are pursuing a truth, but also that we have devoted ourselves to creating an identity, and we respect and are committed to preserving and perpetuating that identity. This was something the Prophet himself did, and he asked his followers to continue this work [...].

This identity has ridden upon this truth; that is, from the heart of that truth, this identity has welled up and become a historical truth, such that it is in no way deniable. ... We are attached to our own language because, firstly, we were born into this language. All our pleasures are with this language; for instance, the poem we read and enjoy, the joke we tell each other and enjoy, the lectures and words we hear from one another, the books we read, the Hafez, Saadi, and Nizami we read. Can we even imagine for a moment that we could think or live individual or social lives without this language? This language has so penetrated the warp and woof of our being that it is inseparable. After a time, religion becomes a language and culture for a people, without which they simply cannot understand the world. This matter is very important. Our communists also called their fallen ones 'martyrs.' Perhaps they were not at all willing to use this word, but ultimately this word has acquired such a meaning that we are compelled, even reluctantly, to use it in order to show the sanctity of a death [...].

Understand my words correctly when I say that religious intellectualism has an attachment both to religious identity and to religious truth. What I mean is that religious intellectualism is, firstly, attached to that worldview which the Prophet of Islam introduced, that God and monotheism he taught, and that experience he bequeathed to us—an experience through which, by way of him, we can not only know but also see that this world is alive with the divine life. Religious intellectualism is attached to this and loves to share this experience with everyone, just as the Prophet was [...].

The Prophet said: see the world this way, understand it this way, know it this way. This language is a language that is the source of their mutual recognition and empathy. We cannot easily set aside such a collection. Religious intellectualism is also attached to identity [...].

A religion is like a language. You cannot say that because there are some bad words in a language, we will eliminate that language and be hostile toward it. Is it even possible to build any language anew? It simply is not. You must use this very language and, within the heart of this very language, fulfill your own intentions, and if there is a deficiency or narrowness somewhere, rise to remedy them. Now I see that in our society, because an Islamic government—or one so-called—has emerged and created so many catastrophes and made the likes of Hajjaj and Saddam look good, some people have seen the solution in turning their backs on this truth and this identity. Both of these matters are problematic [...].

This religious culture that has given identity to us and our forebears cannot be erased by any contrivance, nor is this necessary. [...] Hostility, strife, inciting hatred, and humiliation are absolutely not righteous deeds. Now, outside the country, many websites do not engage in religious critique but rather stir up anti-religious hatred, humiliate the faithful, and regard them as intellectually inferior. They sting Muslims and inflict psychological and emotional harm upon them. These actions are not at all responsible. Not now, when we are confronting a despotic regime, but it is never right. If we abuse the free environment we enjoy here in this way, it is unclear what we will do tomorrow when, God willing, this freedom is established in our own country. We must show that we can make good use of freedom. That we can inspire love. That we can establish dialogue. Not that we should sow hatred, humiliation, and incitement. This, unfortunately, is a pain that exists and must certainly be spoken of.

[...] The difference between a religious intellectual and a non-religious intellectual is that the religious intellectual accepts the essence of religion, the essence of the vision taught by the Prophet, but does not approve of or tolerate its contamination with superstitions. Therefore, he refines and purifies them. Anti-religious intellectuals consider the very essence of religion to be superstition, not that it has a pure core that has been contaminated. They say religion is fundamentally, root and branch, superstition, contaminated, and impure. I and those who share my thinking do not hold this belief.

[27] For example, consider these two books:

Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, Modernization, cultural change, and democracy: The Human Development Sequence, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

[28] Romain Rolland, Jeane Christophe, Kessinger Publishing, (1912) 2004, Vol. 1, p. 213.

[29] Abdolkarim Soroush, lecture titled Love as God, London, 17 Esfand 1385

[30] An example of these rare critiques is the emphasis found in some of Abdolkarim Soroush's later works on the necessity of striking a balance between right and duty, rather than emphasizing the primacy of one over the other.

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PDF file of the article The Emancipatory Promise of Religious Intellectualism

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The Emancipatory Promise of Religious Intellectualism

Author: Mohammad Mehdi Mojahedi

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