In their times
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Life and Thought
Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari is an Iranian scholar of religion, writer, and journalist associated with religious reformism and the nationalist-religious current. His writings and interviews focus chiefly on religion and democracy, civil rights, religious reform, and historical reinterpretations of Islam.
Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari was born on 20 Mordad 1328 in Eshkevar, in the Rudsar region of Iran. From his youth, he studied Islamic disciplines in the seminaries of Rudsar and Qom, including jurisprudence, legal theory, theology, philosophy, and Qur’anic exegesis. After the 1979 Revolution, he served as the first-term member of parliament for Tonekabon and subsequently focused more extensively on research, journalism, and religious and social debates.
Eshkevari was among the founders of the Ali Shariati Research Centre and a contributor to the journal Iran-e Farda. In his writings and public interventions, he has defended reform in religious understanding, democracy, freedom of thought, women’s rights, and criticism of authoritarian readings of religion. His books include Justice in the Monotheistic Worldview, Broken Idols, Reason at the Feast of Religion, In Pursuit of Freedom, and Religious Belief and Religious Judgment in Understanding Revelation and Prophethood.
After participating in the Berlin Conference in 2000, he was arrested and tried by the Special Court for the Clergy. His initial verdict was overturned, but he was sentenced to imprisonment and permanently defrocked. This experience has also been reflected in his writings and memoirs. Eshkevari’s intellectual position is particularly associated with efforts to relate religious faith to critical reason, freedom, and democracy.
