Mohsen Kadivar

Mohsen Kadivar, born June 1959 in Fasa, is an Iranian jurist, theologian, religious intellectual, and researcher in Islamic studies. He is a full research professor of Islamic studies in the Department of Religious Studies at Duke University in the United States. Kadivar is considered one of the important figures of contemporary religious intellectualism in Iran, and his main areas of work are Shiite political jurisprudence, Islamic theology, Islamic philosophy, human rights, freedom of religion, and the critique of the theory of the Guardianship of the Jurist.

He began his Islamic studies in 1980 and then continued at the Qom Seminary. His most important teachers were Hossein-Ali Montazeri and Abdollah Javadi-Amoli. In 1997, Kadivar received a certificate of ijtihad from Hossein-Ali Montazeri. He also earned a master's degree in theology and a doctorate in Islamic philosophy and wisdom from Tarbiat Modares University. His doctoral dissertation was on the views of Aqa Ali Modarres Tehrani in Transcendent Theosophy.

From the beginning, Kadivar has been engaged with the issue of the relationship between jurisprudence, governance, freedom, and human rights. His intellectual project can be summarized in three axes: the structural reform of the Islamic heritage, the critical refinement of Shiite thought, and rethinking the relationship between tradition and modernity.

In political jurisprudence, he is a serious critic of the theory of the Guardianship of the Jurist and appointed religious government. In the field of human rights, he has endeavored to show that a reading of Islam can be presented that is compatible with freedom of religion, human dignity, and civil rights. In philosophy and theology, he has also focused on Transcendent Theosophy, the rational tradition of Shiism, and the critical editing of philosophical texts.