Qantara.de – Debates on Religion and Democracy in Iran: Abdolkarim Soroush vs. Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Qantara.de – Debates on Religion and Democracy in Iran – Islamic Reformers Are Meeting Opposition
Islamic Reformers Are Meeting Opposition

A controversy in religious theory between two Muslim scholars, Abdolkarim Sorush and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, throws an interesting light on the divisions between conservative and reformist forces in Islam. Faraj Sarkohi says the two sides are taking increasingly irreconcilable positions

Abdolkarim Soroush has been supporting the idea of Islamic democracy. Nasr, his intellectual opponent, compared him to second-rate Western intellectuals who know neither Islam or the West.
It wasn’t a new topic. The debate has been going on for about a hundred years. The guests were well-known only in intellectual and academic circles, and it was assumed that the seminar would take place without much interest being shown by the public and with little media coverage.

But a fierce dispute between two scholars over a purely theoretical issue on the fringes of the seminar was quickly taken up by the parliament, the mosques, the religious colleges, the media, the universities and those in power in the country.