Iran's greatest political challenge: Abdol Karim Soroush

World Policy Journal

Volumn 14, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 67-74

  Wright, Robin ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0031494090     PISSN: 07402775     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (3)

1. Interview with John Voll of Georgetown University's Center of Christian-Muslim Understanding, as cited in Robin Wright, "Islamist's Theory of Relativity," Los Angeles Times, January 27, 1995. "Fundamentalism" is actually misused in describing the current Islamic activism. The term first emerged at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries in association with Protestant fundamentalists who advocated political and social passivity - to accept one's lot in life and not push for change in the temporal existence; improvement would come in the afterlife. Islamic activists are just the opposite. Similar to Liberation Theologists of the Catholic Church, they advocate using the tenets and values of the faith to better one's temporal condition, not to accept injustice - and not to wait. In recognition of the difference, foreign policy specialists both inside and outside government are increasingly dropping the term "fundamentalist" in favor of the term "Islamist."
2. All quotations of Soroush are from interviews conducted by the author between November 1994 and March 1997 in Iran and the United States.
3. Biography of Abdol Karim Soroush, July 1996, published on SERAJ, a London-based website run by Soroush disciples. See also Valla Vakili, "Debating Religion and Politics in Iran: The Political Thought of Abdolkarim Soroush," Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 1996.