Abdolkarim Soroush

Abdolkarim Soroush, born Hossein Haj Faraj Dabbagh in Tehran on 16 December 1945, is an Iranian — not Arab — philosopher who writes mainly in Persian. After studying pharmacy in Iran, he studied analytical chemistry in London and then the history and philosophy of science at Chelsea College. He later taught philosophy at the University of Tehran and has held visiting positions at universities including Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia.

In The Theoretical Contraction and Expansion of Religion he distinguishes religion as revealed from religious knowledge, which is human, historically conditioned, fallible and open to change. He has developed arguments for religious pluralism (Straight Paths, 1998), for the compatibility of religion and democracy, and, in The Expansion of Prophetic Experience (1999), for understanding revelation in relation to the Prophet’s human experience. His ideas have been widely debated and have made him a controversial figure in Iran.