Review: [untitled] Author(s): Mehrzad Boroujerdi Source: Middle East Journal, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Summer, 2001), pp.

519-520 Published by: Middle East Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4329675 . Accessed: 09/09/2011 11:24
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BOOK REVIEWS* 519

have takenplace over the centurieson an individual and collective basis, the latter frequently propagatedthroughthe printedpage and characterized by prejudicesand myths. The evolution of these attitudes, and their use as justification for dominance,imperialism,and escapism, is vividly enumeratedwith interesting historical examples. Hopwood's Sexual Encounters in the Middle East, with its fast-paced narrative, descriptive chapter notes, and worthwhile bibliography, is recommendedto all readerswho are interestedin the genesis andevolution of philosophicalperceptions and culturalreciprocitybetween Europeand the Arab world. Dr. Harold E. Raugh,Jr. (LieutenantColonel, US Army [Ret.]), AdjunctProfessor, American Military University.

PHILOSOPHY,RELIGION, AND SCIENCE

Reason, Freedom,and Democracyin Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush, by Abdolkarim Soroush. Translated,
edited, and with a critical introductionby Mahmoud Sadriand Ahmad Sadri.New York:Oxford University Press, 2000. 225 pages. Bibl. to 229. Index to 236. $29.95.

Boroujerdi Reviewed Mehrzad by

Over the last two decades, AbdolkarimSoroush has emerged as Iran's most creative and controversial Islamic thinker. Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam presents to the Englishspeakingworld 11 of his seminalessays originally published in Persian between 1985 and 1994. In additionto theircompetenttranslationand editing of these essays, Mahmoudand Ahmad Sadrihave enhancedthe overall importanceof this book with an introductoryessay informed by the sociology of religion,and a revealinginterviewwith Soroush unknownintellecthatdivulgespartsof his hitherto tual biography.In this interview,Soroushinforms by the readerof how his ideas have been influenced Al-Ghazzali, Mehdi Bazargan,Rumi, Sa'di, 'Ali Shariati,and AllamahTabatab'i,as well as Pierre

Duhem,David Hume,ThomasKuhn,KarlPopper, and W.V. Quine. The essays assembled in this book make abundantlyclear why his admirersconsiderSoroushan innovative thinker while the clerical officialdom in Iranregardshim as an enfant terrible. Soroush establishes his revisionist credentials by declaring: "Thereis hardly a philosopheror theologian who would confidentlyassertthat it is possible to adduce an irrefutableargumentfor the existence of God"(p. 71); "clericalgovernmentis meaningless" (p. 22); "secular governments are not opposed to religion" (p. 56); "democracydoes not require believers to abandon their convictions, secularize their creed, and lose faith in divine protection"(p. 135); "freedomis the sine qua non of humanity because reason and freedom are inextricably intertwined"(p. 89); "justice, as a value, can not be religious;it is religionthathas to be just" (p. 131); whereas "the language of religion (especially that of Islam as exemplified by the Qur'an and the Tradition)is the language of duties, not rights,"in the modernworld "rights arehonoredabove duties"(pp. 61-62); sensitivity to to to humanrightsis not tantamount "surrender relativistic liberalism"(p. 129); the ends cannot justify the means (p. 92); "ideology is the veil of reason" (p. 94); "ideologization of religion is a problem in religious societies" (p. 21); and, finally, "one of the greatest theoreticalplagues of the Islamic world, in general, is that people are Islam as an idengraduallycoming to understand tity ratherthan a truth"(p. 24). Equally, if not more, appalling to the conservative clerics is Soroush's theory of contraction as and expansionof religious interpretation, articulated in the following epistemological propositions: "Religion should be distinguished from religious knowledge since the former is constant and the latterin a permanentstate of flux" (p. 30); "no truth clashes with any other truth"(p. 21); "what is opposed to the truthis not freedom but power" (p. 100); "revolution,human rights, free will, and meaningfulnessof religious propositions are extra-religious concepts" (p. 22, 69); and "religiousscholarscannotaffordto be oblivious to extra-religious knowledge" (p. 127). Soroush maintainsthat his theory is "the missing link" in the endea rs of the revivalists and reformersof the past (p. O), and that it provides "the only

520 * MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

naturalway" to blend sacred religion and secular politics (p. 60). While one can be favorably disposed to Soroush's calls for Muslims to be more inwardly religious while upholdingthe sanctity of freedom of belief, it is still possible to raise a set of questions, reservations,and objections to his theoretical propositions.What this reviewer finds to be particularly troublesome is Soroush's theosophical theory of a "religious democratic government,"based on assertionssuch as these: "in a religious society, any purely secular government would be undemocratic"(p. 126); "democracy, without an intrinsic alliance with life-sustaining moral principles, will be no more than a mere fa,ade" (p. 153); and "the life blood of modern life is the traditionalvices not virtues"(p. 43). Soroush's theory of a religiously democratic governmentdoes not take into accountthe form of the state, nor other pertinentfactors, such as the existence of civil institutions, the presence of a tolerant political culture, discrepancies in the social, economic and political status and power base of variousgroups,the natureof the economic system, etc. Soroush wants us to accept a limited definitionof democracywith referenceto a set of principlesthat he has deduced from epistemological assertions. He contends that in a "truly religious society," all aspects of life, including politics, naturally take on a religious coloring. However, why should we accept this assertion? Can politics-a game of deceit, machination,and halfway measures-be perceived in such an unproblematic fashion? Can realpolitik so easily abandonits hypocriticaland sanctimoniousoaths? Can any state's politics be morally edifying, consideringthe divergentallegiances, judgments, and preferencesof its constituents?Furthermore, isn't it a bit unrealistic to maintainthat a multidimensional and tangled society, such as that of Iran, can be turned into a monophonic Islamic communitywhereby the totality of the citizenry's cultural,economic, emotional, familial, financial, informational, legal, and linguistic interactions and normswill be governedprimarily,if not fully, by religious edicts? Finally, based on what institutions, rules, and laws would shari'a serve as the arbiterof social affairs? Had Soroush examined the lineage of democratic evolution in the West beyond a mere perusalof political-philosophicaltomes, he would

have encountereda whole tapestry of anthropological, cultural,economic, and social factors and nuances at work. The conspicuous absence of these factors in his theory of "democraticreligious govemment" cannot be easily disregarded. Mehrzad Boroujerdi is Associate Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University.

Religionand State:The MuslimApproach to Politics, by L. Carl Brown. New York:

ColumbiaUniversityPress, 2000. vi + 223 pages. Bibl. to p. 236. Index to p. 256. $27.50 cloth.

Islam and Secularismin the MiddleEast,

ed. by JohnL. Esposito and Azzam Tamimi. New York:New York UniversityPress, 2000. ix + 208 pages. Index to p. 214. $55 cloth; $18.50 paper. Reviewed by Henry Munson In the introduction to Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics, L. Carl Brown states that he disapprovesof those "who believe that God has given them a clear message of what is required and has also mandated that they employ any means necessary to impose that message on others" (pp. 4-5). He is thus less than wildly enthusiastic about the militant Islamic movements that he discusses in this book. He says, however, "I have made a conscious effortto be fair to those religious radicalswhose ideology and actions I deplore" (p. 5). Brown's "oldfashioned"good sense in dealing with such issues is refreshing. Middle Eastern studies suffer from moral myopia. On the one hand, some scholars seem determinedto defend political Islam and ignore the problemsit raises with respectto humanrights and peace. On the otherhand,some scholarsvilify Islamism with no attentionto the very real social and nationalistic grievances that fuel it. L. Carl Brown avoids both of these extremes. Brown correctly notes that the conventional wisdom thatreligion andpolitics are not separated in Islam is inadequate.He argues that "Muslim history has been markedby a de facto separation of state and religious authority"(p. 80). He also stresses the predominantlyquietist political role