Abdolkarim Soroush: Critical Rationalism and Religious and Political Reform in Iran

Abdolkarim Soroush

On 15 March, the Iranian intellectual Abdolkarim Soroush (real name: Hosein Haj Faraj Dabbagh) delivered the Sir Karl Popper Memorial Lecture 2012, at the London School of Economics (LSE). Although he has never directly studied under Popper, Soroush memorated that he was studying philosophy of science at Chelsea College (later absorbed into King's College London) when Popper was teaching at LSE.

In his preliminary remarks Soroush noted that there is, and always has been, a very vivid interest in Iranian intellectual circles in philosophy, traditionally also extending into theoretical mysticism (in which Soroush is something of an expert too). However, when it comes to modern Western philosophy, until relatively recent, that interest was generally restricted to continental philosophy rather than the analytical Anglosaxon tradition.

In fact, prior to the revolution of 1979, Popper's work was virtually unknown in Iran -- except for his The Poverty of Historicism.

 
 (for free pdf download click here).

However, when he was appointed to the Cultural Revolution Institute in 1980, Soroush issued a directive making the teaching of philosophy of science mandatory for all university studies. This set in motion a wave of interest in the writings of Karl Popper and his work was translated into Persian and studied across Iran, including the shi'a seminaries in Qom. For almost ten years, Popper was one of the most widely read and discussed Western thinkers in Iran. As an anecdote, Sorouch recounted how, also later, President Sayyid Mohammad Khatami during his term in office (1997-2005) encouraged his cabinet members to study The Lesson of the Century (1992), an interview with Popper which was published in book form.

According to Soroush, for many Iranians the attraction of Popper's thought lay in its combination of anti-Platonic, anti-nominalist, and anti-Marxist views. Recalling the adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity, Soroush stated that Popper's criticism of these various philosophy schools eventually brought together these forces against Popper and eventually led to the repression of his ideas in Iran.

Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994)

Soroush's personal sympathy towards Popper's thinking comes from the modesty it exudes -- for example, his encouragement of piecemeal social engineering (Soroush recalls the Popperian anecdote that when it rains one brings an umbrella, rather embarking on theorizing how the cosmos could be redesigned so that it no longer rains).

To listen to a podcast of the full lecture, click here.

From Russia with Love? Welcome to salamworld

Qantara, the Germany-based news website covering the Muslim world reports on a new social networking initiative based in Turkey, but financed by Russian Muslim activists.

Social networking is big business. Facebook, with its user base of over 800 million users, is expected to raise billions of dollars when it becomes a publicly-traded company later this spring. [...]  Enter a new Istanbul-based startup, salamworld, which hopes to establish itself as the social networking giant of the Islamic world. The company says it will offer a halal-friendly space for Muslims to gather online.

 

Even though the site won't be open to the public until the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, set for late July in the Western calendar, that hasn't stopped buzz in the Turkish tech world from bringing Salamworld to the fore.

Zuhair Al Mazeedi, of the Arab Institution for Social Values, in Kuwait, added that Salamworld can fix more than just the ignorance of non-Muslims about Islam. "There are many Muslims who misunderstand Islam – Islam has been hijacked by terrorists," he said. "We need to bring our youth back to the moderate and effective Islam. Many of our youth have no goals in life, and using such platforms can direct them into goals of life." 

Arab Spring
There is also widespread hope that the momentum of the Arab Spring can be built upon to facilitate political change in the heart of the Muslim world.  

Abdul Wahed Niyazov with OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu

Turanian Connections
The startup capital has largely come from private investors in Kazakhstan and Russia. Chairman of Salamworld is the not uncontroversial Abdul Wahed Niyazov Validovich, President of the Islamic Cultural Center of Russia and a founding member of the Russian Muftis Council.  So is Salamworld designed to help the ummah – the global community of Muslims – or to cash in an empty market niche? 


Click here to read the whole article:

Announcement: Trajectories of Dissent

On 29 February 2012, the European Institute at University College London will be hosting a panel discussion investigating the consequences of the so-called Arab Spring by contrasting its features in political and intellectual leadership with the end of communism in Europe some twenty years ago.

For more details click here

Muslim Cosmopolitanism or Heresy? Lessons for the Aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring

On 6 February, I gave a talk at the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics (LSE), in which I discussed how three contemporary Muslim intellectuals from Algeria, Egypt and Indonesia have given new relevance to religion in the post-secular and post-Islamist Muslim world of the early 21st century.
 Their ideas appear to provide an alternative to both the hard secularism represented by either authoritarian or more benign regimes and the advocacy of an Islamic state. It appears that this third way resonates with the ambitions and expectations of those involved in the Arab uprisings of 2011.

This talk is based on my book Cosmopolitans and Heretics which has been nominated for the AAR Prize in the category for Best First Book in the History of Religions and the Asia Society's Bernard Schwartz Book Award. 

Click here to listen to a podcast of this presentation

Reviving the 'Islamization of Knowledge' Project?

A few days after former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister -- but now opposition leader -- Anwar Ibrahim's acquittal of a second round of sodomy charges, I visited the leading intellectual Osman Bakar in Kuala Lumpur. One of my PhD students, the Malaysian university lecturer Azizan Had, is writing a dissertation on Bakar's contributions to the Islamization of Knowledge, so I was curious to meet the man for myself.

Originally trained at the University of London as a mathematician, Bakar dropped his plans for doctoral studies in that field, opting instead for a more philosophical subject: An examination of the epistemological aspects of the relation between science and religion, in particular Islam. In 1987 he completed a PhD in Islamic Philosophy at Temple University under the supervision of the Iranian-born scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr (himself a graduate of MIT).

Osman Bakar

Within a few years of his return to Malaysia, where he began teaching courses in philosophy and religion, Bakar found himself pulled into university administration and he ended up as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. After his mandatory retirement in 2000, he left for the United States and spent five years at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. Following this stint overseas he again came back home and took a position at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC).

In 2008 he was tapped by then Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi to give shape to the latter's conceptualization of Islam Hadhari or 'Civilizational Islam', a notion that strikes me as not that dissimilar from the ways in which religion can be given a space in the contemporary Muslim public sphere explored in neighbouring Indonesia under the designations 'Civil' or 'Cultural Islam'.

Aside from this immediate context, Osman Bakar's continuing concern with the relationship between science and knowledge must be seen against the background of the 'Islamization of Knowledge' project which took off in the 1970s and 1980s. The term was coined in 1978 by Bakar's fellow Malaysian Syed Naquib al-Attas (b. 1931) in 1978, but it was also claimed by the Palestinian Isma'il Raji al-Faruqi (1921-1986). Consequently, these two intellectuals soon fell out over  accusations of stealing the other's ideas and what had the potential of starting out as a unified endeavour bringing together Muslim thinkers from across the Muslim world became a much more fragmented field.

In spite of these birth pains, Muslim intellectuals greeted the 'Islamization of Knowledge' Project with considerable enthusiasm. Soon other scholars, such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and activists like the British-Pakistani Ziauddin Sardar also began weighing in. In Malaysia the project received the backing of the rising political star Anwar Ibrahim, the former firebrand student leader turned government minister and -- some whispered -- a possible successor of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. The viability of  'Islamization of Knowledge' seemed further assured as the project also began tasking institutional form: In the United States in the shape of Ismai'l al-Faruqi's International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and in Malaysia by the establishment of the earlier-mentioned ISTAC, founded in 1987 by Syed Naquib al-Attas, but since then incorporated into the International Islamic University Malaysia.

Osman Bakar has written prolifically about the Islamization of Knowledge and related subjects, beginning with The History and Philosophy of Islamic Science (1989), which was re-republished a few years later under the much better known title Tawhid and Science. Since then it has been translated in a number of languages. In 1992 he co-authored with Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Classification of Knowledge in Islam. Other titles include: A Critique of Evolutionary Theory and Islam and Civilizational Dialogue.

In spite of the initial optimism, by the  late1990s the project seemed to have run out of steam. In my discussion about this, Professor Bakar opined that this was due to the over-politicization of the project at the expense of its academic rigour. According to him, the epistemological aspects surrounding the issue of how religion and science relate to each other have not been pushed far enough. That is why,following Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi's request in 2008 to help implementing and shaping Islami Hadhari, Bakar responded positively as he saw it as an opportunity to blow new life into the Islamization of Knowlegde Project.

The personal brainchild of Badawi, a Malaysian conceptualization of the notion of al-lslam al-Hadhari conceived by Arab intellectuals in the 1980s was introduced at the government party's 55th congress in 2004. Badawi's ideas were further developed in two books: Islam Hadhari  and Pembangunan Modal Insan, both published in 2006.

Bakar teamed up with a former colleague, the Afghan jurist Mohammad Hashim Kamali. Together they founded the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS), with a guarantee from the Prime Minister's Office for three years of financial support, as part of the administration's attempt to turn Islam Hadhari into government policy.

right to left: Prof. Osman Bakar (IAIS), Dr Carool Kersten (King's College London), Azizan Had (PhD student, King's College London)

The institute's objective is to reshape and revamp the I'slamization of Knowledge' project, by shifting the accent to a holistic epistemology that gives a prominent place to cultural contexts. Since its establishment in 2008, it has hosted or co-hosted a number of conferences and workshops, while Kamali and Bakar also travel the world to take part in other events to promote their ideas. The institute also publishes a journal: Islam and Civilizational Renewal.

With the resignation of Badawi as Prime Minister in 2009, it is unclear how much alive the notion of Islam Hadhari still is (the official government's website, for example, is currently  inactive). It will be interesting to see how successful IAIS will be in keeping a Malaysian variant of Islam as a civilizational concept alive.