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Soroush interview:
Travelers on one ship
Part Six
(Soroush:) ... Third, since the Islamic Revolution of Iran was based
on religious claims, I became increasingly interested in the question of
the true place of religion in society.
A while back someone asked me about the difference between my project
and that of the late Shariati. I replied, without intending to draw a full
comparison, "Shariati wanted to make religion plumper, but I want
to make it leaner."
The greatest pathology of religion that I have noticed after the revolution
is that it has become plump, even swollen. Many claims have been made in
the name of religion and many burdens are put on its shoulders. It is neither
possible nor desirable for religion, given its ultimate mission, to carry
such a burden. This means purifying religion, making it lighter and more
buoyant, in other words, rendering religion more slender by sifting, whittling
away, erasing the superfluous layers off the face of religiosity.
Every system has its own weaknesses. A religious society, too, has its
own peculiar problems. One of those problems is hypocrisy. The other is
ideologization of religion, which means turning it to an instrument of
fanaticism and hatred. I have always stated that unity could be achieved
as much through kindness as through hatred. Ideology attains this objective
through hatred. These, in my view, are the plagues of the religious thought
that will become epidemic if they are neglected.
These problems are readily identifiable in our nascent religious society,
yet our leaders are not only complacent, they unconsciously or otherwise
propagate them. We confront reliance on a single source for all of society's
needs, in this case, the belief that all our needs can be met in the Koran
and religious traditions; there is excessive emphasis on ritual and the
legal aspects of religion (figh'h) a stress on its outward manifestations.
These were among the things that commanded my attention after the Islamic
Revolution. I even attempted to alert the leaders of our society to the
danger inherent in such a situation. Alas, our clerical leaders did not
pay sufficient attention to these issues. They treated these criticisms
as signs of opposition to the regime and their own power and resisted them.
These prompted me to enter the arena of social criticism. In my attempt
to fight the obesity of religion, I engaged in a number of projects, including
putting figh'h in its properly restricted place, separating the
fundamental from the tangential and accidental in religion, and distinguishing
religion as an individual experience from religion as a collective institution.
In all these distinctions I have tried to establish the nature and social
position of religion and the nature of our relationship to God. Above all,
I have tried to paint a kinder portrait of God's role in society, so that
the revolutionaries can enter peaceful coexistence with him and with one
another. Thus I have tried to ameliorate hatred, which some have considered
the truth of religiosity.
Some people in our society, under Stalinist and Fascist influences,
have come to believe that the essence of religion is enmity, excommunication,
and punishment. They need to be admonished. I have observed that if we
can reconcile Islam with revolution, why not reconcile it with human rights,
democracy, and liberty? After all, revolution is an extra-religious concept
as well. The reason is that our clergy are unfamiliar with these concepts,
and their training has not prepared them to appreciate those traits.
I have, therefore, attempted to explain that extra-religious ideas are
authentic and autonomously significant and that they even affect the understanding
of religion itself. Human rights is one of these important extra-religious
concepts, as I have argued in one of the articles in this collection. Although
this discussion needs to be settled outside religion, it has a profound
influence on one's understanding of religion.
I can attribute the development of all of these ideas to the advent
of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the spread of religious way of life
and thought in our society, and the claim of our government to being Islamic.
One of the discussions to which I have been very sensitive has been the
idea of Islamic state and Islamic government.
There is no question that clerical government is meaningless and therefore
I have not even discussed it, except in my essay "Liberty and the
Clergy," where I have argued that no clergy, qua clergy, should have
worldly privileges, whether political or economic, over other citizens.
I have also written on the meaning of religious government. All of these
were results of the revolution and events in Iran. They made me think,
and I tried to provide theoretical foundations for them.
I repeat, the Islamic government in our society is, unfortunately, a
government without theory and doctrine. Thus in the areas of economy, politics,
human rights, and international affairs it acts in a haphazard and reactive
way. It has built no foundations and principles from which to act meaningfully.
Nor does it have time to do so.
Even Mr. Khomeini's later edicts and pronouncements on figh'h
were occasioned by immediate practical concerns. He never found the time
to provide theoretical foundations for them. I think we need to build theoretical
foundations. If my ideas have met with some success, it is because I address
and trace such issues in a theoretically impoverished environment.
Sadri: How about the question of the affinities between your
thought and that of other revivalist and reformists? Do you think you have
addressed this question adequately?
Soroush: Well, I might have alluded to some of these influences.
And there are issues of comparison and contrast that are best left to others
to develop. Of course, I can say that I have paid attention to thinkers
who have harbored reformist ideas, such as Mohammad Abdoh, Seyed Jamal
Asad Abadi, Ghazzali, Shah Valiollah Dehlavi, and other reformists and
revivalists, including Mr. Khomeini. I have scrutinized their theories
to find their different foci and strategies of problem solving.
Sadri: This brings us to the last question: How do you view the
future of Muslims' intellectual and social life -- in other words, what
major and essential problems do you find in the path of the next couple
of generations of Muslims?
Soroush: This is a huge problem, and I am not sure if I can do
justice to it. The theoretical vacuum which I bemoaned in the case of Iran
stretches throughout the Islamic world. Let me point out that in one of
my unpublished essays, I have distinguished between two kinds of Islam:
Islam of identity and Islam of truth. In the former Islam is a guise for
cultural identity and a response to what is considered the "crisis
of identity." The latter refers to Islam as a repository of truths
that point toward the path of worldly and other-worldly salvation.
The Prophet of Islam is thus recognized as the messenger of those truths.
The Prophet and other divine messengers originally invited people to a
series of truths pointing toward salvation. As people accepted those truths
and the religious disciplines that contained them, they gradually developed
identities and built civilizations. Developing an identity or a civilization
was never the intention of the prophets.
The term "civilization" is a construct of the historians.
Muslims, for example, were never aware that they were building or had built
a "civilization" until the last century. This is a modern notion.
We all know what a boundless and nebulous concept it is and how it can
obfuscate judgement.
I fear that Muslims, in their confrontation with Western civilization,
wish to turn to Islam as an identity. And this is encouraged by certain
Muslim and non-Muslim thinkers alike. I recently reviewed Mr. Huntington's
thesis and noticed that he has invoked a number of civilizations, including
Islamic civilization. His notion of a "crisis of identity" in
the Islamic world made me even more confident about the veracity of my
own judgement.
I think one of the greatest theoretical plagues of the Islamic world,
in general, is that people are gradually coming to understand Islam as
an identity rather than a truth. It is true that Muslims did have an Islamic
identity and civilization, but they have not adopted Islam for the sake
of identity or civilization.
Civilizations are emergent and unintended consequences of the conscious
actions of social actors. They are the sum total of material and ideal
achievements of many generations. In this respect, they are like the market
or language. They cannot issue from the conscious attempts of the few.
As Hayek pointed out, these are spontaneous designs. Any intentional attempt
would be inimical to the design.
I don't argue that Muslims have no identity but that Islam should not
be chosen for the sake of identity. Just as Rumi said,
He who sews desires wheat
Hay will fall out as a treat
Mohammad ascended for God's visit
On his way other angels he did meet.
So, I believe that the Islam of identity should yield to Islam of truth.
The latter can coexist with other truths; the former, however, is, by its
very nature, belligerent and bellicose. It is the Islam of war, not the
Islam of peace. Two identities would fight each other, while two truths
would cooperate.
This was the major point, but there are more minute issues as well.
There are a number of problems that can be solved only on a global scale.
One example of this kind of problem is the institution of slavery. Right
now it is banned not only in Islam but all over the world. There is no
country that would legislate it or take slaves in the course of the wars.
We know that Islam, too, assented to that institution. It was an imposition
on Islam on behalf of the dominant world culture that permeated everything,
and Islam was no exception. Muslims would be taken as war prisoners and
turned into slaves, and they did likewise; there was no way to undermine
the institution locally without abrogating it universally.
There is a certain category of phenomena that require universal participation.
There is a tradition from the prophet of Islam that says: "We are
all travelers on a ship; if one person pokes a hole in it, all of us will
drown." This is an excellent allegory, to see all the inhabitants
of the globe as co-travelers on a ship.
We Muslims have two kinds of problems, local problems and universal
problems that are the problems of the humanity as a whole. In my view,
right now, problems such as peace, human rights, and women's rights have
turned into global problems. Our thinkers should take this into consideration.
Another, even more poignant example is the environment.
Therefore, I am of the opinion that Muslims should consider certain
issues as global and tackle them at that level, so that they can reap locally
what they have sewn universally. There are, of course, other issues that
are local and particular. Universal problems such as technology demand
universal solutions.
Fortunately, this research-driven age offers a far better opportunity
to become familiar with other kinds of beliefs, truths, and solutions.
Christianity, Judaism, and other religions, for example, are more readily
available for our scrutiny now, and vice versa. We should seize this opportunity
and try to clarify our interfaith issues. We should become better at reconciling
different truths.
Sadri: You mean an interfaith dialogue, do you not?
Soroush: Absolutely, an interfaith dialogue.
Sadri: Thank you very much.
Soroush: And thank you.
- Introduction
- Part
one
- Part
two
- Part
three
- Part
four
- Part
five
- Part
six
Interviewer
Mahmoud Sadri is an associate professor
of sociology at Texas Women's University. He has a doctorate in sociology
from New York's New School for Social Research. For more information see
his page at the Texas
Women's University. He is the coauthor, with Aruthur Stinchcombe, of an
article in "Durkheim's Division of Labor: 1893-1993" Presses
Universitaires de France, 1993. To top
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