News

The Green Movement (and the Ayatollah Khamenei’s clumsy response to
it) has exacerbated a split with Shiism. It has accelerated the
development of profound and potentially far-reaching doctrinal
innovations. The course of the coming months will determine the extent
to which these innovations will transform Shiism and Iran....

To varying degrees, thinkers and theologians identified with the
democratic movement have been offering a new reading of Shiism that
makes the faith more amenable to democracy and secularism. The most
significant innovation—found in essays, sermons, books, and even
fatwas—is the acceptance of the separation of mosque and state, the
idea that religion must be limited to the private domain. Some of these
thinkers refuse to afford any privileged position to the clergy’s
reading and rendition of Shiism--a radical democratization of the
faith. And others, like Akbar Ganji and Mostafa Malekian, have gone so
far as to deny the divine origins of Koran, arguing that it is nothing
but a historically specific and socially marked interpretation of a
divine message by the prophet. The most daring are even opting for a
historicized Muhammad, searching for the first time in Shia history for
a real, not hagiographic, narrative of his life.

That's pretty much the kind of modernisation - the reformation, if
you lik... >>>