Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam

"In recent years 'Abdolkarim Soroush has emerged as one of the leading revisionist thinkers of the Moslem world. Supporters and critics alike have called him the Martin Luther of Islam - a man whose ideas on religion and democracy could bridge the chasm between Moslem societies and the rest of the world. Soroush and his contemporaries in other Moslem countries are shaping what may become Islam's equivalent of the Christian Reformation: a period of questioning traditional practices and beliefs and, ultimately, of upheaval.". "This book features eleven of Soroush's essays translated into English for the first time, a new critical introduction by the editors, and an original interview that reveals the intellectual biography of Soroush. Offering a timely corrective to the common view of Islam as monolithically reactionary, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the Middle East and Islam and politics both here and abroad."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Philosophy, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.