Islam and Dissent in Postrevolutionary Iran Abdolkarim Soroush, Religious Politics and Democratic Reform

by Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz

• ISBN13: 9781845118808
• ISBN10: 1845118804
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-11-15
• Publisher: Bloomsbury

Summary

The Iranian revolution of 1979 overhauled not only the foundations of Iranian society, religion and politics, but also our understanding of the role of religion in modern government. Here Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi takes us on an enlightening journey, showing that the revolution unintentionally opened up the public sphere to competing interpretations of Islam. Far from being the exclusive preserve of high-ranking seminarians as before, in contemporary Iran lay theologians, intellectuals, lawyers and social activists are active and influential interlocutors in debates on the meaning of Islam. A key figure is philosopher Abdolkarim Soroush, a leading force behind Iran's pro-democracy movement and vocal critic of the state. Through a close reading of Soroush's writings, and by tracing the links between Muslim intellectual critique and the realpolitik of postrevolutionary power struggles, Ghamari-Tabrizi offers nothing less than a pathbreaking reassessment of the Iranian revolution. With powerful insights, Islam and Dissent is essential for an understanding of the Muslim world today, as of the new relationships between religion, politics and democracy visible across the globe.

Author Biography

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi is Assistant Professor of History and Sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He specializes in transnational and global histories in the Middle Eastern postcolonial context, and studies social movements and intellectual articulations of Islamic conceptions of modernity. He has published in varieties of academic journals such as International Sociology, International Review of Social History, Migration Review, Critique, and others.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Classical Persian Literature as a Tradition

The Origin and Development of Literary Persian

The history of literature

Prosody : meter and rhyme

Traditional Literary Theory: The Arabic Backg round

Persian Rhetoric: Elme badi 'and elme bayan

Poetic Imagery

Genres of Court Literature

Genres of Religious Literature

Riddles

Pre-Islamic Iranian and Indian Influences on Persian Literature

Hell enistic Influences in Classical Persia n Literature

Arabic Influenceson Persian Literature

Persia n Literature and the Arts of the Book

Manuscripts in the Domains of the Persia n Language

Printing and Publishing

Libraries and Librarianship

Selected Bibliography

Persian Book-Publishing Abroad

Aspects of Book Publishing Abroad

Bibliography

Contributors

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.