Iranian Intellectuals on “Islam and Democracy” Compatibility: Views of Abdulkarim Soroush and Hasan Yousuf Eshkevari

Abstract

Abstract: Islam-democracy discourse, a hotly debated topic and a burning issue, has highly intensified over the last few decades and throughout the world with several Muslim thinkers/ intellectuals having taken strides to shape Muslim understanding of “Islamic democracy”. To offer a new direction and advance this discourse some steps further, this paper seeks to address this issue in the thought and writings, by way of a comparative study, of two prominent intellectuals of Iran: Abdulkarim Soroush (b. 1945), who sees no contradiction between Islam and the freedoms inherent in democracy, and Hasan Yousuf Eshkevari (b. 1949/50), who is at the forefront of articulating the relationship between Islam and democracy. The essay argues that (i) the efforts of Soroush and Eshkevari, along with those of many other religious reformist intellectuals and political activists, have collectively given rise to a vibrant, intellectually sophisticated, and expansive discourse of Islamic reformism; (ii) although, theoretically, there is no doubt in the argument that Islam and democracy are indeed compatible (on many grounds), there is lack and scarcity of literature on the practical framework/implementation of this envisioned formula of “Islamic democracy”—a challenge still faced by Muslim political theorists especially in the 21st century.