Pemikiran Abdulkarim Soroush tentang Persoalan Otoritas Kebenaran Agama

This article discusses the thought of Abdulkarim Soroush on the relation between the truth claim of religious understanding and the emergence of religious authoritarianism. Truth claim can raise the tyranny of religion when there is an attempt at the ideologization of a religious understanding to political and power sphere. Some questions to be answered here include: why does religious truth claim emerge, and how does Soroush deconstruct religious truth claim? Why does Soroush reject the paradigm of religious ideologization, and how does he promote the democratization of the relation between religion and politics? This article reveals that religious truth claim emerge due to the absence of consciousness to distinguish between religious understanding which is temporal and profan and the very religion which is eternal and sacred.? Attempts at ideologizing religion represent the lack of consciousness to distinguish between religion and politics, as this lack can degrade the divine value of religion to its worldly and human character. The ideologization of religion can result in tyranny in the name of religion, and accordingly give the monopoly of power to a certain religious understanding while rejecting others.