Language of Rights and Language of Obligations: An Islamic Perspective
Language of Rights and Language of Obligations: An Islamic Perspective
Public Talk by Abdulkarim Soroush, a leading Muslim reformist public intellectual, a Rumi scholar, and a former professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran, Iran.
Wednesday, 18 November 2015, 6-8 pm | Room 150, TELUS Centre, University of Alberta
Abstract: All Abrahamic religions employed language of obligations whereas we live in an era whose language is the language of rights. Does this paradigmatic shift mean that a religious reform is incumbent, how and why? Moreover, does Islam, as a great religion, lend itself to such a reform, if yes what are the achievements of Muslim reformers in this turbulent field and what remains to be done in future?
Biography: Abdulkarim Soroush is a leading Muslim reformist public intellectual, a Rumi scholar, and a former professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran, Iran. He is named by Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2005 and by Prospect magazine as one of the most influential intellectuals in the world in 2008. Soroush’s ideas prompted both supporters and critics to compare his role in reforming Islam to that of Martin Luther in reforming Christianity.
He is the author of many books and essays in Farsi including The Theoretical Contraction and Expansion of Religion: The Theory of Evolution of Religious Knowledge (1994); The definitive edition of Rumi’s Mathnavi (1996); Tolerance and Governance (1997); Straight Paths, An Essay on Religious Pluralism (1998); and Expansion of Prophetic Experience (1999).
Soroush has been a visiting scholar at a number of academic institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, University of Maryland in College Park, the Leiden-based International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM), and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin.
