Mohsen Kadivar

Mohsen Kadivar is a distinguished Shi’i Muslim thinker and one of the most original, courageous and prolific leading intellectuals of the Iranian reform movement. He reached the terminal stage of Ijtihad (permission to issue legal judgments) under the supervision of the grand Ayatollah Hosseinali Montazeri in Qom Seminary in 1997. Two years later he obtained a doctorate of Islamic Philosophy and theology from the Tarbiate Modarress University in Tehran and started a decade of teaching at the faculty of philosophy of that University. He was sentenced to spend 18 month in Evin Prison in Tehran by the illegal especial court for clerics because of his political criticism against the governments, and was released in July 2000. In 2007 political pressures forced Kadivar to leave his teaching appointment for a position at the Research Center of Iranian Institute of Philosophy. He is the visiting professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia (2008-2009) and will be the visiting professor of Religion at Duke University (2009-2010). This versatile theologian, philosopher and intellectual historian has written 13 books (in Persian and Arabic) and over 50 articles in Islamic Studies (Philosophy, theology, jurisprudence and political thought).
 
Mohsen Kadivar’s recent works follow two tracks. He extends the reach of “new theology” from the general area of Islam to Shiite Islam. The second trajectory of Kadivar’s thought takes him to the vexing problem of the incompatibility of Islamic Shariah law and the modern axioms of human rights. To deal with this problem Kadivar distinguishes “historical” from “spiritual” Islam. Kadivar is a firm believer in the basic compatibility of Islam with democracy, human rights and rationality.