AbdolKarim Soroush was born Farajollah Dabbagh in Tehran in 1944. After being educated at a religious high school and at Tehran University, he went to England for graduate studies in pharmacology and philosophy.These lines are from one of his interviews…
“We can’t take religion away from our society; nor do we wish to do so. It is our identity. It is our culture. It is our belief, our aspiration. Of course, when the majority of people in a society come to the conclusion that they want to set religion aside, that’s another matter. But we’re not talking in that kind of environment now. We’re talking in an environment in which a revolution has occurred in the name of religion. And people have shown that, despite their differences, they are deeply attached to this creed. But this creed is that same frothy water that must be purified. And this purification is a difficult task, which we must undertake. And there’s a great deal of froth sitting on the water. It’s not something that one can hope to sweep away in one day or in one year. This is froth that is, on occasion, considered to be the same as water. Some people say that the truth is nothing but this froth. Separating the two things and distinguishing between them is very difficult. We want to do this. So, religious modernism or religious intellectualism is trying to explain that peoples, in each historical era, have constructed forms or depictions of religion. Religion is never standing nearby for people to go and discover it. In fact, we’ve been constantly reconstructing it. Today, too, we have to reconstruct it. Just as we constructed philosophy. Just as we constructed mysticism. Religion, too, has to be reconstructed.