Abdolkarim soroush biography of albert

Abdolkarim Soroush is a prominent Iranian philosopher, reformer, and scholar. He has come to symbolize a secularizing strain in Iran's contemporary discourse on Islamic reformation.

Abdolkarim Soroush, born Husayn Haj Farajullah Dabbagh, was born in in southern Tehran, Iran, to a lower middle class family.

Initially a supporter of the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini , Soroush became increasingly critical of the Iranian clerical establishment in the s. His various lectures and publications have become subject to censorship and he has been living and working in exile since Soroush underwent his primary schooling in the Qa'imiyyeh School.

After spending six years there, he continued his secondary education at Mortazavi High School and a year later transferred to the newly inaugurated Alavi High School. After completing his high school education, Soroush took part in the universities' nationwide entrance examinations in both physics and pharmacy. He successfully passed both exams and decided to focus on pharmacy.

(1) The classical account of this colonially mitigated encounter with the European Enlightenment is still Albert Hourani's Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age.

Once he completed his degree at Tehran University he served in the army for two years, fulfilling the national compulsory service, after which he moved to Bushehr to render part of his medical service. After one year and three months he returned to Tehran where he was briefly employed at the Laboratory for Medicine Control. He then continued his studies at Chelsea College and specialized in history and philosophy of sciences.

Prior to and during the revolutionary period sweeping Iran, Soroush became politically active by giving speeches that were then transcribed and produced into pamphlets and books. In those years Soroush emerged as an ideologue of the regime and took part in public debates with its critics, most commonly Marxists whom Soroush would adamantly confront, charging them with dogmatism and historical determinism.

Education: Degrees from Tehran University in pharmacology; M. After returning to Iran, Soroush affiliated himself with Tehran's Teacher Training College where he was appointed the director of the newly established Islamic Culture Group. In the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution , Iran's universities closed and brought the educational system to a halt.