Abdolkarim Soroush
Abdolkarim Soroush ( pronunction (help·info) ahb-dohl-kah-REEM soh-ROOSH[needs IPA] عبدالكريم سروش), born Hosein Haj Faraj Dabbagh (born 1945; Persian: حسين حاج فرج دباغ ), is an Iranian thinker, reformer, Rumi scholar and a former professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran and Imam Khomeini International University. He is arguably the most influential figure in religious intellectual movement in Iran. Soroush is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. He was also affiliated with other prestigious institutions, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, the Leiden based International Institute as a visiting professor for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. 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, founded on Relativism, prompted both supporters and critics to compare his role in reforming Islam to that of Martin Luther in reforming Christianity.