Word: soroush
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...dishes and dispirited citizens who never saw a reason to vote--until Khatami came along. Few misunderstood the protest message of his triumph. Says Hassan, 18, a member of the generation born after Khomeini's 1979 revolution: "We want to have more freedom here in this country." Says Abdelkarim Soroush, perhaps the regime's most prominent internal critic: "The election was a referendum on liberty, justice, everything." One supporter simply gushed, "Khatami is Ayatullah Gorbachev...
More important, Abdelkarim Soroush, a leading intellectual of the anti-Shah revolution, has openly challenged the clergy's infallibility. "Religion is sacred," he said in an interview, "but the understanding and interpretation are not necessarily sacred." Religious interpretations, he said, "are like chemistry and mathematics. They are debatable." Khomeini's heirs will increasingly have to reconcile the everyday requirements of national life with the exigencies of holy law. If they also intend to be taken seriously in the community of nations, they will have to stop using violence and terror in the pursuit of Iran's interests...
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