ISLAM AND DISSENT IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY IRAN: THE RELIGIOUS POLITICS OF ABDOLKARIM SOROUSH by Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi 208 pages, 222 x 141mm, hardback, £39.50, I.B.Tauris, London, New York, November 2000

Synopsis: One unexpected consequence of the Islamic Revolution in Iran was the formation of dissident movements within the coutnry with self-proclaimed Islamic credentiasl. Dubbed by some in the West as 'the Martin Luther of the Islamic World' Abdolkarim Soroush, a prominent Muslim intellectual and the most outspoken of the Islamic dissidents, has explored how a state can at once be Islamic and at the same time adhere to the tenets of a modern civil society in which pluralism, democracy and human rights are respected. Soroush is arguably Iran's most important contemporary pollitical thinker. Little has been written about him outside Iran and his works have not, until now, been translated. This book which includes a translation of threee of Soroush's key essays is crucial to an understanding of the politics of contemporary Iran and the intellectual ferment in the Muslim world. Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi is a Post-doctoral Fellow at Wesleyan University in the United States.