Interviews

The Chronicle, The Independent Daily at Duke University, December 2, 2011   Duke chronicle   Mohsen Kadivar spent 18 months in Iran’s infamous Evin Prison, mostly in solitary confinement. Kadivar says he wasn’t especially bothered by the isolation, since it allowed him to work 16 hours a day on his theological and political writings. Calling Kadivar “resilient” sounds like cheerleading, so I’ll settle for calling him tough. Last semester, one of my classmates in Kadivar’s undergraduate course, “Religion and Politics in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” asked our professor what prison was like.…

"All the people of Iran are the owners of Iran"

In a SPIEGEL interview, Iranian Ayatollah Mohsen Kadivar, currently a visiting research professor at America's Duke University, discusses the recent death of opposition leader Hossein Ali Montazeri, the frustrations Iranians have with their regime, the future of the green movement and the prospect of an escalation.   SPIEGEL: Ayatollah Kadivar, what did Hossein Ali Montazeri mean to you, and what role did he play for the Iranian people? Kadivar:He was my teacher, my spiritual guide, my father -- the most important person in my life. I studied as a young…

TORONTO — The main Iranian opposition leader’s top aide, who was arrested last week because of his investigations into the abuse of prisoners in the crackdown after the disputed election, has been released in what appears to be a sign of retreat by the hard-core conservative authorities running Iran. The release of the aide, Alireza Hosseini-Beheshti, was reported Sunday by the semiofficial ILNA news agency. He is a highly regarded academic with Islamic revolutionary credentials who worked directly under the opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi. No explanation for the release…

Events that have taken place in Iran in the last 30 years are neither republican nor Islamic but the will of a single ruler, words that were recently echoed by another senior dissident ayatollah Monta

As the Iranian president makes a public show of Islamic virtue, it is instructive to look through the eyes of Iran’s most prominent theologians and dissenters, and to recall what actual compassion look

In a SPIEGEL interview, Iranian theologian and philosopher Mohsen Kadivar discusses Tehran's path towards a military dictatorship, how the country's religious leaders abuse Islam and opportunities for reform.   SPIEGEL: Ayatollah Kadivar, we are meeting you here at Duke University in the US State of North Carolina, 7,500 miles away from your home. Are you not needed more urgently in Iran now? Kadivar:Believe me, in these dramatic hours I would much rather be in my homeland. Within the next two weeks, the future of Iran will be decided. Almost all…

In Iran, a theological state is challenged on theological grounds.