Arash Aramesh

In an article published in Gooya News, a Farsi news site outside Iran, Akbar Ganji, an outspoken Iranian dissident, wrote an article in which he criticized Mohsen Kadivar, a Duke University professor and Iranian cleric, for his recent remarks at various public events in the United States.

Ganji, who spent several years in prison in Iran, accuses Kadivar of taking advantage of the current crisis to promote his religious interpretation of Islam and his own standing as a prominent Islamic scholar. Ganji implies that Kadivar’s writings and speeches are designed in a way to position him as the logical alternative to the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who was the spiritual guide of the opposition movement and who died recently. Kadivar was perhaps Montazeri’s most prominent student during his long life; he studied under him for more than a decade in the holy Shiite city of Qom.

Ganji also criticizes Kadivar for his implied criticism of Abdolkarim Soroush, a well-known Iranian intellectual. Kadivar and Soroush have disagreements over many religious concepts and core Islamic teachings, such as the notion of divine revelation and the role of the Prophet Mohammad as the receiver of such revelations. Contrary to common belief held by most Muslims, Soroush believes that the Koran is not entirely the result of direct revelations from God to Mohammad through the Archangel Gabriel. Kadivar is opposed to the notion of going beyond the holy text, as proposed by Soroush, and allowing open interpretations of the Koran. This very debate, and disagreements over other theological issues, have created what some people call a feud between Kadivar, who has a theological orientation, and Soroush, who is more of a secular intellectual.

During the first week of January, five prominent Islamic intellectuals composed a letter in which they criticized the Iranian government’s actions and put forth a list of demands and solutions in order for the government to solve the current political and theological crises. Ganji, Kadivar, and Soroush were three of the five signatories of that letter. Publication of that letter was interpreted by some observers as sign of unity among prominent Iranian intellectuals.

Since the publication of that letter, Kadivar spoke at a number of venues in which, according to Ganji, he tried to distance himself from the content and the signatories of that letter. During an interview with BBC Persian service, Kadivar said that he even had problems with the very title of the letter which read, “Statement by Religious Intellectuals.” He said that Jaras, a Green Movement website and where the letter was first published, chose that title and he was opposed to it from the beginning.”

Kayhan, a pro-government newspaper, poked fun at this division among such prominent dissidents and celebrated their rhetorical war. Kayhan, fully aware that the Green Movement does not have a centralized and official leadership, attacks those dissidents with ties to opposition figures, Mir Hossen Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, frequently to demonstrate large cleavages in what it calls a fragmented and defeated opposition movement.