Abdulkarim Soroush is now fifty-six. In 1995, an American journalist, Robin Wright from the Los Angeles Times, called him "The Luther of Islam".

Not quite right: Soroush did not give birth to an independent force of politics and faith as Martin Luther did. In Germany's sixteenth century, Luther set Protestantism in motion, whose reception spread fast, with the shock felt not only in the body of the Church, but over all Europe.

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