Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari

Shabestari even suggests that there has been a divine providence for a separation of religious values and secular realities: In his book, Naghdi Bar Ghera'at e Rasmi az Din (A Critique of the Official Reading of Religion, December, 2000) Shabestari pursues his critique of religious absolutism as hermeneutically naive and realistically unworkable. Also, he launches a major defense of modern concepts of individualism, democracy, and human rights, although they have not been articulated as such in Islamic sources.

Since the early 1990s, he has been increasingly active in publishing articles in liberal daily papers and magazines in which he argues for a new, more critical approach to religion.

Shabestari was a full professor of Islamic philosophy at the University of Tehran from 1985-2006, where he also taught comparative religion and theology. He regularly organized international conferences on the theme of Christian-Muslim dialogue.

He was also Imam of Islamic Centre Hamburg during the late Pahlavi era, between 1970 and 1978.

From 1970-1978, Shabestari served as director of the Shiite Islamic Center in the Imam Ali Mosque in Hamburg, Germany. He followed in this position Mohammad Beheshti (who was to become one of the main architects of the Islamic revolution of Iran) and was later succeeded in this position by future president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mohammad Khatami.

In the spirit of the political Shia in 1960s and 1970s Iran, Shabestari also felt closely associated with the thinking of religious intellectuals such as Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Ali Shariati, as well as the politically motivated cleric Morteza Motahhari.

Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari (Persian: محمد مجتهد شبستری; born 1936 in Shabestar, Iran) is an Iranian philosopher, theologian, hermeneutist and former professor at University of Tehran. He is noted for his idea that "religion-in-itself" is perfect, but not all-encompassing, i.e. it does not possess the answer to every question in life. Formerly a political activist and MP, he retired himself from politics in 1984.