Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour, raised in Iran, studied at Queen Mary College London, the London School of Economics and the Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran. He has been editor of several cultural, religious and political magazines, a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge and most recently a lecturer at the Islamic College for Advanced Studies in London. His latest book, Muslim Identity in the 21st Century, was published in London in 2001.

Recent articles

Islamic and Western governments share a concern to define just behaviour and just government. But the advocacy of universal human rights by secular democracies challenges the idea of basing social order on religious principle. In a discussion co-hosted by the Iranian government and London’s Goethe Institute, two respected scholars debate the tensions between – and within –their different conceptions of social justice.

The discussion at London’s Goethe Institute between Heiner Bielefeldt and Mohammad Saeed Bahmanpour on Islam, human rights, and social justice was followed by a vigorous debate. How does Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ argument measure up to the experience of Sudan, Turkey and Iran? Is the application of sharia law in modern states realistic or desirable? And is secularism a lived reality or a social ideal?