a government of checks and balances to compensate for the weaknesses of human nature. Soroush's political philosophy, as well, remains close to the heart of the liberal tradition, ever championing the basic values of reason, liberty, freedom, and democracy. They are perceived as "primary values," as independent virtues, not handmaidens of political maxims and religious dogma. Soroush entwines these basic values and beliefs in a rich tapestry of Islamic primary sources, literature, and poetry. Religious democracy Soroush introduced his own definition of the term religious democracy which is now a topic in contemporary Iranian philosophy and means that the values of religion play a role in the public arena in a society populated by religious people. Religious democracy falls within the framework of modern rationality and has identifiable elements. It is in this way that we have a plurality of democracies in the international community. "Religious democracy" is a subject of intense research in Iranian intellectual circles. Democracy where coincides with certain things, it can be secular or religious. Hence, what alters the hue and color of democracy is a society's specific characteristics and elements. Religious democracy is an example of how democratic values can exist in a different cultural elaboration than what is usually known before. But, in a secular society, some other characteristic is deemed important and focused on, and that becomes the basis for democracy. In fact relativistic liberalism and democracy are not identical since democracy is not violated when a faith is embraced, it is violated when a particular belief is imposed or disbelief is punished. We do not have one democracy but many democracies in history. We have a plurality of democracies in the international community. What emerged was that a democracy prevailed in different eras depending on the conditions of the time. Reception In 2008, in an online open poll, Soroush was voted the 7th-most intellectual person in the world on the list of Top 100 Public Intellectuals by Prospect magazine (UK) and Foreign Policy (United States). Due to Sorush's prominence in the religious intellectual movement, he has been called "the Luther of Islam" by the media, a title he disputes as he argues his agenda is fundamentally divergent from that of Martin Luther's. Criticism and attacks Soroush's "postmodern" ideas on epistemology and hermeneutics has been criticized from a "traditional" Shi'i standpoint by the philosopher Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli. Soroush's ideas have met with strong