Mohsen Kadivar is a Muslim scholar, an Iranian dissident who has been in exile since 2008, and visiting professor of Islamic studies at Duke University (Durham, North Carolina, US). Born in 1959 in Iran, he studied at the Islamic seminary at Qom earning a certificate of Ijtihad (highest degree in Islamic religious tradition). He recieved his PhD in Islamic Philosophy and Theology from Tarbiate Modarress University in Tehran. His main intellectual interests and topics of publication include: human rights and democracy in Islam, classical and modern Shi’a theology and legal theories, Shi’a political thought, classical Islamic philosophy, and modern Qur’anic studies. Kadivar has published eight books as sole author, and seven more as co-author and editor in Persian and Arabic.