The crux of the relationship between Islam and its journey to modernity, between the orthopraxy of this religion, with its judicial rules (shari’a) and the creation of democratic and pluralist systems, will soon become apparent.
Ranging from the Egyptian Constitution to civil law, much must be rewritten, from family law to the policies needed to protect the rights of women. All of these issues are already on the agenda. Work can but start again from here to address the controversial issues that have fueled the work discusses here.
I featured an “intellectual chart” of the changes in Islam and the representatives of critical thought within the Muslim word, all against the backdrop of the uprisings in Arab countries and tragic repression in Iran. We are well-aware that we are exposing ourselves to as much criticism with the names we have allowed ourselves to include as with those we have excluded. Here we are featuring a number of biographies of these philosophers, as well as Fred Dallmayr’s essay on two great philosophers, Nasr Abu-Zayd and Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, both of whom died this past year.
Our work in these past few years has brought us into contact with ideas, people, places, and points of view of extraordinary interest. We have observed the “effort to change” in motion, from Tehran to Casablanca, each with different situations, varying degrees of problems, repression and imprisonment, denied passports, threats from extremists, as well as at last some success. Here we wish to attribute names to this success, as well as to share a little of what we have experienced first-hand, providing the identities of many dynamic and committed intellectuals with promising futures still ahead of them. We also print the names of their teachers and those who have recently died, as well as those from past decades who left wonderful legacies of ideas.
After a lengthy exile far from his homeland of Egypt, Nasr Abu Zayd left us with an unfinished project involving the historical reinterpretation of the Koran, which he loved and recited as an observant Muslim, having spent his entire life in the shadow of accusations of apostasy. This is the painful label imposed on many representatives of the various reformist critical traditions that are more or less secular (never anti-religious), more or less religious, of a vast, varied extremely pluralist and conflicting mosaic that exists beyond the nebulous idea that is the “changing Muslim world” we are starting to discuss today.
What relations do these people have with the current changes in the Arab world? The uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, in Libya and Syria are not the result of liberal Islamic reformism or their hermeneutically innovative theories, nor are they the result of some secular anti-religious ideology. They are the consequence of materially unsustainable situations and a desire to be free from authoritarian, oppressive, cruel, and disappointing regimes.
With the exception of a few important public and political personalities (such as the Persian Shiites Khatami and Soroush, or Nobel Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi, now part of the opposition against the theocratic Iranian regime), none of these theorists have been directly called upon to assume public roles.
The protests had no religious characteristics, and yet it is true that the regime used the Islamist opposition, persecuting it alongside secular liberals, to justify restrictions to political freedom.
Now the future leaders of these countries will have to deal with societies with a Muslim majority, where the Turkish experience of lessening Kemalist secularism to bring politics and religion closer together is being observed with interest by all Arab countries.
Hence the crux of this relationship between Islam and its journey to modernity, between the orthopraxy of this religion, with its judicial rules (shari’a) and the creation of democratic and pluralist systems, will soon become apparent.
Ranging from the Egyptian Constitution to civil law, much must be rewritten, from family law to the policies needed to protect the rights of women. All of these issues are already on the agenda. Work can but start again from here to address the controversial issues that have fueled the work of the authors we are here discussing.
Our chart, which will be published in full in the course of the coming months, begins immediately with al-Jabri, Abu Zayd, Talbi, Filali-Ansary, and Soroush. We have restricted historical selection to quite recent times with four great men who died recently (al-Jabri, Arkoun, Abu Zayd, Zakariyya) and two more distant in time, but greatly influential (Taha, Abderraziq).
However, Muslim reformism’s history is far older and did not appear suddenly (as Massimo Campanini insists in his essays), like Minerva from Jupiter’s head.
Without revisiting the first centuries of Mu’tazilah and the golden age of Averroes (Ibn Rushd), it is necessary to at least mention the late 19th century’s so-called Arab modernism, Islah or Nahda, whose most important representative was probably the Persian Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. The names of deceased teachers, a Moroccan, an Algerian, three Egyptians and a Sudanese, already reveal the main issues to be addressed in a discussion of reform: a critique of Islamic heritage (turath) and its changes, the search for the reasons of the decadence that followed the golden age of Muslim hegemony, with emphasis on the need to separate religion from politics (secularists such as Arkoun), and on political historical critique (Abderraziq, al-Jabri) and the need to reopen the door of the hermeneutics of the Koran (Taha, Abu Zayd).
The paths followed in the Arab and Muslim world happened both because of internal impetus and because of external solicitation. Relations with Europe and America have experienced century-long phases of conflict, and then colonialism with its consequent aftermath, but these experiences also fueled a very intense exchange with the outer world. There is hence an Islamic reformism that welcomes the challenge of competition and dialogue with the West, that practices a dialogue with Western liberalism, from Locke to Popper, albeit without renouncing the idea of a religiously inspired democracy. (Soroush) There are also those who today observe the maturing of another source of Islam’s adaptation and change: the immigration of Muslims to democratic European countries (the Euro-Islam of secularist Bassam Tibi and the theory of “relocation” of religious reformist Tariq Ramadan, figures who are very different and in conflict with one another, and yet all part of the mosaic).
One cannot sufficiently emphasize the extent to which the expression “Muslim world” can be deceptive, and yet it is one we cannot do without. One must never forget that Islam itself is a complex weave of sects and the Muslim reformism we are debating through the philosophers in this chart represents an equally vast number of paths
Our work in these past few years has brought us into contact with ideas, people, places, and points of view of extraordinary interest. We have observed the “effort to change” in motion, from Tehran to Casablanca, each with different situations, varying degrees of problems, repression and imprisonment, denied passports, threats from extremists, as well as at last some success. Here we wish to attribute names to this success, as well as to share a little of what we have experienced first-hand, providing the identities of many dynamic and committed intellectuals with promising futures still ahead of them. We also print the names of their teachers and those who have recently died, as well as those from past decades who left wonderful legacies of ideas.
After a lengthy exile far from his homeland of Egypt, Nasr Abu Zayd left us with an unfinished project involving the historical reinterpretation of the Koran, which he loved and recited as an observant Muslim, having spent his entire life in the shadow of accusations of apostasy. This is the painful label imposed on many representatives of the various reformist critical traditions that are more or less secular (never anti-religious), more or less religious, of a vast, varied extremely pluralist and conflicting mosaic that exists beyond the nebulous idea that is the “changing Muslim world” we are starting to discuss today.
What relations do these people have with the current changes in the Arab world? The uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, in Libya and Syria are not the result of liberal Islamic reformism or their hermeneutically innovative theories, nor are they the result of some secular anti-religious ideology. They are the consequence of materially unsustainable situations and a desire to be free from authoritarian, oppressive, cruel, and disappointing regimes.
With the exception of a few important public and political personalities (such as the Persian Shiites Khatami and Soroush, or Nobel Prize Winner Shirin Ebadi, now part of the opposition against the theocratic Iranian regime), none of these theorists have been directly called upon to assume public roles.
The protests had no religious characteristics, and yet it is true that the regime used the Islamist opposition, persecuting it alongside secular liberals, to justify restrictions to political freedom.
Now the future leaders of these countries will have to deal with societies with a Muslim majority, where the Turkish experience of lessening Kemalist secularism to bring politics and religion closer together is being observed with interest by all Arab countries.
Hence the crux of this relationship between Islam and its journey to modernity, between the orthopraxy of this religion, with its judicial rules (shari’a) and the creation of democratic and pluralist systems, will soon become apparent.
Ranging from the Egyptian Constitution to civil law, much must be rewritten, from family law to the policies needed to protect the rights of women. All of these issues are already on the agenda. Work can but start again from here to address the controversial issues that have fueled the work of the authors we are here discussing.
Our chart, which will be published in full in the course of the coming months, begins immediately with al-Jabri, Abu Zayd, Talbi, Filali-Ansary, and Soroush. We have restricted historical selection to quite recent times with four great men who died recently (al-Jabri, Arkoun, Abu Zayd, Zakariyya) and two more distant in time, but greatly influential (Taha, Abderraziq).
However, Muslim reformism’s history is far older and did not appear suddenly (as Massimo Campanini insists in his essays), like Minerva from Jupiter’s head.
Without revisiting the first centuries of Mu’tazilah and the golden age of Averroes (Ibn Rushd), it is necessary to at least mention the late 19th century’s so-called Arab modernism, Islah or Nahda, whose most important representative was probably the Persian Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. The names of deceased teachers, a Moroccan, an Algerian, three Egyptians and a Sudanese, already reveal the main issues to be addressed in a discussion of reform: a critique of Islamic heritage (turath) and its changes, the search for the reasons of the decadence that followed the golden age of Muslim hegemony, with emphasis on the need to separate religion from politics (secularists such as Arkoun), and on political historical critique (Abderraziq, al-Jabri) and the need to reopen the door of the hermeneutics of the Koran (Taha, Abu Zayd).
The paths followed in the Arab and Muslim world happened both because of internal impetus and because of external solicitation. Relations with Europe and America have experienced century-long phases of conflict, and then colonialism with its consequent aftermath, but these experiences also fueled a very intense exchange with the outer world. There is hence an Islamic reformism that welcomes the challenge of competition and dialogue with the West, that practices a dialogue with Western liberalism, from Locke to Popper, albeit without renouncing the idea of a religiously inspired democracy. (Soroush) There are also those who today observe the maturing of another source of Islam’s adaptation and change: the immigration of Muslims to democratic European countries (the Euro-Islam of secularist Bassam Tibi and the theory of “relocation” of religious reformist Tariq Ramadan, figures who are very different and in conflict with one another, and yet all part of the mosaic).
One cannot sufficiently emphasize the extent to which the expression “Muslim world” can be deceptive, and yet it is one we cannot do without. One must never forget that Islam itself is a complex weave of sects and the Muslim reformism we are debating through the philosophers in this chart represents an equally vast number of paths
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