Islam, State, and Modernity: Mohammed Abed al-Jabri and the Future of the Arab World

332 Pages·2018·3.688 MB·English

by  Zaid Eyadat, Francesca M. Corrao, Mohammed Hashas (eds.)

ISLAM,
STATE,
AND
MODERNITY
Mohammed Abed al-Jabri and
the Future of the Arab World
With a foreword by ABDOU FILALI-ANSARI
MET EDITED BY ZAID EYADAT,
FRANCESCA M. CORRAO, AND
MOHAMMED HASHAS
Middle East
Today
Middle East Today
Series editors
Fawaz A. Gerges
Department of International Relations
London School of Economics
London
UK
Nader Hashemi
Center for Middle East Studies
University of Denver
Highlands Ranch
CO
USA
The Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, and
the US invasion and occupation of Iraq have dramatically altered the
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radicalism, democracy, human rights, and Islam as a political force in the
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Zaid Eyadat · Francesca M. Corrao
Mohammed Hashas
Editors
Islam, State,
and Modernity
Mohammed Abed al-Jabri
and the Future of the Arab World
Foreword by
Abdou Filali-Ansary
Editors
Zaid Eyadat Mohammed Hashas
University of Jordan LUISS Guido Carli
Amman, Jordan University of Rome
Rome, Italy
Francesca M. Corrao
LUISS Guido Carli
University of Rome
Rome, Italy
Middle East Today
ISBN 978-1-349-95155-0 ISBN 978-1-137-59760-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59760-1
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The essential interrelationship between thought as an instrument and
thought as content is an indisputable fact. If we take into account another
indisputable fact as well, which is that thought whether as an instrument
of thinking or ideas as the conceptual product itself, is always a consequence
of contact with the environment with which it interacts, especially the social
and cultural environment, and it is simple enough for us to recognize
the importance of this environment in the formation of thought, both as
instrument and as content, and thus, the importance of the particular
specificity of social and cultural environment in forming the specificity of
thought. Consequently, Arab thought, for instance, is Arab, not only because
of its being conceptions and views and theories that reflect the Arab reality,
or which expresses it in one form or another, but because it is also a result
of the method or way of thinking in which a number of givens contributed
to its formation, including the Arab reality itself and all the particular
phenomena relating to it.
Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, The Formation of Arab Reason
(1982; Center for Arab Unity Studies and I.B. Tauris, 2011).
To Arab philosophers and scholars who think, speak
and write in difficult times
To dedicated scholars who care about the well-being of this world
F
oreword
The Voice oF New AspirATioNs ANd GrANd NArrATiVes
According to Eugene Rogan, author of a recent history of the Arabs, the
recovery of sovereignty has been a major concern for the Arabs since an
Egyptian army lost a battle against Ottoman troops near Aleppo on 24
August 1516. This defeat, by “paving the way for the conquest of the
Arab lands by Ottoman Turks”,1 opened the way to a series of invad-
ers and colonizers who have dominated the Arab world for centuries.
The Ottomans were followed by various European powers, and it was
only around the middle of twentieth century that new, independent Arab
states emerged from what seemed a period of long hibernation.
The Moroccan philosopher Mohammed Abed al-Jabri (1935–2010)
belonged to the historical moment when national sovereignty was
thought to be back in hand and where full emancipation from exter-
nal domination seemed possible. Among the most urgent tasks that
needed to be addressed, the one which prevailed in the mind of al-Jabri
was about the Arab cultural heritage and its possible role in contempo-
rary societies. This brilliant and rich heritage, which enabled Arabs to
experience their common identity, needed extensive rethinking, a radi-
cal reappraisal of every aspect of life relevant to the shaping of the new,
future-bound collective identity.
One of the early challenges was that the heritage of high culture
that could be adopted for the definition of national identity could not
ix
x FOREWORD
be confined to any one of the newly created nation states. Most politi-
cal activists and intellectuals believed that these states were artificial units
and that the only real entity was the pan-Arab nation, “from the Ocean
to the Gulf”, that could claim classical Arabic as their language for for-
mal, cultured communication. Their main task was to overcome division
and bring about political and cultural unity at the earliest. Al-Jabri sub-
scribed entirely and wholeheartedly to this vision. He saw his political
activism within left-wing circles of the Moroccan nationalist movement
as part of the Arab struggle for their unity and the regaining of full sov-
ereignty. In fact, both as a militant of the nationalist movement and as
an academic, al-Jabri felt himself to be ready for the enormous task of
rethinking the Arab cultural heritage and its role in the present age.
He began by a rediscovery of two prominent intellectual figures from
the past: Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Rushd. Later, his work led him to engage
in one of his most ambitious intellectual projects, i.e. to entirely rewrite
the intellectual history of the Arabs. The idea was not to offer another
historical narrative or compilation about thinkers and writers of the past,
but to go much further, to submit or to engage with the heritage in criti-
cal ways, adopting the tools and questions that have come to the fore in
our time. His reading of the heritage was intended to go beyond the dis-
play of rich diversity and eye-catching expressions. He wanted to reach
out to the assumptions, rules and aims—implicit and explicit—that had
motivated various intellectual ventures of the past. The outcome of this
project was a series of four books under the overall title of naqd al-‘aql
al-‘arabī (Critique of Arab Reason), the first volume about the forma-
tion or genesis of Arab reason, the second about structures, the third
about its politics and a decade later he added a fourth on ethics. It is in
this series of books that he suggested the first of his famous triads: bayān
(rhetoric), ‘irfān (intuitive knowledge) and burhān (demonstration) as
being three different ideals that defined partially overlapping but inde-
pendent circles of thinkers and literati in the Arab past.
His “discovery” of Ibn Rushd (Averroès) had been a momentous turn
in his thought. Bringing such a medieval figure from learned and special-
ized circles into the light of public discussion enabled al-Jabri to achieve
one of his most desired goals, that of engaging the public in debates
about issues of rationality, tradition, religion and politics through critical
evaluation of the phases of classical history and open adhesion to, even
enthusiastic apology for, those who advocated demonstrative reason. He
could appeal to public opinion as his language was accessible to all those
FOREWORD xi
who could read a newspaper; it was almost devoid of technicalities and
carried messages that struck a chord in a wide spectrum of audiences.
Later, in his al-‘aql al-ssiyyāsī al-‘arabī (Arab Political Reason), he
proposed another set of three key concepts: qabīla (tribe), ghanīma
(booty) and ‘aqīda (creed) that helped make sense of political think-
ing and behaviour of Arabic-speaking peoples in the past. The first was
a short term for the group spirit or sense of collective identity, which
was mainly tribal in character and capable of driving actors on the politi-
cal scene; the second points to an economy where plundering and loot-
ing came to be seen as legitimate rewards for collective political action;
and the last refers to religious beliefs and their influence in motivating
political behaviour. The focus on the intricate action of the three forces
of Arab history took the narratives proposed by al-Jabri radically away
from apologetic discourses with their emphasis on “pure intentionality”
and strictly religious motivations to the exclusion of social and economic
forces. Al-Jabri also turned his attention in the later part of his career
to the most sacred part of the Arab-Islamic heritage, the Qur’ān, offer-
ing another grand narrative where he attempted to bring a historical per-
spective to the study of the scriptures, but managing at the same time to
show respect for the sacred as conceived by most Muslim audiences.
What will be remembered about al-Jabri above all is his outspoken
attitude, his “daring” to challenge more than one view held as self-evi-
dent. One of them is the distinction between scholarly, erudite discourse
and essays aimed at wider audiences. He wrote on subjects usually con-
sidered as the preserve of specialists in ways that belong to the op-ed
style of journalism. In this way, he brought topics from the academic
arena to the public sphere. This was bitterly criticized by many of his
colleagues, who saw in his popular writings a retreat from academic rig-
our. The other is the assumption, widely held in Arab educated circles,
that the cultural florescence of the medieval Muslim West (the Maghreb
and Al-Andalus) was an echo of what had taken place in the Muslim
East, a late re-enactment or imitation of the high culture of the East.
Contrary to this view, he clearly stated that it was in the Muslim West
that the ideal of rational demonstration (burhān) emerged, which was
later adopted in European learned institutions and led to the birth of
modern science and philosophy. At the same time, the Muslim East was
“bewitched” by the ideal of mystical knowledge (‘irfān) and turned its
back on reason and rationality. This raised a storm of protest and refuta-
tions from intellectuals in the East, and intensified controversies which