Mohammed Hashas

Taha Abderrahmane's trusteeship paradigm: spiritual modernity and the Islamic contribution to the formation of a renewed universal civilization of Ethos

This paper synthetically introduces “trusteeship paradigm” of Taha Abderrahmane (b. 1944), a leading philosopher of language, logic, ethics and metaphysics in the Arab-Islamic world. The core of his argument is that the four entities of revelation, reason, ethics and doing (or practice) are neither separable nor antagonistic to each other in the Islamic philosophy he aims at re-grounding; their centripetal force is essentially ethical. Islamic philosophy is primarily ethical. It is only this ethical force that can regenerate the politico-philosophical awakening of the Arab-Islamic world in particular, and can contribute to the formation of a pluralist civilization of ethos in general. Otherwise put, Abderrahmane envisions an ontological-epistemological revisionary revolution in the Arab-Islamic tradition to overcome what may be referred to as “classical dichotomous thought” that dominates some classical and contemporary Islamic thinking as well as much of the Greek heritage and Western modern thought. This ethical revolution is summarized in what he has developed as trusteeship paradigm (al-iʾtimāniyyah) or trusteeship critique (al-naqd al-iʾtimānī), a paradigm the heart of which is a theory of ethics that overcomes dichotomies like religion vs. politics, divine vs. secular, physical vs. metaphysical.

Abdolkarim Soroush: The Neo-Muʿtazilite that Buries Classical Islamic Political Theology in Defence of Religious Democracy and Pluralism

The “search for beauty in Islam” seems to be occupying the attention of scholars “within” and “without” this faith.1 Muslim majority societies have been the most concerned with such a search, especially for the last two centuries characterized by a turbulent encounter with (Western) modernity, because they have experienced the ugliness that replaces such a beauty, ugliness that deprives them of liberty, equality, and social justice. As notable examples, the Islamic

Introduction-Critique and Change: Al-Jabri in Contemporary Arab Thought

The editors raise a number of points in their introduction of this first volume dedicated to the Moroccan philosopher Mohammed Abed al-Jabri . First, they start with underlining the ethical predicament that the Arab world and the regional and international powers face in dealing with Arab issues. They situate the so-called “Arab Spring,” or Arab revolts, in a context of what they refer to as global mobile injustice. They critique the invisibility of Arab intellectual productions in “Western” scholarship that deals with Arab political affairs; they argue that a modern Arab political philosophy exists and deserves attention. Second, they situate al-Jabri in the post-1967 Arab intellectual tradition, as a second wave of Arab Renaissance (naḥda), and refer to him as one of its most important figures, through his magnum opus Critique of Arab Reason , which seeks reform from within. Third, they stop at some of the major intellectual advances that al-Jabri has made to Arab-Islamic modern political theory, and how his concepts are so relevant to current politics and thought.

The Arab Possible State: From al-Tahtawi to al-Jabri

Based on al-Jabri’s study of Arab–Islamic intellectual history, this chapter argues that a modern Arab State is possible from within the Arab–Islamic tradition, despite the various obstacles encountering its realization, lately manifested in the disappointments of the so-called Arab Spring of 2010. After presenting three Arab political discourse levels that preceded al-Jabri’s time and thought since the nineteenth century, Hashas introduces three conditions that block the formation of such a state and form its threefold predicament , based on a synthetic reading of al-Jabri. This predicament is doubly internal but also external: (1) internal intellectual crisis and (2) internal political dictatorship, and (3) external “Western” hegemony. Against these three “oppressive sovereignties”, three “renewal strategies” are required: (1) an epistemological break, (2) democratization and pluralism from within and (3) regional awakening and union.

Reading Abdennour Bidar: New Pathways for European Islamic Thought

Abstract This article introduces the work of the young French Muslim philosopher Abdennour Bidar (b. 1971). It argues that Bidar’s work may be the first attempt that innovatively outlines a theoretical framework for European Islamic thought that is neither Eurocentric nor Islamocentric in the classical senses of the terms. Through a theosophic approach, 1 Bidar tries to put the two worldviews together in a genuine effort of a theologian-philosopher. I divide his project into three intellectual stages which correspond to his three basic concepts: Self-Islam, Islamic Existentialism, and Overcoming Religion.