Mohammed Arkoun is one of the Muslim world's foremost thinkers. His efforts to liberate Islamic history from dogmatic constructs have led him to a radical review of traditional history. Drawing on a combination of pertinent disciplines ? history, sociology, psychology and anthropology ? his approach subjects every system of belief and non-belief, every tradition of exegesis, theology and jurisprudence to a critique aimed at liberating reason from the grip of dogmatic postulates. By treating Islam as a religion as well as (...) a time-honoured tradition of thought, Arkoun's work aims at overcoming the limitations of descriptive, narrative and chronological modes in history by recommending that the entire development of Islamic thought ? from Quranic to present-day fundamentalist discourses ? be subjected to a critical analysis guided by these categories. The expected outcome of such a strategy is an emancipated political reason working hand in hand with a truly creative imagination for a radical re-construction of mind and society in the contemporary Muslim world. (shrink)

Rev. ed. of: Contribution a l'etude de l'humanisme arabe au IVe/Xe siecle. 1970.

In a sense it is easier to talk about human unity in the biological sciences than from the perspective of the human and social sciences, especially as these have developed over the last thirty years. If paleontology, biology and neurology make it possible to emphasize physical constants evident for the entire human race, to the contrary it seems impossible to find similar unity in the social systems and the cultural values that define the radical identity of a group, a community (...) or a nation. Apartheid, racism, intolerance and prejudices everywhere express differences that most frequently derive from social imagination but that function no less strongly as determining forces for human cultural production and historical conduct. (shrink)

Modernity has been working since the sixteenth century in western Europe at what Mr. Gauchet has described as the “exit from religion,” adding that Christianity alone has been able to gain the historical position of “the religion of the exit from religion.” It is indeed the case that the other great religions have not felt, as Christianity has, the intellectual, political and legal necessity to revise their theological foundations radically. Islam in particular has not only been shielded from the fundamental (...) criticisms of intellectual and scientific modernity, but the managers of the sacred have formed alliances with nationalist movements engaged in the anti-colonialist struggle to legitimize wars of liberation and post-independence one-party states. It is true that Islam's mechanisms of state control first came into play in the period of prose-lytism of the new religion, chiefly between 622 and 632; but state control turned into the complete takeover of the irreducible autonomy of the religious domain (the spiritual sphere) by all the states that emerged after the 1920s (Ataturk's radical experiment) and even more so after the post-1945 liberations. (shrink)

Résumé Le texte propose une relecture historique et anthropologique de l’espace méditerranéen par delà tous les cadres de pensée et d’action qui ont commandé son histoire notamment depuis l’émergence de l’islam comme force conquérante. Les théologies politiques de l’islam et du christianisme ont fonctionné comme des idéologies de légitimation des conquêtes par l’islam entre 632-1258, puis 1453-1830 environ. La rivalité se poursuit de nos jours avec les deux grandes figures symboliques de la lutte entre le Bien et le Mal : (...) JIHÂD versus McWORLD. Peu d’analyses archéologiques des religions, puis de la modernité comme idéologies de légitimation ont été proposées. Cet essai s’inscrit dans cette perspective rendue indispensable par le 11/9/O1 et les ripostes vengeresses de la Sainte Alliance contre la barbarie terroriste… Il s’agit de renforcer intellectuellement la quête d’un horizon de sens, d’espérance et d’action pour entrer enfin dans l’ère d’une histoire solidaire des peuples par delà les États puissants et riches peu compréhensifs à l’égard des sociétés sous-développées ou riches, mais historiquement décalées par rapport à la modernité. (shrink)

Savant à la pensée profonde, Mohammed Arkoun (1928-2010) était également un intellectuel engagé. Son analyse serrée des processus à l'oeuvre dans l'islam d'hier était indissociable de ses appels répétés à une réforme des sociétés islamiques contemporaines. Il n'a cessé de porter ce message dans les divers colloques où il était convié, y compris là où l'on ne s'attendrait guère à croiser un islamologue : à un congrès de psychanalystes lacaniens, dans des conférences sur la condition féminine... Il avait choisi de (...) consacrer les dernières années de sa vie à retravailler les textes issus de ces rencontres, qui sont ici publiés dans leur version définitive. Traitant de la nécessité de la réforme, voire de la "subversion" de l'islam, de l'ouverture lacanienne à la parole et à la "raison émergente", de la condition féminine en islam ou encore du rapprochement entre sunnites et shî'ites, ils montrent combien la pensée de Mohammed Arkoun est plus que jamais féconde pour penser notre époque. (shrink)

The starting point of the article is the archive, characterized as a query about the future, and Foucault’s call for a discourse that provides a dual articulation of the history of individuals on the subconscious of culture and the historicity of the latter on individual subconsciousness. The archive has not been read as such either by exponents of the Islamic tradition or by modern scholarship in the Orientalist tradition, thus the first ambitious task of applied Islamology is to deconstructively analyse (...) the foundational discourse of an imaginary that, since the Middle Ages, has opposed Arab-Islamic consciousness to a Jewish and Christian consciousness. Applied Islamology also explores the ‘universal values’ that were invented in the West and then seen as transferable to all cultures worldwide. The public is deprived of the conceptual tools necessary to explore both this imaginary and the West’s ‘universal’ values. The social frameworks of knowledge regarding Islamic studies are in operation as much in the West as in Muslim contexts. (shrink)

— Y.K. Karaosmanoglu: "General, this party has no doctrine...".— Mustafa Kemal: "Of course it hasn't, my son; if we had a doctrine, we would paralyze the movement”.The many studies, articles, essays, conferences and seminars dedicated to the personality and the work of Mustafa Kemal are still far from having exhausted an area of knowledge with many facets, a historical reality with unending extensions. By studying the apologetic literature about the civilizing hero and a historiography which is limited to the relatively (...) neutral description of the rich career of an individual, it can be noted that there are very few writings inspired by the desire not only to analyze, to explain and to understand but also to think through the Kemalist revolution. (shrink)

This paper proposes a historical and anthropological re-reading of the Mediterranean arena over and above all the lines of thought and action that have directed its history, in particular since Islam’s emergence as a conquering force. The political theologies of Islam and Christianity have operated as ideologies legitimating Islam’s conquests between 632 and 1258, then 1453-1830 or thereabouts. Rivalry continues today, with the two great symbolic figures of the struggle between Good and Evil: JIHÂD versus McWORLD. Few archeological analyses of (...) religions, then modernity, as legitimating ideologies have been offered. This essay takes its place in this perspective, which has been made indispensable by 9/11 and the vengeful reactions of the Holy Alliance against terrorist barbarity. Its aim is to strengthen intellectually the quest for a horizon of meaning, hope and action in order finally to enter an era of history where there is solidarity with peoples beyond the powerful wealthy states, which show little understanding for societies, whether rich or underdeveloped, that are historically out of phase with modernity. (shrink)