Progressive, Enlightened Voices from the Arab World
The youth should deepen their reading and culture and at the same time subject all they read and hear to critical evaluation and the application...
With the defeat of the culturally backward Ottoman state in the First World War Arabic Islamic societies began their difficult, fitful attempts at awakening and...
One of the negative aspects of confusing the invasion of imperialism with modern civilisation is the emergence of a narrow barrier between ourselves and humanistic...
The ability to think logically, and thus maintain a logical intellectual productiveness capable of altering reality in a direction beneficial to mankind and his society,...
The failure to tolerate the legitimacy of denominational difference has led political authorities to engage in acts of expulsion, marginalisation, confinement and distortion, in acts...
What is the purpose of the division of the Qur'an into Meccan and Medinan suras? Is this a matter of geography, of the place where...
If we examine the condition of most Arab Islamic societies at the present day we find that the gap between theory and application, between words...
The Qur'an, as a civilisational text, intended to turn the Arabs from oral communities to literate communities. But the collective discourse of these communities expressed...
The image of Orientalism has become tarnished in the Arab world. Yet European scholars, whether they were Orientalists or not, applied the same scientific methodology...
The strange and fantastic tale of the Isra' and the Mi'raj is one that is very similar to the tales and legends of the Thousand...
In the first part of this essay we presented the main roots that led to the emergence of extremism and terrorism not being attributed to...
Of all the problems that the Islamist textualist trend faces with respect to modernity, one of the most thorny is their constant systematic recourse to...
The world has got it wrong in analyzing the causes of its emergence and both qualitative and quantitative expansion. Any in-depth analysis of the hundreds...
ISIS has invented nothing for it to be qualified in any sense as ‘sectarian’. Other than its extreme brutality, this group is simply applying to...
Merely tapping on the shoulders of political and religious leaders in the Muslim world and claiming that what is happening now has nothing to do...
The fifth verse of the Sūrat al-Tawba is considered to be the verse that presents the most problems in understanding the thinking on Jihad in...
The lack of interest in the outside world, and exaggerated admiration for the image of one’s august self is a symptom of narcissistic affliction. The...
In 2015 the Carnegie Center for the Middle East published a study entitled Market for Jihad: Radicalization in Tunisia, by the researchers Georges Fahmi and...
The predominant Islamic discourse is not suitable to the nature of knowledge and the challenges of contemporary life. It is, instead, a discourse that lies...
Neither in the Qur'an nor in the mutawatir hadith is there any mention of a this-wordly punishment for one who apostatises from his faith. The...
The social component and society's culture that drives it play a great role in the building of a contemporary civilisation. Financial resources from oil may...
Democracy is a social right for societies who know how to deal with it and understand its laws. But in these societies democracy – much...
In these current circumstances in which the argument of the Islamic caliphate has come to the fore, we may usefully cast our minds back to...
It is evident that the violent ideology - the best examples being the army of the Ikhwan, Juhayman and ISIS - didn't just fall from...
Islamists have a curious tendency to write off alternative interpretations to theirs as constituting evidence of 'Isrā’īliyāt'. They argue that the purpose of these is...
Reform is the realization of a radical upheaval. It means the change of mindsets and the cultural frames through which the world is perceived. A...
Among us, the insignificant has become great, while the great is laid low, defeat has become victory, the means has become the end, the ignorant...
‘Modernization from within’ is simply counter-productive and as part of the process of reforming Islam is an epistemological impossibility. Contemporary religious studies have been formed...
The reform of Islam today is both essential and possible; what is lacking is political courage. It is true that the age of the religious...
One of the consequences of the absence of the human dimension among the exponents of the religious discourse is that our societies are placed at...
