Progressive, Enlightened Voices from the Arab World
Epidemics have ceased to plague the Islamic world thanks to Western science and colonial medicine, and this is another fact that we are hesitant to...
The act of takfīr (‘declaring someone a non-believer) represents one aspect of how the religious cleric oversteps the limitations of a religious fatwā and threatens...
This is the general outline of Arab thought in all its successive phases. Let us now get into some details. Arkoun sees that Arab intellectuals,...
I would like first of all to pose this question: how does Muhammad Arkoun view Arab Islamic thought? What is the general picture he paints...
It is perhaps an obvious point to make that the Islamic religious mind in general, through all its various historical phases, doctrinal reflections and affiliations,...
These facts about the history of religions help schools pupils and students understand the historical formation of religious phenomena. It blocks the road to blind...
Almost every religion is inhabited by fanaticism, which is the lawful offspring of a religious narcissism promulgated via slogans of greatness. People like us are...
In October 2022 I wrote an article entitled Freedom, China and Creativity on an issue that has long been raised, and is still being raised:...
Since the dawn of the caliphate, the faqīh has sat with the sultan, shaping our Islam for us, an Islam that Islamizes and excommunicates according...
In the first part of this essay we listed some problems inherent to the historical sources for early Islam. We now turn to some more...
Those who call for the return to the text via a return to the legacy of Arabic rhetoric in its “golden age” accuse the proponents...
The Egyptian thinker Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd argued that the mechanisms which govern the large part of religious discourse are the same, whether they manifest...
The term ‘Salafism’ is one of the more widely employed concepts in two arenas: the media and religion. Linguistically the term ‘Salaf’ refers to what...
There are some who claim that there is a difference between the extremist and moderate religious currents, while there is in fact no difference separating...
Before entering into discussions or debates about the particularities of religious discourse, we first have to establish whether the crisis of terrorism is at base...
The concept of charity and unconditional good deeds is inconsistent with the concept of charity and good deeds in the light of what is referred...
Extremist movements have become the military arm of the takfīr institutions, and they even pressure these institutions to grant them fatwās against their enemies. In...
In recent decades fatwās of takfīr (declaring others to be ‘infidels’) have proliferated, going beyond any reasonable limits and threatening both individuals and groups. Official...
In the first part of this article, I referred to the position of the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan, Hasan al-Turabi, towards Western...
In the eighties of the last century, the late Sudanese politician and diplomat ‘Alī Abū ‘Āqila Abūsan wrote a pamphlet entitled “Al-Turābī’s Letters and the...
The Arab sensitivity towards Western thought's focus on the ‘history of the West’ has led to a populist conception on a ‘West-centric bias’, and the...
While the civilized people on our planet are preoccupied with freedom, development, and the defense of human rights anywhere and everywhere, and with conducting more...
It seems that the cause for our backwardness (as concluded in Part 1 of this article) is the men of religion themselves and their opportunistic...
The question is a serious and important one, and also highly sensitive. But it is a question which must be posed forcefully now in all...
Terrorist acts are often seen as the work of the marginalized, the deviant and the untouchables who have failed to integrate into the prevailing social...
As things stand today you will find that the average Muslim knows nothing at all about the religion of his Christian fellow-citizen, while the Christian...
Anyone who attempts to heal the rift between the nation’s brothers usually makes a great effort to find a legitimate document supporting his position, and...
The question of renewing Islam has been the abiding preoccupation of many Arab Muslim thinkers since the 19th century, but the efforts of most of...
The West experienced its resurgence during the period of what has come to be known as the Renaissance, the period between the 14th and 16th...
Contemporary religious discourse manifests itself in three arenas: the educational, propagatory and legally prescriptive (fatwā) fields. In each of its faces (politically ideologized conservative traditional...
When attempting to understand the phenomenon of terrorism, the important thing is not merely to understand the forms in which it manifests itself – but...
Our Islamic Arab nation possesses a number of myths which occupy a position of sanctity – myths such as the beard, the niqāb and the...
No one disagrees about the talk of the domination of the Islamist phenomenon, and its hegemony over the political scene in all the various Arab...
There exists a contradiction between two broad, influential phenomena in societies and cultures: these are the phenomena of takfīr (‘excommunication’) and tafkīr (‘cogitation’), in that...
God in Islam: He is the One Creator, the Eternal, the Eternal, Who has neither a wife nor a son, He is not similar to...
Turning now to the level of content, the second question is: does the Qur’ān include all of the verses that were revealed to the Messenger?...
There are some preliminary questions that we encounter here, so we must decide on them putting to one side the ideological, political, or authoritarian employment...
The Qur’ānic text does not stint at calling for killing and fighting. Indeed in one of its verses (Qur’ān, II, 216) it states: ‘Warfare is...
“Islamic civilization... is a civilization of jurisprudence,” says al-Jābrī . However, Ayatollah Muḥammad ‘Alī al-Ṭabāṭabā’ī was perhaps more accurate when he said: “Islamic civilization is...
Not all of the Qur’ān was collated during the life of the Prophet. In fact the Qur’ān was originally not collated at all. Some believe...
