Islam and Rationality
When fatwās turn on science – 2
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...
When fatwās turn on science – 1
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...
Mohammed Arkoun on the Golden Age and Beyond – 2
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,...
Mohammed Arkoun on the Golden Age and Beyond – 1
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...
On the Islamic religious mindset
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,...
Islam in History
Redefining Islam in Comparative Religion – 2
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...
Redefining Islam in Comparative Religion – 1
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...
Islam, the Arabs and civilization
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:...
Was our past history a happy one?
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...
Problems in Arab Muslim historiography – 2
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...
Salafist Discourse
The Nahda equation – between the past and the present
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 mechanisms of religious discourse according to Abu Zayd
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 15 Characteristics of Salafist Discourse
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...
Abū Zayd on the intellectual premises of religious discourse
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...
Terrorism is a crisis of religion
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...
Ethical Issues
Compassion in light of the doctrine of Al-Walā’ wal-Barā’
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...
Towards the criminalisation of Takfīr – 2
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...
Towards the criminalisation of Takfīr – 1
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...
Letters from London: Al-Turabi and western civilisation – 2
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...
Letters from London: Al-Turabi and western civilisation – 1
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...
Islamism
Problems in the ‘Arab Renaissance’ – 2
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...
The Utopia of Muslim world dominion
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...
Is Islam the reason for Muslim backwardness? (Part 2)
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...
Is Islam the reason for Muslim backwardness? (Part 1)
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...
Why do science faculties in the Arab world create terrorists?
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...
Religious Reform
Mosques of Mischief – 2
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...
Mosques of Mischief – 1
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...
Can Muslim liberals renew Islam?
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...
Reform: a discourse of intellectuals or a rehabilitation?
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...
On reviving the religious discourse
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...
The Doctrinal Dimension
The ethical damage from Madīnan Islam
When attempting to understand the phenomenon of terrorism, the important thing is not merely to understand the forms in which it manifests itself – but...
When will Muhammad’s nation free itself from its sacralised myths?
Our Islamic Arab nation possesses a number of myths which occupy a position of sanctity – myths such as the beard, the niqāb and the...
The concept of a ‘religious police’
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...
The contest of tafkīr and takfīr
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...
Islam’s contradictory God
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...
The Scriptural Dimension
The Qur’ānic text – Hypothesis 1 (Part 2)
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?...
The Qur’ānic text – Hypothesis 1 (Part 1)
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...
Warfare in the Qur’ān
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...
Five hypotheses about the Qur’ānic text
“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...
The collation and burning of the Qur’ān text
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...