Book: Where Is Contemporary Islamic Thought

186 pages

• Arkoun within the lineage of the Enlighteners
• The Arab crisis is tied to entering the age
• A horizon of fragility and uncertainty
• The primacy of modern human rights
• A return to foundational Islam is rejected
• The tension between Islam and the West continues
• The three preliminary questions
• Myth gives meaning
• Fundamentalism as forced conversion
• The imperative “say” has a tripartite communicative structure
• The first Islam was an eruptive revolution
• Juristic Islam is largely expansionist
• Qur’anic Islam is free belief
• Qur’anic Islam is a covenantal relationship
• Later Islam is submission to authority
• Islam turned into an ideology of power
• Islam within society historically
• Islam in Europe is tied to integration and law
• Islam in Europe raises multiple questions
• Islam means loving obedience
• Islamism as a protest identity
• Media and politics amplify the image of Islam
• Ideology threatens scientific research
• Orientalism and Islamic discourses confirm essentialism
• Colonialism reshaped local politics
• The transition to book societies
• Media and political simplification weakens truth
• Liberation begins from within
• Linguistic analysis is a theoretical way out
• Material transformation dismantles traditional morality
• Tradition is studied through linguistic and historical methods
• Decline is linked to the suspension of ijtihad
• Literal translation fails
• Political and religious rigidity are similar
• Rigidity as the preservation of purity
• Tolerance is a political and social necessity
• Tolerance requires individual will and the state
• Diagnosis goes beyond outward symptoms
• Modern civil contracting has historically been unknown in Islamic societies
• European education erased religion and cultures
• Hagiographic education entrenches sectarianism
• Religious education needs anthropological openness
• French education affects the conception of Islam
• Education and the university fuel misunderstanding
• Sacralization elevates the text into the sacred
• Ritual repetition consolidates discourse
• Stalled development has multiple causes
• Reductionist development excludes people
• Development needs freedom of participation
• Modern revolutions reorganize legitimacy
• The European secular revolution overthrew clerical legitimacy
• Technological modernity increases the debt of meaning
• Modernity between liberation and domination
• Modernity requires clearing historical blockages
• Modernity has moved beyond material excess
• Modernity is dominated by pragmatism
• Modernity emerged historically in Europe
• Islamic movements capitalize on remaining energy
• Islamic movements express the social imaginary
• Islamic movements are protest movements
• Fanatical movements are shaped by context
• In the religious view, rights come from revelation
• Moral judgment is an neglected question
• Imposed solutions produce backlash
• Superstition weakens resolve
• Contemporary Islamic discourse is widespread
• Islamic discourse is a reaction to modernity
• Islamic discourse rests on fixed presuppositions
• Violent discourse dominates today
• Eschatological salvation in Qur’anic discourse
• Confusing Islamic and Islamist is a mistake
• External support strengthens religious protest
• The modern nation-state highlights the need for tolerance
• The nation-state feeds this view
• The centralized state dominates after independence
• The state is based on popular will
• Religion as an ideological tool of regimes
• Religion alone does not explain fanaticism
• Religious authority legitimizes rule
• The person includes multiple dimensions
• The modern phenomenon is not an Islamic exception
• Arabic is an essential language for intellectual revival
• Islamic reason and Arab reason are different
• Technocratic reason reduces the human being
• Unused traditional rationality
• The cause may be spiritual and worldly
• Exclusionary secularism excludes religion
• Secularism is a subject that has not been thought through enough
• Open secularization preserves the spiritual dimension
• European positive secularization is excessive
• Secularization needs a local path
• Secularization is institutional separation, not spiritual separation
• The human sciences resist reductionism
• The return to religion is a modern phenomenon
• Political aims prevail in movements
• The West is the reference point for domination and deviation
• The West offers greater freedom and broader inquiry
• The individual and the citizen are modern concepts
• Historical differences explain the weakness of tolerance
• French thought began to take Islam into account
• Philosophy is a partner of anthropology in education
• The Islamic reading of the Qur’anic text
• The non-Muslim reading of the Qur’an
• An epistemological break is a condition for the future of Islamic societies
• A cognitive break in reading texts
• Social repression generates explosion
• The transcendent divine word
• The shared religious imaginary
• The translator needs broad specialist knowledge
• The Muslim intellectual needs a cool diagnosis
• Modern societies produce their own myths
• Arab societies are on the threshold of modernity
• The project reexamines the concepts of institution
• Rationality alone does not provide vital meaning
• The historical-anthropological methodology
• The comparative and concrete methodology
• The messianic pattern links faith with justice
• The universal Islamic model
• The margins dismantle Islamism’s discourses
• Revelation gives meaning that can be interpreted
• The prophetic function produces meaning
• Some Orientalists contribute to it
• The history of religions is a required teaching subject
• Salvation history and real history
• Renewal of terminology is a condition for renewal of thought
• Renewing Islamic thought confronts the crisis
• Liberating the Arab-Islamic spirit
• Political shifts reproduced misunderstanding
• Intervention by non-specialists harms Islamology
• The translation of terms changes until it stabilizes
• The politicization of Islam in contemporary discourse
• Multiple Arab diagnoses of the crisis
• Religiosity is shaped by environment and history
• A new historical solidarity among peoples
• Deconstructing historical doctrines
• Extending critique to the monotheistic religions
• Three objectives of the new study
• The characteristics of Qur’anic and prophetic discourse
• Studying revelation historically and comparatively
• The rule-of-law state protects civil rights
• Rejecting the dualism between the religious and the worldly
• Rejecting essentialist fixity
• Rejecting mythic and ideological visions
• Rejecting the comparison between Islam and Christianity
• Misunderstanding between Islam and the West
• The struggle of reason against closed faith
• The validity of teachings requires historical review
• The necessity of studying religion scientifically
• The weakness of tolerance is linked to late modernity
• An open secularism for studying religion
• A new spiritual secularization is needed
• Factors that feed totalizing movements
• The return of religion is a European concept
• The absence of scholarly spaces hinders debate
• The absence of a constitutional order is not explained by religion alone
• A gap between discourse and practice
• The failure of state models generates a legitimacy vacuum
• Understanding religions requires three cognitive dimensions
• Reading the French Revolution explains the confrontation with Islam
• The inadequacy of previous strategies
• Book societies as a comparative tool
• Erasing the historical dimension of Islam
• Revisiting ideological assumptions
• The centrality of interpretation in the contemporary crisis
• The legitimacy of the rule-of-law state comes from citizens
• The concept of the person is broader than the individual
• The concepts of the individual and the citizen are tied to the European revolutions
• Continuing ijtihad instead of imitation
• Critique of the myth of the Western model
• Critique of analogy as racially inflected
• Criticism of modernity is difficult to receive in Arabic contexts
• Critique of Islamic reason is a condition for democratic participation
• Critique of the two theological readings of the Qur’an
• Critique of superficial knowledge about Islam
• Critique of dominant Western moralizing
• A comprehensive critique of institutional arrangements
• The North-South model is an ideological construct
• The dominance of religions over inherited systems
• The dominance of money, mediation, and barter
• The symbolic function of religions
• The modern political crisis requires distinguishing religion from ideological instrumentalization and building civic legitimacy
• The relationship with the West and modernity requires critiquing mythologization and domination and building a local path
• Arkoun’s project deconstructs the historical and institutional structures that produce meaning and power
• Arab-Islamic renaissance is conditional upon inner liberation and dismantling historical blockages
• Renewing Islamic thought begins with rebuilding the tools of reading and critique
• Studying religion and symbol requires open secularization and preserving the human dimension of meaning