Formulation of the Claim
The book Battles for Humanism argues that the renewal of Arab-Islamic thought requires
Explanation
The book maintains that humanism is not a general slogan but a living critical project, as in humanism is a living critical project that links freedom to reason and responsibility. For this reason, it reconstructs its history through Arab humanism historically flourished and then declined with the closing of ijtihad and diagnoses its present crisis in the contemporary crisis arising from a double rupture with tradition and modernity. Renewal is achieved through educational reform in educational reform as a condition for resisting sectarianism and building plurality, and through reading religion and the Qur’an historically and anthropologically in understanding religion requires an anthropological and historical interpretation of the Qur’an and revelation, and through critiquing domination in critique of religious and political domination reveals the necessity of legal reform. It also draws from Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi, Miskawayh, al-‘Amiri, and language and lexicography models for testing reason in [[sources/محمد-أركون-معارك-من-أجل-الأنسنة/claims/clusters/التوحيدي والهوامل يكشفان إنسانية نقدية قلقة|al-Tawhidi and al-Hawamil reveal an anxious critical humanism]] and philosophy and religion complement each other in a spiritual tension, not in methodological identity and Miskawayh makes reason a methodological and ethical virtue and language, logic, and lexicography reveal the mediation of reason and its limits and al-‘Amiri’s texts reveal a medieval reason in service of the religious norm. Thus, the battles for humanism culminate in the demand for critique of tradition and cultural interaction as liberating Islamic understanding as a condition for liberating human beings, religion, and knowledge together.