Professor Muhammad Arkoun

Professor Muhammad Arkoun (1928 - 2010), an Algerian/French thinker, defends a postmodernist position, criticizes the 'Islamic reason' as well as the 'Eurocentric' Modernism, using an historical anthropological methodology, and aims at founding the new science of 'Applied Islamics'.

His Life

Mohammed Arkoun was born in Taourirt-Mimoun, a town in Grande Kabylie in Algeria. He spent his primary education in Taourirt-Mimoun and his secondary education in Oran. He majored in philosophy in Algeria and France at the University of Sorbonne. He lectured Arabic language in Paris in 1956, and he attained his PhD in philosophy at the University of Sorbonne in 1968. From 1961-1991, Dr. Arkoun was a lecturer at Sorbonne and a visiting lecturer at the following several universities.

Dr. Mohammed Arkoun is a retired lecturer at the Sorbonne. He is also a member and a visiting lecturer at the board of directors in the Islamic Institute in London. In addition to that, he is scientific director at the Magazine ARABICA (Brill, Leiden) since 1980. He is on the board of directors of the arbitration committee for Aga Khan d’Architecture between 1989-1998. From 1995 to 1998 he was member of the High Council for Family and population. Between 1990 and 1998 he was member of the National Committee for Ethics, Philosophy of Life (Weltanschauung) and Health. In 2002, he was a member of the international jury of the UNESCO Prize for the promotion of peace and a member of the arbitration committee for the Arabic/French prize in 2002, which was established by the Arab ambassadors in France. He ist member of the scientific council of the International Centre for the Study of the People of Byblos (Lebanon). He is a member of the committee for laicism in France (2003).

His Philosophical Project

All the writings of Professor Arkoun since about 40 years can be put under one heading 'Critique of Islamic Reason', he describes his project as follows,

The project of 'Critique of Islamic Reason' doesn't take a position in favor of one sect against the others or one belief against other beliefs that has appeared or may appear in the future. It is an historical and anthropological project at the same time, it launches anthropological questions in all stages of history. It surpasses the classical approaches that depend on the historical information that points to names, events, thoughts and remains, and questions the history of the basic foundational concepts such as Religion, State, Society, human rights, the Sacred, the forbidden, Nature, Reason, the 'Imaginaire', Conscience, the Unconscious, the Irrational, the Mythical Knowledge, the Scientific Knowledge, and the Philosophical Knowledge, etc. No doubt historians of thought and literature have studied the history of such concepts but we stress on uplifting the cognitive and procedural boundaries between fields of history, literature, philosophy, religions, political science, sociology and anthropology. These boundaries are thick and high in the Arabic universities which most of them has been founded around mid the twentieth century. Anthropology, especially, is still absent from university programs as well as from the minds, and consequently its problematic is absent from Islamic studies. (Min Faysal al-Tafriqa ilâ Fasl-al-Maqâ, P. XVI)

In addition, the process of 'Critique of Islamic Reason', as a project, includes a trial to integrate such a critical process of Islamic reason within a wider critical process of the religious reason in general. Dr. Arkoun explains such an endeavor as follows,

I have formulated with father Claude Jeffery and Francoise smith Florentine and Jean Lambert the 'Paris group' within the wider group of the Islamic – Christian research that has been already formed by father R. Casper. Within this particular group, I tried to transfer the question of revelation from the 'orthodox' believing faith and the sectarian discourse that excludes the others from 'salvation' in the hereafter reserved only for its group. I said that I tried to transfer the question of revelation from this well-known ground to the ground of the linguistic and semiotic analysis that is related also to a new approach to studying history as a science. By this, I mean to study history as an anthropological science of the past, not as a straight linear narration of selected events in a specific way. (Min Faysal al-Tafriqa ilâ Fasl-al-Maqâ, P. 55)

His Methodology

Dr Arkoun's methodology upon which he depends to realize his project is represented by applying modern and contemporary human sciences, in general, and contemporary methods of studying religions and religious texts, in particular. This includes sciences of history, anthropology, philology, linguistics, sociology of knowledge, social psychology, archeology of knowledge, linguistic deconstruction, semiotics, hermeneutics, etc. Arkoun points out to his use of such a methodology as follows,

The strategy we follow in our study of the societies of the book [means the monolithic religions in Arkoun's dictionary] derives us to uncover all the mechanisms of producing the sacred to study and deconstruct it. The same applies for the mechanisms of transcendence and enforcing the ontological or theological, ideological, or mythical, nature or enforcing a canonical form or stripping the historical nature of things, etc,… all these procedures that nourishe a dynamic social dialectic. In reality the classical faith has tied itself to an enduring non-evolutionary rigid essences that we call 'orthodox'. However, modern faith undertakes all the historical evolutions and its mobility and accepts reconsidering everything including the foundational basis in order to deconstruct and reconstitute it to cope with the mutual circumstances of the social dialectic. (Min Faysal al-Tafriqa ilâ Fasl-al-Maqâ, P. 61)

He also expresses the question of methodology as follows,

We remind here, for what will follow of our speech, by the successes realized by the science of history through implementing the new advances of social sciences, such as linguistics, semiotics, anthropology and social psychology. The works of Paul Ricoeur, for example, with respect to time and narration transfers decisively the classical well contradictions and struggles between faith/reason, or myth/history. It transfers it from its classical positions into new spaces of rationalism and understanding the religious factor within the historical social mobility, and hence understanding history under the pressure of the religious factor. (Min Faysal al-Tafriqa ilâ Fasl-al-Maqâ, P. 81-82)

The final result of Professor Arkoun's methodology is his call for founding a new scientific field under the title, 'the applied Islamics'.

His Works

In English:

- Arab Thought, éd. S.Chand, New-Delhi 1988;
- Rethinking Islam : Common questions, Uncommon answers, today, Westview Press, Boulder 1994.
- The concept of Revelation: from Ahl al-Kitâb to the Societies of the Book-book, Claremont Graduate School, Ca.,1988;
- The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought, London 2002.

in Arabic:

- Al-Fikr al-'arabiyy, éd.'Uwaydat, Beyrouth 1979;
- Al-Islâm: Asâla wa Mumârasa, Beyrouth 1986;
- Ta'rîkhiyyat al-fikr al-'arabiyy al-islâmiyy, éd.Markaz al-inmâ' al-qawmiyy, Beyrouth 1986;
- Al-Fikr al-islâmiyy: Qirâ'a 'ilmiyya, éd. Markaz..., 1987;
- Al-islâm: al-Akhlâq wal-Siyâsa, éd. Markaz..., 1988;
- Al-Islâm: Naqd wa-jtihâd, éd. Dâr al-Sâqî, Beyrouth 1990;
- Al-'almana wa-l-dîn, Dâr al-Sâqî 1990;
- Mina-l-ijtihâd ilâ naqd al-'aql al-islâmî, Dâr al-Sâqî 1991;
- Min Faysal al-Tafriqa ilâ Fasl-al-Maqâl: Ayna huwa-l-Fikr al-islâmiyy al-mu‘âsir, Dâr al-Sâqî 1993;
- Al-Islâm, Urubbâ, wal-Gharb: Rihânât al-ma'nâ wa Irâdât al-Haymana, Dâr al-Sâqî 1995;
- Naz‘at al-Ansana fî-l-fikr al-‘arabiyy, Dâr al-Sâqî 1997 ;
- Qadâyâ fî Naqd al-Fikr al-dînî, Dâr al-Talî‘a, Beyrouth 1998 ;
- Al-Fikr al-usûlî wal-stihâlat al-Ta’sîl, Dâr al-Sâqî 1999.
- Ma‘ârik min ajli-l-ansana fî-l-siyâqât al-islâmiyya, Dâr al-sâqî, 2001.
- Min al-Tafsîr al-mawrûth ilâ tahlîl al-khitâb al-dînî, Dâr al-Talî‘a, Beyrouth 2001.

in French:

- Deux Epîtres de Miskawayh, édition critique, B.E.O, Damas, 1961 ;
- Aspects de la pensée islamique classique, IPN, Paris 1963;
- L'humanisme arabe au 4e/10e siècle, J.Vrin, 2°éd. 1982;
- Traité d'Ethique, Trad., introd., notes du Tahdhîb al-akhlâq de Miskawayh, 1e éd.1969; 2e éd.1988;
- Essais sur la pensée islamique, 1e éd. Maisonneuve & Larose, Paris 1973; 2e éd. 1984;
- La Pensée arabe, 1e éd. P.U.F., Paris 1975; 6e éd. 2002; Trad. en arabe, anglais, espagnol, suédois, italien ;
- L'islam, hier, demain, 2e éd. Buchet-Chastel, Paris 1982; trad. arabe, Beyrouth 1983;
- L'islam, religion et société, éd. Cerf, Paris 1982; version italienne, RAI 1980;
- Religion et laïcité: Une approche laïque de l'islam, L'Arbrelle, Centre Thomas More, 1989;
- Lectures du Coran, 1e éd. Paris 1982; 2e Aleef, Tunis 1991;
- Ouvertures sur l'islam, 1e éd. J. Grancher 1989;
- L’islam. Approche critique, Le livre du mois, Club du livre 2002
- Pour une critique de la Raison islamique, Paris 1984;
- L'islam, morale et politique, UNESCO-Desclée 1986;
- Combats pour l’Humanisme en contextes islamiques, Paris 2002
- The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought, London 2002.
- De Manhattan à Bagdad: Au-delà du Bien et du Mal, Paris 2003

in Dutch:

- Islam in Discussie, 24 vragen over de islam, éd. Uitgeverij Contact, Amsterdam 1993;
- Islam & De Democratie; Een ontmoeting, en collaboration avec Frits Bolkestein, Uitgeverij Contact, Amsterdam 1994. -Plusieurs articles et interviews dans Revues et journaux néerlandais..

in Indonesian:

- Nalar islami dan nalar modern: Berbagai Tantangan dan jalan Baru, trans. Johan H. Meuleman, INIS, Jakarta 1994.
- Berbagai Pembacaan Quran, trans. Johan H. Meuleman, INIS, Jakarta 1997, 256 p.

Articles (in English)

Orient and Occident, the Forgotten Kinship - Ibn Rushd-Prize for Freedom of Thought, Press release

A Modern Critic of Islamic Reason - Burhan Schawi

Articles (in Arabic)

A dialogue with Muhammad Arkoun – Turky Aldekheil (Part1)

A dialogue with Muhammad Arkoun – Turky Aldekheil (Part2)

A conspiracy between the West and the moderate Islamic discourse on the science of 'applied Islamics" – Muhammad Arkoun

The necessity of applying the historical methodology to identify the common denominator of the three monolithic religions – Muhammad Arkoun

The Holy Qur'an in light of the modern Enlightenment philosophy – Muhammad Arkoun

Positive moderate Secularism and negative extremist Secularism – Muhammad Arkoun

Rejected from Muslims and the West – Fikry Crisson

The Unthinkable in Islamic thought – Muhammad khaled Alshayab

Reference

Ibn Rushd-Prize for Freedom of Though

By: Samir Abuzaid