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Mohamed Arkoun

Mohammed Arkoun (born in 1928 in Taourirt-Mimoun, in Kabylia ( Algeria ) - died on 14 September 2010 in Paris is an intellectual Algerian , philosopher and historian of Islam. One of the most influential teachers Study in Contemporary Islamic , he is professor emeritus of history of Islamic thought at the Sorbonne ( Paris III ), and teaches "Applied Islamics, discipline he has developed in various European universities and American, referring to the applied anthropology of Roger Bastide. Among his favorite subjects, the unthinkable in classical Islam and contemporary.

Mohammed Arkoun is in the critical branch of Islamic reformism. Advocating modernist and Islamic humanism, he developed a critique of modernity in Islamic thought, and argues for Islam redesigned in the contemporary world. He spent numerous books including The Arab Thought (Paris, 1975), reading the Koran (Paris, 1982), Thinking Islam Today (Algiers, 1993) or The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought (London, 2002).

Summary

/ / Biography

Mohammed Arkoun was born in 1928 in Taourirt-Mimoun (Ath Yenni), a village kabyle of northern Algeria , in the current wilaya of Tizi-Ouzou , he lived in a large family and very poor. He received his primary education in his native village, and then secondary to Oran. He then studied philosophy at the Faculty of Literature of the University of Algiers and then to the Sorbonne in Paris. There is an associate language and Arab literature in 1956 and a doctorate in philosophy in 1968 .

He gets a certain reputation in the academic world in 1969 with his major research on the work of the historian and philosopher Persian , the first millennium , Ibn Miskawayh, current humanist Muslim, including bringing its Ahlaq Tahdheeb al-wa al Tatha Treaty-Araq in Ethics . Director of the journal Arabica, which he has contributed since 1980 to the great reputation, Mohammed Arkoun has played a significant role in Western language scholarship on Islam. In questioning the possibility and rethinking Islam in the contemporary world, his thinking has provided a counterweight to the sometimes highly ideologized interpretations of Muslim and Western world . He is the author of numerous books in French , English and Arabic , religious sociology devoted to Islam. His work is published in numerous academic journals and translated into several languages.

Mohammed Arkoun taught as a professor at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Strasbourg (1956-1959), Paris at the Lycee Voltaire (1959-1961) as assistant professor at the Sorbonne (1961-1969), associate professor at the ' University of Lyon II (1969-1972), then as a professor at the University of Paris VIII and Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle (1972-1992) .
He was a member of Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin ( 1986 - 1987 and 1990 ) and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton , in the State of New Jersey in the United States ( 1992 - 1993 ), Adjunct Professor of the University of California at Los Angeles ( 1969 ) of Temple University , the University of Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL) in Belgium (1977-1979), of Princeton University ( 1985 ), the Pontifical Institute of Arabic Studies in Rome and the University of Amsterdam (1991-1993) . He also taught many courses and conferences around the world .
Mohammed Arkoun was a member of the Steering Committee and the Jury of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (1989-1998), the International Jury of the UNESCO Education for Peace (2002), and the Scientific Council of the International Science Human Byblos ( Lebanon , UNESCO).

It is made in July 1996, Officer of the Legion of Honour and Officer of Academic Palms. The University of Exeter ( United Kingdom ) then assigns the title of doctor honoris causa. In 2001 , Mohammed Arkoun is invited to the "conferences Gifford (Gifford Lectures) at the University of Edinburgh ( Scotland ), which he entitled "Inauguration of a critique of Islamic reason" (Inaugurating a Critique of Islamic Reason) , one of the most prestigious honors in academia, allowing a renowned researcher to contribute to the "advancement of theological and philosophical thought." He received in 2002 the 17th "Giorgio Levi Della Vida Award for his lifetime contribution in the field of Islamic studies . It is also in 2003 winner of Ibn-Rushd , .

Mohammed Arkoun is Emeritus Professor at Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle , senior associate for research at the Institute of Ismaili Studies (The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) ) and member of the Board of Directors of the ISI.

Thought

Dialogue between Muslim and Western world

It calls for the systematic identification and destruction of prejudices and stereotypes negative, sometimes very old, during which both sides. He said the West is no more the incarnation of the devil materialistic, immoral and godless, that Islam is reducible to fundamentalism fundamentalist breeding ground for terrorism and incompatible with democracy and modernity.

Mohammed Arkoun keeps himself in close dialogue with Christianity and Judaism , and he co-authored books with intellectuals of the two faiths.

Secularism

Arkoun greatly reflects on secularism , whose value he brings to the defense, including the Muslim world, but in the context of the need he recalls having to take into account the specificities of this culture in its history. His plea for secularism is not devoid of a critical one, because of the particular forms it borrowed in history and the contradictions it has also generated, it would like outdated and is summarized in his view, a misunderstanding of another culture:

"I try for years, from the example so maligned, so misunderstood and misinterpreted if Islam, to open avenues of thinking based on comparative studies to exceed all production systems sense - whether religious or secular - who are trying to establish the local historical quota particular experience in universal, transcendental, sacred in irreducible. This implies a distance equal criticism of all "values" in all the inherited traditions of thought up to and including the reason of the Enlightenment , secular experience diverted to militant secularism and partisan. " .

This defense of secularism, and accompanied by a critique of a certain historical tradition, particularly the French. If secularism can be exported, nor history, nor its forms can not. He thinks that "secular thought in its most advanced institutional framework - the French Republic - is still at the stage of denial, rejection, punishment in respect of a great tradition of thought and civilization. Instead of recognizing the intellectual fertility of the debate that Islam, because, if I may say, to offset its history, reintroduced in a society that has not exhausted the confrontation of religious and secular modes of production of meaning, we see multiply smear campaigns against the return of the darkness of the Middle Ages. " .

Arkoun indeed believe that without understanding the peculiarities of Islamic societies, the secular project makes no sense for such companies. And according to him, the lack of tradition in this secular culture is not only analyzable in terms of development, smaller, Islamic societies, but also stems from their difference not only show this famous historical backwardness, but a different experience in their relationship to reason and science. He stresses what he sees as a difference characterizing Islamic societies, profoundly different from Western societies, in their report to the sacred, and thus their relationship to science and secular reason. He writes:

"It is certain that the current Muslim collective consciousness does not know this psycho-cultural breakdown, we noted at least since the nineteenth century in the Western secularized. But we must be careful to attribute this difference to a resistance to movement of secularization more effectively by Islam than Christianity. The category theo- anthropological of Revelation is the same for the three religions of the Book, but it has experienced various assaults on the part of scientific reason and industrial civilization. This does not mean either that the transition to secularism resulting in the marginalization or elimination of the theology by anthropology (cf. the discussion on the death of God) is an inevitable development that is about Islam after on Christianity. " .

Nevertheless, these reservations, Mohammed Arkoun think that to save the world Muslim and his demons out of its impasse, it is essential that Islam accesses the modernity , politics and culture , and he thinks the conditions. A recognized need to consider a "subversion" of Islamic thought, which would allow him to join the modern world and the secular : "Nothing will happen without a subversion of the ancient systems of religious thought and ideologies which reinforce combat , and reactivate the relay. Currently, any operation is subversive doubly censored: official censorship and censorship by states of Islamist movements. In both cases, modern thought and scientific knowledge are rejected or, at best, marginalized. The teaching of religion, Islam to the exclusion of others, is under the control of fundamentalist orthodoxy " .

Politics

It also examines the political history of Arab or Muslim regimes post-settlement, and he comes to denounce the successive failures: "The failures began immediately after independence. Everywhere were imposed regimes police and military, often cut off from people, deprived of any national base, indifferent or openly hostile to anything that can promote the expansion, the entrenchment of a democratic culture. The means by which the plans were put in place have, nowhere, been democratic. " .

The applied Islamic

Mohammed Arkoun has developed a new discipline of applied Islamic studies, following an idea that already existed with the applied anthropology of Roger Bastide , and also applied rationalism of Gaston Bachelard. It is this philosophical idea which advocates critical of the wake of Kant , of Bachelard and Michel Foucault. It opened in Islamic studies applied various universities in Europe and the United States.

Mohamed Arkoun explained that the concept of applied Islamic studies came to him after the independence of Algeria , in finding and analyzing the contradictions in the culture of his country and the countries of the Maghreb , as well as some guidance policy , which wanted to reintroduce the Islam -after the end of the colonial period. This line and this target appeared when the Algerians began to invoke Islam, both as a religion and as culture in order to reconstruct the Arab-Islamic specificity placed under the extinguisher by colonialism. But according to the author, this design and the ensuing political, not held absolutely no account in this new nation that is the Algeria , nor the reality and characters unique to the history of Algeria, but nor the Maghreb where he belongs, and nor is the history of Islam and Islamic thought more generally.

Yet this culture and Islamic thought, in particular, have experienced various times and in a very different story , partially forgotten or at least sidelined. Since the beginnings of Islam in the seventh century until today, this culture has experienced periods quite different. In the thirteenth century has produced a split within the Islamic thought, well before the external intervention of the settlement, which is due to the specific history of Islam and its culture.

Mohamed Arkoun said that most Muslims refuse today to really take into account the history of Islam and to recognize it as is, including going back far enough in time to have a vision of magnitude which integrates the distant past and allow a setback for enlightening the mind.

He insists that the thirteenth century marks a break in the development of Islam. In the tenth century, indeed, there is a brilliant intellectual life and very rich in the Muslim world. It was a time when the philosophy was very present, and occupied the minds of scientists. The Islamic philosophy was born and grown in contact with the ancient Greek Plato , Aristotle were read and translated into an exchange with the ancients, again, considered and welcomed the prospect of a synthesis to be done with thought Muslim. They also were read and interpreted in a trade with the European philosophers, Christians and Jews. This is the era that saw the emergence of humanism , where the Muslim culture was open to other cultures, especially those that were present in the Middle East, and also in the Spain of al-Andalus. This was his most brilliant period. Mohamed Arkoun states, however, this important point on which he insists, that religion was not then in a position to assume control of culture and intellectual life.

Mohamed Arkoun, a scientist who argues historian and philosopher, rejects simplistic oppositions, more or less frozen in attitudes, cultures of Islam and Europe, as would be expected to intensify the opposition between political colonialism (destroyer of crops) and Islam.

The perspective is his contention that the writing of the history , scope and vision of the past in its relationship with religion , firstly, and secondly, a critical reading of Islam both as a religion and a tradition of thought, are tied to the notion of national identity. To all Muslim countries.

The dialectic of power and residues according to Mohammed Arkoun

The dialectic of power and waste, a term borrowed from Henri Lefebvre , is exposed in Humanism and Islam: Fighting and proposals, p. 95 et seq. She identifies as Mohammed Arkoun "deployment of the dialectic continues four oriented hegemonic powers seeking to curb the state of residues or even eliminate four directly antagonistic forces struggling for survival." The four powers are state formation, writing, cultures and scholarly orthodoxy, which correspond the four residues that are segmentary societies, oral traditions, popular cultures, heresies. For Mohammed Arkoun, "a double dialectic unfolds simultaneously and works the global social space", first among the four powers and the four residues, and secondly between each power and each corresponding residue. In this context, the analysis of "implement the three operations methodological and epistemological expressed by the verbs break, move, pass. "

The Islamic studies applied he founded, the study deals with political issues as they emerged after decolonization, that is to say when the Arab-Muslim countries win their independence. Mohamed Arkoun noted that politicians refused then consideration of the history of Islam and Arab culture and the cultural, social and anthropological countries of the Maghreb. This discipline examines the contradictions of history and the differences between Islam and the Western world and the various speeches that express them.

Main works

  • Arab Humanism in the tenth century (1982, Vrin)
  • Readings of the Koran (1982, Maisonneuve et Larose)
  • For a critique of Islamic reason (1984, Maisonneuve et Larose)
  • Islam, moral and political (1986, Descle Brouwer / Unesco)
  • Openings on Islam. Paris: Grancher, 1992
  • Think Islam today. Algiers: Laphomic ENAL, 1993
  • Humanism and Islam: Fighting and proposals (Vrin 2005). ISBN 2711617319 ISBN 978-2711617319 ,
  • The vicissitudes of the ethical and legal issues in Islamic thought (Vrin),
  • Arab thought, What do I know?, PUF, (1991), 7th edition (2008). ISBN 2130570852 ISBN 978-2130570851 ,
  • Mohammed ARKOUN and Maurice Borrmans: Islam: Religion and Society. Interviews conducted by Mario Arosio Translated from Italian by Maurice Borrmans. Editions du Cerf. 1982,
  • ARKOUN Mohammed and Louis Gardet : Islam yesterday, tomorrow. Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1982
  • Mohammed and Joseph ARKOUN MAIL: From Manhattan to Baghdad. Beyond Good and Evil. Descle Brouwer. 2003.

Participation in collective works:

  • Religious Liberty in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, International Symposium at the Abbey of Senanque. Preface by Claude Geffr. Ed du Cerf, 1981
  • Christianity, Judaism and Islam Loyalty and openness. Under the leadership of Archbishop Joseph Dor. Editions du Cerf, 1999
  • History of Islam and Muslims in France from the Middle Ages to today, Mohammed Arkoun, Collective, Jacques Le Goff (Preface). Ed Albin Michel, 2006
(See complete list of works and publications of Mohammed Arkoun)

References

  1. Death of Mohammed Arkoun
  2. Tribute to John Daniel to his late friend
  3. a , b and c "Mohammed Arkoun" , The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2007
  4. a , b and c Mohammad Arkoun (curriculum vitae) on Ibn rush.org.
  5. Courses and Conferences - Arkoun.net (28/11/2006)
  6. (en) History of the Gifford Lectures , GiffordLectures.org.
  7. "Mohammed Arkoun Awarded Prestigious Prize Levi Della Vida" , IIS, May 2002.
  8. Named after a Muslim scientist known as the Latinized Averroes.
  9. Foundation Award Ibn Rushd for freedom of thought (Fund for Freedom of Thought) (See: "Orient and Occident - the forgotten kinship" , Ibn rushd.org, 2003).
  10. a and b Openings on Islam. Paris 1989. 2nd edition revised and enlarged. Paris 1992. pp. 199-200.
  11. "Algeria". In: The politics of Islamic revivalism (ed. Shireen Hunter). Bloomington & Indianapolis 1988.
  12. a and b "It is vital that Islam has access to modernity" , an interview with Mohammed Arkoun, L'Express (27/03/2003).

See also

External Links


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