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Professor Muhammad Arkoun keeps harping on the need for a new theology in general, and particularly for Islam, adding though that this call of his breaks new ice; Professor Arkoun ridicules those who quote the Qur'an in the course of a debate, on the grounds that, "such practice raises the whole range of problems of moving from the mythological to the scientific age." So how would you evaluate this attitude? Jawdat Said to Current Islamic Issues |
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I wonder, Mr.
Al-Rifa'ee, what makes you choose Muhammad Arkoun to be the subject-matter of
one of your questions: I have not brought up the name of Muhammad Arkoun that
frequently in my writings, nor do I count him as one of my major priorities,
although I have read him carefully and attentively, for I was intent on
making out what went on in the mind of that man. The first time I came across
his work was when I read an article he had contributed to Diogenes, a journal
published by the UNESCO, entitled, "Islam versus development," and
I noticed that his writing deserved contemplation. He is not of Malik bin
Nabi's type he rather ridiculed bin Nabi, and considered that he was not
acquainted with modernism: but there is no harm in this, for contemporaries
seldom appreciate each other his denigration of bin Nabi did not detract of
the latter's value in my mind. Muhammad Arkoun, however, is not to be
ignored; he cares for the Muslims. It is likely that Arkoun's insistence on a
new theology for Muslims led me to move ahead in understanding the issue of tawheed
'Oneness of God', not on the basis of theology, but as a social, political
and economic issue. Not that he said any word on the topic, but the need for
a new theology in Islam, as an objective, has remained a major concern of
his; and I felt his insistence to be honest and well-taken. Theology as
handled by mainstream Muslim scholars is not in line with the way tawheed
'Oneness of God' is presented in the Qur'an; it does not at all give justice
to the supreme place reserved for that in the Qur'an. It is such a
fundamental topic, and so pivotal in the story of any prophet, that it is
amazing how little effort we have devoted to it. The topics of belief and
hypocrisy occupy a central place in the Qur'an, and yet we do not understand
their effects on the life of societies indeed they have not been
investigated with any earnestness. It is that what makes me say that what God
revealed to the prophets has not yet descended to the earth; it is not yet
part of people's consciousness; but it will in the future: people will
discover that. Men have discovered the laws of the material world, but they
know so little about the laws of man they do not realize what brings out
the amazing potential powers of that unique creature, a creature that can
annihilate himself if he does not find the way to self-realization. It is the
creature who is capable of being an arm of Divine Will, as Muhammad Iqbal
puts it. (By the way, it is puzzling why Muhammad Arkoun never mentioned
Muhammad Iqbal in any of his writings that I have read, and I do not claim to
have read all that he wrote.) What I did read of his writings I read with
attentive concentration and devotion I was intent on getting the gist of
his terminology and conceptual tools. It does him honour that he has laid his
hand on the idea of the need for a new theology, and to me it is the need for
putting right our concept of God. It is a mistake that we do not try to
understand God through a study of His creation and the history of creation
it is to that that the Qur'an is referring in the following verse: "But
this thought of yours which you entertained concerning your Lord, has brought
you to destruction, and now you have become utterly lost! (41, 23)," and
"[they cherish] wrong suspicions of Allah suspicions due to Ignorance,
(3, 154)." Coming to know God through His laws is the way that Muslims
are yet to realize: after they lost uprightness (al-rushd in Arabic), the
Muslims regressed to pre-Islamic concepts, and they lost the legacy of the
prophets. What the prophets taught
was, as I see it, a social revolution. This is a concept that caught my
attention in no little degree; it drove me to better appreciate the message
that the prophets taught, a message worthy of being attributed to God, the
Able, the High, Who willed to condescend and guide His creatures on the
tongue of His prophets. But we have not understood God, nor do we understand
the prophets' message but we shall rediscover it, and it is then than we
shall see that what the prophets taught long ago is worthy of the Maker of
the Worlds. To capture that message proves to be still hard for mankind, and
that is manifest in their idolatry at the widest scale, and their failure to
appreciate tawheed, which is utterly absent from their minds. When the Qur'an
reports on the tongue of the Ignorant 'the unbelieving group of But we have not even touched
on what the prophets have taught, I mean the social revolution and the great
sorcery in the social life sorcery that is as untrue as when men for long
ages thought that the sun rotated around us, although it is quite the
opposite. The socio-politico-economic
problem should be here discussed in the light of three Qur'anic texts: 1. Come to common terms as
between us and you (3, 64) the social problem; 2. Serve God and eschew the taghoot
'evil, dictatorship, etc.' (16, 36) the political problem; 3. Do you see one who denies
the Judgment to come? Then such is the man who repulses the orphans with
harshness, and does not encourage the feeding of the indigent, (107, 1-3)
the economic problem. Some social writers have
said that Marx exposed the economic exploitations, but his endeavour did not
really go far enough: there is a need to dissect that aspect, and to breathe
life into it until it starts to have an active part in life. One of the things that
Arkoun gave a prime importance to is people's mythical imagination, and I
like to call it miraculous conception. According to the mythical imagination,
people think the world God created is not governed by laws, although we read
in the Qur'an: "But no change will you find in Allah's laws (or ways) of
dealing: no turning off will you find in Allah's laws of dealing (35,
42)." The laws are characterized by constancy; the universe is at man's
service, and man has the ability to discover the laws and have control in the
universe. But it is not enough to
assure ourselves that we have gone beyond thinking on the basis of miracles;
we need to dig in deeper, and we shall find that it still makes us feel most in
familiar circumstances when we think of God's creation as based on miracles
and not on laws and it is that way of viewing things that brings on us all
the disasters. Arkoun also stresses again
and again the need for separating religion and state, but that call of his
destroys and runs counter to his call for a new theology, since a new
theology is one that makes of religion a science and yet he insists that
religion must be separated from state. He cannot get over his confusion
there. I don't, however, go so far as to say he does not have a nostalgic
wish to reconcile science with religion in his latest book, A Window on
Islam, Arkoun has gone further than ever in trying to harmonize religion and
science, drawing on fresh findings. He quotes there from Habermas, the German
thinker, who stressed the need for a revival of the 'Covenant with God' which
was put forth by the prophets In this Covenant, as Habermas puts it:
"When an individual protests against treachery, he is not protesting
solely in his name, but in the name of everybody. Every human being is
potentially a supporter of the struggle against treachery, even against
himself or against me. The principle of honesty is unthinkable without a
thorough and comprehensive compact against treachery." Arkoun is importuning us to
separate religion and state, in the Western fashion, but what the prophets
advocated was coordinating religion with the state. The confusion and
disunity in Arkoun's thinking, which really reflects the bases of the Western
society, is what he is calling on us to follow despite the fact that he
himself does not show satisfaction with that system; he advocates a new
approach to knowledge which encompasses both religion and state, religion and
politics. It is true too of the Muslim masses that they have absorbed the
separation of religion from politics, on the grounds that politics is based
on treachery, betrayal, opportunism and haggling, while religion is honesty,
truthfulness, kindness and altruism: they are utterly incompatible in
people's minds. But what the prophets did
was to turn politics into an honest, truthful and charitable relationship.
Their truthful authority was extended to supersede treacherous politics:
something that the present world badly needs, from the United Nations to the
tiniest Muslim state how to turn politics into an honest and truthful
endeavour. It is in the light of this that we can understand the Messenger's
tradition about assuming positions of authority, when he said: "You will
be keen on securing it, and yet it will be something to regret and repent on
the Day of Judgment. It is a felicity when assumed, and wretchedness in the
end;" and when he said: "Those who ask to be appointed to a
position of authority will be denied that wish, and those who are keen on
securing it and do get appointed will be left to their own means; but those
who are urgently pressed to be appointed will be assisted by God." In brief, mankind is
progressing, though very slowly, towards honesty, towards impartiality and towards
adopting ideals unilaterally that no one is allowed to convince you to
abandon what you know to be true to his own doctrine, from the way of
uprightness to the way of treachery. This very point has always been the
cut-off line between the prophets and their peoples: the domain of honesty
and the domain of treachery. Modernism now begins to
revise itself under new movements, like postmodernism, and the words of
Habermas. Arkoun's citing such new terms, and his enthusiasm in that respect,
show that a new world is looming in the horizon, and that is what Jesus
predicted. The social structure cannot
function smoothly with treachery and privileges: That structure which is now
rotting with treachery and privileges will not last long it will crack and
split as happened in the aftermath of the two Gulf wars. Unless we revert to
the word of even-handedness and common terms (ref. to the Qur'an, 3, 64) the
rift will be more severe and painful. The world which has already split will
not heal with more treachery and disregard of the Covenant which God has
inscribed in the hearts of His servants, though they have been led astray by
the devils. We are now living in a new
and amazing time: we need to scream and shout with both the good news and the
warning, after the example of prophets. There will be no more prophets, but
there are men who teach just dealing with mankind (ref. to the Qur'an, 3,
31,) and worshippers of God, the Cherisher of all creation: it is those who
must bear the burden of the heavy Trust, the Trust which the heavens, the
land, and the mountains would not undertake, but man did accept to undertake
(ref. to the Qur'an, 33, 72,) for man will be true to God's foretelling
concerning him (ref. to the Qur'an, 2, 30;) that he will get over mischief and
the spilling of blood, will find out that his injustice was really against
himself: "O mankind! Your injustice is against your own souls (the
Qur'an, 10, 23.) When we think back to man in the cave, we shall know that
what God expected for man will come true. Muhammad Arkoun is not the
man Muslims take him to be: an apostate who is in the clutches of the West.
He is struggling on both fronts, the front of Arabs and Muslims, and the
front of orientalists. The new additions that Arkoun brought to our notice should
not be underestimated and he did foretell of a new world. Indeed, our
constant attitude should be that we accept from people the best that they can
offer, and pass by their shortcomings indeed who among us is not without
shortcomings! We really need to give people the credit for their efforts, and
should not ignore what they stood by and endured all the hardships for. Let our example be
Abdul-Qader Al-Jailani who said: "When Al-Hallaj stumbled there was no
one in his age who would stretch his hand to help him; but I am ready to take
the hand of whoever stumbles." Such an attitude is what we need in order
to gather people round the supreme ideal, so let's give it some thought. Now as for Arkoun's saying
that a person who cites the Qur'an in support of his stand is provoking the
whole range of problems attending the traversing from the mythical age to the
scientific age, I find this statement to denote no little degree of truth
it is not very different from what Ali, may God bless his person, once said:
"The Qur'an is open to all kinds of interpretation." Indeed, there
is no discourse but is open to various interpretations. Had it not been for
reference to the actual world, words would not have meaning; and the Qur'an,
as it itself says: "By it He causes many to stray, and many He leads
into the right path, (2, 26)." And so the Qur'an, as a Book, is not
sufficient to lead to the right path. That throws the truth into
focus; to be a guidance, the Qur'an requires a referent, the signs of the
world around us and the world of the souls inside us: it is that which will
put right our understanding of the Qur'an. Without that process of referring
to the signs, the Qur'an will be held up as supporting any side and all
sides, and you may recall how the Qur'an was raised on the spears in the
Mu'awiah-Ali dispute. In this incident, it was not the side nearer truth or
honesty who called the others to refer to the Qur'an for seeking solution.
And down to our own day we still compete in citing the Qur'an and other
texts. I may refer here to an article written by Sayyed Hussein Fadhl-Allah
about Islamic unity, in which he does not quote a single verse from the
Qur'an, nor one tradition of the Prophet's or any statement by the ancestors
on the other hand he mentions the real state of affairs more than seventy
times. About that article, I myself wrote an article which was published by
the Iranian Commission in Indeed the Qur'an does not
utter anything by itself: it is there for people to make it utter. The
Prophet did mention a situation in which people can no longer benefit from
their scripture, though revealed by God; he reminded that the Jews and the
Christian do have in their hands books revealed from God, but they do not
benefit anything from them. This is true of us, too. But we hope that in the
future we shall be able to benefit from the Book of God, and that will be by
referring to God's signs in the world around and the world within. Once this
is realized, people will no longer twist the text to suit their
interpretations they will accept with fullest conviction. At the end of his book, Criticism
of the Arab-Islamic Mind, Arkoun includes a chapter entitled: An epilogue
about the potency of the Qur'anic phenomenon, in which he says: It remains
to review something deeper than what we have done so far, something that can
help us fathom the secret of the power of that phenomenon across centuries ..
it is there, existing though we are unable to locate it specifically, it is
somewhere in the Qur'an and in the words of Jesus .. How was it possible for
this power to bring forth the marvelous phenomenon, the Qur'an, which burst
here and no where else? This is the massive, provocative question which
awaits to be answered. But our answer must not be the same as put forth by
the orientalists .. I, for my part, am in favour of a different, wider
research which will give justice to this issue, and if we undertake such
inquiry we shall have contributed something substantial in pushing ahead and
reviving the human sciences through the Islamic specimen, I mean by launching
applied Islamicism, which I have most fervently struggled to see it
established. Again I must wonder if I
have given justice to Arkoun's work. |
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