BETWEEN REVIVALISM AND RECONSTRUCTIONISM: ISLAM, REFORM, AND SECULARISM IN THE WORKS OF TAHA ABDERRAHMANE AND MOHAMMED ARKOUN A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Islamic Studies By Miloud Amine Tais, M.A. Washington, DC May 25, 2018 Copyright 2018 by Miloud Amine Tais All Rights Reserved ii BETWEEN REVIVALISM AND RECONSTRUCTIONISM: ISLAM, REFORM, AND SECULARISM IN THE WORKS OF TAHA ABDERRAHMANE AND MOHAMMED ARKOUN Miloud Amine Tais, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Felicitas M. Opwis, Ph.D. ABSTRACT The examination of the works of some of the major reformist thinkers in the Maghrib region since the late nineteenth century reveals a tension between two attitudes, revivalism and reconstructionism. The study contends that Taha Abderrahmane and Mohammed Arkoun are in some ways the ultimate representatives of later more sophisticated revivalist and reconstructionist drives respectively. Abderrahmane seeks to ground a modern social and political system in renewed Islamic principles that he carefully elaborates to act as a corrective to what he presents as the failures of uncritically imported Western modernity and secularism. He keeps the Islamic at the forefront of an overarching system that replaces ʿalmāniyya (secularism) with i’timāniyya (entrusting). Arkoun, on the other hand, critiques the very foundations of “Islamic principles” and grounds modernity and secularism in a Muslim context through that very critique. He challenges the historical interpretations of Islam and calls for keeping a constant space open for the secular, as a way of combating the sacralization of human discourses, a process that serves the interest of some social groups at the expense of others. The study also argues that by proposing for Muslim societies a commitment to a particular and authentic Islamic vision, Abderrahmane’s project falls within the global intellectual current that stands in an adversarial position towards secularism and its claim to universalism, as exemplified by the works of Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood. Meanwhile Arkoun highlights the need to iii critique and contextualize secularism in order to move beyond the dichotomy of religion versus secularism and to allow secularism to be rethought within the frame of “emergent reason,” a modern universal reason that Islam and Muslims ought to participate in shaping alongside others. Thus, Arkoun’s work falls within another trend that champions secularism but seeks to rethink some of its aspects, as exemplified by the works of Charles Taylor and Jürgen Habermas. iv This dissertation is dedicated to all the wonderful people that helped me build my academic career from Cascadia Community College, the University of Washington at Seattle, and Georgetown University. I am also grateful for the support and patience of my family and close friends over the years. Many thanks, M. Amine Tais v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I Introduction: Modernist Reform and Secularism…………………………........1 A. Tradition and Modernity……………………………………………………….3 B. Secularism and Islam in Western Scholarship………………………………....8 C. The Importance of Taha Abderrahmane and Mohammed Arkoun…………...10 D. Methodological Issues…………………………………………………….......12 E. Thesis………………………………………………………………………….13 F. Map……………………………………………………………………………16 Chapter II Maghribī Modernist Reformers: A Short History …………………………....18 A. What Makes the Maghrib?................................................................................18 The Maghrib as Marginal………….……………………………………..18 The Maghrib in Multiplicity……………………………………………..19 The Maghrib before the Modern Era…………………………………….21 B. Islam and Reform in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries…………………….....26 Modern Reform as State Activity………….……………………………..26 Early 20th-Century Modernist Reformers….……………………………..30 ʿAllāl al-Fāsī…………………………….………………………………..32 ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd ibn Bādīs………………………………………………...37 ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Thaʿālibī……….……………………………………….40 C. Modernist Reformism since the Mid-20th Century…………………………...43 Resistance and Independence…..………...……………………………...43 New Directions in Modernist Reformism……….……………………….45 Fatima Mernissi………………………………………………………….48 Asma Lamrabet.…………………….……………………………………52 Chapter III Taha Abderrahmane and Islamic Particularity……………………………....56 vi A. Taha Abderrahmane in Context………….…………………………………...56 Early Life and Youth….………………………………………………….55 Academic Career…………………………………………………………58 The Būtshīshiyya…………………………………………………………59 A Guiding Hand for Islamic Activism…………………………………...61 B. Language, Translation, and Philosophy…...………………………………….63 The Linguistic Imperative….…………………………………………….63 A Higher Level of Philosophical Translation……………………………66 C. The Arabic and Islamic Right to Difference………………………………….68 No Universal Philosophy………………………………………………...68 Particularity against Hegemony………………………………………….70 The Specificity of the Islamic Vision….…….………………………...…71 D. Renewing ʿIlm al-kalām……………...………………………………………73 A Holistic Approach to the Islamic Tradition……………………………73 The Centrality of Munāẓara……………………………………………...74 Between Tools and Content……………………………………………...75 E. Expanding Rationality………………………………………………………...77 Philosophy within the Islamic Deliberative Field………………………..77 Levels of Reason…………………………………………………………78 F. Rethinking How to Interpret the Islamic Heritage……...…………………….80 Responding to the Modernist Muqallidūn……………………………….80 Mohammed Abed Al Jabri……………………………………………….81 Abdallah Laroui………………………………………………………….84 Taha Abderrahmane as a Critic…………………………………………..87 G. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………89 Chapter IV From Islamic Particularity to Islamic Modernity…………………………....91 A. Western Modernity and the Crisis of Ethics………….………….…….……..92 Rational or Ethical?....................................................................................92 vii The Ethical Predicaments of Western Modernity………………………..95 B. From the Reality of Modernity to its Spirit…………………….……………..98 The Principles of Modernity……………………………………………..98 Achieving Modernity…...………………………………………………100 C. From the Spirit of Modernity to Islamic Modernity……….……..………....102 The Superiority of Islam………………………………………………..102 The Islamic Implementation of the Principle of Maturity……………...103 The Islamic Implementation of the Principle of Critique………………105 The Islamic Implementation of the Principle of Universality………….107 D. “Entrusting” as a Social and Political Frame…….…..……………………...109 Expanded Human Existence……………………………………………109 Diyānī Perspectives……………………………………………………..110 Correcting the Shortcomings of the Diyānī Perspectives………………113 E. Secularism and Ethics……..…………….…………………………………...115 Against Dahrāniyya…………………………………………………….115 The Principles of the Entrusting Paradigm……………………………..116 F. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………...120 Chapter V Mohammed Arkoun and Humanism in Islam………………………………121 A. Mohammed Arkoun in Context…………..….……………………………...121 Family Background……………………………………………………..121 Social Status and Marginalization……………………………………...122 Diversity………………………………………………………………...125 Higher Education and the Challenge of War…………………………...127 B. Searching for Humanism……..………….…………………………………..129 Ṭāha Ḥusayn as Early Model…………………………………………...130 Adab…………………………………………………………………….131 From Miskawayh to the Generation of Miskawayh……………………133 The Humanist Ethos between al-Tawḥīdī and Miskawayh…………….135 viii C. Modern Islamic Discourses………………………………………………….136 Wahhabism and Beyond………………………………………………..137 Managing the Sacred…………………………………………………...139 The Battles of Interpretation……………………………………………141 D. From Classical Islamic Studies to Applied Islamology………...…………...143 Western Imaginary……………………………………………………...144 The Limits of Classical Islamic Studies………………………………...144 Political Science and Political Islam……………………………………146 Applied Islamology……………………………………………………..147 The Unthinkable and the Unthought……………………………………150 E. Conclusion…………………………...……………………………………....151 Chapter VI From Reform to the Critique of Islamic Reason…………………………...153 A. Rethinking Islam…………...………………………………………………..153 Beyond Reform…………………………………………………………153 Islam as Religion-Powers, Religion-Forms, and Individual Religion….154 Critique of Reason……………………………………………………...156 B. The Qur’ānic Fact…...……………………………………………………….157 Prophetic Discourse…………………………………………………….158 Qur’ānic Discourse……………………………………………………..159 The Closed Official Corpus…………………………………………….160 C. The Islamic Fact…………………………………………...………………...161 A Hermeneutical Condition…………………………………………….161 The Risāla of al-Shāfiʿī…………………………………………………162 Dynamics of Legitimation……………………………………………...163 D. Islam and Politics……………………………………………………………165 Governance…………………………………………………………......166 Traditional Solidarities………………………………………………….167 The Experience of Medina and the Model of Medina………………….167 ix The State……………………………………………………………......168 TheʿUlamā’……………………………………………………………..169 E. Islam, Secularism, and Emergent Reason...…………...…………………….170 Problematizing the Secular and Religious Divide……………………...170 Regimes of Truth……………………………………………….171 Postcolonial States and the Social Psyche……………………...173 Emergent Reason and a New Humanism……………………………….174 Characteristics of Emergent Reason……………………………174 Postmodernism……………….………..………………………..175 Humanism Revisited……………………………………………177 F. Conclusion………………...………………………………………………....179 Chapter VII Conclusion: Religion and Secularism as a Global Debate………………..181 A. On Taha Abderrahmane’s Intellectual Project………………………………181 Personal Experience and Intellectual Commitments…………………...181