ARABISLAMIC POLITICAL DISCOURSE OF MODERNITY

1
ARAB-ISLAMIC POLITICAL DISCOURSE OF MODERNITY

• THE OTHER THREE INTERPRETIVE CIRCLES OF ISLAM AND
  POLITICAL

2
THE ISLAMIC AWAKENING

• Between the SEVENTH and SIXTH Circles
• The SOLUTIONIST and its rival NEUTRALIST
• An alternative, FIFTH Circle, to the Solutionist
  conflationist Fundamentalist and Neutralist
  deconflationist Liberalist
• Was Sayyid Qutb the ideologue of SAHWA?

3
NEO-SALAFI PATH OF QUTB

• Between 1920s and 1980s
• 1920s incubation of the Western concept of
  political Islam
• Conflationist argument the necessity of DAWLA
  (state) for the sake of DIN (religion)
• Qutbs HARAKI Islam centered on the individual
  being and its transformation

4
DIVINE WILL AND HUMAN EFFORT

• Creative reconstruction of divinely inspired
  Sharia but appropriated by individual conscience
• God, the preliminary CAUSE of the movement, but
  the course determined by human effort
• Unconditional submission to the Shar (norm),
  acceptance of the Quranic DIN, access to creative
  freedom

5
ISLAMIC TASAWWUR AND DIVINE HAKIMIYYA

• Imaginative Appropriation , personal effort on
  the Sacred text, and on oneself, within social
  reality
• Dynamic relationship between subject and system
  in the interpretation and implementation of the
  Sharia
• Historical unfolding of Islam anchored within the
  expanding subjectivity of the active Tasawwur of
  individual Muslim

6
ISLAM, A SYSTEM (NIZAM) NOT STATE (DAWLA)

• Qutb transcends historically-given ISLAHI
  (Reformist) thinking
• The role of FIQH (jurisprudence) creative renewal
  of Tasawwur (envisionment)
• Rejection of existing forms of government
  non-Islamic did not call for an Islamic state,
  but called for rendering Islam operative through
  gaining political power

7
SECULAR ELEMENT IN QUTBS THOUGHT

• MANHAJ method, stresses importance of human
  reason and creativity
• Non-contamination with all existing forms of rule
  (HAKIMIYYA)
• Uncompromising rejection of all traditional
  loyalties based on personal obligations
• SHAHADA demands rebellion against any man-made
  form of power exercised over other humans

8
SIXTH AND SEVENTH CIRCLES

• Major influence of Wests construction of
  political Islam within Muslim intellectuals
• SEVENTH CIRCLE Islam is the solution
  (SOLUTIONIST) to every social problem by
  invoking the Sharia and the institution of
  Islamic state
• SIXTH CIRCLE Islam is politically neutral
  (NEUTRALIST) does not provide any ready-made
  political recipe, even when it maintains a
  normative hold

9
QUTB AND ABD AL-RAZIQ

• Their aim to purify DIN (religious) from LA DINI
  (non-religious)
• Shar has nothing to do with human government
• Viable Arab-Islamic frame of reference dependent
  upon historical analysis
• Non-existence of a government legitimized by DIN
  in history

10
THE SEVENTH CIRCLE

• End of NAHDA (Renaissance) and beginning of
  SAHWA (Awakening) and TURATH (Heritage), and
  both associated with ASALA (Authenticity)
• Opposite logics dealing with Crisis one
  suppressing ASALA the other working on it

11
YUSUF AL-QARADAWISEVENTH CIRCLE

• SAHWA Return of consciousness and vigilance
  after sleep or drunkenness preceded by
  stagnation (internal) and colonialism
  (external)
• SAHWA engaged in transcending Arab NAHDA faced
  with NAKSA (fall)
• SAHWA can be only Islamic
• UMMA cannot die because the Q and Sunna are
  preserved in the hearts

12
TRANSCULTURAL SPACE BETWEEN CONCEPTS

• SAHWA Western-shaped category of resurgence
• SAHWA, subjective-assertive, RESURGENCE
  external-observational
• Orientalist conflation at the level of IS, and
  the Islamist conflation at the level of OUGHT

13
THE VANGUARD OF SAHWA

• New Islamic Intellectuals of the 1970s
• Controlled by representatives of the Ulama class
  willing to gain public influence
• Two models of Islamic state emerge from the
  Traditional leaders al-dawla al-islamiyya and
  al-hukuma al-islamiyya
• Conflation slogan al-islam din wa dawla

14
POLARIZATION IN THE MATTER OF ISLAMIC STATE

• - SOLUTIONIST slogan Islam is the solution to
  all social problems, and NEUTRALIST slogan
  Islam is neutral towards the form of government
  and the profile of state.
• - Al-Qaradawi and Khalafallah leaders of the
  Seventh and Sixth Circles respectively

15
SEVENTH CIRCLE THEORIST

• - Qaradawis Islam is the solution formulated
  in the aftermath of Sadats assassination in the
  early 1980s
• - His solutionist position denounces
  extremism
• - Hermeneutics of modernity moral bankruptcy of
  Western civilization
• - The Hippy phenomenon and Islamist youth SAHWA
  generation
• - Anxiety of youth a vehicle for rediscovering
  authenticity

16
THE SAHWA GENERATION

• - Quiescent ULAMA under attack
• - ULAMA defend themselves as possessors of ILM
  (religious knowledge) and FIQH (jurisprudence)
• - ULAMA the only legitimate leaders and
  interpreters of awakening
• - Mediation of ULAMA in SAHWA

17
ULAMA ASSIGNED SOCIAL TASK

• - Entitled to the public interpretation and
  definition of Islam
• - Radical reading of Islamic History unauthentic
• - Evolutionism grounded in divine rule of
  gradualism
• - Enlightened FIQH based on a deep hermeneutic
  consciousness, and a fusion of salafiyya and
  tajdid (renewal)
• - No AQIDA without SHARIA, no DIN without DAWLA

18
DAWLA (STATE) FOR SEVENTH CIRCLE

• - Symbolic power for enforcing the Sharia
• - Appeal to individual consciences and achieve
  public resonances
• - Sharia as the discursive medium for envisioning
  Islam as the solution

19
THE SIXTH CIRCLE

• - Politically neutral Islam, held by neutrals
  known as Islamic liberals in the West
• - Similar to the Third Circle in assessing
  Political Islam al-islam al-siyasi
• - Progressive corruption of true Islam
• - Islam as a religion and way of life
• Is neutralism secularism? No, Islam a
  socio-cultural normative system

20
KHALAFALLAHS NEUTRALISM

• - The Quran, for justifying any social strategy
• - No concrete directives about state in the Q
• - Islami or Islamiyya has no basis in DIN
• - To understand Islam one needs to make a
  distinction between DIN and LA-DINI (profane,
  secular)
• - Fails to recognize the socially endogenous
  reasons for the complexity in islam

21
CRITIQUE OF THE SEVENTH CIRCLE

• - Overestimating the capacity of human reason to
  reproduce and represent the Will of God
• - Although Islam is individual commitment to God,
  it is a blueprint for life
• - Communal dimension in no way considered a
  platform for formulating an Islamic doctrine
  about the form of the state
• - Radical critical of clergy ULAMA

22
THE FIFTH CIRCLE

• - Engaged in transcending the polarization
  between the Seventh and Sixth Circles and the
  limits of their Reformist (ISLAHI) framework
• - Focuses on rationally authenticating the
  cultural heritage (TURATH), as a viable discourse
  of modernity
• - Ethos comparable to the Solutionism, closer to
  Neutralism in its concern for social justice and
  redefinition of TURATH

23
MODERN INTERPRETATION BY THE FIFTH CIRCLE

• - Departure from Sixth Circle argument about
  general interest (maslaha amma) as being a
  commitment to progress and social justice
• - Relationship between the Arab-Islamic heritage
  and the globalizing Western-centered modernity
• - Turath what is it? Encompasses of what?

24
AUTHENTIFICATION OF TURATH (HERITAGE)

• - Main task of the Fifth Circle de-reification
  of asala (authenticity) as a term for a static
  and ahistorical reference to a heritage
  considered as given, towards its reshaping as a
  method of reactualizing turath
• - Al-Jabiri critical of Islamic awakening a
  slogan without a historical reality, supporting
  the use of tajdid (renewal), reintroduces nahda
  (will to carry out a modern turn).

25
AL-HADATHA

• - Process of search for the new (hadatha),
  although still Western-based
• - Hadatha not the negation of turath, but
  historical force producing and reproducing
  al-muasara, the modern, contemporary
• - Hadatha as a method of inspection which
  includes its goal in itself
• - Al-hadatha no Western monopoly, universal,
  plural potentiality