Mohammed ‘Abed al-Jabri - Böcker

The distinguished Moroccan philosopher Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, in this summary of his own work, examines the status of Arab thought in the late twentieth century. Al-Jabri rejects what he calls the current polarization of Arab thought between an imported modernism that disregards Arab tradition and a fundamentalism that would reconstruct the present in the image of an idealized past. Both past and present intellectual currents are examined. Al-Jabri first questions the current philosophical positions of the liberals, the Marxists, and the fundamentalists. Then he turns to history, exploring Arab philosophy in the tenth and twelfth centuries, a time of political and ideological struggle. In the writings of Ibn Hazm and AverroËs, he identifies the beginnings of Arab rationalism, a rationalism he traces through the innovative fourteenth–century work of Ibn Khaldun. Al-Jabri offers both Western readers and his own compatriots a radical new approach to Arab thought, one that finds in the past the roots of an open, critical rationalism which he sees as emerging in the Arab world today.

Throughout the Middle East, and in the west as well, there has been much discussion concerning the notion of Islamic rule and the application of shari‘ah by the state. Central to these debates are the three key themes that Mohammad Abed al-Jabri looks at in this book: democracy, human rights and law. Jabri, one of the most influential political philosophers in the contemporary Middle East, examines how these three concepts have been applied in the history of the Arab world, and shows that they are determined by political and social context, not by Islamic doctrine. Jabri argues that in order to develop democratic societies in which human rights are respected, the Arab world cannot simply rely on old texts and traditions. Nor can it import democratic models from the West. Instead, he says, a new tradition will have to be forged by today's Arabs themselves, on their own terms. Through analysis of contemporary Arab ideology, its doubts about democracy, whether human rights are universal and the role of women and minorities in Islamic society, he expounds on the most pertinent issues in modern political philosophy. This lively interrogation of the building blocs of western conceptions of a modern state is a classic text and is vital for all students of modern Islamic political thought. Mohammed Abed al-Jabri (1936-2010) was Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rabat. As one of the most influential political philosophers in the contemporary Arab world, he authored many acclaimed books including, in Arabic: The Structure of Arab Reason, Arab Political Reason' and Arab Ethical Reason, and in English: The Formation of Arab Reason: Text, Tradition and the Construction of Modernity in the Arab World (I.B.Tauris, 2011).