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The Problematic of Twath in Contemporary Arab Thought: A Study of Adonis and Hasan HanafI

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

by Nadia Warden

The Institute of Islamic Studies McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada 2008

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Abstract Author: Title: Department: Degree:

Nadia Wardeh The Problematic of Turath in Contemporary Arab Thought: A Study of Adonis and Hasan Hanafi Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University Doctor of Philosophy

The central theme of this study is the question of turath (cultural heritage) as perceived by contemporary Arab thinkers since the Arab defeat by Israel in 1967. The diverse understandings of turath have raised various questions with respect to it, yielding a plethora of opinions that make it difficult to come up with a common definition. This unstable view of the phenomenon has led to what may be called "the problematic of turath? This study asks whether turath has the roots of the problematic or whether it is mainly the positions on it that have led to its problematization. An attempt to explore the term reveals that the contemporary meaning assigned to turath is ideological in nature, such that it is perceived as a tool for either progress or decline. To understand how this ideologization operates, the study looks at two antithetical positions on turath: that of the Islamic-modernist, Hasan Hanafi (b. 1935) and that of the secular-modernist, Adonis (b. 1930). Their positions are described in the light of their intellectual and ideological backgrounds, and analyzed in view of their primary texts. The study concludes that their "imagined" visions of turath reflect biased thinking, an understanding of turath that is adapted to their own ideological stance. As an Islamic phenomenologist, Hanafi perceives Islamic revelation as a phenomenon present to consciousness, regarding it as authoritative due to its presumed "uncorrupted" character. This makes it suitable to any place and time and renders it the only legitimate source for renewal and progress. However, the fact that he feels a rereading of turath is necessary to achieve this goal reflects a paradox in his discourse, whereby the same turath becomes simultaneously the chief problem and the chief solution for Arab-Muslim society. By contrast, Adonis, as a secular deconstructionist, looks at the inherited turath as a "text" with a static/dynamic dualism, and tries to show that the static elements of turath, which always appear stable, logical and capable of achieving progress, make it otherwise. For him, divine revelation — which is responsible for the predominance of the static and hence an obstacle to human freedom, creativity and progress — must be deconstructed. This paves the way for his own agenda of replacing the static, i.e., religious elements, with dynamic or secular elements, which alone can enable the reconstruction of a new civilization. But in the process, Adonis may only be replacing the religious with the secular and merely setting in place a new static dimension.

iii

Resume Auteur: Titre: Departement: Diplome:

Nadia Wardeh La Problematique du Turdth dans la Pensee Arabe Contemporaine: Etude de Adonis et de Hasan HanafT Institut d'Etudes Islamiques. Universite de McGill Doctorat en Philosophic

Cette etude traite principalement de la question du turdth (heritage culturel), tel qu'il a ete percu par les chercheurs arabes contemporains depuis la defaite face a Israel en 1967. Les differentes facons d'aborder et de comprendre le turdth ont engendre diverses questions, et ont donne place a une surabondance d'opinions, d'ou la difficulte d'etablir une definition commune. L'approche instable du phenomene a conduit a ce qu'on peut appeler "la problematique du turdth.'" Cette etude pose la question suivante : est-ce que c'est le turdth lui-meme qui est l'origine de la problematique ou est-ce que ce sont les diverses positions qui ont abouti a sa problematisation? Une tentative d'explorer cette notion revele que le sens contemporain attribue au turdth est ideologique par nature, puisqu'il est percu en tant qu'instrument du progres ou du declin. Afin de comprendre la facon dont cette ideologisation opere, l'etude se penche sur deux positions opposees: celle de l'islamique moderniste, Hasan HanafT (n. 1935) et celle du seculaire moderniste, Adonis (n. 1930). Ces deux positions seront decrites a la lumiere de leurs fonds intellectuels et ideologiques, et analysees par leurs textes primaires. L'etude demontre que leur vision " imaginee" du turdth reflete une pensee biaisee, et une comprehension adaptee a leurs positions ideologiques. En tant que phenomenologiste islamique, Hanafi permit la revelation islamique comme phenomene present a la conscience, la considerant reconnue et acceptee comme vraie, vu son caractere presume " non corrompu," ce qui la rend appropriee pour n'importe quel temps/espace et lui attribue le statut de seule source legitime du renouvellement et du progres. Cependant, le fait que Hanafi pense qu'une relecture du turdth est necessaire, pour atteindre cet objectif, reflete un paradoxe dans son discours: le meme turdth devient simultanement le probleme majeur et la solution majeure pour la societe arabo-musulmane. Par contraste, Adonis, en tant que deconstructionniste seculaire, envisage le turdth herite comme "texte" ayant comme dualite le caractere statique/dynamique, et tente de demontrer que les elements statiques, qui apparaissent toujours stables, logiques et accomplissant le progres, sont a considerer autrement. Pour lui, la revelation divine - responsable de la predominance du statique et en consequence obstacle a la liberte humaine, a la creativite et au progress — doit etre deconstruite. Cela ouvre la voie au remplacement du statique, i.e., elements religieux, par des elements dynamiques ou seculaires. Cette voie, seule, permet la reconstruction d'une nouvelle civilisation. Toutefois, dans ce processus, Adonis, cherchant a remplacer le religieux par le seculaire, risque d'etablir tout simplement une nouvelle dimension statique.

IV

Acknowledgments

I would like first of all to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to my dissertation supervisor, Professor Issa J. Boullata, for providing me with invaluable advice and for supervising my work with patience and insight. I will forever remember my meetings with him both at the Institute of Islamic Studies and at his home where we held remarkable discussions of my work and other related intellectual concepts. I would also like to thank him for inviting me to spend time with Adonis, when the latter came to participate in an unforgettable cultural event in Montreal some years ago. Above all, I would like to thank him for accepting to continue as my supervisor even after his official retirement. Although constantly engaged in many important scholarly projects, he continued to share his rich experience and valuable time and guidance, and granted me the honor of being his last supervisee. I will always benefit from the lessons of life and scholarship that he has taught me. My gratitude also extends to Professor A. Uner Turgay, my co-supervisor, for always being there for me with his wise advice, friendship, good heart and gentleness, all of which helped immensely and will be forever remembered and cherished. Special thanks must also go to Professor Michelle Hartman, whose encouragement, support and kindness kept me creative and motivated me to finish the requirements of my degree (especially the Doctoral Qualifying Examinations) despite a series of challenges, particularly the loss of my father. I also thank her for showing faith in me by granting me my first opportunity to teach as Course Lecturer and Teaching Assistant in the Institute of Islamic Studies, and for

v

recommending me for the "Faculty of Arts Graduate Student Teaching Award, which I received in the 2004-2005 academic year. She also recommended me for the award of "The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)," I received during my Ph.D. studies, for which I thank her, Professor Issa J. Boullata, Professor A. Uner Turgay. Special thanks go to the entire staff and faculty members of the Institute of the Islamic Studies, and the staff of the Islamic Studies Library for their general help, support and patience. Above all, I am deeply grateful to Kirsty McKinnon, the Student Affairs Coordinator, for being so optimistic, supportive and sympathetic, and to Mr. Steve Millier, of the Islamic Studies Library, for his constant assistance in providing and locating sources, for all the help he gave and for the time and effort he spent in reviewing and editing this work. Finally, I would like to add a personal note by thanking my friends, Diana Wardeh (my soulmate), Lubna Abu Wardeh and Nancy Zaidan for all their long-distance support and concern. Special acknowledgments go to my life-long friend Abla Odeh, who, despite her demanding life, always stood by me to offer any needed help, counseling and professional assistance. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation to my beloved brothers, Haidar, Husam, Rabee, Rami and Feras Wardeh for their emotional and financial support, constant kindness, encouragement and understanding, and for providing me with the best possible environment in which to write a dissertation. Finally, my deepest appreciation and gratitude go to my eternal mentor, my darling mother, Suhaila Zaidan, for her boundless giving, love, caring, kindness, compassion and unceasing understanding and support.

vi

Table of Contents Dedication

ii

Abstract

iii

Resume

iv

Acknowledgments

v

Table of Contents

vii

System of Transliteration

viii

Introduction

1

Chapter I: Turath: Definition, Content, Function and Major Trends

25

1. Turath: Definition and Content 2. Turath: Function

25 46

3. Turath: Major Trends

56

Chapter II: Hasan Hanafi: An Islamic-Modernist Position on Turath

65

1. Hanafi: Intellectual and Ideological Formation: a) Phenomenology and the significance of wahl. b) The development of multiple consciousnesses c) The shock of 1967 2. Liberation Theology and the Islamic-Left

68 75 81 85

3. Hanafi: An Islamic-Modernist Position on Turath

92

Chapter III: Adonis: A Secular-Modernist Position on Turath

119

1. Adonis: Intellectual and Ideological Formation: a) From 'AH Ahmad Sa'id to Adonis b) Nietzsche and Surrealism c) Beirut: A new reality, a new mission d) The defeat of 1967 and the position of Mawaqif. 2. Secularism: The Impact of Antun Sa'adah 3. Adonis: A Secular-Modernist Position on Turath

123 129 134 140 143 150

Conclusion

182

Bibliography

194

vii

Note on Transliteration

The transliteration system employed in this Ph.D. dissertation is that of the Library of Congress, as detailed in the publication ALA-LC Romanization Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts (Washington: Distribution service, Library of Congress, 1991).

viii

Introduction

Arab society has earlier faced and resolved various...crises in its long history. The presentday one is of long standing since it can be dated from the beginning of the nineteenth century when traditional Arab culture first encountered modern European culture on a large and - later - increasing scale, particularly in the context of Western colonial hegemony accompanied by gradual cultural penetration. The current crisis manifestations entangled with Arab underdevelopment, domination by Western imperialism and defeat by Zionism have prompted several Arab intellectuals to devote much of their effort to discussions of their cultural heritage' [turath] with regard to its content.2

The above quotation reflects and validates both the hitherto conventional hypothesis that the French Revolution and the consequent spread of Western culture to the East were the main factors in "awakening" and "reviving" the "modern" Arab

The translation of the Arabic term turath as "cultural heritage" corresponds to Issa Boullata's rendering in Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought. However, it is the Arabic term "turath" that will be used in this study and not any translated terms such as "heritage," "legacy" or "tradition" (as it is variously translated). This is because turath means more than these English equivalents. In fact, "turath"— among contemporary Arab intellectuals — features psychological and ideological characteristics and thus operates as a sign of cultural, national and religious identity in contemporary Arab awareness. In addition, "turath" embraces both metaphysical/intangible and physical/tangible elements, as will be shown in the first chapter of this study. Therefore, in this context, neither heritage nor tradition or legacy can precisely correspond to or match the Arabic term turath. 2 Issa J. Boullata, Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 12.

2

culture — thus promoting a rethinking of its turath — and the corresponding hypothesis articulated by many contemporary Arab thinkers that the notion of "crisis" and/or "predicament" is central to the situation of "modern" Arab culture.4 Moreover, it highlights the central theme of this study, i.e., the problematic of turath as perceived by contemporary Arab thinkers ever since the Arab defeat at the hands of Israel in 1967. As a matter of fact, it was after the initial shock of 1967 that Arab intellectuals reacted by sounding an inward call for explanation and responsibility and turning their attention to turath and to the issue of whether it played a positive or negative role in their society. The common question posed then was simply: Why had the Arabs lost? In their attempt to answer this fundamental question, Arab intellectuals and cultural critics embarked on a multi-faceted effort of analyzing and criticizing the prevailing Arab culture and its turath. Out of this emerged a number of studies, conferences and symposia dealing with the question of turath in the wake of the 1967 defeat, leading many to come up with

3

See, for example, Ra'lf Khun, Al-Fikr al-'Arabl al-Hadlth: Athar al-Thawrah alFaranslyah fl Tawjihihi al-Siyasi wa-al-Ijtima'/(Beirut: Dar al-Makshuf, 1943); Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (London: Oxford University Press, 1962); Al-Fikr al-'Arabl fl Mi'at Sanah, ed., Fu'ad Sarruf and Nabih Arriln Faris (Beirut: alJami'ah al-Amfiklyah, 1967); Hisham Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West, The Formative Years, 1875-1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970). 4 See, for example, Fouad Ajami, The Arab Predicament: Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967(Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Mahdi 'Amil (pseudonym of Hasan Hamdan), Azmat al-Hadarah al-'Arablyah am Azmat alBurjuwazJyat al-'ArabiyaW. (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1974); Shakir Mustafa, ed., Azmat al-Tatawwur al-Hadafi fl al-Watan al-'Arab!: Waqa'i' Nadwat al-Kuwayt ma bayna 712 Nisan (April), 1974 (Kuwait^ Jamlyat al-Khirrijin al-Kuwaytiyah wa-Jam'Iyat alKuwayt, 1975); Muhammad 'Abid al-Jabiri, Ishkallyat al-Fikr al-Arabi al-Mu'asir (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-'Arablyah, 1990); idem, Al-Mas'alah alThaqallyah (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-'Arablyah, 1994).

3 propositions designed to explain the present Arab "stagnation" and to chart desirable future development.5 It is not that previous generations of modern Arab intellectuals had not gone through a similar exercise, for there were writers like Ahmad Airiln, Taha Husayn, 'Abbas Mahmud al-'Aqqad ... to mention only a few of the immediately previous generation, who had left voluminous works on the subject. But there was now an urgent new need to reassess the past in the light of pressing new issues and events.6

Such a need was translated into action when, not long after the 1967 war, the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO)7 called for a "Conference on Authenticity and Renewal in Contemporary Arab Culture."8 In fact, this

5

For more details about Arab intellectuals' reactions and scholars' views of the impact of the 1967 defeat in provoking the question of turath and the prevailing Arab culture, see, for example: Nissim Rejwan, Arabs Face the Modern World: Religious, Cultural, and Political Responses to the West (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998) 104-136; Muhammad Jabir al-Ansafi, Musa'alat al-Hazimah: Jadid al-'Aql al-'Arabl bayna Sadmat 1967 wa-Mun'atafal-Alffyah (Beirut: al-Mu'assasah al-'Arabiyah lilDirasat wa-al-Nashr, 2001); Boullata, Trends and Issues; al-Jabiri, Ishkaliyat al-Fikr al'ArabJ al-Mu'asir; Ibrahim Abu Rabi', Contemporary Arab Thought: Studies in Post1967Arab Intellectual History (London: Pluto Press, 2004); Al-Huwlyah wa-al-Turath; (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-'Arablyah, 1984); Hasan Hanafi^ Hisar al-Zaman: Al-Hadir: Ishkalat al-Hadir (Cairo: Markaz al-Kitab lil-Nashr, 2004) 181-188; Ghafi Shukri, Al-Turath wa-al-Thawrah (Beirut: Dar al-Tafi'ah, 1973)1-10; Constantine Zurayk, Ma ba'da al-Nakbah Mujaddadan (Beirut: Dar al-'Ilm lil-Malaym, 1967); Ajami, The Arab Predicament. See also the proceedings of the first conference held after the war of 1967, published by the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO) under the title Mu'tamar al-Asalah wa-al-Tajdid fi alThaqafah al-'Arablyah al-Mu'asirah (Cairo: ALECSO, Directorate of Culture, 1973), and also in Al-Adab 19, no. 11 (Nov. 1971): 2-27, where six of the eight conference papers are published. 6 Boullata, Trends and Issues, 27. 7 This organization was established in 1970. This conference was held in Cairo between 4 and 11 October 1971.

4

conference "featured eight papers only, and not many of the leading Arab intellectuals were invited."9 Nevertheless, most of the papers touched upon the question of turath and its relation to the present. Even greater attention to the debate over turath led to further conferences of Arab intellectuals, like the one held in Kuwait in 1974 where twenty-two papers were presented. The theme of that conference was "The Crisis of Civilizational Development in the Arab Homeland," and out of fourteen areas of interest, the focus remained on the relation of the past to the present and the future of the Arab people.

[T]he problem which the symposium continually encountered in more than one of its study-papers and in different ways was the role of the Arab past in orienting the [Arab] future. Whether we call this problem that of authenticity and renovation, or the heritage [turath} and modernization, or atavism and westernization, or any thing else, it has taken this role of multiple facets and influence in Arab civilizational development only because our look at it has been ahistorical."10

It is clear from the above-quoted final declaration of the conference that, more important than the past itself was the perception of its bearing upon cultural attitudes in the present. Indeed the pressure of this concern was clearly depicted in a Cairo conference in 1984 on "Cultural Heritage and the Challenges of the Modern Age in the

9

Boullata, Trends and Issues, 13. Nadwat al-Kuwayt [the Kuwait Colloquium]. "Final Declaration of the Kuwait Colloquium on the Crisis of Cultural Development in the Arab Nation," trans. John J. Donohue, in Vision and Revision in Arab Society 1974, CEMAM Reports 1974, 5-15 (Beirut: Dar el-Mashreq, 1975); Boullata, Trends and Issues, 16. 10

5 Arab Nation: Authenticity and Modernity."" The title itself indicates the significant role assigned to tvrath by contemporary Arab intellectuals, and reflects their consciousness of its national function and its impact in the present day. Nevertheless, in most discussions of tvrath one comes to realize that its present status is undervalued, and it is at this point that one grasps an essential aspect of the problematic, i.e., that the present itself, or the present Arab reality, is usually absent from the discussion. To put it simply, although the two central observable facets are the past and the present, nevertheless the former, in most cases, is seen to represent the "superior," accomplished past of the Arab people, while the latter stands for the "highly advanced, glorious" present belonging to the "other," in this case the modern West. This of course raises the issue of tvrath and modernity in contemporary Arab thought, but in fact it was the question of tvrath that took up most of the attention of the intellectuals, who in discussing it at such great length contributed, perhaps, unintentionally, to complicating the question and making the issue of tvrath more problematic than it needed to be. Clearly illustrating Koselleck's view that an intellectual critique, in most cases, creates or makes the crisis,12 all of these discussions and analyses of the question of tvrath by contemporary Arab thinkers and cultural critics have in effect created a new predicament for both themselves and their Arab audience where tvrath itself has become a problem, indeed, a problematic issue, in post-1967 writings. This is reflected in the fact that tvrath is often addressed by most contemporary Arab intellectuals as an

11

Armando Salvatore, "The Rational Authentication of Tvrath in Contemporary Arab Thought: Muhammad al-Jabiri and Hasan Hanaff," The Mvslim World'85, no.3-4 (JulyOctober, 1995): 191-214. 12 R. Koselleck, Critiqve and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modem Society (Oxford: Berg, 1988), 10.

6 ishkaliyah (a problematic). As such, the issue of turath became essentially problemgenerating. To some extent, this was due to the fact that many Arab critics and thinkers started to review their own culture and/or turath in the light of what they thought of as a "superior" Western criterion for progress and victory. The West was consistently regarded as more powerful and successful, especially since the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the spread of European political control in the East, resulting in the actual conquest of the Arab world in the first half of the nineteenth century. It was then that a number of Arab intellectuals and informed individuals, especially those exposed to a European education — whether abroad or in their own lands — started to compare and contrast what they considered their own declining native culture and turath with the new triumphant foreign one, paving the way to what became known as the period of intellectual modernization and reform, or the nahdah movement (Arab-Islamic renaissance) — considered by many to be one of the major trends in Arab thought and culture and as having exercised a far-reaching influence on Arabic literature, politics, culture and even religion. Because the question of nahdah has been exhaustively studied and investigated it need not detain us here; however, one should keep in mind that, in most cases, this was the assumption underlying the literature dealing with modern ArabIslamic thought.13 This literature perceived the West as the criterion by which to gauge

13

See, for example, Ra'lf Khun, Modern Arab Thought: Channels of the French Revolution to the Arab East, trans. Ihsan 'Abbas (Princeton, N.J.: Kingston Press, cl983); Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age; Hisham Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West; Majid Fakhfi, Al-Harakat al-Fikriyah wa-Ruwaduha alLubnamyun fi Asr al-Nahdah 1800-1922 (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 1992); Muhammad Qadi, Al-Fikr al-Islahi 'inda al-Arab fi Asr al-Nahdah (Tunis: Dar al-Janub, cl992); Ghafi Shukri, Al-Nahdah wa-al-Suqut 11 al-Fikr al-Misri al-Hadlth (Cairo: al-Hay'ah al-

7

the modernization of Arab culture, seen as only achievable by emulating the so-called advanced, enlightened principles of Europe. This assumption has dominated, or even shaped, the study of modern Arab thought both in the West and in the Arab world. The emphasis has long been on the impact of European civilization on Arab culture, a notion that took root in and spread throughout Western scholarship in all related fields of study. In view of this, and to understand better the emergence of the question of turath, one should look at it as part of the overall development of modern Arab thought, for as has long been recognized by scholars, the question of the "East-West" encounter, and thus the issue of"turath and modernity," has its roots in the late nineteenth century, a time of colonization and Western domination. In the field of modern Arab thought, one can point to two rival hypotheses that try to account for its emergence. The first, initiated by Ra'lf Khun in his pioneering study entitled al-Fikr al-'Arabl al-Hadlth: Athar al-Thawrah al-Faranslyah fi Tawjihihi al-Siyasi wa-al-Ijtimai(1943),

holds that the French Revolution and the consequent

spread of Western culture to the East were the sole factors in this process. The second (and less well-known) hypothesis, advanced by Fahml Jad'an in 1979, posits a different and earlier source of inspiration, which will be briefly addressed in due course. Khun deals with the period between 1798 and 1940, his central theme being that the French Revolution was the greatest liberating force in history and the only one capable of

Misriyah al-'Ammah lil-Kitab, 1992); Islam Mahfuz, Hi war ma'a Ruwad al-Nahdah alArabJyah (London: Riyad al-Rayyis, 1988); Muhammad Shafiq Ghurbal, ed., Dirasat Tarikhlyah 11 al-Nahdah al-Arablyah al-Hadlthah (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anjlu alMisriyah, 196?); Anwar al-Jindl, Yaqzat al-Fikr al-Arabl: Harakat al-Yaqzah 11 Muwajahat al-Taghrib (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anjlu al-Misfiyah, 1972); Rejwan, Arabs Face the Modern World, John Obert Voll, Islam, Continuity and Change in the Modern World (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press; Harlow, Essex, England: Longman, 1982).

8 breaking the age-old shackles of the Arab world and transforming it into a modern society. Thus he singles out the French Revolution as the main formative influence on modern Arab thought. However, despite his high opinion of the effect of the revolution on the thinkers of the Arab East, he himself admits that many writers and thinkers did not restrict themselves to it, but turned also to Islam and found that it too supported their aspirations for reform, consultative rule and a constitution. In searching for an explanation he reviews a group of influential intellectual and activist figures from alAfghanl (1838-1897) to Taha Husayn (1889-1973), among others. He also observes that when these writer-thinkers came to understand the French Revolution and its doctrines, they reconsidered their environment and conditions and soon turned to the doctrines of Islam at its dawn with its call for goodness, innovation, justice, kindness, freedom and other sublime ideals and values.14 With such an analysis, he eloquently predicts what has turned out to be the most important debate in the modern Arab world, i.e., the question of turath and modernity since the 1950s. Certainly, Khuri's book provided the foundations for other later works;15 yet, despite its importance, its impact remained limited to Arab intellectual circles and, for the most part, was unknown to the outside world until the early 1960s when Albert Hourani first published his famous Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (1962). Owing to Hourani's study, Khuri's central theme and main hypothesis were reinforced and promptly disseminated in the West. Hourani's own similar contention

14

Khun, Al-Fikr al- Arab! al-Hadlth. Among other works, the major themes and arguments of Khuri's book were reproduced in an encyclopedic study entitled Al-Fikr al- Arab! fi Mi'at Sanah (1967), which grew out of contributions to a conference by the same name held in 1958 at the American University in Beirut. 15

9 seems to be that contact with the West awakened a fairly "stagnant" Middle East, that ideas can largely determine the direction of social and political change, and that popularizing intellectuals play central roles in their societies. Above all, it was the selfquestioning of the Arab politico-religious intelligentsia on the subject of the apparent decline in strength of their own society that led them to debate the scope and degree of acceptable borrowing from the West without losing their own identity and heritage (turatti) as Arabs and Muslims. Hourani concluded that a few rejected this heritage and tried to become Westerners in spirit, while others turned their backs on the West altogether and yet others attempted — with varying degrees of success — to mix selectively Western and Islamic thought.16 Certainly, this division became the accepted schema adopted by most succeeding scholars, and indeed a number of studies appeared in its wake. Some scholars especially sought to account for the course of nineteenth and twentieth century Middle Eastern history on this basis, particularly after the events of 1967. One such scholar was Hisham Sharabi (1927-2005). In his Arab Intellectuals and the West (1973), he deals with the first and formative phase of the Arab response to the West, described by him as the "Arab awakening." Like Hourani, he argues that the emergence of Arab thought must be seen as a manifestation of the process of enlightenment brought about by contact with Europe. Studying the intellectuals of the Arab awakening as a collective expression of the experience of their generation, Sharabi presents them in terms of their cultural background, the conditions under which communication and conflict occurred, the manners and forms of their expression, and

Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age.

10 above all the social and psychological determinants of their ideas. As a result, he describes Islamic reformers, Christian Westernizers, and Muslim secularists as constituting the three main distinct and conflicting trends that have dominated Arab intellectual discourse over the past century.17 Clearly, these pioneering works — although they only accounted for intellectual developments prior to the 1950s and concentrated on the effect on the Arab world of the East-West encounter — contributed to the debate over the question of turath, defining the issues that would dominate the field of contemporary Arab thought from the middle of the twentieth century onwards. Among the works that have tried to assess these more recent developments is Issa Boullata's Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (1990). This study provides a detailed and comprehensive survey of the development of Arab thought in the last quarter century and is truly considered as complementary to the works of Hourani and Sharabi. Boullata, perceiving the need to examine Arab thought in the context of current problems and conflicting trends,18 focuses on the two decades following the 1967 debacle and identifies a number of important themes that have engaged Arab intellectuals, including turath. Since its publication, several scholars have imitated it by exploring later developments, among them Ibrahim Abu Rabi'. In two related studies, "Reflections on Concept of the 'Other' in Modern Arab Thought" (1998), and Contemporary Arab Thought: Studies in Post-1967 Arab Intellectual History (2004), Abu Rabi' has tried to update this intellectual trend. In the first study, he too accepts that a great many Arab thinkers in the nineteenth century 17 18

Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West. Boullata, Trends and Issues, 9.

11 were puzzled by the European attack on their societies, even though some of them became fascinated with the nature of Western progress. For him, such a dual reaction to the West has created diverse understandings of the concept of the "other." In view of this fact, he looks at Arab thought from the standpoint of its construction and appreciation of the "other," and demonstrates that modern Arab thought was permeated by outside influence in both its Arab/Muslim past as well as in the colonial era.19 Still, to obtain an accurate picture of contemporary Arab attitudes toward the "other," Abu Rabi' contends that an assessment of post-1967 Arab thought is essential. This is what 90

he argues in his second study,

where he attempts to retrace the Arab world's aborted

modernity of recent decades and explores the development of contemporary Arab thought; nevertheless, he fails to include the issue of turath in his discussion, despite the central role it plays in contemporary Arab thought. While it is true that scholars have, in the majority, accepted Hourani's hypothesis and have attributed to the influence of Western culture on the East the principal responsibility for shaping modern Arab thought, there is still a second view to be considered, i.e., that of Fahml Jad'an. In his classic work Usus al-Taqaddum 'inda Mufakkirlal-Islam fi al-'Alam al-Arabl al-Hadlth (1979), he insists that the roots of Arab modernity lie not in the reaction to Napoleon's penetration of the region, but in the thought of Ibn Khaldun. It was the latter's view on Arab cultural and intellectual backwardness and his attempts to locate rationally and analyze its actual causes that stimulated attempts in the modern era to arrest this decline, while interaction with 19

Ibrahim Abu Rabi', "Reflections on Concept of the 'Other' in Modern Arab Thought," HamdardIslamicusll, no.3 (July-September 1998): 37-46. 90

Abu Rabi', Contemporary Arab Thought.

12 Western civilization has merely enhanced awareness of decline and the necessity for the nahdah. This interaction, in Jad'an's view, created an ever-growing restless and anxious intellectual and mental state, in addition to an ongoing search for the self and a quest for identity within one's own turath. In view of this, he concludes that turath has become one of the most important concerns of the present, regarded by many, but particularly Islamic-oriented intellectuals, as the starting point of any plan for the present and/or 91

future development. This concise review of the influential literature has alluded to certain key questions that emerged among Arab intellectuals as early as their first encounter with Western culture: the questions of "self and other," "Islam and the West," or the more recent "turath and modernity." These questions acquired a broader importance in the 1960s when Arab intellectual discourse, and hence, Arab thought, entered a new phase after the six-day war of June 1967. It was at this time that the question of turathbecame the crucial issue of debate among contemporary Arab thinkers and cultural critics due to the perceived importance of its function and effect in the present. However, this central issue is still overlooked in Western scholarship, where the interest has been mainly oriented toward other, more trendy issues, such as "women," "fundamentalism," "terrorism" and "political Islam," among many other related topics. For this reason, serious studies of the field are needed not only to uncover this deep-seated issue in contemporary Arab thought but also to rethink the question itself. This is because the issue of turath preoccupies many Arab thinkers; it constitutes their principal subject of debate, and promises to do so for years to come. 21 Fahrril J ad'an, Usus al-Taqaddum 'inda Mufakkirl al-Islam fi al-'Alam al-'Arabl alHadlth (Amman: Dar al-Shuruq, 1979, 1988).

13 Certainly, the various and diverse understandings of turath have created a number of intellectual positions and raised various questions with respect to its nature and function. And yet despite (or perhaps because of) the attention devoted to the question, it is still difficult to come up with a theory of turath on which most contemporary Arab thinkers can agree. One may argue that such an unstable, ambiguous view of turath has led to what is called the "ishkallyat a/-turath" (the problematic of turath) in contemporary Arab thought. In view of this, the word "problematic" is used in this study because, on the one hand, it corresponds to the Arabic equivalent term ishkaliyah as it is used by many contemporary Arab intellectuals to describe turath and modern Arab thought, and because, on the other, the term "problematic" in English (and its equivalent in other languages) connotes the uncertainty and ambiguity of turath in contemporary Arab thought. In various French, English and Arabic dictionaries and lexicons, the term problematic is assigned several, though similar meanings, e.g.: of the nature of a problem; constituting or presenting a problem; difficult of solution or decision; doubtful, uncertain, and questionable. From a logical point of view, the word has the sense of enunciating or supporting what is possible but not necessarily true. And from a social sciences point of view, problematic means something that constitutes a problem, or an area of difficulty in a particular field of study.22 Now, if one compares these various understandings of the term problematic, one can confidently state that its basic meaning

Oxford English Dictionary [online], s.v. "Problematic" www.oed.com (accessed March 12 2008); Jamil Safiba, Al-Mu'jam al-Falsafi (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Lubnanl 1982), 2:379; Merriam-Webster Dictionary [online], s.v. "Problematic" www.m-w.com (accessed March 12 2008); Lepetit Larousse(Larousse-Bordas, 1997), 825.

14 is untested theory,

or better still, to use Muhammad 'Abid al-Jabin's description, "a

tension and inclination toward a theory."24 Hence, to speak of the "problematic of turath in contemporary Arab thought" is to underscore several adjoined problems, difficulties, uncertainties, decisions, possible solutions, and inchoate theories within Arab thought regarding the question of turath. In fact, this unstable intellectual position is reflected in the miscellaneous literature and studies that deal with turath and address the critical question, raised by Arab thinkers themselves, of the debased situation of the Arabs of today. In essence, they ask: What role has turath played, for better or worse, in creating the current situation? In the search for an effective answer, a wide range of studies have been penned by Arab thinkers from every intellectual trend, including traditionalists, rationalists, Marxists, revolutionaries, etc. Each trend has offered a different analysis, theory, suggestion or proposal for what each sees as the soundest reading of the turath, in the hope of better understanding the present and extricating Arab society from its current impasse.25 Thus, in most cases, turath is seen as both a means to understand the present and as an accountable antecedent for the current unsatisfactory state of Arab society. In English and Arabic dictionaries, theory is defined as a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts. 24 Al-Jabiri, IshkaRyat al-Fikr al- 'Arab!al-Mu'ask, 15. 25 See, for example, Yusuf al-QaradawI, Ayna al-Khalal?(Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Risalah, 1990); Muhammad 'Abid a-Jabiri, Nahnu wa-al-Turath: Qira'at Mu'asirah fi Turathina al-Falsafi(Beirut: Dar al-Tafi'ah, 1980); Husayn Muruwah, Turathuna Kayfa Na'rifuhu (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Abhath al-'Arabiyah, 1985); Tayyib Tizirii, Mashru' Ru'yah Jadldah lil-Fikr al-'Arabl min "al-'Asr al-Jahifi"hatta al-Marhalah al-Mu'asirah, vol. 1, Min al-Turath Ha al-Thawrah: Hawla Nazarlyah Muqtarahah fi Qadiyat al-Turath al'Arabl (Beirut: Dar Ibn Khaldun, cl978); Hasan Hanafi, Al-Turath wa-al-Tajdld. Mawqifuna min al-Turath al-Qadlm (Beirut: al-Mu'assasah al-'Arabiyah lil-Dirasat waal-Nashr wa-al-Tawzl', 1992); Adonis, Al-Thabit wa-al-Mutahawwil: Bahth fi al-Ittiba' wa-al-Ibda' 'inda al-'Arab, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Saqi, 2002).

15 Consequently, the question of turath and its relation to the present has been increasingly becoming an imperative subject for many contemporary Arab intellectuals and cultural critics. However, despite the important and the special position the topic of turath enjoys among the latter, it is still neglected in Western scholarship. This is not, however, to say that the issue has gone completely unnoticed, for a few Western scholars have begun to consider its centrality in contemporary Arab thought, chief among them being Armando Salvatore. In his study "The Rational Authentication of Turath in Contemporary Arab Thought: Muhammad al-Jabifi and Hasan Hanafi" (1995),26 Salvatore makes an important contribution to the study of this field in the West by placing emphasis on the focal point of interest among contemporary Arab thinkers, namely, the question of turath. In his distinctive analysis, "authenticity" is not regarded as a simple reaction to the "challenge of the West," but rather as a general modern phenomenon in which the crux in the construction of any collective identity is the discussion of authenticity by "authenticity specialists," or intellectuals. He discusses the development of Arab thought during the 1980s and argues that this development consists in an effort to work out a rational and, what is more, viable and therefore, "authentic" way of defining the Arab-Islamic turath - all of which is intended to re-launch Arabism as an autonomous civilizational project in the modern world. In an effort to confirm this point, he studies the works of al-Jabiri and Hanafi, comparing and analyzing them in an attempt to elicit the "Arab-Islamic" features of the hermeneutics of authenticity within modern 26

Armando Salvatore, "The Rational Authentication of Turath in Contemporary Arab Thought: Muhammad al-Jabifi and Hasan Hanafi," The Muslim World $5, no.3-4 (JulyOctober, 1995): 191-214.

16 intellectual discourse. In fact, he correctly sees the question of turath and the debate over it among Arab intellectuals as part of a national struggle not only to preserve identity in the face of the "other" but also to construct it in a way dynamic enough to contribute to the present universal culture.27 Certainly, Salvatore's research opened scholars' eyes to a particular ideology behind contemporary Arab thinkers' positions on turath, paving the way for casting the net more widely by exploring other ideologies such as Islamism or secularism. Another significant study is that of As'ad Abukhalil, entitled "Against the Taboos of Islam: Anti-Conformist Tendencies in Contemporary Arab/Islamic Thought" (2001 ).28 In this study Abukhalil focuses on what he calls the "anti-conformists," i.e., lesser-known contemporary Arab writers who are challenging the accepted norms of a conservative society by investigating its past {turath) from a non-conformist angle. He notes that Western studies of contemporary Islamic thought often attribute to it a monolithic character. The view that there exists one kind of Islam and one kind of Muslim has been reinforced by, as he puts it, "classical Orientalists." Although turath is not the subject of his study, he describes the efforts of these "anti-conformist" writers as important and daring because they challenge the basic assumptions and axioms of the traditional Islamic belief system, including the glorification of the past and the officially transmitted version of Arab/Islamic history. His focus is on the theme of progress in the Arab/Islamic world through the principles of those secular, "anti-conformists" or

27

Salvatore, "The Rational Authentication of Turath in Contemporary Arab Thought." As'ad Abukhalil, "Against the Taboos of Islam: Anti-Conformist Tendencies in Contemporary Arab/Islamic Thought," in Between the State and Islam, ed. Charles E. Butterworth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 110-133. 28

17 "radical reformers." Whereas reform is intended to revive Islam or turath in order to apply it more effectively in polity and society, anti-conformist radicalism aims at marginalizing it in order to revitalize Arabs and their community and remove them from the sway of religion. Anti-conformism reflects the efforts of individual Muslims who, rather than blindly accept officially sanctioned interpretations of religious texts, choose to reject those interpretations and subject the sacrosanct texts to critical examination and interpretation.

Since turath is among the most debated issues in contemporary

Arab thought, Abukhalil's study calls scholars' attention to this non-conformist, secular ideology and its potential as a means of critiquing turath. Although the aforementioned contributions show that the issue of turath has not gone completely unnoticed among contemporary Western and/or Western-based scholars, who seem to be fully aware of its significance, few of them make turath the focus of their work. Indeed, while recognizing its importance and centrality in contemporary Arab thought, they remain largely silent when it comes to the topic of turath itself and how and why it became not only a central issue among contemporary Arab thinkers, but also a problematic area. In other words, no one seems to ask whether turath in itself is problematical, or whether it is the position on turath that seems to lie at the roots of such a problematic — a question that is the chief concern of the present dissertation. In view of this, one should be very careful where to start and what path to follow on this journey. To facilitate this task, the present study will be confined to the post-1967 period, for it has been during this era that the issue of turath has grown into a highly visible and 29

Abukhalil, "Against the Taboos of Islam: Contemporary Arab/Islamic Thought."

Anti-Conformist

Tendencies

in

18 crucial subject of debate among contemporary Arab thinkers and cultural critics. Indeed, it was in this interval that the term turath itself started to take on a special sense. The present study focuses on this innovative sense of turath and how it is perceived or defined by contemporary Arab thinkers — a perception which led to what is described in this study as a subjective, ideological approach to turath. The key question to be asked here is how and why turath came to be perceived in this sense. Depending mainly on primary sources, and applying a descriptive, analytical and critical method, this dissertation intends to take an essential step towards understanding the illusion behind the problematic by offering a more objective definition of turath and by investigating and criticizing some of the more important ideological positions. Because it is almost impossible here to cover all views on the issue, I deliberately focus on two modernist yet opposing positions on turath (the Islamic and the secular). My choice of the modernist current is mainly because of its interest in the "old" ArabIslamic culture, though not for the sake of the "old turath" in itself but rather for the -in

modernizing purposes of the present.

The ideological variation between the two trends

results in antithetical positions, where turath is viewed and exploited ideologically. This in turn generates what one may describe as a methodological deficiency or inability to offer a coherent meaning of turath, so that in the end it becomes interchangeable with religion. Now at first glance, this may not appear very significant, but as one proceeds it This is quite unlike the so-called traditionalist or conservative trend which values the past and/or the old turath for its own sake, calling not only for its revival, but also to adapt the present to it. Since I wrote an entire MA thesis on this current, as represented by one influential contemporary thinker, i.e., Yusuf al-Qaradawl, the traditionalist position on turath will not be examined in the present study. See my thesis, Nadia Wardeh, "Yusuf al-Qaradaw~i and the 'Islamic Awakening' of the Late 20th Century." M.A. thesis, McGill University, Institute of Islamic Studies, 2001.

19 will be shown that such a methodological deficiency, although not the only reason behind the problematizing of turath, is the basis of it. Thus, it must be explored, analyzed and criticized before searching for further reasons - perhaps a subject better left for future study. Therefore, this dissertation serves as an introduction to the problematic of turath in contemporary Arab thought, aiming first at providing an objective definition of "turatlT that may be used as a criterion for examining the grounds of a, so to speak, "imagined" turath and the ideological, subjective position on it. To achieve this goal, the dissertation will be divided into three chapters. In the first an attempt is made to define turath, not by claiming to discover its "essence" (a task beyond the capacity of this research, if at all feasible), but rather by generally observing and describing the content, boundaries and function of turath, arriving in the end at the most popular positions on it. This will allow us to see how turath has been used in the long-term debate over Arab culture, highlighting various positions and observing how, among these positions, two antithetical modernist currents have prevailed: an Islamic-based position represented in this dissertation by Hasan Hanafi (b. 1935), and an opposing secular-based position represented by Adonis (b.1930). Although there are thinkers and/or cultural critics who could be studied to serve the same goal, the selection of Adonis and Hanafi was compelling for at least two reasons. The first one is personal. In my very first undergraduate year at the University of Jordan, I took a special seminar on contemporary issues in Arab thought, and was exposed for the first time to the question of "turath and modernity" as a central issue in contemporary Arab thought. Hanafi was the main thinker studied then. His views were

20

discussed as new and revolutionary, as the basis for establishing a modern, central culture on the foundations of a renewed, "true" Islam. Like any other young, enthusiastic Muslim-Arab, I was enthralled by such a project, thinking of it as the only way open towards changing both the internal and external conditions that control the present and future of the Arabs. This is because I believed then that Islam was so essential to the lives of Arabs that any project intending to change their present reality had no choice but to adhere to its teachings and/or principles. In view of this inherited way of thinking, Hanafi's ideas, particularly his project on turath and renewal, appeared to me to be an almost miraculous solution or way out! However, with time and after being exposed to other various lines of thought and knowledge, I started to rethink a number of questions and axioms, and thus started the process of deconstructing and reconstructing most of, if not all, my inherited, accumulated knowledge — above all religion and its significance in people's lives. During that time, I discovered the thought of Adonis, a prominent controversial, influential Arab poet. This happened when I attended his first ever poetry evening in Amman. At this event I was shocked by the attitude of a number of Muslim fundamentalist groups who were protesting outside the auditorium and praying and reciting verses from the Qur'an on the subject of heresy and deviation from the straight path. After this, they began distributing a lengthy pamphlet that accused Adonis of being an atheist, a detractor of Islam, and a traitor. Inside, Adonis was received with an enthusiastic welcome from the audience, except for the Muslim fundamentalists who gathered in the back and started to shout, protesting his presence until the police

21 intervened and ushered them out of the auditorium.31 This incident had a great impact on me, sparking an interest not only to listen to him attentively that evening, but, more importantly, to further explore his ideas and writings. I still very much recall an important part of his first recited piece: "Everything yet to come is old...be prepared to stay a stranger."32 As I understood it then, such a view regards the "old," be it norms, traditions, or even the past culture, as the factor responsible for making one feel like a stranger or an outsider in one's own culture. At that point I started to question why there was such a feeling of alienation, particularly among the intelligentsia, and to further discover what Adonis meant by "old." Consequently, I started to read more about him and even to explore his non-poetic works and his cultural critiques, until I read the introductory part of his book al-Thabit wa-al-Mutahawwil (The Static and the Dynamic). Again I was won over, this time to his program for progress and advancement founded on a re-evaluation of the validity of the entirety of inherited norms and traditions, including religion, considered by Adonis to be static. Although the choice of Adonis and Hanafi as the two examples for study goes back to an early personal interest in their ideas, it certainly intersects with an absolute academic interest. Because the issue of turath in contemporary Arab thought is becoming the common link between most of the intelligentsia (while being almost completely neglected in non-Arabic scholarship), this study intends to shed light on turath, not only by bringing it to general attention, but also by trying to discover the common ground behind its problematization in contemporary Arab thought. One way to

31

I still have a cassette recording of the entire event which I myself recorded that evening. 32 Adonis, Kitab al-Hisar(Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 1985), 72.

22

do this is by detecting the major elements that make the same turath sometimes the \

magic solution for all the problems of the present (as in Hanafi's view), and at other times the source of the same debated problems (as is perceived by Adonis). Since Hanafi and Adonis stand for two modernist, yet, antithetical positions on turath, both have been described as revolutionary and both have been accused (by the more traditionalist groups) of deviating from the conservative circle of Islam, it is very useful to explore their positions. The goal is to show how the same turath is envisioned differently, due not to its own "nature" but to the "nature" of one's own ideological worldview. While Hanafi's and Adonis's works have been the subject of a number of discussions and debates by other Arab intellectuals — and increasingly by scholars outside of the Arab intellectual scene — nevertheless their ideological positions on turath have yet to be visited and criticized adequately in any scholarship, Arab or Western. Although Adonis was one of the first thinkers to question turath and to consider it the main cause behind backwardness in the wake of the 1967 defeat, and is referred to and discussed in a number of important studies,

he is better known and studied as a poet, and not as an

important, controversial cultural critic. Indeed, his position on turath per se is rarely See, for example, idem, Mahmud Amln al-'Alim, Al-Wa'y wa-al-Wa'y al-Za'iffialFikr al-'Arabi al-Mu'asir (Cairo: Dar al-Thaqafah al-Jadldah, 1986); Boullata, Trends and Issues; Nelly Lahoud, Political Thought in Islam: A Study in Intellectual Boundaries (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005); Sandi Salim Abu Sayf, Qadaya al-Naqd wa-al-Hadathah: Dirasah fi al-Tajribah al-Naqdiyah li-Majallat Shi'ralLubnanlyah (Beirut: al-Mu'assasah al-'Arabiyah lil-Dirasat wa-al-Nashr, 2005); AlDaw' al-Mashriql: Adunls kama Yarahu Mufakkirun wa-Shu'ara' 'Alamlyun (Damascus: Bidayat lil-Tiba'ah wa-al-Nashr wa-al-TawzT, 2004); Kazim Jihad, Adunls Muntahilan: Dirasah (Casablanca: Afrlqiyah al-Sharq, cl991); Muhammad Isma'Il Dindl, Al-Hadathah, Hadathatuna al-Shi'riyah: Mafhumuha wa-Ashkaluha (Damascus: Dar Ma'dd lil-Tiba'ah wa-al-Nashr, 1996); Salma al-Khadra al-Jayyusi, ed., Modem Arabic Poetry: An Anthology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); Kamal Abu-Deeb, "The Perplexity of the All-Knowing," Mundus Artium, 10, no.l (1977): 163-181.

23 discussed in an objective manner. Hanafi too, while he is referred to and discussed in a number of important studies,34 nevertheless in his capacity as a contemporary Muslim reformer with a special hermeneutical method of rereading the Islamic turath, his position on turath per se is still largely underestimated. Therefore, the present study aims to fill this gap by focusing on the question of turath, and by showing how Hanafi, as an Islamic modernist, seeks to adapt Islam/turath to modernity by relying on the foundational text and approaching it with his own hermeneutical theory in order to reread turath in accordance with the needs of the present. In like manner, we will show how Adonis, as a secular-modernist, seeks to explore turath by relying on the foundational text/s but, by applying a deconstructive reading to turath, to prove it illogical and a hindrance to modernity or creativity. Last but not least, the thought and positions of Adonis and Hanafi with regard to turath are acknowledged as ground-breaking, although in diverse senses. For both, turath appears to constitute the key to rescuing modern Arab culture, either by rereading it, as Hanafi has proposed, or by deconstructing it, as Adonis has done. The reason for this is that

34

_See, for example, Jadal al-Ana wa-al-Akhar: Qira'at Naqdiyah fiFikrHasan Hanafi fi Id Miladihi al-Sittln (Giza: Maktabat Madbuli al-SagHir, 1997); Kazuo Shimogaki, Between Modernity and Post-Modernity: The Islamic Left and Dr. Hasan Hanafi's Thought: A Critical Reading (Yamato-machi, Niigata-ken, Japan: Kokusai Daigaku, Chuto Kenkyujo, 1988); John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Makers of Contemporary Islam (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Fahima Charaffeddine, Culture et ideologic dans le monde arabe 1960-1990 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1994); Abubakar A. Bagader, "Contemporary Islamic Movements in the Arab World," in Akbar S. Ahmed and Hastings Donnan, eds. Islam, Globalization and Postmodernity (London; New York: Routledge, 1994); Jurj [George] TarablshI, Nazarlyat al-Aql (Beirut: Dar al-Saql, 1996); Shahrough Akhavi, "The Dialectic in Contemporary Egyptian Social Thought: The Scripturalist and Modernist Discourse of Sayyid Qutb and Hasan Hanafi," International Journal of Middle East Studies 29 (1997): 377-401; Al-'Alim, al-Wa'y wa-al-Wa'y al-Za'if; idem, Mawaqif Naqdiyah min al-Turath (Beirut: Dar al-Farabl, 1997).

24

both, as modernists, are engaged in the study of the past for the sake of the present. This reveals tvrath in contemporary Arab thought as not simply constituting a history of tradition and/or other inherited elements that extend to the present, but as a past or as turath that is being shaped according to a particular modern image - in short, a subjective, ideological vision.

25

Chapter One

Twath. Definition, Content, Function &

Major Trends

1. Turatb. Definition and Content In contemporary Arab thought, turath seems to be one of the most ill-defined and therefore problematic concepts. In fact, there is no single treatment or usage, still less even one meaning assignable to turath. It tends to be used in various ways with different levels of clarity and accuracy. Sometimes it is used to mean simply, albeit imprecisely, the past or "all historically inherited things,"35 or the "customary inherited static elements" that shape the prevailing Arab culture.36 Also, among its suggested meanings is one that sees turath as "everything that has reached us from the past within the dominant culture but, at the same time, remains an issue for the present reality on

See, for example: Hanafi, Al-Turath wa-al-Tajdld, 13; Al-Huwlyah wa-al-Turath, 4243; Ghafi Shukri, Al-Turath wa-al-Thawrah (Beirut: Dar al-TaH'ah, 1973), 122; AlTurath wa-Dawruhu fi al-Bi'na' al-Hadarl al-Mu'aslr (Tunis: Manshurat al-Hayah alThaqafiyah, 1976), 20; Ahmad Kamai Abu al-Majd, "Al-Mas'alah al-Siyasiyah: Wasl alTurath bi-al-'Asr wa-al-Nizam al-Siyasl lil-Dawlah," in Al-Turath wa-Tahaddiyat alAsr fial-Watan al-'Arabi, ed. Al-Sayyid Yasln (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al'Arabiyah, 1985), 572; Jad'an, Usus al-Taqaddum, 562. 36 Adonis, Al-Thabit wa-al-Mutahawwil, 1:14.

26 various levels." 3 On other occasions, turath is presented to mean Islam, be it the culture or the ideology, or even the whole of Arab/Islamic history.38 And it is around these suggestions that turath is identified in the present. A close reading of these descriptions reflects and produces bewilderment. It is revealing, moreover, of unsound attempts to analyze and define the concept out of, perhaps, both an a priori subjective position and a belief in its self-palpability. As such — except for a few attempts

— one can hardly speak of any serious effort to define

turath or to analyze its content or elements previous to any discussion of it as the problem behind or solution to what is seen as a backward Arab present. But before attempting to define turath, it will be necessary to reveal first the current relationships that bind modern/contemporary Arab awareness to it, for it is these relationships that have inspired the contemporary imagined perception of turath, as will be shown in the following. Generally speaking, the debate over turath and its role in the present has tended to take on three major implicit dimensions. The first is religious, such that, whenever turath is discussed, Islam both as religion and culture emerges as the only real face and source ofta7-a7A40This means that turath is an empty space with no real value if Islam is removed from its field of signification. This sort of association between turath and

37

Hanafi, Al-Turath wa-al-Tajdid, 13. Al-Huwlyah wa-al-Turath, 163. 39 See, for example: Sa'd Ghurab, "Kayfa Nahtamm bi-al-Turath," in Al-Turath waDawruhu fi al-Bina' al-Hadari, 136-137; Muhammad 'Abid al-Jabiri, Al-Turath wa-alHadathah (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-'Arabiyah, 1991), 21-24; Fahmi Jad'an, Nazariyat al-Turath wa-Dirasat 'Arabiyah wa-Islamiyah Ukhra (Amman: Dar al-Shuruq, 1985), 17. 40 See, for example, the view of 'Abduh Badawl, Hadaratuna bayna al-'Araqah wa-alTafattuh (Cairo: Dar Qaba', 1999), 62-66. 38

27 religion immediately lends turath an aura of holiness and sanctity and, thus, superiority. The second dimension is nationalist, with the Arab people forming its basis inasmuch as their ancestors created and embellished the turath then transmitted it to their heirs. From such a perspective, turath is seen as having granted them a leading cultural position, as a result of which they became a distinguished "nation" in history. For this reason, turath is regarded as the main factor in informing Arabs and making them aware of their distinctive historical role as anything but a marginal group. Clearly, this kind of rapport grants turath a distinctly nationalistic mission.41 The final dimension is what might be called humanistic, with humanity forming its basis. In fact, this association reflects a certain contemporary intellectual perception of the Islamic/Arab impact on human culture, for this turath is widely regarded as having been responsible for introducing many of the tools and cultural materials of the modern world due to its (in the eyes of most, divine-based) civilizing and enlightening power.42 According to this

See, for example: Muhammad Fantar, "Manzilat al-Turath fi Nahdatina alQawniiyah," in Al-Turath wa-Dawruhu fi al-Bina' al-Hadarl al-Mu'asir (Tunis: Manshurat al-Hayah al-Thaqafiyah, 1976), 31-40; 'Abd al-'Azlz al-Duri, Al-Takwln alTarlkhi lil-Ummah al-'Arabiyah: Dirasah fi al-Huwiyah wa-al-Wa'y (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-'Arabiyah, 1984); Constantine Zurayk, Al-Wa'y al-Qawml (Beirut: Dar al-Makshuf, 1940); Sati' al-Husri, Al-Lughah wa-al-Adab wa'Alaqatuhumabi-al-Qawmiyah (Beirut: Dar al-Tafi'ah, 1966); Fiktur Sahhab, Darurat al-Turath (Beirut: Dar al-'Ilm lil-Malaym, 1984), 31-50. 42 Nun al-QaysI, "Al-Turath al-'Arabi bayna al-Ihya' wa-al-Tawasul," in Al-Turath waTahaddlyat al-'Asr fial-Watan al-'Arabi, ed. Al-Sayyid Yasm (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-'Arablyah, 1985), 213-222. And for a detailed account of the status of turath in contemporary Arab awareness which reflects these elements, see, for example, the papers presented in a number of conferences and collected in the following books: Al-Turath wa-Dawruhu fi al-Bina' al-Hadarl al-Mu'asir, Al-Huwiyah wa-al-Turath; Al'Arab wa-Tahaddlyat al-Qarn al-Hadl wa-al-'Ishrin, ed., Al-Sayyid Yasln (Beirut: alMu'assasah al-'Arablyah lil-Dirasat wa-al-Nashr, 2000); Al-Mashru' al-Hadarl al-'Arabi bayna al-Turath wa-al-Hadathah, ed., Ghassan 'Abd al-Khaliq (Beirut: al-Mu'assasah al-'Arabiyah lil-Dirasat wa-al-Nashr, 2002); Al-Turath wa-Tahaddlyat al-'Asr fi al-

28 way of thinking, Arab-Islamic turath became not only a local turath, limited to the Arabs, but a universal turath that should be reinstituted in modern Islamic/Arab culture and, eventually, offered as a model or ideal for all other modern cultures. The best way to grasp these relationships is to consider them all a reflection of the religious, national, and humanistic dimensions of turath. In other words, one may regard these

dimensions

as determining

the implications

of

turath in the

modern/contemporary Arab awareness.43 In fact, the religious dimension reflects a clear association between turath and eternity, where turath is seen as a way towards a fixed truth, while the national dimension reveals the "great" history of the Arab people, making turath the site of a collective national memory. And, finally, the humanistic dimension comes to reflect the world of the present — a place for cultural competition and civilizational contribution.44 At this point, one may readily argue that these

Watan al-'Arabl, ed., Al-Sayyid Yasin (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-'Arablyah, 1985). 43 Shukri, Al-Turath wa-al-Thawrah, 11-14, and 28; Jad'an, Nazarlyat aJ-Turath, 13-14. 44 It is important to note here that the so-called humanistic dimension has two antithetical facets and reflects two opposed positions. One is more Islamic in nature, where most of the so-called Islamic-modernists think that the Arab-Islamic turath carries the eternal roots of human progress and advancement due to its divine-based nature and, therefore, must be renovated and restored as a preliminary step before presenting it as the ideal alternative, a position supported by Hasan Hanafi. This contrasts clearly with the other facet of the humanistic dimension, according to which a number of so-called secular-modernists see Arab-Islamic turath as a human turath in terms of its human-based nature, a position supported by Adonis. Here, man is the creator, and Islamic/Arab culture flourished and radiated in the past due primarily to human thoughts and actions and not divine interference. It is the general atmosphere of freedom and openness that brings creativity into being, for, in Adonis's view, freedom and creativity are necessarily associated, and are the least required qualities for any culture to flourish and radiate. It is only the free and the creative man who produces a highly developed culture; thus, human progress has nothing to do with God and/or his intervention.

29 particular bonds have generated a kind of misreading or misconstruction of turath, whose actual sense has been submerged under their weight. Nevertheless, it is still in view of these imaginary relationships and dimensions that turath can be portrayed because, although the notion of "imaginary" connotes illusion, it is by no means (in the Lacanian sense) unnecessary or inconsequential (as something that is illusory).45 Thus, viewing turath in the light of such imaginary bonds becomes mandatory since they reflect the contemporary meaning and implications of turath. In addition, this step can bring to light the side effects of such an imaginary perspective on grounds (as will be discussed later on in this study) that necessitate, first of all, finding an alternative way of identifying turath. Attempting to define turath means principally trying to understand its content and the role that it plays in people's lives. Only in this way will it be possible to hypothesize a reasonable meaning of turath, where the concept is shorn of the ideological and psychological dimensions it acquired in the wake of the 1967 defeat. In fact, it is only in the modern or even contemporary period that turath has started to accommodate an ideological content and carry sentimental weight due to what may be regarded as "false" impressions and delusions that have been attached to it as a result of principally two things: on the one hand, turath's association with a sacred "superior" past, and on the other, its identification with a backward "inferior" present. It is the 45

Jacques Lacan, (1901-81) psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and founder of a distinctively French Freudian tradition, introduced the term "imaginary" or "social imaginary" in 1936 to indicate the set of values, institutions, laws, and symbols common to a particular social group and the corresponding society. The imaginary in his analysis entails connotations of illusion, seduction and fascination but in no way denotes the unnecessary or inconsequential (as something that is illusory). It is in this sense that I am using the expression here. For more details see, for example, JacquesLacanby Anika Lemaire (Bruxelles: C. Dessart, cl970).

30

association with the past or what is seen as a sacred past that compels us to define turath in terms of its content and boundaries, with the aim of liberating it from this imaginary quality. The second association, by contrast, requires that we review the role and function of turath in the contemporary Arab's life in an attempt to eliminate the burden and the liabilities that have become attached to it with time. Therefore, we argue in this chapter that such self-deception is due mainly to the absence of a coherent definition of the term. In view of this, we see the first difficulty in most of the texts that discuss turath as a problem/solution — and this is very true in the case of the texts selected for this study — to be the absence of a specific and/or a clear definition of turath, to the extent that the first impression a reader gets when reading these texts is that the discourse is not about turath but about Islam as ideology and/or tradition. Indeed, having a clear, logical and credible definition of the term is the minimum requisite step to establishing a coherent starting point. And since the abovementioned common "definitions" of turath seem to lack such a base, it will be necessary, at least for the sake of argument, to narrow these meanings down in an attempt to clarify them before assessing their level of precision and clarity. These general descriptions can be reformulated into two separate yet related meanings. The first anticipated definition that imposes itself here is to say that turath means simply "all historically inherited things," while the second, which is more complex, may define turath as "awareness of the historically inherited things, and their conscious presence in the present." However, in spite of this attempt to fashion a formal definition out of the above common statements about turath, a careful look at the reconstructed formula reflects a parallel failure and inability to describe or define turath itself. Certainly, the

31 difficulty derives from, or corresponds to, the ambiguity and inaccuracies within the original statements describing turath. While the first case obviously fails to explain the nature of those "historically inherited things," and lends itself dangerously to a circular debate, the second, built on this unstable point, attempts to define turath as the outcome of a conscious effort not only to recognize turath but also to transpose it and make it live in the present. Yet again, it fails to identify what turath is and leads nowhere because it lacks a concrete methodological basis. In view of these considerations, identifying turath and trying to detect its content and components, while understanding its actual link to both the past and the present, is a methodological necessity that must be resolved before any discussion of turath as a problem in contemporary Arab thought. Now, taking into consideration what was described earlier as imaginary bonds, it is important at this point to define turath and identify its content not only by presenting a specific or a general description for it, but rather, by identifying the relation between turath and the truth, between turath and reality. In other words, it is necessary to ask on the one hand whether turath is responsible for the undesirable aspects of the present Arab reality, and on the other, whether it accommodates a fixed truth. It is also important to question whether the components of turath belong to the realm of transcendental absoluteness, or whether they are only part of the worldly socio-historical experience. In the interests of supplying a reasonable and useful answer, and of forming, to some extent, an impartial definition of turath, we should not restrict ourselves to any of the established or popular trends or lines of thought in defining turath found in the works of most contemporary Arab intellectuals. Not only have the latter failed to provide a methodological basis for

32 the question of turath, but their point of departure is a set of false impressions about turath and its function reflecting, in most cases, a biased position, given that "every scholar is trying to produce an understanding of turath in a way that 'is adapted' to his intellectual system of thought, or his ideological point of departure,"46 such that the term turathhas become only "ideological in today's common usage."47 As an alternative, our point of departure will be one that looks at turath independently by avoiding, as much as possible, what may be described as already ideologically-constructed meanings that interfere with our understanding of it. To do so, a linguistic and logical/philosophical description of the term will be employed48 to discover both its original/classic and real (not imaginary) meaning, i.e., one that stands apart from the common contemporary understanding of it. This formula will assist in clarifying our point of departure, which is that turath is a purely human work or achievement, a natural phenomenon extending back through history and incorporating produced and reproduced, changeable and dynamic historical elements where some of these elements stay and others fade away.49 Bearing this in mind, the following section will try to explore what turath is, describing its content and boundaries, by applying to it in the first place certain logical categories. Muruwah, Turath una: Kay fa Na 'rifuh, 7. Adonis, Al-Muhlt al-Aswad (Beirut: Dar al-Saqi, 2005), 41; Al-'Alim, Mawaqif Naqdlyah, 10. 48 In this I am indebted to the attempts made by two prominent contemporary Arab scholars/thinkers — Fahmii Jad'an (b. 1940) in his Nazarlyat al-Turath, and Muhammad 'Abid al-Jabiri (b. 1935) in his Al-Turath wa-al-Hadathah — in identifying the term in this manner. While the former calls attention to the importance of the logical definition, the latter brings forward the question of linguistic connotations; consequently, they both inspired and informed my treatment of the concept/term in this study. 49 See, for example: Paul Bate, Strategies for Cultural Change (Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann, 1994), 81-83; Raymond Tschumi, Theory of Culture (New York: NOK Publishers, c 1978). 47

33

It is at the very least superficial to accept the general portrayal of turath as "all historically inherited things." Such a definition remains ambiguous and general because it does not even attempt to identify those "inherited things." Therefore, to illustrate better what has been inherited in turath, it would be more useful to apply a logic-based approach, since it is through such an approach that one can eventually delimit the boundaries and content of turath. This approach is what logicians call "definition by description," where the emphasis is on "particulars and accidents," thus on tangible concrete elements, and not on general, conceptual or intangible abstract elements.50 This will facilitate, right from the beginning, liberation of the concept from all abstraction, ambiguity and elusiveness. In fact, applying this to turath necessitates making a general inventory of its content and elements, which include "any thing" that may come under it. However, "any thing" here connotes only the realm of the temporal, the tangible and even the accidental since, in this analysis, turath itself is an accident, a product of human effort and a construct that does not exist by itself or for itself. At this point it becomes clear why our starting point is to consider turath a purely human work, and thus temporal. In other words, turath is something that requires a creator or an architect to bring it into being and to realize its existence. In view of this, it is necessary to agree first of all on this fundamental issue because it is very much relevant to the nature of the testator (muwarrith) or turath-maker. Hence, when we speak about turath in this context, it should first be acknowledged that the discourse is about a human creation,

50

'Alf Sam"! al-Nashshar, Al-Mantiq al-Surl mundhu Aristu hatta 'Usurina al-Hadirah (Alexandria: Munsha'at al-Ma'arif, 1963), 188; Safiba, Al-Mu'jam al-Falsafi, 1/305, 1:447 and 1:615; Al-Kindi, Rasa'il al-Kindl al-Falsafiyah, ed., Muhammad 'Abd alHadi Abu Ridah (Cairo: Matba'at al-I'timad, 1950), 165; Al-Ghazafi, Mi'yar al-'Ilm (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-Tlmiyah, 1990), 254-55.

34

where man is the inventor who produced it and who will eventually pass it on to his heirs. In other words, turath, according to this description, is exclusively accidental and temporal, just as the testator is no more than an accidental, human and temporal being. Understanding this starting point will allow us to say that a human does not inherit anything from a supernatural being or from God. As such, turath is an absolutely human product, constructed by man and for man; it is, in other words, a temporal matter and not eternal. In view of this fact, and since we have already raised an objection to the common definition of turath as all historically inherited things (due to its inability to explain the essence of those inherited things), it will be necessary at this point to describe the elements of what may be regarded as a temporal turath. Since these elements are very much related to the nature of the turath-maker, they should therefore reflect the latter, or, to use Ibn Khaldun's terminology, these elements necessarily reflect the human individual either in terms of his nature, or in terms of his role as 'alim (learned), saw '(producer) and fa'il (doer).51 In view of this, it becomes possible and easier to resolve turath into three major elements: sciences (al'ulum), manufactured products (al-masnu'at), and finally values (al-qiyam), both ethical and esthetic. There is neither the space here, nor any great need, to describe in detail these various elements, for they are well recognized in Arab culture. Nevertheless, it may briefly be stated that the first element consists in the inherited Arab-Islamic sciences — their sources, fundamentals and contents — as well as the circumstances of their origin, evolution and development. As for the second element, this is comprised of the record of crafts, professions, and the rise and development of different kinds of 51

'Abd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimat Ibn Khaldun (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al'Ilniiyah, 2003), 31.

35 industries (si'na'at), etc., representing the contributions of several population groups and people of different social status. Last, but not least, the third element combines the value system and the several ways of life that prevailed in Arab-Islamic society at different times, both of progress and decline.52 However, it seems that, for most Arab intellectuals and scholars, in all these elements,

Arabs can distinguish between original and foreign contributions to their turath, and can also detect the circumstances of their dawning and developing, and their historical consequences — whether or not their existence reverts to a very Islamic origin, or to a purely temporal one.54

This being the case, it will not sound odd to say that all sciences are accidental, occasioned and temporal, since they are all nothing but the products of human, historical conditions, or achievements that have origins, conditions, and circumstances, be they political, societal, legal, or economic, etc. In fact, the same things can be said about any manufactured products, and of course values, which are nothing but accidental, variable, occasioned and temporal. In other words, it is both feasible and simple to identify the

See, for example: Al-Turath wa-Dawruhu fial-Bina' al-Hadan, 20-21; Fahml Jad'an, Al-Madlfial-Hadir: Dirasat fi Tashakkulat al-Tajribah al-Fikrlyah al- 'Arablyah (Beirut: al-Mu'assasah al-'Arablyah lil-Dirasat wa-al-Nashr, 1997), 445-446. 53 Note here how the term "Islamic" is used in the context as opposite to the term "temporal," which implies a sort of identification of Islam with the eternal (not temporal), a problem that, to some extent, has contributed to some of the confusion attached to the term "turath. "For when it is associated with Islam or used as parallel to Islam, turath is regarded as eternal and/or the site of a fixed truth, as mentioned earlier. 54 Jad'an, Al-Madl, 445-46. See also a related view in Muhammad 'Abid al-Jabiri, "Ishkafiyat al-Asalah wa-al-Mu'asarah fi al-Fikr al-'Arabl al-Hadith wa-al-Mu'asir: Sira' Tabaql am Mushkil Thaqafi ?" In Al-Turath wa-Tahaddlyat al-Asr fial-Watan alArabi, ed. Al-Sayyid Yasin (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-'Arabiyah, 1985), 52-55.

36 epistemological or the cultural considerations that control and direct

these

achievements.55 In view of this, describing the content and primary elements of turath, which are overwhelmingly temporal and human-based, will assist us in deconstructing the relationship between turath and the sacred, and show that it is only an artificial bond that leads to major confusion — one that for example defines turath as, simply, religion/Islam, or another that states that "divine revelation is the source of turath."56 But the question to be raised now is: Why did the sacred come to be seen as integral to turathl It is not surprising that such confusion has emerged, since the majority of Arab Muslim people think of both the Qur'an and the Sunnah as essential elements of turath. There are even a number of contemporary Arab Muslim intellectuals and scholars who — although seeming to oppose it —^ confirm this notion (whether consciously or subconsciously) in their discussions of turath and acknowledge its potential to correct the current perceived decline of Arabs and Muslims by taking the Qur'an and/or Sunnah as their point of departure, often suggesting some modern method of rereading or reconstructing them.57 Here one may readily argue that this kind of outlook not only

There are several prominent scholars who intended to discover and analyze the historical, sociocultural, political and epistemological origins of the Arab-Islamic turath by employing especially Marxist or materialist methods such as Husayn Muruwah, in his Turathuna: Kay fa Na'rifuhu and Tayyib Tlzirii, in his Mashru' Ru'yah Jadldah lil-Fikr al-'Arablmin "al-'Asr al-Jahifi"hatta al-Marhalah al-Mu'asirah, vol. 1, Min al-Turath ila-al-Thawrah: Hawla Nazarlyah Muqtarahah 11 Qadlyat al-Turath al-'Arabl (Beirut: DarIbnKhaldun,'l978). 56 Hanafi, Al-Turath wa- al-Tajdld, 34. _" See, for example: Muhammad Arkun, "Al-Turath: Muhtawahu wa-Huwlyatuh, Ijabiyatuhu wa- Salblyatuh," in Al-Turath wa-Tahaddiyat al-Asr fial-Watan al-Arabl, ed. Al-Sayyid Yasm (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-'Arabiyah, 1985), 155-167; Hanafi, Al-Turath wa-al-Tajdld, 15 and 163; Adonis, Al-Thabit wa-al-Mutahawwil, 13;

37

confirms the predominance of the Qur'an and Sunnah, but also reinforces the misconception about the relationship between them and turath, thus further problematizing the latter. In fact, it is due to this misconception that turath has been taken to heart as a sacred entity, and thus as a repository of fixed truths. It is also evident that the Islamic religious sciences, including the Qur'anic and Hadith sciences, and the fundamentals of religion and fiqh, have reinforced this illusion. But these sciences, without exception, are man-made historical statements and speeches about the religion, and about the Qur'an or Hadith. And as such, they are historical-human sciences, produced by learned men, that over time became part of the Islamic/Arab sciences — one of the three elements of temporal, unfixed turath. In fact, the same scenario can be applied to the Hadith, since it constitutes the historical speech of the Prophet on the religion or life of a believer. Nevertheless, because the Qur'an/the revelation is regarded by the majority as transcendental and beyond history — hence not human-based — it cannot and should not by this standard be included in turath; consequently, turath should be seen as truly devoid of any sacred nature. Besides the factors of the Qur'an, the Hadith and the religious sciences, which have lent some holiness to turath, the inclusion of the Arabic language (the language of the Qur'an) under the heading of turath has also contributed to the aura of sanctity surrounding it. But is it really necessary to look at the Arabic language from this angle, i.e., as an extension of the divine? Indeed, as one scholar reasonably argues, the only language that may be considered as such is the revelation itself, or, as he puts it, "God's Muhammad al-Nuwayhl, Nahwa Thawrah fi al-Fikr ai-Dini (Beirut: Manshurat Dar alAdab, 1983), 149; Jad'an, Nazariyat al-Turath, 19.

38 speech alone." All other speech, as such, should be seen as a worldly, natural phenomenon, subject to change and development.58 But it is not only this aspect of the Arabic language that has leant holiness to turath, but also the relevance of the Arabic language to the issue of national identity and the renewed determination of the historical presence of the Arab nation as a unique entity. Indeed, this tendency became more popular after the colonization of the Arab world, when the question of turath became much more analogous to the issue of identity and distinctiveness.59 In conclusion, it seems that these two elements — religion and language — are the major factors that, when incorporated in turath, are most responsible for evoking its sense of holiness and sanctity. In order to avoid such a misconception, a careful distinction between the Qur'an and its human-derived sciences and between the language of revelation and other historical languages should be made. If such an approach is employed, the illusion may be gradually overcome, for the other turath elements — sciences, products and values — do not seem to (and should not) cause any particular problem due to their accepted purely human nature, created as they were in specific times and places under specific conditions and circumstances. In view of this, it becomes essential to distinguish between the so-called "metaphysical and intangible part" of turath — since it belongs not to the sphere of man — and the tangible part,

58

Jad'an, Al-Madl, 446-447. For more details on the question of the relevance of the Arabic language to the issue of national identity see, for example: Sati' al-Husri, Abhath Mukhtarah fi al-Qawmiyah al-'Arablyah, (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahdah al-'Arabiyah, 1985); Yasir Suleiman, Arabic Language and National Identity: A Study in Ideology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003); Al-Duri, Al-Takwln al-TarJkhi; Fiktur Sahhab, Darurat alTurath, 31-50; Zaki al-Arsuzl, Al-Mu'allafat al-Kamilah, 6 vols. (Damascus: Matabi' alIdarah al-SiyasIyah lil-Jaysh wa-al-Quwat al-Musallahah, 1972). 59

39 "especially if we refer to the concrete cultural, social, and literary practices and habits of a people." 60 Attempting logically to define turath by describing its content and elements while delimiting its human boundaries, and thus proposing a speculative definition, permits us to confirm that turath is nothing but a body of human achievement with epistemological, societal, cultural and historical conditions, devoid in itself and for itself of any trace of absolute, supernatural or transcendental elements. In view of this fact, it should be easy to reject the perception that links turath to an absolute fixed truth. However, this clarification will remain incomplete if we do not look at the linguistic/classical meaning of the concept so as to understand both the original/classic and the modern/contemporary meanings of the word. This will show how much, and why, the latter is at variance with the former, to the extent that turath became identified with what is seen as a backward present, ironically functioning as the cause and the solution for such a state of being! Linguistically, the word &J> (turath) in the Arabic language is derived from the triliteral root ^ j j (w r th), forming the verbal-noun ^ J J (warth). This term is identified in classical Arabic dictionaries as a synonym for other, equivalent verbal nouns such as ^JJJI

(al-wirth) and ^Lw^l (al-mlrath). These verbal nouns are used to indicate, when

employed as nouns, any inheritance that one might receive from an ancestor whether in the form of money, assets, ancestry or glory. In fact, some earlier linguists distinguished

60

Ibrahim Abu Rabi', Intellectual Origins of Islamic Resurgence in the Modern Arab World, 41; for a related view see also, Husam Muhyi al-DIn al-Alusi" "Al-Fikr fi alTurath al-'Arabi al-Hadari7' in Al-Mashru' al-Hadarial-'Arabi bayna al-Turath wa-alHadathah, ed. Ghassan 'Abd al-Khaliq (Beirut: al-Mu'assasah al-'Arablyah lil-Dirasat wa-al-Nashr, 2002), 319-320.

40 between ^jjll (al-wirth) and ^Ij^l {al-mlrath) on one level, and &j) {irth) on another. They employed the two former terms to designate money and assets, and the latter to signify ancestry '.mitti (al-hasab). According to these sources, the term £>*> {turath) is derived in particular from mirath, which in turn was originally ^U>» {miwrath) -^- the j (w) having changed to cs (y) due to the influence of the kasrah preceding it. Turath and its cognates therefore signify: what is inherited; an inheritance; a heritage; the origin; the old condition or state; the lasting of a thing; or even in some sources, ashes and remains.61 From a survey of the classical sources, it is clear that the word turath is among the least used or least common verbal nouns in the works of classical Arab linguists and lexicographers. Even in the Qur'an, the term appears only one time,62 i.e., in Q.89:19, where it is used in the context of human craving after money: ^ ^

^>fl Oj&i j (And

See, for example: Ibn Manzur, Lisan al-'Arab, 15 vols. (Beirut: Dar Sadir lil-Tiba'ah wa-al-Nashr, 1955) 2:111-112; 'Abd Allah al-Bustarii, Fakihat al-Bustan (Beirut: alMatba'ah al-Amfikariiyah, 1930) 167; Ibrahim Mustafa, et al., Al-Mu'jam al-Wasit, 2 vols. (Tehran: al-Maktabah al-Tlmlyah, 1976), 2:1035; Butrus al-Bustarii, MuhJt alMuhlt Qamus Mutawwal lil-Lughah al-'Arablyah (Beirut: Maktabat Lubnan, 1987), 964-65; Edward William Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Eng.: Islamic Texts Society, cl984), 1:2934. 1:2934; Abu Mansur Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Azhari, Tahdtiib al-Lughah, 15 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Katib al-'Arabi, 1967), 15:117-118; Muhibb al-DTn al-Zabidl al-Hanafi, Taj al-Arus min Jawahir al-Qamus, 20 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1994), 3:164-165; Majd al-Din al-Fayruzabadi, Al-Qamus al-Muhlt, 4 vols. (Cairo: Matba'at al-Sa'adah, 1925), 1-2:165-162 and 176; Ghurab, "Kayfa Nahtamm bi-al-Turath," 136-137; AlJabifi, Al-Turath wa-al-Hadathah, 21-24. 62 In fact, the other related terms such as "irth" "mlrath" and " warith" appear more than one time and are used in the context of the above-mentioned classical meaning, particularly the inheritance and the inheritor. The word Warith also appears in the Qur'an among God's names and attributes, which means (as mentioned in the abovecited classical dictionaries) eternal.

41 ye devour inheritance — all with greed).63 In fact, this meaning (craving after money) is well illustrated and confirmed in the next verse Q.89:20: L*» W* iMI OJP^ j (And ye love wealth with inordinate love!). Accordingly, the word turath was interpreted by most classical Qur'an commentators to mean inherited money.64 The same scenario can be observed in the field of fiqh, where one never encounters the term turath. Instead, the word used is always mlrath — usually employed in a legal sense, denoting the distribution of an estate, or when discussing the issue of inheritance and lawful shares. Similarly, in all the other Arabic and Islamic sciences, including art, theology, philosophy, etc., the word turath, if expressed at all, did not have the special significance that it has today. 65 Based on the above review of the original/classical meaning of the word turath in the Arabic language, we can readily conclude that the term bore no ideological content, nor did it carry the same sentimental weight among the ancestors of today's Arabs and Muslims that it does in modern times. In fact, as Salvatore affirms, "it is uncertain when the use of turath as a crucial category" in contemporary Arab thought "began to take shape," nor is it really our concern here, for our focus is on the novel connotation of the concept after 1967, given that it was roughly around this time that the term turath began to accommodate other meanings that principally pointed to a cultural and 63

This translation, like the one that follows, is quoted from 'Abdullah Yusuf 'AH, The Meaning of the Holy Qur'an (Brentwood, Maryland: Amana Corporation, 1991), 16461647. 64 See, for example: Al-Zamakhshari, Al-Kashshaf 'an Haqa'iq al-Tanzll wa-'Uyun al'Aqawllfi Wujuh al-Ta'wll, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Ma'rifah, 1990), 4:21; Al-Qurtubl, Mukhtasar Tafslr al-Qurtubl, 5 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-'Arabi, 1987), 5:377; AlTabari, Jami' al-Bayan fl Tafslr al-Qur'an, 30 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Ma'rifah, 1987), 12:115-117. 65 Al-Jabiri, AT Turath wa-al-Hadathah, 21-23. 66 Salvatore, "The Rational Authentication of Turath," 193.

42

intellectual heritage and not to any material or money-oriented inheritance, as it had in the past. In fact, it is this connotation of turath that is alluded to in the present study, since it is in this sense that the term is used among contemporary intellectuals; hence my decision to use the Arabic term {turath) and not a translation, such as "tradition" or "heritage" among other possible renderings. Here, we can certainly agree with al-Jabiri that the term turath has taken on a meaning different from, if not contradictory to, its equivalent term mlrath in the traditional terminology. While on the one hand the term mlrath has always meant the inheritance distributed to one's heirs, or everyone's share in the inheritance, on the other, it has clearly evolved in recent decades to indicate something common to Arabs, that is to say, the intellectual and spiritual inheritance that brings them together to make them all successors to their ancestors. Indeed, this shift in meaning carries a different implication. Since the terms for inheritance (wirth or mlrath) were used to indicate any inheritance that one might receive from an ancestor in the form of money, assets, ancestry or glory, they logically implied the passing away or disappearance of an ancestor and the appearance of an inheritor or successor. As a result, while mlrath was a sign of the "father's disappearance and the son's substitution,"67 turath became —- for the current Arabic consciousness — a sign of the father's presence in the son, the presence of the ancestor in the successor or, in other words, the presence of the past in the present.68 It is most likely this new perception that makes it possible for both Hasan Hanafi and Adonis ideologically to construct their projects on turath. While, on the one hand, Hanafi regards turath both as an issue of inheritance and as a given present on many 67 68

See, for example, Ibn Manzur, Lisan al- 'Arab, 2:199. Al-Jabiri, Al-Turath wa-al-Hadathah, 22-24.

43 levels, and thus takes turath as his point of departure for solving the problems of the present day, calling for reviving and rereading it in a particular way, Adonis, on the other hand, although he still perceives turath as having a profound influence on the present, opposes Hanafi's stance by calling not for its revival but its deconstruction.69 Thus, to improve the present, he calls for a transformation of past culture and its inherited values, while seeking inspiration from only those elements in the same turath which, in one way or another, correspond to his own ideological position. In any case, this observation (the presence of the past in the present) calls attention to the actual status of turath in the minds and hearts of Arabs today. In effect, turath is envisioned not simply as what is left from past culture, the ruins or the ashes (as in its classical definition), but rather as the "perfection" and the "absoluteness" of that culture, or even its burden, thanks to this latter quality. Seemingly, the perception of the past culture as superior becomes possible because, as was mentioned earlier, the past culture with its turath is regarded as righteous and sacred due mainly to its divinebased origin. In fact, it was this alleged quality that was thought of as having once permitted the Arabs to play a leading cultural and enlightening role that covered all aspects of life. According to this modern understanding, turath became not only the historical elements that reached the present day from an anterior past culture, but also, 69

The term alludes here to its usage in philosophy and literary criticism to question traditional assumptions about certainty, identity and truth. See, for example, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition, 2000 [online], available from available from http://www.bartleby.eom/61 /96/D0079600.html (accessed 20 December 2007). Moreover, as some sources explain, if anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is mainly the claim to the unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another (as is the case with Adonis, to be discussed in the last chapter). For more information about the term and its significance, see, for example, Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982).

44

and increasingly, a "psychological store of influences from the past, pervading the Arab people and forming part of their social reality...where the old turath with its inspirations, conceptions and ideals still directing Arab's life,"70 to the extent that it became "the ideology and the law, the language and the literature, the intellect and the mentality; it is the nostalgia and the aspiration."71 In fact, it is interesting to note here that those who adopt a more religious view, be it traditionalist or modernist, look positively at these qualities, whereas those who adopt a more secular view look negatively at these very qualities. As such, the same turath became a thing and its opposite, constituting in the first case the perfect example to be followed and restored, and in the second, the wrong model to emulate, and the scapegoat for the unsatisfactory state of present-day Arab culture, requiring for this reason a complete transformation. Now, if one asks why turath has evolved into such a psycho-cultural, intellectual, religious and sociopolitical complex among contemporary Arab intellectuals, the answer could be that such a perspective — one that reflects the psychological burden that turath places on the minds and hearts of those intellectuals — is strongly linked to the situation of the Arabs in modern times, particularly the circumstances that attended the "Arab awakening" from the nineteenth century onwards. Seeing the "awakening" itself as a kind of reaction against external threat to the Arab community and its continuing existence in the face of the challenge of the West, validates turath as signifying the "self," or the "identity."72 Therefore, the emphasis in both the discourse on the "Arab

70

Hanafi, Al-Turath wa-al-Tajdld, 15-16. Al-Jabiri, Al-Turath wa-al-Hadathah, 24. 72 For more information about the questions of "self and "other" in the awakening discourse, see Abu-Rabi', "Reflections on Concept of the 'Other' in Modern Arab Thought"; Hanafi, Hisar al-Zaman, 441 -458. 71

45 awakening" and the current intellectual discourse that has focused on turath, can be described as a type of self-defense mechanism where attentiveness to turath became crucial to protecting the Arabs' distinct identity, and to preserving their existence in the present, respectively.73 Moreover, one would not be too far wrong in regarding the development of Arab thought itself, at least during the past three decades, as positioned mainly on what Salvatore, for instance, describes as the intellectuals'

efforts to work out a correct, i.e., rational (and additionally, socially viable and therefore "authentic" way to define the Arab-Islamic turath ...) as a tool to relaunch Arabism74 as an autonomous civilizational project in the modern world.75

In a sense, such a view corresponds with the foregoing analysis that bore on the major dimensions of turath, where both the national and the humanistic/universal seem to occupy a fundamental position in the minds of a number of intellectuals. Indeed, turath in such a context is regarded not only as an essential means for expressing the modern Arabs' distinct identity, but also, as Salvatore convincingly argues, as "crucial to the shaping of an Arab-Islamic framework of universal reference."76 By the latter, Salvatore, in fact, alludes to Francois Bourricaud's description of the "universal reference," as

73

Al-Jabiri, Ishkafiyat al-Fikr al-'Arabl, 25-27; Abu Rabi', Intellectual Origins, 43-44; Shukri, Al-Turath wa-al-Thawrah, 27-31. 74 In spite of my agreement with Salvatore on this point, I myself believe that turath according to Hanafl is not only used to instigate Arabism but, more importantly, Islamism, as the perfect civilizational alternative in the modern era (as I hope to show in the second chapter in this study). 75 Salvatore, "The Rational Authentication of Turath" 191. 76 Ibid., 192.

46 the system of conditions that, make possible the establishment coexistence encompassing all respects. This means that such a universal and ideal.77

if realized, would of a community of minds in certain community is both

From this analysis, the religious, nationalist and humanistic dimensions of turath become clearer. Turath is now the locus for national identity, and the source of the ideal universal way of life attributable mainly to its presumably divine-based origin. The Arab-Islamic community is thus regarded as the concrete realization of the divine blueprint. In fact, it is in this sense that a number of contemporary Arab-Islamist intellectuals in particular take turath as their point of departure, their aim being to establish a renewed Islamic structure in order to lead all of humanity to a better life (as will be shown in chapter two when discussing Hasan Hanafi's position on turath and its function in the present). It is this end, and the status of turath in the contemporary Arab consciousness (especially as presented in some key texts) that compel us to investigate the role and function of turath. In so doing, the intention is to liberate this consciousness from what was earlier called an imaginary association between turath and the difficult present-day reality faced by the Arabs.

2. Turath: Function A general look at turath in everyday life demonstrates that it performs no less than three observable functions: psychological, esthetic and what might be called practical. This is

77

Francois Bourricaud, "Modernity, 'Universal Reference' and the Process of Modernization," in Patterns of Modernity, ed. S.N. Eisenstadt (New York: New York University Press, 1987), 12-21.

47

perhaps because, early in its course, Arab-Islamic culture knew the heights of glory before declining to a point where it suffered setbacks that still affect both Arabs and Muslims in the present, and also because Arabs regard the Arab-Islamic turith as an attribute of a whole nation {turath ummah) which has played a remarkable civilizational role and enjoys a well-known standing in world history. Therefore, it is vital to the psychological self-defense mechanism that turath should come to play a role in confronting and fighting the present-day political and cultural malaise while trying to recapture lost glory. Turath, here, seems to play a dual role; it serves as a psychological weapon that provides some form of moral support to the defeated Arab, just as it helps in minimizing the so-called inferiority complex that has beset Arabs faced by the advancement and domination of the modern West. What seems to reinforce this outlook today is the idea that the modern, dominant Western culture is seen to be based on Arab-Islamic foundations.

This was posited by Arab thinkers as long ago as the 1920s,

and it is a well-recognized theme among contemporary thinkers, particularly traditionalists and reformists.79 At this point particularly, the psychological function of turath seems to intersect with both the nationalist and religious dimensions, turath becoming an incentive for liberation from what is seen as the ignominy of historical national failure. This is to be achieved by working to overcome present-day national challenges, for in this context turath functions not only as "an essential component of

78

See, for example, the analysis of 'Abd al-Rahman Badawl (1917-2002, a prominent contemporary Arab philosopher) in Dawr al- 'Arab tl Takwln al-Fikr al-Urubbl(Beirut: Daral-Qalam, 1979), 1-10. 79 Among these are, Yusuf al-Qaradawl, Fahrril Huwaydi, Muhammad 'Amarah, Taha Jabir al-'Alwarii, Ahmad Kamil Abu al-Majd, and for more information about their positions see Muriir Shafiq, Al-Islam wa-Tahaddiyat al-Inhitat al-Mu'asir (Tunis: Dar al-Buraq, 1991).

48 national Arab culture,"80 or as "an essential formative of the identity," but, in addition, as a tool to relaunch both "Arabism as an autonomous civilizational project in the modern world,"82 and also Islamism, as will be further explained in the following chapter. In fact, taking this psychological-national, religious dimension into consideration allows one to grasp the hidden meaning behind a particular kind of argument articulated by certain contemporary intellectuals that paints turath as an ideology and even makes it parallel to Islam, or at the very least seems to twist the meaning of turath to an extent that makes turath representative of Islam, both as an ideology and culture, such that it is presented as an alternative Islamic self-defense mechanism to what has been regarded as the failure of Arab nationalistic ideology. This in a way explains the extra effort put into the question of turath after 1967 when, as was typically argued, what was seen as the failure of the Arabs to preserve their nationalist project had to be redeemed by a different ideological line — the return to Islam. At this moment, the appeal to turath became a necessity because "the failure of the Arab nationalism model offered no other solution but to return to Islamic turath.

Here one sees to what extent the new

connotation of turath was made to deviate from the original meaning and embrace an evident ideological sense, where turath was associated now with Islam!

80

Al-'Alim, Mawaqif Naqdiyah, 52. Jurj Tarabishi, Al-Muthaqqafun al-'Arab wa-al-Turath: Al-TahUl al-Nafsl li-'Usab Jama~7'(London: Riyad al Rayyis, 1991), 82. 82 Salvatore, "The Rational Authentication of Turath," 191. 83 See, for example: the view of Al-Sayyid Yasin, in Al-Huwlyah wa-al-Turath, 32-36; Yusuf al-QaradawI, Bayyinat al-Hall al-Islaml wa-Shubuhat al-'Alman7yah (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Risalah, 1988); idem, Al-Hall al-Islaml Farldah wa-Darurah (Beirut: Mu'assasat al-Risalah, 1983); idem, Min Aj'll Sahwah Rashidah Tujaddid al-Dln waTanhad bi-al-Dunya (Tanta: Dar al-Bashir, 1994). 81

49 The second major function of tvrath is esthetic. It is not a new thing to say that several fields of turath contain esthetic elements that preserve the beauty and grace of past ages. Today, as in the past, one can still appreciate the artistry of the pre-Islamic poems, as well as the literature of the classical period and the rest of Islamic history. There is no doubt that the sense of beauty which literature, for instance, stimulates in a person, is a significant component in the psychological unity of human beings. And it can be said that the deepest cohesion in turath, and the best preface to it, is performed by literature in its wider sense. This includes the arts, music and architecture. This is in addition to what these elements contain that is beneficial and delightful, in forming a humanistic, mental, and spiritual homogeneity that has its roots in this very same sense of beauty.85 In the case of Islamic architecture, for instance, its esthetic strength lies in its ability to combine native design elements with assorted imported ones. It reflects the splendor of the different cultures that contributed to it, and exemplifies the multiculturalism and richness of Islamic culture — the vehicle of such diversity. When Islam expanded across the Middle East and into India in the East and all the way to Spain and Morocco in the West, this vast empire began to assimilate architectural styles from many traditions. Religious architecture was to become the most obvious symbol of Islam, especially its mosques and holy shrines. As a general rule, such structures reflect the identity of the civilizations, becoming landmarks of the environment. Indeed, they exemplify the characteristics, shape and tone of a society, and represent the image a society has of itself. Therefore,

84

Fantar, "Manzilat al-Turath fl Nahdatina al-Qawmlyah," 31; Jad'an, Usus alTaqaddum, 562. 85 Jad'an, Al-MadI, 457-458.

50 viewing such structures in the Islamic environment, whether in Spain, Turkey, India, North Africa, Egypt or the Middle East (to mention only a few), allows the individual to appreciate this culture and its people, while enjoying the everlasting beauty and magnificence of its arts.86 Today, as in the past, people still appreciate the artistry of the Alhambra Palace in Granada, the Great Mosque of Cordoba, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Taj Mahal in India, and Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. However, for both Muslims and Arabs, the esthetic function of turath seems to intersect with its psychological function. In this context, the existence and spread of such Islamic landmarks around the globe stand as testament to the glorious past of Arab-Islamic culture, bearing out its remarkable civilizational role and its distinguished standing in world history. This reality may thus inspire exceptional feelings of pride and dignity, and restore confidence at both the individual and collective levels. Indeed, were it not for the esthetic element in turath, a number of Islamic and/or Arabic arts could have been neglected, for it is the unbiased esthetic element in turath that is most responsible for forming a humanistic, mental, and spiritual homogeneity among people, regardless of any racial, national, religious or ideological beliefs. As one scholar has expressed it:

Islamic art is perhaps the most accessible manifestation of a complex civilization that often seems enigmatic to outsiders. Through its brilliant use of color and its superb balance between design and form, Islamic art creates an immediate visual impact. Its strong aesthetic 86

For more on the significance and role of Islamic art, see, for example, Richard Ettinghausen and Oleg Grabar, The Art and Architecture of Islam (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987).

51 appeal transcends distances in time and space, as well as differences in language, culture, and creed.87

The third, and last, function of turath is a practical one, or what might be called its usefulness. Certainly, Arab intellectuals have long recognized this fact, and have strained to adapt this function to the task of bettering society, relying especially on practical or workable elements that can be used in the present time. These elements may be found in many fields of turath, such as the religious sciences and several other kinds of practical and theoretical sciences. Indeed, some of the most useful elements can be found, for example, in usul al-fiqh and some of the 'ulum al- 'aqldah. Although in the modern age complete reliance on these old sciences and opinions is impractical, they nevertheless offer certain solutions in the form of opinions, judgments and methods that are seen as "helping in resolving issues faced in the modern world."88 A good illustration of relying on the practical or workable elements in turath and bringing these elements into play is the trend towards amendment of the divorce law and the sanction of the decree of khuV (divorce initiated by the wife) in many Muslim countries, including Egypt. In brief, the pressure exerted by civil society and women's rights organizations in the 1990s in Egypt had pushed the government to enact a new law to reorganize and facilitate court procedures in personal status cases, especially divorce. Although this new law (No. 1, January 2000) addresses many personal status issues, it became known as the KhuV Law because of Article 20, which stipulates that a

87

This statement by Dr Linda Komaroff, associate curator of Islamic Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is quoted on the Al-Bab website, available from http://www.albab.com/arab/visual/art.htm (accessed 20 December 2007). 88 Jad'an, Al-Madi, 458.

52 woman can obtain a divorce by a court order, even without the husband's consent, if she agrees to pay him back the dowry and forgo the rest of her material rights. This issue was the object of much dispute within Parliament and the press. In this debate, the law was treated as an innovation, despite the fact that it was mentioned in the Qur'an and Sunnah, as pointed out by its advocates. What is of concern to us here is that those who stood up for it attempted to legitimize their claim not by resorting to the recent debate on women's issues and human rights, but by resorting to the Shari'ah and the authority of the classical religious scholars. In other words, they made use of what we call the practical elements in tvrath, relying mainly on the interpretations and judgments of most classical jurists who — with reference to the Prophet's decision — adjudged that the wife might divorce her husband after giving up her dowry.90 Among the other debated points were the role of the judiciary, the consent of both partners, and the social effects of khul1 — once again giving evidence of the practical function of turath. In fact, the law was criticized on the grounds that the consent of the two partners is not obligatory, as many of the classical jurists stipulate;

For a detailed discussion on Law 1 of 2000, see, for example, Dawoud Sudqi el-Alami, "Remedy or Divorce? The System of Khul'and the Effects of its Incorporation into Egyptian Personal Status Law," Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law 6 (19992000): 134-139. 90

This hadlth is said to have been narrated by Ibn'Abbas. It states that the wife of Thabit ibn Qays appeared before the Prophet alone, saying that — despite her husband's irreproachable behaviour — she still wished to separate from him because she did not want to be faithless, that is, she would not play the hypocrite. The Prophet asked her, then, if she would return his garden. When she agreed, he asked Thabit to make a declaration of divorce. For a detailed account of this narration, see, for example, Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalanl, Fath al-Barl bi-Sharh al-Imam Abl 'Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukharl, ed., 'Abd al-Rahman Muhammad, 17 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat waMatba'at Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1959), 9:327.

53 that the judge does not have the authority (like the Prophet) to order or allow a divorce; and that khul' would encourage wives to seek a divorce because its procedures were so easy, resulting in the destruction of the Egyptian family. At this point, the advocates of khul' argued that the judge is the only person who can decide any dispute, and in order to support this view, they again resorted to turath, arguing that many classical jurists such as Imam Malik, al-Bukhari, and Hasan al-Basri all agreed on the role of the judge in these issues.91 This brief example of the discussion of the law of khul in Egypt, illustrates the practical function of turath. As we saw, an important aspect of the debate was that of legitimizing such an amendment, seeking support from already established sources, the judgments of the classical religious scholars and their interpretations of the Sharl'ah. And this approach shows us that some aspects of turath are of immense value and are still used in addressing important modern issues. Yet it is one thing to see turath as necessary only insofar as it is useful in enriching the sources that provide the answers to contemporary problems, and another thing entirely to impose it coercively on the present. As a general rule then, turath does have an ordinary role to play in people's lives; indeed, it is a central, critical role that constitutes part of what may be called the living complex that forms the psychological, societal, religious and nationalistic bases of an individual's, or a group's life, as the case may be.92 It is important, however, to realize

91

For more information, see, for example: Fauzi M. Najjar, "Egypt's Laws of Personal Status," Arab Studies Quarterly10, no. 3 (1988): 319-344; Amal Abdel Hadi, "Citizenship is Absent from Discussion of the Personal Status Procedures Law." Sawawai 33 (2000): 11. 92 Although by turath I do not refer here to what Hobsbawm calls the "invented

54 that not all of turath can enter into that complex. There are, of course, parts of turath that have fallen by the wayside, and these have indeed outlived their usefulness, for what remains is usually that part which serves a purpose or meets a need. Indeed, it is a truism that needs are variable and change with the passage of time, place and circumstances.

Every living human group has a cultural heritage which is a function of its societal structure and which it keeps modifying in accordance with its needs and its own established principles. The latter may vary from group to group but they normally comprise principles of inclusion and exclusion which help the group to determine what cultural elements to include in its heritage and which to exclude in the light of the group's historical experience and felt needs. The aim of modifying the heritage is to enhance the group's viability and ensure its continuity as an identifiable group. As the group moves in time and space it meets with new circumstances that necessitate new institutions, values, attitudes and behavior.

In other words, the surviving elements of turath constantly merge with the new, for, after all, the creation of turath is a continuous process, one that never ceases as long as

tradition," nevertheless his analysis was useful to my conclusion here, especially when he speaks about the role of the so-called invented traditions in people's lives, particularly as they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historical past to fortify their very existence as these invented traditions, in his analysis, are "highly relevant to that comparatively recent historical innovation, the 'nation,' with its associated phenomena: nationalism, the nation-state ... histories and the rest." Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1 and 13. In other words, what Hobsbawm discusses in this context is, in one way or another, analogous to the position of turath among present-day Arabs for, obviously, turath is very much present in its psychological, nationalistic, and religious functions. 93 Boullata, Trends and Issues, 11.

55

one lives, acts, works, learns, crafts, creates, etc. As a consequence, people in all periods of history fashion new elements that may in turn be inherited by their successors. Turath is, therefore, a process of creating and exchanging elements and experiences. Hence the natural process is that, at the same time a person receives turath, he also fashions new turath, enriching what he/she has already inherited. In view of this, we can readily confirm that the individual's mission is not restricted to the process of receiving turath; rather, it most likely lies, to use Adonis's language, in creating it.94 The attempt made thus far to investigate turath as a concept in contemporary Arab thought, looking at its content, boundaries, elements and functions, has allowed us to eliminate some of the confusion that has attached itself to its meaning over time. This was done by means of a linguistic and logical analysis of the term itself. One may object that this approach is too theoretical; however, it must be remembered that the main task in this chapter is to find a methodological basis for and to outline a theory of turath, that is to say, to present a coherent, rational description so that the notion is no longer such a baffling, ideologically bound and self-contradictory phenomenon in contemporary Arab thought. By this we mean that turath has become an ambiguous concept and an area of difficulty in a number of contemporary texts, due to the absence of an essential ingredient, i.e., an impartial definition of it. In view of this fact, we have introduced both the classical and logical meanings of turath, and thus proposed a neutral (not ideological) meaning for it by confirming finally that turath's boundaries are

94

Adonis, Al-Thabit wa-al-Mutahawwil; 3:29-30; Ilyas Khun, "Al-Taqfid wa-al-Ibda'," in Al-Islam wa-al-Hadathah: Nadwat Mawaqif (Beirut: Dar al-Saqi, 1990), 311-319; Fahml Jad'an, "Al-Turath wa-al-Taqaddum," in Al-'Arab wa-Tahaddlyat al-Qam alHadl wa-al-'Ishrin, ed. Al-Sayyid Yasin (Beirut: al-Mu'assasah al-'Arablyah lil-Dirasat wa-al-Nashr, 2000), 50-51.

56 temporal, portable and changeable. Its content is thus made and formed by an absolutely human effort to satisfy a need, or to serve a cause, or, simply, to correspond and interact with the requirements of current reality. The outcome of such human activity appears to consist in different kinds of turath, comprised mainly of tangible and intangible elements/values that are transmitted from one generation to another, together forming a heritage, of which the lasting, remaining elements have a role to play in the present, as mentioned earlier. However, since this turath is created in relation to some specific needs or requirements, and in particular conditions and circumstances, it must therefore be recognized as being capable of change in accordance with changes in people's lives, and in time and place. Therefore, it is unacceptable to consider turath a fixed sacred entity and to try (vainly) to revive expired elements that history itself has jettisoned. Nevertheless, it is equally unacceptable to insist that all products of this turath are defunct without recognizing that some elements are still very much alive. In fact, these two views display the two extreme positions on turath today, the first one reflecting the so-called traditionalist tendency, and the second an absolute secular position, namely, a revolutionary tendency. Both of these have led to the emergence of major trends, as we shall briefly explore in the following.

3. Turitb. Major Trends Generally speaking, the so-called traditionalist tendency looks at the Arab-Islamic turath from a sacred point of view and sees the Islamic elements of Arab culture as the only ones that must prevail. This attitude, in fact, has a corresponding, opposite

57 tendency that insists on a cultural revolution, a transformation of the current inherited value system, in order to replace what its supporters consider to be old ideas and values with absolutely new ones. According to the traditionalists, turath constitutes the sole basis and the only recognized means of progress. Based on this, the advocates of this notion have devoted their attention and efforts to glorifying the entire Arab-Islamic past. This has led to a focus on editing and publishing old manuscripts, on promoting the different aspects of turath and on stressing its distinctive and notable values and characteristics.95 It is not lost on their critics that the ambition here to rediscover turath extends also to glorifying the past and entrenching the idea of its sacredness, to the extent that traditionalists regard anything and everything from the past to be a sound and good model to follow, regardless of its content or its validity. The importance of the past, or the turath, according to this notion, acquires its sacred value from the fact of its existence and function in olden times, and not from its utility to the present. Accordingly, such an attitude tends to fix the Arab existence at one point in history, resulting in nothing less than an impoverishment of this existence and neglect not only of the entire heritage of pre-Islamic cultures and civilizations but also any non-Islamic contributions from the period of the Islamic heyday. The implication of this is that the success of Arab civilization was conditional on the rise of Islam. Nevertheless, Arab-Islamic civilization was no different from other cultures in the sense that it was not produced in a vacuum. Rather, it was preceded by other deep-rooted civilizations in the same region, in a context of mutual interaction and 95

See, for example, Al-Turath wa-Dawruhu fi al-Bina' al-Hadarl, 7-11; and for a detailed account of the efforts made to revive turath in this way, see, for example, Mahmud Muhammad al-Tanahi, Madkhal ila Tarlkh Nashr al-Turath al-'Arab! Ma'a Muhadarah 'an al-Tashifwa-al-Tahrlf (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanil, 1984).

58

influence. Moreover, Islam continues to profit from the contributions of other nonIslamic cultural elements, such as the Greek and Persian traditions with their recognized impact on Islamic thought and philosophy. In view of this fact it seems unreasonable to define turath in terms of Islam exclusively. Islamic turath is the product of a variety of civilizational and cultural contributions made at different periods of time and in diverse ways. As such, one cannot accept the rigid traditionalist stance as it limits the boundaries of turath to a single historical period that laid the foundations of Arab civilization in all its brilliance. In short, for traditionalists, changing Arab culture can only be done in conformity with "old" Islamic values, institutions, and traditions. By contrast, the secularist/revolutionary deems the cutting off of individuals or nations from their history a desirable thing, claiming that the natural abilities of human beings have atrophied because of the influence of "old" turath. The advocates of this notion tend to call for a rupture with turath and a cultural transformation by stirring up paralyzed human faculties through an absolute extension beyond the past, and of establishing instead a new man by freeing him from old ties and by releasing his hidden creative ability. However, although the call here sounds rational and expresses esteem for innovation and individual freedom, it in fact seems to bring about not only an impoverishment, but also a sort of amputation of the Arabs' entire existence, inasmuch as the call is for a complete transformation where the prevailing Arab culture should be abandoned and completely remade.96 This call, as one scholar puts it, would "take us in

96

Muhammad Kamil Dahir, Al-Sira' bayna al-Tayyarayn al-Dlni wa-al-'Almanl fi alFikr al-'Arabl al-Hadlth wa-al-Mu'asir (Beirut: Dar al-Blrurii lil-Tiba'ah wa-al-Nashr, 1994), 7-10; Issa J. Boullata "Cultural Change, Creativity and Authenticity," in The Next Arab Decade: Alternative Futures, ed. Hisham Sharabi (Boulder: Westview Press; London: Mansell, 1988), 148-159; Boullata, Trends and Issues, 3-5; Majid

59 the direction of the West via our past," reflecting the wrong-headed notion that "both Europe and the United States stand for the accomplished liberal ideal."97 In fact, neither of these trends can provide an accurate understanding of turath and its function in present-day Arab life since their positions on turath seem, on the one hand, to take their point of departure from a reality that is not the current Arab reality but rather a past Islamic reality or a modern Western reality. On the other hand, each position seems to reflect, first and foremost, a stance on religion where it and turath became parallel, i.e., two faces of the same coin. While the traditionalists want to conform to what they see as an Islamic solution to bring back lost glory, and hence look only at the Islamic elements in turath, the secular position reflects an antithetical ideological stance, rejecting any religious elements in turath. Indeed, it rejects all past culture since, in the view of the secularists, it is based purely on religion, such that current Arab culture is a mere manifestation of that religion. In other words, when traditionalists or, more generally, Islamists, speak about turath they mean Islam exclusively; hence, in their searching for progress and improvement, they call for reviving and rereading turath, meaning by the latter to revive the Islamic tradition and to reread its fundamental sources in keeping with the requirements of the modern age. The same can be said of the secularists, who, in their call for breaking with turath, mean simply breaking away from all religious elements, or traditional Islamic elements. To achieve progress, in their view, the first rule is to reject religion and seek inspiration only from secular elements in the past. In any case, the

Khadduri, Political Trends in the Arab World: The Role of Ideals in Politics (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), ix-x. 97 Shukfi, Al-Turath wa-al-Thawrah, 146.

60 point of departure for both traditionalists and secularists is the current debased situation of Arab culture, due, in the eyes of the former, to departing from the Islamic tradition of turath, and in the eyes of the latter, to maintaining this same turath. Finally, these two opposing perspectives have led to the rise of different ways of thinking on the question of turath in light of the present. Indeed, one can distinguish three major positions on how to deal with it. These are: revivification of turath, seeking inspiration from turath, and re-reading turath. Generally speaking, the advocates of the so-called revivification of turath give their attention to reviving or revivifying turath in its entirety, and look at turath mainly from an Islamic point of view, which considers Islam responsible for the expansion and progress of Arab civilization. In order to solve current Arab problems, therefore, everything from the past must be revived, so that people in the present can reacquaint themselves with the past, and live and act according to its patterns. The weakness of this argument has come in for much criticism. It does not take into consideration the historical dimension of the past and yet it envisions turath as the key to opening all closed doors, as a magic solution to the entire present crisis. It is an imaginary way of thinking that tends to complicate the present rather than facilitate understanding of its real problems. Its opponents argue that, if it follows that turath should be revived, it is better that the process should be practical, namely, that turath be envisioned as "historical" and not "sacred." 8

See, for example: Muhammad al-Nuwayhi, Bayna al-TaqRd wa-al-Tajdid: Buhuth fi Mashakil al-Taqaddum (Cairo: al-Munazzamah al-'Alamlyah li-Hurriyat al-Thaqafah, 1963), 299-320; Fu'ad Zakariya, "Al-Takhalluf al-Fikrl wa-Ab'aduh al-Hadanyah," AlAdab 22, no. 5 (May 1974): 30-37; Muhammad Arkun,"Al-Islam, al-Tarikhiyah wa-al-

61 It is perhaps due to the rigidity of the first position that another view has come to the fore, calling not for revivification of the entire turath but rather seeking inspiration from certain specific inherited ideas and values that can merge successfully with current Arab values. In other words, the aim here is to adapt a body of positions and concepts that can make a valid contribution to the life of today's society, giving it a distinct way of thinking and action. Some of the most oft-cited models for such a construct are, for instance: the rational position of the Mu'tazilites; the principle of justice as observed by some of the caliphs; the notion of freedom associated with certain Islamic or nationalist movements and revolts; and democracy, represented in the past in the guise of the Islamic institution of shura. By selecting such values from turath, one expresses the continuation and maintenance of these inherited values in modern times." Yet, a closer look at this selective method in dealing with turath points to another story. If one looks at these selected values, or positions, be they rationality, freedom, shura, or equality, what may really be perceived are today's values of reason, revolution, freedom, democracy and justice. As it happens, these are the most popular values among the advocates of this trend in the modern Arab world, as well as the most widely debated values throughout the region, particularly in underdeveloped societies. In view of this, the issue in the two above-mentioned positions is not so much the revival of turath, or inspiring its presumed eternal values, but rather a matter of justifying present values by dressing them in transmitted, inherited values. In other words, the whole process of Taqaddum," trans. Hashim Salih, Mawaq/f 40 (Winter 1981): 6-39; Jad'an, Usus alTaqaddum, 563; Shukri, Al-Turath wa-al-Thawrah, 32-33. 99 Despite their diverse starting points, I see both Hanafi and Adonis as representing such a line of thought, seeking inspiration from turath as an important means to justify the required changes in the present (as will be further discussed in the second and third chapters of this study).

62 reviving turath or being inspired by it is basically misleading, artificial and formal. In adopting such methods, it seems that their advocates try to delude traditionalist or conservative groups, or perhaps their own regimes, by claiming that the call for change, or the call for what appear to be new values and ideas, are all rooted in the Islamic turath and not an innovation of the present. Still considering the important role turath plays in the present and its effect on shaping the current Arab reality, the majority of contemporary Arab intellectuals call for a rereading of the turath. In fact, the advocates of this approach claim that, in order to make, or to keep, turath alive in the present — so that it can meet the requirements of today's practical and rational needs — a new reading of it is necessary. By new reading, they mean a reading of turath according to specific present-day methodologies and interpretations in order to bring turath to life in today's conditions, and to make it appear to be a natural part of our modern life. In fact, this position is most popular among those who have been exposed to modern scientific methods of research and modern Western philosophies. Its advocates usually adopt a specific research method and/or specific referential philosophy, then read turath accordingly. A tangible outcome of this tendency is that the present-day library is full of works in Arabic offering numerous and varied readings of turath, whether phenomenologist, structuralist, rationalist or materialist. Each of these readings claims to be the soundest approach to understanding or explaining turath and each of them departs from a different starting point, directing turath into a channel that would make it serve particular ends, or particular matters and concerns of the present.100

Al-'Alim, Mawaqif Naqdlyah, 9-12.

63 At first glance, these readings may seem to represent a fresh way of reading and understanding the turath, but the fact is that their real aim is to influence or inform — in order to change and even overturn — the present reality. Hence one sees some of the predominant intellectuals in the Arab world today wanting to draw a line from turath to revolution,101 whether they identify this turath with, its broadest definition or a narrower one, such as 'aqldah (Islamic religious doctrine).102 Such positions, however, inevitably end up ideologizing turath, and, certainly, an ideological reading of turath implies at least two things. On the one hand, it acknowledges that neither the potential nor the actual qualities of the current Arab reality are capable of carrying out any required changes, while on the other, it suggests that only turath possesses the magical power to effect essential reforms. Thus, according to some prominent advocates of this trend, salvation lies in reading turath in a specific ideological way that makes it serve the required objectives of the present time. In other words, they see that it is only at this point that revolution, for example, will be possible, i.e., once it has been blessed by turath itself. Finally, at the risk of sounding overly theoretical, it can be asserted that the issue of turath in contemporary Arab thought does not revolve in an abstract, static orbit, but rather moves within a tangible dynamic. To say this is not because it was argued earlier that turath itself is a dynamic being, but because the issue of turath as articulated in the discourse of most contemporary intellectuals travels within the 101

See for, example, Tayyib Tram's project of rereading al-turath as set forth in his book entitled, Min al-Turath ila al-Thawrah (Beirut: Dar Ibn Khaldun, 1976) and Shukri's Al-Turath wa-al-Thawrah. 102 See Hasan Hanafi's project of rereading al-turath in his two works entitled, Min al1 Aqldah ila al-Thawrah, 5 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat Madbufi, 1988), and Al-Turath wa-alTajdld.

64 political, social, and ideological spheres, with the latter accommodating almost all the others. Hence, "the question of turath was not simply an 'intellectual' question, in effect, it became a pressing urgent sociopolitical issue,"103 and as such it will not be wrong to regard the issue of turath in contemporary Arab thought as an ideological question, as a number of Arab thinkers themselves admit. In fact, the great effort devoted to studying, speaking about, rejecting or reviving turath, has all been pursued with an eye to the present-day backwardness of the Arab world, and with the aim of changing this reality through a subjective reading of turath. Indeed, the most popular positions on turath reflect an ideological outlook where the writers, in most cases, tend to read or observe turath with particular a priori ideological lenses. But as it happens, in most of their judgments on turath and its function, they admit that turath derives its importance from its function in the present social reality; thus, they always (at least in theory) take the latter as their point of departure and not turath, though when it comes down to the practical level, they, in most cases, are unsuccessful in defending their claims. This failure is most likely due to what may be regarded as a confusing description of turath at the very outset and to the apparent subjective ideological stance that contributes further to problematizing the issue. This will become clearer in the following two chapters, where I discuss both an Islamic-modernist view of turath as represented by Hasan Hanafi (in the following chapter), and its antithetical secular position represented by Adonis (in the last chapter).

Shukri, Al-Turath wa-al-Thawrah, 10.

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Chapter Two

Hasan HanafI: An Islamic-Modernist Position on Twath

In this chapter, an attempt will be made to explore, analyze and criticize Hasan Hanafi's (b.1935) position on turath. It will be shown how this position reflects the general contemporary attitude towards turath after 1967, an imagined and essentially erroneous attitude whereby it is held accountable for all the problems facing the Arabs in the modern era, while at the same time being vaunted as the magic solution to these problems. Like a number of his contemporaries, HanafI has engaged in a profound intellectual and ideological rethinking, taking his point of departure from what he sees as a present-day society in crisis and in need of solutions. This was translated into his lifetime project Turath and Renewal (J***^ J ^ ' J ^ X regarded by him not only as an ideology for answering the urgent questions of the current epoch, but also for identifying the causes of crisis and developing mechanisms for progress and advancement.104

HanafI is engaged in producing a multivolume scholarly study. It reconstructs the Islamic heritage in a new historicist and critical interpretation; it reassesses Western culture within a de-centering and downsizing critical

HanafI, Al-Turath wa-al-Tajdid, 175.

66 approach; and it builds a new hermeneutic of religious culture on a global scale in which Islam is the ideological foundation of a modern humanity liberated from alienation and provided with a comprehensive program of positive action leading to happiness, peace, prosperity, and justice for all.105

According to Hanafi, the first and foremost prerequisite for accomplishing such a goal is turath, regarded by him as the primary active component in present-day culture and its preponderant agent of change.106 This compels us to ask why turath for Hanafi holds such a standing, what it is that he alludes to when speaking about turath (its meaning, content and boundary), what its function is and what relation it has with both truth and reality. To understand better Hanafi's position, it is necessary first of all to acquaint oneself with his overall intellectual and ideological outlook by exploring some important stages in the formation of his personality and, eventually, his way of thinking. It will be useful to trace the chief incidents and/or events that had an impact on his intellectual development, as well as to reveal the major dimensions and elements in his thought, particularly phenomenology, the notion of the Islamic left and liberation theology. In fact, these elements cannot be ignored, for they jointly characterize and inform Hanafi's Islamic-modernist position on turath— at the head of which stands the principle of ira/?/(divine revelation).

Issa J. Boullata, "Hasan Hanafi," in The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Modem Islamic World, 4 vols., ed. John L. Esposito (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 2:98. 106 Hanafi, Al-Turath wa-al-Tajdid, 9-14; Hasan Hanafi, Qadaya Mu'asirah: FI Fikrina al-Mu'asir(Beirut: Dar al-Tanwir, 1981), 54-58.

67 To facilitate this task, the present chapter will be divided into three main sections. The first part will look at some of the main stages in the development of Hanafi's different levels of consciousness and the impact of the 1967 defeat, as he himself describes them in his autobiography. The second part will briefly explore his notion of Islamic left and liberation theology, since they dictate his overall ideological perceptive and generate his position on turath. In the third part (the focus of this chapter) I will discuss, in some detail, the main premises of the so-called Islamicmodernist tendency, exploring its general hypothesis concerning Islam and its particular position on turath as represented by Hanafi in the introductory volume of his project (which he calls his manifesto) Turath and Renewal: Our Position on the Old Turath. However, because wahl occupies a significant position in his thought and influences his position on turath, this will be the initial point explored in the first part. Indeed, one should bear in mind that it is divine revelation in its Islamic form that Hanafi refers to in his discourse. His ultimate goal is to rebuild both Arab-Islamic culture and all of global culture on its basis. In brief, this assumption is based on his diagnosis of Western culture as liable to disintegrate due to its rejection of divine revelation, to the extent that it even declared at one point the death of God.107 In view of this belief, Hanafi anticipates the steady decline of Western culture and the rise of its Eastern counterpart as the best potential alternative.108 The latter, in his view, will eventually play the central role in leading humanity to peace and happiness because it is

Hasan Hanafi, Muqaddimah fi 'Ilm al-Istighrab (Beirut: al-Mu'assasah al-Jamnyah lil-Dirasat wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzi', 1992), 507. 108 The East, in Hanafi's view, "includes the Third World, Africa, Asia and Latin America." Hanafi, Al-Istighrab, 544.

68 the practical embodiment of the sound, authentic divine revelation.109 In fact, the latter point is a fundamental one in Hanafl's project, not only because it defines his overall position on turath, but because this revelation is regarded by him as the main (if not the only) source of turath.'10

1. Hanafi: Intellectual and Ideological Formation a) Phenomenology1'' and the significance of wahl In his autobiographical account, Hanafi portrays his life as nothing more than a series of developments in his consciousness. In the process he reveals one of the three key elements in his thought, i.e., phenomenology. Influenced by Husserl, Hanafi considers phenomenology to be the best method or tool for explaining texts, objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness (as opposed to anything For a detailed discussion of this view, see Ibid., 369-550. Hanafi, Al-Turith wa-al-Tajdid, 55. 111 Briefly, phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. "The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object." This experience is "directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions." And as a discipline, it has been practiced in various guises for centuries and has come into its own in the early 20th century in the works of many philosophers. Indeed, it was Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) who contributed to develop the phenomenological method to make possible "a descriptive account of the essential structures of the directly given." So, phenomenology "emphasizes the immediacy of experience, the attempt to isolate it and set it off from all assumptions of existence or causal influence and lay bare its essential structure." Moreover, phenomenology "restricts the philosopher's attention to the pure data of consciousness, uncontaminated by metaphysical theories or scientific assumption." To a phenomenologist, "any object, although it has existence in time and space, achieves meaning or intelligibility through the active use of a consciousness in which the object registers." In other words, "phenomenology finds reality in the physical realm of awareness." And to accomplish the analysis of the object as it registers in the consciousness, a phenomenologist suspends all presuppositions, inferences, or judgments about the object outside the consciousness. For more details see, for example, Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy[online], available from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/ (accessed 27 December 2007). 110

69 independent of human consciousness).112 This is an important statement, for Hanafi is not only employing phenomenology to describe and explain the various stages and development of his consciousness, but also to pinpoint his chosen method in rereading turath and its major sources, themselves the products of wahl. As such, phenomenology and wahl stand as the primary elements in Hanafi's thought. While the wahl, in his view, reflects the best source of the Arab culture, providing the raw material needed for achieving progress and advancement, phenomenology represents the best source of Western culture, providing the appropriate tool and means to convert the divine revelation into reality. Accordingly, his proclaimed mission is to transform wahl— for him the "logic of the superior existence of the Arab-Islamic civilization —"" 3 into a comprehensive science or a comprehensive ideology, and ultimately into civilization, which has its own humane construction corresponding to the requirements of this epoch. Furthermore, he argues that, from the time it first came to exist, wahl has changed and developed into the ideal sciences; thus, Islamic civilization as a whole is nothing but an attempt to methodize and rationalize revelation according to different contexts.114 In such an analysis, the emergence of all the older Islamic intellectual sciences was nothing but an ongoing effort to understand and interpret the wahl as it appeared to the consciousness of each era. Thus, wahl, became significant not by itself or for itself, but as a phenomenon present to the consciousness. Its significance in effect shifts from the realm of the metaphysical/transcendental to that of the real/physical, reflecting Hanafi's concern about the given reality and his disregard for anything beyond it. According to 112

Hasan Hanafi, Al-Dln wa-al-Thawrah flMisr: 1952-1981, 8 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat Madbufi, 1988), 6: 228 and 233-234. 113 Hanafi, Qadaya Mu'asirah, 175. 114 Hanafi, Al-Turath wa-al-Tajdld, 55-58.

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this scheme, the first generation of the recipients of the wahlwas comprised of the early architects of the Islamic intellectual sciences; they brought their own understanding of the wahlInto conformity with the requirements of that era. This means that Hanafi not only associates the emergence or existence of the Arab-Islamic intellectual sciences with wahl and sees them as conditioned by it, but that he also regards the intellectual turath of Islamic civilization as essentially based on divine revelation. Indeed, the importance of the latter in this case lies solely in its realization in the consciousness and minds of the people that received, understood, interpreted and finally realized it in history, producing what became known as the religious sciences, or turath.U5 In Hanafi's discourse therefore, turath alludes to the Islamic intellectual sciences exclusively, and above all its five central disciplines: theology, fundamentals of religion, philosophy, jurisprudence and sufism. He argues that these sciences are not only inspired by the Qur'an and the Sunnah but that they also testify to their free encounter with the sacred text of revelation, a quality that has been distorted through generations of ignorance, to the extent that modern Arabs appear to lack the depth of intellectual insight and emotive experience reflected in these disciplines. Consequently, he states that "most Arabs now live a superficial, superstitious religious life ... closed-minded to anything but their captivity to the literal understanding of the Qur'an and the Hadith."116 To change such a condition, turath (or these sciences) needs constantly to be revisited and reconstructed in the light of modern needs. Only in this way can turath be

115

Ibid., 151-152. Boullata, Trends and Issues, 44; Hasan Hanafi, Dirasat Islamlyah (Beirut: Dar alTanwir, 1982), 300. 116

71 used as an ideology for modern man, allowing him to live a full and perfect life and to found a new reality on its basis. As we see from the aforementioned analysis, Hanafi perceives wahl as a factual historical event, and as nothing but a phenomenon present to the consciousness. This allows him to associate the event of the wahl with the emergence of the religious sciences on the basis of individual consciousness and perception of the wahl. In other words, the Islamic sciences are to be reformed or reread in accordance with the requirements of modern reality. Therefore, when he speaks about rereading turath, he essentially means rereading the wahl— the source of these sciences. Here, we see that turath and wahl form two sides of the same coin and function almost as interchangeable terms in Hanafi's discourse. However, this raises at least two problems. The first is that wahl and turath become one and the same; hence, Hanafi is constantly viewing turath from the point of view of the religious and sacred." 7 And the second is that he restricts turath to the realm of the religious sciences exclusively,"8 neglecting the other important elements of which it is composed.11 As a phenomenologist, Hanafi argues that revelation changes into ideal sciences out of an effort to methodize and rationalize it according to a particular awareness at a particular point in history. Thus, he maintains, for turath to be reconstructed nowadays, one has to re-methodize and re-rationalize it according to the conditions of the present reality and the modern consciousness. In view of this analysis, Islamic civilization itself

117

The outcome of such a perception is discussed on pages 36-39 of this study. Hanafi considers only the sunriiaccount, completely ignoring the non-sunnl sciences — as he himself acknowledges on various occasions. See, for example, Hanafi, Dirasat Islamlyah, 299. 119 These elements are mentioned on pages 34-35 of this study. 118

72 represents an attempt at a methodical, intellectual presentation of this revelation to the world in a specific historical period and under specific socio-cultural circumstances.120 Certainly, this is a phenomenological analysis of the event of the wahl. Because Hanafi believes there are "no hidden things in themselves," he regards the wahl as a phenomenon, existing not outside history (reality) but inside it and is realized in it. Therefore, he argues that the wahl does not descend from the heavens to earth/reality; on the contrary, it ascends from earth/reality to the heavens. Hence, reality itself becomes the criterion of the value and worth of the wahl itself, not the other way around.121 It seems that the reasoning behind this analysis derives from Hanafi's view that the Qur'an was not revealed once and for all, but gradually, in order to respond to various periods of time in harmony with people's needs, requirements and circumstances. This reflects the nature of the wahl in Hanafi's eyes. "It is not a given, but an asked for revelation."

I22

In fact, the most important thing that distinguishes us as a nation now or as a ,2U

Hanafi, Al-Turath wa-al-Tajdld, 151. Hasan Hanafi "Al-Wahl wa-al-Waqi': Dirasah fi Asbab al-Nuzul," in Nadwat Mawaqif: Al-Islam wa-al-Hadathah (Beirut: Dar al-Saqi, 1990), 133-175. 121

199

— —



Hanafi^ Qadaya Mu'asirah, 175. In fact, Hanafi hints here to the significance of the so-called asbab al-nuzul (occasions of revelation), maintaining that it confirms his claim, for asbab al-nuzul reflects the fact that Qur'an was revealed in response to, or as reflections of certain situations in the life of the Prophet, revealed piece by piece over the period of some twenty-three years of Muhammad's preaching career. For more details on asbab al-nuzul, see for example, Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an [online], available from http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/uid=1417/entry?entry=q3_SIM00305&authstatusco de-202 (accessed 26 February 2008).

73 civilization in the past is that we received a revelation which has three qualities. First, it was the last revelation in history from Adam until Muhammad, so we have the complete version of revelation, which can be taken as the origin of all religions without waiting for any change or replacement. Second, it was preserved in a written text which is the Qur'an, preventing any kind of distortion or corruption, unlike other holy books like the New Testament or the Torah. As a holy book, the Qur'an was not revealed all at one time, but verse by verse according to the events and needs of people, then all the verses were collected over twenty three years to become the Qur'an we know.

We see here how the Qur'an becomes the key historical text, not only in differentiating Muslim-Arabs from all other nations, but also in granting them a superior status due to its "truly" divine nature. This is a very critical statement in Hanafi's discourse, not just because it reflects his apparent ideological position on turath and the so-called imagined relationships associated with it (national, religious, and humanistic, as mentioned in chapter one),124 but because it also forms the foundation for his plan to reconstruct the present reality on the basis of divine revelation, in its Islamic form. Here it becomes clearer why Hanafi predicts the decline of Western civilization and the rise of an Islamic-based Eastern civilization — one that is structured around a sound, complete version of revelation no longer in need of any sort of change or replacement! The least that one can say about such a view is that it is ideological. Certainly, in Hanafi's eyes, the validity and the reality of the revelation is an absolute truism. Revelation, for him, is taken for granted as "an unquestionably authentic, historical Hanaff, Qadaya Mv'asirah, 91-92. See pages 26-29 of this study.

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document untouched by corruption or alteration of any kind and verifiably sincere and truthful."125 However, since wahl is regarded here as nothing other than a "phenomenon presented to the consciousness," one can say that the revelation was always there — the factor responsible for the materialization of the old turath— and that it is still present, here and now, producing a new turath. This sort of analysis, in fact, confirms wahl in its presumed suitability to any place and time, and legitimizes the process of renewal. Most likely, this is what Hanafi alludes to when he defines the process of renewal. To renew turath according to him, is "to reread it in accordance with the requirements of the present age."126 This involves providing a new interpretation of the religious and intellectual text/s in the face of the present reality or as it appears before the modern consciousness. In any case, Hanafi's view of wahl and its significance reflects an apparent contradiction. Whereas on the one hand wahl in itself is regarded by him as absolute, factual and eternal, it is this same wahl (a phenomenon present to the consciousness) that is seen by him as relative, ever-changing and temporal. In either case, however, it is bent on "instating change and giving the world ideal structures, leading to perfection."127 Nonetheless, despite the complexity of Hanafi's analysis of wahl/turath and the problems it may generate, the issue of wahl in itself is not of concern to this study except to remind us that its correctness is an absolute postulate and an axiom that influences Hanafi's overall position on turath, allowing him to declare its universality

Hanafi, Qadaya Mu'asirah, 41. Hanafi, Al-Turath wa-al-Tajdld, 13. Boullat a, Trends and Issues, 41.

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and its potential to construct a new world-civilization. In fact, his thinking on this issue was the result of various stages in the development of his consciousness, as we shall see in the following biographical sketch.

b) The development of multiple consciousnesses In describing the development of his consciousness in his autobiography, Hanafi looks at the important events and changes in the life of his nation and how these contributed to the evolution of his self-awareness. He indentifies the national, the religious, the philosophical and the political as the major consciousnesses that have created and shaped his personality. The "national consciousness" is identified by him as the first consciousness that he experienced, particularly during his childhood years. It was the occurrence of the First World War, which meant leaving Cairo to escape German bombing raids, that created his awareness of a homeland under fire.

But, as he

maintains, the maturity or the "true beginning of national consciousness" came later, particularly in 1948 with the outbreak of war in Palestine and the creation of Israel in the same year. Moreover, he maintains that this consciousness further developed with the triumph of the free officers' nationalist revolution in 1952, a phase wherein (as

In his autobiography, Hanafi explains that, for him, the German was not his enemy but rather the British. He believed, as did most of the Egyptians at that time, that the German army was there to protect Egypt and its people from the British, who had occupied Egypt since 1882. In addition, he confesses that he used to admire not only the power of the German military force and its industry but also everything related to German culture. This was perhaps due to the influence of his German mother, as he maintains. See Hanafi, Al-Dln wa-al-Thawrah, 210-211.

76 Esposito describes it) "[nationalism and revolution became the great themes." During that time, Hanafi (now a secondary school student) volunteered to work in the struggle against Zionism, discovering not only the excitement of the cause, but more importantly the danger of division among Arabs and Muslims.130 In addition, it was at this time, he says, that he started to understand or even to feel the value of a homeland, to the extent that it became for him the "new God, the start of an association between religion and revolution — even before hearing about so-called liberation theology."131 Indeed, Hanafi regards this development or understanding as having contributed the most to his finding a religious/Islamic consciousness. In view of this, Hanafi's nationalism came to develop a more Islamic tone when he joined the Muslim Brotherhood (the Society of Muslim Brothers), for him the "beginning of religious consciousness." As he tells us, he took part in demonstrations before the free officers' revolution in 1952 and was active in student politics in those days of the new revolutionary era. But in keeping with the Brotherhood's ideology, he opposed the communists,132 whom he "regarded as not only corrupt, but also as having deviated from the right path, as alienated and foreign, as possessing inclinations that

John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Makers of Contemporary Islam (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 70. 130 Hanafi, Al-Dln wa-al-Thawrah, 6: 210-217. 131 Ibid., 6:212. 132 He, for example, states that when Muhammad Najib (1901-1984), the first President of the Republic of Egypt, came to address the students at the University of Cairo, he felt moved by the sense of affirmation of Islamic unity but offended by the communist students who shouted "Constitution! Constitution!" He maintains that he felt that this group was standing "outside of the trends of the ummah," for "what could a Constitution mean when compared with Islamic unity?" Hanafi, Al-Dln wa-al-Thawrah, 6:219.

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were far from the truth, and, indeed, immoral."133 He also emphasized his involvement with the Brotherhood and his fondness for the teachings and writings of its ideologues — including Hasan al-Banna (1906-1949), Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), and Muhammad al-Ghazali (1917-1996) — as well as other Islamist ideologues like Abu al-A'la alMawdudi (1903-1979) and Abu al-Hasan al-NadawI (1913-1999). Their writings were inspiring and allowed him not only to develop a strong sense of the renaissance of Islam, but also of his own mission. He began to acknowledge Islam as the only solution to the various kinds of malaise affecting all modern societies. However, regardless of his involvement with the Brotherhood and the impact of its mentors on his overall Islamic ideology, Hanafi confesses that he never really conformed to all the principles held by this Society. This included, for example, his dealings with female colleagues, his playing of music and his general modernist attitude. He recalls, for example, the first time that he became involved in a discussion, in which he argued and recommended that, to be active as a group in the modern world, the Brotherhood ought to change its logo to one of a book and two cannons instead of a book and two swords. He, in short, felt the need to refashion Islam to speak the language of the present or to renew it in accordance with the requirements of modern times.134 Apparently, Hanafi was fluctuating between the Brotherhood's Islamic, conservative principles and his own modernist attitude, which was, in this sense, closer to that of the communist or leftist groups. In fact, this peculiar attitude can still be detected in his writings, exposing him at times to criticism from divergent quarters, as we shall see in due course. 133 134

Ibid., 6: 219. Ibid., 6: 217-221.

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In addition to the influence of the abovementioned modern Islamist reformers, there was also the factor of Hanafi's own study of philosophy and his exposure to other kinds of methods and ideologies, particularly those related to religion and society. However, as he maintains, these were not efficiently taught at the University of Cairo. As a student there, he was discontented with the method of teaching Islamic philosophy, describing it as detached from the reality he was facing and living outside the classroom. In view of this fact, he worked hard to formulate his own interpretation of major topics in medieval Islamic philosophy and mysticism, to the extent that by his final year at university, his personal analysis had begun to govern all his answers. During those years, he says, he had a clearer vision of his own mission to establish a general Islamic method. The significance of his method lay, as he describes it, in its attempt to build Islam on the basis of the rationality of good and bad, the unification of truth, goodness, and beauty, while considering reality and not theory as its point of departure.135 Such an approach and his general revolutionary attitude soon brought him into conflict with his professors and even before a disciplinary board. This incident is regarded by him as one of several key crises in his life. This time he lost his status as an honors student, making him ineligible for a place on an upcoming educational mission to France. This personal crisis (as he calls it), was aggravated by both the persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood under 'Abd al-Nasir's (1918-1970) regime, and the intellectual crisis of Islamic studies in his country. It was at this point that he started to go regularly to mosques, to read the Qur'an and to explore its significance. During that period, and

Ibid., 6: 221-224.

79 for the first time, he "felt the Qur'anic philosophical intuition, the importance of the world of consciousness and the senses, and the necessity of continuing the struggle."1 Looking around him, Hanafl started to recognize three facts: the weak "self," the. powerful "other" and "reality," alluding to where Arab Muslims stood with respect to the actual current reality. For him this meant that the struggle is to be pursued on three main fronts: (a) the self/Islam/7«r

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