Mohamed Arkoun leaves rich intellectual heritage
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Mohammed Arkoun, a renowned Islamic scholar, passed away on Tuesday (September 14th) in Paris at the age of 82. The native of Algeria's Kabylie was buried in Morocco, a country he had grown to love.
Many scholars said his death was a substantial loss and that his intellectual legacy would inspire future generations.
Arkoun's death is "a major loss to the Arabic, Islamic and human circles of thought, because his studies did not solely address Arabs or Muslims. Rather, they targeted all academicians and scholars of heritage, history, cultures, particularly the Arab, Islamic culture," said Dr. Professor Mohammed Tomoro, a professor of philosophy and Islamic history.
He was "a unique character who was passionate about his work and who took everything he did seriously", said Rabat professor Dr. Abdel Ghani Abdul Azm, who worked closely with Arkoun.
"He tried to break free from the taken-for-granted views. He left behind an enormous heritage related to the religious history of Islam, in terms of criticizing the Muslim mind, and in terms of introducing new concepts and methodologies in studying issues pertaining to Muslim history and Islam," Abdul Azm added.
Arkoun was born into modest circumstances in 1928 in the small village of Taourirt-Mimoun, in Kabylie, Algeria. He studied Arabic literature, law, philosophy and geography at Algiers University before being appointed professor at the Sorbonne in Paris where he taught the history of Islamic thought. His reformist ideas were widely read throughout the Arab world and in the West.
"What is new about Arkoun is that is that he endeavoured to work on the Islamic system and sciences so as to apply modern methodologies that were adopted in the sixteenth century, and methodologies that became deeply entrenched since the nineteenth century such as anthropology, sociology, linguistics, philology, psychology, etc.," said Mohammed al-Saghir Jenjer, one of Arkoun's closest friends.
"He labelled that methodology 'applied Islamics,' i.e. subjecting Islamic phenomena, be they a text, a legacy or a collective action, to readings that rely on the human mind as a tool," added al-Saghir Jenjer. "The methodology of the human mind is applicable to all cultures, including the Islamic culture."
Arkoun's death is "a major loss to the Arabic, Islamic and human circles of thought, because his studies did not solely address Arabs or Muslims. Rather, they targeted all academicians and scholars of heritage, history, cultures, particularly the Arab, Islamic culture," said Dr. Professor Mohammed Tomoro, a professor of philosophy and Islamic history.
"Mohammed Arkoun is one of the key figures of our times, on the Maghreb, Islamic or global level," agreed Ahmad Asseid, a scholar of Amazigh culture. "His intellectual contribution, that spans more than forty years, betrays the sound thinking, strict methodology, and accurate notions of a man whose main concern was to modernize Muslim societies, and lead Islamic awareness and mind to the gains of current age and civilization."
Dr. Abdel Latif Fateh el-Din, head of the department of philosophy at Ben M'sick, said that the death of Arkoun is "a major loss for the Arab scene of philosophy, as Arkoun was one of the few Arab philosophers who managed to establish the critical project of revisiting the Arab Islamic heritage and re-emphasizing the human nature of Islam, as was evident in his concentration on the human heritage."
"Mohammed Arkoun is a beacon of thought of an international calibre, who left behind a rich intellectual legacy that has given rise and continues to give rise to incessant discussions," he added.
Arkoun's influence on his students lasted long after they had left his classroom.
Former Algerian Prime Minister Reda Malek, who completed part of his studies with the late professor, was keen to pay his respects "He was always obsessed by a single idea rationality in Muslim societies. He was a historian and a thinker who studied the Muslim scholars through the eyes of a scientist. He had the courage to tackle complex problems. For me, his titanic work will remain for posterity. It will be an immense help to our young people."
Professor Mustapha Cherif, another Islamic scholar who worked with Arkoun, paid him a moving tribute "He was the greatest Islamic historian of his time. Throughout his whole life, he devoted himself to the promotion of modernity and rationality within Muslim society."
As for why Arkoun chose to be buried in Casablanca, Mohammed Al-Saghir Jenjer thought that it had to do with the fact that "he married a Moroccan and lived in Morocco after he retired".
"However, his legacy was available for everyone to benefit from. It is a legacy for all Muslims or for the entire human race," he added. "Thought knows no boundaries."
As Abdel Ghani Abul Azm said, "He always spoke as a man of the Maghreb, not as an Algerian or a Tunisian or Moroccan."
http//www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/features/2010/09/21/feature-03
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The taboo that orthodoxy has always laid on Qur??nic studies was more easily lifted during the period of historical-philological positivism than today The euphoria of scientist reasoning was boosted by colonial rule. Hence, the battle for a critical edition of the text of the Qur??n, including most notably a chronological ranking of the s?r?t is not as persistent as it was in the period between T. N?ldeke and of R. Blach?re. All the same, this subject has lost nothing of its scientific relevance since it implies a more reliable historical reading less dependent on suppositions, hypotheses and the quest for the plausible (despite the trust she puts in her methods, J. Chabbi cannot avoid writing in the conditional mood). Unless more revealing manuscripts related to the history of the text are found, which is still possible, it seems better to draw the conclusion that an irreversible situation was created by the systematic destruction of precious documents or by the lack of interest of people today in all that has become essential for modern historical knowledge. This field of research does not seem to have broadened its horizons or inquiries, if one is to judge by three collections of articles bearing carefully chosen signatures Approaches to the history of the interpretation of the Qur??n, ed. Andrew Rippin, Approaches to the Qur??n, ed. G.R. Hawting and Abdul-Kader A. Shareef, and The Qur??n as text, already cited above, the title of which does not fulfill its promises, as its editor, S. Wild, has admitted. Each contribution seems to be limited to verifying the continuity of historicist problematics, philological procedures and peripheral curiosities. This syndrome, clarified by J. van Ess, is apparent in each researcher contributing to this collection, who considers him or herself an expert in a well-defined domain but who is never a reflective researcher vis-?-vis an object of knowledge that demands precise intervention on all levels and manners of production and propagation of meaning and assumptions of meaning. All of this includes those involved in the collection under examination as well as those produced by the writing of the researcher and those which circulate among the community interpreting its heritage (la communaut? interpr?tante). The problem must be reiterated We are dealing with a corpus of which the primary constitutive function of its linguistic articulation is to say the true meaning of human existence- the objective, ideal, intangible, insurmountable norms which have to be strictly observed to keep this existence in line with its true meaning. We are also dealing with secondary corpuses derived from the first, of which the linguistic articulation has, in its long history, similarly functioned (the yaq?lu-ll?hu of the exegetes and of current discourse or j??a f?-l-had?th perpetuate, throughout the long course of history, the illusion of a lived continuity between revealed norms and meanings and the accumulated interpretations and plans used by the living tradition of the community of believers. We are thus dealing with such an existential structure translated into multiple, developing existential realities Is the researcher permitted to sever systematically knowledge of marginal facts from the critique of prophetic discourse as a discourse of existentiation (the Arabic term, ?j?d renders the causative function more explicit) which gives shape, content and orientation to the actual existence of the believers. This is the problem toward which the reflective researcher directs his or her sights, in reaction against the dominance of scholastic reason which imposes its manner of cutting and pasting the heritage, not on the basis of an intellectual authority which would create a debt of meaning in its regard, but by the mechanisms of academic power which are intertwined with and dependent on the political philosophy of modern states, just as the clerics who create and guard religious orthodoxies, were enmeshed with these state powers before the secular revolution.
It is necessary to open up the Qur??nic fact by situating it in a comparative approach not only within the three monotheist religions, but also within a historical anthropology of the religious phenomenon in its geo-historical and geo-cultural ambiance that can, for the time being, be qualified as Mediterranean. The historical phase of what historians explore under the name of the Near East should always be kept in sight, although not in order to rediscover so-called origins or to reconstruct linear filiations of ideas, representations, linguistic forms and rituals of expression. The aim should be to deepen our knowledge of constituent elements common to the monotheistic religious conscience in its global historical genesis and strategies of differentiation to preserve its exclusive vocation to receive, interpret and transmit the revealed Truth. This requires more than accumulation of names, facts, dates, titles of major works; it needs a deconstrutive analysis of the organising themes common to monotheist conscious the inaugural Moments of spiritual history, the new departures from cultural codes that engender logical existential systems, dogmatic enclosures, societies of the Book-book, elected communities promised to salvation in contrast to anonymous groups destined to stray and be damned; in brief, it is a matter of deepening our knowledge of all these historical formations that the ethnographic view imprison in so-called identities and enclose in equally alleged regions, traditions and cultures.
http//sites.google.com/site/mohammedarkoun/QURANintrod.pdf
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A Berber from the mountainous region of Algeria, Mohammed Arkoun is an internationally renowned scholar of Islamic thought. In this book, he advocates a conception of Islam as a stream of experience encompassing majorities and minorities, Sunni and Shi?a, popular mystics and erudite scholars, ancient heroes and modern critics. A product of Islamic culture, Arkoun nonetheless disagrees with the Islamic establishment and militant Islamist groups; as a student of twentieth-century social science in the West and an admirer of liberalism, he self-consciously distances himself from Western Orientalists and Western conceptions of liberalism.This book?the first of Arkoun?s works to be widely available in English?presents his responses to twenty-four deceptively simple questions, including Can one speak of a scientific understanding of Islam in the West or must one rather talk about the Western way of imagining Islam? What do the words ?Islam,? ?Muslim,? and ?Qur?an? mean? What is meant by ?revelation? and ?tradition??? What did Islam retain from the previously revealed religions?Judaism and Christianity? What did it retain from the religions and customs of pre-Islamic Arabia? In answering these and other questions, Arkoun provides an introduction to one of the world?s great religions and offers a biting, radical critique of Islamology as it has been practiced in both East and West.This is a book for the beginning student of Islam and for the general reader uneasy with media images of Islam as a monolithic, anti-Western, violence-prone religion. It is also a book for specialists seeking an entr? into Arkoun?s methhodology?his efforts toapply contemporary thinking about anthropology, philosophy, semiotics, history, and sociology to the Islamic tradition and its relationship to the West. It is a book for anyone concerned about the identity crisis that has left many Muslims estranged from both a modernity imposed upon them and a tradition subverted for nationalist and Islamist purposes.
http//books.google.fr/books?id=lvrXAAAAMAAJ&dq=islamology%20arkoun&source=gbs_book_other_versions
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The main characteristic of Arkoun thought is in the conjoining between Western world and Islamic world, in line with his dream to arrange the specific combination of different ways of thinking. The effort in combining the two elements, the most divine of Islamic thought (Islamic Reason) and the most valuable in the modern western thought (modern thought), is his wish that motivates his activities and works, that is particular combining of different ways of thinking.
http//repository.ui.ac.id/contents/koleksi/2/1a21e511085b1bc990f890bb3dd7e7373cc82580.pdf
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Thanks.
