Exploring Critical islam: Muslims and their Religion in a Post-Islamist World

This article was released as part of the Singapore Middle East Papers series, published by the Middle East Institute at NUS
 
The term ‘critical Islam’ can mean a host of things and therefore needs to be qualified. Here it will be used to describe a strand of contemporary Muslim thinking arising  and developing both in parallel with–and in contrast to–what scholars of Islam from different academic disciplines refer to as the ‘Islamic Resurgence’ beginning in 1970s.The exponents of this other current are called turāthiyyūn, or ‘heritage thinkers’, because they do not take Islam as a narrowly defined and fixed set of doctrines and tenets, nor do they regard it as offering a set and concrete political model that works as a panacea against all the ills affecting Muslims and Muslim societies. Instead, they regard Islam as a civilizational concept with a rich legacy of religious, philosophical, and cultural expressions. This is not to imply that the advocates of political Islam, or Islamists, can’t be critical too. In fact, a case could be made that their views of the role of religion in human life refers to another meaning of ‘critical’; in the sense of considering it crucial or critically important to human felicity. However, rather than projecting Islam as an ideal, the heritage thinkers–depending on their disciplinary backgrounds–take religion as an idea or a social fact. 

The full text can be accessed by clicking on the image below

Intellectual Archive: Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

The Jadaliyya website, which has grown into one of the most prominent platforms for alternative voices from the Middle Eastern and North African parts of the Muslim world has established an archive offering a useful introduction to the intellectual legacy of one of the pioneering scholars of Islam from the Arabic-speaking world during the final decades of the last century and the early years of the new millennium.

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd has done ground-breaking world in the subfields of Qur'anic studies and in the discourse analysis of religious thinking in the contemporary Muslim world. His writings drew the attention of inquisitive young Muslims both at home and abroad, and some of his writings have been translated into Turkish, Indonesian, French, German, and Italian.

On the other hand, his proposition to approach the Qur'an as  literary text that can be subjected to text analytical and semiotic investigations also earned him the hostility of reactionary Muslim bloc. In the combustible political-religious climate of the Egypt in the early 1990s, which saw not only bloody confrontations between violent extremist and the Egyptian security forces, but also the assassination of the writer Farag Foda and a failed attempt on the life of Nobel Prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz, Abu Zayd saw no other option than going into exile in Germany and the Netherlands. His premature death in 2010, cut short the life and career of Muslim humanist and innovative academic.

For those who can read Arabic, click here to read brief sketches and view video clips of a number of talks. For those who don't, here are a few interviews in English:

Part 1 & 2

An intellectual History of the Contemporary Muslim World

An impressionist and anecdotal talk by yours truly about contemporary thinking in the Muslim World at Mahfil Ali Shi'a Ithna'ashari Community in Middlesex (SICM).

The Legacy of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd: One Year On...

A year ago this week, the leading Egyptian Islamicist Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd died rather unexpectedly in Cairo (see my post of 6 July 2010). The Qantara website carries two articles to commemorate the event, the first one reports on the conference organized by Navid Kermani and Katajun Amirpur, bringing together scholars such as the Syrian scholars Sadiq al-Azm and Aziz al-Azmeh, the Iranian intellectuals Abdolkarim Soroush and Muhammad Shabestari, South Africa's Farid Esack and Amina Wadud from the USA.

But the fact that this conference with its star-studded guest list took place in Essen and not in Cairo, Tehran or Lahore is an indication of the lack of acceptance with which innovative approaches are met within the Islamic world. It is also a reminder of the fact that Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd was declared divorced from his wife against his will in 1995 as a result of his very cautious attempts to stimulate reform in Egypt.

To read the whole article click here.

The other contribution was Yoginder Sikand's last interview with the Egyptian scholar.In response to the question how he sees his work, Abu Zayd replied:

 I see it as part of my long interest in Islamic hermeneutics, the methodology of understanding the Koran, the Sunnah and other components of the Islamic tradition. Of particular concern for me are certain assumptions in popular Islamic discourse that have not been fully examined, and have generally been ignored or avoided. Thus, for instance, Muslim scholars have not seriously reflected on the question of what is actually meant when we say that the Koran is the revealed 'Word of God'. What exactly does the term 'Word of God' mean? What does revelation mean?

In a historical understanding of the Koran one would also have to look at the verses in the text that refer specifically to the Prophet and the society in which he lived. Some people might feel that looking at the Koran in this way is a crime against Islam, but I feel that this sort of reaction is a sign of a weak and vulnerable faith. And this is why a number of writers who have departed from tradition and have pressed for a way of relating to the Koran that takes the historical context of the revelation seriously have been persecuted in many countries.

I think there is a pressing need to bring the historical dimension of the revelation into discussion, for this is indispensable for countering authoritarianism, both religious and political, and for promoting human rights

 For the whole interview, click here

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943-2010)

The Egyptian Islamicist Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd has died in a Cairo hospital on 5 July 2010. He had only recently returned to Egypt after being diagnosed with a rare viral disease.

Since 1995 Abu Zayd had lived in exile in the Netherlands after his innovative approaches to Quranic studies -- promoting a human-centered hermeneutics and applying methods derived from semiotics, literary theory & criticism to the study of the Islamic scripture -- caused controversy in both academic, religious and political circles. This not only led to him being denied tenure at the University of Cairo, but also resulted in court proceedings initiated by lawyers associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Following a conviction on grounds of apostasy, those prosecuting Abu Zayd went a step further by insisting that the courts also impose a divorce from his wife on grounds that an non-Muslim cannot be married to a Muslim woman.

Because of these developments, Abu Zayd and his wife Ibtihal Younes ( a professor of French literature) considered it prudent to leave Egypt for the more welcoming academic environment in Europe. Traveling via Spain Abu Zayd found refuge in the Netherlands, where he held a number of academic posts at the Leiden University and lastly as the incumbent of the Ibn Rushd Chair at the University for Humanistics in Utrecht. He was also associated with the Wissenschaftkolleg zu Berlin in Germany. In 2005 he was awarded the Ibn Rushd Prize by the Ibn Rushd Fund for the Freedom of Thought

After an absence of almost fifteen year, Abu Zayd started to revisit his home country again. However, his position is still controversial; in December 2009 Kuwait refused him entry in spite of having initially issued a valid visit visa. It was during a recent visit to Indonesia that the scholar fell ill and was admitted to the Shaykh Zayed Hospital in Cairo where he slipped into a coma.

Publishing primarily in Arabic, very little of Abu Zayd's work has been translated into English. The German-Iranian scholar and author Navid Kermani assisted Abu Zayd a number of years ago with the publication of an autobiography in German, which was later also translated into Dutch.

For more on Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd on this blog, click here.