The problematic of authenticity and contemporaneity in modern and contemporary Arab thought

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Acknowledgements

For helpful comments and suggestions the translator is grateful to Dr Ghada Osman and to the anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. The original essay has the subtitle: ‘class struggle or cultural problem?’ In this abridged translation I have edited out the parts of the argument that deal with whether the phenomenon in question can be understood via class analysis. Al‐Jābri argues that it cannot. The awkward term ‘problematic’ is a translation of ‘ishkāliyyah (‘ishkāliyyāt in the plural). An ‘Ishkāliyyah, according to al‐Jābri, is a constellation of interrelated and interwoven problems within a particular situation or mode of thinking. It only lends itself to a solution if the situation or the mode of thinking in which it arises is changed. Despite the awkwardness of the terms in English I have translated ʿishkāliyyah and ʿishkāliyyāt as ‘problematic’ and ‘problematics’ respectively, and reserved ‘problem’ and ‘problems’ for ‘mushkil’ in the singular, and ‘mashākil’ as well as ‘mushkilāt’ in the plural.

2. The Centre for Arab Unity Studies in Beirut has translated and co‐published this seminal work (February 2011) with I. B. Tauris: al‐Jabri, Mohammed Abed, The formation of Arab reason: text, tradition and the construction of modernity in the Arab World. Contemporary Arab Scholarship in the Social Sciences (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011).

3. Arab‐Islamic Philosophy: A Contemporary Critique, trans. from the French by Aziz Abbassi with an Introduction by Walid Hamarneh (Austin, TX: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1999); Democracy, human rights and law in Islamic thought (New York, NY: I. B. Tauris in association with the Center for Arab Unity Studies, 2009). The latter work, which appears without an editor’s or a translator’s introduction, plunges the reader into debates to which only area experts in the English‐speaking world would normally have access. It appears as the first volume of a series entitled ‘Contemporary Arab Scholarship in the Social Sciences’. The English translation of the first volume of al‐Jābri’s Critique of Arab Reason is part of the same series under the title.

4. Secondary sources in English include: Issa Boullata, Trends and issues in contemporary Arab thought (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990), 45–56; Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, Contemporary Arab thought: cultural critique in comparative perspective (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2010), 154–172; Ibrahim M. Abu‐Rabi’’s critical treatment in Contemporary Arab thought: studies in post‐1967 Arab intellectual history (Sterling, VA: Pluto, 2004), 256–295; and Jaafar Aksikas’s critical treatment in Arab modernities: Islamism, nationalism, and liberalism in the post‐colonial Arab World (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2009), 61–94. For an excellent and critical commentary on al‐Jābri’s work (sadly only in German), see Anke von Kügelgen, Averroes und die Arabische Moderne: Ansätze zu einer Neubegründung des Rationalismus im Islam (New York, NY: E. J. Brill, 1994). While largely critical of al‐Jābri’s work, von Kügelgen makes a plea to readers in the Conclusion not to dismiss al‐Jābri’s overall project (pp. 416–417).

5. This paper was presented at a conference given in Cairo in 1984 organized by the Center for Arab Unity Studies under the heading ‘The Heritage and the Challenges of the Age in the Arab Homeland (Authenticity and Contemporeneity)’. It was subsequently published as the first chapter of a volume entitled ‘Ishkāliyyāt al‐fikr al‐arabī al‐muʿāṣ□iir (Problematics of contemporary Arab thought) (Beirut: Center for Arab Unity Studies, 1994, second printing). This is the edition used here in translating the essay. It is noteworthy that among the commentators on al‐Jābri’s work in English, Elizabeth Kassab recognizes the significance of this paper and dedicates several pages in her book to a discussion of it; Kassab, Contemporary Arab thought, pp. 154–158.

6. Since I am not offering a complete translation of the text, I have marked the places in which text appears that I have not translated with ellipses (…). In the first section of the essay that is not here translated, al‐Jābri explains that although he is convinced that class struggle is a main mover of history, he nonetheless believes that thought enjoys a relative independence from it. Specifically, he points out that the problematic of authenticity and contemporaneity arises at the level of thought and can only be overcome at that level.

7. Readers of Arabic will notice that turāth has a pathos that is missing in the English word ‘heritage’. Al‐Jābri illuminates this below in the two sections entitled ‘A dramatic feeling of the depth of the abyss between the heritage and reality’ and ‘Europe and its heritage: continuities and discontinuities’.

8. In two paragraphs not here translated al‐Jābri explains that these positions are not mutually exclusive, and that they each contain a diversity of ideological and political currents.

9. In two paragraphs not here translated, al‐Jābri acknowledges the existence of currents of thought for which this duality does not arise. But he considers them marginal.

10. In a short paragraph not here translated al‐Jābri points out the need to examine renaissance ‘mechanisms’.

11. Literally: the ‘true believers’.

12. The Holy Qurʾān, ‘sūrat al‐māʾidah’, verse 104, trans. ‘Abdullah Yusuf ‘Ali (I. B. Tauris).

13. The Qurʾn refers to Abraham as anīf.

14. The Holy Qurʾān, ‘sūrat al‐ḥajj’, verse 78.

15. Compare this meaning with the different meaning that al‐Jābri uses for the term in the section entitled ‘National culture and local specificities’ below.

16. In two paragraphs not translated here al‐Jābri points to the same mechanism in the European Renaissance.

17. Recall that the paper is written for a conference under this topic.

18. In four paragraphs not here translated al‐Jābri points to some of the geopolitical and social conditions that complicate this duality. These include the hope that some Arabs had in obtaining Western help to resist Ottoman domination. Then in a lengthy section also not included in the translation he explains why he thinks that the issue at hand is not well captured by a class analysis. His overall point on this matter is well captured by the following sentences: ‘… Suffice it then to reiterate (and this is perhaps the core of what I have said so far in analyzing the subject at hand) that the relationship between class conflict and the problematic of authenticity and contemporaneity in modern and contemporary Arab thought is not a causal relationship. Thus coinciding and conflicting interests do not explain this problematic. It goes without saying that the existence of this problematic does not deny the existence of class conflict, nor its reflection in thought: ideological conflict …. If the reality of class relations does not undergird or explain this problematic, then there is only one other “reality” that it can be linked to namely, the intellectual, cultural reality. Let me put it clearly then: the problematic of authenticity and contemporaneity in modern and contemporary Arab thought is a purely intellectual, cultural problematic. Its bases and justifications are to be found in Arab cultural and intellectual contexts, its constituents and contradictions.’

19. The first paragraph of this section is not here translated. It deals with the effect of colonialism on the intellectual elite in the Third World in general.

20. Zaki Naguib Mahmoud, The renewal of Arab thought (Beirut: Dar al‐Sharq, 1971), 189. This reference is from al‐Jābri’s text.

21. In the first four paragraphs of this section not here translated al‐Jābri explains that he does not presume a homogenous Arab cultural heritage, but a rich diverse one.

22. In the first five paragraphs of his section not here translated al‐Jbri summarizes some parts of this argument and revisits the question of the relationship between thought and social class.