Algerian scholar Mohammed Arkoun, who died in September 2010 at the age of 82, has been one of the most influential personalities in the Muslim world among those who devoted themselves to a critique of extremism, ossification, mystification and dogmatization of the holy text with the aim of manipulating and enslaving religion to the objectives of power. So as to defuse and demystify this deception, Arkoun appealed to the Islamic tradition’s wealth of humanist resources.
Just like the younger Abu Zayd, Arkoun proposed the need for a “critical history of the text passed down with the name of the Qur’an,” but unlike the Egyptian scholar, he expressed a more self-assured and critical perspective. He also considered the holy text as something now lost and irretrievable, no longer the result of transcendence, arguing that the divine source has become unrecognisable due to the pressure of political ideology. Arkoun’s “critique of Islamic reason” incorporated the legacy of the French Enlightenment, although it would be a mistake to say, as some of his enemies did, that he adopted a western point of view or estranged himself from his origins.
Arkoun possessed a rhetorical passion capable of enchanting his listeners. He powerfully laid claim to the internal resources of a tradition he never ceased to belong to, such as the Muslim and Arab humanism of the golden age of Islam (12th century) that could have flourished and produces its own Enlightenment in the sciences, the arts and critical thought, if it had not been destroyed at birth by political circumstances. This critique he devoted himself to also as the editor-in-chief of the magazine Arabica, aimed to allow the emergence of the “unthought-of” in the Muslim tradition, which could result in a richer and more modern secular and religious awareness. Islamic studies, he thought, should therefore be devoted to the identification of what had gone wrong in history leading to a decadence and stagnation from which Muslim countries have been unable to free themselves for centuries. His work on this topic includes Contribution à l’Étude de l’Humanisme Arabe (1970) and Essais sur la Pensée Islamique (1973). His resolute critique of the holy text, contained in his book, Lectures du Coran (1982), exposed him to accusations of heresy, as also happened to Abu Zayd, in spite of his great concern to remain within the religious context, that of a believer, in his relationship with the Qur’an.
At Reset we remember him both for his conference in Rome at the Eliseo Theatre (on November 24th 2006, see Reset no. 99 January-February 2007) together with Abdolkarim Soroush, and for a public debate with Hassan Hanafi in Cairo in a vast auditorium at the January 2007 Book Fair. Facing an impassioned audience, the debate was between very two different interpretations of the Muslim culture: Arkoun’s, decidedly the more secular and uninhibited, and Hanafi’s, also reformist in a way, but more orthodox and concerned with separating himself from the European Enlightenment and always resisting anything that might be interpreted as “colonial” subordination.
Arkoun, however, was not remotely a “nominal” Muslim, and right until the end, he devoted himself to promoting education for Muslim immigrants in Europe, a subject on which he harshly addressed the French establishment, finding support almost exclusively on the Left and in a few local administrations. He was also very critical of the education system in Arab countries, whose schools, in his opinion, instead of being a means for liberation, had become the means for promoting “institutionalised ignorance” for the benefit of Islamism.
Until the very end, Arkoun contributed to the dialogue between cultures and between religions, actively joining in the debate. He published many books in Arabic, French, Italian, and many other languages.
Translated by Francesca Simmons