Arab Political Thought: Past and Present

Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
	Does Arab thought exist?
	A barely visible cultural richness and complexity
	A new ‘fascination with Islam’
	A journey into contemporary Arab thought
Chapter 1
	The diversity and dynamism of Arab culture
	The distinction between Islamic civilisation and Arab culture
	The poetic and musical mode in Arab culture
	Rhetoric and prose
	Arab philosophy
	The nineteenth-century renaissance of Arabic and Arab thought
Chapter 2
	The complex question of religious and national identity
	The need for distinction between Arab and Islamic thought
	Encumbered by a fascination with the past
	Attempts to create an irreducible Islamic otherness
	The need to contextualise the development of thought
	The sources of authoritarianism in the Arab world that have been ignored
Chapter 3
	Choosing an epistemological framework and a model for understanding Arab thought
	The otherness of the Arab mind: Orientalisms and counter-Orientalisms
	The problematic trap of authenticity vs. modernity
	Is Islam really indivisible?
	The conditions of cultural and intellectual production in the Arab world since the end of the twentieth century
	Albert Hourani’s 1962 pioneering overview of Arab thought
	More recent overviews
	Misinterpreting the role of Arab Christian thinkers
Chapter 4
	The shifting political contexts of Arab societies
	The dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and the three afflictions of the Arab world
	The factor of petroleum in the major upheavals of the Arab world
	The impact of the Iranian ‘religious’ revolution
	The development of a rentier economy
	The consequences of the fragmentation of Arab societies in the face of the European challenge
Chapter 5
	The sources of political and intellectual conflict
	The creation of the State of Israel and its impact on Arab thought
	The complex issue of the lack of unity among Arabs
	The six contemporary historical factors of Arab conflict
	An enigma of history: the Arab abandonment of power in the ninth century
Chapter 6
	The factors that led to a renaissance of thought
	Identities and historical decline?
	The problem of identity and its complexities
	The first generations of intellectuals and their relationship to Europe
	Arab thought in the face of colonial expansion: the failure of Ottoman patriotism
	The first steps of modern Arab nationalism
	Awareness of historical decline and underdevelopment
Chapter 7
	The flourishing of the Arab renaissance, 1850–1950: the desire for modernity
	The pivotal role of the Azharis in an Islam of Enlightenment
	Taha Husayn, an exceptional individual
	The emergence of a rich Arab feminist movement
	Other major figures of the Arab renaissance
	Questioning the European development model
	Arab and Russian Thought: the same contradictions
	Does Arab Shi‘i reformist thought exist?
Chapter 8
	The theories and political parties of Arab nationalism (1940–1980)
	Revisiting Arab military weakness and its impact
	The blossoming of secular and anti-imperialist Arab nationalism (1919–1967)
	The post-Second World War generation of Arab nationalist thinkers
	Factors that led to the radicalisation of nationalist thought
	The main nationalist thinkers
	The main political currents adhering to Arab nationalism
		The Arab nationalist doctrine of the Baath Party
		The Nasserist mode of Arab Nationalism
		The Arab Nationalist Movement
Chapter 9
	Other forms of nationalism in the Arab world
	The Syrian People’s Party: a distinct nationalist movement
	The nationalisms of the Maghreb
	Other forms of identity-based nationalisms in the Arab world
	The Arabic language: a reservoir of collective culture
	Two privileged spaces of Arab nationalist thought
		The Centre for Arab Unity Studies
		The Institute for Palestine Studies, a place for preservation of memory
Chapter 10
	Arab thought in the face of successive political and military failures since 1961
	The growing complexity of the Arab political landscape
	Reflexive thought on the failure experienced by the Arab world
	Yasin al-Hafiz and radical revolutionary thought of a secular nature
	Sadiq Jalal al-Azm and Adonis: their fight against religious obscurantism
	The original and enlightening work of Abdallah Laroui
	National thought through the prism of Marxist critical reflection
	Samir Amin’s Marxist internationalist humanism
	Mahdi Amil’s critical deconstruction
		The important works of Tayyeb Tizini and Elias Morcos
Chapter 11
	Islamic nationalisms as anti-nationalist Arab thought
	A return to the context in which ‘anti-national’ Islamist thought emerged
	A pocket guide to the thought of modern Islamic movements: Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood
	‘Islam is the solution’: the triumph of a slogan in the 1980s
	Intensification of the struggle for power in Arab societies
	The role of foreign influence on the elites
	The harmful effects of confining thought within the dilemma between Islam and Arab identity
Chapter 12
	The major controversies generated by Islamic nationalism
	Islamic heritage: the controversy over an open or closed universe
		Al-Jabri’s three modes of operation of Arab thought
		Tarabichi’s deconstruction of al-Jabri’s work
		The comparative status of philosophy in Islam and Christianity
		The impact of European Islamic studies and Ernest Renan’s thought on al-Jabri
		The artificial opposition between the gnostic Islam of the Orient and the rational Islam of the Occident
	The dispute between partisans and adversaries of secularism: a religious McCarthyism?
	The tribulations of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd
	The assassination of Mahmoud Taha and Farag Foda
	The debate between al-Azmeh and al-Messiri
		Secularism as the source of all the woes of the modern world in the work of al-Messiri
		Secularisation of the Arab world ‘from another angle’ in the work of al-Azmeh
Chapter 13
	Intellectual attempts at ideological conciliation
	The new ‘liberal’ Arab thought
	The silent continuation of the critique of formal ‘Islamic reason’
	Many other overshadowed contemporary critical thinkers
	Reflections on serious tensions within Arab thought
		Mohammed Jaber al-Ansari’s critique of the spirit of conciliation
		Muhammad Dahir: on the need to return to the modernist, secular experiment of Muhammad ‘Ali and Nasser
	Wasatiyya: an attempt to counter radical and fanatical Islamic thought
	Thought that claims to be rooted in Arab Christianity
Chapter 14
	An overview of contemporary Arab thought in the human and social sciences
	Philosophical and anthropological thought
		Abdel Rahman Badawi, a prolific ‘go-between’
		The innovative thought of Nassif Nassar
		A broad diversity of contemporary thinkers
	Arab thought in sociology and history
	The shortcomings of Arab thought in economics and technology
	Arab economists who have made substantial contributions
		Youssef Sayegh’s premonitory analysis of the failure of Arab development
	Numerous other useful economic contributions
	Antoine Zahlan’s analysis and the causes of Arab technological powerlessness
Conclusion
	Vibrant thought, decaying politics
Notes
Bibliography
Index