11: Muhammad Arkoun's attitude

Professor Muhammad Arkoun keeps harping on the need for a new theology in general, and particularly for Islam...

..adding though that this call of his breaks new ice; Professor Arkoun ridicules those who quote the Qur'an in the course of a debate, on the grounds that, "such practice raises the whole range of problems of moving from the mythological to the scientific age." So how would you evaluate this attitude?

I wonder, Mr. Al-Rifa'ee, what makes you choose Muhammad Arkoun to be the subject-matter of one of your questions: I have not brought up the name of Muhammad Arkoun that frequently in my writings, nor do I count him as one of my major priorities, although I have read him carefully and attentively, for I was intent on making out what went on in the mind of that man. The first time I came across his work was when I read an article he had contributed to Diogenes, a journal published by the UNESCO, entitled, "Islam versus development," and I noticed that his writing deserved contemplation. He is not of Malik bin Nabi's type – he rather ridiculed bin Nabi, and considered that he was not acquainted with modernism: but there is no harm in this, for contemporaries seldom appreciate each other – his denigration of bin Nabi did not detract of the latter's value in my mind. Muhammad Arkoun, however, is not to be ignored; he cares for the Muslims. It is likely that Arkoun's insistence on a new theology for Muslims led me to move ahead in understanding the issue of tawheed 'Oneness of God', not on the basis of theology, but as a social, political and economic issue. Not that he said any word on the topic, but the need for a new theology in Islam, as an objective, has remained a major concern of his; and I felt his insistence to be honest and well-taken. Theology as handled by mainstream Muslim scholars is not in line with the way tawheed 'Oneness of God' is presented in the Qur'an; it does not at all give justice to the supreme place reserved for that in the Qur'an. It is such a fundamental topic, and so pivotal in the story of any prophet, that it is amazing how little effort we have devoted to it.

The topics of belief and hypocrisy occupy a central place in the Qur'an, and yet we do not understand their effects on the life of societies – indeed they have not been investigated with any earnestness. It is that what makes me say that what God revealed to the prophets has not yet descended to the earth; it is not yet part of people's consciousness; but it will in the future: people will discover that. Men have discovered the laws of the material world, but they know so little about the laws of man – they do not realize what brings out the amazing potential powers of that unique creature, a creature that can annihilate himself if he does not find the way to self-realization. It is the creature who is capable of being an arm of Divine Will, as Muhammad Iqbal puts it. (By the way, it is puzzling why Muhammad Arkoun never mentioned Muhammad Iqbal in any of his writings that I have read, and I do not claim to have read all that he wrote.) What I did read of his writings I read with attentive concentration and devotion – I was intent on getting the gist of his terminology and conceptual tools. It does him honour that he has laid his hand on the idea of the need for a new theology, and to me it is the need for putting right our concept of God. It is a mistake that we do not try to understand God through a study of His creation and the history of creation – it is to that that the Qur'an is referring in the following verse: "But this thought of yours which you entertained concerning your Lord, has brought you to destruction, and now you have become utterly lost! (41, 23)," and "[they cherish] wrong suspicions of Allah – suspicions due to Ignorance, (3, 154)." Coming to know God through His laws is the way that Muslims are yet to realize: after they lost uprightness (al-rushd in Arabic), the Muslims regressed to pre-Islamic concepts, and they lost the legacy of the prophets.

What the prophets taught was, as I see it, a social revolution. This is a concept that caught my attention in no little degree; it drove me to better appreciate the message that the prophets taught, a message worthy of being attributed to God, the Able, the High, Who willed to condescend and guide His creatures on the tongue of His prophets. But we have not understood God, nor do we understand the prophets' message – but we shall rediscover it, and it is then than we shall see that what the prophets taught long ago is worthy of the Maker of the Worlds. To capture that message proves to be still hard for mankind, and that is manifest in their idolatry at the widest scale, and their failure to appreciate tawheed, which is utterly absent from their minds. When the Qur'an reports on the tongue of the Ignorant 'the unbelieving group of Mecca': "Has he [Muhammad] made the gods all into one God (Allah)? Truly this is a wonderful thing! (38, 5)," their attitude is not that different from our failure to establish equality among all people. Similar attitudes are registered by the Qur'an: "Am I [Pharaoh] not better than this Moses, who is a contemptible wretch and can scarcely express himself clearly? (43, 52);" and similarly, “No Messenger came to the Peoples before them, but they said of him in like manner, "A sorcerer, or one possessed! (51, 52)”.

But we have not even touched on what the prophets have taught, I mean the social revolution and the great sorcery in the social life – sorcery that is as untrue as when men for long ages thought that the sun rotated around us, although it is quite the opposite.

The socio-politico-economic problem should be here discussed in the light of three Qur'anic texts:

1. Come to common terms as between us and you (3, 64) – the social problem;

2. Serve God and eschew the taghoot 'evil, dictatorship, etc.' (16, 36) – the political problem;

3. Do you see one who denies the Judgment to come? Then such is the man who repulses the orphans with harshness, and does not encourage the feeding of the indigent, (107, 1-3) – the economic problem.

Some social writers have said that Marx exposed the economic exploitations, but his endeavour did not really go far enough: there is a need to dissect that aspect, and to breathe life into it until it starts to have an active part in life.

One of the things that Arkoun gave a prime importance to is people's mythical imagination, and I like to call it miraculous conception. According to the mythical imagination, people think the world God created is not governed by laws, although we read in the Qur'an: "But no change will you find in Allah's laws (or ways) of dealing: no turning off will you find in Allah's laws of dealing (35, 42)." The laws are characterized by constancy; the universe is at man's service, and man has the ability to discover the laws and have control in the universe.

But it is not enough to assure ourselves that we have gone beyond thinking on the basis of miracles; we need to dig in deeper, and we shall find that it still makes us feel most in familiar circumstances when we think of God's creation as based on miracles and not on laws – and it is that way of viewing things that brings on us all the disasters.

Arkoun also stresses again and again the need for separating religion and state, but that call of his destroys and runs counter to his call for a new theology, since a new theology is one that makes of religion a science – and yet he insists that religion must be separated from state. He cannot get over his confusion there. I don't, however, go so far as to say he does not have a nostalgic wish to reconcile science with religion – in his latest book, A Window on Islam, Arkoun has gone further than ever in trying to harmonize religion and science, drawing on fresh findings. He quotes there from Habermas, the German thinker, who stressed the need for a revival of the 'Covenant with God' which was put forth by the prophets – In this Covenant, as Habermas puts it: "When an individual protests against treachery, he is not protesting solely in his name, but in the name of everybody. Every human being is potentially a supporter of the struggle against treachery, even against himself or against me. The principle of honesty is unthinkable without a thorough and comprehensive compact against treachery."

Arkoun is importuning us to separate religion and state, in the Western fashion, but what the prophets advocated was coordinating religion with the state. The confusion and disunity in Arkoun's thinking, which really reflects the bases of the Western society, is what he is calling on us to follow – despite the fact that he himself does not show satisfaction with that system; he advocates a new approach to knowledge which encompasses both religion and state, religion and politics. It is true too of the Muslim masses that they have absorbed the separation of religion from politics, on the grounds that politics is based on treachery, betrayal, opportunism and haggling, while religion is honesty, truthfulness, kindness and altruism: they are utterly incompatible in people's minds.

But what the prophets did was to turn politics into an honest, truthful and charitable relationship. Their truthful authority was extended to supersede treacherous politics: something that the present world badly needs, from the United Nations to the tiniest Muslim state – how to turn politics into an honest and truthful endeavour. It is in the light of this that we can understand the Messenger's tradition about assuming positions of authority, when he said: "You will be keen on securing it, and yet it will be something to regret and repent on the Day of Judgment. It is a felicity when assumed, and wretchedness in the end;" and when he said: "Those who ask to be appointed to a position of authority will be denied that wish, and those who are keen on securing it and do get appointed will be left to their own means; but those who are urgently pressed to be appointed will be assisted by God."

In brief, mankind is progressing, though very slowly, towards honesty, towards impartiality and towards adopting ideals unilaterally – that no one is allowed to convince you to abandon what you know to be true to his own doctrine, from the way of uprightness to the way of treachery. This very point has always been the cut-off line between the prophets and their peoples: the domain of honesty and the domain of treachery.

Modernism now begins to revise itself under new movements, like postmodernism, and the words of Habermas. Arkoun's citing such new terms, and his enthusiasm in that respect, show that a new world is looming in the horizon, and that is what Jesus predicted.

The social structure cannot function smoothly with treachery and privileges: That structure which is now rotting with treachery and privileges will not last long – it will crack and split as happened in the aftermath of the two Gulf wars. Unless we revert to the word of even-handedness and common terms (ref. to the Qur'an, 3, 64) the rift will be more severe and painful. The world which has already split will not heal with more treachery and disregard of the Covenant which God has inscribed in the hearts of His servants, though they have been led astray by the devils.

We are now living in a new and amazing time: we need to scream and shout with both the good news and the warning, after the example of prophets. There will be no more prophets, but there are men who teach just dealing with mankind (ref. to the Qur'an, 3, 31,) and worshippers of God, the Cherisher of all creation: it is those who must bear the burden of the heavy Trust, the Trust which the heavens, the land, and the mountains would not undertake, but man did accept to undertake (ref. to the Qur'an, 33, 72,) for man will be true to God's foretelling concerning him (ref. to the Qur'an, 2, 30;) that he will get over mischief and the spilling of blood, will find out that his injustice was really against himself: "O mankind! Your injustice is against your own souls (the Qur'an, 10, 23.) When we think back to man in the cave, we shall know that what God expected for man will come true.

Muhammad Arkoun is not the man Muslims take him to be: an apostate who is in the clutches of the West. He is struggling on both fronts, the front of Arabs and Muslims, and the front of orientalists. The new additions that Arkoun brought to our notice should not be underestimated – and he did foretell of a new world. Indeed, our constant attitude should be that we accept from people the best that they can offer, and pass by their shortcomings – indeed who among us is not without shortcomings! We really need to give people the credit for their efforts, and should not ignore what they stood by and endured all the hardships for.

Let our example be Abdul-Qader Al-Jailani who said: "When Al-Hallaj stumbled there was no one in his age who would stretch his hand to help him; but I am ready to take the hand of whoever stumbles." Such an attitude is what we need in order to gather people round the supreme ideal, so let's give it some thought.

Now as for Arkoun's saying that a person who cites the Qur'an in support of his stand is provoking the whole range of problems attending the traversing from the mythical age to the scientific age, I find this statement to denote no little degree of truth – it is not very different from what Ali, may God bless his person, once said: "The Qur'an is open to all kinds of interpretation." Indeed, there is no discourse but is open to various interpretations. Had it not been for reference to the actual world, words would not have meaning; and the Qur'an, as it itself says: "By it He causes many to stray, and many He leads into the right path, (2, 26)." And so the Qur'an, as a Book, is not sufficient to lead to the right path.

That throws the truth into focus; to be a guidance, the Qur'an requires a referent, the signs of the world around us and the world of the souls inside us: it is that which will put right our understanding of the Qur'an. Without that process of referring to the signs, the Qur'an will be held up as supporting any side and all sides, and you may recall how the Qur'an was raised on the spears in the Mu'awiah-Ali dispute. In this incident, it was not the side nearer truth or honesty who called the others to refer to the Qur'an for seeking solution. And down to our own day we still compete in citing the Qur'an and other texts. I may refer here to an article written by Sayyed Hussein Fadhl-Allah about Islamic unity, in which he does not quote a single verse from the Qur'an, nor one tradition of the Prophet's or any statement by the ancestors – on the other hand he mentions the real state of affairs more than seventy times. About that article, I myself wrote an article which was published by the Iranian Commission in Damascus.

Indeed the Qur'an does not utter anything by itself: it is there for people to make it utter. The Prophet did mention a situation in which people can no longer benefit from their scripture, though revealed by God; he reminded that the Jews and the Christian do have in their hands books revealed from God, but they do not benefit anything from them. This is true of us, too. But we hope that in the future we shall be able to benefit from the Book of God, and that will be by referring to God's signs in the world around and the world within. Once this is realized, people will no longer twist the text to suit their interpretations – they will accept with fullest conviction.

At the end of his book, Criticism of the Arab-Islamic Mind, Arkoun includes a chapter entitled: An epilogue about the potency of the Qur'anic phenomenon, in which he says: “It remains to review something deeper than what we have done so far, something that can help us fathom the secret of the power of that phenomenon across centuries .. it is there, existing though we are unable to locate it specifically, it is somewhere in the Qur'an and in the words of Jesus .. How was it possible for this power to bring forth the marvelous phenomenon, the Qur'an, which burst here and no where else? This is the massive, provocative question which awaits to be answered. But our answer must not be the same as put forth by the orientalists .. I, for my part, am in favour of a different, wider research which will give justice to this issue, and if we undertake such inquiry we shall have contributed something substantial in pushing ahead and reviving the human sciences through the Islamic specimen, I mean by launching applied Islamicism, which I have most fervently struggled to see it established.”

Again I must wonder if I have given justice to Arkoun's work.