{"id":10580,"date":"2013-06-22T11:13:51","date_gmt":"2013-06-22T15:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=10580"},"modified":"2013-06-22T11:13:51","modified_gmt":"2013-06-22T15:13:51","slug":"meddebs-islam-the-challenge-of-civilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/meddebs-islam-the-challenge-of-civilization\/","title":{"rendered":"Meddeb’s Islam & the Challenge of Civilization"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MeddebCover\"<\/a>If yesterday I posted Hind Meddeb’s letter from Tunis \u2014 an urgent cry for human rights &, I think, an accurate evaluation of the situation in Tunisia post-Arab Spring \u2014 I want to point today to her father, Abdelwahab Meddeb’s, latest book in English translation, out earlier this year from Fordham University press & translated (excellently so) by Jane Kuntz, \u00a0Islam and the Challenge of Civilization<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

This book, for me, is\u00a0the perfect handbook for deepening our understanding of both the incredible richness through time and the paradoxical present obtuseness of Islamic culture. Meddeb achieves this feat \u2014 how clear knowledge can disarm belligerent interpretations of a paradoxical faith \u2014through his elegant and polyphonic use of Qu\u2019ranic exegesis, advanced literary poetics, and a strong sense of democratic citizen politics, all of which are informed by a profound cosmopolitanism able to simultaneously draw on Ibn Arabi\u2019s eclectic sufism and Voltaire\u2019s secular intellect, among many other sources. A necessary exploration, a must read.<\/p>\n

<\/em>The Press accurately states the aim of \u00a0this book \u00a0\u2014 the same aim as that of his \u00a03 other untranslated volumes of essays and of the book that opened his writing on this subject,\u00a0The Malady Of Islam\u00a0<\/em>translated\u00a0by myself & Ann Reid in 2003 but unhappily let go out of print by its publisher, Basic Books :<\/p>\n

\n

Abdelwahab\u00a0Meddeb\u00a0makes an urgent case for an Islamic reformation, located squarely in Western Europe, now home to millions of Muslims, where Christianity and Judaism have come to coexist with secular humanism and positivist law. He is not advocating ‘moderate’ Islam, which he characterizes as thinly disguised Wahabism, but rather an Islam inspired by the great Sufi thinkers, whose practice of religion was not bound by doctrine.<\/p>\n

To accomplish this,\u00a0Meddeb\u00a0returns to the doctrinal question of the text as transcription of the uncreated word of God and calls upon Muslims to distinguish between Islam\u2019s spiritual message and the temporal, material, and historically grounded origins of its founding scriptures. He contrasts periods of Islamic history\u2014when philosophers and theologians engaged in lively dialogue with other faiths and civilizations and contributed to transmitting the Hellenistic tradition to early modern Europe\u2014with modern Islam\u2019s collective amnesia of this past.\u00a0Meddeb\u00a0wages a war of interpretations in this book, in his attempt to demonstrate that Muslims cannot join the concert of nations unless they set aside outmoded notions such as jihad and realize that feuding among the monotheisms must give way to the more important issue of what it means to be a citizen in today\u2019s postreligious global setting.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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If yesterday I posted Hind Meddeb’s letter from Tunis \u2014 an urgent cry for human rights &, I think, an accurate evaluation of the situation in Tunisia post-Arab Spring \u2014 I want to point...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,22,55,1395,58,498],"tags":[124],"class_list":["post-10580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-culture","category-book-review","category-intellectuals","category-islam","category-islamic-fundamentalists","category-maghreb","tag-abdelwahab-meddeb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10580"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10587,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10580\/revisions\/10587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}