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Pluralism in Contemporary Islamic Thought: The Case of Mohammed Arkoun, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and Abdolkarim Soroush

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Abstract

This chapter engages with the issue of pluralism in contemporary Islamic thought by discussing the work of three Muslim thinkers, namely, Mohammed Arkoun, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, and Abdolkarim Soroush. In order to address this theme, the chapter first contextualizes their work within the historical fragmentation of authority in Islam. Secondly, it elaborates on their hermeneutical project as the basis for religious pluralism in both its inward and outward dimension: inward, as the promotion of a plurality of interpretations within Islam; outward as the opening to the possibility of access to Salvation and Truth to different religious traditions. The chapter argues that although coming from different intellectual traditions, Arkoun, Abu Zayd and Soroush testify to the plurality of voices within Islam, as well as the centrality of the question of pluralism within contemporary Islamic thought. By shifting their analysis from an ontological to an epistemological exploration of religion, these thinkers challenge the monopoly of any authority over the correct interpretation of the Sacred Sources and Truth. In this process, their attention to the hermeneutics of the Sacred Sources reflects their knowledge of both Islamic theological tradition as well as theories from the humanities and the social sciences.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Dale F. Eickelman, “Who speaks for Islam? Inside the Islamic reformation,” in An Islamic Reformation?, eds. Michaelle Browers and Charles Kurzman (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004); John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think (New York: Gallup Press, 2007); Gudrun Krämer, and Sabine Schmidtke eds., Speaking for Islam: Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies (Leiden: Brill, 2006a, b); Khaled Abou El Fadl, And God Knows the Soldiers: The Authoritative and Authoritarian in Islamic Discourses (Lanham: University Press of America, 2001), 20.

  2. 2.

    Mehran Kamrava ed., The New Voices of Islam: Rethinking Politics and Modernity (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006); Suha Taji-Farouki ed., Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qurʼan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Charles Kurzman ed., Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Ronald L. Nettler, Mohamed Mahmoud, and John Cooper eds., Islam and Modernity: Muslim Intellectuals Respond (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998); Shireen Hunter, Reformist Voices of Islam: Mediating Islam and Modernity (Armonk: Sharpe, 2009); Lena Larsen, Kari Vogt, and Christian Moe eds., New Directions in Islamic Thought: Exploring Reform and Muslim Tradition (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009).

  3. 3.

    Mohammed A. Bamyeh, “Introduction: The social dynamism of the organic intellectual,” in Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East: Liberalism, Modernity and Political Discourse, ed. Mohammed A. Bamyeh (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012) 3.

  4. 4.

    This chapter will leave the comparison of their socio-political understandings of pluralism to further research.

  5. 5.

    Peter Mandaville, “Globalization and the politics of religious knowledge: Pluralizing authority in the Muslim world,” Theory, Culture & Society 24:2 (2007) 101–115; Wael B. Hallaq, Authority, Continuity, and Change in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Abou El Fadl, And God Knows the Soldiers, 2001; Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 38–59.

  6. 6.

    Krämer and Schmidtke eds., Speaking for Islam; Kathryn A. Miller, Guardians of Islam: Religious Authority and Muslim Communities of Late Medieval Spain (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

  7. 7.

    Suha Taji-Farouki, “Introduction,” in Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qurʼan, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 10.

  8. 8.

    John L. Esposito, ed., Makers of Contemporary Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 12.

  9. 9.

    Mandaville, “Globalization and the politics of religious knowledge,” 101–115; Frédéric Volpi and Bryan S. Turner, “Introduction: Making Islamic authority matter,” Theory, Culture & Society 24:2 (2007):1–19; Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam; Juliane Hammer, and Riem Spielhaus, “Muslim women and the challenge of authority: An introduction,” The Muslim World 103:3 (2013): 287–294.

  10. 10.

    Kamrava , The New Voices of Islam, 19; William Shepard, “The diversity of Islamic thought: Toward a typology,” in Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, ed. Suha Taj-Farouki and Basheer M. Nafi (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008).

  11. 11.

    Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and Esther Ruth Nelson, Voice of an Exile: Reflections on Islam (Westport: Praeger, 2004), 1, 20.

  12. 12.

    Taji-Farouki , Introduction, 10.

  13. 13.

    Morteza Kariminiya, “Ta’wil, haqiqat va nass: Goftogu-ye Kiyan ba Nasr Hamed Abu Zayd,” Kiyan 54 (2000): 6;

    Mohammed Arkoun, “The vicissitudes of ethics in islamic thought,” in Humanism and Muslim Culture: Historical Heritage and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Jörn Rüsen Stefan Reichmuth, Aladdin Sarhan (Gottingen: V&R Unipress, 2012), 63.

  14. 14.

    Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Reformation of Islamic Thought: A Critical Historical Analysis (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Universty Press, 2006), 84.

  15. 15.

    Ibid. 93.

  16. 16.

    Abdolkarim Soroush, “Intellectual autobiography: An interview,” in Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam, ed. Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 13, 15.

  17. 17.

    Mohammed Arkoun, “Rethinking Islam today,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 588:1 (2003): 18.

  18. 18.

    Abu Zayd, Reformation of Islamic Thought, 84.

  19. 19.

    Mohammed Arkoun, The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought (London: Saqi, 2002), 12–13, 398–334.

  20. 20.

    Ibid. 156–163.

  21. 21.

    Abu Zayd, Reformation of Islamic Thought, 97.

  22. 22.

    Navid Kermani, “From revelation to interpretation: Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and the literary study of the Qur’an,” in Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur’an, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 187.

  23. 23.

    Abu Zayd, Reformation of Islamic Thought, 85, 86.

  24. 24.

    Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, “Linguaggio religioso e ricerca di una nuova linguistica: Una lettura del pensiero di Mohammed Arkoun,” in Islam e storia, ed. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002), 184.

  25. 25.

    Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA), “Some of our religious intellectuals are still afraid of being called liberal or secular,” 2006, accessed 10 October 2019, http://www.drsoroush.com/English/News_Archive/E-NWS-20061027.html

  26. 26.

    Arkoun, “Rethinking Islam today,” 18.

  27. 27.

    Taji-Farouki , Introduction, 27.

  28. 28.

    Abdelwahab El-Affendi, “The people on the edge: Religious reform and the burden of the Western Muslim intellectuals,” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 8 (2009): 32.

  29. 29.

    Ursula Günther, “Mohammed Arkoun: Towards a radical rethinking of Islamic thought,” in Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur’an, ed. Suha Taji-Farouki (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 132, 134.

  30. 30.

    Mohammed Arkoun, Essais sur la pensée islamique (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1973), 10.

  31. 31.

    Arkoun, The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought, 155, 249.

  32. 32.

    Arkoun, “Rethinking Islam today,” 27.

  33. 33.

    Abu Zayd, Reformation of Islamic Thought, 86.

  34. 34.

    Arkoun, The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought, 256–267.

  35. 35.

    Ibid. 57, 61–62.

  36. 36.

    Ibid. 262.

  37. 37.

    Günther, “Mohammed Arkoun: Towards a radical rethinking of Islamic thought,” 132, 133, 148.

  38. 38.

    Ibid. 139.

  39. 39.

    Arkoun, The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought, 12, 13, 15–23.

  40. 40.

    Arkoun, “Islam facing development,” Diogenes 20:77 (1972): 83.

  41. 41.

    Abu Zayd, Reformation of Islamic Thought, 95–96.

  42. 42.

    Ibid. 93–94; Abu Zayd, Critique of Religious Discourse, translated by Jonathan Wright (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 118.

  43. 43.

    Abu Zayd, Reformation of Islamic Thought, 95–96.

  44. 44.

    Abu Zayd, Critique of religious discourse, 118; Kermani, “From revelation to interpretation,” 138–139, 173.

  45. 45.

    Yoginder Sikand, “For a plurality of Koranic interpretations: Interview with Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd,” Qantara, 2011, accessed 5 December 2019, https://en.qantara.de/content/interview-with-nasr-hamid-abu-zayd-for-a-plurality-of-koranic-interpretations

  46. 46.

    Abu Zayd, Critique of Religious Discourse, 51.

  47. 47.

    Ibid. 82.

  48. 48.

    Ibid.

  49. 49.

    Ibid.

  50. 50.

    Ibid. 53.

  51. 51.

    Ibid.

  52. 52.

    Kermani , “From revelation to interpretation,” 177.

  53. 53.

    Abu Zayd, Reformation of Islamic Thought, 97.

  54. 54.

    Ibid. 98.

  55. 55.

    Abu Zayd and Nelson, Voice of an Exile, 79.

  56. 56.

    Abdolkarim Soroush, “Islamic revival and reform: Theological approaches,” in Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush, eds. Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 31.

  57. 57.

    Ibid. 28.

  58. 58.

    Ibid. 30.

  59. 59.

    Ibid. 30–38.

  60. 60.

    Abdolkarim Soroush, “The evolution and devolution of religious knowledge,” in Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 248–249.

  61. 61.

    Abdolkarim Soroush, “Straight Paths — 2: A Conversation on religious pluralism,” in The Expansion of Prophetic Experience, ed. Forough Jahanbakhsh (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 176.

  62. 62.

    Ibid. 178.

  63. 63.

    Abdolkarim Soroush, “Bashar and Bashir: Soroush’s first response to Sobhani,” in The Expansion of Prophetic Experience, ed. Forough Jahanbakhsh (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 306.

  64. 64.

    Soroush, Straight Paths — 2, 179.

  65. 65.

    Mohammed Arkoun, “New perspectives for a Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 26:3 (1989): 528.

  66. 66.

    Forough Jahanbakhsh, Islam, democracy and religious modernism in Iran, 1953–2000: From Bazargan to Soroush (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 151–152.

  67. 67.

    Abu Zayd, “Linguaggio religioso e ricerca di una nuova linguistica,” 182–183.

  68. 68.

    Arkoun, The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought, 15.

  69. 69.

    Mohammed Arkoun, “The Study of Islam in French scholarship,” in Mapping Islamic Studies: Genealogy, Continuity and Change, ed. Azim Nanji (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997), 44.

  70. 70.

    Kermani , “From Revelation to interpretation,” 185.

  71. 71.

    Soroush, “Islamic revival and reform,” 29; Forough Jahanbakhsh, “Introduction,” in The Expansion of Prophetic Experience, ed. Forough Jahanbakhsh (Leiden: Brill, 2009), xx.

  72. 72.

    Ibid. xxii.

  73. 73.

    Arkoun, “New perspectives for a Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue,” 528.

  74. 74.

    Ibid.

  75. 75.

    Rachid Benzine, I nuovi pensatori dell’Islam (Frosinone: Pisani, 2004). 118–119.

  76. 76.

    Arkoun, “New perspectives for a Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue,” 526, 528.

  77. 77.

    Arkoun, Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, Uncommon Answers (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 34.

  78. 78.

    Ibid.

  79. 79.

    Arkoun, “New perspectives for a Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue,” 526.

  80. 80.

    Ibid.

  81. 81.

    Ibid.

  82. 82.

    Arkoun, Rethinking Islam, 9.

  83. 83.

    Mohammed Arkoun, “From inter-religious dialogue to the recognition of the religious phenomenon,” Diogenes 46:182 (1998): 123.

  84. 84.

    Arkoun, “New perspectives for a Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue,” 524.

  85. 85.

    Mohammed Arkoun, “Democracy: A challenge to Islamic thought” (Seminar June 1, 1999), accessed October 10, 2019 http: //www.philo.Sm.com/akroundemocratie.html

  86. 86.

    Arkoun, “New perspectives for a Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue,” 523.

  87. 87.

    Ibid.

  88. 88.

    Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, “The Qur’anic concept of justice,” Polylog: Forum for Intercultural Philosophizing 3 (2001), accessed October 10, 2019, https://them.polylog.org/3/fan-en.htm

  89. 89.

    Ibid.

  90. 90.

    Ibid.

  91. 91.

    Ibid.

  92. 92.

    Ibid.

  93. 93.

    Ibid.

  94. 94.

    Ibid.

  95. 95.

    Ibid.

  96. 96.

    Soroush and Kadivar, “Religious pluralism: Kadivar, Soroush debate,” 2008, accessed 5 December 5 2019, https://drsoroush.com/en/religious-pluralism-kadivar-soroush-debate/

  97. 97.

    Ibid.

  98. 98.

    Ibid.

  99. 99.

    Soroush, “Straight Paths — 1: An Essay on religious pluralsim; positive and negative,” in The expansion of prophetic experience, ed. Forough Jahanbakhsh (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 120.

  100. 100.

    Soroush, “Religious pluralism: Kadivar, Soroush debate.”

  101. 101.

    Ibid.; Mohammed Hashas, “Abdolkarim Soroush: The neo-muʿtazilite that buries classical Islamic political theology in defence of religious democracy and pluralism,” Studia Islamica 10:1 (2014): 166.

  102. 102.

    Soroush, “Religious pluralism: Kadivar, Soroush debate.”

  103. 103.

    Soroush, “Straight Paths — 1, 149.”

  104. 104.

    Soroush, “Religious pluralism: Kadivar, Soroush debate.”

  105. 105.

    Soroush, “Straight Paths — 1,” 150.

  106. 106.

    Soroush, “Straight Paths — 2,” 161.

  107. 107.

    Ibid, 156.

  108. 108.

    Ibid, 168.

  109. 109.

    Soroush, “Straight Paths — 1,” 146.

  110. 110.

    Ibid, 128.

  111. 111.

    Soroush, “Straight Paths — 2,” 166.

  112. 112.

    Soroush, “Straight Paths — 1,” 122

  113. 113.

    Soroush and Kadivar, “Religious pluralism: Kadivar, Soroush debate.”

  114. 114.

    Soroush, “Straight Paths — 2,” 172.

  115. 115.

    Ibid.

  116. 116.

    Abdolkarim Soroush, “Essentials and accidentals in religion,” in The Expansion of Prophetic Experience, ed. Forough Jahanbakhsh (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 63.

  117. 117.

    Soroush and Kadivar, “Religious pluralism: Kadivar, Soroush debate.”

  118. 118.

    Arkoun, “New perspectives for a Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue,” 528.

  119. 119.

    Soroush, Straight Paths — 1, 143–4.

  120. 120.

    Soroush and Kadivar, “Religious pluralism: Kadivar, Soroush debate.”

  121. 121.

    Soroush, “Straight Paths — 2,” 160.

  122. 122.

    Ibid, 159.

  123. 123.

    Mohammed Arkoun, “Islam facing development,” 84.

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Zohouri, P. (2021). Pluralism in Contemporary Islamic Thought: The Case of Mohammed Arkoun, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and Abdolkarim Soroush. In: Hashas, M. (eds) Pluralism in Islamic Contexts - Ethics, Politics and Modern Challenges. Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66089-5_9

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