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By Issa J. Boullata
This e-book makes a speciality of modern Arab proposal prior to now 20 years, in particular because the 1967 Arab defeat within the Six Day warfare. recognized Arab writers are studied, and their exceptional and anguished workout of self-examination and self-criticism is explored. a few Arab thinkers are awarded for the 1st time in English. this is an account of a few of the newest highbrow developments within the Arab international. because the writers grapple with the Arab hope for social swap, with principles of freedom and equality and social justice, and with the matter of accommodating Arab tradition to fashionable occasions, their will to maintain their nationwide identification is displayed. The position performed via Islam within the present Arab discourse is analyzed as Arab intellectuals creatively interpret their current trouble so as to make it significant immediately.
Arab suggestion is obvious right here to be in hindrance because it displays this truth and questions the legitimacy of Arab political regimes. a lot of the current turmoil within the Arab global may be greater understood in mild of this insightful therapy of latest Arab thinkers since it indicates how the Arabs themselves believe, what they consider their very own modern existence, and the way they envision their destiny.
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Extra resources for Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought
Sample text
He accepts the influence of external factors on the Mu'tazila, such as Greek, Persian or Indian thought and Christian theology, but he shows how the necessities of the internal factors shaped their doctrines by a process of innovative assimilation that responded to the perceived needs of their own Muslim society. As time went on, the new order soon began to exhibit internal contradictions within the relations of production and the political hegemony of the Umayyad state, creating new quantitative accumulations that grew rife in Caliph 'Abd alMalik's rule and eventually sought various qualitative transformations in the political, social and intellectual spheres, sometimes accompanied by armed revolts, 96 and culminating in the rise of the 'Abbasids.
105 What is needed first and foremost, in his opinion, before any industrial, agricultural, or political revolution can succeed in the Arab world, is a human revolution that rebuilds the new man. This response may have been to conditions internal to the Islamic community and it may have been to attacks external to it. 114 Hanafi maintains that all of them are inspired by the Qur'an and the Sunna and he deals with them in some detail for a dual purpose: (a) to establish their provenance as disciplines related to divine revelation on the one hand, and to specific conditions of their times on the other; (b) to reconstruct them within a new and comprehensive cultural system that responds to the conditions and needs of the modern age.
97 The Mu'tazila were the intellectuals who built up a unified theological system reflecting all these concerns. Hence it is possible to study his project before it is completed. 105 What is needed first and foremost, in his opinion, before any industrial, agricultural, or political revolution can succeed in the Arab world, is a human revolution that rebuilds the new man. This response may have been to conditions internal to the Islamic community and it may have been to attacks external to it.