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Arab Liberal Thought after 1967 Old Dilemmas, New Perceptions Edited by zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZ Meir Hatina and Christoph Schumann zyxwvutsrqpo palgrave zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcb macmillan ARAB LIBERAL THOUGHT AFTER 1967 Copyright © Meir Hatina and Christoph Schumann, 2015. AH rights reserved. First published in 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RC21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978-1-137-55427-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Arab liberal thought after 1967 old dilemmas, new perceptions / edited by Meir Hatina and Christoph Schumann, pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-137-55427-7 (hardback: alk. paper) 1. Liberalism—Arab countries. 2. Arab countries—Politics and government. I. Hatina, Meir, editor. JC574.2.A6A73 2015 320.51089 927—dc23 2015013618 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: October 2015 10 987654321 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA memory of Christoph Schumann, colleague and friend 5 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSR Liberal Renewal of the zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcba Turath: Constructing the Egyptian Past in Sayyid al-Qimni s Works Wael Abu- Uksa zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYX Introduction zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQP A prominent shift in the post-1967 Arab intellectual discourse was an inten sive intellectual preoccupation with the issue of zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWV turath (historical heritage) by intellectuals in various secular, non-Islamist political streams. The theo retical assumption underlying the majority of these works was the need to produce an "authentic" Arab Islamic foundation for modernity to bypass what had been labeled "imported," "superficial," and "Western" ideologies. The intellectual discourse around turath pursued the creation of new frames of reference for questions of legitimacy in Arab thought, and it aimed to pro duce a genuine interpretation and understanding of the contemporary era (muasara), which was perceived as being in crisis {'azma). 1 The rise and fall of the modern Marxist critique and the crisis of secular thought at the end of the 1970s led to two contradictory phenomena among leftist intellectuals: a metaphysical turn toward Islamic heritage and the beginning of a transition toward liberalism that peaked at the end of the Cold War. The 1970s were the years of the rise of political Islam. The collapse of mainstream leftist thought (Nasserism) after the 1967 war, the leading role of the conservative Gulf oil states in Arab regional politics, and the rise of Sadat in Egypt and Hafiz al-Asad in Syria led to the decline of the regional order and its political concepts—"conservative, reactionary" versus "progressive, republican" camps—that underpinned the political discourse of the pre-1967 era. 2 The Iranian Revolution in 1979 reinforced the rise of political Islam. The major changes at the political level formed the context of the intel lectual preoccupation with turath. In addition to Arab domestic changes, 10; zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA WAI I AIM I IIKSA manifested In zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA the decline of revolutionary epistemology zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA (thawra) and the st ol political Islam, the late 1970s and early 1980s witnessed a new left ist critique influenced by the rise of postmodernism (prominently the works of Michel Foucault), which aimed to deconstruct the premises of Enlightenment, Eurocentrism, and rationalism. 3 Political Islam on the one hand and postcolonialism on the other succeeded in imposing their cri tiques on the subject of the authenticity of Arab thought, especially during the 1980s and the years after.' 1 The works in the field of turath are characterized by totality—as evident in philosophical projects that explored concepts derived from the fields of epistemology, such as Arab and Islamic reason. This preoccupation yielded the most prominent and comprehensive works in the field of thought and philosophy in the Arabic language in the modern era. Some scholars, such as Muhammad 'Imara, Hasan Hanafi, and Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, iden tified with pan-Arabism and Islamism; others, such as Husayn Muruwwa, Ghali Shukri, Tayyib Tizini, identified with Marxism; while some such as Zaki Naguib Mahmud, Mohammed Arkoun, and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd identified with liberalism; all these enriched the Arab intellectual field with works that focused on the issue of turath from different ideological perspec tives. The controversy around turath encompassed a variety of political top ics, such as political identity, narratives on national history, ethics, and the status of religion in the state. The focus of the intellectual discourse during and after the 1970s on the subject of turath was accompanied by public and institutional attention that manifested in the organization of public conferences and symposiums in sev eral Arab countries. 5 Prominent Marxists perceived this trend among leftists, former leftists, and liberals as reactionary. They saw it as primarily represent ing the increasing influence of political Islam on secular political discourse and as a manifestation of the crisis of the progressive left. Jurj Tarabishi, for example, commented in 1974 on the joint statement of scholars convened at Kuwait to discuss the issue of turath. This statement, he argued, represented the crisis of progressive intellectuals and perpetuated "consciousness of backwardness." 6 The renowned Egyptian leftist philosopher Fu'ad Zakariyya agreed with this and emphasized the link between intellec tual discourse and social practice. He contended that the greatest tragedy of this trend was the popular manifestation of this discourse, by which scholars were recruited to protect the hijab (veil), the growing of beards, and the adop tion of other "Islamic" costumes considered part of the expected authentic Nahda (cultural revival). The Arab enlightenment, labeled "secular," found itself in a defensive position when "secularism" {'ilmaniyya) was presented in a negative light and as a spearhead of cultural imperialism. The preoccupa tion of secular intellectuals with religious texts was, for him, an articulation of absolute defeat. 7 LIBERAL RENEWAL OF THE TURATH 103 The main rationale of the leftist critique of the 1970s and 1980s was the I .ii mption that the leftist preoccupation with turath meant embracing a rel- |tl\ ist attitude to culture. This relativism undermined Enlightenment uni- salism through the use of definitions of ideas and norms that had srcins in political Islamic ideology. The Islamist discourse argued that the Islamic I i Itage {turath) is the authentic heritage (asala) for the umma (Islamic com munity); therefore, any ideology without roots within this framework is no Irss t han imported. 8 This assumption was embraced by many leftists during |nd .liter the 1970s. 9 In fact, despite the leftist critique of the intellectual pre- i upation with turath, the premise of the significance of Islamic heritage in Arab political life became a mainstream concept. After the 1970s, secular Hi inkers became aware of the claim that their political ideology should be grounded in local history. An example of this intellectual shift is to be found in the development of the thought of Tarabishi, who became deeply engaged In turath conceptualization during the late 1980s despite the oft-quoted 1970s i it ique from his Marxist phase. 10 During the 1980s the confines of the Arab Islamic definition of turath underscored the ethnoreligious perceptions among intellectuals identified with pan-Arabism and Islamism. Their cultural critique was based on the Idea that there can be no legitimate ideological, social, or political construc tion outside the framework of the Arab Islamic heritage. For example, the modern Arab history of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth enturies (termed the Nahda by many Arab thinkers) was depicted as the product of a degenerate culture adopted from the imperial West and thus •i failure. 11 One of the prominent philosophers representing this orienta tion is Mohammed Abed al-Jabri, who wrote in 1980 that liberalism (libi- rtiliyya) is equal to "class exploitation, ideological fabrication and imperial hegemony." 12 This chapter examines the preoccupation with turath from the perspective of systematic political ideas. We present at length Sayyid al-Qimni's contribution to turath polemics in the context of the conflict between the different ideologies. Presenting his works in the general context of Arab thought may reveal the political division lurking behind the Arab intellectual debate in topics such as collective memory, nationalism, democracy, religion, and eth ics. From this viewpoint we show how the works of al-Qimni regarding the past and the present constitute a comprehensive liberal ideology or world- view that was articulated in Arabic as libiraliyya —a political category with which he identified. Sayyid al-Qimni is a prominent Egyptian scholar who after the 1980s became deeply engaged in the Arab intellectual endeavor of redefining the subject of turath. Through his works al-Q.imni sought to establish an epistemic background for a liberal worldview that is intended to fortify the authentic roots of liberal theory in Egyptian national history. 104 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA WAEL ABU- UKSA zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Al-Qimni was born in 1947; his father was a merchant and an al-Azhar graduate. He began his intellectual journey as a pan-Arab zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA (qawmi), and at the end of the 1980s—particularly after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait—he switched to liberalism. 13 From the mid-1990s al-Qimni came to be one of the most prominent spokesmen for Egyptian liberalism, and probably the most critical of political Islam. His polemical activity was not limited to written works but extended to the popular media as well. In this regard, it is worth noting that he participated thrice in discussions on one of the most popu lar TV shows in Arabic, al-Itijah al-mu'akis (the opposite direction) on al-Jazeera, where he strongly attacked political Islam. 14 He wrote his doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Fu'ad Zakariyya. In 1988 he published his dissertation as a book under the title Rab al-thawra: uziris wa-'aqidat al-khulud fi misr al-qadima (The god of revolution: Osiris and the faith of eternity in ancient Egypt). Al-Qimni's works fall into three main categories: works that focus on the ancient history of the region (some of these were collected under the title Isra'iliyyat or "Jewish-Hebraic heritage"); works that focus on the establishment of Islam (which he collected under the title Islamiyyat or "Islamic works"); and his collection of essays on daily topics written for Egyptian newspapers and journals. Extending the Limitations of zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Turath: Pluralizing the Past Diversifying the Present In his book al-Ustura wa'l-turath (The myth and turath, 1991) al-Qimni asserts that the vast interest of Arab scholars writing on the subject of turath was a result of the failure of the Arab modernity project espoused by progres sive revolutionary thinkers and regimes. To this general failure, he continues, Arab secular thought failed to find a firm social base in Arab societies. The prominent cause for this "massive orientation" toward the past he finds in the negative impact of Israel on its neighbors. In addition to the open wound to Arab national pride, Israel's ethnoreligious system provided a model for similar trends in the Arab milieu. The "Arab masses," al-Qimni explains, feel a need for a collective ideology that has found its reference in Islam. For them ideologized Islam becomes "nation and ethnicity," and thus includes all Muslims everywhere. The ideological logic that stood beyond this massive recruitment, he continues, extended the confrontation with Israel and turned the Arab-Israeli dispute into a Muslim-Jewish one—a conflict between "the best nation ever raised up for mankind [the Muslim people] versus the chosen people [the Jewish people] ," 15 That is how al-Qimni, who perceives himself as a child of the 1967 defeat, 16 understands the Arab nostalgia toward turath. Like many secularists before LIBERAL RENEWAL OF THE zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedc TUR TH 105 1 11111 , especially Marxists, he considers this intellectual engagement the result I || deep cultural crisis. This crisis led to a sanctifying of the concept of turath, Which formed the core of legitimacy in the longed-for Arab revival. In this irspect the works of al-Qimni constitute a continuous attempt to redefine, IXtend, and challenge the definitions that evolved within the context of the i ultural crisis. He defines the ideological orientation that shaped his inter-pretation of history as liberalism, which he embraced as a "principle, ideology ind model for the salvation" of Egypt. 17 Following the spirit of the interwar, liberal-national Egyptian school of Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid and Taha Husayn, al-Qimni embraces liberalism as I comprehensive ideology. In his case, liberalism not only stands at the core zyxwvutsr ill his attitude toward political streams and social and religious values, but llto informs his perception of history and collective memory. Al-Qimni con-lends that the Arab definition of turath should not be limited to the medi eval Arab Islamic heritage, as it had been defined by pan-Arab and political Islamist intellectuals. In his perception, the chronological limits of turath should also include the pre-Islamic, pre-Arab history of the eastern side of I lie Mediterranean, and its beginning should not be confined to the "the era of documentation of Islamic heritage" ('asr al-tadwin). is Al-Qimni refers this critique to al-Jabri's "project" that began with his book Nahnu wa'l-turath (We and turath, 1980), and continued through his series Takwin al-'aql al-'arabi (Critique of Arab reason, 2002). 19 Al-Jabri, who came from a pan-Arab background, limited his definition of turath to Arab Islamic history—and, more precisely, to the era of documentation in I he eighth century. 20 For him this era witnessed the start of the evolution of Arab reason, or the Arab historical consciousness. These chronological defi nitions marked the beginning of the construction of what would be defined ,is turath or, in al-Jabri's words, the "framework of legitimacy and reference to the Arab aspect of things." 21 Others, such as Mohammed Arkoun, 22 extended the definition of turath to "the extensive Islamic tradition," 23 so that its manifestation could be reflected in myths and oral stories. These motifs played an active part in the formation of the "imaginary" that in later stages of Arkoun's career included I he monotheist Mediterranean heritage. 24 Al-Qimni, who writes as an Egyptian rather than as an Arab or a Muslim, extends further the chronological definitions of turath. He asserts that pan- Arab and Islamist intellectuals recruit these definitions to establish historical memory and political identity, a process that views ancient history as foreign or acknowledges it only in negative terms, such as jahiliyya, meaning "barbaric era" ruled by tyrants and heretics. 25 For al-Qimni, the concept of the national memory of Egypt as a story that begins with the Islamic conquest of Amr ibn al-Aas in the seventh century is completely false. Egypt's history began thousands of years before this, and its ancient history recorded the first kingdom in the history of the world.
