The Politics of Muslim Intellectual Discourse in the West: The Emergence of a Western-Islamic Public Sphere

Description

This case study in the literary, psychoanalytic, and theological encounters between diasporic Muslim intellectuals and secular western modernity focuses on the simultaneous search for the possibility of both a reformation of Islamic fundamentalism and a transformation of the exclusionary limitations of western public institutions. With roots in original research in the fields of comparative religion and cultural studies, and drawing on sources in English, French, and Arabic, the author introduces and elaborates on the concept of "Western-Islamic public sphere." This concept defines what is at stake in the formative play of public representations where traditionalist foundations and modernist adaptations meet, clash, and produce discourse around their common disequilibrium. The Western-Islamic public sphere (which is secular but not secularist and which is Islamic but not Islamist), within which a critical Islamic intellectual universe can unfold, deals hermeneutically with texts and politically with lived practices. It emerges from within the arc of two alternative, conflicting, yet equally dismissive suspicions defined by a view that critical Islam is the new imperial rhetoric of hegemonic orientalism, and the opposite view that critical Islam is just fundamentalism camouflaged in liberal rhetoric. This innovative and original scholarly apparatus offers a third view-one that arises in its practice from ethical commitment to intellectual engagement, creativity, and imagination as a portal to the open horizons of conflictual history. [Subject: Islamic Studies, Theology, Literary Criticism, Sociology] Front Cover Dedication Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: The Damaged Notions of East and West Main Concepts 1 The Politics of Critical Islam The Praxis of Critique Examples of Religious Heteronomies Against Heteronomy Theory and Praxis The Meaning of Critique 2 Critical Islam inside Academia Quranic Hermeneutics: The Work of Muhammad Arkoun and Nasr Abu Zayd The Scholarly Projects of Tariq Ramadan, Malek Chebel and Fethi Benslama Tariq Ramadan Malek Chebel Fethi Benslama Critical Perspective – Part I 3 North-American Post-Colonial Studies and European Polemics against Islam The Conundrums of Orientalism: The Reception of Critical Islam in North American Academia The Tyranny of Guilt – A Counterresponse Critical Perspective – Part II 4 Literary Voices Turned Political On the Politics of Literary Texts Abdelwahab Meddeb’s Public and Literary Project Critical Reception Ali Eteraz’s Children of Dust Children of Dust in the Perspective of the Western-Islamic Public Sphere Poetics of Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers Plot and Themes Maps for Lost Lovers in the Perspective of the Western-Islamic Public Sphere Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red Plot and Structure Politics of the Literary Masterpiece A Discussion of Divine Heteronomy Conclusion: Beyond the Damaged Notions of East and West Notes Bibliography Index Back Cover