Narrative with enlightening tendencies in contemporary Islamic reform discourse: Origin, development and relapse
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17879/mjiphs-2022-3896Keywords:
Grand Narrative, Enlightenment, Islamic Reform, Muhammad AbduhAbstract
This paper aims to clarify how a part of Muslim reformers’s discourse in the Arab world, between the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, contained a new grand narrative through which some reformers, led by Muhammad Abdo, tried to establish an Islamic identity Influenced by the European Enlightenment as it was known in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This narrative arose in specific historical conditions marked by the infiltration of secular discourse into contemporary Arab thought. However, the changes in the Arab context during the twentieth century did not allow this narrative to develop and be enshrined in Arab culture. On the contrary, there was a clear setback with the dominance of the narratives of political Islam›s discourse.