The Palestinian thinker Hisham Sharabi asserts that if we want our Arab society to overcome its worsening crisis, to regain its strength, and to re-enter the course of history, it must carry out a process of “civilizational criticism” that enables it to create self-awareness that restores purposeful rationality. Explaining that this can only be achieved through free intellectual interaction and continuous discussion, not between thinkers and intellectuals, but among all segments of society.
Sharabi heralded the flourishing of civilized criticism opposed to the ideologies of the old revolutionary thought, and the occultism of the developing fundamentalist thought, by resorting to critical tools related to the spirit of the times and global transformations.
Sharabi built his idea on three phenomena revealed by the last decade of the twentieth century, namely: (modernity, the issue of women, and social forces or movements). different from the language of power,” in order to “disrupt the dominant thought and establish the foundations of a new consciousness.” He adds to the previous mission a detail that requires "confronting the fundamentalist religious current, in an explicit and total confrontation, which is an integral part of the mission of the modern critical movement."
Sharabi believes that fundamentalist religious movements are “political movements that seek, in the name of religion, to reach political goals, which necessitates dealing with them as a political party, no more, no less,” since the Islamic religion is not the monopoly of a class, group, or sect of Muslims that has a right in it. Interpretation and interpretation without the rest of the categories, components and individuals. Religion belongs to every Muslim who believes in God and His Messenger.
Sharabi cautioned to avoid entering into heritage theologies, to avoid controversy over sacred texts, and to refrain from falling into the trap of reconciling religious truths with the discoveries of modern science. The fundamentalist confrontation within this framework “will only lead the modern criticism movement to surrender, as it is not possible to reconcile patriarchy and modernity, between fundamentalism and secularism.”
He pointed out the importance of reading, which should actually precede writing, and also come after it, as there is no text without a reader, which requires the production of a language that speaks cognitively with the traditional language that is not able to understand the modern critical text, so “without assimilating the new text, using New concepts and a new language, consciousness cannot be changed, and the opposite is true.” Thus, “returning to the traditional language to interpret the new discourse is only a reinforcement of the traditional language and its patriarchal discourse.” Therefore, we see that Sharabi continues to assert that "intellectual emancipation is (linked) organically to linguistic emancipation."
He argues that the language is responsible for the formulation of philosophical, historical and critical discourses or articles. If the language is not formulated with a modernist awareness, this would lead to the dominance of the religious fundamentalist article, which Sharabi believes is “the only article capable of imposing itself by resorting to religious legitimacy and slogans.” The same Islamic law that the existing authority adopts as the basis for its legitimacy.
Sharabi believes that modernity is based on “the rationalization of civilization and the secularization of society” in order to avoid distorting modernity. Civilizational criticism is a comprehensive and radical criticism that deals with problems at their root and stems from self-criticism of our illusions and ideologies and exposes their fallacies and falsifications. Revolutionary ideologies only spawned the one-party ideology. And the fundamentalist ideology gave birth to nothing but a metaphysical thought rooted in myths and superstitions.
Presented by: Ali Al-Rubai @Al_ARobai
