The Crisis of Muslim Religious Discourse

 The Crisis of Muslim Religious Discourse: The Necessary Shift from Plato to Kant addresses Islamic religious discourse and its influence on culture. Lahouari Addi argues that “cultural representations,” rather than sacred texts, serve as the guiding principles for a society, and those representations, or values, “are the core of social life” (x). Addi claims that cultural representations tend to change as people become aware of a new reality that is different from the reality they knew in the past. As a new reality emerges, a paradigm shift occurs in the thinking of the people, and thus a new interpretation of sacred texts emerges and becomes the dominant ideology. With this theory, Addi asserts that secularization in Europe was caused by a shift from Platonic dualism (illusory life vs. real life) to a Kantian worldview, according to which Plato’s Cave (i.e., this world) is not an illusion but the lived reality and that this life is the only real life. The new social thought that Kant introduced provided Europe with a new thinking that praises moral conduct in society without being obsessed with hereafter. Hence, secularization was not the dechristianization of Europe; rather, it was “the passage from a social thought influenced by Plato to another social thought influenced by Kant” (xvi).

Modernity, Addi claims, was the result of a new reality that broke with Greek metaphysics. The new reality provided a secularized metaphysics that gave more value to consciousness. The latter has no place in Platonic dualism because “reason is sufficient to distinguish the hidden essences” (10). This Platonic worldview was rejected by modern European thinkers who realized that a human is a consciousness and that “reality is a fact of consciousness and not uniquely a discovery made by reason” (16). The shift from Platonic dualism to a Kantian philosophy is also a challenge to Muslim society. While European culture accepted the shift from a theocentric order to an anthropocentric order (i.e., from the focus on God and the hereafter to the focus on the human and life on earth), Islam, according to the author, “is blocked in the middle of these two paradigms probably because the Qur’an is more consistent with Plato’s philosophy than the Gospels” (17).

Addi dedicates ample discussion to why modernizing Islam has failed so far. He begins by arguing that Muslim reformists have never succeeded in freeing Islamic societies from medieval theology. He argues that puritanical Islam rejected the idea of the nation, and denounced the secular governments across the Middle East. Puritanical Islam, the author adds, politicized Islam and erased its spirituality (52). Although this puritanism unwillingly contributed to secularization by placing more importance on life on earth than on the afterlife, it feared secular principles, such as that a society should be without a public religion. Reformist leaders also never succeeded in “inventing a modern form of religiosity” or “adjusting the spiritual to the demands of modern life” (55). Moreover, Islamic puritanism has remained a prisoner of medieval theology, “of the submission of Forms to Essence; the submission of history to the utopia”—the submission to Platonic dualism, in short (55). Hence, Puritanical Islam failed to modernize Muslim culture because it adhered to a medieval theology that “devalues history and idealizes an imaginary world” (55).

 Addi also details why reformist theologians failed to modernize Muslim societies. As an example, the author focuses on the reform of Egyptian modernist Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905). He argues that Abduh’s reform failed because he was reluctant to 1) criticize medieval Islamic theology, which dismissed the philosophy of great Muslim philosophers such as al-Farabi (d. 950) and Ibn Sina (d. 1037); and 2) defend Islamic philosophy against the attacks of prominent Muslim theologians such as al-Ghazali (d. 1111) and Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), who played a key role in the death of Islamic philosophy. The failure to challenge a theology that was hostile to philosophy and secular sciences led Abduh to his own failure to reform the official interpretation of Islam, according to the author. Addi attributes Abduh’s failure to modernize Islam to the bipolarity of his thought system.

For instance, while Abduh gave society autonomy over its actions and praised the use of reason, he also realized that the unlimited use of reason could contradict revelation. For Abduh, reason can explain history but does not have the capacity to attain the Divine. Addi adds that while Abduh believed that reason is necessary to understand nature and society, he set a boundary for reason and was against submitting the Qur’an to human reflection. Thus, Abduh’s thought system not only failed to create a new theology aimed at modernizing Islam, but also strengthened the legitimacy of the old theology, which curtailed the use of reason and the progress of human thought.

The thesis of the book can be challenged by arguing that Europe, by distancing itself from Platonic dualism, declared the death of religion. Europe did not merely secularize, but stopped believing in God altogether. In other words, European culture is more than secular; it is atheist. Secularism is not the death of God or the end of religion; it is the freedom to worship one god, no god, or many gods. The United States is a secular society, but recent surveys show that 81% of U.S. adults believe in God and the hereafter. Now, it is absurd to argue that the U.S. has failed to modernize or secularize because it is a religious society. Islam has failed to modernize not because Muslims failed to embrace Kant’s worldview, and not because they rejected the idea of moving God’s residence to earth (in fact, the Qur’an puts more emphasis on life on earth and the human being than the hereafter). The problem in Muslim societies is the lack of democracy and freedom of religion. It is the authoritarianism of the Muslim world, not medieval theology, as the author argues, that prevented the modernization of Muslim societies.

This book benefits those interested in the debate on secularization and the relations between religion, culture, and philosophy. It adds new ideas to the existing scholarship and raises compelling questions that need to be revisited in future research.

Hussam S. Timani is a professor of philosophy and religion and co-director of Middle East and North Africa studies at Christopher Newport University.

Hussam S. Timani

Date Of Review:

September 13, 2023