CHAPTER II OF MY THESIS (S1 PTIQ JAKARTA)
A. Social And Intelectual
Background
Mohammed Arkoun was one of the
most prominent and influential figures in Islamic Studies. He was born on 1
February 1928 in Taourirt-Mimoun, Kabilia, a mountain range of Berber
territory in East Aljir. This situation
leads him since his childhood to three languages; Kabilia language, one of
Berber language inherited by North Africa since pre-Islam and pre-Roman time;
Arabic brought by Islamic expansion since the first century of Hijri; French,
brought by colonial which conquer Algeria between 1830 and 1962.
Kabilia teritory consits of Big Kabilia and Small Kabilia. Inhabitant lives
from agriculture (Fig and olive fruit), livestock and handicraft trade.
Berber is labelled to inhabitant spread
in North Africa, from Libya to Atlanctic ocean.
According
to Historical note, Algeria was conquered by Arabs in 682 under the comander
of Uqbah bin Nafi’ in the period of
caliph Yazid bin Mu’awiyah. Most of Berberian embraced Islam and then together
with Arabic shouldiers follow in several Islamic conquest, primarily the
conquest of Spain under comander of Tariq bin Ziyad. In later development –like
Khawarij– they rebelled against Bani Abbas. Because of this rebellion, Bani
Abbas was divided into several dynasties, like Aglabid Dynasti, Moravit, and Almohad.
These dynasties underwent power degradation in the last of 13th century and
subsequently shattered thoroughly.
In Social-cultural point of view,
Kabilian people actually are illiterate. They knew nothing but oral language.
Algeria –when Arkoun was born and grown up– was under France dominance.
In this subjugated territory, France promoted agriculture settlement specially
dedicated for French. They lived in districts –on their views– have belonged to
them legally. The district they live in usually is was taken from the hands of land owners who rebel, or a
district from reclamation result.
French in general, did want to destroy moslem people. Moslem people even were
given special rights in line with French them self. But this happened if they were ready to accept kinship law of
French as well as ready to leave kinship law of Islam which based on shariah
rule. For French, this regulation was small sacrifice of Moslems against worn
out believe, which will be rejected by blind prejudice. But, Moslems, even they
who were educated in french school,
seldom choose be a French –in mean leave kinship law of Islam,- Although
culturally they were really “French”.
In this condition, Arkoun’s position, that was educated in culture and
education system of French, can be placed proportionally.
As a Kabilian born-child, Arkoun
recognized well the illiteracy of Kabilia. As Algerian, Arkoun knew Arabic well
as well as French as educated people. In other words, those languages
represented three traditions and different culture orientation. Kabilia
language was a tool to convey all kinds of traditions and guide value related
to social and economic life which exist since thousands years ago. Arabic was
expression tool and perpetuation of tradition in religioun which linked Algeria
to other regions and nations in North Africa and Middle East. French was
goverment language and medium for western values and traditions delivered
throught French schools which established by colonialist in quite big number in
Kabilia.
Because Arkoun lived among these
three languages, he got awareness that language was more than technical medium
to express self, that can be changed to another language without any problems.
Each language has own valuable background. As ilustration, in Arkoun’s view,
arabic is religious language, while French is administration and education
language.
He passed away in Paris on
14 September 2010. In a career of more than 30 years, he was an
outstanding research scholar, a searching critic of the theoretical tensions
embedded in the field of Islamic Studies, and a courageous public intellectual,
carrying the banner of an often embattled Islamic modernism and humanism.
B. Education and Experience
Arkoun’s education will lead his
intercourse to many languages and thought tradition, primarily Islamic
tradition, mostly expressed in arabic, and Western tradition, which specially
devoloped in French and France. He took his primary school in his native
village, Kabilia, and his high school in Oran. Since 1950-1954, he studied
Arabic literary in University of Aljir, while he was teaching Arabic on one of
high school in outskirt of Capital of Algeria,
namely in Al-Harrach High School.
In the middle of liberation war of
Algeria from France (1954-1962), he registered as student of university in
Paris. Since that time, he lived in France. But he never changed his prime
field of study and research: Arabic language and literary and more islamic
thinking.
In further development, he focus his attention intencity on islamic thinking
much more than before. Prominent characteristic of Arkoun’s thought, therefore,
is special combining between western and Islam. Incorporation effort of both
substances is extremely his dream and be a baground of his works and programs.
He established his scholarly reputation with his early studies (1969, 1970).
Arkoun took his last formal
education and reached doctoral degree in Literary field in 1969 from Sorbonne
University in Paris under disertation about humanism according to ethical
thinking of Miskawaih, a Moslem Persian thinker since the last 10 century till
11 century (d. 1030).
As he began to consider how one might rethink Islam in the contemporary world,
his sophisticated questioning provided a welcome counterpoint to the highly
ideological interpretations that dominated debate in both the Muslim world and
the non-Muslim West.
This prompted Arkoun to consider ways to adapt modern scientific and scholarly
thought to Islam in the twentieth-century. He promoted this critical approach
as editor of the journal Arabica, serving also as its science editor. He
influenced the way English-language scholars viewed Islam, urging them to
depart from the dichotomy of Orientalism versus Occidentialism to adopt an
epistemological approach to the study of cultures.
As scholar who focuses on language
field, Arkoun’s view about language, in the early phase comes from self
experience, but then supported by several contemporary studies on languege
through the opus of western scientist, philosophs, antrophologist, and
teologist. We can understand, therefore, why most prime term of Arkoun’s study
related to language. Nevertheless, various terms that Arkoun explicates,
finally, bring us to one purpose, that is how to combine diverse different
thinking ways.
When he was a student of
university in Paris, Arkoun ever worked as a member of Arabic language and
literary. He was also a teacher in an high school in Strasbourg, a dicstrict
located in east of France. Beside that, he was also asked to give a lecture at
Literary faculty of Strasbourg University (1956-1959).
In 1961, he was installed as a lecturer at University of Sorbonne, Paris. But in
1970, he moved and started to teach at University of Lyon till 1972.
In the same year, he came back to Paris and became professor of the history of
Islamic thought at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University.
Retired in 1992, Arkoun was a
senior research fellow and member of the Board of Governors of The Institute of
Ismaili Studies in London. He was a visiting professor at many schools: The
University of California, Los Angles; Louvain-La-Neuve University, Belgium;
Pontifical Institute of Arabic Studies in Rome; Princeton University; Temple
University, Philadelphia; and the University of Amsterdam. He was a fellow at
Wissenschaftkolleg in Berlin and Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in
Princeton.
He joined several academic and
public policy initiatives in Europe to rethink relations between Europe, Islam,
and the Mediterranean. France decorated him as an Officer of the French Legion
of Honour in July 1996. He also received UCLA’s Seventeenth Georgio Levi Della
Vida Award for contributions to Islamic Studies. Other centers of Islamic
research, such as the University of Exter’s Institute of Arab and Islamic
Studies in England, awarded Arkoun honorary doctorates. During the Exeter award
in 2001, he gave a keynote to the international conference “Orientalism
Reconsidered.”
In 2001, Professor Arkoun was asked to
deliver the
Gifford
Lectures, which enable
a notable scholar to contribute to the advancement of theological and
philosophical thought and was announced as the recipient of the
Seventeenth Georgio Levi Della Vida Award for his lifelong contribution to the field of
Islamic Studies. Professor Arkoun taught as a visiting professor at UCLA,
Princeton University, Temple University, the University of Louvain-la-Neuve,
the Pontifical Institute of Arabic Studies in Rome and the University of
Amsterdam and served as a jury member for the
Aga Khan Award for Architecture. He was Emeritus Professor, La Sorbonne as
well as Senior Research Fellow and member of the
Board of Governors of The Institute of Ismaili Studies.
C. His Works
As productive scholar, Arkoun has written
many books and several articles spread in outstanding journals, like Arabica
(Leiden/Paris), Studia Islamica (Paris), Islamo-Christiana (Vatican), Diogene
(Paris), Maghreb-Machreq (Paris), and so forth. Beside that, he also published
some articles compilation and some opuses written thogether with other scholars.
Meuleman mentioned some important books and
articles often quoted by Arkoun’s opus reader, they are:
Traite D’ethique
(Traduction Francaise Avec Introduction Et Notes Du Tahdhib Al-Akhlaq De Miskawayh)
Damaskus, 1969;
Contibution a l’Etude de l’Humanisme Arabe au IV/X siecle:
Miskawayh Philopohe et Historien, Parin, Vrin, 1970;
La Pensee Arabe,
Paris P.U.F., 1975;
Ouvertures sur l’Islam, Paris, Gancer, 1989;
Essaiss
sur La Pensee Islamique, Paris, Maisonneuve et Larose, 1973;
Lectures du
Coran, Paris Maiisonneuve et Larose, 1982;
Pour une Critique de la Raison
Islamique, Paris, Maiisonneuve et Larose, 1984.
Most of Arkoun’s works are written in French
as mentioned above. Some of his works are written in English such as
Islam,
Europe and the West (1996);
Rethinking Islam: Common
Questions, Uncommon Answers (1994);
Character: The Essential
and the Changeable (1989);
Rethinking Islam Today (1987).
The
Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought (London, 2002)
Arkoun has also influenced the discussion on modern approaches to Islamic
architecture and urban renewal. This has been expressed in several published
works:
The Aga Khan Award as a Process of Thinking (1998);
Spirituality
in Architecture (1995);
Architectural Alternatives in Deteriorating
Societies (1992);
The Meaning of Cultural Conservation in
Muslim Societies (1990);
A Policy for Architectural
Conservation (1990);
Current Islam Faces its Tradition (1989);
Islam,
Urbanism, and Human Existence Today(1983); and
Building and Meaning
in the Islamic World (1983).
It
is important to note that Arkoun did not write a single Arabic works. He lived
in Frecch where he spent his years. That is why he wrote many works in French.
One important reason is that he could express his thought in french better than
in Arabic. In an article published in 1983, Arkoun wrote that determining
advancement happened in scientific thought since 1950 was not available in
arabic or any islamic language; or many terms in critical epistemology, discourse
criticism, and deconstructive history were unthought by the language user.
Some of Arkoun’s works translated into Arabic
are
al-Fikr al-Islami, Qiraah Ilmiyyah, translated by Hashim Salih,
Beirut: Markaz al-Inma’ al-Qaumi, 1987. It included eight articles;
al-Fikr
al-Islami, Naqd wa Ijtihad, translated by Hashim Salih, Beirut: Dar as-Saqi,
1992, included some questions-answers with Arkoun.
Min Faisal at-Tafriqah ila
Faṣl al-Maal, Aina Huwa al-Fikr al-Islami al-Mua’aṣir?, translated and
commented by Hashim Salih, Beirut: Dar as-Saqi, 1993. This book included six
articles and an introduction from Arkoun.
Al-Islam, Asalah wa Mumarasah, translated
by Khalil Ahmad, 1986, covering two articles and Arkoun’s foreward.
There is prominent thing from Arkoun’s opus.
He ask moslem researchers to go beyond the limit of traditional islamic study –either
within West or Islamic world itself-, which approached Islam through written opus
of classical figures about logical, rational, jurisprudence, and primarily
teological thought. Arkoun analyses clasical text beyond tradition limit of
islamic study by other approaches such as philosophy, social sciences,
contemporary western humanism that never applied in earlier islamic study.
He did this, combining all kinds of
contemporary western sciences to islamic thought, no purpose but to free such
islamic thought from characteristic of unbendingness and closedness, and bear
an islmic thought that can respond challenges faced by moslem in modern world.
D. Arkoun’s
Scholarly “Teachers”
As a moslem thinker and learner who studied in
the West, particularly France, Arkoun exactly was influenced by many thinkers
there. He tried to study Islam by mulitidiscipline approaches in various modern
sciences. This indirectly influenced his thinking way and his knowledge
aplication in studying Islam. According to him, as Meuleman transmitted, the
superiority of West knowledge and west thinking, generally, comes from the
rationality which lead them to the modern thinking. He was sorry that
contemporary advancement of West knowledge is not known well and not accepted
yet in moslem community, primarily that related to religious science and
islamic thought.
According to Arkoun, the acceptance of such
West thought doest not threaten islamic thought and societies, but conversely,
it is a medium to understand well why islamic thought undergoes unbendingness
and closedness and how to abolish the limitedness.
To make easy and to know the knowledge reference that Arkoun frequently refers
to, the writer will explain Western
thingking figures who influenced him.
1. Figures of Semiotics
As
a language scholar, he was influenced so much by language and semiotic observers.
Therefore, themes of Arkoun’s thought are related to more language problems,
like correlation between language, thought, history, and power; competition
between diverse kinds of languages and thinking way; and contradiction between
oral language and written language. Those problems turn to relate to what
become obsession of Arkoun’s thought, that is combining different thinking
ways.
a. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
Ferdinand
de Saussure often mentioned as the founding father of Praha school, a school emphasizing
on criticizing the language study. This emphasize more to real language, whole
forms of meaning. From this, de Saussure known as developer of sound and form
of language.
He is the first man who
expresses the concept of
la language, la langue, and
la parole.
According to him,
la language is language phenomenon in general;
la
langue is sign system and a set norm of social and institution; while
la
parole is individual perception and action which selected and self
actualisation, that include part of language in individual characteristic.
De
Saussure also acknowledged that language actually consists of amount of signs.
Those signs do not refer directly to many kinds of things in real. Sign is
combination of two elements, the material –certain sound in oral language,
graphic scratch in written language– and the mental one –concept of two
elements cannot be separated one and another. Therefore, the question about
what elements exist first is not proper. Technical term that de Saussure used
to the material is “signifiant” and “signifie” to refer to the mental element.
b. Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
Roland Barthes is french
semiologist who studied much about written language and “sign” system, like his
study on L’etranger, opus of A. Camus. He uses literary criticism as
reflection of domination of bourgeois culture in le Degre Zero de l’Ecriture
(1953). The critique of Barthes looks very dominant in his work entitled Mythollogie
(1957). This work reflect myths in daily life, through the behaviors,
societies describe the result of their ideological history. For Barthes, myth is
in second level of signifying. After the forming system
sign-signifier-signified, the sign will be new signifier which has second
signified and makes new sign. The first signifying is language, while the
second one is myths.
Sign is everything that refers to itself. Myth is a kind of symbol or a special
kind of it. Myth is a kind of symbol expressed in story.
c. Algirdas Julien Greimas (1917-...)
Greimas is a professor in Alexandria, Ankara,
Istambul, and Poitiers. In semiotic, Greimas shows how the phenomenon of nature
and social, symbolicly, must be read in one line with new interpretation or
reading about parabola in sacred book. He inspired Arkoun so much in his
semiotic studies, namely to go beyond the limits of very rigid and narrow
language when explain the significance of interaction between subject-object
and sender-receiver of message in a text.
The
concept of corpus used by Arkoun is borrowed from Barthes and Greimas.
According to both of last mentioned, a corpus is limited collection of the
element. It is same to Quran as closed and opened corpus that means the form
recognized and used generally now consists of amount of certain utterance which
have unchanged form. But, Arkoun then adds that the corpus is opened which
means opened to all kinds of contexts.
2. Figures of Philosophy
As
a historian as well as a thinker, Arkoun’s study cannot be separated from
philosophy element. Some of philosophical thought and modern social science
theory which influenced much to Arkoun is indigeneous from contemporary french
philosophers, or well known as pasca-strukturalism and posmodernism school.
Among them are:
a. Paul Ricouer (1913-2005)
Ricouer
is a french philosopher stated a thesis that mankind in his thought way
frequently use sign or symbol, something which has double meaning like myth.
According to him, myth is secondary symbol or the meaning of symbol in second
level. He remarked that myth must not rejected or criticized all because some
of myth can be justified and understood.
In
another word, myth as secondary symbol means a story illustrates primary
symbol. Myth is not kind of unmeaningful fantasy.
Therefore, either Ricouer and Arkoun, both emphasize the study on the critique
of people mistake in understanding a myth which frequently sacralize or even
considered as kind of idol, in primitive as well as modern era.
b. Michel Foucault (1924-1984)
Michel Foucault is an outstanding
french philosopher and prolific writer. The interesting elaboration of Foucault
is about archaeology, defined not as olden times science, but as philosophical
knowledge or historical thinking process. It means, each period of time has “a
thinking system” that formulates the way to practize the knowledge in that
time. Such thinking system is called as “episteme” by Foucalt, that
means “knowledge” in Greek.
Episteme then defined by Foucalt is as the way of human grasps, namely sees and
understands the reality. Because human grasps a reality by certain ways, he
talks about it by certain ways too. This kind of talking the reality is called
as “discourse”.
c. Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)
Derrida
is a french philosopher which known well by his deconstruction theory. What
Derrida means by deconstruction is critical analysis of a text or discourse
from within. Critical analiysis can be practized only from within discourse
because, according to Derrida, human cannot interact but through language. The
result we can reach from the deconstruction is grasping the meanings from the
text which hidden before or realizing the limit of the discourse itself.
By
deconstruction process, Derrida expresses an “unthought” (
l’impense) and
“unthinkable” (
l’impensable). For him, in thinking tradition and text
tradition, what must be thought is not just positive things, but also the
negative one, so that unthought and unthinkable thing can be deconstructed. The
purpose is human can realize the negative things and finally be able to avoid
and abolish it.
d. Northorp Frye
Frye is a professor of Toronto University. He
also taught in at Harvard, Princeton, Colombia, Berkelay, and Oxford
University. Besides Barthes and Riouer, Frye is also a scientist who acquaints
a thought about myth. According to him, a myth is designed not to describe a
specific situation, but to contain it in a way that does not restrict its
significance to that situation. The truth is inside its structure, not outside.
Although
Arkoun does not mention much and refer to Frye’s work, certain substance of
Frye’s thought looks influence the study he does, for instance, the application
of metaphor (symbol and myth) in interpreting sacred book. Arkoun refers to
Frye’s work in relation to how to read a sacred texts through critical
approach, that is reading that emphaizes not just in its teological authority,
but also pays attention to studies about the historical and cultural
background.
e. Spinoza (1632-1677)
One of the most important Spinoza’s idea is a
freedom to think and teological
fatwa for political purpose. He also
serves “free interpretation” of sacred book which shows that sacred book cannot
be used to justify conservative politics. Open attitude that Arkoun has, may be
inspired by Spinoza, specially in freedom to think, as well as effort to
interpret Quran without through medium and old interpretation of “orthodox”,
which reluctant to open self on empirical thing. This is like what Spinoza has
done in interpreting Bible, namely unwilling to go by ratification of Church
party before.
3. Figures of Sociology and Anthropology
Social science that influences Arkoun’s
thought so much is social science of structuralism school. For this school, the
basic problem unsolved till today is how everything can interrelate in certain
culture. Because, for them, relation network is more important than just the
facts and materials tied by the relation. And this relation system is more
important than the history of the system itself, as well. Then, the primier is
societies structure problem, not the origin problem. People who have important
influence of Arkoun’s thought in this case are:
a. Claude Levi-Strauss (1829-902)
We can say that Claude Levi-Strauss is the
founder of structuralism school. This school is actually influenced by
linguistic teaching, de Saussure in particular. In his opus,
La Pensee
Sauvage (Savage Thought), Levi-Strauss wants to understand the concept of
categories which elementaryly used by human reason to classify nature and
social-culture environment. Besides, for him, myth thinking builds its own
ideological palace with the debris of past social discourse. Myth consists of
as hard relations and oppositions as modern life. However, in “savage thought”
world of primitive societies with its sensory reason, it lastly becomes a
regularity, or in Boudieu’s term, makes “orchestra” in its own world.
b. Pierre Boudieu (1930-1986)
There are some prominent concepts in social
analysis of Boudieu and taken over by Arkoun in his analysis about islamic
societies. That concept related to certain mechanism that, according to
Boudieu, plays an important role in the societies. But, Although related to
life condition, including material one, it is not determined exactly by
material factors. And on another hand, it is not created and controlled
basically and independently by a certain men or group of people.
Another
significant concept belongs to Bourdieu is
habitus,that is a system of
many taken inclinations, permanent and generator, which has function like
principles that produce conditions and interpretation of meaning illustration
without any promise like regulation.
Habitus can be understood as
general order, amount of pratices which adjust to the production of objective
environment arrangement.
c. Jack Goody
Jack Goody is a Britain anthropologist who
develops the concept of “graphical reason”, that is particular reason of
societies who recognizes writing. He also contradicts between oral language and
written language and superiority of written language on oral language, as well.
All theses, for him, are anthropological problem.
Arkoun says that human thought takes the shift between two kinds of language
use. So, by this opinion, in human thought has happened the shift from
prophetic word to teaching or academical discourse.
It seems that he was influenced by Goody.
By
previous opinion, Arkoun indirectly contends that oral language is earlier and
more original than written language. This is influenced by Goody, as well,
though little contradicted to Derrida’s view who says that writing precedes
pronounciation, and that is the first requisite of a language.
To avoid misunderstanding on the different standpoint on Goody and Derrida’s
thought about the relationship between the oral and the written language, it
needs to add that Goody talks in anthropological side while Derrida talks
primarily about philosophical views.
