Abstract

Faced with the observation that the renewal of Islamic thought has failed to materialize since the nineteenth century, the Iraqi philosopher ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Rifaʾī examines the history of Muslim theology in order to identify possible causes and develop a discursive and programmatic framework. Our presentation will highlight the way Rifaʾī approaches history and how he calls for a critical approach as opposed to an ideological one. Drawing on certain contemporary thinkers, he argues that only critical history allows collective memory to avoid becoming burdened with imaginaries of the past that turn it into a “seductive romantic narrative.” Since this ideological history is a source of conflict, only the critical approach can sustain and ground theological renewal in Islam. 

Bio

Dr Emmanuel Pisani is an Islamologist and has been Director of the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies (IDEO) in Cairo since June 2020. Holding a doctorate in philosophy and theology, he received the Mohammed Arkoun Prize in 2016 for his dissertation on al-Ghazali. A specialist in the question of otherness in Islam, he is also a professor at the Vice-Rectorate for Research of the Catholic Institute of Paris.

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