At Arkoun’s work, this path brings together the question of modernity and secularization with the meaning of rights and citizenship within the history of Islamic societies. He does not present them as ready-made formulas; rather, he connects them to a reconsideration of the relation between knowledge, religion, politics, and the public sphere, so that the question of freedom and difference becomes part of the question of reform itself.
This path appears in Where Is Contemporary Islamic Thought? through the link between critique and ijtihad and the overcoming of intellectual deadlock, and through the need for a cognitive horizon that opens the way for a new reading of tradition. The idea also appears in Fundamentalist Thought and the Impossibility of Foundationalization, where fundamentalism is tied to the closure of history and the control of meaning, in contrast to a historical reading that reopens the question and does not confine it to absolute foundationalization.
This path is also present in From Manhattan to Baghdad, where questions of violence, legitimacy, democracy, and understanding the West enter at the heart of the discussion. Here, modernity and secularization appear as an entry point for thinking about the public sphere and the conditions of coexistence, not as topics detached from political reality.
Related books
- Where Is Contemporary Islamic Thought?
- Fundamentalist Thought and the Impossibility of Foundationalization
- From Manhattan to Baghdad