A deconstructive reading of Mohammed Arkoun's intellectual project

Abstract

Contemporary Arab thought has witnessed a significant surge in critical projects since the last century, which attempted to reread "Islamic heritage" and deconstruct the Arab mind using the tools of Western methodologies. The project of our thinker, Muhammad Arkoun, stands at the forefront of these projects, in which he employed "linguistics, anthropology, and deconstruction...". With the accumulation of these modernist writings, a new generation of researchers emerged who moved towards reviewing and deconstructing these contemporary Arab intellectual projects. On the one hand, this criticism opened the door for researchers to re-evaluate the validity of applying modern Western methodologies to Islamic heritage. Researchers revealed that the excessive use of complex Western terminology may turn into a tool for obscuring historical facts instead of revealing them, and that the true understanding of this criticism lies in establishing a complex critical consciousness that does not merely criticize traditional heritage, but also practices vigilant and continuous criticism of the modernist tools and methodologies with which this heritage is read. The research also addresses the positions of a number of thinkers who discussed his critical project and deconstructed its intellectual foundations, including George Tarabishi, Muhammad Abed Al-Jabri, Taha Abdel Rahman, Muhammad Amara, and Radwan Al-Sayed, while highlighting the points of difference in approaches to issues of heritage, reason, and modernity. The research seeks to reveal the limits of the Arkounian project and its cognitive possibilities in light of these critical readings.