Postscript: When Islam Awakens: Problematizing the Idea of Reformation (Islah) by Mohamed Arkoun

Abstract

Abduh’s originality, as it is presented in this book, is to have understood, anticipated, and experienced some fundamental conflicts between the Divine Law and the secular democratic law in what I have called, for this very reason, Book-book societies. Abduh is acquired in the positions of his liberal contemporaries; but, to protect his alim status among his peers, at al-Azhar in particular, he had to articulate his opinions, his positions, and his arguments in the strict framework of the orthodox mujtahid. Mr. Haddad clearly explains this uncomfortable situation and the didactic patience of a welcoming spirit to the modernity offered in France in the nineteenth century, but did so aware of its historical solidarities with the long Islamic tradition as it still prevailed in the Arabian-Islamic logosphere.