State and Religion in al-Jabri’s Political Thought

Abstract

Since the nineteenth century, Arab-Islamic quest for renewal has emerged as a response to the challenges of modern times. Modern Arab-Muslim intellectuals have presented a number of theories to explain the relative decline of the Islamic civilization vis-à-vis the modern West. This article reflects on the aspects of Arab political thought as expressed by the eminent modernist political theorist al-Jabri, with main reference to his critique of the dominant epistemological political system of thought in the Arab world , and his claim for a necessary renewal based on a modern interpretation of the place of religion in politics. Al-Jabri refers to Ibn Khaldun’s theory of history and discusses the contemporary reality of religious interpretations of sharia and the way ahead.