Résumé : (non disponible)

Mots Clés : Islam, modernité, dialogue, compréhension interculturelle, herméneutiques.

Abstract :

This paper argues that Western academia has largely eschewed dialogical understanding in favour of Marxist inspired accounts and poststructuralist theorizing of the Muslim world. The over abundance of the critique of ideology, other forms of "ideological demystification" and anti-essentialist theorizing has resulted in the failure of the human sciences to adequately understand the emergence of contemporary Islamic and Islamist fervour and its relationship to modernity. In contrast to much, but not all, of the literature on Islam and modernity, the paper develops a reconstructed dialogical theory, which draws upon both Gadamerian hermeneutics and inter-religious dialogue, as a means to take more seriously the truth-claims of the Islamic Other. By drawing upon notions of "suspicion" and "silence" from inter-religious dialogue, a reconstructed dialogical model can also overcome the absence of critique, a charge often levelled against hermeneutical dialogue, without resorting to the Enlightenment mode of critique. Although a reconstructed dialogical framework is not without its own problems, for instance how to overcome the chasm between a foundationalist Islamic worldview and an increasingly anti-foundationalist modern one, it takes us a long way from explanatory accounts and anti-essentialist theorizing and remains the best prospect for understanding the Other.

Keywords : Islam; Modernity; Dialogue; Inter-cultural Understanding; Hermeneutics.

Extended Abstract :

This paper begins from the premise that the human sciences have largely failed to understand the Islamic encounter with modernity, including contemporary Islamist revivalism. This failing arises from the lack of dialogical engagement with the Muslim world; instead, the human sciences, especially since the 1970s, have adopted either Marxist-based explanatory accounts or post-structuralist theorizing that, with their over-abundance of 'suspicion', implicitly and often explicitly dismiss the truth-claims of Muslims. Marxist based accounts of Islamism, such as those of Olivier Roy and Gilles Keppel who draw inspiration from Maxime Rodinson's influential work, retain the Enlightenment ideal of 'pure' and 'objective' knowledge untainted by ideology and often dismiss Muslim accounts of their self-understanding as ideological, obscuring the real economic or political interests. Poststructuralist theorizing, such as in the discourse analyses of Leonard Binder and Armando Salvatore and in the deconstructive opus of Muhammad Arkoun, which draw upon Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida respectively, not only dismiss the metaphysical truth-claims of Muslims, they also deny any holistic conception of Islam. The poststructuralist emphasis on historicity denies the transcendent character of those notions, such as revelation and prophecy, which Muslim believers regard as sacred, and the poststructuralist critique of essentialism disperses the notion of the ummah in the name of emancipation and liberation from repressive thought-systems. The paper argues that although poststructuralist analyses also claim to be dialogical engagements with Islam and modernity especially in contrast to classical Orientalism, such analyses draw upon a narrow version of dialogue that do not take seriously the Other's truth-claims.

In contrast to Marxist based accounts and poststructuralist theorizing, the paper proposes that dialogical understanding is possible in the human sciences if it retrieves the hermeneutic conception of dialogue as found in the work of H.. G. Gadamer, for whom dialogical understanding is not simply a method but an ontological quality of individuals and cultures. According to Gadamer, dialogical understanding is at work wherever there is the search for interpretive understanding. The paper addresses the claims of Jurgen Habermas' Critical Theory, as exemplified in the work of Roxanne Euben's analysis of 'Islamic Fundamentalism', that dialogue is an important element in the task of the human sciences but that hermeneutical dialogical understanding fails to incorporate critique and thus cannot lead toward human emancipation from repressive systems. But the hermeneutical rejoinder to Critical Theory is that critique is possible in dialogical understanding because in making sense of the Other's truth-claims one also challenges them.

While Gadamer's vision of dialogue and even Habermas' ideal speech situation leads to an unending dialogue, the paper argues that this is too optimistic and that the role of silence needs also to be taken into account. Hence, the paper turns to inter-religious dialogue to indicate how distortions of power and purpose are part of the process of establishing dialogue. Similarly, inter-religious dialogue also makes clear that the failure of dialogue to go beyond those irreducible points at which both the Self and the Other claim finality and universality does not necessarily lead to the 'fusion of horizons', as espoused by Gadamer. A reconstructed theory of dialogical understanding that draws upon notions of 'suspicion' and 'silence' from inter-religious dialogue can overcome the absence of critique without reverting to Enlightenment-based modes of analysis.

The paper concludes by recognizing that even a reconstructed theory of dialogue may not be sufficient to overcome the gap between foundationalist and anti-foundationalist worldviews.