Religion, State, and Democracy from Arkoun’s Perspective

 The Center for Arab Unity Studies published the book Religion, State, and Democracy from Arkoun’s Perspective by Dr. Boubaker Boukhrissa.

The issues of religion, the state, and democracy occupy fundamental axes in modern and contemporary Arab political thought, in the various Arab schools of thought, both modernist and Islamic, with their multiple trends. The works of Muhammad Arkoun represented one of the most prominent Arab schools of thought calling for the modernization of religious thought, specifically Islamic thought, and the necessity of adopting a positivist approach to the affairs of the state, governance, authority, the constitution, society, rights, individual freedom, and other dimensions that govern the conditions for establishing the modern state. This will not be achieved except by transcending the rigid interpretation of the religion and promoting the historical reading of Islam.

The topics addressed in this book represent strictly selected titles from among the topics and titles contained in the huge stock of knowledge and the multiple problematic issues and topics that Muhammad Arkoun raised and addressed. Therefore, it was necessary for the author to differentiate between those issues and topics to choose a group of interconnected topics related to the main challenges that the modern national state and the models of governance still encounter in Arab and Islamic countries, and the prevailing Islamic religious approaches towards this state and its models of governance. Therefore, this book represents a kind of epistemological and intellectual challenge with regard to the topics that some chapters address, such as: the epistemology of Islamic knowledge and its problems; Religion, state and democracy. These are topics that fall within the framework of discussing the concepts and methodology of deconstructing orthodox Islamic knowledge, according to Muhammad Arkoun, who aspired to modernize this Islamic knowledge. Finally, Muhammad Arkoun places epistemology at the heart of his work and concerns.