Burhan Ghalioun: From a Critique of the Modern State to the Critique of Contemporary Islamists’ Understanding of the State

Volume 3|Issue 9| Summer 2014 |Discussions

Abstract

Burhan Ghalioun presented a unique discourse on the critique of Arab modernity and the Modern Arab Nation state amidst the major intellectual review imposed by the calamity of June 1967, which constituted a defeat for Arab intellectuals. Contrary to modernists, who attributed the crisis to the dominance of tradition, and traditionalists who blamed it on the modernists’ abandonment of their heritage and religious identity, Ghalioun’s critique was directed at the strategy of modernization itself as theorized by the Arab elite and implemented by the Arab nation state. Ghalioun’s first book, Manifesto for Democracy, which appeared in 1978 and represented his basic intellectual intuition, included all the subjects of his critique, which he went on to expand and deepen in the rest of his oeuvre. He established a new theory in Arab thought that academics cannot ignore though it remains a perspective marred by the influence of dependency theory and the vestiges of class analysis in what concerns democracy.

Download Article Download Issue Cite this Article Subscribe for a year Cite this Article
× Citation/Reference
Arab Center
Harvard
APA
Chicago