This is the first study to compare the philosophical systems of secular scientific philosopher Mario Bunge (1919-2020), and Moroccan Islamic philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman (b.1945). In their efforts to establish the philosophical underpinnings of an ideal modernity these two great thinkers speak to the same elements of the human condition, despite their opposing secular and religious worldviews. While the differences between Bunge’s critical-realist epistemology and materialist ontology on the one hand, and Taha’s spiritualist ontology and revelational-mystical epistemology on the other, are fundamental, there is remarkable common ground between their scientific and Islamic versions of humanism. Both call for an ethics of prosperity combined with social justice, and both criticize postmodernism and religious conservatism. The aspiration of this book is to serve as a model for future dialogue between holders of Western and Islamic worldviews, in mutual pursuit of modernity’s best-case scenario.

Reforming Modernity is a sweeping intellectual history and philosophical reflection built around the work of the Morocco-based philosopher Abdurrahman Taha, one of the most significant philosophers in the Islamic world since the colonial era. Wael B. Hallaq contends that Taha is at the forefront of forging a new, non-Western-centric philosophical tradition. He explores how Taha’s philosophical project sheds light on recent intellectual currents in the Islamic world and puts forth a formidable critique of Western and Islamic modernities. Hallaq argues that Taha’s project departs from—but leaves behind—the epistemological grounds in which most modern Muslim intellectuals have anchored their programs. Taha systematically rejects the modes of thought that have dominated the Muslim intellectual scene since the beginning of the twentieth century—nationalism, Marxism, secularism, political Islamism, and liberalism. Instead, he provides alternative ways of thinking, forcefully and virtuosically developing an ethical system with a view toward reforming existing modernities. Hallaq analyzes the ethical thread that runs throughout Taha’s oeuvre, illuminating how Taha weaves it into a discursive engagement with the central questions that plague modernity in both the West and the Muslim world. The first introduction to Taha’s ethical philosophy for Western audiences, Reforming Modernity presents his complex thought in an accessible way while engaging with it critically. Hallaq’s conversation with Taha’s work both proffers a cogent critique of modernity and points toward answers for its endemic and seemingly insoluble problems.

Contemporary Moroccan Thought offers a new and broad coverage of the intellectual dynamics and scholarly output of what is presented here as the Rabat School since the 1950s. Geographically situated at the western edge of the classical Arab-Islamic world, Moroccan scholarship has made a belated yet vigorous comeback on the modern Arab intellectual scene, attracting wider reception beyond the Arabic-speaking world, through influential contributions in philosophical, theological, social and cultural studies. This volume sets a new standard in the study of Moroccan, North African, and Middle Eastern societies, and will undoubtedly remain an important scholarly reference for generations to come. Contributors Deina Abdelkader, Nayla Abi Nader, Kholoud Al-Ajarma, Salah Basalamah, Mohamed Wajdi Ben Hammed, Sara Borrillo, Ibrahim Bouhaouliane, Tina Dransfeldt Christensen, Driss El Ghazouani, Brahim El Guabli, Abdennabi El Harri, Amin El-Yousfi, Francesca Forte, Fatma Gargouri, Wael Hallaq, Mohammed Hashas, Alma Rachel Heckman, Aziz Hlaoua, Abdellatif Kidai, Markus Kneer, Mohamed Lamallam, Khalid Lyamlahi, Juan A. Macías-Amoretti, Djelloul Magoura, Mohammed K. B. Rhazzali, Raja Rhouni, Nils Riecken, Fatima Sadiqi, Hamza Salih, Ari Schriber, Simone Sibilio, and Abdessalam Tawil.

What does it mean to be a Muslim philosopher, or to philosophize in Islam? In Open to Reason, Souleymane Bachir Diagne traces Muslims’ intellectual and spiritual history of examining and questioning beliefs and arguments to show how Islamic philosophy has always engaged critically with texts and ideas both inside and outside its tradition. Through a rich reading of classical and modern Muslim philosophers, Diagne explains the long history of philosophy in the Islamic world and its relevance to crucial issues of our own time. From classical figures such as Avicenna to the twentieth-century Sufi master and teacher of tolerance Tierno Bokar Salif Tall, Diagne explores how Islamic thinkers have asked and answered such questions as Does religion need philosophy? How can religion coexist with rationalism? What does it mean to interpret a religious narrative philosophically? What does it mean to be human, and what are human beings’ responsibilities to nature? Is there such a thing as an “Islamic” state, or should Muslims reinvent political institutions that suit their own times? Diagne shows that philosophizing in Islam in its many forms throughout the centuries has meant a commitment to forward and open thinking. A remarkable history of philosophy in the Islamic world as well as a work of philosophy in its own right, this book seeks to contribute to the revival of a spirit of pluralism rooted in Muslim intellectual and spiritual traditions.

This book takes a fascinating look at the role of the Arab-Islamic world in the rise of the West. It examines the cultural transmission of ideas and institutions in a number of key areas, including science, philosophy, humanism, law, finance, commerce, as well as the Arab-Islamic world's overall impact on the Reformation and the Renaissance.

While the transmission of Greek philosophy and science via the Muslim world to western Europe in the Middle Ages has been closely scrutinized, the fate of the Arabic philosophical and scientific legacy in later centuries has received less attention, a fault this volume aims to correct. The authors in this collection discuss in particular the radical ideas associated with Averroism that are attributed to the Aristotle commentator Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) and challenge key doctrines of the Abrahamic religions. This volume examines what happened to Averroes’s philosophy during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Did early modern thinkers really no longer pay any attention to the Commentator? Were there undercurrents of Averroism after the sixteenth century? How did Western authors in this period contextualise Averroes and Arabic philosophy within their own cultural heritage? How different was the Averroes they created as a philosopher in a European tradition from Ibn Rushd, the theologian, jurist and philosopher of the Islamic tradition?