Arab Intellectuals that Every Sciences Piste Should Know: Taha Abdurrahman

Taha Abdurrahman is a Moroccan philosopher who was born in 1944. Most of his studies were conducted in Morocco; however, he earned his Ph.D. at Sorbonne University in Paris, focusing on the role of language in philosophy.

Abdurrahman’s work centers around the hegemony of Western philosophical traditions, stressing the need for Islamic and Arab scholars to engage with their particularism. He emphasizes the need for scholarship to free itself of secularist thinking, which has created a universalist view of what constitutes modernity. Moreover, he criticizes Western philosophy’s unitary nature, which aims to standardize other philosophies and marginalize different perspectives, methodologies, and practices. He furthers that this tradition directly conflicts with academic freedom because true intellectual liberty can only flourish if there is dialogue between varying viewpoints, which is effectively prevented by Western dominance. 

For Abdurrahman, the tendency to seek consensus rather than highlighting particularities results in two forms of violence: “greater” and “lesser” violence. Greater violence is characterized by “physical” violence, with which the dominant position subjugates the dominated one. This violence is exercised through material support and influence, which seeks to uphold the hegemon and otherize its weaker counterpart. Greater violence also has an “epistemic” — the dominant position delegitimizes that of the dominated and removes it, almost entirely, from public discourse.

“Lesser” violence occurs when the two positions compromise, as it denies the particularized a position.

However, Abdurrahman also criticizes Arab and Muslim scholars for blindly adhering to Western principles within their philosophical explorations. He underlines that a major issue is that they are not asking their questions but rather seeking to answer those posed by others. Moreover, Western thought often employs reason to arrive at ethics. In contrast, Abdurrahman advocates for a strong ethical basis to reach reason, a process that he views as increasingly lost amongst Islamic philosophers. He draws this thought from his view of religion, in which statements are never separated from moral precepts. Conversely, “knowledge” has been rendered scientific in Western philosophy — philosophers have attempted to separate value from knowledge. Values are indispensable to our understanding, and rather than negating them, they should be included in the discourse and regarded as a starting point for any exploration. 

Abdurrahman underscores the importance of religion in creating ethics, something which is neglected by Western secularists who have attempted to develop comprehensive global systems of ethics while completely overlooking that the vast majority draw their ethics from religion.

In his view, the most complete ethical system is provided by Islam and proposes a reinterpretation of the Holy Qur’an, which he believes to be humanistic above all.