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1- The First Modern Arab Cultural Renaissance, or Nahda: from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Mid-Twentieth Century 17 2- Critique After the 1967 Defeat 48 The Existential Dramatization of Critique the Day After the Defeat: Saadallah Wannous's Theatrical Oeuvre 48 Humanistic Nationalism and Critical Reason Qustantin Zurayq 65 The Critique of Religious-Metaphysical Thought Sadeq Jalal al-Azm 74 The Critique of Ideology and Historicization Abdallah Laroui 82 Gendering Critique Nawal el-Saadawi and the Late-Twentieth-Century Arab Feminists 91 The Radicalization of Critique and the Call for Democracy: Reclaiming the Individual's Critical Faculties 113 3- Marxist, Epistemological, and Psychological Readings of Major Conferences on Cultural Decline, Renewal, and Authenticity 116 The Cairo Conference of 1971: "Authenticity and Renewal in Contemporary Arab Culture" 117 The Kuwait Conference of 1974: "The Crisis of Civilizational Development in the Arab Homeland" 121 The Cairo Conference of 1984: "Heritage and the Challenges of the Age in the Arab Homeland: Authenticity and Contemporaneity" 150 Critique in These Conferences: The Fixation on Tradition and the Intellectualization of the Malaise 171 4- Critique in Islamic Theology 173 From the Unthought and the Unthinkable to the Thinkable Mohammed Arkoun 174 The Historicity of Revelation and the Struggle for Thought in the Time of Anathema Nasira Hamid Abu Zayd 183 Feminist Historicization of Religious Traditions Nazira Zain al-Din Fatima Mernissi LeilaAhmed 195 An Islamic Theology of Liberation: The "Islamic Left" of Hassan Hanafi 200 A Christian Arab Theology of Liberation Naim Ateek Mitri Raheb in Palestine-Israel 207 On the Potential for Critique in Traditional Islam: Talal Asad's Analysis of the Public Criticism by Ulemas in Saudi Arabia 213 Islamic Critique and the Cultural Malaise 217 5- Secular Critique 220 Critique of the Exclusive Monopoly over "True" Islam Farag Fouda 221 The Importance of Keeping the Debate on the Human Level Fouad Zakariyya 224 Critique of the Essentialist and Romantic Conception of Identity Aziz al-Azmeh 228 Critique of the Islamicization of Knowledge and the Quest for an Indigenous Social Science Bassam Tibi Abdelkebir Khatibi Hisham Sharabi 238 Critique of the Conciliatory Pattern of Thinking Muhammad Jaber al-Ansari Hisham Sharabi Nadeem Naimy 253 Secularism, Democracy, and Cultural Critique 269 Recentering the Historical, the Human, and the Partial: The Secular Call for Democracy and Human Rights 280 6- Breaking the Postcolonial Solitude: Arab Motifs in Comparative Perspective 282 The Western Debates 282 The Non-Western Postcolonial Debates 304 Common Leitmotivs and Arab Specificities 335 Shifting Priorities 344 Conclusion: The New Nahda Impulses, Reclaiming the Right to Freedom and Life 347 Notes 365 Bibliography 431 Index 473

During the second half of the twentieth century, the Arab intellectual and political scene polarized between a search for totalizing doctrines-nationalist, Marxist, and religious-and radical critique. Arab thinkers were reacting to the disenchanting experience of postindependence Arab states, as well as to authoritarianism, intolerance, and failed development. They were also responding to successive defeats by Israel, humiliation, and injustice. The first book to take stock of these critical responses, this volume illuminates the relationship between cultural and political critique in the work of major Arab thinkers, and it connects Arab debates on cultural malaise, identity, and authenticity to the postcolonial issues of Latin America and Africa, revealing the shared struggles of different regions and various Arab concerns.