Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: The author of this work has previously published studies on Arab liberal discourse and co-edited a volume on liberal thought after 1967 and is therefore wellknown for his interest in the subject.1The new monograph focusses on liberal debates from the post-1967 crisis to the 2011 revolutions but it can also be read in part as a quintessence of the previous studies.The book's title is obviously inspired by Albert Hourani's 1962 classic Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939 and must be understood as an answer to its shortcomings.This is no coincidence, as other historians have already attempted to move beyond Hourani's framework in general,2 not least by inscribing the Arab Left into the Arab intellectual history.3In the present case, the author's first argument against Hourani's classic is that liberalism did not vanish after 1939.The second argument is visible in the title's inversion which substitutes "Arabic thought" in "the liberal age" by "Arab liberal thought" in the "modern age."The adjective "liberal" qualifies the mode of thinking, not a period of time, whereas the age is qualified as "modern."The underlying idea of this inversion is to indicate that there has always been a clearly distinguishable group of liberal thinkers that has shaped modern Arab political culture.The third asset of the study is that its author looks beyond Egypt and Greater 1 Meir Hatina, Identity Politics in the Middle East: Liberal Thought and Islamic Challenge in Egypt, London: I.
Source: Die Welt des Islams
Author: Manfred Sing
Institution: University of Freiburg
Language: English
Topic: Islamic Studies and History
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4365146394