Ibn
Rushd-Prize for Freedom of Thought is presented to Mohammed Arkoun
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Orient
and Occident – the Forgotten Kinship This
Year's Ibn Rushd-Prize for Freedom of Thought is presented to Mohammed
Arkoun, Algerian-born philosopher searching for a way to a peaceful
co-existence of cultures and religions and who has rendered
outstanding services to societies in the Arab world by searching for a
genuinely Arab approach to reason and enlightenment. Only
weeks after Shirin Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for her
courageous struggle for freedom and democracy in Iran, Mr Arkoun will be
presented the Ibn Rushd-Prize for his vision of reforming the Islamic
world by a thorough re-interpretation of the history of Religion in the
Islamic world. An independent jury, consisting of five prominent Arab
intellectuals, elected the emeritus professor of the Sorbonne University
at Paris Mohammed Arkoun to receive this year's award. The
IBN RUSHD Prize for Freedom
of Thought will be presented for the fifth time on December 6th
, 2003. In the Spirit of its
namegiver, the philosopher and mediater between the cultures Ibn Rushd
(1126 – 1198, aka Averroes), the non-governmental organization IBN RUSHD
Fund Fund for Freedom of Thought dedicates itself to supporting the right
to freedom of speech and democracy in the Arab world. This year’s prize called for an independent
philosopher who has rendered outstanding services to societies in the Arab
world by seeking for a genuinely Arab approach to reason and
enlightenment. Mohammed
Arkoun, one of the most prominent modern philosophers in the Arab world
and an advisor to academic and political personalities and institutions,
is explicitly opposed to the thesis of the 'clash of civilisations' that
has been made to look so inevitable. His approach is to show similarities
between the Islam and the West rather than magnifying the differences and
demonising the 'Other', as is unfortunately the prevailing attitude at
present. For Arkoun, both of the two imaginary poles "Islam" and the
"West" construct the other culture as the enemy. Arkoun
stands for a dialogue between the cultures, his comparative approach to
religions and cultures make him a modern-time Ibn Rushd
: http://www.ibn-rushd.org/English/BiographicalInfoIbnRushd.htm
In
his works, he scrutinises the cultures' common past and their present
mutual disapproval and condemnation that result mostly from what he calls
"institutionalised ignorance" that spread at an unprecedented scale
especially during the last 50 years. He
reproaches the West for the image it has created of Islamic cultures that
they deem as remaining in medieval times. The emeritus professor for
Islamic history and culture points out that Bagdad was the most modern
city of the world in times when witches burnt in Europe. There, the holy
inquisition raged, while Islamic societies had a concept of humanism.
Libraries and universities were founded; Arab scientists were the ones who
preserved the mental heritage of Greek and Roman antiquity by translating
Greek philosophers and scientists. This heritage is completely absent from
Western minds and even neglected in Western
sciences. Mohammed
Arkoun's main focus, however, is on Islamic cultures. He criticises them
for being unable or unwilling to create an accomodation between Islamic
ideas and scientific and intellectual modernity. He calls for radically
rethinking the concept of 'Islam', to put an end to so many arbitrary
ideological and even phantasmagoric manipulations by both Muslims and
non-Muslims. Arkoun
holds a more discriminating position about the current assertion that
Islam never knew the separation between state and religion. He regrets
that this intellectual project inaugurated and so strongly advocated by
Ibn Rushd was completely abandoned after his death in 1198 by the
successive generations in all Islamic contexts until the second half of
the 20th century. He
favours the French concept of laicité as the most appropriate system to
solve the problems related to authority and power, spiritual and secular
spheres of human needs and activities. Laicité protects religious freedom
as the modern expression of the freedom of each individual's
consciousness. For Arkoun, laicité therefore cannot be represented as an
ideology aiming at the negation of religion as a spiritual and ethical way
of education for human beings; it does mean, however, limiting the
theologians' direct influence on society. Arkoun's
provocative thesis is that Islamic society has never had and desperately
needs its own renaissance to revolutionise the "closed official corpus"
that Islam has become especially in the last 40
years. Mr
Arkoun will accept the award personally on December 6
,
2003 at 11:00 a.m. in the Goethe Institut, Neue Schönhauser Str. 20 in
Berlin-Mitte. There will be a press conference after the ceremony of
presenting the award; the reception concluding the presentation will leave
room for personal discussion. Mohammed
Arkoun is the editor of the journal Arabica: Journal of Arabic and
Islamic Studies founded at the Sorbonne in 1953 and published by
Brill. He
produced an extensive body of scientific works, such as L'humanisme Arabe
au 4e-10e Siècle (1970, 1982), La Pensée Arabe (6e edition 2003), Lectures
du Coran (1982), Critique de la Raison islamique (1984), L'islam. Approche
Critique (1989), The Unthought in contemporary Islamic Thought (2002); De
Manhattan à Bagdad: Au-delà du Bien et du Mal (2003). Further
info on Arkoun’s philosophy: http://www.ibn-rushd.org/English/Info.Arkouns.philosophy.htm Further
information on the Ibn Rushd Fund: http://www.ibn-rushd.org/English/Pamph-E.htm
Curriculum
Vitae of M.
Arkoun and publications: http://www.ibn-rushd.org/English/CV-Arkoun.htm
Arkouns
Foto
:
http://www.ibn-rushd.org/English/ArkounFoto.htm
The
Jury: short CVs of the individual members
:
http://www.ibn-rushd.org/English/Jury-03-E.htm
IBN
RUSHD Prizes for Freedom of Thought : http://www.ibn-rushd.org/English/prizes.htm
Contact: Phone
+49 (0)30-446 50 218 or +49
(0)2962-5162 Fax
+49 (0)30-446 50 219 or +49 (0)2962-802424 |