Islam and Post modernity: M. Arkoun on Deconstruction

Abstract

Ideologies are directly albeit not always perceptibly related to methodological and epistemological themes. Social psychology also reveals that knowledge depends upon the policy of rejection or incorporation of various philosophies. In the journey of human thought dawned the age of reason with the Era of Enlightenment. Gradually, universal values and the scientific method gained supremacy. And then all the grand narratives stood redundant and rejected, giving rise to the need to re-search, re-analyze, and re-think every work donethus far with the aim to de-construct the now-discarded. This research studies the greatly admired post structural theory of deconstruction and its proponents in the Muslim civilizations to evaluate its impact on contemporary Muslim thought. The rationale of the study is a critical appraisal of the theoretical concepts in the Muslim world in response or reaction to the current epistemological influences from the West. This exploration led to the conclusion that the scholars of the Islamic world missed the point by going a bit too far as the Holy Quran and collections of authentic Ahadith explicitly state what Muslims should reject or incorporate. The remedy comprises in updating the conventional way of thinking and interpreting things, acquiring the ability to think the unthinkable and the previously unthought, honest hard word, incessant striving for excellence, as well as discarding getting overwhelmed by whatever gains ‘currency’ in the largely impulsive Western thought.