Reason, Prophesy and History: The Methodological Approach of Mohamed Talbi

Abstract

Islamic thought in North Africa and beyond has progressed in recent decades beyond the simple modernist/Islamist dichotomy to reflect a wide range of nuanced approaches to the interaction of religious text and modern socio-political conditions. At the same time, Islamic intellectuals continue to find themselves caught between competing intellectual influences – traditional and modern, Western and Eastern – and many have sought to reconcile these approaches into a single body of thought. Among these thinkers, Mohamed Talbi offers a methodology in which the religious core of the Qurʾan, which he defines as a set of eternal ethical principles, may be separated from timebound injunctions using the crucible of history. He defines a methodology that is at its core modern, stating however that it is in the tradition of the classical asbāb al-nuzūl, by which God’s intended outcomes (maqāṣid) are identified through a detailed analysis of the circumstances surrounding the revelation. This article traces Talbi’s methodology in the context of its application and attempts to situate it vis-à-vis the classical traditions that it invokes. In the wake of Talbi’s death in 2017, it is likely that the influence of this method will continue to grow, as a new generation of scholars offer refinements to his approach and apply it to persistent social and political debates in Tunisia and beyond.