The Islamic Recurrent Crisis Cultural Heritage and Social Progress

Abou Yaareb Marzouki

Abstract

At the recent decades, Islamic civilization was developed by Muslim scholars by way of the implementation of Islamic values in various aspect of Muslim life. Islam is not only understood as a system of belief, but also as a system of values to bring out Muslim from the multidimensional crisis. One of the multidimensional crisis backgrounds among Muslim society today is they did not able to maintain the cultural heritage and social progress that are created by Muslim scholars in the past. Based on the reason, this paper explains about how can Muslim do to go out from the multidimensional crisis today, including rebuild the cultural heritage and social progress. One of the solutions is they should reform Islamic fiqh to be in accordance with universal values in modern life.

Key words: cultural heritage, soaial progress, multidimensional crisis, universal values

A. Introduction:
The Islamic World has begun his Revival two centuries ago. Nevertheless, the economic and social underdevelopment of Muslims is indisputable. The crisis his civilization is experiencing continues to be critical, not only for Muslims, but for all Mankind. Even if the superficial effects of this crisis are exacerbated by the alien intervention, especially by American and Israeli ones, the core problems of our society stem from endogenous causes. The most important of these causes is the role of the cultural heritage, which has lost its vital dynamic and constitutes a hindrance to social progress.
This tentative essay elaborates on the theoretical and practical diagnoses proposed by four of our great thinkers, two of whom have systematically dealt with the theoretical dimension of the problem: al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd[1]. The two others systematically scrutinized the practical dimension: Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Khaldun[2]. Our purpose, in this paper, is to understand the overwhelming consequences of the reactive attitude towards the exogenous factors, which define the thought and action of both those who adopt these factors and those who refuse them, without finding out the universal principle of creativity in every genuine culture[3].
Applied to the current situation of our intellectual and institutional history, this characterization seems doubtless. Nobody can dispute the aggravation of this reactive attitude and the dependence implied by it, at the levels of the intellectual and institutional dispositions of our present culture. This reactive attitude is, either an imitative aping[4] of the exogenous factors, or a repetitive faking[5] of our proper past. These, I believe, are the two ethical and existential pathologies, which have crippled our historical ambitions, eliminated any possibility of genuine experience and ipso facto any possibility of innovation and creation in our modern history.
The Muslim elite of our time should acknowledge that this debate is crucial. It continues to be determinant, because the current crisis cannot be overcome unless we radically tackle these pathologies. We should have the courageous attitude of the abovementioned philosophers, in order to deepen their analysis and propose radical solutions able to reinstate the spirit of historic enterprise as sine qua non condition for any innovation and creativity. Indeed, we cannot get rid of dependence as a permanent mental and cultural structure whose causes are deeper than the current conjuncture of our relationship with the modern West, unless we trace back the causes of the breakdown of Islamic creativity, which is identical with the principle of Islamic brotherhood and Unity[6].
As a matter of fact the reactive attitude and the dependence implied by it are not new, because, as we will see, they derive, either wittingly or unwittingly, from both the misunderstanding of Islamic theoretical and practical visions and the historical neutralization of this vision due to the antagonistic formation of our theoretical and practical sciences and their applications[7].
1- We should courageously acknowledge that every serious evolution in our thought and action (their institutions, too), after the event of the prophetic mission, was overwhelmingly characterized by a reactive attitude to exogenous factors. Rarely can one find an action stemming from the endogenous ones, i.e., in accordance with the injunctions of Islam itself, because these factors were either ignored or neglected.
2- We should continue the effort exerted by the thinkers we have mentioned, in order to define the deep cause of this behavior and avoid that the future development of our thought and action (their institutions, too) continue to be a superficial struggle, oscillating between a reactive refusal and a reactive imitation of the creation other civilizations or our proper past have strived to produce, or both.
These painful pathologies are directly related to the problem of the lost Islamic brotherhood and the disunion of our Ummah. Indeed, the continual refusal of addressing them, determines the very roots of our spiritual and political disunion. This paper assumes that the auto-hindrance of Islamic theoretical and practical Revolutions is the very root of the Islamic spiritual and political weakness and disunity. We believe that tracing back the courageous beginning of the diagnoses defined by our great thinkers is the necessary condition of a progressive and active unification of our mind and reality and thus of our universal role and the shaping of humankind future. We will address this hindrance in two steps as following:
How Islam as continual reformation has been hindered, until the breakdown of the principle of creativity of Islamic Civilisation?
Why to be a continual reformation, is the unique possibility for Islam to fit its revolutionary characteristics and consequently to guarantee its future universal role?
The first step will try to determine the deep causes, which have hindered the Continual Reformation, in order to revive the favorable conditions of the Islamic Revolution. The Reinstatement of Islamic theoretical and practical Revolution as continual reformation is able to whet the principle of vitality and creativity and consequently guarantee the fundamental lever of Islamic Union
The second step will try to define the Meaning of Islamic Revolution as continual reformation and the possibilities of the renewal, which will enable this continual reformation. The understanding of the characteristics of this very revolution can help understand the obstacles, and revive the Islamic theoretical and practical Revolutions and consequently generate the Islamic spiritual and moral union as sine qua non condition of the Islamic cultural and political union.
This specific diagnosis’s importance notwithstanding, it cannot have a universal dimension if it is not preceeded by a general conceptual and historical analysis of the relationship between the cultural heritage as ethical existence of the nation and the social progress. This is why the first part of our paper intends to answer two double primordial questions from an Islamic perspective:
The first double question generally deals with the relationship between the cultural heritage and social progress in the current Islamic reality:
1- Nature of the cultural Heritage which hinders the social progress: the fossilization of Islamic religious thought and the popular superstition
2- Nature of the social progress hindered: Human Rights and Democratic political life.
The second double question tries genealogically to define the vision Muslim thinkers have had of the roots of the Islamic Crisis as consequence of the relationship between cultural heritage and social progress:
a- Pre-modern era: from the al Ghazali’s diagnonsis to the pre-scientific formulation by Ibn Khaldun
b- Modern era: the revival in its secular (Nahdha=Renaissance) and religious (Sahwa=Rise) formulations.
We hope that the party of social progress will give time to time, in order to permit a sure and pacific evolution of Islamic society. We hope also that the party of independence and defense of Islamic cultural heritage will clearly distinguish the struggle of religious renewal and national liberation from the viruses of Terror inherited since the era of Cold War: the secular terrorism used by the Soviet Union against the USA, and the religious terrorism used by the USA against the Soviet Union.
Thus, the paper will contain two Chapters:
The first, general study, deals with the relationship between cultural heritage and social progress, conceptually and historically.
The second, specific to Islamic civilization, genealogically analyses the roots the distorted relationship between the cultural heritage and social progress stems from and defines the genuine Islamic revolution as continual reformation.

B. The first question: Cultural heritage and social progress: conceptual analysis
1- Nature of the relationship:
Nobody believes that the cultural heritage as such is a hindrance to social progress, even if one can think that some components of the cultural heritage as such may sometimes hinder the social progress. The determinant factor, I believe is the perspective, which uses the cultural heritage as hindrance to social progress. The struggle, when endogenous[8], is between those who would like to conserve the ancient social scheme and those who would like to settle a new social one.
The stake of the struggle is double. The first stake is related to the economical values and economic interests. The second stake is concerned with the ethical values and ethical interests. These two struggles define the civil society by its two essential dimensions: economic and ethical interests. Hence, we can define the relationship between the cultural heritage and the social progress as a struggle between the future and the past of a civilization translated in the proper double dynamic of its civil society. The political stake always aims at avoiding that this struggle becomes a civil war, by the pacific negotiation of a modus vivendi between the social forces, which represent the parties of the future and the parties of the past in the society. However, when this double dynamic is alienated, the problems raised by the relationship between the past and the future of a civilization are no more those of the same civil society but those which stem from the failure of a violent transplant of the values of an alien culture.
Two kinds of interpretation have dominated the vision of this struggle as representative of the relationship between the cultural heritage and the social progress in the same civilization. The first characterizes the philosophical thought, since Plato until Kant. The second has begun with Kant and been defined as principle of universal history in Hegel’s Philosophy of History. The disputation of the truth and universality of this vision constitutes the very core of the post-modern thought.
The first vision–Plato’s vision of History[9]- considers any natural evolution of the national civilization as a regress. Thus, the role of the education and state consists in the preservation of the cultural heritage, whose evolution and change are seen as corruption and decadence. Plato’s paradigm is the Egyptian state. The regress being infinite or finite, two visions of the regression may obtain: cyclical with possible regeneration (essentially ancient)[10] or linear without regeneration (essentially medieval)[11].
The second vision -Hegel’s vision of History[12]- considers the natural evolution of the international civilization as a progress. Consequently, the role of the education (instillation of the objective spirit in the subjective one) and state (management of the contradictory interests in the civil society) consists in the implementation of the social progress and the change of the cultural heritage. The progress being infinite or finite, two visions of the progression may obtain: an evolution with a final stage (essentially modern)[13] and an evolution without final stage and indefinite (essentially post-modern)[14].
This is why one can say that the functions of the education and politics conceived of by these opposite theories of history are the same kind, vz. the very function of philosophy: how to implement the rational in order to shape history and determine the relationship between cultural heritage and social progress. This mission of Philosophic teaching is the religious and moral dimension of human reason.

2- The situation in Islamic World
The vicious effects stemming from the distorted vision of the relationship between the cultural tradition and the social development may be illustrated by the very image of the crisis of Islamic World, which is simultaneously a special and universal one. The image caused by the prejudices towards the Islamic efforts aiming at the revival of the Islamic culture have excluded any possibility of understanding of the dynamic of this relation and the ordinary phenomenon of the struggle between the forces of progress and the forces of conservatism in the Islamic society becomes a universal crisis
a. The image and its vicious effect:
Notwithstanding the universal stakes which should encourage the pacific evolution of a great cultural tradition namely the Islamic culture, the particular prejudices responsible of the extorted image of this struggle, has harmed the independent development and solution of the crisis experienced by the Islamic civilization. It seems that the originator of this image have forgotten two truths;
a- The bloody history of the modern West: from the religious revolution (the Reformation) till the philosophic revolution (the French revolution) first and then from the totalitarian trends between the two World wars till the presumptive American democracy the blood has never ceased to be shed.
c- The terror groups and totalitarian movements in Islamic world, are created and developed by the two powers in the era of Cold War,[15] which have infected the movements of National Renewal and Liberation and are used by the Us and Israel as alibi, firstly to consolidate this image of terror and totalitarian behavior, secondly to legitimize the war and the occupation of the very heart of the Islamic World, renamed Great Middle East[16].

b.The real problems and their significance:
Independently of this image however, the real stake of the relationship between our cultural heritage and social progress is the historic struggle of the access to Human Rights and the Democratic life. This struggle is not new. It has begun with the Islamic message, as practiced by the first generation of Muslims. This is why the first schism and civil war were about the very nature of the political system: is it founded on a divine right or on the choice of the community[17]?
Each of the two main parties stemming from this schism has experienced another schism about the Human Rights. The schism in the Sunni party was about the relationship between the role of reason and the role of faith in the theoretical and practical thought and practice[18]. In the Shi’i party, the schism was about the subject of the divine Right: is this right allotted to any man who has a sound faith or limited to a predetermined house[19]?
This endogenous dynamic was accompanied by two successive exogenous wars whose consequences were the decline of Islamic civilization:
1- The first double war was with the Byzantine and Persian Empire.
2- The second double war was with the Catholic Church (Crusades and Reconquesta) and the Barbarian of Asia (Mongols).
When the Islamic world has restarted his reconstruction, in the early eighteenth century the alien intervention of the western expansion has do almost anything imaginable to hinder its renaissance. This intervention does not help achieving the aims of the renewal, because it leads to a confusion, which reduces the social progress to the acceptance of an alien cultural domination. The refusal of the first, may lead to the refusal of the latter.

c. The alien intervention hinders these aims.
The resistance to the imitation of the current alien civilization cannot be fruitful, if it is reducible to an imitation of the past or to the fossilization of the cultural heritage. This principle is universal: the distance between the potential and the actual is not a distance between two real entities, but a distance between an ideal entity, which nowhere exists and a real potential entity. This phenomenon is twofold: 1- the ethical ideal, for the moral action; 2- and the theoretical ideal, for the technical action. The theoretical reason produces through its theoretical imagination an esthetical and technical vision of the being, and the practical reason produces through its practical imagination an ethical and political vision of the value. These are the transcendent conditions of civilizational creation. They are the very functions our civilization has failed to renew. This failure cannot be explained by an exogenous intervention. Thus, we have to trace back its roots in order to define the deep reason of the recurrent crisis of our civilization.
Islam teachs us that these two forms of Ideal are not simple dreams invented by human imagination. They are the trace of the Divine transcendence defined as divine brand: fitrah. When these Ideals are identified with real entities (Current West civilization and Islamic Past civilization seen as Ideals) they become source of Idolatry: the divine transcendence would be materialized in idols. This is the real Shirk. The Muslims, both secularist and religious parties, are Mushrikun. They cannot be independent and, consequently, they are unable to be creative in any level of the theoretical and practical thought, let alone in their symbolic and institutional applications. Our current being is thus, reduced to an absolute ontological dependence. The unique possibility of spiritual and temporal liberation must stem from the deepening of Islamic revolutions: the deep meanings of Ijtihād and Jihād.

C. Second question: Cultural heritage and social progress: Historical analysis:
Neither the crisis of Islamic culture nor its diagnosis, are new. We will try to sketch rapidly the essential moments of this crisis and diagnosis.
1-The pre-modern era: from al-Ghazali’s diagnosis to Ibn Khaldun’s pre-scientific formulation:
a- al- Ghazali’s diagnosis:
How al-Ghazali has diagnosed the crisis of Islamic Culture? He has dealt with this question and determined the causes of the crisis as two sources of totalitarianism, in two of his books: the theoretical or metaphysical totalitarianism in Thahfut al Falasifah and the practical or political totalitarianism in Fadha’ih al Batiniyyah.
In Tahafut al Falasifah[20]- the contradiction of the philosophers- al-Ghazali refutes the core of the Metaphysics in order to lay the grounds of a liberal theology permitting the plurality of views and religious choice: anti-metaphysical totalitarianism of elite founded on an alleged absolute knowledge. This is why he tries to realize the idea Kant has later illustrated in the introduction of the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason: he tries to limit the claims of the theoretical knowledge in order to render possible the practical faith.
In Fadhaih al Batiniyyah[21]-the scandalous behavior of the Batiniyyah- al-Ghazali tried to lay the grounds of a liberal political system permitting the plurality of views and political choice: he tried to found a rational refutation of the totalitarian government founded on divine right.
Al-Ghazali has tried to go forward and proposed an Islamic religious reformation related to the disciplines he believes responsible of these two totalitarianisms: the reformation of the two antithetical theoretical sciences (Philosophy and Theology) and the two antithetical practical sciences (Mystics and Laws). He has christened his reformation as Revival of Religious Sciences (Ihya’ “Ulum al-Din)[22].
b- Ibn Taymiyyah’s interpretation of the crisis: the religious “aufkaerung”.
The diagnosis and the remedy proposed by al-Ghazali however, were not enough adequate to the situation and the crisis has worsened. As a matter of fact, the theoretical totalitarianism has combined the mystical and metaphysical absolutism in order to present a monolithic and absolute worldview by which the free will was absolutely negated. The practical totalitarianism has combined the legal and theological absolutism in order to present a monolithic and absolute political system: the government as the shadow of God and the legitimization of dictatorship of fait accompli.
The negation of free will and the political dictatorship became the unique vision of the cultural tradition and, hence, exclude any possibility of social and moral progress. The struggle about the democratic government was the first problem, which has caused the Muslim Ummah to engage in an interminable Civil war: the two horns of the alternative were the Shi’ite solution and the Sunnite one.
The Shi’ite proposed a religious regime in which the Imam is designed and inherited and not chosen by the nation. The Sunnite proposed a semi-secular regime in which the Khalifah is chosen by the elites of the nation (Ahlu al Halli wal-‘Aqdi = the Ulama’ and the Wujaha’, i.e. the scholars and notables who has the right to decide for the Ummah), but the principal source of the law is religious. The civil war between these two visions has never ceased since then.
The situation has worsened since the displacement of the civil war into the heart of the two parties. The Shi’ite, as we see it now in Iran, are now trying to overcome the contradiction between the democratic legitimacy of the President of the Republic and the religious legitimacy of the Principal Scholar who is the mouth piece of the Imam. The Sunnite, as we see it in the programs of the Islamic parties, are now trying to overcome the contradiction between the principle of the choice of the government and the refusal of the democratic source of the law.
c. Ibn Khaldun’s interpretation of the crisis: the philosophical “aufkaerung”.
Ibn Khaldun defines the political arbitrariness, in two fields:
1- Material goods i.e. the confiscation of the property and the exploitation of the work ;
2- Moral values i.e. the sharing of power and the liberty as respect of the five rights of human being defined by the five purposes of Shariah.
These purposes are the religious formulation of Human Rights: 1- liberty of thought, 2-right of property, 3- respect of human dignity 4- right to defend one’s belief 5-and holiness of the life. Our reading of Ibn Khaldun's thought[23] is not a anachronic modernization. The reformation he has proposed in his Muqddimah, means the reformation of the moral and material civil society in order to eliminate the obstacles to Istikhlaf[24] in its four meanings. The principle of this elimination is simple: it is grounded on preventing the cultural to dominate the natural, or preventing the socialization to become taming and enslavement. The problem, in a nutshell , is: how to rationally manage the natural force in individuals and collectivities, in order to shape and canalize it without corrupting the original sovereignty of the man, or his good fitrah[25].
Are we justified to talk of "contract" as solution proposed by Ibn Khaldun to these problems? Here is the text refered to:” People in any social organization must have someone who exercises a restraining influence and rules them and to whom recourse may be had. His rule over them is sometimes based upon a divinely revealed religious law. They are obliged to submit to it in view of their belief in reward and punishment in the other world (things that were indicated) by the person who brought them (their religious law).Sometimes, (his rule is based) upon rational politics. People are obliged to submit to it in view of the reward they expect from the ruler after he has become acquainted with what is good for them” [26]
Ibn Khaldun has used the plural form عقود of the term عقد in his definition of the legitimate state, which can persist without `Asabiyyah[27]. Ibn Khaldun does not specify the double character of the religious contract. The distinction we introduce, however, is not arbitrary. Two reasons account for it: first, nothing excludes the possibility for religious authorities to behave as the political ones, using the religious law in their unique interests of the clerics; second, the bipartition of the rational contract implies that in the two cases the rational contract is germane to a religious one.
2- Modern era: from the Nahdah vs. Sahwah to the unity of the renewal:
The modern era or the Nahdhah has tried to ground the renewal on this same analysis, the references of its initiators being essentially these three authors, particularly the third. The reformers were interested in the political and social reformations via the instauration of a democratic life and a liberal system of education. Their thought however was rustling with two difficulties each of which was the very concern of Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah:
1- The first, is related to the ambiguity of Islamic possible and real constitutions: how to conciliate a democratic political regime with a divine Shari`a (divine source of law)?
2- The second is related to reinstitution of the Islamic unity: how to conciliate the principle of secular national states instituted after the breakdown of the Khilafah and the necessary unity condition sine qua non of the economic development and social progress, in the era of globalization and mega economic ant politic entities, as E.U.?

D. First step: How the continual reformation has been hindered, till the breakdown of creativity of Islamic Ummah?
The revolutionary character of Islamic continual reformation is not easily comprehensible nor is its application a straightforward process[28]. By the relation it has defined between the religious transcendent ends and their historical means Islam has defined the achievement of Islamic values by an ascendant historical process alternative to the opposite conception which consider the human future as continual moving away from a golden age ending up in a necessary decline. The ascendant process Islam has proposed is based on tow notions derived from the same Arabic radical:” j.h.d.” = Effort. The first notion is the very essence of the applied theoretical and practical reasons: Jihād. The second is Ijtihād, which represents the essence of the abstract theoretical and practical reasons.
The inversion of Islamic vision of history has excluded the possibility of any serious epistemological and ethical implementations of these two notions. This is why we need to unveil the historical and conceptual causes of this unfortunate inversion. Our quest, thus, will be historical and conceptual:

1. Historical investigation:
The historical investigation may be illustrated by the institutional borrowing, which has overwhelmingly defined almost all our institutions. This receptive attitude was the result of both an urgency for action before a sound theoretical foundation and a universal confusion between al-Barā`a al-Asliyyah and “Istishāb al-hāl"[29]. This institutional illustration may be confirmed by the legal Ijtihad as general behavior, whereby our scholars legitimize a posteriori by a farfetched justification, the adoption of the existent solutions proposed by other cultures, after initial resistance and refusal.
This attitude began since the adoption of the institutions of the Byzantine and Persian empires and lasted til the late adoption of the western organization of all aspects of our life and above all our political, educational and economical systems, let alone the content and the form of our theoretical and practical thought. The reason is evidently the break down of Islamic theoretical creativity and practical innovation. No past era of Islamic civilization, after the prophetic period, can be a refuge against alien influence. All our intellectual and institutional past adopted this very attitude, which has ended up contaminating the deepest bottom of our soul and led it in an absolutely unfounded chaotic theoretical and practical borrowing[30]. We believe that this attitude constitutes the fundamental cause of Islamic disunion:
A. The theoretical borrowing may be qualified as Istishab al-hal al `Aqade. As a matter of fact, Usul ad-Din has become a simple defense of some dogmatic formulations of the credo, as a vision of the Truth[31], instead of being the continual seeking of the truth: at-Tawāsee bil-Haqq . The result of this theoretical “tahreef” was the maiming of Islamic theoretical reason, as illustrated by the following consequences:
1-The suppression of all spiritual creativity: negation of imagination as source of symbolic production of scientific theories and fines arts. The exclusion of Sciences and fines Arts from the dignity of spiritual activity has doubly maimed Islamic spirituality: Muslims have renounced these fields to alien peoples and minorities, and these fields became irreligious. Being innate the needs of sciences and arts can never be eliminated; their interdiction or degradation can eliminate only their religious dimension.
2-The suppression of all material creativity: negation of imagination as source of technical production of material institutions and mechanical arts. The same behavior has been adopted towards the second craft of the theoretical reason: it became an activity related to magicians and charlatans.
3-But the most dangerous consequence was the disunion of Muslims. Reduced to the defense of credo-dogma the theoretical knowledge cannot be but the source of an absolute spiritual disorder: the multiplication of dogmatic formulations of the credo is the first cause of the disunity of our Ummah.
B. The practical borrowing may be qualified as Istishab al-hal al Shar`ee. Indeed, Usul ul Fiqh has become the defense of a dogmatic formulation of the law as a vision of the Right, instead of being the continual search or the justice and the conditions of its implementation: at-Tawāåá bis-Sabr.
The result of this practical “tahreef” was the maiming of Islamic practical reason, as illustrated by the following consequences:
1-The suppression of all ethical creativity: The negation of imagination as source of symbolic production of ethical theories and fines manners is clearly represented in the notion of Bid`ah, which became the very root of an absolute conservatism and conformism in all aspects of life.
2-The suppression of all institutional creativity: The negation of the imagination as source of institutional production of civil institutions and political organizations, does not need further demonstration.
3-Furthermore, the defense of law-dogma cannot be but a source of an absolute institutional disorder: the multiplication of dogmatic foundations of the laws is the second cause of the Islamic disunity, because these multiple foundations were not considered as simple doctrinal and scientific theories but source of behavioral oppositions between madhahab and consequently source of civil unrest.
The Islah Movment has tried to liberate Islamic theoretical and practical thought of the superficial manifestations of these consequences. But the solution it has adopted was an eclectic syncretism, which addresses only the phenomenal appearances of the third kinds of consequences: the multiplicity of the theological schools and legal doctrines. It is motivated solely by pragmatic and non-theoretical reasons: alleviate some appearances and respond to an urgent task i.e. the formation of a front against the colonizer. But it was unable to tackle the real and deep crisis,[32] because the very root of the problem has not been addressed: the suppression of the functions the theoretical and practical reasons should achieve to meet the definition of Ijtihād and Jihad as conceived of by the Islamic Revolution i.e. the Continual Reformation.

2. Conceptual demonstration:
How this suppression of the functions of the theoretical and practical imagination as principal devices reason uses to achieve its role, could be understood, in a religion which consider them as the underpinning of the faith i.e. Ijtihād or Tawāsee bil-Haqq and Jihād or Tawasee bis-Sabr [33]?
The unique explanation possible of these consequences should be found in the reinstatement of the authorities the abolition of which has been a necessary condition of the Ijtihād and Jihād formulations of the function of the theoretical and practical reasons. In order to prevent the misuse of the spiritual authority as mediation between man and God, Islam has created the institution of Ijtihād, provided we construe it as defined by its deep meaning obliterated by this reinstatement of the spiritual authority. The misuse of the material authority of domination could be prevented if Muslims have implemented the institution of Jihād as outlined by its deep meaning suppressed by this reinstatement.
Hence the revolutionary role of Ijtihād and Jihād became void and caducous by the simple elimination of the functions of the theoretical and practical reasons, i.e. the role of imagination:

3. Revolutionary role of Ijtihād:
a- Negatively, this role can be defined as an alternative to an exclusive institution corrupted religious castes have made intermediary between man and God. They pretend that the spiritual authority is infallible and can assume the personal responsibilities of the believers in the field of knowledge and faith.
b- Positively, Ijtihād can be defined as a new vision of knowledge where the criterion of truth is not the adequacy with an alleged objective reality but the consensus and the practice of the believers, defined by the rational and ethical behavior: at-tawāsee bil-Haq.

4. Revolutionary role of Jihād:
a- Negatively this role can be defined as an alternative to an exclusive institution corrupted political castes pretend intermediary between man and God presenting it as a political authority infallible in the field of action.
b- Positively this role can be defined as a new vision of action where the criterion of good is not the adequacy to an alleged objective value, but the consensus and the practice of the believers defined by the rational and ethical behavior: at-tawasee bis-Sabr.
If the reinstatement of these authorities, which has begun by a double malefic reduction, has happened since the first phase of our history, it must be conceptually inescapable for two reasons each of which encourages the adoption of the solutions yet existent in other civilizations, and substitutes the intellectual and institutional borrowing for intellectual innovation and institutional creation:
1- The alleged preeminence of action excludes any possibilities for the first generations of Muslims to grasp all the consequences of the abolition of the institutions which are by definition source of misuse and the proposal of intellectual and institutional solutions able to avoid the moral and material corruption.
They need to reestablish them in order to deal pragmatically with the improvised situations. The Shi`a have chosen the reestablishment of the spiritual authority de jure. The Sunna, have chosen to reestablish it de facto. The Khawarij, for whom every good muslim is virtually Imam, have chosen to universalize the Shi`i solution. The Mu`tazila , for whom every reasonable man is ipsu facto able to know the good and the evil, have chosen to universalize the Sunni solution.
2- But the concrete determination of alternative institutions to those abolished by Islam, must be a historic theoretical and practical process and consequently a continual reformation wherein the religious aspect of the theoretical and practical knowledge and their institutions are not bound to a determinate content but related to a universal purpose and general form. This indetermination was too risky, dangerous and, consequently, unbearable when the theoretical development of the thought is immature. Hence, the petrifaction of the two couple of solutions was the unique solution possible: Ahlu as-Sunna (Dhawu Al-Ahliyyah wash-Shawkah=those who have competence and force) and their Mu`tazilite opposition (Every rational being= Kullu dhi`Aql) and the Shi`ah (Divine Right of Àlil-Beit =The Prophet’s House’s Divine right) and their Khārijite opposition (wal-Ardhu yarithuhā `Ibāduna as-Slihun = the Earth is the Right Men’s heritage)[34] could not evolve without the intellectual and moral courage to go to the bottom of the principle of legitimacy of the spiritual and political authorities.
Instead of that courage, the facile solution conceptually possible was negatively Sadd adh-Dharai` and positively the borrowing of any given solution, in order to avoid the risky possibilities of chaos and anarchy stemming from the indetermination revolutionary Islamic solutions imply if their requirements are not theoretically deduced (Ijtihād) and practically implemented (Jihād). Being grounded on a generalization of interdiction alternative to the Islamic principle of the generalization of permission, Sadd adh-Dharai` coincides with the reestablishment of the authorities Islam has abolished. The reestablishment will be possible via the systematic borrowing of the two empires of the time, as Muslims have done during the last century: superficial “legal” justification of the adoption of socialism or capitalism via the casuistic fatawa as false thought neutralizing any genuine philosophical and religious foundation.
The interdiction, which is the easier solution, begins with the double reduction of the revolutionary alternative institutions proposed by Islam:
a- Objective reduction: Ijtihād and Jihād are reduced to their narrower objective meanings: legal Ijtihād, martial Jihād. This objective restriction implies that Ijtihād will be reduced to the unique science of religious laws, without the sciences whose subject matters are the things for which the fiqh may legislate. It implies also that Jihād will be reduced to the unique task of holy war without the mediate and immediate means, which achieve the conditions of success in any war, holy or otherwise.
b- Subjective reduction: Ijtihād and Jihād are reduced to their narrower subjective meaning: Ijtihād and Jihād became a particular religious obligation “fardhu kifaya”. This subjective restriction implies that Ijtihād will be reduced to a unique particular obligation of lawyers (fardhu kifayah) who will become a religious authority and substitute to the universal obligation (fardhu `Ayn) whereby every believer must seek knowledge. It implies also that Jihād will be reduced to a unique particular obligation of warriors (fardhu kifayah) who will become a political caste (the mamluks) or military Janissaries as substitute to the universal function of citizen’s self-defense.
The first reduction has eliminated all theoretical and practical sciences (Ijtihād) and their esthetical, technical and ethical applications (Jihād). The second reduction has eliminated the universal commitment of all Muslims in the life of the community: the Fuqahā‛ and the mercenary castes have stripped the citizens of all theoretical and practical contributions. Therefore, we should avoid the objective and subjective restrictions of the institutions of Ijtihād and Jihād, in order not to return to the traditional vision of the religion, Islam has described as corrupted: Muäarrafah. The negative and positive definitions of these two institutions are safe guards against the corruption which has grounded a double restriction of Ijtihād and Jihād :

E. Second step: Why to be a continual reformation, is the unique possibility for Islam to fit its revolutionary characteristics?
The purpose is to analyze the Islamic theoretical and practical revolution and to interpret our thought and institutions in relation to the functions they must achieve, as Islam commends so that the conditions of a free and powerful society obtain. This understanding will enable us to grasp the revolutionary meaning of Islam.
Islam is not a simple continuation of the religious traditions as misunderstood by those who have doctrinally adopted the Isra‛iliyāt (Israelite mythologies), the Nasraniyāt (Christian mythologies), the Sabi`iyāt (Sabaen mythologies), the Mājâsiyyat (Magean mythologies) and the Mushrikiyyāt (Pagan mythologies)[35], or by those who have institutionally aped the political, educational and social organization of the two empires of the era. It is a genuine deconstruction of these doctrinal and institutional traditions via two concepts[36]: Tahreef or corruption of religious thought and action and Jahiliyyh or corruption of natural thought and action.
The concept of Tahreef should be construed as an Islamic critical deconstruction of the dogmatic traditions which have crippled the theoretical and practical revealed knowledge and petrified the institutions implied by it.
The concept of Jāhiliyyah should be construed as a critical deconstruction of the dogmatic traditions, which have maimed the theoretical and practical rational knowledge and corrupted the institutions grounded on it.
By these two critical concepts of Tahreef and Jāhiliyya and their institutional consequences, Islam has tried to renew the religious and philosophical thought[37] and to define the alternative institutions able to avoid the corruption of the spiritual and political authorities. These alternative solutions it has proposed cannot be but a continual reformation of the theoretical and practical thought both at the level of abstract thinking (Ijtihād) and at the level of its concrete implementation (Jihād).

1. Deduction[38] of the concept of continual reformation:
As consequence of the full realization of the Revelation "Khatm al-Waäyi ختم الوحي " and of the abolition of all spiritual authorities mediating between the believer and God Islam qua Islam, must be a continual reformation, i.e.[39]:
1- Islam should be a continual theoretical and practical knowledge, or Ijtihād which, if institutionalized, must give birth to a social and formal institution one can rename: Mu‛asasat al-Tawāsee bil-Haqq [40]. Our purpose, in continuity with the theoretical effort of our philosophers, is to understand the historical fact according to which this theoretical thought has been reduced before the era of decline to the legal dimension and since the Sahwa to the political thought of religious parties, without the conditions, which render effective these meanings.
2- Islam should be a continual theoretical and practical action or a continual Jihād grounded on the meticulous application of the theoretical and practical knowledge, which, if institutionalized, must be a social and formal institution one can rename: Mu‛asast at-Tawāsee bis-Sabr [41]. Our purpose, according to the same continuation, is to understand the historical fact according to which this practical thought has been reduced till the era of decline to solely the practice of the religious obligations or `Ibada , and since the Sahwa, to the practice of holy war, without the conditions, which render effective these meanings.
The deep meaning of Ijtihād as epistemological (the criterion of truth) and ontological (the nature of truth) condition of Islamic intellectual and institutional revolution, has been omitted. It has been reduced before the era of decline to Usul al Fiqh, and since the Sahwa, to politics, both reduction being absolutely unaware of their conditions and means. Ijtihād should be more universal than the legal methodology. It should have five dimensions: the traditional two kinds to which we add two others related to the conditions of their possibility. These four meanings should be grounded on the general principle of Ijtihād, i.e. the principle of the intellectual attribute of the human being: the theoretical reason as absolute free power.
Hence, we should sort out the following kinds of Ijthihād: 1-al-Ijtihad al-Asghar (or legal Ijtihād), 2- al-Ijtihād al-Akbar (or religious ethics), 3-al-Ijtihād al-Sagheer or the Ijtihad which realizes the conditions and means of the Ijtihād al-Asghar (theoretical knowledge: natural sciences, the man as natural being included), 4-al-Ijtihād al- Kabeer or the Ijtihād which realizes the conditions and means of the Ijtihād al-Akbar (the practical knowledge: moral sciences including nature as moral being), 5-and the principle of all Ijtihād, or the conditions of enlightened reason as tawāse bil-Haqq.
The deep meaning of the Jihād as axiological (the nature of truthfulness or moral value) and ethical (the criterion of truthfulness or moral value) has also been omited. This is why Jihad has been reduced before the era of decline to the religious obligations and since the Sahwa to the holy war, both without their conditions and means. The Jihad should be more universal than its martial connotation. It should have five dimensions: the traditional two kinds and two others related to the conditions of their possibility and the principle of Jihad in general, i.e. the principle of the ethical attribute of the human being: the practical reason as free will.
Hence, we should distinguish the following kinds of Jihād: 1- al-Jihad al-Asghar (holy war), 2- al-Jihad al-Akbar (`Ibadah or ethical action), 3- al-Jihād al-Sagheer or the Jihad which achieves the conditions and means of the Jihād al-Asghar (Technology and economics or the application of the theoretical sciences), 4- al-Jihād al-Kabeer or the Jihād which achieves the conditions and means of the Jihād al-Akbar (Politics and Education or the application of moral sciences) 5-and the principle of all Jihad: the free will as tawasee bis-Sabr.
These deep meanings of the alternative solutions proposed by Islam in order to organize human thought and action imply a new vision of the institutions able to produce the conditions and means of their concrete and gradual achievement in the social reality during the historical existence of the Ummah.
If we adopt Ibn Khaldun`s analysis of `Umran, we can tell the constituents of its form represented by the educational and political systems from the constituents of its substance represented by the economic and social systems. The `Umran as Universal Existence of Mankind is generally materialized in the particular cultures and particularly, in the singular persons both being the fruit of Ijtihād (Theoretical and practical Knowledge) and Jihād (action grounded on these two kinds of knowledge) and their functions and institutions as here interpreted.
This is why these meanings, if construed philosophically, should coincide with the necessary purposes of Shari`ah as fundamental principles of the Universal Religion, because they illustrate the five essential attributes of God as Ideal for human life in its theoretical and practical dimensions [42]:
1-The purpose of reason is not solely concerned with the simple biological power of mind; its religious meaning represents the source of the theoretical and practical knowledge and their conditions and means.
2-The purpose of property is not solely concerned with the simple economical power of wealth; its religious meaning represents the material conditions of the subsistence and independence of the person or the means produced by the application of theoretical knowledge,
3- the purpose of honor is not the simple sexual manners; but its religious meaning represents the moral conditions of the person’s dignity produced and protected by the application of practical knowledge,
4- The purpose of religion is not solely concerned with the simple superficial execution of the religious obligations; but its religious meaning is the superior life founded on `Ibada as crowning of theoretical and practical knowledge of `Ayat Allah,
5- And the purpose of Nafs is not concerned with the simple physical conservation of “an-Nafs” as bio-psychological existence; its religious meaning is the fulfillment of the former purposes as conditions of the spiritual life (religion) which implies the full exercise of Ijtihād and Jihād: the enlightened reason and the will as condition of the person as moral being.
This tentative interpretation unveils the deep result of Islamic alternative institutions when they fulfill their functions[43]: the burden of Amanah as Shahādah and Khilāfah in their universal and particular meanings:
A- In Ijtihād, the form of `Umran (Education and State) is anterior to the substance (Economics and Society), because it is concerned essentially with the abstract theoretical and practical knowledge as Tawasee bil-Haqq. The abstract dimension of the purpose an-Nafsu al Muæma`innah as subject of the other purposes and as constituent of al Ummah al-mukallafah bish-shahadah `ala al-`Alamin, obtains as following:
a-The form of `Umran is related to the educational (the purpose of Reason) and political (the purpose of `Irdh) systems able to produce the person and the community excluded of Al-Khusr .
b-The substance of `Umran is related to the economical (the purpose of property) and social (the purpose of Religion) systems able to produce the person and the community excluded of Khusr.
B- In Jihād the substance of `Umran is anterior to the form, because it is concerned essentially by the application of the abstract theoretical and practical knowledge as Tawasee bis-Sabr. The concrete dimension of the purpose of an-Nafsul-Muæma`innah, or al-mustakhalfah as subject of the other purposes and as constituent of the Ummah al-Amirah bil-Ma`aruf wan-Nahiyah `An al-Munkirobtains by the same mechanism, but in the reverse direction: first the substance, than the form.

F. Conclusion and propositions:
The evolution of Islamic Fiqh (divine source of civil, personal and constitutional law) has come out to the theory of the Shari’ah as spirit and ethics of legislation rather than codes and laws. As a matter of fact the term divine Shari`ah may be understood either materially or formally. This vision -which is the narrower one- materially, coincides with the instauration of disguised spiritual authority, represented by the Fuqha`, but without infallibility, the spirituality being that of the laws not of the lawyers. The material character means the application of texts not in function of the universal meaning, but in function of the meaning they have had in concrete situation whose architypical privilege is generally advocated for, by the Sunnah.
This vision is, formally, the way out of the crisis of our culture. The divine Shari`ah is not reducible to the traditional fiqh. It may be generalizable, to every legislation grounded on the universal purposes and priniciples, common to the inexhaustible meaning of the revelation and the evolution of rational interpretation of the laws of human and natural phenomena under the light shed by the moral principle of al-Qur`an al Karim, the Ummah being the unique spiritual authority and the fuqaha`, simple technocratic advisers, as any other scholar and expert.
Indeed, the religious character is of two kinds:
1- It may mean the Shari`ah in its materiality i.e. the laws whose legislator is God or the Prophet.
2- It may mean the holiness of the law established by those who believe in the truth and values the religion has defined as roots of the terrestrial life which is a preparatory phase to the celestial life: the spirit of the community of believers is the spirit of the law. This is the meaning presupposed by the closure of Revelation (Wahy) and the abolition of religious authority.
This is why Ibn Khaldun believes in the absolute adequacy between religious and rational principles of good governance. The binary structure of the political power does not depend upon the nature of the regime: the moral and material dimensions of the state are necessary. These dimensions can be aware of or not. When the people are aware of the distinction the power will be balanced and it can never be dictatorial. This is why we must reestablish the Khilafah as defined by Ibn Khaldun who has studied its evolution and the sharing of power between the Khalifah and the Sultanate. We have to define the modes of election of the Khalifah and the mode of alternation of the head of government which is the chief of the party of majority (by peaceful election and by not military coup)
Ibn Khaldun has defined two double meanings of Istikhlaf: the theoretical and practical each of which is abstract and applied. The abstract meanings are the thrush of the moral civil society, and the applied ones the thrush of the material civil society. The core of Islamic crisis is related to the misunderstandings of these meanings by the theological, philosophical, legal and mystical thought. Ibn Khaldun’s equation between theoretical and practical knowledge might be the way to transcending the antagonistic reduction of either ontology to axiology (which is the final telos of the Qadarite vision) or axiology to ontology (which is the final telos of the Jabrite vision).
In order to get rid of this opposition grounded in the opposition of Rational and Revealed knowledge, Ibn Khaldun eliminates the opposition itself by virtue of his concept of man (whose being is essentially axiological because the man is the very desire of auto-deification). By virtue of his being what he is, the man is evaluator as will of domination because will of absolute sovereignty. This is why Ibn Khaldun grounds his dialectic vision of the force as "being-value" without which no realization of value is possible. He philosophically translates the Ash`arite solution which transcends the opposite reduction (Qadarism/Jabrism) by the new definition of Politics as equation of the concept of Istikhlaf with the concept of Kasb. The human knowledge and action are individually and collectively the human concretization of sovereignty and therefore the concrete meaning of universal Khilafah: the man per se is Khalifah.
Many texts of al Muqddimah, underline this conception. The text related to the consequences of the oppressive education, and the text related to the decline of nations as effect of the lack of sovereignty are the more eloquent ones. If the positive resistance to domination is impossible, the negative one may, in these two cases, end up in a moral and even physical autodestruction. Our current crisis is related to the phases of our renewal in the two last centuries. We can distinguish five phases defining the essentials of the current Islamic situation, and its implications in the universal history:
a- the first phase: before the direct colonization (the second half of 18th and the first half of 19th centuries);
b- the second phase: the colonization (the second half of the 19th century);
c- the third phase: the war of national liberation (the first half of the 20th century);
d- the national reconstruction (the second half of the 20th century) ;
e- the struggle for Islamic unification and the strategy of Great Middle East and enlargement of NATO as concealment on a real implementation by Us and Israel of the strategy of clash of civilization (since the break down of the Soviet Union).
So far, Muslims are wittingly or unwillingly, refusing to honestly define their precise moral and political situation. The relation of our present to the western present and to our proper past cannot cease to be pathological unless a universal bridge enables us to integrate without complex the human experiences, which have overrun our moral and political development. Any attachment to specificity opposed to the universal values is pathological and considered by Islam itself bad Taqleed. This Khaldunian proposition may be disputable, but it can constitute a good starting point.
As consequence of the reinstatement of a spiritual mediation represented by a religious authority (infallible in principle for Shi`ite schools, and de facto for Sunnites) the Islamic continual reformation has failed. Our current attitude towards the West is not unique in its species, but the very structure of our historic attitude to other cultures. This attitude has, doubtless, a positive aspect: openness and universality. But when a culture is overwhelmed by the exogenous influence, it can never develop a proper backbone. This is why its fundamental characteristics cannot obtain in their full meaning and implications.
The reactive attitude of the religious elite and the irrational behavior of the political elite have always entailed a false conception of the principle of accommodation to reality. The simple adoption of the solutions other cultures have invented, instead of the real creations Islam enjoined, seems so far the dominant characteristic of our thought and institutions.
We have tried to demonstrate the insufficiency of any explication grounded on an accusation of Muslims as such. As defense against the Orientalists who accuse Islam, the alternative accusation of Muslims in general is neither fair, nor a satisfactory explanation of the Muslim situation. The Islamic Revolution itself is not immune of responsibility. The Islamic vision of the nature and role of theoretical and practical thought and their institutions was very radical and genuine to be understood by the first generation of Muslims. We should renounce the belief that the first generation was more apt than its successors ones to understand Islam and to achieve the required conditions of its revolution.
Islam itself has been gradually revealed and consequently it can not be but gradually understood and implemented. The historic experience of fourteen centuries in theoretical and practical thought and in their concrete applications and institutions is absolutely necessary, in order to understand some of the essential implications of this great and genuine revolution. The solutions proposed by our philosophers continue to be only discursive. They were not aware of the modalities, which will render the continual reformation a real historical action.
The obstacles continue to be double after the Sahwa, which has not succeeded in implementing the deep meaning of the civil society as defined by Islam. Our fuqaha‛ are nowadays trying to become politicians without sound awareness of the epistemological and ethical problems entailed by Islamic theoretical revolution as foundation of the divine legislation defended by the moral civil society[44]. Our politicians are likewise trying to become thinkers without sound awareness of the political and ontological systems entailed by the Islamic practical revolution, as foundation of the divine vice-regency defined by the material civil society.
The reformation of our theoretical thought and its institutions should lead to two urgent measures. The first is a doctrinal reformation according to which Usul ad-Din must become an absolute liberal Philosophy of Being or research of Truth and Beauty. It must not continue to be an impotent defense of the dogmatic credo the sole result of which is the spiritual disorder. The second is an institutional reformation according to which the educational and political systems must be liberal and universal.
The reformation of our practical thought and its institutions should also lead to measures of the same kind. The first is a doctrinal reformation according to which Uåul al-Fiqh must become an absolute liberal Philosophy of Value or research of Justice and Efficiency. It must cease to be an impotent defense of the dogmatic legal methodology, the unique result of which is the civil disorder. The second is an institutional reformation according to which the economical and social systems must be just and ethical.
We believe that we have shown that what happens now in Islamic world is simple and pure consequences of both these endogenous and exogenous factual and intellectual history and the current international conditions in which the Islamic renaissance is obtaining. If the European states had understood we cannot continue to perceive Islam as it has been perceived in the medieval age. Neither USA nor Israel, however, does. If we succeed to help Muslims in the renewal of their civilization the outcome will be beneficial of all Humankind. Let us give time to time in order to permit a sure and pacific evolution of Islamic heritage and society.
The consequences of the two World Wars have convinced the world powers that the peace and social progress cannot be but global. The role played by the USA in the democratization and unification of Europe has helped Western powers win the Cold War. Can we hope that the same role can help the Mankind win the peace and social progress? This is the deep meaning of a possible cordial entente between West and East in order to avoid the clash of civilization and deepen the condition of peace and social progress? If the motivation of the same entente cordiale has been the vision of Europe as Origin and forefather of USA civilization, we can pretend that the Middle East is the Origin of the Origin and the forefather of all forefathers of the civilization of which the USA pretend to be the mouthpiece.

































DAFTAR PUSTAKA

Al-Ghazali, Ihya’ “Ulum al-Din, Translated by Al Haj Fazul Karim, Sind Sagar Academic, Lahore, Pakistan, 1982.
--------, Tahafut al Falasifah
--------, Fadha’ih al Batiniyyah
Hegel, Phaenomenologie des Geistes, Werke, 8 stw s.591:”
Ibn Kaldun, Muqaddimah, Beirut: Dar al Kitab al-Lubnani, 1967
Plato, Republica, Book 8. Politica, Book VI.1.1316b35-1317a10.
[1] The project of al-Ghazali was a pre-critical diagnosis. His refusal of the alien factor paradoxically ended up founding a new synthesis of philosophical and religious thought. He tried to liberate our thought from the conflict between fiqh and tasawwuf and between Kalām and Philosophy. His double critique of Sunna’s reduction of religion to Fiqh and Shi’a’s reduction to Politics represents a good starting for the renewal of the critique of sahwa. The project of Ibn Rushd aimed at a restorative diagnosis. His adoption of the alien factor has paradoxically ended up to a foundation of an absolute separation between the religion as “`ammi” thought and the philosophy as khaåi thought. He adopted Aristotelian philosophy as final and universal knowledge.
[2] Ibn Taymiyyah’s project is a critical theoretical diagnosis aiming at overcoming the obstacle of Metaphysics imposed by Ibn Rushd as unique universal theoretical knowledge and Pantheism imposed by Ibn `Arbi as unique universal religion. An alternative theoretical epistemology and ontology was his first concern, but his deep purpose was a new foundation of ethics and religious faith in human freedom and responsibility. Although he practices the superior theoretical Philosophy and Mystics, he excommunicates the factors whereby philosophical and mystical thought provides the thought with a proper historical efficacy. A sterile religious enlightenment cannot but exclude the technical and symbolic efficacies of human reason i.e. science and technical crafts on one hand and esthetics and symbolic efficacy on the other. Ibn Khaldân’s project is an immediate critical practical diagnosis aiming at an overcoming of the obstacle of Meta-history imposed by the Shi`i vjsion and Ibn `Arabi’s mysticism as unique universal practical knowledge. The alternative practical epistemology and axiology was his first concern. Although he practices the superior practical Philosophy and Mystics he excommunicates the factors whereby the philosophical and mystical thought provides the thought with a proper historical efficacy. Sterile religious and scientific enlightenments without technical and symbolic efficacies of reason were the unique result possible of a renewal grounded by Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Khaldun, on objective and subjective reductions of Ijtihad and Jihad. These are the deep reasons of the failure of the critical school. They may constitute the principal causes of the shortcomings of the Åaäwa, which was profoundly inspired by the critical role of these two philosophers.
[3] This principle is universal: the distance between the potential and the actual is not a distance between two real entities, but a distance between an ideal entity which is nowhere realized and a real potential entity. This phenomenon is twofold: the ethical ideal, for the moral action and the theoretical ideal, for the technical action. The theoretical reason produces through its theoretical imagination an esthetical and technical vision of the being and the practical reason produces through its practical imagination an ethical and political vision of the value. These are the transcendent conditions of civilizational creation. The two forms of Ideal are not simple dreams invented by human imagination. They are the trace of the Divine transcendence. When these Ideals are identified with real entities (Current West and Islamic Past as Ideal) they become source of Idolatry: the divine transcendence would be materialized in idols. This is the real Shirk. The Muslims, both secularist and religious parties, are Mushrikun. They cannot be independent and consequently they are unable to be creative in any level of the theoretical and practical thought, let alone in their symbolic and institutional applications. Our current being is thus reduced to an absolute ontological dependece. The unique possibility of spiritual and temporal liberation must stem from the deepening of Islamic revolutions: the deep meanings of Ijtihād and Jihād.
[4] Euphemistically called modernization: Tahdith .
[5] Euphemistically called authentication: Ta’seel .
[6] The unity of a community is first and foremost a spiritual and moral principle. Its virtue and power are testified by its phenomenal manifestation i.e. the cultural, economical and political unities. We can measure the quantitative strength of the former by the extension of the latter. But its qualitative virtue can be measured solely by the active action of innovation and creation of the community and of the persons who constitute it. Only some traces of the qualitative dimension of Islamic principle continue to keep the Muslims unite. The qualitative principle itself seems to have faded away. It must be revived. The search for the theoretical conditions of this revivification is the purpose of all modern Islamic authentic thought.
[7]We can define the architectonic Islamic sciences by the outspoken formulation of the antagonistic definition of two couples of disciplines: Falsafah and Kalām on one hand, and Tasawwuf and Fiqh on the other. These two couples have succeeded a mutual neutralization. Our first concern in this paper is the mutual neutralization of the first couple. Indeed, Kalam was reduced to a negative philosophy stemming from an insipid advocating of some formulations of the religious dogma. Falsafa was reduced to the opposite: a negative theology stemming from an insipid advocating of the some formulations of metaphysic dogma. The theoretical reason became an ideological attorney whose unique task was the defense of the existent doxa without any ambition to seek the truth. How can we seek the truth when we believe that we possess its final formulation? But how can we be true Muslims if we don’t see that this belief means the absolute negation of al-Ghayb? The seeking of truth is infinite because the Ghaib is impossible to exhaust. This is why the prophet Ibrahim, has not given a final answer to his question: his question is related to the essence of God, the faith in his existence being beyond all forms of doubt.
[8] It may be exogenous as it is the case in Islamic world where an exogenous civil society is substituted to it endogenous one. This substitution is imposed by an alliance between the alien intervention and the alienated elite, which has decided to impose and precipitate a social progress, which has not had enough time to does not mach with the cultural heritage.
[9] Plato, Republica, Book 8. The development of the political life is descendent. The descendent succession has been defined by the scheme of the regimes as systematically determined by Aristotle in his Politics. The Greek classification common to Plato and Aristotle is founded on two principles: the number of governing and their morality. The application of the first principle produces three regimes: one governing person, some governing persons, all citizens participate to the governing body. The application of the second double the number of regimes: either good or bad. Thus, we have : three good regimes: Kingship, Aristocracy, Republic and three bad ones: Dictatorship, Oligarchy and Democracy. No doubt that there are many other nuances in this calssification due to the combination and overlap of this simples kinds of constitutions, as Aristotle has affirmed, in Politica, Book VI.1.1316b35-1317a10.
[10] The world being eternal, the corruption cannot be but infinite, by cyclical repetition.
[11] The world being temporal and will come at an end before the Day of Judgement.
[12] Hegel, Phaenomenologie des Geistes, Werke, 8 stw s.591:” Das Ziel das absolute Wissen order der sich als Geist wissende Geist hat zu seinem Wege die Errinnerung der Geister wie si an ihnen sebst sind und die Organisation ihres Riechs’ vollbringer. Ihre Aufbewahrung nach der Seite ihres freien in der Form der Zufaelligkeit erscheinender Daseins ist de Geschichte nach der Seite ihrer begriffenen Organisation aber die Wissenschaft des erscheinenden Wissens; biede zusammen die begriffene Geschichte bilden die Erinnerung und die Schadelstaette des absoluten Geistes die Wirklichkeit Wahrheit und Gewissheit seines Thrones ohne den er das leblose Eisname waere”.
[13] Modern optimism as represented by Hegel (the absolute knowledge and liberation) and Marx (the absolute justice and liberation).
[14] Post modern pessimism as represented by Heidegger (The hope that a God save the men) or worse indifferentism represented by Rorty (The equivalence of all worldviews and final vocabularies).
[15] This is why they are of two kinds: the religious groups (the ash’arit or Ikhwan muslimun and the Wahabi or the Salafi ) and the secular groups ( the Arab nationalists and the Social-internationalists ).
[16] This euphemism has only one intention: to veil the definition of Islam and essentially of its Arabic trend as the Enemy of the western civilization as conceived of in the theory of the clash of civilization. The confirmation of this reading is found in the expansion of NATO and the encirclement of the area by its military bases and activities. There is no need to indicate that this is not the unique motivation of these belligerent attitudes: the domination of the sources of energy and the ways of communication between Orient and Occident which are essentially situated in our land are the underpinning of these inimical vision of the relationship between Muslims and Us.
[17] This is the essential distinction between Sunnah and Shi’ah.
[18] This is the essential distinction between Sunni and Mu’tazili (= those who go astray from the Sunni party). The principle of the separation is the following: if the definition of good and evil and the government are not a divine Right it should be founded either on force or on reason. The Mu’tazili are those who think that it should be grounded on reason and on force. The separation of the two components of the Sunni political power was the final stage of the constitutional evolution whose out put was the separation of these two components. The Sultan will represent the temporal power and the Khalifah the spiritual one but not in the meaning of an infallible spiritual authority: the two best instanciation of this model is the Buweiheed (in which the sultan is Shi`i and the Khalifah is Sunni!) and Saljukeed Sultanates. It is rather a symbolic power as the Queen of England. The real problem is that the sultan is not elected as a chef of government but imposed by his 'Asabiyya generally related to the military force of the Khalifate.
[19] This is the essential distinction between Shii and Khariji (those who go astray from the Shii party). The principle of the separation is the following: if the definition of the good and evil and the government are divine right it should be the right grounded on the soundness of the faith and not on the appurtenance to a cast of a pedigree.
[20] Al-Ghazali, Tahafut al Falasifah as refutation of the metaphysical dimension of the rational theoretical knowledge defined by him as an ideological investment of the theoretical thought in order to impose an alternative paradigm of intellectual progress in complete contradiction with the cultural heritage of Islamic civilization.
[21] Al-Ghazal, Fadha’ih al Batiniyyah as refutation of the metahistorical dimension of the rational practical knowledge defined by him as an ideological investment of the practical thought in order to impose an alternative paradigm of social moral progress in complete contradiction with the cultural heritage of Islamic civilization .
[22] Al-Ghazali, Ihya’ “Ulum al-Din, :” "They (The 'Ulama) duped the people to believe that there is no other science than that of Fiqh (Jurisprudence)…They say that there is no learning except that of Munazara or debates. The present learned man cherishes hope to victory over his adversary and seeks means to make him silent. Or they informed the people that there is no learning except the science of scholastic theology by help of which a speaker seeks to influence the mind of the public. They see no other science except these three sciences. The sciences of the next world(=Tasawwuf) and the learning of the sages of early times(=Philosophy) have disappeared from the people and the learning, which was described by God in his Holy Book as theology, wisdom, light and guidance, has been immerged in the deepest recess of forgetfulness." Ghazali, Ihya, Revival of Religious Learning, Translated by Al Haj Fazul Karim, Sind Sagar Academic, Lahore, Pakistan, 1982, vol.1, pp.9-10.

[23] This text defines the relationship between his science and Fiqh is clear Ibn Kaldun, The Muqaddimah, Dar al Kitab al-Lubnani, Beyrouth (3rd. ed. 1967) p.64
[24] Istikhlaf means the designation of the Man as vice-regent of God in Earth.
[25] This means a liberal educational reformation, which has been proposed by Ibn Khaldun as ultimate end of his Muqaddimah.
[26] Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, III, 50, pp.137-8 (translated by Franz Rozenthal, Princeton University Press, SP of SE, New Jersey 1980).
[27] ‘Asabiyyah means, as translated by Rosenthal, the group feeling. This translation is a happy one because is let the term group without more specification. The group may be natural (tribal groups), or religious (confessions and nominations) or political (Parties ).
[28] The basic hygienic conditions of Islamic revolution materialize this difficulty more than any other further commentary: the hygienic vision of the body, as condition of the religious obligations is absolutely impossible to meet in the Islamic life, without a new vision of the city and the social organizations.
[29] The thoughts and institutions borrowed are not “`ala an-Nafyil-asle” or “`ala al-Bara`a al-Asliyyah” i.e. according to a natural state; but they are a cultural product which expresses a vision of an “objektives Geist” the adoption of which needs analysis and interpretation. Every Istiåäāb al Äāl is therefore wittingly or unwittingly a spiritual dismissal of one’s proper intellectual and ethical effort, when operated without being preceded by a philosophical investigation.
[30] This categorical statement has nothing to do with the negation of genuine Islamic thought. It concerns the historical forms of alleged philosophical schools like Ikhwan as-Åafa‛, or the historical behavior of the political and legal elites who have adopted the existent institutions without seeking to fructify the concepts defined by this very genuine Islamic thought, which has been ignored or neglected, provided it offered any far fetched justification of the borrowing . The first concern was the urgent response to the improvised situations and consequently the refusal of any serious theoretical foundation of the institutional requirements of the Islamic Revolution. They have forgotten that the theoretical foundation of the Islamic Revolution (Mekkan Qur’an) has lasted almost 10 years before the beginning of the practical implementation of this theoretical vision (Medinean Qur’an).
[31] This definition of Uåâl ad-Din reduced to the defensive Kalām has prompted Ibn Khaldân to dismiss it. This “`Ilm” is no more necessary, because the `Aqádah after its domination needs no more to be defended.
[32] This eclectic syncretism in Uåâl al Dán and in Uåâl al Fiqh adopted by the reformers has aggravated the problem for two reasons. First, because the adoption has a unique motivation: to help the continual intellectual and institutional borrowing of alien sources and hence to substitute the innovation by the openness to alien influences. Second, every synthesis of kalām schools produces another school, and every synthesis of fiqh doctrines adjuncts another doctrine. Thus this syncretism will never resolve the problem of the theoretical and practical taäráf.
[33] Al `Asr: والعصر* إن الانسان لفي خسر* إلا الذين آمنوا وعملوا الصالحات وتواصوا بالحق وتواصوا بالصبر
[34] Historically the two oppositions have practically disappeared, even if they marginally lasted in some peripheral Islamic countries. But the core of their thought have been adopted by the two great parties of Islam: Ash`arism and Bahshamism stemmed from this adoption of the mu`tazilitism’s vision by Sunna and Shi`a: the role of theoretical Reason and theoria. Hanbalism and Isma`islism stemmed form the adoption by them of Kharijism’s vision: the role of practical reason and action.
[35] The five possibilities of faith in relation of which Islam define itself proposing an Irja`I attitude towards their evaluation, in order to ground the principle of religious tolerance are defined in this verse: الحج 17:" إن الذين آمنوا والذين هادوا والصابئين والنصارى والمجوس والذين أشركوا إن الله يفصل بينهم يوم القيامة إن الله على كل شيء شهيد"
[36] These two concepts are defined in `Ali `Imran: Tahreef as limit concept of theoretical thought construed as arbitrary epistemological Interpretation and Jahiliyya as limit concept of practical thought construed as arbitrary axiological Interpretation.
[37] The terms Book and Nubuwah are not haphazardly accompanied by the terms Hikma or Hukm in all qur`anic verses. The Book and Nubuwah hint to the revealed knowledge or the super natural source of our knowledge of Shari`a. The Hikma and Hukm hint to the natural knowledge or to the natural source of our knowledge of Æabi`ah. Being the final formulation of the Universal Religion which is one in all historic religions, the Qur`an must be a reminder of the two sources without pretending to be an alternative substitute to the investigation of each of them in the five subject matter defined in it: the nature, the shari`a, the human history, the person, and the book itself as “‛ayat” or “kalimat” Allah.
[38] We use this concept in its Kantian meaning: rational foundation of any given beyond its factual existence.
[39] We continue the philosophical presentation of the two dimensions of reason. We begin with the theoretical aspect. Religiously, the practical aspect has the preeminence. But our analysis of the concept of Ijtihād is conceived of by comparison with the concept of Jihād: this why we apply the five dimensions introducing in both two comparatives (Kabir and Åaghir) as median between their two superlatives (Akbar and Asghar) connotations.
[40] Al-`Asr: الذين آمنوا.... وتواصوا بالحق.
[41] Al-`Asr:وعملوا الصالحات.....وتواصوا بالصبر .
[42] These five essential attributes are: existence, life, knowledge, power and will. The existence being, for God, identical with the essence, it represents the very reality of God: الذات. These attributes constitute the ends the means of which are the purposes of Shari`ah. So, man can be khalifah because he has a quantum of these essential attributes: existence, life, knowledge, power and will. The respective purposes of Shari`ah are: Nafs, Religion, Reason, Property, and Honor. Without full existence, superior life, knowledge, real power, and free will, Nafs, Religion, Reason, Property and Honor have neither material nor actual reality.
[43] This is why these purposes are both Human Rights and Human Duties. They are Rights towards the religious and political authorities. They are duties of every person towards itself, the community and God.
[44] The moral civil society is a notion we have coined in order to define the role of social self-defense of the ends of superior spiritual life i.e. the purposes of Shari`ah as both Rights and Duties. The material civil society corresponds to the social self-defense of the means of this same superior spiritual life, i.e. the conditions of possibilities of these Rights and Duties. Civil society with this double connotation exists as national and international institution. At the national level it protects the citizen against the abuses of the national spiritual and temporal authorities. At the international level it protects nations and minorities against the abuses of the hegemonic imperialisms.