Linked with Islam and the Enlightenment – Between Ebb and Flow.
Abdelwahab Meddeb is a high-profile French writer of Arab origin. He was born in Tunis in 1946 and comes from a long family line of theologians and scholars. He studied art history and literature, beginning his working life as an editor for a major Paris publishing house. Between 1974 and 1988, he edited his own series of literary titles at Editions Sindbad. He has published the novels Talismano (1976) and Aya dans les villes (1999). His book The Malady of Islam (2003) gives a precise analysis of contemporary Islam. He lives in Paris. (sigt and sigt.com, scroll down).
He says: » … Because at that time, the Islamic world was home to a large, well-educated upper class which encouraged debate. Throughout the medieval period, there were renowned literary salons in major cities like Baghdad that were run by aristocratic patrons and merchants and whose sole raison d’être was to bring together Christians, Jews and various sects who did not agree at all on questions of faith. The Pope is wrong to speak of a single Islamic doctrine; there were many, and they were often the subject of open disputes. In Tunis, the capital of the Maghreb, the Sultan explicitly placed progressive theologians under the protection of the freedom of opinion and defended them against attacks by the people. Of course, the majority of simple Muslims were uneducated and hardly willing to be persuaded by the power of logic and arguments as the intellectuals hoped. Today, we have comparable Muslim masses, but there is little trace of an educated elite capable of leading the discussion … (full interview text – Islam’s heritage of violence/05/10/2006 … originally appeared in German in Die Zeit – dem Islam ist die Gewalt in die Wiege gelegt/September 21, 2006.).
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Abdelwahab Meddeb – Tunis & France
Abdelwahab Meddeb, né en 1946 à Tunis, est un écrivain et poète franco-tunisien. Directeur de la revue internationale Dédale, il enseigne la littérature comparée à l’Université Paris X. Il est aussi professeur invité dans de nombreuses universités (dont Yale et Genève). Il anime l’émission Cultures d’islam sur France Culture … (tout le texte sur wikipedia.fr).
Transatlantic Intelligencer: Barak on Hamas, Barcelona Plot, and Tariq Ramadan, on World Politics Review Exclusive, by John Rosenthal, 05 Feb 2008.
For Abdelwahab Meddeb, the Koran is the product of man. In an interview conducted by Gilles Anquetil, Abdelwahab Meddeb, the Frano-Tunisian poet and writer believes that « the return to the Mutazilites, these 9th Century rationalist theologians, is priceless. Didn’t they defend the idea of a ‘created Koran’ against those literalists who took the Koran as ‘received’? What is the ‘created Koran’ if not the belief in writings inspired by God and translated into the language of man? This human mediation implies the necessity to situate the text in the context of its proliferation and to go back to the time of its relevation, which is anthropologically outdated. Its meaning is thus relative. What happened with the Bible at the end of the 17th Century is happening with the Koran today. There are many Muslim researchers who are participating. Our role is to bring the results of this research to the largest number of people possible » … (on english Courrier International janvier 18, 2008 – a translation from Comment guérir l’islam?, on Nouvel Obs, 17 Janvier 2008).
Vidéo en français du salon du livre en Tanger: Interview de Abdelwahab Meddeb, March 3, 2007.
Vidéo en français pour son livre ‘la maladie de l’Islam‘, 1.51 min.
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