What Is Enlightenment?: Continuity or Rupture in the Wake of the Arab Uprisings

Political sociology has struggled with predicting the next turn of transformation in the MENA countries after the 2011 Uprisings. Arab activists did not articulate explicitly any modalities of their desired system, although their slogans ushered to a fully-democratic society. These unguided Uprisings showcase an open-ended freedom-to question after Arabs underwent their freedom-from struggle from authoritarianism. The new conflicts in Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Libya have fragmented shar’iya (legitimacy) into distinct conceptualizations: “revolutionary legitimacy,” “electoral legitimacy,” “legitimacy of the street,” and “consensual legitimacy.” This volume examines whether the Uprisings would introduce a replica of the European Enlightenment or rather stimulate an Arab/Islamic awakening with its own cultural specificity and political philosophy. By placing Immanuel Kant in Tahrir Square, this book adopts a comparative analysis of two enlightenment projects: one Arab, still under construction, with possible progression toward modernity or regression toward neo-authoritarianism, and one European, shaped by the past two centuries. Mohammed D. Cherkaoui and the contributing authors use a hybrid theoretical framework drawing on three tanwiri (enlightenment) philosophers from different eras: Ibn Rushd, known in the west as Averroes (the twelfth century), Immanuel Kant (the eighteenth century), and Mohamed Abed Al-Jabri (the twentieth century). The authors propose a few projections about the outcome of the competition between an Islamocracy vision and what Cherkaoui terms as a Demoslamic vision, since it implies the Islamist movements’ flexibility to reconcile their religious absolutism with the prerequisites of liberal democracy. This book also traces the patterns of change which point to a possible Arab Axial Age. It ends with the trials of modernity and tradition in Tunisia and an imaginary speech Kant would deliver at the Tunisian Parliament after those vibrant debates of the new constitution in 2014.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1. The Arab Uprisings: the Freedom-to Question, Mohammed D. Cherkaoui Part I: Experimenting with Social Change Chapter 2. Immanuel Kant in Tahrir Square, Mohammed D. Cherkaoui Chapter 3. Newtonian Force of the Arab Uprisings, Mohammed D. Cherkaoui and Hani Albasoos Chapter 4. The Battle for Syria: The Bloody Non-violent Protest, Mohammed D. Cherkaoui and Radwan Ziadeh Part II: Debating Reason and Modernity Chapter 5. Revolutionary Mediatization and the New Arab Civil Sphere, Mohammed D. Cherkaoui Chapter 6. The Google-Earth Democracy: The Two-Legitimacy Conflict in Egypt, Mohammed D. Cherkaoui Part III: Connecting the Arab Public Sphere to the World Chapter 7. How Do We Know What We "Know" about Politics and Reform in the Arab World?, Brian R. Calfano Chapter 8. Crafting Democracy: Political Learning as a Precondition for Sustainable Development in the Maghreb, John P. Entelis Chapter 9. Religion, Youth and Women in the Arab Region: Challenging Global Institutions and Politics of Development, Azza Karam Part IV: Predicting an Arab Age of Enlightenment Chapter 10. Democracy against Social Reform: the Arab ‘Spring’ Faces its Demons, Albena Azmanova Chapter 11. Organizing Principles for the Arab Enlightenment: Philosophical Reflections on the History of Power, Solon J. Simmons Chapter 12. The “Dialectic of Enlightenment” and the New Arab Awakening, Richard E. Rubenstein Chapter 13. An Arab Axial Age?, Mohammed D. Cherkaoui Chapter 14. Conclusion: Islamocracy or Demoslamic Politics? The New Dialectic, Mohammed D. Cherkaoui

About the Author :
Mohammed D. Cherkaoui is professor of conflict resolution and peacebuilding at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution and member of the Center for Narrative and Conflict Resolution.

Review :
The book does a good job in providing answers to the two main questions it raises: Why and in which ways the Arab Spring was a middle class phenomenon, and why and in which ways the pre-2011 traditions (authoritarianism and Islamism) reasserted themselves so forcefully, not to say violently, in the MENA countries after the uprisings of 2011. . . . The authors of this collective volume are to be congratulated for having elevated themselves above present day social sciences enslaved to the scientist myth of instrumental reason. A uniquely informative read for anyone interested in the philosophical background of the Arab uprisings, paying equal weight to Arab and Western contributions, and displaying a careful attention to the relation between daily activism and the intellectual zeitgeist associated with revolutionary action.