Taha Abderrahmane's Philosophical Journey

Notes:
1) For more information on the Absolute Evil, which Taha uses to refer to the Zionist entity, viewers would find it helpful to watch the lecture titled ‘On Absolute Evil and Intellectual Sentinelship’.
2) The word “murābiṭ” originally denotes one who is stationed as a guard at a military outpost. The word “ribāṭ” (i.e., to keep watch as a sentinel) is used in the ḥadīth of the Holy Prophet ﷺ where he said: “ribāṭ for a day in the path of God is better than the entire world and what it contains.” He also said in another narration: “ribāṭ for a day and a night is better than fasting and performing night prayers for a month”. There are other narrations where the word “murābiṭ” is used, such as: “whoever dies as a murābiṭ in the path of God, he will continue to receive rewards for the good deeds that he has committed”. These terms then also evolved to denote concepts within Sufism, where “ribāṭ” means to keep vigilance against the whispers of Satan and one’s desires. It should not be lost on the viewer that Taha also hails from a city in Morocco named Rabat. Meanwhile, “thaghr” literally means frontline or post in a battlefield, as Taha is conceptualizing the work of the philosopher as some kind of intellectual warfare.
3) The first frontier mentioned by Taha, that of reason, can be seen in his early works pertaining to logic: Fī Uṣūl al-Ḥiwār and al-Lisān wa ‘l-Mizān being the essential works in this category. As for those pertaining to philosophy: Fiqh al-Falsafa and al-Ḥaqq al-ʿArabī are essential works.
4) The second frontier, that of tradition, includes essential works such as: Tajdīd al-Manhaj and Su’āl al-Manhaj.
5) The third frontier, that of modernity, includes essential works such as: Rūḥ al-Ḥadātha, Bu’s al-Dahrāniyya and Shurūd Mā Ba’da al-Dahrāniyya.
6) The fourth frontier, that of ethics, includes essential works such as: Su’āl al-Akhlāq, al-ʿAmal al-Dīnī, al-Mafāhim al-Akhlāqiyya.
7) The fifth frontier, that of Absolute Evil, is his recent work Thughūr al-Murābaṭa.
8) Taha takes (faithic) connection [waṣl] as a default principle, i.e., that continuity with the Islamic tradition [turāth] is always assumed until proven otherwise, which goes against most modernist Muslim thinkers that a “rupture” must be created and justified, e.g. ‘Ābed al-Jābiri. This is used in contrast to separation [faṣl], which is a kind of severance, fragmentation and discontinuity. One cause of this separation is the importation [naql] of foreign and non-indigenous traditions and concepts into the Islamic tradition, as they cannot find an organic fit within the Islamic tradition since they presuppose some hidden hermeneutical and methodological assumptions that are usually grounded in Western modes of rationality and (non-)ethics.
9) For more information on Taha’s conceptualization of the spirit of modernity, viewers will find it helpful to peruse his work, ‘Rūḥ al-Ḥadātha’. While one might initially be put off by the negative connotations of modernity, what Taha is doing is neutralizing the concept of modernity in its spirit, redefining it as taking charge of one’s own time and thus separating it from the popular non-neutral understanding of Western modernity and its assumptions of infinite progress.
10) The reason why Taha says denuded reason [ʿaql mujarrad] cannot independently reach the conclusion of the spiritual equivalence given in the Qur’ān, i.e. that killing one soul unjustly is equivalent to killing all of humanity, is because this refers to Taha’s tripartite classification of reason. Denuded reason stands as the lowest level of reason, being bound by logic. The second level is that of guided reason [ʿaql musaddad] which allows one to act in accordance with the Divine Legislation [sharʾ]. It is at this level of reason that one is able to accept this equivalence, as this reason implies accepting the truthfulness of Revelation. However, it is only at the highest level of reason, enhanced reason [ʿaql mu’ayyad] where one might be able to grasp the reality of this equivalence, since one aims to comprehend the inner realities of things at this level. For more information on this, refer to Taha’s work ‘al-ʿAmal al-Dīnī’.
And God and His Emissary ﷺ knows best.
Lecture delivered by Prof. Dr. Taha Abderrahmane in Doha, March 3 2024.
Full video originally uploaded by جائزة الدوحة للكتاب العربي.

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بارك الله فيكم يا سيدي وحفظ الله شيخ طه ❤

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Allah reward you and accept your efforts Aqil, I would have never been exposed to Sheikh Taha without your hard work

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Again ❤❤❤
😊

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Please don’t get a job