Naissance médiatique de l'intellectuel musulman en France (1989-2005)

II. The reforming intellectual of Islam

As we have just studied it, the coordination of a certain number of events to the turning of the years 1990 is the occasion to adopt a new intellectual posture. Thinkers start in France to have the advisability of expressing themselves and of reacting as Moslems. They must thus show their singularity compared to the intellectual « Westerner », historically rocked by the humans right, while marking their compatibility with a grid of considered thought dialectically opposed to their. This adequacy to be shown between the traditions Islamic and jacobine thus passes by a duty of pedagogy, of explanation of the text, even of interpretation : here how was born a new category of « mediacrats » Moslem : reformers of Islam. The majority of these intellectuals are not theologists in a strict sense term, but they assigned a role of hermeneutics of the Koranic text in order to adapt it to the current context. That it is about the question of the Islamic scarf, the Rushdie business or islamist terrorism, all the pretexts are good to launch what many names Islam a aggiornamento. With regard to the Republic and principles born of the Western history, singularity and compatibility of Islam thus form a dialectical couple which try to satisfy the Moslem reformers.

A) A new intellectual field ?

This new type of Moslem intellectual makes irruption in the media with the new visibility of questions of domestic policy (business of the veil) and external (terrorism, war of the Gulf, Rushdie business) related to Islam. But it is legitimate to wonder whether the reforming intellectual of Islam is a new figure of Moslem intellectual. Indeed, there is a tradition reformist in Islam. For example, as of VIIIe century, the current mutazilite affirms the theory of Coran created, opposed to that of incréé Coran, thus making it possible to underline the historicity of the revelation. But this school of thought is quickly rejected and it is definitively prohibited since 1017. Moreover, the difficulty of definition of arises what is a reform. For illustration, ibn Abd Al-Wahhab (1703-1792), father of the wahhabism, very rigorous version of Islam, wanted to be itself a large reformer insofar as it proposed new grids of reading and interpretation, therefore attempts at reform of Islam. As we suggested in introduction, the press thus tended to make concepts of reformism and modernism of the synonyms which they are however not.

Actually, the new reforming intellectuals are presented partly in the form of heirs to the movement reformist of Nahda, which goes from the end of XIXe at the beginning of the XXe centuries. This movement of reform, which tries to reconcile Islam and rationality, was initiated by several figures like the Indian Sayyed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), Persan Aldine Jamal Al-Afghani (1839-1897) and especially the Egyptian Mohammed Abduh (1848-1905). The heritage of this last then was the subject of a controversy between the Syrian Rachid Rida (1865-1935) and the Egyptian Ali Abderraziq (1888-1966). From a matrix reformist commune, will be born two branches very distinct from interpretation from the fact that must be the adaptation of Islam with modernity : islamist reformism on the one hand and reformism criticize on the other hand. If, since 1925, Ali Abderraziq goes very far in reformism criticizes, by denouncing the illegitimacy of the system of the caliphate and by declaring the separation of the temporal powers and religious in its work the Islam and the Bases of the capacity^63(*), work of Rachid Rida Hassan Al-Banna (1906-1949) will inspire, founder in 1928 of the Moslem Brothers, stamps Islamism, i.e. of political Islam.

Actually, certain current cleavages are explained by this conflict of historiographic and doctrinal interpretations surrounding the heritage of this early reformism. For the critical reformists, Rachid Rida has, according to words' of Rachid Benzine, « deviated » the thought of Mohammed Abduh by making it pass from one « reformism progressist with a reformism traditionalist^64(*) ». In the same way, Mohammed Arkoun distinguishes two periods in modern Islam : first of all, Nahda^65(*), i.e. awakening of the Islamic lights, then Thawra^66(*), the time of decline and the islamist deviance. On the other hand, Tariq Ramadan, which is asserted also reforming modernistic, claims on its side that Hassan Al-Banna, in fact her grandfather, are the heir-at-law to the ideas developed by Aldine Jamal Al-Afghani, Mohammed Abduh, and Rachid Rida^67(*). For him, it is well Ali Abderraziq who would have produced a thought truncated by « colonial pressure^68(*) ».

At all events, it is interesting to note that the strong opposition, between the two principal schools of reformers claiming in a place on the contemporary French intellectual scene, has a remote historical explanation. Nevertheless, we will see it thereafter, the press clearly sliced for the support for the critical branch of Moslem reformism.

To be accepted in the club very snuffed of « reformers of Islam » in the French media landscape, it is thus necessary to claim old figures reformists, but not of all. Thus, Tariq Ramadan explains :

« It would be liked that I disavow my grandfather, Hassan Al-Banna, or that «I acknowledg» my total adhesion with his thought. Either I am «an intellectual lit», or «a obscurantist», implied like my grandfather. Simple, but especially simplistic equation: not, I as many do not disavow my filiation with a man who resisted colonizations English and to Zionist, who founded 2.000 schools, 500 social centers, co-operatives of development, and which forever, all the serious studies prove it, active terrorist attacks^69(*). »

Historical filiation thus has its importance among new reforming intellectuals of Islam. But they do not want to be simply heirs to a current of thought, they also claim to exceed this heritage. There is thus on their premises a certain will to dissociate itself, as at the lexical level the title assumed suggests it of « new thinkers of Islam » by Rachid Benzine^70(*) :

« The project in which I fit is not a project of reform of Islam nor to adapt Islam to modernity. It is a question of thinking Islam with the cognitive tools of today and of making occur a modernity which is endogenous at the companies known as Moslem^71(*). »

If this néo-category of emergent intellectuals intends to exceed the strict framework of the reform of their aïeux, it is also different from it by the fact that the reformers of Nahda were primarily soufis and that they sought to be modelled on Western modernity. On their side, the new contemporary thinkers claim to be useful themselves of the tools of modernity while trying not inevitably not to copy the Occident. Moreover, the new visibility which is offered to them makes incontestably that it is about a intellectual field new good since one waits from now on them « results ». Indeed, even if it is not always explicit, the media contributed to invent the category of « new thinkers of Islam » for instrumentaliser this reform, to solve contemporary material problems. This awaited theological reform is not an end in itself but the purpose of it is to adapt Islam to its new context, in particular in its points of hang with Western civilization.

* ⁶³  Ali Abderraziq  The Islam and bases of the capacity (translated from Arabic), the Discovery, 1994 (1ère edition  : 1925  ), 177 p.

* ⁶⁴ Rachid Benzine, new thinkers of Islam, Albin Michel, 2004, p. 50.

* ⁶⁵ = «  rebirth  ».

* ⁶⁶ = «  revolution  ».

* ⁶⁷ Cf Dried up Ramadan, With the sources of the Moslem revival. From Al-Afghani with Hassan Al-Banna, one century of Islamic reformism, Bayard, 1998, 479 p.

* ⁶⁸ Is Aziz Zemmouri, Necessary to make conceal Tariq Ramadan? , The Archipelago, Paris, 2005, pp. 291-297.

* ⁶⁹ Tariq Ramadan, «  To be Moslem, to be heard  », the World, 5/11/2000.

* ⁷⁰ This denomination comes from the title of the work of Rachid Benzine, the new thinkers of Islam, op.cit. , a book which presents the majority of the Moslem intellectuals accepted like reformers by the French press.

* ⁷¹ Rachid Benzine, «  Reflection for an Islam of XXIe century  », intervention with the Meetings of Tangier, the 23 to February 27, 2005, diffused on France Culture the 15/8/2005.