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

B) Portrait of these new reforming intellectuals

Our subject concerning the image returned by the press, it acts to treat in this part the figures which, among those which claim in a place of reformer, reached this statute in « landscape French médiatico-intellectual ». They are thus primarily rationalist and liberal reformers, heirs mainly to critical reformism, gathered around the concept of « new thinker » forged by Rachid Benzine. This new class of intellectuals, impromptu renovating of the Koranic text by an economic situation the there encouraging one, have a double culture : Islamic and Western. The apparent heterogeneity of the courses masks it a real uniformity of the new interpretation of Coran proposed ?

1) Various courses ?

At first sight, these néo-reformers of the Islam, whose list here is not claimed exhaustive, have few joint things. Chronologically, we can notice that Mohammed Talbi  (1921) and Mohammed Arkoun (1928) are to some extent the precursors, elder new thinkers. The others were born in the decades 1940 and 1950: Fatima Mernissi (1940), Abdelmajid Charfi (1942), Nasr Abou-Zeid (1943), Youssef Seddik (1943), Abdul Karim Soroush (1945), Abdou Filali-Ansary (1946), Abdelwahab Meddeb (1946), Malek Chebel (1953), and Farid Esack (1957). Federator of the group, Rachid Benzine (1971) is the youngest child. Some other figures, like the Pakistani Fazlur Rahman (1919-1988), died but tend to being presented in a retroactive way like posthumous figures of this new Moslem reformism.

Geographically, these intellectuals seem reformers « interior » of Islam by their birth. The near total come from colonized in the past Moslem countries. The Maghrebian countries are largely represented, and it « school of Tunis of the interpretation » is with the point of the movement (Mohammed Talbi, Abdelmajid Charfi, Mohammed Charfi, Youssef Seddik, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Fethi Benslama,) : « Tunisia is today one of the grounds of Islam where are made hear the most voices which call some with a new approach of the religious phenomenon^72(*). »

But Algeria also produced its thinkers (Mohammed Arkoun, Malek Chebel), just like Morocco (Abdou Filali-Ansary, Fatima Mernissi, Rachid Benzine) or Egypt (Nasr Hamid Abou-Zeid).  The others come from different geographical spheres but have as a common point to have lived their childhood within a community of religious culture Islamic, like Abdul Karim Soroush (Iran) or Farid Esack (minority  indo-Pakistani of South Africa).

Other figures provide an important professional work for a liberal reform of Islam and have more or less a profile corresponding to that of the new thinkers. But their visibility in the press, in particular because of the barrier of the language, is completely unimportant in France and they cannot thus be compared to this new caste of media intellectuals^73(*).

If they thus resemble each other little by their origins, these reformers present an unquestionable analogy in their intellectual course. Many of these characters leave their native land to go to study in Occident. Nasr Abou-Zeid leaves to study in the United States in Philadelphia, while others like Fazlur Rahman and Abdoul Karim Soroush are found in England.

But France is also a large hearth of training of these new thinkers. According to Mohammed Mestiri, president of the French office of the IIIT (International Institute of the Islamic Thought), « UNESCO classifies France in second position, after the United States, in the capacity to accommodate the exile of the Moslem knowledge^74(*) ». For this reason Jamel-Eddine Bencheikh goes even until affirming that « modern Islam will be born in France », since « in this country, it is perfectly possible to choose forms of social, economic life and policy which do not contravene basically the inspiration of prophetic preaching^75(*) ». Thus, the great figures of this new caste of Moslem intellectuals, like Mohammed Arkoun, Mohammed Talbi, Fethi Benslama, Malek Chebel, or Abdelwahab Meddeb, followed studies in the Hexagon. Without disavowing their faith, all these thinkers, who were in contact with Western university methodology, decide whereas the knowledge of the social sciences must guide their reform of Islam.

Perhaps if, for these reformers, the aggionarmento of Islam will come to France, it is on the other hand inconceivable for them that it comes from French researcher. For Mohammed Arkoun, the Western researcher inevitably sees his thought skewed by his subjectivity, whether it is positive or negative :

« I know more than one islamologist, «friend of Islam and Arabs», who prefers to be made the cantor of the official ideologies, of the «size» of Islam, rather than to contribute to the necessary combat of modernization of the Islamic thought. There are also those which disparage Islam systematically and force the Moslem intellectuals criticize to harden their own combat against the hegemonic model of the Occident^76(*). »

The French intellectual, it was converted, if it can help to diffuse the reform, cannot be itself a reformer of Islam. It is the case of Michel Renard, with his Review Islam of France, which is not regarded as tel. Indeed, it is not only with Islam but in the Moslem world as a whole which one asks to reform. However, as Malek Chebel explains it, «there is of valid criticism only if it is, essentially, a self-criticism^77(*). »

If the standard portrait of the reformer of Islam is thus a personality resulting from the Moslem world of which part of the intellectual formation proceeded in Occident, another characteristic also should be added : the media reformer inevitably was at one time of his life confronted with preserving oulémas. Fazlur Rahman and Abdoul Karim Soroush have, under the threat, due respectively to leave Pakistan and Iran definitively to join the United States, whereas Nasr Abou-Zeid is declared apostate by university Al-Azhar in 1995 for its Critique book of the religious speech^78(*), and it is consequently constrained to exile itself in the Netherlands. In Morocco, Fatima Mernissi saw itself prohibiting to publish his modernistic test, the political Harem^79(*). As for the Tunisian historian Abdelmajid Charfi, it is censured as soon as it treats in a critical way of the relationship between science and Islam^80(*).

The group of reformers of the Islam which is constituted also has this of remarkable which it gathers of the intellectuals who assign a role of interpretation without being a theologist with the organic direction of the term. « I specify that I am a historian and not a faqîh^81(*). I do not make a statement in the name of Islam because I do not have mandate to make it nor to here are affirm what he says on such or such question », explains Mohammed Talbi thus^82(*). On the other hand, if they did not receive all a training in theology, they claim indeed to make evolve/move the interpretation of the Koranic text by explaining its context. Coran which has, for these believing intellectuals, a dimension at the same time « history » and « transcendantale^83(*) », can thus be analyzed with the critical tools of Western modernity all while not neglecting the sacral aspect of the message.

These intellectuals thus have the same idea of the reform. It must according to them be carried out at the same time inside Islam- made by people of culture and Islamic religion- and outside this one- by the use of the tools of Western modernity.

2) A uniform reform ?

It is, as we saw, possible to detect a certain resemblance of the courses of these intellectuals whose fundamental common point is the statute of mid- intellectual Islamic, mid- Western : « These new thinkers are distinguished from other intellectuals by the fact that they acquired a good knowledge of the Islamic inheritance and that they confront it with the data of the social sciences- history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, semiotics, hermeneutics... », explains Rachid Benzine^84(*).

That is found in the type of ijtihad^85(*) which is preached, even if, of course, their ideas and convictions are not identical. The thought of these reformists wants to be a decorated Moslem thought of the tools of knowledge developed in Occident. Thus Mohammed Talbi, for example, takes care well to stress that it is « at the same time, historian and Moslem^86(*) », thus confronting two presumedly paradoxical terms. It is not anything else that wants to render comprehensible Rachid Benzine when it explains why, for the new thinkers of Islam, « to believe in the eternal relevance of the Koranic text does not want to say for believing as much in a timeless text^87(*) ». It is a divine message transmitted in a human cultural context.

Thus, although, as Nasr Hamid Abou-Zeid affirms it, « Coran [that is to say] a linguistic text, a historical text and a cultural product^88(*) », the new thinkers refuse to call into question the dogma of the ijaz^89(*) : Coran is imitable as an Arab text, but it is not it as a fruit of a divine revelation containing a divine knowledge. Its superiority thus lies in its contents rather than in its style.

Subtlety thus lies in coherence in the fact of regarding the message of Coran as an at the same time cultural product and of divine nature. Since nature transcendantale of the transmitter is not called into question, it is well the receiver of the message which is analyzed scientifically through the study of the context of the Revelation. The new thinkers thus raise the problems of the relationship between the Islamic faith and the reason while trying to reconcile both. It is this delicate nuance which gives sound « air of family » with all the new thinkers of Islam. She can be synthesized by this thought of Mohammed Talbi :

« The renovating ones I am, do not reject the contribution of the social sciences like the history, sociology or anthropology. But if they are attached to best modern world, freedom, justice, the tolerance, they adhere at the same time to the entirety of the message of Coran which they read in adequacy with our time. On the other hand, for the islamologists and these intellectuals whom I call «desislamized», Coran is a human creation, a completely desacralized cultural text of which they reduce the approach to the only social sciences. Their thought is sizeable, but it is not a believing thought^90(*). »

The balance is delicate thus between the will to dissociate Western thought and the need to borrow some of its scientific tools : « It would be necessary that the Moslems cease confusing the political dispute with the Occident and the indebted projections of knowledge primarily in this same Occident », explains Mohammed Arkoun^91(*). It is true that the grid of thought adopted by the new thinkers, in spite of a posted prudence, appears very rationalist, with the risk to curl the caricature of positivism sometimes. While distinguishing what can be analyzed scientifically, the new thinkers make return Islam in a Western interpretative diagram. For example, whereas Fethi Benslama carries out a psychoanalytical study of Coran^92(*), the anthropologist Malek Chebel analyzes the place of the individual- concept in the center of European humanistic philosophy- in the Islamic religion^93(*). One of the twenty-seven proposals of its Proclamation for Islam of the Lights consists even with « to affirm the superiority of the reason on any other form of thought and belief^94(*) ». This will to mainly analyze Coran with the tools resulting from the Western history is found among all other new thinkers, like the philosopher Youssef Seddik, who étydue the hellenistic influence on the Koranic text^95(*), or Abdelmajid Charfi, which reflected much on the historicity of the divine message^96(*).

The very rationalist vision of these reformers, in spite of some points of divergence, is thus rather homogeneous. It is legitimate that it can be disputed by reforms wanting to be more endogenous with Islam and less influenced by grids of thoughts close to those present in Occident. If Rachid Benzine tries to evacuate a semantic confusion not by introducing a new caste « reformers », but of « thinkers » of Islam, force is to note that this nuance of vocabulary is not retained by the French press. Only are presented like potential reformers of the history those which, we saw it, preach a vision positivist of Islam. The French public opinion, whose French media are at the same time the reflection and the engine, with the characteristic to await Islam an evolution similar to that which could occur in its own Christian ground history. The references to outstanding historical events are frequent. « Islam did not know 1789 yet^97(*) », us are said. Thus copying the future ideal of Islam on the past of Christianity, the reformers, representatives of « the Islam of the lights^98(*) », are waited in a Messianic way like « Galileo^99(*) » of « Erasme^100(*) », of « Luther^101(*) », of « Descartes^102(*) », or of « Spinoza^103(*) » of Islam. Yes, Islam must make sound « The Vatican II^104(*) » !

However, it is only part of the Moslem reformers which returns in this preconceived mould. This is why they are almost always the same actors who illustrate the files of intellectuals claiming to modernize the interpretation of Islam. To leave in particular the book of Rachid Benzine, the new thinkers of Islam, the globality of the media speech accepted only one caste of « good reformers »: «New thinkers of Islam » in the New Observer^105(*), « The renovating ones of Islam » in the World of the religions^106(*), them « new thinkers and old critics » in the Barber Magazine^107(*). The intellectuals who form part of it defend a reform, we saw it, very reconciling with the universal principles developed in Occident. In the challenge of the adaptation of Islam to Western modernity, they privilege, according to data's which we previously provided, the criterion of compatibility to that of singularity. For them, the reform must tend towards a universalism by correction of certain Western modernistic ideas.

* ⁷² Rachid Benzine, new thinkers of Islam, Albin Michel, 2004, p. 215.

* ⁷³ Among these intellectuals of the shade, we can inter alia quoting the Tunisian linguist Moncef Benabdeljalil, the Egyptian philosopher Hassan Hanafi, the Indian thinker Asghar Ali Engineer, Malaysian Amina Wadud, the South-African Imam Ebrahim Moosa, or the Sudanese lawyer Abdullahi Year-Na' im. 

* ⁷⁴ Maintenance with Amara Bamba with Mohammed Mestiri, Saphirnet, 19/5/2003.

* ⁷⁵ Jamel Eddine Bencheikh, «  Modern Islam will be born in France  », the New Observer, 22/2/1996.

* ⁷⁶ Maintenance with Henri Tincq with Mohammed Arkoun, the World, 5/5/1992.

* ⁷⁷ Malek Chebel, Expresses for an Islam of the Lights, Hachette, 2004, p. 19.

* ⁷⁸ Nasr Abou-Zeid, Criticizes religious speech, Actes Southern, 1999, 220 p.

* ⁷⁹ Fatima Mernissi, the political Harem, Albin Michel, 1987, 293 p.

* ⁸⁰ Catherine Simon, «  The State and Islam under the wing of the censure  », the World, 18/10/1996.

* ⁸¹  = «  specialist in jurisprudence  ».

* ⁸² Mohammed Talbi, Plea for a modern Islam, Editions of the Paddle, 2004 (1ère edition  : 1998), p105.

* ⁸³ Ibid, p75.

* ⁸⁴ Rachid Benzine, «  Research orientations  », The World of the Religions, September-October 2003

* ⁸⁵ = «  effort of interpretation  ».

* ⁸⁶ Mohammed Talbi, Plea for a modern Islam, op.cit., p106.

* ⁸⁷ Rachid Benzine, «  An Islamic modernity  », in the New Observer, out of the ordinary, «  New thinkers of Islam  », April/May 2004.

* ⁸⁸ Rachid Benzine, new thinkers of Islam, Albin Michel, 2004, p. 181.

* ⁸⁹ = «  inimitability of the revealed Book  ».

* ⁹⁰ Maintenance of Serge Lafitte with Mohammed Talbi, Writings, July 2004.

* ⁹¹ Mohammed Arkoun, «  An Islam of the Lights  », in the New Observer, out of the ordinary, «  New thinkers of Islam  », April/May 2004.

* ⁹²  Fethi Benslama, the psychoanalysis the Islam proof, Flammarion, 2004, 334 p.

* ⁹³ Malek Chebel, the Subject in Islam, Threshold, 2002, 294 p.

* ⁹⁴ Id., Expresses for an Islam of the Lights, Hachette, 2004, p 29-36.

* ⁹⁵ Youssef Seddik, We never read Coran, the Paddle, 2004, 298 p.

* ⁹⁶ Abdelmajid Charfi, Islam between the message and the history (translated from Arabic), Albin Michel, 2004, 230 p.

* ⁹⁷ Edgar Weber and Kader Jelali, Islam in France or holy peace, Harmattan, 1992, p. 180.

* ⁹⁸ Mohammed Arkoun, «  An Islam of the lights  », in the New Observer, out of the ordinary, op.cit.

* ⁹⁹ Antoine Menusier, «  New thinkers and old critics  », the Barber Magazine, 31/1/2004.

* ¹⁰⁰ Guy Sorman, «  Coran and poverty in division  », the Barber, 29/9/2001.

* ¹⁰¹  Henri Tincq, «  A «reform» in Islam is possible  », the World, 30/4/2004.

* ¹⁰²  Qualifier employed by the political economist Gilles Kepel to indicate Nasr Abou Zeid, quoted by Ursula Gauthier, «  Islam counters modernity  ?  », the New Observer, 11/9/2003.

* ¹⁰³  Maintenance with Patricia Briel with Abdelwahab Meddeb, Time, 20/3/2004.

* ¹⁰⁴ Bernard Gorce, «  Discussion with Soheib Bencheikh  », the Cross, 30/1/1998.

* ¹⁰⁵ The New Observer, out of the ordinary, op.cit.

* ¹⁰⁶  «  The renovating ones of Islam  », The World of the religions, September-October 2003.

* ¹⁰⁷  Antoine Menusier, «  New thinkers and old critics  », op.cit.