Lost in Linguistics: Abdou Filali-Ansary
1 January 2012

Abdou Filali-Ansary was director and founder of the Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations (2002-2009) and the King Abdul-Aziz Foundation for Islamic Studies and Human Sciences in Casablanca, Morocco (1984-2001). He was also previously Secretary General of Mohammed V University in Rabat (1980-1984), where he taught modern philosophy.

A philosopher and Islamologist, Filali-Ansary studies the relationship between Islam and modernity. Inspired by Ali Abderrazziq’s work, which Filali-Ansary translated into English, Filali-Ansary is an advocate of secularism and liberalism. Filali-Ansary’s article for the American Journal of Democracy entitled “What is liberal Islam? The Sources of Enlightened Muslim Thought” (2003), has had a strong international impact. The article enters the debate regarding the Muslim world and the Enlightenment, highlighting this debate within the Muslim world itself. His book Islam and Laicity, the Point of View of Progressive Muslims, was published in 1996 and translated into Italian in 2003 (Castelvecchi).

Filali identifies three key moments in the development of liberal thought within the contemporary Muslim context. The first took place between 1920 and 1930, when great independent Muslim thinkers appeared, adopting critical and rational perspectives on and interpretations of the Koran. The second moment came with the assertion of a historicist perspective, which asserts that what is sacred is not extra-historical, but should instead be linked to society and to the words and actions of people in time. The third key moment was marked by the emergence of “secular” language in the contemporary Muslim context. According to Filali-Ansary, it is precisely this secular vocabulary that made possible the recent uprisings in Tunisia and in Egypt.

Another important aspect of Filali-Ansary’s work concerns linguistics, specifically the translation of concepts through language from one cultural sphere to another. In the Arab world, the word secular was translated for the first time in the 19th century as dahriya, which provided an idea of secularism as a total rejection of the religious message equivalent to atheism. Scholars later acknowledged that this translation was inaccurate, and the word was replaced with la-dini (a-religious, non-religious), although this word also implied a more intense opposition to faith than the word “secular” in English or “laico” in Italian. The word now used is almania, but, to a certain extent, the damage of this translation error has been done, and widespread traces of it are present in Muslim culture.

According to Filali-Ansary, religion provides a cohesive contribution to collective life in the Arab world, as religion does for many Christians in Western countries. The presence of religion can thus be invoked to oppose excesses of individualism, consumerism, and capitalism, without necessarily compromising the secularity of political institutions.  

Translated by Francesca Simmons

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