The Arab Renaissance and Consciousness of Paradox

Abstract

The European newcomer posed a challenge to the renaissance intellectuals' view of the world and the place of Muslims in it. The results of this challenge were full of contradictions, as the newcomer seemed attractive, suspicious, and repulsive simultaneously, inevitable and accidental. He blew up their accumulated self-obsessions about their identity. He also aroused in them a direct intuition of their identity that reflects their excessive sensitivity in interacting with this alien newcomer. Since then, Arab thought has been preoccupied with questioning the self-identity against the Other. It also questioned why the Other is the most advanced, powerful and dominant? This challenge has imposed on the consciousness an immediate cognitive response. It was not primarily the result of developing the subjective laws of Arab societies. However, it came mainly due to an abrupt external factor, which came from outside Arab societies and provoked their stable and stagnant structure. Thus, the Arab Renaissance was formed as a broad ideological stream. It produced different and paradoxical intellectual responses dominated by reverberation. The dilemma of historical perception of the Arab Renaissance still dominates a wide area of the prevalent intellectual and cultural debate nowadays. There is a continuous argument about the Arab Renaissance as a necessary means for salvation. The excessive discussion on the potential of the second or third Arab Renaissance, at a minimum, is an acknowledgement of the failure of the first one. This also means that the first one was not originally a renaissance and did not constitute a historical renaissance case. In this context, the historical question arises in the ruins of this debate, albeit extreme: Was there an Arab renaissance? What makes us say it has existed? How can we measure it? Did the theoretical and historical event since the late eighteenth century and during a century constitute a renaissance act? How can we investigate the reasons for its failure and setback? If the last question is legitimate and justified, is it correct to distinguish between the intellectual and theoretical success of the Renaissance and the historical success? Is it possible to distinguish between the failure of the two levels as well? Is it permissible to separate them? Why was it a renaissance, and compared to what? Was the European Renaissance the ideal paradigm for the latter and its pioneers? Was the European Renaissance reviewed from a historical and critical Arab perspective? Did the Arab renaissance intellectuals achieve any real progress on the issues they faced in their answers and perceptions? Is it right today to read this renaissance event in the light of the European model? Did the latter represent a template for the identification of the historical subject? Did the latter exhaust the historical and epistemological conditions of the European Renaissance, or was it merely a faint shadow of the first and authentic experience?