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The Center for Arab & Middle Eastern Studies
The Mohammad Atallah Chair in Ethics
American University of Beirut
Cordially invite you a hybrid talk
Rabat School
A Different Reading of Contemporary Arab Thought
With
Mohammed Hashas
Rome Tor Vergata University, and Luiss University of Rome
Discussants
Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, Professor of Philosophy, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
Bashshar Haydar, Professor of Philosophy and Mohammad Atallah Chair of Ethics
Moderated by
Sari Hanafi - American University of Beirut
Wednesday 17 April | 5 -6:30 PM (GMT+3)
Conference Room, 4th Floor, Issam Fares Institute, AUB
Zoom link:
https://zoom.us/j/98212491264 | Meeting ID: 982 1249 1264
The talk will be in English
Open to the public
Abstract: This contribution aims at introducing a different reading format of contemporary Arab thought, and takes the intellectual productions
of “Rabat School” since the 1950s-60s as it reference case. First, methodological questions on how to read this thought are clarified. Second, Rabat School of thought is contextualized within contemporary Arabic scholarship. Third, the major sources as well
as markers of “Moroccanness” are outlined, with a focus on what is termed here “Arabity” and “Amazighity” narratives. Fourth, the chapter introduces a novel typology of Moroccan intellectual history, away from the common distinction of religious vs. secular,
traditional vs. modern, or conservative vs. liberal dichotomies. This new typology is “near-far-other” thought distinction, each of which is first described, then elucidated through the intellectual projects of some of the most prominent philosophers and scholars
of contemporary Morocco from different disciplines – with a focus on philosophical and theological political thought and the question of ethics. Major themes like the tradition, modernity, space, time, existence, liberty, liberation, freedom, equality, justice,
technology, the self, other, pluralization, difference, tomorrowness, and the global world order are studied by some iconic figures of Rabat School that have turned their geographic edge into a cultural center within the broad Arab and Islamic scholarship
of contemporary times. This presentation closes with listing some challenges facing the new generations of scholars of Rabat School.
Biographies
Mohammed Hashas [“ḥaṣ-ḥāṣ”] (PhD, Habil.) is Assistant Professor at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He is also
a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Luiss University of Rome, from which he received his PhD in Political Theory, with a focus on modern Islamic Thought, and is a Research Fellow affiliate to Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. His
research areas are modern intellectual history of the Arab-Islamic world, Islam in Europe, and modern/contemporary Moroccan thought. Hashas has been a visiting research fellow in Copenhagen, Tilburg, Berlin, Oxford, and non-resident fellow in Winchester in
Virginia. Hashas published The Idea of European Islam (2019), Intercultural Geopoetics (2017), and led the
edition of Pluralism in Islamic Contexts (2021), Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm: Taha Abderrahmane’s Philosophy in Comparative Perspectives (2020), Islam, State and Modernity: Mohammed Abed al-Jabri and the Future of the Arab
World (2018), Imams in Western Europe (2018), besides various journal articles and book chapters. His forthcoming collective volume is the first work on modern Moroccan intellectual history, entitled Contemporary Moroccan Thought: Philosophy,
Theology, Society, and Culture, to be out with Brill by July 2024 (30 chapters, about pp. 600). Hashas contributes opinion essays in Arabic and English on contemporary Arab and Islamic thought (which are also archived at his private website: www.mohammedhashas.com).
Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab is the author of
Contemporary Arab Thought. Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (2010) and
Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution. The Egyptian and Syrian Debates (2019), both published by Columbia University Press and translated into Arabic. Since 2016 she has been Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies,
Qatar. She is currently Chair of the philosophy program and Chair of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences Board of Trustees. Her research interests lie in modern and contemporary history of Arab thought and culture. Her present work in progress is on “Arab
Modernity Between Philosophy and Art. Writing a Different Contemporary Arab Intellectual History.”
Bashshar Haydar is Professor of Philosophy and the Mohammad Atallah Chair of Ethics at the American University of Beirut. He works on Aesthetics,
Political Philosophy, and Normative Ethics. His work in ethics focuses on the duties of assistance, global justice, poverty alleviation, war ethics, and humanitarian intervention.
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