Dr. Hasan Hanafi and the History of Arab and Islamic Thought

We could easily figure, among the most important subjects where it is necessary to shed light on, when talking about the great intellectual contribution of the late Egyptian and Arab philosopher and thinker Dr. Hasan Hanafi, who left our world few weeks ago, the stands and perceptions that he elaborated and adopted regarding the history of Arab and Islamic Thought and its evolution over consecutive periods and eras, as he presented a number of interesting arguments in this respect.
Dr. Hanafi did not look at the heritage of Arab slamic thought from the angle of being a heritage confined to museums and libraries, but as a reflection of the aggregate behaviour that was prevailing in previous eras. He adopted a positive approach in his attempt to formulate and elaborate a new definition of the intellectual heritage of the Arab and Islamic worlds. According to his definition, such heritage includes elements that are ready to constitute a theoretical framework to direct guide human action and helps reform human behaviour, in addition to representing a rich and important historical asset for the Arab and Islamic worlds in the context of their current ongoing struggle. Revisiting such Arab and Islamic intellectual heritage to re-explore it and examine it in order to reject elements that were added to it in the previous eras of intellectual retreat  for Muslims and Arabs. The revisited intellectual heritage should be properly guided and invested in order to rebuild human beings in the Arab and Islamic worlds on correct bases and a deep-rooted and solid ground.
    
   According to the above-mentioned proposition, the intellectual heritage of Arab and Islamic thought is not simply mere history but represents part of the living reality and constitutes an important component of the social culture of the Arab and Islamic societies and of the psychological setting of individual Arabs and Muslims. Through these facts, the intellectual heritage has a main role to play in the current era in directing human behaviour and in influencing formulating their perceptions. Intellectual heritage also constitutes a good part of the bases of existing socio-cultural structures. Consequently, any approach to deal with the Arab Islamic intellectual heritage, from the point of view of late Dr. Hanafi, should be based on reinterpretation of that heritage, taking into consideration the existing intellectual problematics and challenges faced by the Arab and Islamic worlds.  
In light of the fact that the late Dr. Hasan Hanafi considered that his objective is to elaborate an intellectual project combining both heritage and renewal, he made it clear that this requires a process of re-reading the Arab and Islamic intellectual heritage, through distinguishing between positive aspects in that heritage, which could constitute a motive for a new renaissance project for the Arab and Islamic worlds, which necessitated a prior project of intellectual enlightenment, and between negative aspects that  became part of that intellectual heritage during the eras of retreat of the Arab and Islamic worlds at the civilizational, cultural and intellectual levels, and which could impede the new proposed intellectual project of enlightenment and renewal.
Dr. Hanafi saw that the Arab and Islamic intellectual heritage, as any other intellectual heritage in the world, has left-wing and right-wing components. The Arab and Islamic intellectual heritage covers philosophy, jurisprudence and interpretation. In this context, Dr. Hanafi took the side of the left. He considered according priority to public interest the left in jurisprudence; while rational and natural tendencies are the left in philosophy, and movements in early Islam, such as Kharijites and Mu’tazila, are the left in intellectual life. Therefore, the late philosopher and thinker Hanafi perceived that the task of his renewal intellectual project of the heritage is to discover the progressive components in the Arab and Islamic intellectual heritage, which were marginalized over the last centuries. This should be achieved in the context of a comprehensive project for reinterpreting that intellectual heritage in a progressive manner that could represent the basis for formulating a progressive ideology that reflects the sufferings of people as well as their aspirations and dreams. One could find commonalities between such project and the evolution of the “theology of liberation” and the “theology of land”, which developed in the framework of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America after World War II. One of the important figureheads of the “theology of liberation” was the late Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, assassinated by right wing death squads in 1980.
The objective of the late Dr. Hanafi was to transform the progressive components of the Arab and Islamic intellectual heritage into a general framework that constitutes a comprehensive theory that could, in turn, give birth to an elaborate and comprehensive ideology based on scientific, objective and rational pillars. Such ideology needs also to formulate a program of action for its implementation at the levels of principles, institutions and targets, through projects and strategies that everyone would understand and absorb.
Dr. Hanafi went one more step forward when he considered that Arab and Islamic intellectual heritage, after deeply examining it to keep the positive and constructive elements and get rid of the negative and destructive ones, and also after reinterpreting it in a progressive direction, could largely contribute not only to a better understanding of the surrounding world and accurately describing it, but also, and more importantly, going beyond that to help in the needed action to change that world to the better and to enhance human capabilities in controlling that surrounding world.
The late philosopher and thinker Hanafi aimed at benefiting from the intellectual heritage in defending the Arab and Islamic “Ummas”, which suffered from divisions and disintegration and received over the last few centuries several successive defeats, whether from inside or from outside, and also suffered from intellectual stagnation and from inability to act, thus being confined to reaction to the acts of others. In general, the Arab and Islamic Worlds characterized by lagging behind in efforts to undertake a renaissance that would have introduced progress, development, intellectual renewal and modernization. Consequently, there is a need, from the perspective of late Dr. Hanafi, to utilize the intellectual heritage, after being reinterpreted in a progressive manner, to defend the Arab and Islamic Ummas: the peoples, the territories, the culture, the wealth and the individuals.
The intellectual project on heritage and renewal of late Dr. Hasan Hanafi was, thus, based, on exploring the genuine content of the intellectual heritage, which is living with the peoples. It is a heritage based on providing priority, in the first place, to the interests of the Arab and Islamic peoples. It also aims at containing and limiting the wave of “westernization”, which led an important segment of the intelligentsia in these countries to delink from their heritage, as they looked only at ehat became part of this heritage in the years of intellectual stagnation and retreat. According to late Dr. Hanafi, time is ripe to try to regain this part of the intelligentsia back to their heritage after purifying it and reinterpreting it in a progressive direction. This intellectual proposition, in turn, would lead to bridging the existing gap at the cultural level, as well as at the level of the societal discourse, between the intellectual class and the mainstream of the masses of Arab and Islamic peoples, particularly in light of the increasing importance of culture and the rising influence in our world of what we could call “authority of culture”.
His intellectual project towards heritage led the late philosopher and thinker Dr. Hanafi to try to lay the foundations of a new methodology in reinterpreting the Arab and Islamic intellectual heritage. He called for the reconstruction of the main four Islamic sciences, namely Islamic theology; philosophy; mysticism and science of jurisprudence principles. This required, from the point of view of Hanafi, and similar to what the later progressive Iranian thinker Dr. Ali Shariati (d.1977) concluded, the establishment of a historical sociology of Arab and Islamic thought, aimed at discovering the socio-ideological roots of the existing problematics at the historical, civilizational, ideological, cultural and social levels in our current era. The goal is to return of Islamic sciences, originally derived from the Quranic revelation, to civilizational sciences contributing, in turn, to elaborating a theoretical framework that could help Arabs and Muslims better understand their realities and what happens around the, and could help in directing them regarding how they could change such realities to better ones, that could achieve the interests of the Arab and Islamic worlds.