New Tracks

Abstract

Towards the middle of the twentieth century, reformism experienced a certain slowdown with the rise of national liberation movements, the ideology of progress, and the principle of the equivalence of cultures. It was thus one of the victims of the “defeat” of thought in the face of the hegemony of identity. Official Islam, meanwhile, never recovered from the crisis caused by the abolition of the caliphate, despite the many debates that souhgt to find a way out. The paradigm of nahda (rebirth) and islah (reform) was everywhere passed on to that of thawra (revolution) and tanmiya (development). The times were no longer conducive to an in-depth reflection on the reforms that would be necessary in Islam; the “reformist” debate, like so many others, has been overshadowed in the name of preserving national identity. Radical Islamism ended up occupying all the ground, while “Leftism,” Nationalism, and Third-World Relativism did not favor the reopening of the files timidly inaugurated by the liberal reformism of the nineteenth century. Short-term political management has everywhere led to the silence of any serious debate on the renewal of religion. So many factors came together to make it difficult to reflect calmly and thoroughly on the theme of the reforms to be envisaged.