If you follow the self-proclamations of the Muslim world, you may conclude that you’re dealing with a proud culture rooted in faith. This must have occurred to Michel Foucault when, as an observer of the Mullah uprising in Iran, he saw a »political spirituality« at play here. From this perspective, the idea that the recent decades of Islamist ambitions are mainly rooted in Western intellectual figures, even suggesting we’re dealing with a strange reinterpretation of Montesquieu, Hegel, Fichte, and Marx, sounds like something from another planet. But this is the exact story told by Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, who traces the intellectual history of the Islamic world back to a young man, Rifa’a at-Tahtawi, sent to Paris in the early 19th century and who returned to Egypt with the ideas of the Enlightenment. As the Islamic world became aware of its own backwardness (which came to be referred to as the Nakba), it took refuge in the Counter-Enlightenments—particularly that of German Romantic philosophy, especially where it extended into the political sphere. This history, as a form of cultural unconscious, is the main focus of our conversation with Hussein Aboubakr Mansour—and how the unique perspective he offers on the past reveals a completely new view of the mysteries of today’s world.
Hussein Aboubakr Mansour is a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) and writes the Substack blog The Abrahamic Metacritique. He is a respected expert on Arab intellectual history. After coming under scrutiny from Egyptian intelligence services during the Arab Spring for his work in this field, he now lives in the US.
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