Western Concepts and Arab Intellectual Autonomy the Case of Mohammed Abed Al-Jabri

Mohammed Abed Al-Jabri spent much of his intellectual career studying important ideas from Western political thought. He tried to adapt and reshape these ideas so they could fit within the Arab-Islamic way of thinking. His main goal was to help build a solid intellectual base for creating a modern Arab state. The central problem addressed in this paper revolves around evaluating the extent to which Al-Jabri's appropriation and reinterpretation of Western political concepts effectively contributed to the formulation of a coherent theoretical model for the modern Arab state. To navigate this inquiry, the study undertakes a comparative analysis between Al-Jabri’s adapted usage of these concepts and their original connotations within Western political thought. Furthermore, the paper scrutinizes Al-Jabri’s critical stance toward secularism - an axis upon which Western modernity pivots - and juxtaposes his reservations with alternative perspectives that advocate secularism as an indispensable remedy to the entrenched political crises of Arab and Islamic societies. The analysis ultimately reveals that Al-Jabri’s epistemological project remains situated in a liminal space - marked by a cautious engagement with Western political paradigms, while simultaneously aspiring to reanimate indigenous political concepts that resist transposition beyond their Islamic epistemic matrix.