Persecution and Norm: A comparative analysis between Averroes and Sayyed Qutb
Prof. Dr. Hassan Hanafi
Hassan Hanafi Hassanien was born in 1935 in Cairo, Egypt. He received a Ph.D. in philosophy from Sorbonne University in Paris and later became a professor of philosophy at Cairo University. Hanafi has served as the Secretary General of the Egyptian Philosophical Society, and as Vice-president of the Arab Philosophical Society. He has also acted as an advisor to the InterAction Council, a coalition of 26 former prime ministers and presidents. He is a member of the Association for Intercultural Philosophy, which encourages a dialogue among philosophers from all over the world. Hanafi is the author of 30 books in French, English, and Arabic.
Selected publications
Contemporary issues Volume I on Arabic thought (1976) and Volume II on Western thought (1977), Cairo (Arabic).
Tradition and Modernism (1980), Cairo, 1980 (Arabic).
Cultures and Civilizations, conflict or Dialogue? (2005), Vol. I, The Meridian Thought,Cairo.
From Scripture to Reason (2009), Cairo.
Mohammed Iqbal, philosopher of subjectivity (2008), Cairo.
Persecution and Norm: A comparative analysis between Averroes and Sayyed Qutb
There is no religion or thinking, absolute, universal and normative outside time and space as its known in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in Capitalism, Socialism, Nationalism, Liberalism and Anarchism. That does not prevent from asking the question of “essence” or “substance” since it changes its forms throughout history according to the law of balance and middle term.
Religion, Culture, Ideology, Art and even Science are the outcome of socio-political, economic and historical circumstances. That does not prevent the question of the structure since structure itself is a historical accumulation.
There is a constant dialectics between norm and reality. There is no norm outside reality and there is no reality without norm. Both are two faces of the same coin. Norm and reality are not eternal. Both are intertwined in time and space.
There is no normative Islam except through what is permanent in human experience as represented by natural religion, which manifests in consciousness, virtue and rational evidence.
Qutb and Averroes follow the same rule, norm and persecution in spite of differences of time, Averroes (d. 1198 AD), Qutb (d. 1966 AD), and of space between mediaeval Spain and modern Egypt.
