Muhamed Abed Al-Jabri: The man’s gone; yet the nationalist activist – educator –thinker’s boarded on the ark of immortality

An article written by: Idriss Jandary ([email protected])
Translated by: Aziz Bakader ([email protected])


Muhamed Abed Al-Jabri: The man’s gone; yet the nationalist activist-educator-thinker’s boarded on the ark of immortality.

I still can t realize the death of our professor and great thinker Muhamed Abed Al-Jabri. The first time I heard of the sad news, I thought that death dreads approaching the greats who inscribe history. I thought it would at least spare them some time to serve more the humanity and enlighten it, before they eventually go into eternal extinguishment. Now that my eyes witnessed the funeral ceremony and after I came to realize that this is it, I couldn’t but start writing. The first thing that mitigated the torment of such a moment is the fact that the late’s thought will always fly far away, incompliant to any burial. At that time I said to myself: the man’s gone; yet the national activist-educator-thinker’s boarded on the ark of immortality.

Indeed, Professor Al-Jabri was an icon of thought in the Moroccan and the Arab culture in general. He came out of a splintered historical period caused by colonialism, and accordingly developed a sharp awareness of such a period, wherein all focus was on gaining independence. For AL-jabri, such independence should transcend the political dimension to the intellectual one. The Arab nation has to obtain a thorough and historical independence through consolidating its own particularity as a nation that can affect the universal human history. It was this obsession that forged the personality of Al- Jabri as a national activist, educator and thinker.


1- Muhamed Abed Al-jabri as a national activist

Al-jabri was born in 1936 in Figuig, a town in the east of Morocco. His birth came in a time when Morocco was mingling in a number of critical situations. To begin with, the colonial movement, at its most zenith, started to reign over all of Morocco through setting regulations like The Berber Decree (1930), which aimed to separate Arabs from Berbers.
These muddled circumstances, in which Al-Jabri was born and raised up, opened his eyes from the very beginning at a struggle for the unity of Morocco and that of the whole Arab nation. Therefore, he dedicated his youth-life to fight against the colonial power.

Since the fifties of the twentieth century, he engaged in the cells of national resistance, full of the spirit of the national movement that led the struggle for independence and unification of Morocco. After the independence of Morocco, he carried on this national struggle in the Istiqlal (independence) Party and later in the rows of the National Union for the People forces, before he ultimately joined in the Socialist Union for the People forces as a theoretician for the party and a member in its political bureau. In 1981 he resigned from the party and devoted himself to intellectual work. During this phase, he was an intellectual who didn’t believe in the separation of the intellectual work and struggle against colonialism. On the contrary, these two features intertwined in harmony in his character and rather kept him all through this period from falling in the pitfalls of the political struggle.


2- Professor Al-Jabri as an educator

Early in his life, Al-Jabri entered the field of education with his profound sense of national struggle, combining the educational practice and theorization. He gradually advanced throughout school education phases, starting with primary school and high school, before he finally settled in the university as a lecturer of philosophy. He is now considered as the godfather of the philosophy lecture in Morocco; As he co-authored (with Ahmed Assatani and Muhamed Al-amri) the pilot textbook of philosophy for the Baccalaureate students, and also taught philosophy in the university. Furthermore, he held responsibility of the process of Arabicizing the Moroccan education that had just gone out of the Francophone dominance. He worked hard for this from a deep strategic perspective that considered Morocco as an entity that shouldn t break up with its belonging to the Arab civilization. He simultaneously worked to bring about change to education through his educational theories, which approached profoundly the problematic questions of school education in Morocco after independence; an approach that advocated critical thought, raised questions about and discomfited the whole era.

Among his interesting educational works:

* Gaining Insight into the Problems of School Education in Morocco (1973)
* Towards a Progressive Understanding of Some Cultural and Educational Problems (1977),
* Education policy in the Maghreb (1988)

In these academic works, Al-Jabri approached the issue of education in Morocco from a standpoint of a person who knew well how this was critical for the future of Morocco. Thus, in his prominent book "Gaining Insight into the Problems of School Education in Morocco", he criticizes the francophone policy instilled by the French Protectorate into the Moroccan education to tear Arabs and Berbers apart; A policy led by George Hardy, head of education in on-protectorate Morocco, on the premise Divide, and rule

Accordingly, Al-Jabri didn’t spare any effort to bond his teaching practices with theories and the latter with political and national activism. He was the first one to make us aware of the role of educational process in consolidating independence as a value and a concept, which involves not only the political triumph over the colonizers but also the independence of thought; That is to say, an independence that would eventually strengthen the Moroccan identity, and prohibit the colonizer from breaking in through the window after having been pushed out from the door.


3. Professor Al-Jabri as a thinker

Although he was a prominent national activist and educationalist, his distinguished presence as a thinker over-shaded all this. The academic project "Critique of the Arab Mind" eclipsed all his previous and future works in spite of their abundance and variety. In fact, the distinguished and powerful presence of his thought was primarily owed to this outstanding project, which he launched initially with a small-in-size-and-great-in-value book "We and our Heritage". This was in a time when the widespread ideological study of cultural heritage was calling for the obliteration of this heritage; just like it was the case with the baby-girls infanticide in the Jahiliya (pre-Islamic Arabia), because it brings about disgrace and throw the Arab mind in the lethargy of the past.

Exactly in this time appeared "We and our Heritage"; the book which comprised a number of essays on cultural heritage, and which would afterwards stimulate a lot of criticism and counter-criticism.

Al-Jabri established his conception of heritage in this book and developed his own method of interpreting it. He tried to get rid of the ideological readings that explored heritage either from a Sufi, Marxist or liberal perspective, and thus was obliged to find out a suitable means for this new interpretation of the heritage.
Since the appearance of this base book, Al-Jabri advocated the epistemologist standpoint as the right means that would enable him to deal with the heritage outside the prevalent ideological mainstreams. This book actually led forward all the other following books which established the “Critique of Arab Reason” Project.

* The Genesis of the Arab Thought (1984)
* The Structure of the Arab Mind (1986)
* The Arab Political Mind (1990)
* The Arab Moral Mind (2001)

From the beginning, this Academic project has created a deep and enormous intellectual debate, to the extent that the professor George Tarabishi became specialized in the critique of "Critique of Arab Mind". The intellectual questions that have been raised up about the project contributed much in its enrichment and development. Moreover, it opened widely the door towards other intellectual pursuits and eventually promoted the Arabic Culture.

Al-Jabri was preoccupied all through this Academic Project with the question of rationalizing the Arab thought. And thus he advocated:
• Burhan (1) over Bayan (2) ;
• Bayan over Irfan (3) ;
• Averroism (4) and Hazmiya (5) over Avicennism(6)and Ghazaliya (7).

Accordingly, he also advocated the Maghreb (the western Arab world) over the Mashreq (the eastern Arab world), and regained consideration to it as a cultural entity that is inevitably attached to the Arab civilization and essential for its progress of. By doing this, he also disregarded the narrow chauvinist perspective endorsed by ideologists.

To consolidate the rationalization values in the Arabic culture, Al-Jabri called for an epistemologist rupture with the past, which is different from Abdallah Laroui’s view of rupture, and called for breaking up with the ‘Irfan’ assertion that is strange to the Arab Reason.

Such a breach that is based on the epistemologist perspective of Averoism and hazmiya, would initiate a new inscription and record of the Arab culture. And its legitimate philosophical dimensions should promote the reconstruction of ‘Bayan, rearrange its association with Burhan and eliminate Irfan .

Al-jabri was always concerned with the issue of Arab thought retardation. He held throughout his intellectual pursuit that any breaking with this retardation could take place only from within the Arab-self and its cultural particularities; from a rational (philosophical reasoning) perspective which works on the exclusion of all the features of Irfan set up by Sufism , Ishraqia (8) and Faydia (9)

According to him, the establishment of Burhan is at the same time a revolution of the Arab mind against sufi-gnostic tendency.


At last, Muhamed Abed Al-Jabri, as a national activist, educator and thinker, was a candle that illuminated the Arab world. He broke the knowledge boundaries and historical precincts among the Arab culture figures. He, also, crushed the geographic borders the colonial power had formed unjustly and aggressively between the two parts of the Arab world.

Immortal you shall abide in our glorious Arab history; symbol of national struggle and free thought. Death is an avoidable destiny in life; yet the immortality of thoughts is an incessant resurrection and rebirth of life



_________________________________________
(1) ‘Burhan’: Rational and Philosophical reasoning (of religious texts) advocated by Averroes

(2) ‘Bayan’: literal meaning (of religious text) based on linguistic analysis. (‘Zahiri’)

(3) ‘Irfan’: Spiritual and Mystical dimension in Islam advocated by Sufism

(4) Averroism: Averroes Philosophy

(5) Hazmiya: coined by the writer to refer to the philosophy of Ibn Hazm, who is Andalusian philosopher, litterateur, psychologist, historian, jurist and theologian born in Cَrdoba

(6) Avicennism: Avecinna philosophy

(7) Ghazaliya: Coined by the writer to refer to the philosophy of Al Ghazali, who is an Islamic theologian, jurist, philosopher, cosmologist, psychologist and mystic of Persian origin.
(8) ‘Ishrafia’ and (9) ‘Faydia’: two Persian trends of philosophy which advocate ‘Irfan’ and reject rational thought


Name:Aziz Bakader

Born in 30/06/1982, Ouarzazate, Morocco.

Profession: High school teacher of English.

Academic and professional degrees:
* 2005 diploma in English Language and Arts, university of Ibno Zohr, Agadir.
* 2006 ENS (Ecole Normale Superieur) Certificate of Pedagogical Aptitude
* 2008 IEARN(International Education and Resources Network) Certificate In Language Arts and Creative Writing.
* I’m currently taking a British Council online course: Teacher Knowledge Test.

Interests:
* Associative work:
A board-member in the Moroccan Association of Teachers (MATE), Ouarzazate Regional branch.

* Literary work:
I’m about to finish writing a novel in English (it should be printed at the beginning of next year).

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