Why Critique?

Abstract

This paper examines the stakes in disentangling critique from its Western operation in order to locate a position of political freedom for the critical study of the Islamic tradition. It considers how the question of the critical study of Islam is a question about the political significance of the concept of critique, and the challenge that the study of the Islamic tradition poses to the discriminating operation of Western criticism. It argues that critique espouses the very philosophical ethos of the Enlightenment itself that challenges us to adopt the "a limit-attitude" of analyzing and reflecting on the limits of the Enlightenment and the political and governmental apparatus that accompanied it.

Making Religion and Human Rights at the United Nations

“…By classifyingaspecific rangeoftheorizedpracticesa sr eligions,f aiths or spiritualities,i tt hereby exiles them and simultaneouslyc onstructs the domain of the secular in accordancew ith natural reason. ( Fitzgerald 2011:8 )  " Critique" and "criticism" are concepts that come with alot of baggage (Koselleck 1988;Asad et.al 2009;Mas 2012). Iuse it heremerely in aheuristicfashion, to distinguish it from the "phenomenological" approach frequentlya ssociated with Mircea Eliade.…”