Against the World: Toward an Islamic Liberation Philosophy

In 2008, an ideologue of Pax Americana, Zbigniew Brzezinski, penned an op-ed warning the incumbent president of a “global political awakening.” Four years after Brzezinski prescient warning, the Arab world witnessed a wave of revolutions, toppling the long-standing dictators Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya. The Muslim world, following the Arab Spring, finds itself in the throes of a transition and is beset by an existential crisis. It stands before a pivotal moment in a world characterized by the triune idolatry of the self, capital, and the state. This book examines the contours of an Islamic critical consciousness and praxis, the fruits of which is the liberation of the Muslim world from the idolatrous global and neoliberal world order. The basis for this radical Islamic critical consciousness is rooted in tawḥīd, the divine unicity, and Oneness of God. The inauguration of a tawḥīd as a critical consciousness and radical praxis amounts to reclaiming our alterity as an ummah, created not in the image of the hegemonic state but in its own distinct image. Tawḥīd as a grounds for a critical consciousness and alterity, this book argues, amounts to a liberatory politics of spiritual self-affirmation through which the Muslim world can reclaim its liberatory vocation and chart a future beyond a world created in the image of the hegemonic state. Ultimately, the task at hand is two-fold, a tajdīd, a renewal of our understanding of tawḥīd and the inauguration of a second Islamic insurrection made possible only through a revolt against the world at large.