Yadh Ben Achour
Research project
The Islamic religion and the universality of the democratic norm
Project summary
The Averroès Chair inaugurates a cycle of studies and research on contemporary Islam and the challenges of the 21st century. Why Averroès? The first conference of the cycle answers this question. Averroes rethought the status of the law through a particular hermeneutic that opens the way to freedom for both the interpreter and the believer. Among the major challenges facing Islam, the question of democratic norms and human rights must be considered as a priority. To achieve this, we need to free Islam from a certain fixist interpretation of the law and open it up to democratic thinking. But to do this, we must first open up the democratic norm itself from the historical-cultural relativism in which anti-democratic political theories such as fascism and religious radicalism seek to maintain it. This opening up can only be achieved through a radical break with the mass orthodoxy that has framed Islamic thought for centuries. Mass orthodoxy, which explains both proselytism and violence, must be replaced by a new culture of tolerance. The problem is that tolerance was not originally one of the guiding principles of religion. Through a complex interplay of intellectual destructuring and linguistic reconfigurations, Islam is gradually becoming acclimatized to this culture of tolerance.
