The Arab Revolution Takes Back the Public Space

Abstract

In 1991, al-Sadiq al-Nayhum, a Libyan thinker exiled in Geneva, published a book of collected essays in Arabic with the provocative title Islam in Captivity: Who Stole the Mosque and Where Did Friday Disappear?2 The thesis of the book was not novel. Al-Nayhum posited that modernity had failed to take root in the Arab world because in large part it had grown out of Western history and developed in a Western cultural and epistemological context, which is incompatible with the culture and knowledge nurtured by Islam. Al-Nayhum, predictably, advocated a return to a pure, foundational Islam to rebuild the battered and confused Arab societies.