Farah Antun

1874 - 1922

Lebanese intellectual.

Though originally from Tripoli in Lebanon, Antun spent much of his adult life in Cairo (Egypt) and in New York. He was the editor of the Arabic periodical al-Jamiʿa and the author of several books, including the famous Ibn Rushd wa Falsafatuhu (Ibn Rushd and his philosophy). Antun was one of the pioneers of modern secular thought in the Middle East. As a Christian, and heavily influenced by the French orientalist Ernest Renan, Antun addressed the question of religion and science in Islam and the Middle East. He concluded that neither can claim to be more true than the other. In Antun's view, the only solution to the dichotomy is to allow each its sphere, although he was critical of religious law (what he termed the "inessential part of religion"). In the same vein, he believed in the separation of church and state. Only through such secularism, he argued, could the Middle East avoid being overtaken by Western civilization. Antun was sensitive about the capacity of Islam to tolerate other creeds, be they different religious faiths or alternative world models, such as the one posited by Western science. Though Antun was at odds with individuals such as the Islamic reformers Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida over these questions, he deeply respected Islamic culture and strove to defend it against the intellectual onslaught of the West.

Bibliography

Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798 - 1939. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.

— ZACHARY KARABELL UPDATED BY MICHAEL R. FISCHBACH