Islamic thought in the postmodern era: the philosophy of Hasan Khanafi

This article aims to reconstruct the paradigm of Islamic thought associated with postmodernism. The relevance of this goal is explained by the need to understand how Islam in its theological and anthropocentric dimensions corresponds to postmodern thinking. In this regard, the works of the Islamic thinker Hassan Hanafi (1935- 2021), whose philosophical development is closest topostmodernism, are of particular interest. Hasan Hanafi, with the Turat va tajdid (Tradition and Reform) project and the Islamic left, identifies three factors for the implementation of Islamic revival, Islamic revolution, unityand integrityof the ummah. According to him; (1) the need for rationalism to revive the intellectual treasures of classical Islam and bring out the progressive elements in it; (2) the need to confront Western civilization and do away with its global civilization bystudying local culture and creating accidentalism that is contraryto the Orientalist paradigm; (3) the need to analyze the realityof the Islamic world byabandoning traditional textual methods and resorting to certain methods that allow the reality of Islam to speak for itself. Here he contrasts Occidentalism with Orientalism. If Orientalism views the East from a Western perspective, from the standpoint of cultural superiority, then Occidentalism seeks to present a picture of Western culture from the perspective of the East. Hassan Hanafi does not approve of isolationism in anyform (including Islamic). Islam is a world, and therefore a global religion, therefore the Islamic world must see cultures in a global perspective. Occidentalism is an attempt toundermine Western supremacy in language, culture, science, theory, and opinion.