From the Arab Perspective: Contemporary Iranian and Arab Thinkers (2)Muḥammad ‛Imāra: From Marxism to Salafism

Muḥammad ‛Imāra (1931–2020) was one of the most prolific and prominent modern Egyptian intellectuals, and a leading figure in twentieth-century Islamic thought. He completed all his academic studies at the Dār al-‛Ulūm Faculty of Cairo University: a BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies in 1956, an MA in Islamic Sciences with a concentration in Islamic philosophy in 1970, and a PhD in the same discipline in 1975. ‛Imāra sought to connect Islam with modern concepts such as freedom, social justice, and democracy, yet his intellectual life followed a complex and turbulent trajectory. In his youth, he was drawn to leftist and Marxist ideas, later gravitating to “Islamic leftism,” and eventually, over the decades, moving closer to Salafi traditionalism. During his middle intellectual period, he viewed Islam as a civilization-building religion imbued with reformist and progressive capacities. His main concerns at that time included the defense of Islamic rationality, a critical re-reading of the heritage, and the reconstruction of the concept of the umma. With a reconciliatory approach between tradition and modernity, he sought to present a renewed image of Islam in the face of modern challenges. However, in his later years, his outlook grew increasingly conservative until he ultimately anchored himself in a rigid and militant Salafism. This shift appears less as a natural process of maturation than as a “reverse evolution”: a regression from rationality to dogmatism, and from open-minded, reformist thought to rigid doctrinal rigidity. In his final stage, ʿImāra defended extremist Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS, while vehemently opposing rationalist currents. Despite his broad command of the Islamic heritage and his professional independence from official institutions, his late writings were often polemical and at times takfīrī in tone. Moreover, although deeply familiar with the intellectual tradition of the Shia, he, like other Salafis, launched sharp and unreasonable attacks on Shiite thought, producing several works on this theme in addition to numerous lectures. Among ‛Imāra’s notable works are Islamization of Knowledge, Ibn Rushd bayn al-Gharb wa-l-Islām (“Ibn Rushd between the West and Islam”), and Muḥammad ‛Abduh: Tajdīd al-Dunyā bi-Tajdīd al-Dīn (“Renewing the World through Renewing Religion”). The present article, authored by Professor ‛Abd al-Jabbār Rifā‛ī and translated into Persian with the author’s permission, critically examines the intellectual stages and transformations of Muḥammad ‛Imāra.