From Ego-Politics to Rūḥ-Politics Abderrahmane Taha’s Insurgent Ethics of Izʿāj as a Decolonial Imperative
Main Article Content
Keywords
Abderrahmane Taha, Izʿāj, epistemoral agitation, Islamic decoloniality, Rūḥ-politics, epistemic disobedience, ethics
Abstract
This article probes the Moroccan philosopher Abderrahmane Taha’s concept of izʿāj—literally agitation/disturbance—as an Islamic decolonial option. Reading it through his notion of al-majāl al-tadāwulī (the pragmatic discursive field), this study shows how izʿāj redirects Walter Mignolo’s “body-politics” of epistemic disobedience toward an insurgent rūḥ-politics, relocating agency in divine trusteeship (amānah) and innate human disposition (fiṭrah). Against both religionist quietism and secular activist models, Taha’s rūḥ-centred critique refuses any split between inner purification (tazkiyah) and outward struggle: al-zāʿij—the epistemoral agitator—fuses ethical sincerity (ikhlāṣ) with justice, and spiritual renewal with social liberation. Anchored in amānah (trusteeship) and animated by the logic of khilāfah (stewardship), Taha’ian resistance seeks to ‘insurgify’ political life by recalibrating
worldly power through ethical responsibility. Thus, this intervention recasts decolonial resistance as a covenantal ethic that redefines the telos of resistant disobedience itself. To illustrate izʿāj in action, the discussion closes with a reading of Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure (1961), tracing how communal ritual, personal defiance, and interior crisis each unsettle the materialist and epistemic regimes of colonial modernity. This framework demonstrates that true liberation requires ethical insurgency, resisting the reduction of ethics to private piety. Izʿāj thus emerges as an Islamically grounded and morally integrated Islamic decolonial option.
References
Endnotes
1 Walter Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience and the Decolonial Option: A Manifesto,”
Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic world,
1, No. 2 (2011): 46-66.
2 Jason Sparkes, “Tradition as Flow: Decolonial Currents in the Muslim Atlantic,”
Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive), January, (2020).
3 Halim Rane, Debbie Bargallie, and Troy Meston, “Mobilising a Decolonial–Islamic
Praxis: Covenants in Islam and Muslim–Indigenous Relations,” Religions, 15, No. 3
(2024): 1-19.
4 Abdelaziz El Amrani, “Desecularising the Postcolonial Resistance: The Role of
Islamic Spirituality in the Framing of Moroccan Anticolonial Thought,” The Journal
of North African Studies, 28, No. 5 (2021): 1240–64.
5 Iskander Abbasi, “Islam, Muslims, and the Coloniality of Being: Reframing the
Debate on Race and Religion in Modernity,” Journal for the Study of Religion, 33,
No. 2 (2020): 1-33.
6 Joseph E. B. Lumbard, “Islam, Coloniality, and the Pedagogy of Cognitive Liberation
in Higher Education,” Teaching in Higher Education (2025): 1–12; Joseph E. B.
Lumbard, “Islam and the Challenge of Epistemic Sovereignty,” Religions, 15, No. 4
(2024): 1–14; Joseph E. B. Lumbard, “Decolonizing Qur’anic Studies,” Religions, 13,
No. 2 (2022): 1–14.
7 In keeping with Abderrahmane Taha’s own clarification, made in his response to
Wael Hallaq’s study on his thought, I follow the name order “Abderrahmane Taha,”
since he indicated that Taha is his family name rather than Abderrahmane. See
Wael Hallaq, Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of
Abdurrahman Taha (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), xvi.
8 In his philosophy, the concept al-majāl al-tadāwulī could be rendered as the pragmatic-
discursive-cultural domain or field. His formulation and its relevance to
the decolonial discussion in the Islamic world is to be found in the next section.
Please also note that, when written in full, the concept is transliterated as al-majāl
al-tadāwulī. However, to avoid redundant repetition of the first definite article (i.e.,
the / al-), where stylistically appropriate we have preferred phrasing such as “the
majāl al-tadāwulī” and “the Islamic majāl al-tadāwulī.”
9 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of
Epistemologies of the South (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018).
10 Enrique Dussel, “Transmodernity and Interculturality: An Interpretation from the
Perspective of Philosophy of Liberation,” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral
Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1, No. 3 (2012): 28–59.
11 Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and
the Making of Worlds (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018).
12 Mohammed Hashas translates al-istikhlāf as “the principle of Caliphate,” and further explains that it “holds the highest rank after divinity itself. God has willed that man does not only care for his private matters but also carries the honorary message of inheriting the world, a deposit (amānah) he should ethically care about.” Mohammed Ḥasḥas The Idea of European Islam: Religion, Ethics, Politics and Perpetual Modernity (London: Routledge, 2019), 190. For a further discussion of how Taha’s project can engage with and transcend alternative, transmodern, and pluriversal perspectives, see Guennouni Idrissi, Achraf. “Misreading the Rūḥ: Taha Abderrahmane, Enrique Dussel and the Ethics of Decolonial Modernities.” Postcolonial Studies (2025): 1-24.
13 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islam in the Modern World: Challenged by the West, Threatened by Fundamentalism, Keeping Faith with Tradition (New York: Harper One, 2010).
14 Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).
15 Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism (Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, 1993).
16 Lumbard defines first principles in relation to metaphysics and the underlying structure of classical Islamic knowledge. These first principles provided the link whereby everything was tied to a greater vision of the whole. The goal of knowledge derived from such conceptualizations is to understand things “in relation to the Real, the Absolute, God,” establishing an implicit cognitive hierarchy whereby everything is oriented and driven by the values of first principles. “Islam, Coloniality,” 12.
17 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience,” 45.
18 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience,” 45.
19 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience,” 45.
20 For a thorough discussion of the aforementioned issues, see Taha Abderrahmane, Tajdīd al-Manhaj fī Taqwīm al-Turāth (Dār al-Bayḍāʾ: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 1994); Taha Abderrahmane, al-Ḥaqq al-Islāmī fī l-Ikhtilāf al-Fikrī (Dār al-Bayḍāʾ: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2005); Taha Abderrahmane, al-Ḥaqq al-ʿArabī fī l-Ikhtilāf al-Falsafī (Dār al-Bayḍāʾ: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2006); Taha Abderrahmane, Suʾāl al-Manhaj: Fī Ufuq al-Taʾsīs li-Namūdhaj Fikrī Jadīd (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Fikr wa-l-Ibdāʿ, 2015).
21 Muhammet Ateş, “The Concept of Majal al-Tadawul (Pragmatic Field) in the Thought of Taha Abd al-Rahman,” Journal of Kocatepe Islamic Sciences 5/1 (2022): 38–39.
22 For a discussion of the interrelation between knowledge, praxis and resistance within the Islamic Majāl at-Tadāwulī see Taha, al-Ḥaqq al-ʿArabī, 70-81.
23 For a thorough discussion of these principles, see, Taha Abderrahmane, Rūḥ al-dīn: Min ḍīq al-ʿalmāniyya ilā saʿat al-iʾtimāniyya, 4th ed. (Dār al-Bayḍāʼ: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2017), 23–44.
24 Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and
Colonization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003); Walter Mignolo, The
Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2011).
25 Taha Abderrahmane, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah (Beirut: Maʿhad al-Maʿārif
al-Ḥikmiyyah li-l-Dirāsāt al-Dīniyyah wa-l-Falsafiyyah, 2008), 13.
26 Taha Abderrahmane, “Taha Responding”, in Wael Hallaq, Reforming Modernity:
Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman Taha. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2019), 275.
27 Harald Viersen, The Time of Turāth: Authenticity and Temporality in Contemporary
Arab Thought. (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2024), 353.
28 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 14.
29 Taha Abderrahmane, Rūḥ al-Ḥadāthah: al-Madkhal ilā Taʾsīs al-Ḥadāthah al-Islāmiyyah,
3rd ed. (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2013).
30 See Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “What is Decolonial Critique?,” Graduate Faculty
Philosophy Journal, 41, No. 1 (2020): 157–83; Ramón Grosfoguel, “Decolonizing
Western Universalisms: Decolonial Pluri-versalism from Aimé Césaire to the
Zapatistas,” in Towards a Just Curriculum Theory (New York: Routledge, 2017),
147–64; Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” Cultural Studies,
21, No. 2–3 (2007): 168–78.
31 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 22.
32 Taha, al-Ḥaqq al-ʿArabī, 71.
33 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 11–12.
34 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 14.
35 Taha, Rūḥ al-Ḥadāthah, 18.
36 Taha, Rūḥ al-Ḥadāthah, 18.
37 Walter Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial
Freedom,” Theory, Culture & Society, 26, No. 7–8 (2009): 14.
38 Taha distinguishes three degrees of reason: (1) Abstract reasoning (al-ʿaql al-mujarrad
), purely theoretical and detached from ethics/religion (dominant in philosophy);
(2) Guided reasoning (al-ʿaql al-musaddad), rule-bound and juristic but limited to textual
formalism (dominant in fiqh); and (3) Supported reasoning (al-ʿaql al-muʾayyad),
which integrates intellect, spiritual insight (maʿrifah), and divine grace, grounding
knowledge in ethical self-purificatory critique (tazkiyah). The hierarchy critiques
secular and reductionist epistemologies, positioning Sufi-inflected reason as the
highest form of ethical-intellectual praxis. For a detailed exposition of these degree
see Taha Abderrahmane, al-ʿAmal al-dīnī wa-tajdīd al-ʿaql, 2nd ed. (Casablanca:
al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 1997). For a brief sketch of levels of reason in
English, see Farid Suleiman, “The Philosophy of Taha Abderrahman: A Critical
Study,” Die Welt Des Islams, 61, No. 1 (2021): 49-50; Mostafa Amakdouf, “Suʾāl al-Akhlāq bayna al-Dīn wa-l-ʿAql al-Mujarrad: ʿAlī ʿIzzat Bīgūvītsh wa-Ṭāha ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Namūdhajan” in Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 78–103.
39 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 510.
40 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 511.
41 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 29.
42 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 52.
43 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought,” 16.
44 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought,” 16.
45 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 60. See also Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 14.
46 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 511.
47 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 59.
48 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 40.
49 Wael Hallaq, Reforming Modernity, 14. See also Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 73. In fact, Taha inaugurates a rupture with the Western conception of the human by displacing the primacy of rationality as its defining trait, and reinstating the ethical as the cardinal mark of human distinctiveness. Taha Abderrahmane, Suʾāl al-Akhlāq: Musāhamah fī al-Naqd al-Akhlāqi li-l-Ḥadāthah al-Gharbiyyah (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2000), 13-14.
50 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 27. Taha further explains that the basis of being oriented by the Absolute is a triad of complete sincerity. As an exemplar of Islamic resistance, al-zāʿij embodies such a unique paradigm of “ṣidq kāmil;” one that transcends the personal to include transparency with the Ummah, honesty with the enemy, and integrity in political engagement (the world). As such, izʿāj serves not only as a political force but as an ethical and pedagogical model which challenges the prevailing norms of deceit in global political culture. See Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 75-76.
51 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 27
52 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 27.
53 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought,” 17.
54 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 302.
55 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 511.
56 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 510.
57 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 513.
58 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 296.
59 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 513.
60 Hallaq, Reforming Modernity, 205.
61 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 91.
62 Hallaq, Reforming Modernity, 207.
63 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 511.
64 Dustin Craun, “Exploring Pluriversal Paths toward Transmodernity,” Human
Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 11/1 (2013): 93.
65 Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, 8.
66 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 319-335
67 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 271.
68 Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “Secularism and Religion in the Modern/Colonial World-
System: From Secular Postcoloniality to Postsecular Transmodernity,” in Coloniality
at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, eds. Mabel Moraña, Enrique
Dussel, and Carlos A. Jáuregui (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 383.
69 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 271.
70 Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 114.
71 Maldonado-Torres, Against War, 114. See also Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 93.
72 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 52.
73 Hallaq, Reforming Modernity, 208.
74 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 297.
75 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 298.
76 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 298-299.
77 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 298-299.
78 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 300.
79 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 300.
80 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 302.
81 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought,” 4.
82 See Masoud Budoukha, “Milestones of Terminological Renewal of Taha Abdul
Rahman,” al-Fikr al-Islāmī al-Muʿāṣir, 21, No. 83 (2016): 87–112; Nourreddine
Benkaddou, “Philosophical Independence and Renewal of Taha AbdurRahman,”
al-Fikr al-Islāmī al-Muʿāṣir, 24, No. 93 (2018): 119–43; Muḥammad Al-Shahabī and
Fayṣal A. Būzāhir, “Suʾāl Tajdīd al-Manhaj al-Kalāmī ʿinda Ṭāhā ʿAbd al-Raḥmān:
Dirāsah fī Fiqh ʿIlm al-Kalām,” Majallat Namāʾ, 7, No. 3 (2023): 124–54.
83 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 35.
84 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 302
85 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 307-308.
86 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 309.
87 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 312.
88 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 313.
89 Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, (New York: Melville House, 2012), 12.
90 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 13.
91 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 12.
92 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 8.
93 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 14.
94 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 14.
95 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 20.
96 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 21.
97 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 85-86.
98 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 72.
99 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 8.
100 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 86.
101 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 90.
102 Mohamed Hashas, “The Trusteeship Paradigm: The Formation and Reception of a Philosophy,” In Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm: Taha Abderrahmane’s Philosophy in Comparative Perspectives, eds. Mohamed Hashas, Mutaz al-Khatib (Leiden: Brill), 42.
103 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 42.
104 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 18.
105 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 19.
106 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 19.
107 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 20.
108 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 32.
109 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 20.
110 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 34.
111 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 33.
112 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 25.
113 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 25.
114 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 31.
115 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 42.
116 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 21.
117 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 5.
118 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 15.
119 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 42.
120 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 12.
121 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 25.
122 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 20.
123 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 42.
124 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 31.
125 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 19.
126 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 33.
127 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 20.
1 Walter Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience and the Decolonial Option: A Manifesto,”
Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic world,
1, No. 2 (2011): 46-66.
2 Jason Sparkes, “Tradition as Flow: Decolonial Currents in the Muslim Atlantic,”
Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive), January, (2020).
3 Halim Rane, Debbie Bargallie, and Troy Meston, “Mobilising a Decolonial–Islamic
Praxis: Covenants in Islam and Muslim–Indigenous Relations,” Religions, 15, No. 3
(2024): 1-19.
4 Abdelaziz El Amrani, “Desecularising the Postcolonial Resistance: The Role of
Islamic Spirituality in the Framing of Moroccan Anticolonial Thought,” The Journal
of North African Studies, 28, No. 5 (2021): 1240–64.
5 Iskander Abbasi, “Islam, Muslims, and the Coloniality of Being: Reframing the
Debate on Race and Religion in Modernity,” Journal for the Study of Religion, 33,
No. 2 (2020): 1-33.
6 Joseph E. B. Lumbard, “Islam, Coloniality, and the Pedagogy of Cognitive Liberation
in Higher Education,” Teaching in Higher Education (2025): 1–12; Joseph E. B.
Lumbard, “Islam and the Challenge of Epistemic Sovereignty,” Religions, 15, No. 4
(2024): 1–14; Joseph E. B. Lumbard, “Decolonizing Qur’anic Studies,” Religions, 13,
No. 2 (2022): 1–14.
7 In keeping with Abderrahmane Taha’s own clarification, made in his response to
Wael Hallaq’s study on his thought, I follow the name order “Abderrahmane Taha,”
since he indicated that Taha is his family name rather than Abderrahmane. See
Wael Hallaq, Reforming Modernity: Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of
Abdurrahman Taha (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), xvi.
8 In his philosophy, the concept al-majāl al-tadāwulī could be rendered as the pragmatic-
discursive-cultural domain or field. His formulation and its relevance to
the decolonial discussion in the Islamic world is to be found in the next section.
Please also note that, when written in full, the concept is transliterated as al-majāl
al-tadāwulī. However, to avoid redundant repetition of the first definite article (i.e.,
the / al-), where stylistically appropriate we have preferred phrasing such as “the
majāl al-tadāwulī” and “the Islamic majāl al-tadāwulī.”
9 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of
Epistemologies of the South (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018).
10 Enrique Dussel, “Transmodernity and Interculturality: An Interpretation from the
Perspective of Philosophy of Liberation,” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral
Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1, No. 3 (2012): 28–59.
11 Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and
the Making of Worlds (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018).
12 Mohammed Hashas translates al-istikhlāf as “the principle of Caliphate,” and further explains that it “holds the highest rank after divinity itself. God has willed that man does not only care for his private matters but also carries the honorary message of inheriting the world, a deposit (amānah) he should ethically care about.” Mohammed Ḥasḥas The Idea of European Islam: Religion, Ethics, Politics and Perpetual Modernity (London: Routledge, 2019), 190. For a further discussion of how Taha’s project can engage with and transcend alternative, transmodern, and pluriversal perspectives, see Guennouni Idrissi, Achraf. “Misreading the Rūḥ: Taha Abderrahmane, Enrique Dussel and the Ethics of Decolonial Modernities.” Postcolonial Studies (2025): 1-24.
13 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islam in the Modern World: Challenged by the West, Threatened by Fundamentalism, Keeping Faith with Tradition (New York: Harper One, 2010).
14 Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of Modern Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).
15 Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism (Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization, 1993).
16 Lumbard defines first principles in relation to metaphysics and the underlying structure of classical Islamic knowledge. These first principles provided the link whereby everything was tied to a greater vision of the whole. The goal of knowledge derived from such conceptualizations is to understand things “in relation to the Real, the Absolute, God,” establishing an implicit cognitive hierarchy whereby everything is oriented and driven by the values of first principles. “Islam, Coloniality,” 12.
17 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience,” 45.
18 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience,” 45.
19 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience,” 45.
20 For a thorough discussion of the aforementioned issues, see Taha Abderrahmane, Tajdīd al-Manhaj fī Taqwīm al-Turāth (Dār al-Bayḍāʾ: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 1994); Taha Abderrahmane, al-Ḥaqq al-Islāmī fī l-Ikhtilāf al-Fikrī (Dār al-Bayḍāʾ: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2005); Taha Abderrahmane, al-Ḥaqq al-ʿArabī fī l-Ikhtilāf al-Falsafī (Dār al-Bayḍāʾ: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2006); Taha Abderrahmane, Suʾāl al-Manhaj: Fī Ufuq al-Taʾsīs li-Namūdhaj Fikrī Jadīd (Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Fikr wa-l-Ibdāʿ, 2015).
21 Muhammet Ateş, “The Concept of Majal al-Tadawul (Pragmatic Field) in the Thought of Taha Abd al-Rahman,” Journal of Kocatepe Islamic Sciences 5/1 (2022): 38–39.
22 For a discussion of the interrelation between knowledge, praxis and resistance within the Islamic Majāl at-Tadāwulī see Taha, al-Ḥaqq al-ʿArabī, 70-81.
23 For a thorough discussion of these principles, see, Taha Abderrahmane, Rūḥ al-dīn: Min ḍīq al-ʿalmāniyya ilā saʿat al-iʾtimāniyya, 4th ed. (Dār al-Bayḍāʼ: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2017), 23–44.
24 Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and
Colonization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003); Walter Mignolo, The
Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2011).
25 Taha Abderrahmane, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah (Beirut: Maʿhad al-Maʿārif
al-Ḥikmiyyah li-l-Dirāsāt al-Dīniyyah wa-l-Falsafiyyah, 2008), 13.
26 Taha Abderrahmane, “Taha Responding”, in Wael Hallaq, Reforming Modernity:
Ethics and the New Human in the Philosophy of Abdurrahman Taha. (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2019), 275.
27 Harald Viersen, The Time of Turāth: Authenticity and Temporality in Contemporary
Arab Thought. (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2024), 353.
28 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 14.
29 Taha Abderrahmane, Rūḥ al-Ḥadāthah: al-Madkhal ilā Taʾsīs al-Ḥadāthah al-Islāmiyyah,
3rd ed. (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2013).
30 See Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “What is Decolonial Critique?,” Graduate Faculty
Philosophy Journal, 41, No. 1 (2020): 157–83; Ramón Grosfoguel, “Decolonizing
Western Universalisms: Decolonial Pluri-versalism from Aimé Césaire to the
Zapatistas,” in Towards a Just Curriculum Theory (New York: Routledge, 2017),
147–64; Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” Cultural Studies,
21, No. 2–3 (2007): 168–78.
31 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 22.
32 Taha, al-Ḥaqq al-ʿArabī, 71.
33 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 11–12.
34 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 14.
35 Taha, Rūḥ al-Ḥadāthah, 18.
36 Taha, Rūḥ al-Ḥadāthah, 18.
37 Walter Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial
Freedom,” Theory, Culture & Society, 26, No. 7–8 (2009): 14.
38 Taha distinguishes three degrees of reason: (1) Abstract reasoning (al-ʿaql al-mujarrad
), purely theoretical and detached from ethics/religion (dominant in philosophy);
(2) Guided reasoning (al-ʿaql al-musaddad), rule-bound and juristic but limited to textual
formalism (dominant in fiqh); and (3) Supported reasoning (al-ʿaql al-muʾayyad),
which integrates intellect, spiritual insight (maʿrifah), and divine grace, grounding
knowledge in ethical self-purificatory critique (tazkiyah). The hierarchy critiques
secular and reductionist epistemologies, positioning Sufi-inflected reason as the
highest form of ethical-intellectual praxis. For a detailed exposition of these degree
see Taha Abderrahmane, al-ʿAmal al-dīnī wa-tajdīd al-ʿaql, 2nd ed. (Casablanca:
al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 1997). For a brief sketch of levels of reason in
English, see Farid Suleiman, “The Philosophy of Taha Abderrahman: A Critical
Study,” Die Welt Des Islams, 61, No. 1 (2021): 49-50; Mostafa Amakdouf, “Suʾāl al-Akhlāq bayna al-Dīn wa-l-ʿAql al-Mujarrad: ʿAlī ʿIzzat Bīgūvītsh wa-Ṭāha ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Namūdhajan” in Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020), 78–103.
39 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 510.
40 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 511.
41 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 29.
42 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 52.
43 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought,” 16.
44 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought,” 16.
45 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 60. See also Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 14.
46 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 511.
47 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 59.
48 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 40.
49 Wael Hallaq, Reforming Modernity, 14. See also Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 73. In fact, Taha inaugurates a rupture with the Western conception of the human by displacing the primacy of rationality as its defining trait, and reinstating the ethical as the cardinal mark of human distinctiveness. Taha Abderrahmane, Suʾāl al-Akhlāq: Musāhamah fī al-Naqd al-Akhlāqi li-l-Ḥadāthah al-Gharbiyyah (Beirut: al-Markaz al-Thaqāfī al-ʿArabī, 2000), 13-14.
50 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 27. Taha further explains that the basis of being oriented by the Absolute is a triad of complete sincerity. As an exemplar of Islamic resistance, al-zāʿij embodies such a unique paradigm of “ṣidq kāmil;” one that transcends the personal to include transparency with the Ummah, honesty with the enemy, and integrity in political engagement (the world). As such, izʿāj serves not only as a political force but as an ethical and pedagogical model which challenges the prevailing norms of deceit in global political culture. See Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 75-76.
51 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 27
52 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 27.
53 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought,” 17.
54 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 302.
55 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 511.
56 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 510.
57 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 513.
58 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 296.
59 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 513.
60 Hallaq, Reforming Modernity, 205.
61 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 91.
62 Hallaq, Reforming Modernity, 207.
63 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 511.
64 Dustin Craun, “Exploring Pluriversal Paths toward Transmodernity,” Human
Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 11/1 (2013): 93.
65 Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, 8.
66 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 319-335
67 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 271.
68 Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “Secularism and Religion in the Modern/Colonial World-
System: From Secular Postcoloniality to Postsecular Transmodernity,” in Coloniality
at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, eds. Mabel Moraña, Enrique
Dussel, and Carlos A. Jáuregui (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 383.
69 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 271.
70 Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 114.
71 Maldonado-Torres, Against War, 114. See also Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 93.
72 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 52.
73 Hallaq, Reforming Modernity, 208.
74 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 297.
75 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 298.
76 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 298-299.
77 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 298-299.
78 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 300.
79 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 300.
80 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 302.
81 Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought,” 4.
82 See Masoud Budoukha, “Milestones of Terminological Renewal of Taha Abdul
Rahman,” al-Fikr al-Islāmī al-Muʿāṣir, 21, No. 83 (2016): 87–112; Nourreddine
Benkaddou, “Philosophical Independence and Renewal of Taha AbdurRahman,”
al-Fikr al-Islāmī al-Muʿāṣir, 24, No. 93 (2018): 119–43; Muḥammad Al-Shahabī and
Fayṣal A. Būzāhir, “Suʾāl Tajdīd al-Manhaj al-Kalāmī ʿinda Ṭāhā ʿAbd al-Raḥmān:
Dirāsah fī Fiqh ʿIlm al-Kalām,” Majallat Namāʾ, 7, No. 3 (2023): 124–54.
83 Taha, al-Ḥadāthah wa-l-Muqāwamah, 35.
84 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 302
85 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 307-308.
86 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 309.
87 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 312.
88 Taha, Rūḥ al-Dīn, 313.
89 Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, (New York: Melville House, 2012), 12.
90 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 13.
91 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 12.
92 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 8.
93 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 14.
94 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 14.
95 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 20.
96 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 21.
97 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 85-86.
98 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 72.
99 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 8.
100 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 86.
101 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 90.
102 Mohamed Hashas, “The Trusteeship Paradigm: The Formation and Reception of a Philosophy,” In Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm: Taha Abderrahmane’s Philosophy in Comparative Perspectives, eds. Mohamed Hashas, Mutaz al-Khatib (Leiden: Brill), 42.
103 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 42.
104 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 18.
105 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 19.
106 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 19.
107 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 20.
108 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 32.
109 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 20.
110 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 34.
111 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 33.
112 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 25.
113 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 25.
114 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 31.
115 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 42.
116 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 21.
117 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 5.
118 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 15.
119 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 42.
120 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 12.
121 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 25.
122 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 20.
123 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 42.
124 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 31.
125 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 19.
126 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 33.
127 Kane, Ambiguous Adventure, 20.
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Published
Mar 27, 2026
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G. Idrissi, A. (2026). From Ego-Politics to Rūḥ-Politics: Abderrahmane Taha’s Insurgent Ethics of Izʿāj as a Decolonial Imperative. American Journal of Islam and Society, 43(1-2), 6–40. https://doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v43i1-2.3812
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