Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Moroccan Thinker and Philosopher, Abed Gabri has died

The great Moroccan Thinker and Philosopher Mouhamed Abed El-Jabri has died yesterday, in Casablanca, Morocco, in age of 75 years old after a long trip full of creativity and hard work, especially in the study and criticism of the Arab mind, announced the Moroccan news agency, MAP.

Mohamed Abed al-Jabri was born in “Figuig”, east of Morocco in 1935 where he took his primary studies and then left to Casablanca, where he obtained a Graduate Diploma in Philosophy in 1967 and Ph.D. in philosophy in 1970 from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Mohammed V University in Rabat, where he worked as professor of philosophy and Arab Islamic thought.

Prior to that, he traveled in 1958 after the independence of Morocco to Damascus to get a BA in philosophy, but he did not finish his studies there and returned to belong to the young Moroccan university where he completed his academic trip.

He was active in cells of the National Action against French colonization of Morocco in the early fifties of last century, as he was a noticeable leadership in the Socialist Union of Popular Forces party to which he, for long time, served membership of its political bureau before retiring from politics, and devoted his full-time to his Academic and intellectual Affairs, according to the same source MAP.

Gabri left several books in which he addressed the criticism of the Arab mind and cultural heritage issues, democracy, state and national identity.

Among his many works: Our Cultural Heritage and Us: Contemporary Reading of our Philosophical Heritage (1980), Tribalism and the State: Features of Ibn Khaldoun’s Theory in Islamic History (1971). He also wrote Introduction into the Philosophy of Sciences (1982), Introduction to the Koran in three parts, Gaining Insight into the Problems of School Education (1973), Towards a Progressive Understanding of Some Cultural and Educational Problems (1977), The Contemporary Arab Discourse (1982), Problems of Contemporary Arab Thought (1986), Unity of Morocco (1987), Cultural Heritage and Modernity (1991), Towards Rebuilding Contemporary Arab Thought ( 1992), The Question of Culture in the Arab World (1994), , Democracy and Human Rights (1994), The Intellectuals of Arab Civilization (1995 ), The Question of Identity: Arabism and Islam and the Maghreb (1995), Religion, State and Applying Islamic Law (Shariaa law) (1996), and The Arab Project of an Enlightenment: A Critical Review (1996) and many other essays and contributions to press.

However, the main of his works is Criticism of the Arab Mind, which was issued in three parts: The Genesis of Arab Thought, and The Structure of the Arab Mind, as well as The Arab Political Mind.

Morocco, and the whole Arab world have lost, a beacon of light in the cultural studies, God bless his soul and fold him with his mercy. Amen!

1 comment:

  1. In general, the late, great, admirable on many levels. At the intellectual level carved his name by persistently and diligence among the talented, the Arabs a lot of knowledge and is pleased to Arab readers, through the works of the major written. Perhaps the famous intellectual in the East comparable to what it is in their homeland, who took the political aspect in Jabri except academic circles.

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