The Political Theology of Taha Abderrahmane: Religion, Secularism, and Trusteeship

This paper introduces some major aspects of Taha Abderrahmane’s political theology as presented in his various works, with major reference to his The Spirit of Religion: From the Narrowness of Secularism to the Openness of Trusteeship (2012). The paper centralizes his concept of “spiritual self-criticism” which he uses as an apparatus for the formation of what I refer to here as “trusteeship society”; the latter is a critical synthesis of the secular and religious societies and ways of governance of human affairs. Abderrahmane’s “trusteeship paradigm” briefly engages with secular-religious analytical frameworks as proposed by Cox Harvey, Talal Asad, Olivier Roy, Asef Bayat, and Charles Taylor. The argument here is that trusteeship paradigm faces serious limitations to be implemented in the Arab-Islamic plural societies, let alone the Euro-American secular-liberal societies; the homo-moralis it calls for to lead spiritual self-criticism for human renewal may not be appealing to the plural religious and philosophical views present in society. Still, its call for a radical ethos remains relevant for societies in predicaments, be they secular, religious, or secular-religious societies.