lifetime of intellectual work An introductory summary of research centers and academic studies

 lifetime of intellectual work An introductory summary of research centers and academic studies

Muhanna Abdul Aziz AlHubail

Muhanna Al-Hubail is an independent Arab researcher. Born in 1963, in the city of Dhahran in the Al-Ahsa region (extending along the coast of the Arabian Gulf in the east of the country of Saudi Arabia). He currently resides in the city of Toronto, Canada. Al-Hubail publishes weekly articles in a number of newspapers, such as the New London Arab and the Qatari newspaper Al-Watan. Al-Hubail’s writings focus on issues related to the renewal of Islamic intellectual awareness, by tracking the processes of thinking and moral options to renew awareness around contemporary Muslim thought.

In his writings, he is also concerned with analyzing the current strategic thinking in the Arabian Gulf, focusing on the structure of political and geopolitical thought of the region.

Al-Hubail participated in many TV programs and seminars covering a wide range of intellectual and political affairs. He had also published several books, most notably an intellectual trilogy on: Thought of the Prophetic Life – Time for Awakening – For the Sake of Enlightenment. He published a second trilogy on the Arabian Gulf, which is made up of: The Arabian Gulf and Iranian Encroachment – The June Setback in the Gulf – The Autumn of the Arabian Gulf.

After settling in Canada in 2017, Al-Hubail established the Canadian Center for Intellectual Consultancy, a melting pot of intellectual and cultural issues for the Arab and Muslim communities in the West. The Center organizes debating workshops and cultural events and discussions involving young people and elite groups from the Arab and Muslim communities in Canada, as well as efforts to support pluralism and social co-existence in Canada.

The intellectual vision Al-Hubail focuses on the two tracks of Islamic knowledge and political strategy. It relies on his vision on the moral dimension of the message of Islam, as the message capable of presenting a valuable antidote to the troubles that marred the human journey in intellectual and philosophical terms. This vision summarizes Al-Hubail’s position in the face of pressing issues of Arab thought, such as the question of renaissance, political reform, dilemma of the identity, and the ideas of religious renewal.

Central issues in the thought of Hubail The issue of the ‘intellectual question’: Al-Hubail is aware of the impact of the major setbacks and breakdowns in the Muslim East. These have been further compounded by the openness and transparency of the methods of knowledge and the development of the means of communication among people all over the world. He is aware of the impact of these collapses in revealing the reality of the cultural movement in the Arab world. For this reason, Al-Hubail focuses on enhancing his intellectual and epistemological aspects of these issues and contributions on current issues related to contemporary Islamic East. He stresses the urgent question faced in the arena, at the present, which is a question of thought and attitude. “The big conundrum today is: what is the position of Islamic culture in the light of this unbridled chaos and confusion about the concept of Islam in the mind of the Arab youth movement, and to the ranks of the religious intellectuals and others? Where do the world and the international public opinion stand, especially with regard to the crisis of the Arab mind and independence from the Muslim Identity?”(1).

In his analysis of our contemporary intellectual reality, Al-Hubail observes that the rigidity of intellectual discourse is due to interlocking factors such as the rise of the official, bureaucratic, preaching discourse, and the mistakes of the advocacy parties that have been active at the expense of systematic intelligent thinking that started in the late Ottoman period (1).

In his book Time for Awakening, Al-Hubail reviews the path of corrective thought in various fields, which are summarized in the question of the new renaissance and how to stimulate the intellectual tools in the contemporary Arab mind. It also addresses the reasons for the decline of the intellectual outline of concepts in Islamic discourse and the dominance of the instructional, official curriculum, which alone cannot compensate for the gap nor keep pace with urgent and emerging questions. Therefore, Al-Hubail insists on the importance of arriving at a contemporary communication technique that balances the presentation between the civil and rigid educational curricula. In the context of working towards a balanced Islamic awareness, the priority is for Islamic concepts to start from the immediate ceiling of Muslim, educated, Islam-conscious groups to the higher level of human community, thereby liberating it from the restricted politization to free production in the various fields of knowledge and culture. This coincides with the demand for a conscious critique of Western intellectual doctrines, in which values are intertwined with money, and the spirit of justice is tainted by many contemporary challenges.

The issue of civil and political thought: While much of the intellectual effort has been torn between capitalist modernity and rigid heritage, Al-Hubail is keen to relate the greatest values in Islam to what human knowledge has reached in managing human societies. His analysis focuses on the modern model of the civil state, not as the ideal model, but rather as the aim of liberating some of the concepts that dominated Muslim mind for a long period of time, which kept it absent from civilized interaction and its societies inherited a terrible backwardness away from the spirit of modernity and well-being.

Al-Hubail is placing all his expectations on the Islamic values system. It is the only system capable of standing up to capitalist aggressive liquidity and the inertia of heritage. In his book, Thoughts of the Prophetic Life, Al-Hubail wrote: “The need is growing to appreciate the cultural and intellectual evidence of the Prophet’s biography. There are new intellectual and cultural ideas experienced today by the Muslim world and the East, in face of the human contribution to develop programs for the modern life, in the directions of justice, human rights, and the well-being and the roots of these meanings to deliver the message of Islam to humanity”(2) The piece quoted above reveals the first building block of contemporary regenerative awareness. It shows the door of Islamic civil thought, as a reformist way in, firmly established. This is done by referring to the absolute values of Shariah and the genuine version of the Prophet’s life, in an obvious attempt to distinguish between the great objectives of a Heavenly message and the genuine endeavor of Muslims to implement is throughout the ages. Within the political sphere, Al-Hubail, in his book, Time for Awakening, deals with the dilemma of the association of Islamic thought with interlocking party ideologies, where religion has been associated with determinist fate for a long time, resulting in the rise and dominance of ‘Sovereign Rulings’ and the disappearance of freedom, with claims to preserve the nation and totally prohibit opposition to the ruling Sultan. Al-Hubail realizes the impact of this historical reading on the hearts and minds of young people. He realizes that restoring their confidence in the authenticity of freedom and rights in Islam requires liberating many concepts from their politicized historical heritage. Due to this, Al-Hubail insists that it is crucial to return to the commonalities that are shared among Arab intellectual trends, in order to advance civil society, resist tyranny and limit the collapse in the East.

The issue of identity and the humanly shared in the immigrant community: Often, the Arab thinker abroad often finds himself stuck in isolation between Western society and its melting pot. Al-Hubail believes that this duality is not a mere social issue, but rather an extension of the decline in intellectual discourse and the domination of partisan thinking, on the one hand, and an attempt at forced cultural integration exercised on migrants in the West, on the other. Therefore, Al-Hubail is critical of the efforts of some to reproduce the experience of the “Dar Al-Arqam” and the Muslim preaching community in framing the relationship with the other. He believes that this reproduction is responsible for forming social groups isolated from each other, whose main concern is conflict, not integration. Al-Hubail sees in the concept of the humanly common a glimmer of light for the Arab mind abroad. He confirms this in his book: On the Way of Enlightenment (which is the last of the books of the intellectual trilogy) and in some chapters of his book: Time for Awakening. He affirms that the departure from the duality of the Arab mind abroad is only through an approach that focuses on the common values between the Western civil society and the values of global Islam. Thus the ideas of al-Hubail are concerned with the concept of partnership in citizenship, as firmly rooted in the story of the companion Ja`far ibn abi Talib and his attempt to understand the Ethiopian society in the first migration of Muslims, in 613CE, from Makkah to Abyssinia(2), where the common values of Islam did not constitute a stumbling block for Muslims to participate in the first exodus. Al-Hubail also stresses the importance of making use of the constitutional space granted by the host country for the Muslim to be active in its civil society as a partner in citizenship, not as part of an alien community that focuses on its cultural specificity.

Strategic political analysis The Arab Gulf issue from a strategic perspective: Al-Hubail’s interest in the strategic file of the Arabian Gulf appears in his first publications such as his book: The International Regional Conflict in the Arab Gulf, and in his editing of the Troika of the Gulf (the Arabian Gulf and the Iranian Advance – the June Gulf Setback – the Autumn of the Arabian Gulf). These three publications focused, in documented intellectual analysis, on two central factors:

• The Iranian regional plan, and the intersection with Western interests.
• The fragility of the internal structure of the Arab Gulf states, especially after the Gulf crisis. Al-Hubail elaborates on his analysis of the problems stemming from the absence of civil society, and reviews the emerging reform movements in some Gulf countries. He discusses the impact on thought, politics, and the identity of the Arab Gulf. Al-Hubail believes that the identity of the Arabs, as a nation, is only valid by an existential connection with the ‘land of the Message of Islam’. This association does not monopolize the message nor contradict the roots of Arab national, but rather enhances people’s awareness of themselves, which qualifies them for a mature partnership with other nations (3). On the level of contemporary challenges, Al-Hubail believes that the Gulf crisis contributed to the collapse of the Arab situation. This rift and the implosion of conflicts will only end with the disengagement in the Gulf between Doha and Riyadh. In his book, June Gulf Setback (the second of the trilogy books), Hubail shows that nothing but dialogue can be the way to break up the Gulf confrontation and negotiate with the major countries of the region, Turkey and Iran, and to neutralize the Western agenda in the region.

Al-Hubail has always maintained that he is not the first to offer and present this potential solution. Perhaps what distinguishes it is the organised manner in which it is presented and that it combines intellectual, theoretical and realistic application that paves the way for a conscious Islamic civil renaissance.

Modern philosophical work In 2019, al-Hubail began editing began editing some new intellectual studies, based on reviews, and following, with a critical approach, some the most prominent arguments supporting and criticizing the results of contemporary Western philosophy. His modern studies have led to what he calls ‘the third way’ through today’s intellectual platform. This is based on ethics and values, and re-editing of the human reference in it, based on an equation that he is working on in this regard, under the name of the ‘balance of Islamic knowledge’. Al-Hubail says that from here he sets out toward the modern world, not from the point of view of the missionary or ideological participation at all, but rather through the basis of sharing in the co-founding for the human interest and his collective values, after the failure of the trends of modernity and beyond.

Canadian Diversity Support Platform Professor Muhanna Al-Hubail launched, through the Canadian Center for Intellectual Consultancy, which he established in Toronto, a cultural dialogue platform to act in two main directions. These contribute towards supporting the fundamental values of the people and state of Canada and their divergent mosaic, and strengthening Canada’s position in the world, especially the East, since Canada is one of the most important countries embracing immigrants from that region. The platform shall also work to spread a culture of conflict resolution and popular diplomacy for the new Canada. One proposal is to work for peace in the areas of conflict in the Arab world and the East, to achieve a peace environment, or a dialogue that pushes for settling conflicts and civil wars or bloody internal political clashes.

Important activities Al-Hubail participated in many TV programs and cultural conferences, and he was published many writings in the Arab and Gulf newspapers.

Book published, most notably

• Thinking of a Prophetic Biography: Contemporary Cultural Reading
• Time for Awakening: Critical Reviews in Contemporary Islamic Thought.
• Towards Enlightenment.
• Arab Trends and the Issue of Democracy.

On strategic analysis of the Arab Gulf region:

• International and regional conflict in the Arabian Gulf.
• The Gulf June Setback.
• The Persian Gulf and the Iranian Advance.
• The Autumn of the Arabian Gulf.

Other writing

• In Defense of National Reform.
• From and to Al-Ahsa.
• The Night Egypt under Arrest of: A Reading of the Bloody Scene at Raba’t, and its preludes.
• Arab Trends and the Issue of Democracy.
• Bahrain: Tales of Thought and Politics
• The Gaza Holocaust: Israel’s losing war

Margins: (1) Time for Awakening. (2) Thinking of a Prophetic Biography. (3) A symposium at Ibn Khaldun Center