Malek Chebel

Malek Chebel is a Anthropologue, Philosophe and Islamologue Algérie N. He studied in Algeria, then in France with Paris, where he also studied the Psychanalyse. He is today psychoanalyst with Paris. He taught in many Université S throughout the world.

He is known for his reflection on Islam, his Culture, his history, his intellectual life, his erotism. He is also known for his public standpoint in favor of a liberal Islam and in favor of a reform of Islam including certain positive aspects of the Modernité Politique.

Biography

Born in 1953 with Skikda in Algeria, Malek Chebel makes its primary studies and secondaries then obtains its baccalaureat philosophy and letters. He enters in 1977 to the University Ain El-Bey of Constantine. In 1980, it obtains a first doctorate in clinical Psychopathologie and Psychanalyse with the Université Paris 7. Then in 1982, Malek Chebel obtains its doctorate of Anthropologie and Histoire of the religions in Jussieu, and in 1984 its doctorate of Political sciences of the Institut of political studies of Paris. In 1995, it is entitled to the direction of research to the Sorbonne. He exerted and gave conferences in Europe, in the Arab world and in Americas: in universities in France (the Sorbonne, Paris IV), with the Morocco, University of Marrakech, in Tunisia, in several Egyptian higher establishments, with the the United States, Berkeley and Stanford, San Francisco, UCLA of Los Angeles, with the CUNY with New York, Rockefeller University with Chicago, in Belgium ULB with Brussels…

Malek Chebel is active member of the Groupe of Wise the which, near Romano Prodi, president of the European commission, thinks of the induced cultural implications by the Europe, in particular in its relationship with southern bank of the the Mediterranean.

Thought

The prolific work of Malek Chebel, nourished of its triple luggage of historian, Psychoanalyst and Anthropologue is mainly devoted to the defense of freedom in all its forms, political freedom, freedom of thought, of living and liking, and its place in the Islam and the Moslem culture. Declined like object of perception, construction, practice, freedom guides the reflection of Malek Chebel to work on the body, the desire the love, the relations between the sexes, but also the tolerance, the political commitment, the gift.

It wrote several forewords, of which that of the Coran translates by Edouard Montet (Payot Editions). This foreword is devoted to the new methodology of interpretation of Coran. Malek Chebel took strong positions to preach what it condère to be a modern Islam. That it is about the veil which is, according to him, a “secondary” subject, - what does not prevent it from qualifying this claim like a “regression” -, that it is still about the need to deal with the problems between the men by the same men them, and not by the recourse to the religion, in the name of God, or by calling upon the name of God.

Islam and Occident

Its work, Islam and free-referee have the aim of including/understanding Islam in its relation with the Occident, whereas today, it is the fear which dominates. To include/understand the manners of thinking, of living, the sensitivity of the other, to exceed hatred. To leave a place to the other. It is also of an interrogation on the place of freedom in Islam and about a plea for a second reading of Islam and its traditions.

Malek Chebel also writes to rehabilitate Islam, because for this black day of the September 11th, 2001, all has appeared as if Islam had become suspect or even had been condemned and Moslems obliged always to justify itself by proving their bona fide. In Occident, they often cause hatred and suspicion, and especially incomprehension. Malek Chebel tries to position as an expert of Islam. If Islam is in the middle of the debates of the century, it is initially important to include/understand it and to know it. According to its analysis, the Musulman S suffer from this negative image of their religion.

“ the majority of the Moslems are taken out of clipper between a bunch of Moslems violent one, who want to Islamize the world, and the large majority of the Westerners who do not include/understand anything with Islam ”.

He recalls that Islam is plural, and that he is also alive. He recalls that in the past, Islam was innovator in many aspects of the life. He analyzes with a grid of sociologist the evolution and the changes of mentalities within the world Musulman. Malek Chebel defends the idea that through the centuries, great periods ago of peace, creativity and happiness:

“ it is in the name of these centuries that I work, in the name of a great number of scientists, literary men, of grammairiens, lawyers, doctors and caliphs or sultans dilettantes that I express myself, while being with the different one, the agent of this heritage ”.

He denounces the Manicheism of the Fondamentaliste S, because according to him, the Islamiste S Intégriste S bring back the thought of Islam to the 7th century. They want to forget and erase the Moslem contribution in the philosophical field, like all the reforms and changes which the religion knew, with the liking of the history and under the effect of the events.

Malek Chebel think that those cling in a rigid and authoritative way to the Coran and with the Théologie NS Fondamentaliste S to give Coran a completely anachronistic reading. Their design is limited to a dualistic and dogmatic vision of the life where all is categorized in terms of pure and of impure. Malek Chebel refuses this Manichéisme; according to him it is with a diversion of Islam, of its culture and of its tradition, to which one attends the planetary scales, which are disastrous for the Muslim world, completely regressive and even destructor because it represents enfermement dangerous, which maintains moreover, the incomprehension of the Occident in its connection and enmity.

All contrary to this Integrist line of the defense of the purity, Malek Chebel pleads for a “Islam of the Lights”, concept which gives its title to one as of its last works. The Islam of which he speaks, it is that of the division:

“ that which brings to the world the Algèbre, the Arithmétique, perfumery, a brilliant gastronomy, a music, a house of the wisdom and which deals with Cosmologie, founded on the reason, knowledge and work, the exchange and the respect of others. I tried to show that Islam is more human than it is thought, it is more accessible, nearer to us, it speaks in the middle, with the emotion and is not there to sow terror

This Manifeste for an Islam of the Lights is presented as follows:

To associate Islam with the Lights: this relation is registered in the dynamics started at the 19th century and continued by the many reformists who wanted to change the face of this religion while being based on the work of the Raison. These thinkers were taxed with Hérésie. Today, the debate is more than ever of topicality: the Islam is it compatible with the République? Which is the place and the statute of the free word, of the Laïcité, the equality of the sexes, the Tolérance or the Démocratie? Is it necessary to adapt the Islam to the Modernité or on the contrary to adapt the Modernité to the Islam, as the Fondamentaliste S claim it?

In twenty-seven proposals, Malek Chebel answers these interrogations without masking contradictions of Islam nor to elude the difficult questions: it is made the theorist of a “other Islam”, an Islam in catch on reality.

It has just made appear Islam, passion French: an anthology , which makes it possible to better include/understand perception that the Westerners have of this religion. The work is thus presented by the editor:

perception that we have of the third religion Monothéiste is extremely old. In testify the many classic authors interested by the religion to the Prophète, which always caused impassioned reactions, enthusiasm with mistrust. This anthology wants to be the reflection of a concern which crossed the centuries and which was expressed multiple manners. It is question of faith there, of Mahomet, mosques, Ramadan, rites, Orient… Nombre of high places are described there Djeddah, Mecque, Jerusalem, Al-Azhar, Cordoue… Of Pascal, Montesquieu and Voltaire with the islamologists of the 20th century, Massignon or Rodinson, while passing through the writers travellers of the 19th century century, this glance French offers the retreat necessary to better include/understand the world which comes.

The erotic specific one to the culture of the Muslim world

The other part of work, erudite, raises also the veil on the culture suitable for Islam, under the aspect of the erotic life, the relationship between the sexes, arts and other refinements of the Eastern culture which fascinated the Occident since the discovery of the Orient.

It is all the part of its work, where find themselves the associated psychoanalyst and the anthropologist to penetrate manners, the imaginary one and the erotic, through the history of Islam and the Muslim world, that is to say all these books which speak about the love and the desire in Islam, to reveal some the singularity, the richness, refinement and to point out them, even them to make reappear, while analyzing them.

In 2004, Malek Chebel published its Dictionnaire in love with Islam , where it approaches the whole of the questions which milked with Islam, right marriage, but also of erotic: Moslem reformism, the repudiation of the women, the veil or sexuality. This exploration of the mysteries of the love is also a book of history which exposes refinements of the Eastern culture.

In Psychoanalysis of Thousand and One Nights Malek Chebel shows that it was necessary for the women to reinvent the world with their measurement to control it: cloîtrées in their harem, in prey with the trouble and the intransigence of the seraglio, they tell stories of which they are the main actors. Under their inspiration, Thousand and One Nights become an initiation with the mysteries of the flesh. Malek Chebel deciphers this splendid and famous work: how the woman, Shéhérazade, had to reinvent the world to control death.

Of the desire watch that to speak about the desire, it is to speak about others. As for the spirit of seraglio, Mythes and practices sexual in the Maghreb studies all kinds of topics related to sexuality: taboo of virginity, obsession of virility, androgyny, and also the language obscene, homosexualities, veils, yous-yous, circumcision… Starting from these emblematic figures, Malek Chebel shows how in the Maghreb the “spirit of seraglio functions”, concept which it forged for better seizing the frightening influence of the law of the Father on the spirit and the body of each one - man or woman.

The Encyclopédie of the love in Islam points out what it was love and sensuality at the origins of Islam: “One made me like in this low-world three things: the perfumes, the women and the prayer, which remains most important in my eyes”, affirmed the Mohamed prophet. It is to say that one can be a faithful Moslem, respectful crowned Text, without being enemy carnal pleasure, affirms malek Chebel. In this work, fruit of ten years of research, Malek Chebel traversed the universe in love with the Moslem countries. He proposes with this study, like an entry in the language in love, manners, of the erotic techniques, but also medicine, jurisprudence, esthetics, the psychology and the mystic of this civilization which known in its history, and still knows, the life of imaginary in love refined and a great richness.

He publishes “Arab Kama-sutra” (Pauvert), which exhumes clandestinity, large texts of the Arab erotism that he presents thus " Islam likes the flesh, the love and the femmes".

" The fundamentalist ones hold for impure any carnal intention, and even any wink. But this Islam proceeds of a hatred of the flesh. He condemns the body and nudity, and excommunicates the woman with the only pretext which she is a woman. The religion of Mahomet was not always synonymous with frustration and culpability. In the past, a great refinement accompanied its development, in particular in Mésopotamie, in Andalusia, in the Maghreb and in Syria. We point out the couches covered with pinks and the beds rascals about which speakspeak “Thousand and One Nights”. But the psychoanalysis proved that what one drives back more is that even which flashes back with a wild force…

All those which want to draw up the young girls according to their retrograde vision act not like Moslems, but like misogynists and machos"

Documents

Interviews:

for the newspaper Humanity of January 24th, 2004
for the magazine the Point February 12th, 2004 (1639 - Page 98)
for the magazine the Point of September 22nd, 2005.
for the magazine the Point - N°1826 of September 13rd, 2007 Islam is victim of its slave culture. at the time of the exit of its book ground slavery of Islam (Beech)

Forewords:

Coran , translation of Edouard Montet (Payot Pocket 2001)

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