Islam And Postmodernism
Assalam-u-Alikum @irfan can you pase entertain the following idea, based on the discussion you shared with me: If the fitrah is a knowledge that gives rise to reason and language, and knowledge is created when it interacts with the “subjects” in the external world, as Ghamidi Sahab points out, that would make Fitrah pre-linguistic. This reminds me of the postmodernist Gillies Deleuze’s affect theory, which posits a chaotic energy (called affects) which is in constant flux and is prelinguistic, but it flows through language, this energy doesn’t really have a direction or stability, it just moves through everything. Fitrah is much the same in that it’s also prelinguistic and it flows through language. The only point of contention would be that fitrah does have a direction unlike Deleuze’s affects, with Quran and it’s commands being the ultimate culmination of that direction, and that we can experience the fitrah in it’s absolute sense, by purifying the soul through the Quran. I know that Fikr-e-Farahi is very wary about drawing parallels with the western philosophical tradition. But i think if this analysis is fair, it can be a great way to give dawah to postmodernist youth finding themselves agreeing with postmodernisms deconstruction but trying to escape the meaningless void it creates, since not only does it align with post-structuralist thinking (with the fitrah being pre-linguistic), it builds a meaningful meta-narrative while being post-structuralist.