The Image of Ibn Rushd in Contemporary Moroccan Thought

Moroccan Rushdist studies did not draw a unified, harmonious image of the philosopher of Cordoba and Marrakesh, but rather drew different and varied images of him, even contradictory and conflicting ones. We have come across three different images whose features began to take shape since the first beginnings of Moroccan studies on Ibn Rushd on the occasion of organizing the symposium “Ibn Rushd and his School in the Islamic West” in 1978, and this conflict in the position on Abu al-Walid and his philosophy continued until the writing of these lines.
The tendency to glorify Ibn Rushd reached its peak with Muhammad Abed al-Jabri, who defended in all his research a central thesis, namely that Rashidism constituted an epistemological break with Eastern Islamic philosophy… at all levels: methodological, conceptual, and problematic, which makes it, that is, Rashidism, the key to our liberation and intellectual, scientific, and political progress….
Al-Jabri’s theses on Ibn Rushd were subjected to various criticisms, the degree of which varied from one thinker to another…
But the radical criticism of al-Jabri’s thesis would reach its maximum limits with Taha Abd al-Rahman, who placed the concepts of Ibn Rushd and al-Jabri in one category, and directed against them all the tools of demolition and means of undermining that he could, reaching the point of departing from the rules of philosophical craftsmanship and resorting to the logic of accusation and dogmatic thinking…. Taha Abd al-Rahman was not alone in his criticism of Ibn Rushd. Rather, we find this tendency present in a number of Moroccan researchers.
There is a difference between Moroccan and Eastern Rushdian studies. While the debate has raged in the Western intellectual arena between Rushdian and non-Rushdian trends, a debate has taken place between different trends in the Arab East, each of which claims to represent the true Rushdian spirit.

Has the Moroccan philosophical reading of Ibn Rushd achieved its ultimate goal, which is to draw a complete and true picture of Ibn Rushd? This is what the book attempts to answer.