Ливанский коммунист Махди Амиль как философ религии

Восток. Афро-азиатские общества: история и современность. 2024. № 6. С. 191–203.

Zolotukhin V. V.

This paper deals with main ideas of the Lebanese Marxist Mahdi ʻAmil on the philosophy of religion. ʻAmil, a non-dogmatic thinker, attached great importance to political aspects of the class struggle. Therefore, his philosophy of religion is based on the original concept of the colonial mode of production (CoMP). A blending of capitalist and pre-capitalist production practices, the CoMP consists in a structural dependence on the capital metropolis, a raw material economy, the extreme weakness of industry and the proletariat as well as of the class consciousness, and (most importantly) in the impossibility of transforming national capitalism into Western-style capitalism. ʻAmil notes the isomorphism of Lebanese confessionalism to the CoMP. The confessionalism, nurtured by the local bourgeoisie namely in defense of capitalism, due to its archaic roots does not allow to develop further capitalism itself. Religion as a worldview is indifferent to politics, but it inevitably adapts to it. In Arab-Islamic history, every social struggle is expressed in religious form. Islam was instrumentalised by the aristocracy, mainly through fiqh. The main purpose of religious law is to perpetuate and sacralise existing orders. Sufism and Illuminationism become a peasant ideology, “Islam of the poor”, which protests against the service of Islam to aristocratic despotism (“Islam of the rich”). The peasant worldview lacks economic innovations as well as its own epistemology that is why the Mysticism constantly loses. Nevertheless, it could become an ally of communists (heirs of all revolutionary ideas ever existed), while rethinking its Idealist roots in a Marxist way.

Keywords: Ближний Восток, философия религии, philosophy of religion, коммунизм, антиколониализм, Ливан, Near East, Lebanon, Communism, anticolonialism, Lebanese Communist Party, Ливанская коммунистическая партия