© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2017, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX [CIS 11.1 (2015) 5–33] Comparative Islamic Studies (print) ISSN 1740-7125 https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.30824 Comparative Islamic Studies (online) ISSN 1743-1638 Arguing the Archive: Ṭāhā ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī, and the Future of Islamic Thought Samuel Kigar Duke university samuel.kigar@duke.edu This article analyzes an argument between the Moroccan philoso- phers, Taha ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (b. 1944) and Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī (1936 – 2010). In the 1990s, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān claimed that al-Jābirī had misread Islamic intellectual history by failing to grasp its connection to the Arab-Muslim community. After showing that the differences between ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and al-Jābirī cannot be reduced to differ- ences in European philosophy, this article proposes that a theory of the archive better conceptualizes their differences than MacIntyre’s notion of “tradition,” a common theoretical posture in Islamic stud- ies. The archive, as elaborated by Jacques Derrida (to whom these thinkers are also compared), emphasizes the importance of differ- ence, or an encounter with alterity, and repetition to Muslim intel- lectual history. The signiicance of these themes is demonstrated by showing how ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and al-Jābirī read the debate between Mattā ibn Yūnūs (d. 940) and Abū al-Ḥasan al-Sīrāfī (d. 979) on gram- mar and logic. You have kept one thing, but let many things slip. Abū Nuwās In the 1990s, the Moroccan philosopher, Ṭāhā ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (b. 1944), took aim at Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī (d. 2010), his colleague in the philosophy depart- ment at Mohammed the 5th University in Rabat, Morocco. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān unleashed a vicious assault on the more senior scholar. His claim, on the surface, was that al-Jābirī had misread the Arab-Muslim archive. But the stakes went Keywords: Contemporary Islamic thought, Islamic philosophy, Morocco, Muslim intellectual history, New Muslim intellectuals