Our faculty member from the Sociology Department at Ibn Haldun University, Prof. Dr. Irfan Ahmad’s article titled “Habermas as an Ethnic Thinker Par Excellence: On Critique, Palestine, and the Role of Intellectuals,” has been published in Teaching in Higher Education, one of the prestigious academic publications in the field of social sciences.
The article questions the concepts of “critique” and “universality” through the statements made by German philosopher Jürgen Habermas in 2023 regarding the Israel-Palestine issue. Prof. Ahmad criticizes the acceptance of Habermas as a “universalist” thinker, arguing that his ideas do not appeal to everyone and are, in fact, lacking “from all.” In this context, it is claimed that Habermas adopted an Islamophobic and missionary discourse, especially in the post-9/11 period.
Prof. Ahmad argues that Habermas’s refusal to recognize the events in Palestine as genocide and his unconditional support for Israel’s “right to exist” are closely related to his past and his understanding of Enlightenment-modernity. The article also evaluates Habermas’s intellectual stance by comparing it with the resistance of the 8th-century Islamic scholar Imam Malik against unjust power. The study opens a discussion on the limits of critical thinking in higher education, the importance of historical context, and the nature of intellectual responsibility.
We congratulate Prof. Irfan Ahmad for successfully representing our university on international academic platforms and wish him continued success.
For article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13562517.2025.2466001#abstract
