Mruvwe, Hussein

Hussein Mruvwe was born in the village of Haddata in southern Lebanon in 1910 (or according to other versions in 1908). In 1924, he was sent by his father to Iraq to study Islamic sciences at the University of Najaf.

Since the late 1920s, he began to engage in literary work. Basically, he wrote critical essays on history and literature, as well as poems.

In 1948, he read the “Communist Manifesto” by Hussein Mohammed al-Shabibi (one of the founders of the Iraqi Communist Party), after which he became interested in Marxism.

After returning to Lebanon in 1949, for the next seven years he was a literary critic and columnist in the Beirut newspaper Al-Hayat .

He later studied Arabic philosophy at the University of Lebanon in Beirut and received an honorary doctorate in Moscow .

In addition to journalism and literary creation, throughout his life he was actively engaged in scientific activities and politics. Being an ardent supporter of the ideas of Marxism , he joined the Lebanese Communist Party in 1951 . The following year, he became a member of the political association Ansar al-Salaam (Arab Communist Party for the Liberation of Palestine). In 1965, he was elected as a member of the Central Committee of the Lebanese Communist Party , and then as a member of the Politburo. However, his political activity caused a mixed reaction in society.

Mruvwe participated in the creation of the Lebanese Writers Union in 1948 . From 1966 to February 1987 (that is, until his death) he was the editor of the cultural journal At-Tariq, and was also a member of the editorial board of Al-Nahj magazine published by the Center for the Study of Socialism in Arab Countries.

In 1980, he was awarded the annual literary prize "Lotus" of the Association of Writers of Asia and Africa .

Hussein Mruvwe was killed in Beirut at his home on February 18, 1987, by Shiite extremists, who considered the scientist an apostate from Shiism , claiming to be a monopoly on the truth and Islam . Mruvwe was especially dangerous for the Shiite armed fanatic group, since his works revealed the scientific truth and laid bare the essence of Islam, different from that which religious figures and politicians speculated.

Mruvwe was writing the history of the Arab world and Islam on the basis of historical materialism .

He criticized bourgeois-idealistic trends in Arabic literary criticism. He was one of the publicist writers who began to publish a number of new magazines that propagated democratic ideas and introduced readers to Marxist aesthetics . Mruvve defended the right to the existence of democratic “ biased literature ” in the era of fierce class struggle, argued that the “apolitical” nature of bourgeois literature was false, because, preaching the writer's right not to interfere in politics, the influence of which seems to be detrimental to artistic creation, bourgeois writers in fact, they serve as reactions, diverting the masses from the struggle, spreading among them disbelief in the achievement of a better life. Mruvve wrote: “We urge writers to call for the joys of life, to discover beauty, the sources of happiness and hope in life ... Therefore, we urge to fight against that black literature that sows despair and pessimism, wants the window of hope for tomorrow to close for people, better than today. We urge the creation of literature ... drawing a human creator who understands what he is doing. Only under this condition can a person truly conquer nature for his happiness and joyful life ... ” ^[2] . The upbringing of a new person, a person of free labor and broad mental horizons, such democratic writers as Mruvwe cannot think without wide propaganda among the people of the pressing problems of social life in the present; they make extensive use of the classical literary heritage of the Arabs, which is often falsified by scholastic literary criticism. Progressive literary scholars strive to identify in the monuments of classical literature features of a critical attitude to the life of that time, elements of the struggle against evil and injustice.

Mruvwe believed that the “journey”, as he expressed it, from the past to the present and the future will be natural if the Arabs accept the achievements of Western civilization not through renouncing their own past, but on its basis, but not invented by traditionalists, but real historical, - on the revival and development of the traditions of mutazilites and representatives of eastern peripatetism (or falsafa) . There were obstacles and obstacles to the development of this culture, because of which its progressive movement stopped. But these obstacles are surmountable, as evidenced by the revival of the Islamic (and Arab) world, which began in the 19th century. Mutual exchange between cultures is natural, they must be open to each other, only thanks to this there is a movement forward: antiquity nourished a young Islamic civilization, a flourishing Islamic civilization contributed to the development of medieval European culture . And this interchange continues. The problems that the Islamic world faces today is a legacy of the problems that faced it, but in a different form, in the past. Therefore, we must turn to this past, study it, without throwing out from it what the religion of Islam brought, “which is the origin and fundamental principle of this heritage,” “the starting point for the emergence of various questions and problems that attracted the Arab mind” ^[3] . Even the Arab falsafa, after its separation from Kalam, remained connected with this “soil”, with religious thought. And inside the Kalam itself, reminds Mruvwe, there was a struggle to interpret the role of reason, its power in solving metaphysical problems, a struggle to affirm the idea of ​​free will.

Mruvwe considers any semblance of materialism to be progressive. He presents the science of asharite kalama as idealistic, committed to the letter and thereby expressing the dominant ideology, the ideology of the autocratic feudal system. Mruvwe contrasts this ideology with falsafe, which expresses the mental mood of the social strata who opposed the ruling central government. As such a force, Mruvwe considers, for example, the Karmat movement as unconditional, in his opinion, revolutionary and progressive.

Since the late 1960s the adherent of Marxism, H. Mruvwe already confidently considers Islam, or rather rationalistic, non-traditionalist movements within Islam, as part of the legacy that has played in history and can play a positive role now. Nevertheless, the historical and philosophical works of Mruvwe are quite traditional for the dialectical-materialistic interpretation of the development of philosophical thought as a confrontation of materialism with idealism. This raises the question of the compatibility of scientific knowledge and faith, science, philosophy and religion, constantly arising in the philosophical concepts of the Arab-Muslim countries. Let us digress from the trivial argument that religious beliefs did not prevent great scientists (as, by the way, from atheistic or agnostic moods) to make scientific discoveries and create scientific systems. The modern view of knowledge, of possibilities, or rather the limitations of the rational, that is, strictly scientific knowledge of the ultimate foundations of being, makes the question of the existence or non-existence of the divine principle open. His decision is given to a person’s personal choice, for which one thing becomes important: to what extent and which religious doctrines can impede the development of science, and which, on the contrary, will correct the conclusions and practical applications of science, protect it from the destructive consequences for humanity of its discoveries.

• Literary Problems (1956) / قضايا أدبية
• Iraqi Revolution (1958) / الثورة العراقية
• Critical Studies in the Light of a Realistic Approach (1965) / دراسات نقدية في ضوء المنهج الواقعي
• Materialistic tendencies in Arab-Muslim philosophy (in 2 parts) (1978) / النزاعات المادية في الفلسفة العربية والإسلاميّة
• Our Legacy As We Know It (1985) / تراثنا كيف نعرفه
• Sheikh was born, the child died (autobiography) (1990) / ولدت شيخاً وأموت طفلاً (سيرة ذاتية)
• Research in Idea and Literature (1993) / دراسات في الفكر والأدب

• Hussein Mruvwe's works ( in Arabic )
• Borisov V. Arabic literature after the second world war