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Journal of Arabic Literature (Jal.
Vol.
7 No.
2 June 2026 .
Available online at:
https://ejournal.
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php/jali/issue/view/1555 http://dx.
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18860/jali.
Between European Rationality and Eastern Spirituality: A Deconstruction of Identity and Modernity in Tawfiq Al-Hakim's Novel 'Ufr Min Al-Syarq Jumriyah 1*.
Mubasyiroh1.
Siti Fatimah1.
Muhammad Zakki Masykur2 1 Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang.
Indonesia 2 Universitas Gadjah Mada Yogyakarta.
Indonesia jumriyah_yusuf@uin-malang.
id mubasyiroh@uin-malang.
id, siti.
fatimah@uin-malang.
, muhammad.
zakkimasykur@ugm.
Received:
21-02-2026
Revised:
30-05-2026
Accepted:
22-06-2026
Abstract: This article examines Ufr min al-Sharq by Tawfiq al-Hakim as a dialectical exploration of European rationality and Eastern spirituality within the discourse of Modernity is frequently framed in binary terms: the West as rational, material, and technologically advanced, and the East as spiritual and tradition-bound.
Such dichotomies, however, often overlook how identity is constructed and negotiated in modern Arabic literature.
While previous scholarship has read the novel through the lens of civilizational conflict, it has seldom undertaken a deconstructive analysis of how EastAeWest identities are destabilized and reconfigured through the characters' existential struggles.
This study addresses two questions: .
how are European rationality and Eastern spirituality narratively constructed in the novel, and .
how are identity and modernity dismantled through the characters' inner conflicts and relationships? Employing qualitative interpretive literary analysis informed by Derridean deconstruction and postcolonial theory, the article traces the text's ambivalent and paradoxical structures of meaning.
The findings show that the protagonist Muhsin's dialogues with the Russian intellectual Ivan expose the existential emptiness of a Western rationality that excludes the transcendent from its account of the world, while Muhsin's admission of a faith as fragile and wavering as a flower in the wind reveals Eastern spirituality to be equally unstable once subjected to modern Through the Opera scene where Muhsin's aesthetic and emotional response is set against Ivan's disillusioned critique of Europe, the novel reframes modernity not as a fixed Western achievement but as a hybrid third space of identity The study contributes a deconstructive rereading that moves beyond the civilizational-conflict paradigm, demonstrating how al-Hakim's narrative unsettles the very binary it appears to stage.
Keywords: Tawfiq al-Hakim.
European rationality.
Eastern spirituality.
INTRODUCTION
Written in 1938.
Tawfiq al-Hakim's novel Ufr min al-Sharq (A Bird from the Eas.
emerged at a formative moment in modern Arabic literature, when Arab writers were confronting European modernity directly through the figure of the student abroad.
The novel narrates the life of Muhsin, an Egyptian student in Paris, and his encounter with Western modernity, in a narrative widely read as semi-autobiographical, since Muhsin's persona closely resembles al-Hakim himself during his years in Paris in the 1920s.
Composed against the backdrop of the interwar period, the novel stages al-Hakim's wellknown dichotomy between the heart and the mind, dramatizing the confrontation Corresponding Author: jumriyah_yusuf@uin-malang.
Journal of Arabic Literature (Jal.
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2 June 2026 between what it presents as the spiritual richness of the East and the material rationalism of the West.
Though written nearly a century ago, the questions it raises about the relationship between scientific rationality and spiritual meaning remain strikingly relevant to the present.
These questions resonate with a broader phenomenon in contemporary global society, where the tension between modern rationality and human spiritual needs has become increasingly pronounced (Nachef, 2.
Globalization, technological acceleration, and the dominance of science have fostered a paradigm that privileges efficiency, productivity, and rational calculation, yet this has been accompanied by symptoms of alienation, a perceived emptiness of meaning, and a renewed search for spiritual values in response to a modernity often regarded as excessively materialisticAia dynamic visible not only in the West but also across an Eastern world undergoing intensive modernization (Handoko et al.
, 2.
Read in this light.
Ufr min al-Sharqis not merely a historical document of the interwar encounter between civilizations but a text whose central preoccupations anticipate debates that continue to shape global discussions of identity, modernity, and cultural belonging today.
Theoretically, modernity is often understood through Max Weber's concept of rationalizationAithe dominance of instrumental rationality that displaces the sacred dimension of life .
he disenchantment of the worl.
This rationality produced bureaucratic, scientific, and technological progress, yet it also drew criticism for reducing human beings to economic creatures (Weber, 2.
In al-Hakim's novel, these symptoms surface through a Europe that is materially advanced but spiritually depleted.
In postcolonial studies, the encounter between East and West is understood not as a unidirectional relation of domination but as a dynamic space in which identities are continuously negotiated and reconstructed.
Homi K.
Bhabha's concept of hybridity holds that cultural identity is not fixed or essentialist.
instead, it emerges through ambivalence, interaction, and the blending of cultural influences (Bhabha, 2.
Within this framework, postcolonial subjects are active agents who reinterpret, appropriate, and at times resist external values, while experiencing a simultaneous attraction to Western modernity and attachment to Eastern tradition.
Rather than signaling mere instability, such ambivalence becomes a productive force enabling the emergence of new, hybrid identities that transcend rigid binary oppositions (Ashcroft et al.
, 2.
In this study.
Bhabha's hybridity is operationalized through the notion of the "third space"Aia discursive zone where identities are produced through interaction rather than inherited as fixed essences.
Concretely, the analysis focuses on narrative momentsAiinternal monologues, dialogues, and symbolic settingsAiin which the protagonist aligns fully with neither Western rationality nor Eastern spirituality, tracing how his identity is formed through mimicry, resistance, and reinterpretation.
The complementary concept of ambivalence then reads his contradictory attitudes as a structural feature of postcolonial subjectivity rather than psychological inconsistency: his admiration for Western progress coexists with spiritual alienation, while his attachment to Eastern spirituality is shadowed by doubt about its adequacy in a modern context (Wulandari et al.
, 2.
Although various studies have examined al-Hakim's works through structuralism, literary sociology, and moral values, studies that specifically link the rationalityAespirituality dialectic with identity deconstruction and the critique of modernity remain limited.
Most emphasize intrinsic textual elements or social criticism without dissecting the epistemological constructs underlying the EastAeWest contradiction.
Building on this gap, the present research analyzes how Ufr min al-Sharq represents the deconstruction of the opposition between European rationality and Eastern spirituality while negotiating identity in the context of modernity, contributing to the study of modern Arabic literature by enriching the interdisciplinary discourse on modernity, postcolonialism, and identity.
Existing scholarship on Ufr min al-Sharq has approached the EastAeWest theme largely descriptively, mapping the opposition as a stable structure or thematically, without interrogating how the novel destabilizes the very categories it appears to oppose.
The novel has consistently Between European Rationality And Eastern Spirituality Journal of Arabic Literature (Jal.
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2 June 2026 been read as a pivotal work that interrogates the tension between European modernity and Eastern spirituality, reflecting the intellectual anxiety of Arab thinkers confronting the promises and contradictions of modernity.
Within this scholarship.
Europe is typically depicted as a site of scientific advancement and intellectual freedom that is nonetheless spiritually hollow and morally ambiguous, a dual representation echoing broader accounts of Arabic travel narratives that portray the West as materially advanced but spiritually deficient (El-Enany, 2006.
Sellman, 2018.
Sukiman et al.
, 2.
Two recent studies frame the present article's positioning most directly.
Apriyono .
, drawing on Carl Thompson's travel-literature framework, examines the novel as a representation of the Other, analyzing how the superior West and the inferior East are produced as a recurring inequality, while arguing that al-Hakim ultimately proposes a value of equality between the two (Primadani & Latifi, 2.
Employing Lucien Goldmann's genetic structuralism, map the binary opposition between characters and their surrounding world as a fixed structural pattern expressing the author's worldview.
Both approaches, while valuable, treat the EastAeWest opposition as a stable structure to be describedAiwhether as representational hierarchy or as structural binaryAiand stop short of asking how the text dismantles that opposition from within.
This is precisely the gap the present study addresses.
Differing from Apriyono .
, who reads the novel through the representation of the Other, and from Primadani and Latifi .
, who emphasize a structural binary, this study proposes a deconstructive reading that does not merely identify the opposition between European rationality and Eastern spirituality but demonstrates how the text itself dismantles itAirevealing the West's privileged rationality as spiritually hollow and the East's spirituality as equally vulnerable.
A second contribution lies in integrating postcolonial hybridity with existential subjectivity: rather than treating Muhsin as a symbolic representative of the East, the study foregrounds his inner conflicts as a locus of identity deconstruction, reading his oscillation between admiration for European modernity and longing for Eastern spirituality as the "in-between space" of postcolonial subjectivity.
Finally, the article reconceptualizes modernity as a hybrid and dialogical construct rather than a unilinear Western project, reframing it as an unfinished, contested process of synthesis and thereby contributing to broader debates in literary and cultural studies.
METHOD
This study employs a qualitative textual analysis grounded in the tradition of literary close reading, in which the novel itself functions as the primary site of inquiry.
The object of study is the Arabic literary text Ufr min al-Sharq by Tawfiq al-Hakim (Al-Hakim, 2.
The primary data source is the original Arabic text of the novel, while secondary sources comprise scholarly books and peer-reviewed articles relevant to the conceptual axes of European rationality.
Eastern spirituality, identity, and modernity, which serve as the theoretical apparatus for interpretation rather than as methodological justification.
The analysis proceeds through close reading, understood here not merely as careful reading but as a systematic interpretive procedure in which the text is read repeatedly to identify, isolate, and interrogate passages that stage the opposition between rationality and spirituality.
practice, this was carried out in three stages.
First, the entire novel was read to map its narrative structure and locate the episodes in which the EastAeWest encounter is dramatized, particularly the extended dialogues between the protagonist Muhsin and the Russian intellectual Ivan.
Second, these episodes were re-read intensively at the level of individual utterances, with attention to word choice, imagery, metaphor, and rhetorical structure, to surface the internal tensions and contradictions within each passage.
Third, the selected passages were analyzed through the chosen theoretical lenses, tracing how the text constructs, destabilizes, and reverses the hierarchical opposition between the two paradigms.
The unit of analysis is the textual segment, operationalized at three levels: .
intercharacter dialogue, especially the ideological exchanges between Muhsin and Ivan that articulate competing visions of civilization.
the protagonist's interior monologue, which registers his Jumriyah.
Mubasyiroh.
Siti Fatimah.
Muhammad Zakki Masykur Journal of Arabic Literature (Jal.
Vol.
7 No.
2 June 2026 ambivalence, self-doubt, and the destabilization of his spiritual certainty.
narratorial description and figurative language, including allegory and simile .
or example, the personification of "Europe" and the image of faith "trembling as a rose in the wind"), through which the novel encodes its civilizational critique.
The selected segments were then categorized according to the conceptual function they perform within the deconstructive argument.
Four analytical categories were established: .
passages depicting Western rationality as scientifically powerful yet spiritually hollow.
passages depicting instrumental rationality as a force of dehumanization and disenchantment.
passages revealing the West as an internally contradictory and ambivalent construct.
passages destabilizing Eastern spirituality as an incomplete or vulnerable alternative.
This categorization provides the structure for the Results section and ensures that each interpretive claim is anchored to specific, verifiable textual evidence.
The interpretation is framed by three complementary theoretical perspectives: Jacques Derrida's deconstruction (Derrida & Spivak, 1.
, which guides the reading of binary collapse and hierarchical reversal.
Homi K.
Bhabha's (Bhabha, 2.
concepts of hybridity, ambivalence, and the third space, which inform the analysis of identity.
and Max Weber's (Weber, 2.
theory of rationalization and disenchantment, which contextualizes the critique of modernity.
RESULTS
This study identifies four key textual findings that demonstrate how Ufr min al-Sharq deconstructs the binary opposition between European rationality and Eastern spirituality.
Each finding is presented through the structure of claim, textual evidence, and theoretical analysis.
The dialogues between the protagonist Muhsin, an Eastern student in Paris, and Ivan (Ivanovitc.
, a Russian worker-intellectual, constitute the novel's central epistemological debate and provide the primary evidentiary basis for the analysis.
European rationality is portrayed as scientifically powerful yet spiritually hollow.
The novel stages the West's mastery of the material world as inseparable from its loss of transcendental meaning.
Ivan first concedes the West's scientific greatness, only to subordinate it to what the East has discovered:
A !A OuIN ONAUA"uOI A I (E) EOOI IO CO OuE EEIN OEANA AEEI I COI N uOE I EE EEA EI EO N OA EC! A uI EA A OEC OEA EI! A uI EO I OI EO EEN OAAUAOEA EA AEI OOI EC A uI EO I OAI IE N (EEI)u NEO COC AOC IOOA AE A uII II EE EO O EuEIIO OEI uEIIO (C O) A EEI E IOA (Al-Hakim, 2023: .
")A (EIA:A OEI uEIIOAUAI EE EO A uEIIOA "I know that 'the West' today is an object of esteem and admiration for its science, its discoveries, its production, and its inventions! A But what is the value of this beside that greater discovery which appeared in the East?! A The West discovers the earth, while the East discovers heaven! A He who was able to immerse all of humanity in a dream that endures for ages A is truly above the level of mankind A We glorify the one who created and settled humanity in a 'new continent' A yet we do not see the glory of the one who raised humanity and settled it in: 'heaven.
Read through Jacques Derrida's deconstruction (Derrida & Spivak, 1.
this passage does not simply praise the East.
it exposes the West's scientific achievement as an incomplete term that depends on what it has excluded.
Ivan openly grants the West's empirical mastery ("its Between European Rationality And Eastern Spirituality Journal of Arabic Literature (Jal.
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In Derridean terms, the opposition "the West discovers the earth, the East discovers heaven" privileges the empirical pole only in the narrative logic inverts the hierarchy, showing that the discarded supplement, "heaven" or transcendental meaning, is precisely what gives human existence its value.
The contrast between settling humanity in a "new continent" .
aterial discover.
and raising it to "heaven" .
piritual discover.
dramatizes how Western rationality cannot signify wholeness on its own.
It remains haunted by the very spiritual dimension it claims to have surpassed.
Western instrumental rationality reduces life to efficiency and calculability.
The hollowness identified in Finding 1 is given concrete socioeconomic form when Ivan describes modern industrial labour and the fragmentation of the worker:
A ONOAUA EO EI ON OO uEONAUAIOI N I EIE IE C EN O EE EE EAIO ECIOA
A EO EIAUAOAI OON EIE OA ION EAO A II! A O I EEC EEIEA
UA O OCAUAN ION C Nu OA EI IN I IE O IEC O IEIu OA
A ONO OE NN EIEO EANAUA AO IOI E II N EO O E EAUAO OIA
(Al-Hakim, 2023: .
!AEE ONA
"This means that the worker is left without even that old artistic pleasure he used to feel and find comfort in, when he made a complete shoe with his own hands in his small workshop A Yes! A even the joy of complete creation, which used to make him feel his humanity, is gone.
and he has now become like the lathe, the hammer, or the saw Ai turning, hammering, or sawing one particular small part of this pin or that shoe, repeating this trivial operation his entire life! A" This passage exemplifies Max Weber's concept of rationalization and the disenchantment of the world (Entzauberun.
(Weber, 2.
The division of labour, invoked through the implicit reference to Adam Smith and the pin factory, renders the human being a calculable fragment of a productive process, reduced to the level of the very machines he operates ("like the lathe, the hammer, or the saw").
Modernity's efficiency is purchased at the cost of meaning: the worker's "humanity" (Adamiyy.
and his "joy of complete creation" .
utat al-khalq al-kAmi.
are precisely what instrumental reason cannot quantify and therefore strips away, leaving only the endless repetition of a "trivial operation.
" The novel thus diagnoses Western rationality not as liberation but as a structure that erodes the qualitative, creative, and transcendental dimensions of human "Europe" is depicted as an internally contradictory and ambivalent civilizational subject Crucially, the novel does not present the West as a stable essence.
Ivan allegorizes Europe as the beautiful but selfish child born of Asia and Africa:
A E OIONAUA"NN EA EC Ai EO IO (OO)Ai IOE OC EOu EEIN AOA IIOA (Al-Hakim, 2023: .
A O ONAUAuE IANA "This blonde girl Ai who is called 'Europe' Ai is beautiful, graceful, and intelligent.
yet she is shallow and selfish, caring for nothing but herself and the enslavement of others A" Jumriyah.
Mubasyiroh.
Siti Fatimah.
Muhammad Zakki Masykur Journal of Arabic Literature (Jal.
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Bhabha's framework of hybridity (Bhabha, 2.
, this image reveals Europe itself as a hybrid and ambivalent construct rather than a pure origin.
In the surrounding narrative, "Europe" is genealogically derived from the East, born of "her parents.
Africa and Asia," even as she "denies and imprisons" them.
This destabilizes the colonial hierarchy in which the West functions as the self-sufficient norm: the allegory locates the West's identity in a relation of disavowed dependence on the East.
The binary West/East therefore collapses from within the Western term itself, since "Europe" cannot define itself without the parental civilizations it represses, an ambivalence that the protagonist registers but cannot fully resolve.
Eastern spirituality is itself destabilized and shown to be vulnerable, not a complete The novel's deconstruction is symmetrical: it refuses to install Eastern spirituality as the final This is most acute in Muhsin's reflective monologue, in which he recognizes that faith cannot be manufactured and admits that modern teachings have shaken his own:
A"OIE II IEOcs COE EOO ONO OI uOE ONN IE E A uIN OO N ECOO IA A ANOAUA uI uEIOI E OaAIA:AOEC uIOI EEI A I IE OE I OA IEN ONO OCOE OA IANA A O C OO EO AON EOOEAUA OOII IACN E OO IOAUA OC E OEOIAUAC OEOI I uEIIA A I uIOOI O EI EO OA INA- A O EEOI EOA- AOI OA (Al-Hakim, 2023: .
"AEOA
"Muhsin pondered the Russian's words at length, looking at his tormented, angry face A He wants, through his powerful argument, to create a faith of love A Then he soon drifted into his reflections, saying to himself: Faith cannot be manufactured.
may exist in a person, or it may not, and when we lose it, it does not return Ai or it may return only in its original form.
And I too Ai under the influence of modern teachings Ai feel my faith trembling as a rose trembles in the path of the wind.
Analyzed through Derrida and Weber together, this monologue completes the Eastern spirituality is not a stable presence to which one can simply return:
Muhsin's own assertion that "faith cannot be manufactured" .
l-mAn lA yun.
denies it the status of a recoverable foundation, while his confession that it trembles "under the influence of modern teachings" .
aut tathr al-taAlm al-uadth.
demonstrates its vulnerability to Weberian disenchantment once exposed to the rationalizing force of modernity.
The protagonist thus embodies what Bhabha terms a double estrangement: belonging fully neither to Europe nor to the East.
He inhabits a "third space" of ambivalence in which both rational critique and spiritual faith have become unstable.
Consequently, the hierarchy between the two paradigms collapses in both directions: rationality is shown to require ethical and metaphysical grounding, while spirituality is shown to require critical rational articulation to remain historically relevant.
Taken together, the four findings demonstrate that Ufr min al-Sharq does not resolve the EastAeWest opposition but exposes both poles as mutually dependent and internally Western rationality is depicted as scientifically powerful yet spiritually hollow and as an instrumental force that reduces human life to calculability.
Eastern spirituality, in turn, is shown to be ethically rich yet historically vulnerable and incapable of serving as an untouched The protagonist's hybrid, ambivalent consciousness becomes the site where this deconstruction unfolds, positioning modernity not as a fixed Western achievement but as a contested discourse shaped by tension, contradiction, and the continuous search for existential Between European Rationality And Eastern Spirituality Journal of Arabic Literature (Jal.
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DISCUSSION