Book description
A devastating critique of the Arab world's political stagnation by
one of its most revered thinkers. The 1967 War - which led to the
defeat of Syria, Jordan and Egypt by Israel - felt like an
unprecedented and unimaginable disaster for the Arab world at the
time. For many, the easiest solution was to shift the blame and to
ignore some of the glaring defects of Arab society. Syrian philosopher
Sadik al-Azm was one of the few to challenge such a view in his
seminal Self-Criticism after the Defeat. Exposing the political and
cultural faults that led to the defeat, he argued that the Arabs could
only progress by embracing secularism, gender equality, democracy, and
science. Available in English for the first time, Self-Criticism after
the Defeat is a milestone in modern Arab intellectual history. It
marked a turning point in Arab discourse about society and politics on
publication in 1968, and spawned other intellectual ventures into Arab self-criticism.
'Sadik al-Azm saw the Arab defeat for what it was: an indictment of
Arab culture, a verdict on the sort of world that the military officers
and the revolutionaries of the era had built. With al-Azm's critique - a
new generation of truth-tellers had found its voice.' Fouad Ajami
Born in Syria in 1934, Sadik al-Azm is one of the foremost Arab
intellectuals of recent decades. Since this book's original
publication in Arabic, al-Azm was to know both eminence and
persecution. He was tried in Lebanon for his assault on Islamic
religious dogma, and was dismissed from his position at the American
University of Beirut. Many of his works are still banned in the Arab
world. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Modern European
Philosophy at the University of Damascus and was awarded the Erasmus
Prize in 2004.
