Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm | |
|---|---|
 Sadiq al-Azm at University of California, Los Angeles, 2006 | |
| Born | 1934 |
| Died | December 11, 2016(2016-12-11) (aged 81–82) |
Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm (Arabic:صادق جلال العظمṢādiq Jalāl al-‘Aẓm; 1934 – December 11, 2016) was aProfessor Emeritus of Modern European Philosophy at theUniversity of Damascus in Syria and was, until 2007, a visiting professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies atPrinceton University. His main area of specialization was the work of German philosopherImmanuel Kant, but he later placed a greater emphasis upon theIslamic world and its relationship to the West, evidenced by his contribution to the discourse ofOrientalism.[1] Al-Azm was also known as ahuman rights advocate and a champion of intellectual freedom and free speech.[2]
Al-Azm was born in 1934 inDamascus,Syrian Republic, into the influentialAl-Azm family, who were ofTurkish orArab origins.[3][4][5] The Al-Azm family rose to prominence in the eighteenth century under the rule of theOttoman Empire in theregion of Syria. Al-Azm's father, Jalal al-Azm, was one of the Syrian secularists who was known to admireMustafa Kemal Atatürk'ssecularist reforms in theRepublic of Turkey.[4]
Al-Azm was schooled inBeirut,Lebanon, earning a B.A. in Philosophy from theAmerican University of Beirut in 1957. Al-Azm earned an M.A. in 1959 and a Ph.D. in 1961 fromYale University, majoring in Modern European Philosophy.
In 1963, after finishing his Ph.D., he began teaching at theAmerican University of Beirut. His 1968 bookAl-Nakd al-Dhati Ba’da al-Hazima (Self-Criticism After the Defeat) (Dar al-Taliah, Beirut) analyzes the impact of theSix-Day War on Arabs. Many of his books are banned in Arab nations (with the exception of Lebanon).
He was a professor of Modern European Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Sociology at theUniversity of Damascus from 1977 to 1999. He continued to be active in lecturing at European and American universities as a visiting professor. In 2004, he won theErasmus Prize withFatema Mernissi andAbdulkarim Soroush. In 2004 he received theDr. Leopold Lucas Prize awarded on behalf of the Protestant Faculty of theUniversity of Tübingen by ProfessorEilert Herms with an address entitled "Islam and Secular Humanism"[6][7] In 2005, he became a Dr. Honoris Causa atHamburg University. In 2015 he was awarded theGoethe Medal by the president of the Goethe Institute.
Al-Azm was at the center of a political controversy in December 1969 when he was arrestedin absentia with his publisher by the Lebanese government; he had fled to Syria only to later return to Beirut to turn himself in, where he was jailed in early January 1970. He was charged for writing a book that aimed at provoking feuds among the religious sects of Lebanon. This was after publication in book form of various essays that previously appeared in journals, magazines and periodicals. Together, they comprised the 1969 book,Naqd al-Fikr al-Dini (Critique of Religious Thought) (Dar al-Taliah, Beirut). In it, Al-Azm's rebuke of political and religious leaders and the media who supported them for exploiting their populations' religious sentiments was relentless and made him enemies. He applied a Marxist-materialist critique to religion, not to discredit people's religious commitments, but to expose how "Arab regimes found in religion a crutch they could use to calm down the Arab public and cover-up for their incompetence and failure laid bare by the defeat, by adopting religious and spiritual explanations for the Israeli victory...."[8]
Al-Azm was released from prison in mid-January 1970 after the "Court decided in consensus to drop the charges filed against the Defendant Sadiq Al-Azm and Bashir Al-Daouk due to the lack of criminal elements they were charged with."[8]: Appendix Subsequent editions ofNaqd al-Fikr al-Dini include the Documents from the Tribunal and continue to be published in Arabic to this day, though with restricted access in the Middle East.
Al-Azm long believed his arrest was motivated by other factors, perhaps as a way to "settle scores with their critics and foes." Regardless, the arguments Al-Azm raised inCritique of Religious Thought continue to be debated, and there have been numerous books published in Arabic furthering the positions of both sides of the debate. The most thorough chronicling of the "affair", to use the author's own words, outside the Middle East was in the German journal,Der Islam, by Stefan Wild in an essay translated "God and Man in Lebanon: The Sadiq Al-Azm Affair" in 1971.[9]
HistorianAlbert Hourani characterizes Al-'Azm's writing as "a total rejection of religious thought."[10] Al-Azm was a critic ofEdward Said'sOrientalism, claiming that itessentialises 'the West' in the same manner that Said criticises imperial powers and their scholars of essentialising 'the East'. In a 1981 essay, Al-Azm wrote of Said: "the stylist and polemicist in Edward Said very often runs away with the systematic thinker ... we find Said ... tracing the origins of Orientalism all the way back to Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides and Dante. In other words, Orientalism is not really a thoroughly modern phenomenon, as we thought earlier, but is the natural product of an ancient and almost irresistible European bent of mind to misrepresent the realities of other cultures, peoples and their languages. ... Here the author seems to be saying that the 'European mind', from Homer to Karl Marx and A.H.R.Gibb, is inherently bent on distorting all human realities other than its own."[citation needed]
Within a decade, Al-Azm became an active participant in the dialogue surrounding free speech and the 1988 publication ofThe Satanic Verses bySalman Rushdie.[citation needed]
Al-Azm wrote numerous books and articles in Arabic, and some have been translated into European languages including Italian, German, Danish, French. NeitherAl-Nakd al-Dhati Ba’da al-Hazima norNaqd al-Fikr al-Dini has been translated in its entirety into English, though selections ofNaqd al-Fikr al-Dini have appeared in English translation in John J. Donohue and John L. Esposito'sIslam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives ([1982]2007, 2nd Ed.) Additionally, chapter two ofNakd al-Fikr al-Dini was translated into English in a 2011 Festschrift in honor of al-Azm's career published under the titleOrientalism and Conspiracy: Politics and Conspiracy Theory in the Islamic World, Essays in Honour of Sadiq J. Al-Azm.
وُلد صادق جلال العظم عام 1934 في العاصمة السورية دمشق لأسرة تنتمي لعائلة سياسية عريقة من أصل تركي، وكان والده جلال العظم أحد العلمانيين السوريين المعجبين بتجربة مصطفى كمال أتاتورك في تركيا.
