As is always the case with the controversial writer and professor Sadek Jalal Al-Azm, hundreds of Beirut’s intellectuals and students flooded to West Hall on December 12 to hear him speak. Organized by the Anis Makdisi Program in Literature in line with its program, ‘The Crisis of Arab Thought,” his lecture was entitled “Three Years After 9/11: A Critical Review.” Maher Jarrar, director of the program, began the session with a brief introduction of the “bold” and esteemed thinker who is the recipient of several awards for his work, the most notable of which are the Dutch Erasmus and the Belgian Prince Claus prizes. Despite those honors, Al-Azm continues to be regarded in the Arab world as al-kafer (a sinner), particularly after the publication of his Critique of Religious Thought in 1968. Quoting Jihad Al-Zoghbi, Jarrar hailed Al-Azm as the only intellectual in the Arab world who supported Salman Rushdie in the name of freedom of expression. Al-Azm began his talk by alluding to his expulsion from AUB after the publication of his 1968 book. He then moved into his topic by asserting that the celebrations of 9/11 witnessed on the Palestinian streets were an honest expression of anti-American sentiment, whereas the pressuring of Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat to donate his blood represented a form of political bankruptcy. Al-Azm also expressed disbelief at the “surrealist conspiracy theories” that followed this milestone event. With reference to Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, Al-Azm marveled at how the fact that reality imitates literature is often denied, let alone questioned. He subsequently compared the more dangerous Osama bin Laden to his predecessor, Saudi terrorist Juhayman Al-Otaibi, who invaded the Ka’ba in Mecca in 1974. Al-Azm then attacked Samuel Huntington’s theory of “the clash of civilizations,” which he labeled “a theory contrary to history.” He described Huntington as a pupil of the radical Islamists and disparaged Iranian President Mohammed Khatami’s famous call for the dialogue of civilizations. He deemed Khatami’s claim as more amusing than serious and saw it as a ploy to maintain his position. Al-Azm’s statement that “Islam is not a civilization” was bombarded by a string of questions from prominent Lebanese lawyer Chibli Mallat and others in the audience. . |
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