Sadik Al-Azm

Sadik Al-Azm (Arabic,صادق العظم) (born in Damascus, Syria, in 1934) is a Professor Emeritus of Modern European Philosophy at the University of Damascus in Syria. His area of specialization is the Islamic world and its relationship to the West, and he has contributed to the discourse of "Orientalism". He is also known as a human rights advocate and a champion of intellectual freedom.

Career

He grew up in a well-known Sunni family. In 1963, after finishing a Ph.D. from Yale University, he began teaching at the American University of Beirut. His book "Self-Criticism After the Defeat" (1968) analyzes the impact of the Six Day War on Arabs. Many of his books are banned in Arab nations (with the exception of Lebanon). He is a notable critic of Edward Said's "Orientalism", claiming that it essentialises 'the West' in the same manner that Said criticises imperial powers of essentialising 'the East'.

Al-Azm was jailed by the Lebanese government after publishing his 1969 book "Critique of Religious Thought" (Naqd al-Fikr al-Dini, Beirut, 1970). In 2004, he won the Erasmus Prize, with Fatema Mernissi and Abdulkarim Soroush. In 2004, he also received the Dr. Leopold-Lucas-Preis of the Evangelical-Theological Faculty of the University of Tűbingen. In 2005 he became a Dr. Honoris Causa at Hamburg University.