An interview with Sadik Al-Azm.

• Author: Talhami, Ghada
• Position: University of Damascus professor - Interview

We would like to ask you to go back to the 1960s and to the Arab liberation movement and your role in it, specifically to the dominant thought during that period and your seminal work Naqd al-Fikr al-Dini.

The thought of the Sixties, at least as far as I am concerned, developed within a certain context in which the Arab liberation movement appeared to be producing hopeful changes in Arab life, politically, economically, and socially. We felt at the time that there was a wave of modernization and industrialization and serious efforts were emanating from Syria and Egypt to crystallize new ideas and values suitable for this wave and capable of dealing seriously with the question of strengthening Arab resolve. These new values and ideas were also necessary for confronting Israel and for dealing adequately with the dilemmas of limiting its appetite for expansion. In other words, despite the limitations and contradictions of this Arab liberation movement, it appeared to be activating all kinds of hitherto marginalized social forces and human capabilities for building a better Arab future. We, the young intellectuals of that time, were compelled to ask ourselves if we were capable of playing a role within this movement and contributing to its goals, regardless of our particular personal ideological inclinations and/or commitments, be they Arab nationalist, Ba'thist, Nasserite, Marxist, progressive, neutral technocratic, or positive neutralist.

It was also natural for us as intellectuals to focus on the upper structures of thought, values, and culture. What really attracted my attention then was the presence of a transformational and radicalizing tendency within this liberation movement which aimed at the implementation of necessary changes in the economic, productive, and political structures of the Arab World. But along with this tendency went a highly conservative counter-trend which wanted to preserve the old social structures and their values, as well as the superstructures of thought, values, morality, and religion. In other words, it appeared to me then as though the Arab liberation movement was striving toward the implementation of significant and revolutionary transformations in the lower structures of society with its left hand, while at the same time striving just as hard to slow down the transformation of the superstructures with its right hand. I was convinced then that this contradiction within the Arab liberation movement resulted in a great deal of obstruction, without any realization on my part at the time that this may have been class-related, or more specifically, directly related to the nature of the petty bourgeoisie. It appeared to me that the most appropriate intellectual task for a person like myself would be to engage in some constructive activity. This meant destroying those superstructures which had lost their capacity for life because of the changes occurring in the base, while at the same time participating in the building of relatively new structures more suited to the transformations gripping Arab life at that moment.

I was also attracted strongly, while focusing on this dilemma, to the kind of Islamic thought prevalent at the time. This thought appeared to be one of the most prominent elements in the reigning reactionary superstructure. The Arab liberation movement was very guarded in it approach to Islamic thought, avoiding direct contact with it and ignoring the need to renew and rebuild it with openness and clarity. I was becoming very conscious of the ability of this body of thought to continually reproduce the values of ignorance, myth-making, backwardness, dependency, and fatalism, and to impede the propagation of scientific values, secularism, enlightenment, democracy, and humanism.

Allow me here to say parenthetically that I and others like myself fell victim to the prevailing belief that the changes we were witnessing had surpassed all the issues brought forward by the Arab Nahda (Renaissance) of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. In other words, we fell victim to the erroneous idea that history had already decided all the issues raised by the Nahda in favor of progress, genuine modernization, modern science, secularism, socialism, and national liberation. We also felt that retreat from all this had become impossible and that duty dictated the need to continue the struggle at all levels in order to deepen these values in our contemporary lives. Based on this, I used to criticize some intellectuals of the period who were in the habit of marshaling the ghosts of Muhammad 'Abduh and al-Afghani in support of their views, as though nothing had transpired since the beginning of the Twentieth Century. As intellectuals and thinkers, we used to view ourselves as part of a new reality which had overtaken the Nahda phase. We used to think that we represented a movement which had, at least in principle, transcended the issues raised by Muhammad 'Abduh, al-Afghani, and the rest of the luminaries of al-Nahda. But today we find ourselves defending the accomplishments of al-Nahda against Salafi and other obscurantist attacks. Our mistake was to believe that the period in question, namely the 1960s, had historically superseded the Nahda.

The second point I wish to emphasize is an admission regarding the impact of Yassin al-Hafez on my thinking during the early 1960s, although I had not yet met him personally. Al-Hafez had dealt brilliantly with all these issues, dissecting them with sharp logic, clear style, and profound analysis. This was particularly true in his book: Hawla Ba'd Qadhaya al-Thawrah al'Arabiya (Regarding Some Issues of the Arab Revolution). This is why, as an expression of my indebtedness to him, I used a quote from his book as an introductory statement to my work: Naqd al-Fikr al-Dini. He had illustrated with magnificent economy of words a part of the cultural project which I, as well as some others, felt was so vital to Arab progress. What al-Hafez brought out for me was the importance of critically confronting the superstructures of thought, culture, heritage, and religion which were impeding the economic, social, and political accomplishments of the Arab liberation movement.

Let me go back to what the right hand of the Arab liberation movement, or its conservative side, was doing. I was firmly convinced that in order to engage truly in the liberationist cultural project, especially as outlined by al-Hafez, one had to confront the religious establishment and its reactionary thought. (Yassin al-Hafez, naturally, is not responsible for what I have committed in the way of misjudging certain circumstances and issues). One of the symptoms of the poverty of religious thought, for instance, was the Ulama's utter ignorance of anything remotely related to modem science, its problematics, and its theories. This type of ignorance still prevails today. To cite one example, an ideological and political battle raged in those days over the issue of whether or not the Earth was round and whether it revolved around the Sun. The reactionary camp, which rejected this Copernican notion, was led by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, 'Abd al-'Aziz Ibn Baz and the Islamic Alliance of those days, supported by the Americans and opposed to 'Abd al-Nasser. The progressive camp, which affirmed that the Earth was round, was led by Nasser's Egypt. Incredibly, religious thought was and still is preoccupied with these issues. The problem facing us in those days was how does an intellectual who was versed in modem science and philosophy enter in a serious debate with a religious discourse of that level? We felt that it was our right to demand of the religious establishment that they produce the kind of thought that we could logically debate even if we were not disposed to agree with it. In addition, I attacked the Lebanese tendency toward mutual deception among the various religious sects (or what used to be called the Islamic-Christian dialogue) by employing previously agreed upon clever but vague language which says a great deal to each of the parties while saying nothing specific to the other side. It became clear later on that these debates were nothing more than deceptive maneuvers by all sides and a prelude to the civil war.

What I really wanted to debate and discuss with the other side was how do we deal with sacred religious texts during the second half of the Twentieth Century? How are we to understand and interpret Qur'anic texts, particularly following the uproar raised by the religious establishment in Egypt as a result of the publication of Muhammad Ahmad Khalaf al-Allah's book dealing with this question realistically and quite moderately? Are we to read these Qur'anic stories as if they were real events, or are we to appreciate them for their...