Author Description

Sadik Jalal al-Azm is an internationally respected scholar and political commentator who has offered innovative, often controversial challenges to conventional narratives on issues surrounding Islam and the West, secularism, Orientalism, and the Israel-Palestine issue. He is recognised as a principled defender of human rights and has been the main ethical reference for the Syrian revolution. Professor Al-Azm was educated at the American University Beirut, and at Yale in modern European philosophy and has taught at Damascus, Harvard, Princeton, Brandeis, Oslo, Antwerp, Hamburg, and Berlin, his academic specialization being Immanuel Kant and the critique of religious thought. He has been the recipient of the Dr. Leopold-Lucas Prize 2004, the Erasmus Prize 2004, and in March 2013 the Mahmoud Darwish Award for Freedom and Creativity.