Sadiq Jalal al-Azm

Sadiq Jalal al-Azm (Damascus, 1934 - Berlin, 2016) was a Syrian philosopher trained in the modern European tradition. He brought the rigor of Kant and a Marxist-materialist critique to the study of religion and of contemporary Arab culture, and his name became associated with the defense of intellectual freedom.

He came from a wealthy Sunni family in Damascus. He studied in Beirut, earned his doctorate at Yale in 1961, and from 1963 taught at the American University of Beirut. After the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War he wrote a book of self-criticism (1968). In 1969 he published Critique of Religious Thought, which led to his imprisonment in Lebanon and to the banning of much of his work in Arab countries. He argued that regimes used religion as a crutch to hide their failures, rather than as a way of respecting people's faith.

He also wrote on the relation between East and West. He criticized Edward Said for essentializing "the West" in the same way Said condemned European views of "the East". His influence is felt above all in contemporary Arab thought, where he is remembered as a courageous defender of critical analysis against orthodoxy.