I respected French-Syrian scholar, Burhan Ghalyun, and liked some of his writings. Today, I heard him speak on Al-Jazeera. I could have been listening to Raphael Patai, I kid you not. Some Arab journalists/academics today, in order to sound "modern" and "democratic," feel the need to rehash the cliches of classical Orientalists, and to engage in sweeping "cultural" generalizations that filled the pages of The Arab Mind. Ghalyun was saying that Arab cities don't have "a soul." What does that suppose to mean? I mean, I live in a US city in California, and I have never encountered its soul. Or is he looking for spooky ghosts. Soul? And those who are obsessed with "modernity"--and Ghalyun certainly is--don't they need, deeply need, to read, at the very least, Adorno and Horkheimer? They can start with Dialectics of the Enlightenment. Ghalyun also said that the Hobbesian state of nature is only applicable today to the Arab world. OK. Stay "modern" Mr. Ghalyun.