Sunday, February 18, 2007

For Lebanese ultra-nationalist reasons (and for right-wing reasons too), the Lebanese press is now celebrating the anniversary of Shi`r magazine. I wrote about that before. But personally, I think that Dirasat `Arabiyyah journal is an extremely important journal: that broke the most taboos. I still re-read its articles some times. Some times I read them and look with amazement at the ideological transformations of some of the contributors: like Bassam Tibi, Al-`Afif Al-Akhdar, and Waddah Shararah among many others. Al-Akhdar (who had influence on me in the mid-1970s, and who I utterly disrespect nowadays) was at his best in those issues. He broke new grounds. People should still read his edition of the Communist Manifesto.