This is a grotesquely sectarian interview with Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm in the Qatari-funded Al-Modon website. The more I read of his current-day rhetoric the more I feel that we are obligated to re-read his past writings. It has a different meaning to me now and I wrote about that in Arabic. (thanks Dirar)
PS Not only the sectarianism but the man is pissed at Israel because it would not let the US bomb the hell out of Syria. Those of you English speakers don't understand: Al-Azm was the king of Muzayidin (people who engaged in crude polemical one-upmanship in the Arab world. This is a man who called most Arab intellectuals CIA agents sometimes because they met with American citizens. He actually did do that against Walid Khalidi because the latter met with a Harvard professor who visited Beirut in the 1970s and Al-Azm was convinced that they were cooking a conspiracy against the Palestinian cause. In hindsight, the "right-wing" Walid Khalidi proved to be much more principled than the "left-wing" Al-Azm, who is spending his later years obsessing about his family name and his "prominent" extraction. Kid you not.
PS Not only the sectarianism but the man is pissed at Israel because it would not let the US bomb the hell out of Syria. Those of you English speakers don't understand: Al-Azm was the king of Muzayidin (people who engaged in crude polemical one-upmanship in the Arab world. This is a man who called most Arab intellectuals CIA agents sometimes because they met with American citizens. He actually did do that against Walid Khalidi because the latter met with a Harvard professor who visited Beirut in the 1970s and Al-Azm was convinced that they were cooking a conspiracy against the Palestinian cause. In hindsight, the "right-wing" Walid Khalidi proved to be much more principled than the "left-wing" Al-Azm, who is spending his later years obsessing about his family name and his "prominent" extraction. Kid you not.
