Self-Criticism After the Defeat

The 1967 War – which led to the defeat of Syria, Jordan and Egypt by Israel – felt like an unprecedented and unimaginable disaster for the Arab world at the time. For many, the easiest solution was to shift the blame and to ignore some of the glaring defects of Arab society. Syrian philosopher Sadik al-Azm was one of the few to challenge such a view in his seminal Self-Criticism After the Defeat. Exposing the political and cultural faults that led to the defeat, he argued that the Arabs could only progress by embracing secularism, gender equality, democracy, and science. Available in English for the first time, Self-Criticism After the Defeat is a milestone in modern Arab intellectual history. It marked a turning point in Arab discourse about society and politics on publication in 1968, and spawned other intellectual ventures into Arab self-criticism.