Baathist 'Culture Shock': Pre-2011 Syrian Regime Policy in Culture and the Arts

By Salam Kawakibi

While political, social, and economic influences on national, ethnic, and religious groups generally dominate the focus in researchers’ studies of revolution or war, the sway of the arts remains largely overlooked. According to Salam Kawakibi in his “Baathist ‘Culture Shock’: Pre-2011 Syrian Regime Policy in Culture and the Arts,” (scheduled to appear in the forthcoming issue of Al Jadid magazine, Vol. 21, No. 72, 2017), this oversight continues to occur despite the importance of the arts in creating a “collective identity and harmony.” Kawakibi’s essay, which offers an in-depth introduction to Ettijahat’s recently published “Cultural Activities in Syria During the Dark Assadist Years,” states that the arts not only play significant roles in the settlement of civil disputes, effectively “renew [ing]…the social fabric of war-torn countries,” but also build a favorable climate for creativity and expression, a task the state often fails to promote.

Essays and Features

‘Children of Monsters’: Doomed by Nature and Nurture?

By Elie Chalala

With the passing of Patrick Seale (1930-2015), it might become difficult to read more “authoritative” personal-political biographies of members of the Assad family. Assad the son demonstrated little trust in the past decade, even for the British scholar in whom Assad the father frequently confided. Will anyone else step onto the stage of political biographies about Syria’s elites in order to offer us a stronger grip over the character of Bashar al-Assad? Not certain, at least as of now. 

Essays and Features

Sadiq Jalal Al-Azm: A Critical Yet Humanist View of Arab Thought

Excerpts from the article

“From “Self-Criticism after the Defeat” and later through his monograph “Love, and Platonic Love,” al-Azm engages in refuting myths and justifications, while also rejecting their use in perpetuating various kinds of ideological and political dominations…The correct answer to the question ‘Is Islam compatible with the humanist secular tendency and its components?’ is to call them incompatible if we examine them from the perspective of rigid dogma, but to label them compatible if we look at them from a historical perspective."

Essays and Features

The Decline of Lebanese Press? A Story of Politics, Corruption, Nepotism and Sectarianism

By Elie Chalala

For quite some time, the Lebanese journalistic community has engaged in an ongoing debate concerning the future of their print media. This occurs at a time already impacted by previous closings of many literary supplements as well as political and cultural magazines, a time when many of the surviving newspapers must lay off journalists, severely reduce their daily pages, or finally close their doors, as in the case of the recent shuttering of a 43-year old daily. To a large extent, most of the Lebanese print media problems remain global, but nevertheless, indigenous or “homegrown” issues do exist.

Essays and Features