“I have found that our entire history has been distorted, that all those who created Arab culture and its greatness were persecuted individuals, outcasts, exiled, imprisoned, and even executed for their views. It is necessary to look at this culture with new eyes and with a different humanity.” Adonis

Examples of authoritarian regimes in the Arab world are well-known, characterized by absolute contempt for the individual and social rights of citizens, as well as an unabashed recourse to repressive methods, often extreme. Today, ISIS engages in atrocities that often surpass even the most morbid imagination.

What can be attributed to this unprecedented wave of violence and savagery? To what extent do the roots of similar phenomena and practices lie in the very foundations of Islam, in its foundational text, the Quran? Is intolerance and non-acceptance of the other intrinsic to Islam? How are all these connected to the long history as well as the literature – and specifically the poetry – of the Arab world?

To what extent do certain extreme positions of traditional Islam regarding heterodoxy and women have not only religious but also psychoanalytic roots? The foremost representative of contemporary Arab poetry attempts to address these issues – and many others – in an extensive conversation with the Moroccan psychoanalyst and his French translator Houria Abdelaouah.

“The greatest living Arab poet decodes, analyzes, and dissects, with tremendous depth, the Quran and the Arab world today. The result is shocking…”