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Yassin Hajj Saleh

Yassin al-Hajj Saleh is a Syrian dissident writer, critic, researcher and translator, and a former political prisoner. He was born in the city of Raqqa in 1961, and was arrested in 1980 on charges of belonging to an opposition communist democratic organization. Published in many Arab newspapers and magazines, including Al-Hayat, Al-Safir, Al-Adab and others. He is considered one of the most important Syrian writers and theorists on issues of culture, secularism, democracy and issues of contemporary Islam, and has a wide influence in the Syrian and Arab cultural arena. He is married to Samira Al-Khalil. He left the Syrian territories in October 2013 and is currently living in Istanbul.

Education

He graduated from high school and obtained the first degree in the city of Raqqa in the secondary school. He entered the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Aleppo in the academic year 1977-1978, and was arrested in the third year when he was 19 years old, and he was absent in Syrian prisons for 16 years, to return to the faculty in May 1997 and continue his studies of medicine and graduate from the faculty in 2000. Hajj Saleh did not specialize In medicine, because after his arrest he was deprived of civil rights and consequently the salary for graduate studies that the university provides to medical professionals, and he does not work in medicine because he prefers to work in the culture failed, in addition to his inability to practice medicine because of his lack of specialization.

Political Life

Banned from traveling since 2005. He is considered one of the organic Arab intellectuals and one of the most communicative writers with young people via Facebook and the Internet. With the outbreak of the events of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Yassin al-Hajj Saleh was considered one of the main theorists of the Syrian popular movement, and he made several strong statements on satellite channels and through many press interviews with him. He refused to enter the opposition as an opposition politician because of his preoccupation with intellectual coverage of the Syrian revolution. There are those who consider him one of the prominent activists in the popular movement and the local coordination committees from his position as a citizen and intellectual. Perhaps his articles, which he kept writing in his secret hideout, represented a space for contemplation, analysis and quiet reading of the dimensions and facts of the revolution. It has appeared on the Internet as a single weapon in its solitude, and many readers are waiting for it, due to its depth and daring. In March 2012, a group of young Syrian writers and researchers contributed to founding the Al-Jumhuriya Group for the Studies of the Syrian Revolution, which turned into a cultural and intellectual platform to cover the Syrian issue during the prolonged revolution. He left Damascus for Eastern Ghouta two years after the start of the Syrian revolution and followed it up from the capital, to live about three months in Douma before moving to Raqqa, which had been occupied by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, which forced him to continue incognito until he left for Istanbul, where he currently resides. .

Opinion

Yassin al-Hajj Saleh is considered a liberal, democratic writer with a left-wing, non-ideological orientation, and he is the most prominent critic of the Syrian regime and one who deals with the issue of political Islam.

Hajj Saleh trusts Arab culture, and believes that efforts made in the cultural field will be more fruitful than in any other fields. "We have a great historical culture built around a world religion. This is a great advantage, but it is a grave historical challenge. I think that a renewed renaissance of our culture is conditioned on confronting the religious problem, or - the religious ghoul - and with the humanization of this ghoul. And by undertaking this challenge, which I see as a forced path towards renewal Cultural Our culture can achieve the global aspiration of Islam, but on a worldly basis, and with the liberation of all dimensions and human energies, aesthetic, moral and cognitive. I think that this is the struggle of this twenty-first century.

Arabism and Islam

Hajj Saleh defends the right of Islamists to political life, and considers them closer to their societies than the ruling regimes of tyranny, and called for the development of Islamic thought and religious and spiritual life in his country. He believes that Islamic reform includes two processes: internal and external. Foreign affairs are concerned with all Arabs and Muslims, especially the modernists and secularists among them, and he sees the need to separate religion from sovereignty (not politics), that is, preventing it from monopolizing public jurisdiction or exercising coercion; While internal reform is the renewal carried out by faithful Muslims from within the religious establishment. He calls for the strengthening of the religious institution instead of weakening it, because weakening it, according to his opinion, means the dispersal of fatwas and the spread of intellectual chaos, while strengthening it is a guarantee for it from being dominated by the state, as happened in Islamic history. Islam is a complex and mixed phenomenon. Islam is a religion and a belief system; It also identifies as a nation and a broad cultural and symbolic realm; There are also approaches to Islam that define it as a state, leadership, and general mandate. It also differentiates between a cultural Islam to which all Arabs and Muslims, including secularists, belong; a social Islam that has depth in Arab societies; political Islam; In addition to Islam the religion.

Reality and Change

Hajj Salih has a theory of the “three ogres” in the contemporary Arab world: Arab regimes; Islam; the West. He considers that the Arabs are divided between these three, and that each of them bears part of the responsibility for the Arab reality. He refers accordingly to two models of change in order to get rid of the Arab reality: political change, which includes getting rid of the ruling junta and tyrannical regimes, towards democratic regimes that respect human rights and the will of the people, and are based on the freedom of citizens, and this political change is rapid and urgent; Cultural change, which includes religious reform processes, confronting fundamentalism, consolidating pluralism, the values of modernity, equality and democracy among citizens, and working on cultural production and the development of Arab thought and reason. This cultural change is slow and must be preceded or supported by political change and democratic transformation. Political independence from Western influence in the Middle East and the Arab world, as one of the most internationalized regions in the world, joins the political change. Intellectual independence from Western thought and the cessation of cultural dependence joins the cultural change.

Secularism

He also criticizes secular fundamentalism, or populist, and cultural secularism, which is represented in the transcendence of some intellectuals over society and accusing him of obscurantism by many of them, and considers that religion cannot be the only identifier by which our societies are defined, as the political, social and international conditions are an essential part of the Arab reality The analysis must address it and highlight its impact on life and religion. He considers that focusing on religion, and saying that “Islam is the problem” can do nothing, and therefore he stood against the demonization of religion and blamed it for all the responsibilities of backwardness and considered it a victim in many cases: “Islam is not the solution, but it is not the problem either.”

Syrian Revolution

However, his most prominent work was his sober criticism of the policies of the Assad regime, since he began writing in 2000 until the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011. He wrote important articles inside Syria, most notably collected in the book Syria from the Shadows. One of the most famous of what he said about the events of the revolution was that “the regime is the political, security and financial complex, i.e. the president, his brother, the intelligence services, the heads of its agencies and senior officers, and billionaires from the sons of former officials and official thieves and their cronies”, and that the regime is unable to present a political initiative that threatens its cause. The basic principle is "rule forever", not Palestine or stability, as he says about himself.

Publication

In addition to weekly articles and separate studies, he published in 2010 a study entitled Syria from the Shadows: Views Inside the Black Box by Jedar House for Culture and Publishing, in which it deals with emerging issues inside Syria, most of them centered on the pattern of exercising power and renewing thinking about national affairs. In 2011, he published his book Legends of Others: Criticism and Criticism of Contemporary Islam, in which he records the currents of political Islam and raises problematic questions about the range of intellectual, political and moral issues raised by the status of "Islam" in the contemporary world. In 2012, he published a book Biography on One Foot by Dar Al-Adab. It is another book that deals with various issues in the Syrian issue. Most of them revolve around criticism of the official discourse and the practices of the Assad regime, in addition to the history of Syria, its regional situation, its economic and social reality, its desired democracy, and the question of its national identity. Also in 2012, a book by Dar Al-Saqi published a book about salvation, guys!, about 16 years in Syrian prisons, in which he presented his deep reflections that came to him in prison and after prison, and how he was able to tame the prison monster and turn it into a real liberation experience, “emancipation through conflict with prison and with oneself.” And with others, and by learning from comrades and from books.

Honors

In September 2012, the opposition writer who has been hidden from the authorities in Damascus since the outbreak of protests in his country won the Prince Claus Prize, one of the most important European awards that reward thinkers and writers in countries that suffer from a “lack of freedom opportunities” according to their regime. In his secret hideout, in internal exile imposed on him to escape the repression of the authority and for fear of being kidnapped or imprisoned and killed, the opposition writer received the news of this winning the Dutch prize previously awarded to the poet Mahmoud Darwish and other names and organizations, Arab and international. This award came to raise a lot of the injustice that befell this writer and thinker, after he suffered for a long time in Syrian prisons, was persecuted, persecuted and tortured, like prisoners of conscience, and how many of them are under the Baath Party regime. Haj Saleh wrote on his Facebook page, "Thank you, friends, for congratulating the Prince Claus Award. The truth is that the award is a sign of respect for the Syrian revolution and a tribute to the Syrian people. The heroic struggle of our people for freedom is what forced the world to turn to us, feel us, and stand with us.. I have the honor to I dedicate the award to the souls of our martyrs, Hamza, Hajar, Tamer, Ghiath, Basil, Lin, Lieutenant-Colonel Hussein Al-Harmoush..., and over 24,000 other martyrs, Syrians and Palestinians, and to our families, Muhammad, Yahya, Wael, Mazen Darwish, Hussein and Urwa..., and tens of thousands of others." Some intellectuals considered this award to be a victory for a cultural face and a certain cultural line against another, the victory of a critical intellectual biased towards his people over the elitist intellectual who evaded his people. There is an intellectual who seeks to dedicate himself by appearing as coming from underdeveloped countries, and an intellectual who seeks to dedicate his people by joining them; An intellectual deceives the world by distorting the image of his people to beautify his image, and an intellectual who believes in his people and sees his image in his image and his struggle is part of his struggle.

Wejdan Al-Naqib

Wejdan Abdul-Ilah al-Naqib (September 30, 1991 - September 16, 2016) was an Iraqi poet. She was born in Baghdad and raised by an orphan mother. She studied at the Institute of Applied Arts in Baghdad. She became famous as a popular poet and a cancer fighter in the early 2010s in Iraq, as she suffered from lymphoma, and "fighted cancer with hair". She published her first collection of poetry, Partridge, Dreams, and Childhood, nine months before her death, written in the Iraqi and Standard Arabic dialect. She was supported and encouraged by her father, Arian Sayed Khalaf, after he got to know her and was her spiritual teacher. She passed away at the age of 24 due to illness.

Biography

Wejdan Abdul-Ilah Al-Naqeeb was born on September 30, 1991 in Baghdad. Her mother died when she was a child. She studied at the Institute of Applied Arts, Department of Graphic Design at the Central Technical University in Baghdad, and in the second year of the Institute of Arts, 2010, she was diagnosed with lymphoma. She underwent chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgeries, "but the doctors despaired of her condition, and told her that she had only four years left." Then she was known as a women's symbol to fight cancer, and she wrote poetry and had many TV interviews with the most famous presenters in Iraq.[4] Wejdan Al-Naqeeb passed away on the night of September 15, 2016/ Dhu al-Hijjah 13, 1437. After her death, her citizens began relaying her story on social media.

Poetry

Her poetry opened from a young age, and her first inspiration was her father. She practiced writing poetry during university days as an amateur, and her father continued to support her, as he explained to her the origins of popular poetry and southern terminology, "and her first ascension to the poetic podium was seen in a special festival of the institute from which she graduated." She met the poet Arian El-Sayed Khalaf after she knew She had cancer and he was her spiritual teacher. She published her first book, Partridge, Dreams and Childhood, on January 1, 2016, although she had published her poems several years earlier in local newspapers. She continued as a poet and became prominent in Iraqi folk poetry in the early 2010s. Abdel Aziz Lazem, said about her group Hajl, Ahlam and Childhood, "This good group launched by Wijdan Al-Naqeeb occupies its position in the body of Iraqi folk literature with a well-established merit to give its enlightenment to other poets and those interested in issues of popular poetry and popular literature in general. We have the right to claim that many of the group's poems can be transformed. into songs by vocalists who are trained to express tragic pain." She said in a press statement before her departure, "My first group was a start to the dream and a first step to self-realization, as well as to help me overcome the feelings of intense pain that I suffer daily due to the deadly disease. I am now in the process of writing another set to be published next year, God willing.”

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Youssef Abdullah Sayegh (1916-2014), a Palestinian thinker, economist and researcher, and a member of both the Palestinian National Council and the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization; He worked on establishing and managing the Palestinian Planning Center until 1971 AD, and then became director of the Palestinian National Fund. He co-founded several research institutions in the Arab region, including the Center for Arab Unity Studies.

Early Life, Education and Professional Biography

He was born in 1916 in Syria, and his family moved the year 1924 to Al-Busaih in the Tiberias district and then to Tiberias in 1930. His father is the Reverend Abdullah Al-Sayegh, and his brothers are Fayez Sayegh, Anis Sayegh and Tawfiq Sayegh. He received his education in Sidon, and studied business administration at the American University of Beirut and graduated in 1938.

In 1939 he worked as a teacher in a private school in Iraq, and in 1940 he returned to Palestine and worked as an assistant general manager for the Al-Hamma Mineral Springs Company Ltd near Tiberias. In 1943 he worked as a director of the Tiberias Hotel until 1944 AD to go to Jerusalem to work in an organization concerned with companies and cooperatives Savings and the fight against inflation, and after a few months he worked as a manager to the branch of “Saba” company in Jerusalem, then he held a position of financial director in the fund of the Arab Higher Committee in Palestine. He was captured in the 1948 war and spent nine months in a prisoner of war camp.

After his release, he returned to the American University of Beirut with a master's degree in economics in 1952, then in 1954 he got a scholarship to the United States of America and obtained a Ph.D in political economy from Johns Hopkins University in 1957. He returned to Lebanon to work as an associate professor in the economics department at the American university. He was a visiting professor at Harvard University in the years 1959-1960, Princeton University in 1960, and took over the administration of the Economics Research Institute at the American University in Beirut in the years 1962-1964, then he was appointed as a professor at the Department of Economics in 1963, and he remained there until his early retirement in 1974.

He worked as an advisor to the Kuwaiti government in the years 1964-1965 and presented a development plan for the state, and also an advisor to OPEC, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) (1973-1977), and the Arab Industrial Development Organization; He was a founding member of the Center for Arab Unity Studies in Beirut since 1976, and in the Arab Thought Forum in Jordan, and in the Economic Research Forum for Arab Countries, Iran and Turkey (1993-1996), and chaired the Cairo Association for Economic Research in 1992-1995.

He married Rosemary Sayegh, professor of oral history and anthropology at the American University of Beirut, and his son was Yazid Sayegh, a principal researcher at the Malcolm H. Kerr-Carnegie Middle East Center.

Political Biography

He went to his family’s house in Tiberias and visited Ghassan Tueni, Hisham Sharabi, Fouad al-Najjar, Youssef Salama and Anton Saadeh. Him and his brothers joined to the Syrian nationalism and argued with communists such as Emil Habibi, Emil Touma, Hanna Nakkara, Mukhlis Amr and Saliba Khamis, and joined the Syrian Social Nationalist Party during the study period in Beirut, then he headed his branch in Mandatory Palestine.

In 1964, Youssef Al-Sayegh was one of the members of the first Palestinian National Council held in Jerusalem. He established the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Planning Center in 1968 and managed it until 1971. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization from 1968-1974, and as a Secretary of the Palestinian National Fund in the years 1968-1974. 1971-1974.

In 1990, he formed a team of economists and experts to prepare the Palestinian Development Program. In the 1990s, he became a member of the Palestinian National Council. He worked as an economic advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization and was the official in charge of representing it with the banks of the world. He headed the Palestinian delegation (Madrid) in negotiations related to economic developments in (1992-1993), and after the signing the agreement of the Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Autonomous Authority, he supervised the program of developing the Palestinian national economy for the years 1994-2000, which included a seven-year plan for the Palestinian economy, and participated in the negotiations related to the international aid of the Palestinian Authority, and he was a member of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction (PECDAR).

Death

He died on May 12, 2004, at the age of 88.

Awards and Honors

Awarded several certificates and awards, including

• Certificate of Merit from the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research for Excellence in the Field of Economic Developments in the Arab World (1981).
• Rewarded as “Distinguished Scientist” at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (1984-1985).
• Abdullah Al-Tariqi Prize (2000).

Publication

He published several works in both Arabic and English:

• The Economic Impact of the Arab Refugee Problem on Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan (1955).
• Bread with Dignity: The Socioeconomic Content of the Arab Nationalist Concept (1961).
• The Israeli Economy (in English, 1963 and in Arabic, 1966).
• Entrepreneurship in Lebanon, a role of Enterprise Leader in Developing Economies (1962).
• Action Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine (1968).
• Third World Economics (1978).
• Determinants of Arab Economic Development (1978).
• Arab Oil and the Palestine Question in the Eighties (1981).
• The Arab Economy, Past Performance and Future Prospects (1982).
• Arab Oil Policies in the Seventies (1983).
• Economic components of an independent Palestinian state (1991).
• Elusive Development: From Dependency to Self-Reliance in the Arab Region (1991).
• Arab Development: From the Palaces of the Past to the Margin of the Future (1995).

See Also

Rosemary Sayegh

Yazid Sayegh

Anis Sayegh

Tawfiq Abdullah Sayegh

Fayez Sayegh