In This Arab Time The Pursuit of Deliverance

In this collection of bold and wide-ranging essays, Fouad Ajami offers his views on the Middle East, commenting on the state of affairs in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt and more. He brings into focus the current struggles of the region through detailed historical standpoints and a highly personal perspective. The author discusses such landmark past events as the Algerian civil war, the state of the Arab world shortly after 9/11, and the pan-Arab awakening that began in 2011, as well as current events such as the Syrian rebellion and the repercussions of its brutal response from Bashar al-Assad. In addition, he sheds new light on some of the significant players in the Arab world, past and present, from Naguib Mahfouz, the Nobel laureate of the Arabs, to Ziad Jarrah—the terrorist who is thought to have been at the controls of the plane forced down by its heroic passengers in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 9/11.

Fouad Ajami was a MacArthur Fellow, a Lebanese-born American university professor, and a prolific writer on Middle Eastern issues. He was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the cochair of the Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order. From 1980 to 2011 he was a professor and director of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He has written numerous books, including The Arab Predicament, Beirut: City of Regrets, The Foreigner's Gift, and The Syrian Rebellion.