Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd by Mamoun Sakkal for Al Jadid

Contemporary debates about the role of Islam in modern Middle-Eastern societies are often captive to the vocabulary of “moderate vs. extremist,” leaving little room for discussions that move beyond these black and white distinctions.  Fortunately, Mohammed Ali Atassi’s recently released documentary about the late Egyptian “liberal” Islamic intellectual Dr. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd is a rare exception.  

One would be hard-pressed to overstate the role of Saad Ardash as a pioneer of modern Egyptian theatre; indeed, throughout a five-decade career he was unarguably its principal architect. As a young man and founder of Egypt’s Free Theatre he was the first to introduce both traditional and experimental forms of western theatre to Egyptian audiences.

Cover of the newest Arabic edition of al-Azm's "Critique of Religious Thought"

For over 40 years now, Sadiq Jalal al-Azm’s “Naqd al-Fikr al-Dini” (“Critique of Religious Thought”) has been one of the most controversial and influential books about the role of religion in Arab politics. Originally published in 1969 by Dar Al Talia and reprinted in 2009 by the same publisher, al-Azm’s work has been cited in countless articles and books about Arab politics and, according to the Qatari weekly,

Director Alaa al-Aswany

So spoke the police officer overseeing the retrieval of my debit card from an ATM machine in Cairo. We had five hours to kill before the process would be successful, so I decided to interview him in his office about his reaction to “The Yacoubian Building.” He gladly obliged me. His comment above was in response to my question about the police brutality in the film version – actually a scene where a young political protester was tortured in a prison, with Mubarak’s picture in the background.