- News - "Critical attitudes from our Heritage"

Sultan Bin Al Owais Cultural Foundation in Dubai recently issued a new book that belongs to the "Winners" Series. The author of the new book, "Critical attitudes from our Heritage", is Mahmoud Ameen Al-A'lem (1922-2009), the winner of the award of the Eighth Circle of the Human & Future Studies. The book deals with different critical attitudes towards thought and philosophy. It presents Critical attitudes from our Heritage belonging to relatively new thinkers such as Abdullah Al-Nadeem, Taha Hussein, Abdulrahman Badawi, Zaki Naguib Mahmoud, Mohamed Abed Al-Jabiry, Hasan Hanafi, and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, besides thinkers from older times such as Al-Tawhidy, Ibn Tufail and Ibn Rushd.
The deceased thinker devoted a full chapter for each of these thinkers. Some of these chapters are: "The civilizing project of Hasan Hanafi", where he discusses hanafi's duality, "Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd's methodology in criticizing religious thought" where he looks in the fundamentals that Abu Zayd derives from heritage and relies on in criticizing the present. He takes us in a tour when he discusses Al-Jabiry's criticism of our political mentality as Arabs, and spares another full chapter for subjects like "Ibn Rushd's Paradox between European enlightening and Arabian Evaluation", "The rationality of Ibn Rushd between creativity and the lack of inspiration", and "A comparison of the views of Ibn Rushd and Zaki Naguib Mahmoud on the concept of mind subject". Later in the book, he moves to discussing the views of Zaki Naguib Mahmoud, the philosopher, in the chapter: "Zaki Naguib Mahmoud; a journey from partial analysis to comprehensive vision". On Abu Hayyan Al-Tawhidi, Al-A'lem wrote the chapter: "about the questions of Abu Hayyan Al-Tawhidi and their comprehensive answers" in which he discusses a seminar that was held by Egypt's higher council of culture. In another chapter: "Contemporary constituents in the thought of Abdullah Al-Nadeem", the book discusses the relationship between this thinker and Europe. The last chapter of the book is about "The ideological indications of Taha Hussein's book: "The Pre-Islamic Poetry".
Sultan Bin Al Owais Cultural Foundation is always keen to provide the Arabic Library with the most valuable book among the books of every award winner that is not available any more in print, usually a book that is essential for the Arabic Library and which is indispensable for both researchers and learners. Aiming at spreading culture and making books as useful as possible, Sultan Bin Al Owais Cultural Foundation sends books to interested people for free.
It is worth mentioning here that the award of the Eighth Circle of the Human & Future Studies (2002-2003) was granted to the thinker "Mahmoud Ameen Al-A'lem" for his outstanding intellectual activities and works which reflected his exceptional intellectual, philosophical and social awareness in handling important subjects concerning enlightening and civilization, and for his constant defense of Arabic culture, not to mention his vigorous attempts to add to it. Al-A'lem established bridges that connected the Arab renaissance ideology to the historical period he was living in. His speech with others was truly open minded and always called for dialogue, and nothing but dialogue, between all kinds of ideologies and civilizations in our world. His works spread widely and has always been of an outstanding influence that led to a methodological foundation of a contemporary intellectual Arabic culture scheme that combines both the production and criticism of knowledge in a context that really serves humanity in many aspects.