بدايات تختتم عيدها العاشر وتعلّق الصدور مؤقتًا

Bidayat Concludes Its Tenth Anniversary and Temporarily Suspends Publication

Bidayat

After ten years of publication, “Bidayat” magazine is temporarily suspending its work due to funding challenges, hoping to find a qualitative shift that ensures its continuity or concludes its venture.

هل الاقتصاديات العربية ريعية؟ حالتا مصر ولبنان

Are Arab Economies Rentier? The Cases of Egypt and Lebanon

Bidayat

The concept of "rentier economy" is inverted from a negative symptom to an inherent feature of capitalism, where exploitation extends beyond production to strongly impact the market.

السودان، الجزائر، إلخ. استئناف البدايات

Sudan, Algeria, Etc.: Resuming the Beginnings

Bidayat

The popular movements in Sudan and Algeria represent a resumption of the 2011 uprisings, posing the challenge of achieving genuine change that expresses the will of the people in the face of authoritarian regimes and the interference of old and external powers.

مئوية سايكس بيكو الخرائط والتاريخ

The Sykes-Picot Centenary: Maps and History

Bidayat

The Great Loot: Gouraud raised his glass — "the deal will be profitable!" What the French unified economically, the independentists divided in 1950. One partition Sykes-Picot can't be blamed for.

النفط في المِخيال العربي تقاسيم على مقام السوائل

Oil in the Arab Imaginary: Variations on the Mode of Liquids

Bidayat

Oil is the devil's urine, said Judge al-Hajari — then drank deeply of it. Variations on the mode of liquids: water, tears, semen, blood, and oil.

دليل ثوار وثوريين العرب

A Guide to Arab Revolutionaries and Rebels

This is not a museum of revolutionaries but a guide to what revolutions teach: independence is not enough, and defeat itself changes the victor.

تقديم كتاب: إن كان بدك تعشق، كتابات في الثقافة الشعبية

Book Introduction: If You Want to Fall in Love - Writings on Popular Culture

Gilgamesh is popular culture, Picasso drew from African masks — no rupture between "high" and "low," but the key distinction: culture produced by the people vs. culture produced for their consumption.

أم كلثوم مسكّن – الاوجاع لا يشفي من مرض

Umm Kulthum as Painkiller - A Sedative That Does Not Cure

As-Safir

Umm Kulthum was not merely a talented singer, but a Sufi priestess for societies in historical crisis, offering them a painkiller for their woes, not a cure for their illness.

وأثر التحولات الراهنة في الفكر العربي المعاصر

The Impact of Current Transformations on Contemporary Arab Thought

What blocks understanding is not a lack of cultural explanations but their excess: “culturalism” erases social reality and reduces politics to identity and religion.

مداخلة ندوة الكرامة

Intervention at the Dignity Symposium

The people want the fall of the regime—but rulers fell, not systems, and whoever won power was the most centralized, most ideological force.

Arab Revolution – AUB

The Arab revolutions are directed not only against the present but against the "until now"—the moment when the voiceless make the experts voiceless.

Reflections on Culture and Folklore in Lebanon

Folklore is the "matrix of every culture": the dabkeh is a pre-monotheistic fertility rite, proverbs are ruins of old tales—and the Rahbanis and Ziad created modern folklore confronting war and hypocrisy.

Fawwaz Traboulsi: Revolt Motives Are Internal

Tribune

The motives of the uprisings were internal: inequality, unemployment, and authoritarianism — and democracy means people choose their representatives.

لا حرية بدون مساواة

No Freedom Without Equality

Shu'un Filastiniyya

Interview: no freedom without equality; “work, freedom, bread” is one triad, and whoever splits it apart reproduces the same order.

Revolutions bring down ideas as well!

Heinrich Boll Stiftung

Revolutions do not merely change governments; they shatter the ideologies that made those governments seem permanent and legitimate, and undermine decades of intellectual frameworks that naturalized authoritarian rule.

الثورات تٌسقِط أنظمة الافكار ايضا !

Revolutions Bring Down Systems of Ideas Too!

Al-Akhbar

A quarter-century of "good governance" conferences didn't topple a president — the crowds did it in weeks. Each Saudi prince gets $275,000/month, but The Economist worries about bread subsidies.

العروبة والأيديولوجيا القومية: عروبة الحاضر

Arabism and Nationalist Ideology: The Arabism of the Present

Between the glorious past and the promised future lies the entire subject—the present. No Arabism without the value of work against "rentier laziness."

كلمة تقديم لمحاضرة نوام تشومسكي/ الاونسكو

Introductory Remarks for Noam Chomsky's Lecture / UNESCO

Noam Chomsky is presented as a thinker who combines humility with extreme sensitivity to injustice, a critic of American imperialism, an advocate for freedom and equality, and a supporter of resistance against occupation.

محيي الدين اللبّاد وثقافة العين

Mohieddin al-Labbad and the Culture of the Eye

A lifetime project to revive Arab eye culture: the book as hospitality — three-quarters for the writer, one-quarter blank for the reader. Before al-Jahiz's duck: "This is not a duck!"

Genealogy: Science or Practical Illusion?

Genealogy is "practical illusion" per Ibn Khaldun: its utility lies not in knowledge but in cementing solidarity and "social honor"—and families accept from their own history only what pleases them.

فواز طرابلسي لـ«الوقت»: نشهد سقوط الأوهام.. وإضعاف الدولة لا يقوّي الحريات

Fawwaz Traboulsi to Al-Waqt: We Are Witnessing the Fall of Illusions... Weakening the State Does Not Strengthen Freedoms

Al-Waqt

The global financial crisis shatters liberal illusions about the market and state intervention, affirming that weakening the state in our countries disintegrates society and does not strengthen freedoms, necessitating deep left-wing critique.

ليس بالثقافة وحدها يحيا الانسان

Man Does Not Live by Culture Alone

When culture turns into a ready-made identity, politics and economics disappear, and a society lacking production is told to settle for a “knowledge society.”

Breaking with the “National Consensus” – Towards Lebanese-Palestinian Reconciliation

As-Safir

Translation: "I will have no part of the settlement consensus"—it is a fraud manufactured after Taif for scapegoating. Even granting citizenship to all Palestinians would barely change the confessional balance.

We the Arabs, the Holocaust, and Palestine

As-Safir

Holocaust denial discourse is "a hallucination obsessed with the West"—the crime was European against Europeans, and Nazi theories ranked Arabs lower than Jews. Better to investigate Israel's crimes than to deny the Holocaust.