المقالات

One does not have to look far to see that several wars are being waged, with Iran’s blessing, across the Arab world and beyond. In Yemen, the Houthis are trying to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait by seeking to retake the Yemeni port of Mokha, from which they were driven in 2014 by local Yemeni forces backed by the United Arab Emirates. Will Iran manage to control both the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the gateway to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, through the Houthis in Yemen? Iran has made no secret of its decision to pursue an offensive policy on several fronts. But for the Revolutionary Guards, the priority today remains maintaining Iran’s grip on Iraq. A genuine struggle is underway there, centered on the weapons held by sectarian militias affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards. These militias were brought together under the banner of the “Popular Mobilization Forces,” which receive funding from the Iraqi state budget and seek to exercise over the state the same dominant role played by the Revolutionary Guards in Iran. The Revolutionary Guards’ attachment to the Popular Mobilization Forces and their arsenal explains the importance Iran places on Iraq, which has now been put at the service of multiple Iranian interests benefiting the regime in Tehran. Among those uses is financing part of Iran’s budget. A few days ago, the governor of Iran’s central bank traveled to Baghdad to demand payment of $12 billion for Iranian gas used in Iraq to generate electricity. The Iranians have forgotten that closing the Strait of Hormuz prevents Iraq from exporting a large share of its oil and therefore costs Iraq billions of dollars. Iran is demanding billions from Iraq while at the same time seeking, for reasons of its own, to prevent it from exporting most of its oil. Those reasons stem from the fact that the Strait of Hormuz has become Iran’s most powerful weapon in its confrontation with the United States, with Iraq now among the victims of that confrontation. Regardless of what the “Islamic Republic” derives from Iraq’s resources, particularly its oil, Iraq remains the grand prize handed to Iran by the United States. That happened under the administration of George W. Bush, which insisted in 2003 on overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime and handing Iraq to the “Islamic Republic” on a silver platter. The US administration is now seeking to wrest Iraq away from Iran. Yet it appears to ignore a fundamental reality: since 2003, Iraq has effectively been ruled by sectarian militias linked to the Revolutionary Guards, the very militias that fought the Iraqi army during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988. These are Iraqi militias that returned from Tehran, riding American tanks into Baghdad. They took control of the key institutions of the Iraqi state and prevented any genuine reform capable of turning Iraq into a normal state, one able to balance its relations with Iran and its Arab neighbors. This is an Iraqi reality that Donald Trump’s administration neglects because of its failure to understand the depth of Iranian penetration into Iraq… The George W. Bush administration rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist, family-run regime. It was necessary to get rid of that regime, both brutal and foolish, but only if one knew who would replace it. The Trump administration is now trying to address the consequences of a disaster that befell Iraq, which is now being asked to become a dagger in the side of Arab security. Attacks against Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are launched from Iraq. Iraq is also used as a launchpad for attacks on specific targets in the Kurdistan Region. It is no coincidence that Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, speaker of Iran’s parliament, made a point of beginning his latest visit to Iraq with a stop at the memorial to Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, who was killed in a US strike alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, shortly after they left Baghdad airport in early 2020. Qalibaf, one of the most prominent figures in the Iranian regime, came to Baghdad to confirm Tehran’s opposition to the disarmament of Iraqi militias, in direct opposition to the efforts of Ali al-Zaidi’s government, which finds itself in an unenviable position. Qalibaf did not say so explicitly. But his visit to the Qassem Soleimani memorial, where he delivered a speech glorifying the “resistance,” carries a clear message. Above all, it means that the “Islamic Republic” still regards Iraq as an “arena” within its orbit, and indeed as an essential asset in its confrontation with the Trump administration, a confrontation that is sometimes quiet and at other times overt, punctuated from time to time by public or secret negotiations. Iraq can now be regarded as an integral part of the wars unfolding across the region, from Yemen to the Strait of Hormuz, from the Arab Gulf states subjected to Iranian attacks to South Lebanon. Who will have the final say in Iraq? How far can Iran continue to exert pressure? To what extent can Ali al-Zaidi’s government withstand the armed militias? Will the visit to Saudi Arabia by Faiq Zidan, president of Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council, help secure Arab support for Ali al-Zaidi’s government? It should be noted that Faiq Zidan has recently emerged as a major player in Iraq’s domestic politics, including in the choice of prime minister. These are the questions that will define the next phase, with Iraq itself at the heart of them. It is in Iraq that Iran is defending its regime and seeking to assert that there will be no turning back, no return to the situation that existed before 2003. That year, the George W. Bush administration decided to make the “Islamic Republic” the custodian of Iraq under the pretext of Iraq’s “Shiite majority.” Can Donald Trump’s administration correct a historic mistake that upended the balance of power across the Middle East, the Near East and the Gulf?

Some human beings resign themselves to their fate, while others take their destiny into their own hands. This is all the more difficult when you are a woman in a man's world. And yet… some have not hesitated — they have chosen to fight, managing to shatter the taboos and dictates of their time. Throughout history, women have refused to be mere footnotes. Whether wielding a paintbrush, a pen, science, or their voice, they inhabited their era with a boldness that sometimes bordered on scandal. They were wanted as muses — they became creators. They were expected to be submissive — they chose freedom. They were meant to be silenced — they proclaimed their convictions louder and stronger than ever. From Artemisia Gentileschi defying Italian society and its courts five centuries ago, to George Sand trading her corset for the freedom to write, from the raw and wounded Camille Claudel, to the rigor and genius of Marie Curie, to the universal voice of Oum Kalthoum… these women did not merely work around the dictates of their time: they shattered them. In doing so, they sometimes succeeded and sometimes failed, but they never gave up. This series of articles is a journey through time, bringing us face to face with these incandescent figures, driven by an unshakeable will, who remain profoundly inspiring to this day. At the end of the 19th century, a respectable woman was expected to be a wife, a mother, and at best, a delicate muse. She did not get her hands dirty, did not chisel marble, and did not confront the naked human form. Sculpture — that physical and "unclean" art — was exclusively reserved for men. And yet, it was precisely that forbidden territory that Camille Claudel (1864–1943) chose to conquer. Camille Claudel, 1881, Photo César Séegner, Musée Rodin. An artist of blazing genius, she dared to break every boundary of a suffocating era. She chose sculpture as her profession, lived a love story like no other, and paid a heavy price for a freedom that fin-de-siècle society could not forgive. Her tragic trajectory, of a rare and searing intensity, was shattered against the walls of an asylum. The Early Years Born into a lower-middle-class provincial family, sister of the writer Paul Claudel, nothing seemed to destine young Camille for sculpture — women were expected to stick to watercolors or embroidery. Yet from adolescence, Camille worked clay with a visceral, almost furious energy. Encouraged by her father, who recognized her extraordinary talent early on, and against the wishes of her cold and rigid mother, she moved to Paris. There she joined the Académie Colarossi, where she learned to master her medium. The Burning Mirror: The Rodin Whirlwind In 1883, her path crossed that of Auguste Rodin. He was 43; she was 19. The master, then at the height of his fame, immediately recognized the young woman's exceptional talent. She became his student, his model, his collaborator, and then his lover. For a decade, their two genius minds merged in an artistic dialogue of extraordinary power. Camille influenced Rodin as much as he inspired her. She collaborated on some of the master's greatest works (such as The Gates of Hell, The Kiss, The Burghers of Calais … and others), bringing a lightness to his bronze. Despite her talent, society saw in her only the courtesan. Even critics began to whisper that her gift was merely a reflection of the master's. In 1892, after Rodin refused to leave Rose Beuret — his lifelong companion — to marry her, Camille ended their relationship. She chose solitude to save her art, refusing to be reduced to the role of "Rodin's doll." The Assertion of an Independent Genius Alone, Camille Claudel sculpted her most powerful works and broke free from the Master's aesthetic. Where Rodin worked with mass and volume, Claudel chiseled intimacy and imbalance. She sought to express the truth of bodies, the movement of the soul, and raw sensuality. She invented a narrative form of sculpture, capturing fleeting moments with extraordinary delicacy, working in onyx and marble and blending different materials. The Age of Maturity, Camille Claudel, 1902, Musée d'Orsay. Her masterpiece, The Age of Maturity , immortalizes the inexorable passage of time and her lost love with Rodin: it depicts a middle-aged man being pulled away by an old woman from the arms of a young woman, kneeling and pleading. One of the 6 bronze casts of this work was discovered by chance in a Parisian apartment a few years ago and sold for over 3 million euros. Camille's independence came at a price. Without the backing of Rodin's network, commissions grew scarce. Camille descended into poverty, isolation, and a destructive paranoia. She became convinced, wrongly, that Rodin was spying on her and stealing her ideas. In fits of despair, she smashed her own plaster works with a hammer. The punishment: Thirty years of silence The verdict of patriarchal society came down like a guillotine blade, orchestrated by her own family. In 1913, upon the death of her father — her only source of support — her brother Paul Claudel and her mother signed the papers for her psychiatric commitment. Camille Claudel was 48 years old. She would spend the last thirty years of her life in an asylum, never touching sculpture again. Yet medical reports quickly noted that her delusions had faded — but her mother categorically refused to allow her release. Paul Claudel visited her only a handful of times over three decades. She died in 1943, largely forgotten, a victim of the malnutrition that ravaged asylums at the time. She was buried in a common grave, her body lost forever. The legacy of a rebel Camille Claudel paid for her genius with her life. Society and her own family sought to erase her name, but the material she loved so deeply did not forget her. Years after her death, her works were rediscovered and her talent finally recognized. She who was not even granted a decent burial was at last acknowledged as a pioneering and brilliantly gifted artist. Since 2017, she has had her own museum, placing her among the greats. Today regarded as one of the most important sculptors in history, she proved that genius has no gender, and she paved the way for generations of women artists.

Several diplomatic and military developments marked Wednesday in the Middle East, with renewed tensions between Israel and Turkey over the Syrian issue. The latest episode unfolded on Wednesday, a day after Israeli aircraft bombed the Abu al-Duhur air base in the Idlib province of northwestern Syria. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that he had "clearly" communicated to Turkey that it should not establish a base in Syria, implicitly acknowledging the previous day's strike. At the same time, Israeli Chief of Staff General Eyal Zamir warned that his country would not tolerate the presence of any "hostile force" near its borders, speaking during a visit to Israeli troops deployed in southern Syria. The senior officer's visit came the day after the bombing of Abu al-Duhur air base. The Israeli government has accused Damascus of violating an agreement between the two sides by allowing Turkish troops to be deployed at the facility. Ankara, whose relations with Israel have been strained for several years, rejected these accusations. U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who also serves as the American president's special envoy for Syria, condemned the Israeli strikes, calling them "unnecessary escalation." According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the strikes came after "the visit, in recent days, of a Turkish military delegation to the airport as part of ongoing efforts to return it to service." Conference in support of the Lebanese army On the Lebanese front, Beirut announced Wednesday that it had received an invitation from France to take part in a preliminary meeting ahead of an international conference in support of the Lebanese army, set to be held in Paris next month. The conference was originally scheduled to take place in March in the French capital, but was postponed after Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into the regional war in support of Iran. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, currently on an official visit to Rome, received a letter from his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron inviting Lebanon to "participate in a preliminary meeting on September 17 in Paris, ahead of the international conference in support of the Lebanese Armed Forces and Internal Security Forces," the Lebanese presidency announced. Chiefs of staff from several countries, as well as experts and representatives of governments and international organizations, are expected to attend the preliminary meeting, according to the Lebanese presidency. However, Paris has yet to make an official announcement regarding the meeting. Israeli army admits killing Hind Rajab In Gaza, the Israeli army acknowledged Wednesday that its troops had opened fire on the car in which Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl, was riding when she was killed in January 2024. It also announced the opening of an investigation following preliminary inquiries into the matter. Hind Rajab's body had been found in a bullet-riddled car several days after the girl was last heard during a lengthy phone call with the Palestinian Red Crescent on January 29, 2024. The Israeli army had until now denied that its troops were in the area at the time of the incident. Hind Rajab had called emergency services from her family's car, which had come under fire as the family attempted to flee Gaza City amid the Israeli army's advance into the northern part of the Palestinian territory. The circumstances of the girl's death had sparked widespread international outrage and prompted numerous calls for an independent investigation. The original recordings of her call to emergency services were later incorporated into the Oscar-nominated documentary The Voice of Hind Rajab . Ghalibaf in Baghdad Iranian Parliament Speaker and Tehran's chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday for a three-day visit, as Iraq faces significant pressure from Washington to disarm the powerful Iran-backed armed factions. Ghalibaf stated that his visit was aimed at "strengthening the new order in the region and accelerating the deepening of cooperation among all regional countries, free from foreign interference." The statement comes at a particularly sensitive time for Baghdad, caught between its ties with Tehran and US demands regarding Iran-backed armed groups operating on its soil. Ghalibaf is scheduled to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, before holding talks with representatives of the "Coordination Framework," the ruling coalition grouping several Shia parties with varying degrees of closeness to Tehran. Under pressure from Washington, Zaidi has given Iran-backed armed groups until September 30 to lay down their weapons — a deadline that coincides with the end of the US-led anti-jihadist coalition's mission in Iraq.

In April 2026, Wissam Saadé delivered four lectures at the University of Bologna. The first, at the invitation of Professor Giovanni Giorgini, was entitled “The Prophet and the Philosopher: The Hierarchy of Knowledge between Avicenna’s Falsafa and al-Kirmānī’s Ismaili Neoplatonism.” Its text is presented here in a revised and expanded version, as part of a series of ten articles. This series explores the intellectual landscape of Neoplatonism in Islam through a comparative reading of Avicenna and al-Kirmānī. Although both thinkers share a broad Neoplatonic horizon, shaped by a metaphysics of emanation, a hierarchy of being, and a synthesis of Aristotelian and Platonic thought, they develop two distinct philosophical projects: Avicenna within the Peripatetic tradition of falsafa , and al-Kirmānī within Ismaili theology. Despite their different intellectual contexts, their systems remain in constant dialogue around the nature of knowledge, the relationship between reason and revelation, and the ascent of the soul. Their respective projects also embody two contrasting conceptions of the political, illuminating different ways of understanding the place of philosophy in relation to authority, law, and the organization of the community. This article constitutes the seventh part of this ten-part series. VII - Avicenna’s Synthesis of Prophetic Necessity and the “Secret” Philosopher-King The challenge of reconciling the Platonic philosopher-king with the Islamic political horizon remains one of the most fertile problems in classical falsafa . In the Islamic context, the figure of the ruler is perpetually overshadowed by the singular authority of the Prophet, whose unique access to the divine renders any subsequent claim to power ontologically secondary. Consequently, the post-prophetic era witnessed a divergence into two distinct modes of “Guidance,” each attempting to bridge the gap between divine sovereignty and terrestrial governance. The Sunni tradition articulated the Caliphate as a synthesis of the Qurʾānic theory of human vicegerency ( istikhlāf ) and the pragmatic necessity of the “Commander of the Believers.” In this framework, the Caliph does not act as an ontological bridge to the divine, but rather as a functional guardian of the sharī ʿ a . His authority is primarily administrative and judicial: he is the executor of a pre-existing, revealed Law. Here, the philosopher-king is tempered by the rule of law; the ruler is “just” insofar as he governs the community according to the dictates of a revelation that has already been perfected and completed. In contrast, the Shiʿi Imamate links vicegerency to the metaphysical continuity of the “Muhammadan Light” ( al-Ḥaqīqa al-Muḥammadiyya ). In this paradigm, while the cycle of legislative prophecy ( nubuwwa ) is sealed, the cycle of spiritual guidance ( walāya ) remains open. Authority undergoes a profound shift from the exoteric phase ( ẓāhir ), the delivery of the literal message, to the esoteric phase ( bāṭin ), the unfolding of its hidden spiritual truths. The Imam, therefore, is not merely a political administrator but a luminous presence who possesses the “Inner Revelation” required to decode the divine mystery for the faithful. The Ismaili tradition, particularly in its Fatimid imperial iteration, offered a radical synthesis of these two paths by merging the Caliphate and the Imamate into a single office. Following the “Period of Concealment” ( dawr al-satr ), the public emergence of the Imam-Caliph in North Africa and the subsequent founding of Cairo transformed a secret spiritual lineage into a global empire. For the Ismaili dā ʿ īs , the Imam-Caliph was the living touchstone for all inherited political theories of antiquity. He represented a singular historical phenomenon: the intersection of absolute nostalgia, the restoration of the pure prophetic atmosphere, and absolute utopia, the realization of a perfect, enlightened state. In the person of the Fatimid Imam, the Platonic philosopher-king finally found a home within the Islamic world, not as a theoretical ideal, but as a sovereign who united the sword of the Caliph with the gnosis (ʿ irfān ) of the Imam. The Fatimid Empire stands as the Neoplatonic empire par excellence , representing perhaps the most ambitious attempt in history to translate the vertical hierarchy of Plotinian emanations into a horizontal, terrestrial political structure. For the Fatimid dā ʿ īs , the state was not merely a social contract but a cosmological necessity. They viewed the universe as a series of emanations descending from the “First Intellect” to the material world. Within this Neoplatonic framework, the Imam-Caliph is the earthly counterpart to the Universal Intellect. He is the “Point” from which all knowledge flows downward. While Neoplatonism provided the “how,” the structure, Platonism provided the “what,” the goal. The Fatimid project was Platonic in its fundamental commitment to the Rule of Wisdom. Like Plato’s ideal city, the Fatimid state was an educational project. The establishment of the Majālis al-Ḥikma (Sessions of Wisdom) and al-Azhar was not merely an instrument of propaganda; it was intended to “elevate” the souls of the subjects. The purpose of the state was the perfection of the human soul, the highest Platonic ideal. It is precisely at this juncture that I propose the following formulation: for a thinker such as al-Sijistānī, al-Kirmānī, or Nāṣir-i Khusraw, the Ismaili Imam-Caliph represented the “Unconscious Philosopher-King,” a figure in whom the Platonic ideal is already ontologically realized and objectively manifest, requiring the philosopher not to legislate, but to decipher. In contrast, for Avicenna, who enacted a Promethean rupture with the Ismaili project, the locus of sovereignty shifts. No longer embodied in a visible imperial institution, the burden falls upon the individual: it is the philosopher who is compelled to inhabit a dual existence, serving simultaneously as a cosmic citizen of the intelligible realm and as the secret king of a hidden, inward kingdom. The odyssey of the philosopher-king within the “Oriental” theosophical horizon is thus anything but linear; it is a profound movement from the political manifestation of Gnosis to the interiorization of Sovereignty. The Philosopher-King Beyond Greece While Plato provided the most rigorous philosophical formulation of the philosopher-king, the concept is not uniquely Platonic; it appears elsewhere in more ambiguous and equivocal forms. In ancient Indian traditions, the closest analogue is not a philosopher-king in the strict Platonic sense, but a ruler subordinated to dharma , often guided by, or acting as an embodiment of, wisdom. In the Upanishadic and epic traditions, figures such as Janaka are presented as the rājarṣi (royal sage). Janaka does not merely receive counsel from philosophers; he is an active participant in metaphysical inquiry. Here, the king becomes a site where political authority and spiritual knowledge intersect, not through systematic, independent philosophy, but through the realization of Brahmanical wisdom. Within this framework, the ruler is legitimized not by a dialectical ascent, but by his alignment with the cosmic order ( dharma ). Thus, while the king wields temporal power, the Brahmin, the “knower,” often retains a superior epistemic authority that outranks the throne. In the Persian tradition, specifically within Sasanian and later Islamicate political thought, the figure of the Just King occupies a central place. Here, the king’s legitimacy is contingent upon his embodiment of justice, a concept that later philosophical elaborations, particularly within the Illuminationist tradition, linked to divine light. This synthesis profoundly shaped both the genre of Mirrors for Princes ( naṣīḥat al-mulūk ) and the development of falsafa . Within the Arabic and Persianate Mirrors for Princes tradition, this synthesis was instrumental in redefining Justice. It was no longer understood merely as the “following of the law,” but as the maintenance of the Equilibrium of the state. This political “homeostasis” mirrors Avicenna’s conception of the Prophet-Legislator as the ultimate “balancer” of divergent human temperaments. Thus, while the falāsifa adopted the vocabulary of Greek political science, particularly Plato’s Republic and Laws , the “flesh and blood” of their ideal ruler was often modeled on Sasanian archetypes such as Ardashir I or Khusraw Anushirvan. The divergence from the Greek source is telling: for Plato, the king’s legitimacy derives from his knowledge of the Forms. The falāsifa , however, beginning with al-Fārābī and culminating in Avicenna, shifted the emphasis toward the Sasanian conception of Justice as Equilibrium. Consequently, when Avicenna discusses the Prophet-Legislator, he describes a figure who establishes a Measure ( mīzān ). In this intellectual move, the philosophical “Good” is translated into the Sasanian “Just Order,” in which the ruler’s primary function is to ensure that no part of the social body transgresses against another, thereby preserving the harmony of the whole. The most famous Sasanian political maxim, attributed to Ardashir I, that “Religion and Kingship are twin brothers,” became a foundational principle of Islamic political philosophy. In its original Sasanian context, religion served as the foundation while kingship acted as its guardian; neither could endure without the other. The philosophical impact of this maxim was transformative, as it effectively replaced the Greek concept of the purely secular polis . The falāsifa drew upon this notion of “twinship” to argue that the Prophet, as the founder of religion, and the King, as the preserver of the Law, were two sides of the same coin. This synthesis allowed philosophers to present the sharī ʿ a not merely as a body of ritual law, but as the equivalent of the Sasanian dād (Just Law), a structural necessity for the survival and stability of the state. From the Philosopher-King to the Prophet-Legislator In Plato’s Republic , the ideal ruler is one who, having attained knowledge of the Forms, governs through rational insight. However, in the Islamicate reception of Greek philosophy, this figure undergoes a significant reconfiguration: the presence of prophecy introduces a second locus of access to truth. The central question, therefore, is no longer simply whether the philosopher should rule, but how philosophical knowledge and prophetic authority are to be related, whether as distinct functions, complementary modalities, or hierarchically ordered manifestations of a single truth. In Plato’s formulation, the philosopher-king is defined by a complex movement of conversion rather than a simple ascent: through dialectical training, the soul is reoriented away from opinion toward knowledge, culminating in the contemplation of the intelligible order of reality. This cognitive transformation is not merely cumulative but involves a decisive “turning around” of the soul itself. Yet this contemplative achievement does not translate smoothly into political sovereignty. On the contrary, the philosopher is compelled to re-enter the realm of appearance and opinion, where governance appears less as the natural extension of metaphysical vision than as a burdensome return to the cave, justified only by the demands of justice. Within the Islamicate tradition of reception, however, most notably in the work of al-Fārābī, this Platonic schema can no longer be preserved in its original form. The institutional presence of prophecy as a constitutive source of truth and law compels a profound reconfiguration of the philosophical model. The problem is thereby sharpened to its core: who, in the final analysis, has access to ultimate truth, the philosopher or the prophet? Or, more radically still, are these two figures genuinely distinct, or are they rather two modalities of a single function articulated within different epistemic regimes? Al-Fārābī’s response is at once systematic and conceptually elegant. He reformulates political perfection through the figure of the “First Ruler” ( al-ra ʾ īs al-awwal ), who integrates within a single figure the philosophical and political functions articulated by Plato. This First Ruler unifies two distinct modes of access to truth: philosophical intellection, grounded in demonstrative knowledge ( burhān ), and prophetic cognition, expressed through imaginative-symbolic revelation. In this configuration, prophecy is no longer positioned outside philosophy as its rival or alternative; rather, it appears as its civic and symbolic completion. The philosopher-king is thus neither simply replaced nor contradicted, but reconfigured. He is effectively transfigured into a figure in whom philosophical and prophetic functions converge, though they remain differentiated at the level of expression: rational demonstration on the one hand, and symbolic-imaginative articulation on the other. Within this architecture, rational truth and revelatory symbolism are not opposed but integrated into a single epistemic and political order. In Avicenna, however, the problem shifts decisively from political theory toward metaphysics. The question is no longer primarily how to govern, but how different degrees of intellect relate to the structure of being itself. The Prophet is no longer conceived simply as a ruler-philosopher, but as an intellect whose relation to the Active Intellect is maximally immediate. Avicenna introduces a crucial distinction between modes of cognition: the philosopher ascends gradually through discursive reasoning and abstraction, whereas the prophet receives an instantaneous emanation ( fayḍ ) of intelligible forms. The philosopher-king thus becomes a limit case within the hierarchy of human cognition, while prophecy is elevated to a superior, non-discursive epistemic mode. Political authority remains implicit in this architecture, but it is now grounded in a deeper cognitive hierarchy rather than in civic function alone. The classical “Philosopher-King problem” is thereby transformed within falsafa into a more radical question: whether philosophy can still claim any form of sovereignty once prophecy has been internalized, rationalized, and repositioned as the highest possible mode of truth. Prophecy, the Sacred Intellect, and the Hierarchy of Knowledge For Avicenna, the prophet and the philosopher share the same destination but follow different paths. Both seek to grasp ultimate truth and the nature of the First Principle, but they do so through different faculties of the soul. Both figures seek conjunction with the Active Intellect, the source of all knowledge and forms in the sublunary world. The difference lies in how they gain access to this source. The philosopher reaches truth through syllogistic reasoning, study, and discursive thought. It is a bottom-up process of intellectual labor. The prophet receives truth through intuition ( ḥads ) and revelation. It is a top-down process in which the soul is so pure that it receives knowledge instantaneously, without the need for instruction. Avicenna introduces a sophisticated psychological framework to explain how the prophet operates at a higher level than the philosopher. He identifies the Sacred Intellect ( al- ʿ aql al-qudsī ) as a superlative degree of human intellect, unique to prophets. It enables them to bypass the slow stages of logical reasoning. While a philosopher might take years to grasp a metaphysical truth, the prophet’s “Sacred Intellect” perceives the entire chain of middle terms in a flash of intuition. The most decisive distinction, however, lies in the prophet’s powerful Imaginative Faculty. Because the prophet must lead a community, his imagination “translates” abstract, purely intellectual truths into vivid symbols, images, and parables. These symbols are so powerful that the prophet “sees” them as angels or “hears” them as voices. The philosopher, by contrast, deals with abstract concepts in their “naked” form. Avicenna argues that the prophet is superior to the philosopher in his social function because he fulfills a role the philosopher cannot: that of the Lawgiver. While the philosopher understands why the truth is true, the prophet provides the sharī ʿ a , a necessary framework of laws and symbols that allows society to function and guides non-philosophers toward a virtuous life. In this sense, the prophet is both a “perfect philosopher” and a “perfect statesman.” Whereas for al-Fārābī the ideal ruler is both philosopher and prophet, because philosophy provides knowledge of what is good while prophecy provides the rhetorical and imaginative means to implement that good in the “Virtuous City,” Avicenna shifts this equilibrium by emphasizing the ontological necessity of the Lawgiver. For Avicenna, the prophet is not merely a philosopher who happens to possess rhetorical skills, but a unique human being whose very nature bridges the gap between the celestial and terrestrial realms. While the Farabian Imam stands at the summit of a political hierarchy, the Avicennian Prophet constitutes the indispensable foundation of human survival: without the divine law he provides, humanity would be unable to establish the justice required to sustain a stable society. Consequently, where al-Fārābī views religion as the “handmaiden,” or symbolic imitation, of philosophical truth, Avicenna elevates the prophetic office to a miraculous psychological state, the “Sacred Intellect,” which allows the prophet to grasp the totality of existence instantaneously, something that remains perpetually beyond the reach of the traditional philosopher’s discursive, step-by-step reasoning. Al-Fārābī sees the prophet as the ultimate legislator and educator who makes philosophy accessible to the public. Avicenna shifts the focus inward, conceiving the prophet as a biological and spiritual phenomenon, a human being whose intellect is naturally attuned to a higher cognitive register than that of even the most brilliant philosopher. The Rationalization of Prophecy The Avicennian project represents one of the most sophisticated “rationalizations” of the prophetic phenomenon in the history of ideas. By transposing the office of the Prophet from the domain of theological voluntarism, where the jurists ( fuqahā ʾ) viewed it as a miraculous, arbitrary act of divine selection, into the domain of natural and psychological necessity, Avicenna integrated revelation into the very fabric of the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic cosmos. In doing so, he did not merely defend the possibility of prophecy; he redefined the hierarchy of human intellects, ultimately carving out a unique, “secret” sovereignty for the philosopher within a world governed by prophetic law. At the heart of Avicenna’s system lies a rigorous classification of the human intellect, ascending from the Material Intellect ( al- ʿ aql al-hayūlānī ), the sheer potentiality for thought, to the Acquired Intellect ( al- ʿ aql al-mustafād ), where the mind achieves conjunction with the Active Intellect. Within this hierarchy, Avicenna identifies the Sacred Intellect ( al- ʿ aql al-qudsī ) as a superlative state reserved for the prophetic soul. Unlike the traditional philosopher, who must laboriously traverse the “middle terms” of a syllogism through discursive reasoning, the possessor of the Sacred Intellect operates within the realm of “Acute Intuition.” For the Prophet, knowledge is not a temporal process but an instantaneous flash; the intellect is so purified that it receives the totality of intelligibles from the Active Intellect “at once or nearly so.” This represents a shift from quantitative learning to qualitative conjunction, where the soul becomes a perfectly polished mirror reflecting the divine order of the universe. Avicenna’s divergence from the jurists is most pronounced in his treatment of the Prophet’s function. Where the fuqahā ʾ saw the Prophet as a messenger of divine commands intended for ritual salvation, Avicenna viewed him as an ontological necessity for the survival of the human species. Because humans are inherently social yet prone to conflict, society requires a Lawgiver to establish the “Universal Law.” This legislator must be more than a mere philosopher; he must possess a powerful Imaginative Faculty capable of translating abstract, intellectual truths into vivid symbols, parables, and sensory warnings, heaven, hell, and the voice of the angel. This “rhetorical” layer of religion is essential: it provides a stable socio-political framework for the masses, who are incapable of grasping purely demonstrative proofs. Thus, the Prophet fulfills the Platonic ideal of the Philosopher-King, but with a psychological depth, the Sacred Intellect, that allows his authority to permeate both the intellectual and the sensory worlds. Avicenna’s description of the Prophet’s intellect as a “Sacred Power,” which receives direct emanation from the Active Intellect, serves as a philosophical rationalization of the Farr-e Izadi (or Khvarenah ). This ancient Persian concept denotes a divine, luminous splendor that descends upon the legitimate sovereign, signaling both spiritual authority and temporal grace. The “Secret” Philosopher-King A critical tension arises in Avicenna’s political thought: if the Prophet is the supreme legislator and the only source of executive and judicial legitimacy, what remains for the philosopher? For Avicenna, the philosopher possesses no formal political power. He is neither judge nor executioner; he is a citizen subject to the Prophetic nomos . However, this lack of temporal authority gives rise to what may be termed the “Secret Philosopher-King.” While the Prophet rules over the “Exoteric,” governing the bodies and social order of the masses, the philosopher attains a “Secret Royalty” over the “Esoteric” ( bāṭin ). The philosopher is the only one who understands the ratio behind the Prophet’s symbols. He obeys the law not out of fear or hope, but out of a rational recognition of its necessity. As hinted in the Metaphysics of The Healing ( al-Shifā ʾ), the continuity of the cosmic order depends on an “Intellectual Successor” who preserves the inner truth of the law. Ultimately, Avicenna transposed the Platonic dream from the public Agora to the sanctuary of the mind. The Avicennian philosopher is a “Cosmic Citizen” who, despite his external submission to the state, lives in an inward kingdom of self-sufficiency. By achieving conjunction with the Active Intellect, the philosopher becomes an independent “mental world,” rendering him immune to the vicissitudes of political power. This “Secret Royalty” grants the philosopher the highest form of freedom: the freedom of demonstration over tradition. He remains a “stranger” ( gharīb ) in the earthly city, yet he is the true sovereign of the intelligible realm, standing as “a nation unto himself” while his soul resides among the “Highest Assembly” ( al-mala ʾ al-a ʿ lā ). The Interiorization of Sovereignty The trajectory of the philosopher-king in classical falsafa is neither linear nor self-evident; it unfolds through a series of reconfigurations that progressively relocate sovereignty. With al-Kindī, philosophy remains external to power: the ruler appears as a patron whose legitimacy is ornamented, but not constituted, by rational inquiry. In al-Fārābī, this balance is overturned, as philosophy claims to define power itself: the ruler becomes the Philosopher-Prophet, and political authority derives its validity from demonstrative truth. In the Ismaili synthesis of al-Kirmānī, this relationship is both inverted and absorbed into a theological architecture, where sovereignty is no longer achieved but ontologically vested in the Imam, and philosophy is reduced to an act of interpretation. The Imam is the actualization of the First Intellect on earth; his “philosophy” is not a discursive pursuit but a lived, sovereign presence. For al-Kirmānī, the King does not need to become a philosopher; he is, by virtue of his cosmic station, the very source from which all wisdom emanates. The philosopher’s role is not to guide the ruler, but to decipher his luminous authority. Finally, with Avicenna, sovereignty is internalized: the philosopher withdraws into a “virtual city” of the soul, where true kingship subsists as an invisible, intellectual state. Sovereignty is no longer a political office but a state of being, constituting a hidden royalty that persists beyond the reach of any terrestrial sultan.

The Muslim Brotherhood moved from preaching and proselytizing to political and jihadist activity in Palestine by restructuring its organization, which took the form of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas. This transformation was accompanied by a considerable expansion of its popular base. The movement then sought to impose its own conception of the Palestinian interest, as discussed in the first part of this analysis. In its declared political stance, Hamas relied on two main pillars: overturning the Oslo Accords and denouncing the Palestinian Authority’s governance failures and corruption. At the same time, it promoted the slogans of reform and change, targeting the Authority, its ministries and agencies, as well as the Palestine Liberation Organization, the institutional framework of Palestinian representation endowed with official status and international legitimacy. As for its jihadist, military, and security activities, these provided the emerging movement with the gateway through which it transformed itself from a closed, elitist partisan group into a broad-based popular movement. This transformation took place through the use of violence during what it called the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Hamas then pushed its use of violence as far as its capabilities allowed, convinced that suicidal jihad would lead to the liberation of Jerusalem and the entirety of Palestinian territory from Zionist occupation. This orientation followed the revolutionary model of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the alliance with Hafez al-Assad’s regime in Syria, as though these two experiences alone embodied both the Arab and Islamic worlds! By the end of the Al-Aqsa Intifada and after the death of President Yasser Arafat, the internal Palestinian balance of power was shifting in Hamas’s favor. As the January 2006 legislative elections approached, a fatwa was issued authorizing participation in the vote, without dwelling on the laws governing it, its connection to the Oslo Accords, or the Palestinian Authority’s commitments toward Israel and the international community. The movement relied on its broad popular base, which supported armed struggle in all its forms, while maintaining its slogan calling for the “downfall of the agreement of betrayal.” Drawing strength from this new popular footing, it entered the elections under the banner of “Change and Reform.” The Test of Power Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats in the Legislative Council, securing a majority. Its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, became prime minister alongside the elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas did not demand that Hamas alter its party platform, any more than he required this of the other factions participating in government. He did, however, stress the need for the government and all institutions of the Authority to abide by the agreements signed with Israel and by existing commitments toward the international community. This position rested on an essential distinction between, on the one hand, parties and factions with their respective programs and, on the other, the institution exercising governmental authority, which was supposed to represent the Palestinian political entity. In principle, this is a distinction observed in parliamentary systems and modern states. Looking back at the electoral platform under which Hamas ran beneath the banner of “Change and Reform,” one finds a political document containing provisions on national principles and resistance, the protection of political freedoms and pluralism, the peaceful transfer of power, the rejection of internal fighting, respect for minority rights, the prohibition of political arrests, the fight against corruption, and judicial reform. The platform also called for Islamic Sharia to become the sole source of legislation, alongside a range of social and economic provisions that, for the most part, scarcely differed from those supported by other Palestinian political forces. The program contained eighteen sections, each broken down into a number of detailed points. Yet this document, which represented Hamas’s first major democratic test in the exercise of power, did not long withstand the reality of the institutional duality that emerged between the presidency of the Authority and the premiership. Less than a year and a half later, this duality culminated in armed confrontation, followed by Hamas’s forcible takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. The events surrounding this internal conflict exposed a stark contradiction between the electoral platform’s pledges to uphold pluralism, reject internecine fighting, and ensure the peaceful transfer of power, and a political practice that ultimately resorted to force to settle the struggle for power. Hundreds of members of the security forces, factional militants, and civilians were killed or wounded in those clashes. Since then, the Palestinian arena has entered a phase of political and geographical division between two rival authorities. The problem did not lie in Hamas’s transition from opposition to government as such. That is, after all, the essence of democracy. But taking power confronted its ideological discourse with a very different test: how does a political doctrine become a governing project? There is a fundamental difference between possessing a mobilizing discourse capable of rallying public support while in opposition and governing a society afflicted by poverty, unemployment, blockade, occupation, and deteriorating public services, a society that needs, above all, education, healthcare, jobs, development, justice, and sound administration. Here lies one of the structural dilemmas of religious fundamentalism: its capacity to produce a political discourse that derives much of its strength from a religious frame of reference, set against the difficulty of translating that frame of reference into a coherent program for economics, development, culture, and public administration. This difficulty is not unique to the Palestinian experience. It has appeared, to varying degrees, in other Islamist experiences, from Iran to Sudan, Somalia, and Tunisia, whenever ideology collided with the realities and complexities of society, and whenever politics became an extension of doctrine rather than a sphere for managing competing interests within society. In the Palestinian case, the dilemma was even more complex. Hamas had not taken power in a fully sovereign state, but within an Authority with limited powers, under occupation, in a society subjected to blockade, while Israel continued to control borders, airspace, waters, and crossings and retained the ability to separate Palestinian territories and control the movement of people, goods, and resources. In such an environment, any political project aspiring to govern should have placed development, improved living conditions, and institutional management at the top of its priorities, while clearly defining the relationship between resistance and the requirements of governance. Yet Hamas gradually came to place the armed conflict with Israel at the center of its political and security activity. Thus, the transition to power did not lead to a separation between the movement’s partisan and ideological function and the role of governmental institutions. Instead, it reproduced the conflict within the institutions of power themselves. From that point on, the paradox that would accompany the Hamas experience became increasingly clear: a movement that came to power through elections, yet proved unable to establish a stable separation between its ideological project as a movement and the requirements of governance as an authority. This paradox would ultimately lead from “Change and Reform” as an electoral slogan to the establishment of a de facto authority born of division and military force. Power and War Since taking control of the Gaza Strip, Hamas has fought four major wars and dozens of intermittent clashes, in addition to two wars during which it remained on the sidelines while Islamic Jihad confronted the Israeli military alone. Just as major Israeli operations bore symbolic names drawn from Zionist religious imagery, Hamas, too, gave its battles names laden with Islamic religious references: Al-Furqan in 2009, Hijarat al-Sijjil in 2012, Al-Asf al-Ma’kul in 2014, Sword of Jerusalem in 2021, and finally the “Al-Aqsa Flood.” Over the course of these confrontations, the al-Qassam Brigades developed their rocket-launching capabilities and tunnel network, devoting considerable sums of money and significant human resources to both. Across the first four wars, whose combined duration approached one hundred days, the death toll exceeded 4,000, while tens of thousands more, civilians and combatants alike, were wounded. The wars also caused extensive destruction of buildings, infrastructure, and homes. If these wars were subjected to serious study and analysis in terms of their causes, immediate consequences, and long-term effects, one would find that they constituted the principal factor holding together Hamas’s military and security apparatus. Ongoing confrontation with the Israeli military allows Hamas to preserve this cohesion and prolong its rule, while also allowing it to deflect responsibility for its failures in governing a blockaded territory whose economy relied heavily on tunnels and smuggling. The poverty rate in the Gaza Strip reached 60 percent, while unemployment rose to 45 percent, three times the level recorded in the West Bank. Whereas Gaza’s gross domestic product represented 31 percent of total Palestinian GDP in 2006, its share had fallen to 17 percent of the Palestinian economy by 2022 under Hamas rule. These figures reveal the reality of failure in the management of public affairs when political choices are elevated to the status of religious obligations and linked to slogans invoking the afterlife. Death then becomes a form of spiritual ascent to be celebrated, with congratulations offered to the organization and the family when the fallen is a fighter. By contrast, the death of a civilian is merely mourned, although that civilian was never entrusted with any mission and, above all, was never consulted, whether single or responsible for a family, losing his life, or even the lives of his family, without ever having chosen such a fate. In this way, the impasses of governance are projected onto the permanent conflict with the occupation. Any criticism, objection, or demand can then be cast as an assault on the sacred or, at the very least, as an abandonment of the struggle against the occupation and, more often than not, as high treason. However harsh and bitter the consequences may be, the movement’s leaders continue, in their political discourse and public statements, to mobilize religious terminology, Quranic verses, and Prophetic hadiths in order to convince the population that it is advancing toward Israel’s defeat and the liberation of Jerusalem. They even proclaim “the inevitable disappearance of the Zionist entity”, just as some nationalists and leftists once proclaimed “the coming defeat of global imperialism and its protégé, Israel”. This pattern was reproduced year after year under Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip, until the “Al-Aqsa Flood” of October 2023.

As social media rediscovers the modesty and integrity of Fouad Chehab, a personal memory brings back the image of a president who sought to replace political fiefdoms with the authority of the state – and whom Lebanon fully recognized only after his death. In recent days, photographs of President Fouad Chehab have proliferated across social media. Many users now celebrate his modesty, his honesty and his sense of the state. One of these images shows him attending a Mass held in honor of the Virgin Mary in the early 1960s, on the esplanade of the Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon in Harissa, overlooking Jounieh Bay. This photograph stirs a particularly moving personal memory. At the time, I was a teenager and a boarding student at Collège des Apôtres in Jounieh. I sang in the school choir, led by our French-language teacher, Mr. Labaki, who accompanied the religious service. President Fouad Chehab stood just a few meters away from us. I still remember the pride I felt standing so close to the President of the Lebanese Republic. But what stays with me most is the image of a man whose very presence naturally conveyed dignity, simplicity and profound humility. Fouad Chehab was unquestionably one of Lebanon's greatest presidents. Surrounded by capable figures, this upright, conscientious and austere man was deeply commitment to the state and to the principle of public service. Yet during his lifetime, he was neither sufficiently understood nor properly appreciated. Like so many great men in our country, it was only after his death that many finally recognized the importance of his work. Elected president in the aftermath of the 1958 crisis, he set out to transform a Lebanon dominated by private interests, clientelism and political fiefdoms into a genuine state built on modern institutions. During his presidency, the public administration expanded, state authority strengthened, and the population lived in an atmosphere of security and stability whose true value we appreciate far better today. The armed forces and security services, led with firmness, commanded respect and authority. Certain practices from that era, particularly those attributed to the Deuxième Bureau, did draw criticism and controversy. But they should not obscure the scale of the institutional work accomplished. Fouad Chehab sought to assert the authority of the state over that of clans and patronage networks. His ambition was not to wield power for its own sake, but to build an administration capable of serving all citizens. Jounieh, home to my boarding school, was then a large, peaceful town. It was a small coastal city where long-established families lived in houses scattered along the shoreline. The opening of the Phoenicia cinema in 1963, followed by the Présidence cinema in Kaslik, were landmark events for the region. These new gathering places and cultural venues accompanied the growth that had begun a few years earlier with the Casino du Liban. The landscape looked nothing like what we know today. The mountains surrounding Jounieh, up to the heights of Harissa, were green and still largely untouched by urbanization. During his term, Fouad Chehab breathed new life into Jounieh and played a major role in modernizing Kesrouan. The road network expanded, infrastructure was strengthened, and the region joined the country’s broad modernization drive. His work remains, in my view, invaluable. As his term neared its end, many members of Parliament wanted to pave the way for him to remain in office. Fouad Chehab rejected the idea and stepped down when his mandate expired. Yet a large part of the population of Kesrouan showed him a level of ingratitude that is difficult to fathom: in the parliamentary elections, not a single candidate on the list he backed in the region was elected. What a sad paradox. The man who had given so much to Kesrouan never received, in his lifetime, the recognition he deserved. This ingratitude sadly reveals a constant feature of our national life: we fight true statesmen while they are still among us, then celebrate them once they can no longer hear us or serve their country. Yesterday's opponents sometimes become their posthumous admirers. Those who had obstructed their work later claim their legacy. We turn into symbols the very men we had refused to listen to while they could still act. In Lebanon, recognition of great men seems to arrive only after their death, once their adversaries no longer fear them and their work can be celebrated without disturbing established interests. Fouad Chehab, however, needed neither a cult of personality nor excessive praise. His honesty, his humility, his sense of duty and the institutions he helped build speak for him. He remains the symbol of a dignified, orderly Republic, genuinely at the service of its citizens. A nation that forgets its history, disregards its builders and refuses to learn from the past is doomed to repeat the same mistakes. It is time, then, to fulfill a genuine duty of remembrance – not to idealize an era or deny its controversies, but to do justice to those who sincerely tried to build a state and place the national interest above personal ambition. The memory of Fouad Chehab should not simply inspire belated tributes or a handful of fleeting social media posts. It must lead us to ask ourselves what Lebanon we have lost – and, above all, what Lebanon we want to rebuild. Truly honoring Fouad Chehab is not merely a matter of celebrating his memory after his death. It requires us to rediscover his integrity, his humility, his sense of the state and his demanding conception of public service. Only then can memory become a force for rebuilding the Republic and safeguarding the Lebanese nation.