ABSTRACT
History is now passing its judgment on battlefi elds, and is about to pronounce a terrible verdict regarding on which side it wishes to live and continue its procession of progress and development: Will it be on the side of the values of religions, the French Revolution and its sister revolutions or on the side of the doctrines of Nazi reaction? 1
The vision of enlightenment had signifi cantly marked Arab intellectual debates of the past few decades. The war against Nazism, as Khūrī had argued, was neither European, nor was it limited to questions of territorial control. From his point of view, the war touched upon the prospects of the Arab East, and implied a crucial choice about the future path of Arab societies. This was no exceptional view. While Khūrī stood for the most explicit antifascist currents, concern about a victory of Nazism was anything but marginal. The ideals of the French Revolution echoed in the writings of various Arab authors. Yet, just as much as these authors’ egalitarian vision of social and political liberation, radical nationalist and totalitarian ideologies had increasingly resonated in local battles over a new civic order.
