Yassin al-Haj Saleh
Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a contributing writer at New Lines magazine, is a Syrian author and former political prisoner. He has written several books on Syria, prison, contemporary Islam and intellectual responsibility, including “The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy” (2017) and “The Atrocious and its Representation” (English edition forthcoming). He is the husband of Samira al-Khalil, who was abducted by an armed Islamist group in Douma in December 2013. He now lives in Berlin.
Latest from Yassin al-Haj Saleh
The Ordeal of the Syrian Nation-State Today
The new Syrian government’s base is narrow and its politics sectarian. No “state” can unify a nation while aggressively alienating wide segments of its people, nor has it any right to demand patriotism from others if it displays none itself.
Seeing Israel Clearly Through Arab Eyes
In its decades-long clash with Israel, the Arab world has not yet fully understood its characteristics as a state or Zionism as an ideology. Separating the issues of settler colonialism, Jewish faith and Israel as a “sacrificial” project can offer a clearer picture of the challenge Arabs continue to face.
The Liquid Imperialism That Engulfed Syria
In Syria, multiple imperial and subimperial powers have poured into one small country — some of them to protect a murderous regime, all of them annihilating any independent political aspirations among its people, dividing up sectors of Syrian society among themselves and their satellites.
Syria Before the Storm: A Dissident Recalls Life in the Pre-Assad Era
In this deeply autobiographical essay, a leading Syrian intellectual recounts his early years in rural parts of the country before the rise of the Assad regime, lamenting the political and cultural vitality since lost in a society shattered by tyranny and war.
Chomsky’s America-Centric Prism Distorts Reality
In prison, Chomsky’s writings convinced Yassin al-Haj Saleh that Syrian dissidents had partners in the world. But the American linguist has betrayed those early hopes by refusing to take seriously the reality of the Syrian revolution.