Biography
Azmi Bishara’s primary intellectual and research interests fall under the general heading of philosophy and society – more specifically, social philosophy and the theoretical social sciences and humanities. This includes issues such as the state and civil society; religion and secularism; democracy, sectarianism, and collective identities; justice, freedom, and ethics. All these areas require an interdisciplinary approach to research. While the majority of Bishara’s work falls in these areas, his writings are divided into the theoretical and the applied – that is, the application of his theoretical ideas to the realm of social philosophy, in specific areas such as the Arab revolutions or the Palestine question, and what he calls the Arab question, and in response to specific questions that arise from social and political practice.
Bishara uses scholarly theoretical methods in his writings. He sees this as the basis of objectivity. He does not see neutrality as a scientific approach, but rather as a position, one that can be amoral, even immoral. Bishara considers himself biased towards the values of equality and freedom, which he sees in their interactions throughout history as components of the justice that he supports.
In the introduction to his book, Palestine: Matters of Truth and Justice, Bishara writes:
“Objectivity concerns using scientific method and available facts. It is also a conscious effort to avoid cherry-picking and letting value judgements and ideological stances influence reasoning processes. If objectivity appears biased to some, it is simply because it is predisposed to truth seeking. Neutrality, on the other hand, is a belief and attitude and not a scientific method; it is a negative moral position of no bias and no alignment, an amoral position. When it comes to an issue of oppression or a consummately humanitarian issue, an amoral position could become an immoral one. I am not neutral towards anything to do with the Palestine question or any other just cause.”
Bishara has not limited himself to existing theories in the social and human sciences as presented by Western academia, but has made his own theoretical contributions. His most prominent writings include the book Civil Society: A Critical Study, which was published in 1996. In this work, he challenged the prevailing understanding of civil society, demonstrating how the concept has transformed from coinciding with the state in its philosophical distinction from the state of nature through a process of historical differentiation between society and the state and the conflation of civil society with the bourgeoisie. Finally, it offers a distinction between the social and political spheres during the interaction between society and state in democracy, to arrive at the most accurate historical understanding of it at the current stage.
Bishara published what could be considered a completion of this work more than a quarter of a century later, in two books on the state: The Question of the State: Philosophy, Theory, and Context (2023); and The Arab State: Beginnings and Evolution (2024). Together, they make a theoretical and philosophical contribution to understanding the state, which he also applies to the emergence and structure of the Arab state. Bishara’s theses focus on the theory of the state, starting from the premise that the modern state has emerged through a process of differentiation of the political sphere from other spheres and their subjugation to it – including the religious sphere – as well as the unification of the apparatus of violence and its monopolisation in the hands of a central authority, the institutionalisation of tax collection, the emergence of a bureaucratic apparatus, and the demarcation of territorial borders between states.
Bishara builds his thesis on the notions that this outcome was key to the emergence of the modern state in Europe, but that states no longer go through this process. Rather, the state is imposed as a ready-made model, regardless of its own trajectory of historical development. This has given rise to cultural and political conflicts and discrepancies. The distinguishing features of the modern state are the principles of sovereignty and citizenship; that is, the distinctions between the rulers and the institutions of government, and between the governing regime and the state, and the latter’s foundation on the common ground between the rulers and the ruled, instead of its definition as the subjugation of the ruled to the rulers, as in ancient states. Bishara’s particular contribution here is that the state in the Arab world is no longer created by tribal asabiyya seizing power, even if certain ruling regimes still incite asabiyya and prejudices to consolidate their authority. Asabiyya no longer produces the state but is rather produced by it. The term “state sovereignty” no longer refers to the ruler’s sovereignty or supreme authority, but rather to citizenship, the other face of sovereignty, which ought to be recognised as one of the basic elements defining the modern state. The distinction between belonging to the state through citizenship, and belonging to it through the group, marks the process of the emergence of a nation of citizens, an idea that Bishara first addressed in his book On The Arab Question: An Introduction to an Arab Democratic Manifesto (2007) and later crystalised in his thesis on the state.
In these two books on the state, Bishara emphasises that the state should not be understood through a single principle, as ideologies do. The modern state was established not only through the emergence of a territorial entity and a monopoly of legitimate violence, but also through the existence of institutions that organise various aspects of life without the use of violence; the state gains sovereignty by virtue of its ability to legislate and impose the rule of law within its borders. Historical development shows that the rule of law is closely related to the concept of sovereignty. The modern state also does not achieve sovereignty alone; rather, it arises within a system of states that exchange recognition of sovereignty with the aim of preserving the framework and existence of the state. Bishara argues that there is a positive tension between the concepts of sovereignty and citizenship; the latter is described as the other face of sovereignty, as it is rights and duties that regulate the relationship between the individual and the state. The tension between the concept and reality of the modern state also contributes to understanding the development and trajectory of the state. Bishara applied this theory in a historical study of the emergence of the Arab state, starting with a chapter on the Ottoman tanzimat and its impact on the Arab state, and ending with a review of models for the emergence of five Arab states: Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria.
Bishara addresses questions of religion and secularism in his book Religion and Secularism in Historical Context, (in two parts, the first published in 2013 and the second in 2015). The first part is an in-depth study of religion and religiosity, clarifying his understanding of religion, its definitions, emphasising the element of faith as opposed to belief which is cognitively susceptible to change when exposed to the development of rationalism and science, and the distinction between religion and religiosity in terms of social practices. Bishara arrives at the conviction that understanding religion requires an understanding of its distinctiveness in the current era, which in turn demands an understanding of the secularisation process and its interaction with the prevailing patterns of religiosity, i.e. the patterns of social practice of religion, and the degree of religiosity in different societies. Secularisation is a process of differentiation between the religious and other social spheres and modes of cognition r, where the former is confined to specific spaces along two basic trajectories: that of prioritising reason and scientific knowledge in understanding nature, the human body, and society; and that of distinguishing between the religious and the political in the state.
The second part of the book was supposed to be issued in one volume, but during research it became clear that two volumes were needed. In the first volume of the second part, titled Secularism and Secularisation: The Intellectual Process, Bishara reviews the history of intellectual and cultural secularisation in the West as well as examining intellectual development in the West more generally. In the second volume, Secularism and Theories of Secularisation, he discusses the forms of secularism prevalent in Western systems of government and their development. Here, he addresses the two intertwined paths of epistemological and state secularisation.
Bishara’s motivation for writing this book, Religion and Secularism, was to refute the idea of a relationship of compatibility or contradiction between religion and democracy, and to replace it with the idea of democracy and patterns of religiosity. He made advances in the study of this topic in the case of Islam, denying the existence of a relationship either of conflict or compatibility between Islam and democracy, a matter he considers pure illusion. Rather, the issue is related to patterns of religiosity, and social and historical circumstances, requiring a prior study of the theory of religion and secularism.
Bishara also promised readers a fourth volume (third part) on the development of the secularisation process in Arab-Islamic civilisation, but he has since been unable to devote himself to the book due to other research and non-research obligations. However, he has continued to prepare for it by studying the history of the Islamic Caliphate and patterns of Islamic religiosity and democracy, that prompted him to write Religion and Secularism in the first place.
The obligations that forced Bishara to take a pause from writing the fourth volume of this book, which some consider his magnum opus, include his interaction with current affairs and recent intellectual developments, which pushed him to write several books about other topics he believed were lacking sufficient theoretical treatment. The most important of these is his 2018 book on Sectarianism, published in English in 2021, by Oxford University Press, under the title Sectarianism Without Sects. The book’s main hypothesis posits that sectarianism forms/constructs imaginary sects, and that in the contemporary Arab context within the modern state, sects no longer produce sectarianism – rather, sectarianism (in the form of movements and ideologies) produces sects, as imaginary cross-border communities.
Continuing with his intellectual interest in religion and secularism, in 2018 he published an analysis of Salafism. This was translated into French as Qu’est-ce que le salafisme? in 2021, and in 2022 Stanford University Press published an updated version in English, as On Salafism: Concepts and Contexts. This book had supposed to have been a theoretical introduction to another work Bishara published in 2018, The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Daesh): A General Framework and Critical Contribution to Understanding the Phenomenon, but Bishara opted to publish it separately, because the introduction transformed into an independent study. He also wished to avoid giving the impression that the “Islamic State” group was merely a natural derivative of Salafism and Wahhabism, in a kind of history of ideas.
After the 2011 Arab Revolutions, Bishara published theoretical historical books on the revolutions, starting with his book On Revolution and Susceptibility to Revolution (2012) aiming to formulate a critical theory that provides a contemporary scientific definition for the concept of "revolution" and its roots in Arab thought. It was followed by another book published in the same year on the revolution in Tunisia, and another one in the following year on the Syrian revolution. In 2016, he published his two-part book on the Egyptian revolution: part one From the July Republic to the January Revolution, and part two From the Revolution to the Coup. Ten years after the outbreak of the Arab revolutions, Bishara published his trilogy on the Arab revolutions, in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria, in English by I.B. Tauris. This trilogy is considered a historiographic and theoretical contribution, as well as a comprehensive and lucid assessment of the revolutions in three Arab countries:
Understanding Revolutions: Opening Acts in Tunisia (2021); Egypt: Revolution, Failed Transition and Counter-Revolution (2022); Syria 2011-2013: Revolution and Tyranny before the Mayhem (2023).
As part of the author’s preoccupation with the topics of democracy, the state, and civil society, he published an important book combining theoretical analysis and comparative application: Democratic Transition and its Problematics: A Theoretical and Applied Comparative Study (2020), which is forthcoming in English under the title Arduous Paths: On the Theory and Practice of Democratic Transition. In this work, Bishara reviews and critiques the major theories of democratic transition, including the modernist theory, offering important theoretical contributions from Arab models. Setting out from his conclusions regarding the importance of the state in a democratic transition, he immediately began writing two works on the state: The Question of the State, and The Arab State. As he considered obstacles to the emergence of, and transition to, democracy, he also published What is Populism? in 2019, addressing the matter of populism from the perspective of the periodic crises in the democratic system, and the dialectic between popular participation and liberal principles. He demonstrates that democracy developed through these recurring crises if its institutions were strong enough and withstood the threat of populism. This also prompted him to address the importance of political culture, intersecting with his interest in democracy and patterns of religiosity.
Among Bishara’s other works is The Army and Political Power in the Arab Context: Theoretical Problems published in 2017. He penned the introduction to the Arabic translation of Benedict Anderson’s seminal work Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, which was published in 2009 by Dar Qadmus in Damascus.
In 2016, Bishara published a comprehensive philosophical work on the concept of liberty, entitled An Essay on Liberty (2016). He has also published other philosophical treatments, such as his lengthy essay On Justice in the Current Arab Context, published in Tabayyun in 2013, and another entitled Reflections on the Question of Identity, also published in Tabayyun, in 2022. His treatise on the problem of research methods, which he presented at the opening of the Social and Human Sciences Conference (March 22-24, 2019), titled On the Precedence of Understanding Over Method, was also published in Tabayyun in 2019. Bishara also wrote an intellectual and philosophical introduction to the translation of Polish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman’s book Modernity and the Holocaust which was published in 2019 by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.
Bishara’s interest in topics he sees as issues of justice within the framework of national concerns, has led him to publish several books, including Palestine: Matters of Truth and Justice (Hurst, 2022). As the work was first published in English before the recent Gaza war, and the Arabic translation was published during the war, Bishara decided to write an additional Arabic-language work published in parallel, titled The Flood: The War on Palestine in Gaza (2024), which deals with the Israeli war on Gaza and its background.
Before he was forced to leave Palestine in 2007, Bishara published books related to the structure of the Jewish state and the reality of the Arabs living within it, most importantly: The Intifada and Israeli Society: An Analysis in the Midst of Events (2002); The Arabs in Israel: A View from Within (2000); The Amputated Political Discourse and Other Studies (1998); Propositions on the Impeded Renaissance (2003); and the book From the Jewishness of the State to Sharon: A Study in the Contradiction of Israeli Democracy (2004), which addresses the structure of the state and society in Israel.
Bishara spent a decade as a professor of philosophy and cultural studies at Birzeit University (1986-1996), before co-founding and leading the National Democratic Assembly (the Balad party), the party which he represented in the Knesset from 1996-2007. Through these experiences, he asserts his belief that any Arab intellectual engaged in the social sciences and humanities – no matter how important their intellectual production, and unlike the intellectual in developed countries – does not have the luxury of refraining from involvement in social and political practice under the existing conditions of backwardness and tyranny.
Bishara has been involved in the national struggle since his early childhood. He founded the first National Committee for Arab High School Students, becoming its chairman in 1974, and he also made an important contribution to the Palestinian student movement at Israeli universities. After returning from studies in Germany and working as a professor at Birzeit University, Bishara saw it as his duty to participate in the struggle and engage in the causes of his people, in accordance with the principles he held dear. He was involved in the first intifada. He took part in establishing the National Democratic Assembly, leading and representing it in the Knesset (1996-2007), and establishing many institutions that have continued the mission, independently, especially since he forcibly left Palestine, and many remain active in Palestine until today.
Following his exile from Palestine, Bishara settled in Qatar, where in 2010 he established the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), and became its general director. He also founded the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI), which began its academic programs in 2015, and he serves as the chair of its Board of Trustees. The State of Qatar has warmly welcomed and strongly supported these institutions.
The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies has become one of the most important research social sciences and humanities research hubs in the Arab world and the Middle East, and has expanded to establish branches in Beirut, Tunis, Paris, and Washington DC. It publishes extensive research books in the fields of social sciences and humanities, as well as peer-reviewed academic journals such as Siyasat Arabiya, Omran, Tabayyun, Hikama, Ostour, Istishraf and Al-Muntaqa. It also organises academic conferences that produce specialised studies on Arab political and intellectual issues.
The Center has also spent the past 11 years establishing the Doha Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language, whose electronic portal was launched in 2018 to make its content accessible online. Work on the Dictionary is expected to be completed by the end of 2025. Bishara is currently leading another major project, the Encyclopedia Arabica, for which he has recently finished writing several entries on Liberalism, Anti-Semitism, and Marx, while working on other entries.
The Doha Institute for Graduate Studies offers master’s and doctoral programs in the social sciences, humanities, administration, and public policy [The Inaugural Lecture of the 2017/2018 Academic Year "The Doha Institute: the Challenge Facing the Social Sciences and Humanities in an Arab Context"]. The Center and the Institute are both independent academic research institutions that enjoy international recognition and continuously ascending academic status.
Bishara has also guided the founding of other institutions, including those working to raise professionalism in the media and instil what he calls “bias towards the truth,” placing human causes at the heart of the media’s attention. These institutions have come to occupy an important position and play a major role by providing information, supporting freedom of expression, providing a free space for rational dialogue, and embracing high-quality cultural, literary, and artistic production.
