Africa, Arabs and Colonization: Studies in Ali Mazrui’s Work

The Center for Arab Unity Studies published the book Africa, Arabs and Colonization: Studies in Ali Mazrui’s Work  for a group of researchers (Edited by Mohammed Ashour Mahdi).

This book discusses a set of intellectual and political issues presented by the African thinker Ali Mazrui on a number of African and Arab issues, namely: Arab-African relations, African identity, Islam and the West, and Zionism. These issues reflect the comprehensive deep thought of the thinker Ali Mazrui, whose writings included many innovative and daring ideas and approaches, such as “The Triple Inheritance of the African Continent” and “The Comparison between Zionism and Racism in South Africa,” and his call for what was known as “benign colonialism,” or “African-African colonialism”, or his call for Arab-African integration into what he called “Afrabia,” and his statement for the areas of convergence and disagreement between the Islamic world and the West. He also pressed on the necessity of recognizing the internal obstacles in the Islamic world that prevent its progress. Those ideas that provoked a lot of controversy about them and about his person.

The most important thing that distinguishes his works is standing up for the truth against injustice, the superior critical ability, the spontaneous flow of language, the abundance and diversity of knowledge and sources of information, with the diversity and multiplicity of topics and issues, and his intuition regarding many of them. This made the United Nations Secretary-General in 2002 describe Mazrui as “Africa’s gift to the world”. In 2005, Foreign Policy magazine put him on the list of the 100 best intellectuals in the world.

This book is a serious attempt to shed light on some of the writings of that scientist and thinker, in celebration of him and his writings, in an effort to understand the manifestations and developments of the issues he addressed at the present time and their future prospects.