Balconies for Contemplation, Thinking, and Reflection

The Center for Arab Unity Studies has published the book Balconies for Contemplation, Thinking, and Reflection by Dr. Youssef Al-Hassan.

This book seeks to diagnose the current Arab scene, in terms of thought, policies, and institutions, and the predicaments and crises it has reached, and a reality fraught with anxiety, oppression, and dangers. In his reflections and thoughts, the writer examines the turbulent developments that have turned the Arab region upside down, pushing it into a dark tunnel with few lights, under an international system whose foundations and values ​​have been shaken, and with a settler-colonial state with a Torah-based ideology; a state based on the eradication of the other, not adhering to international laws and conventions, living with a mentality of perpetual war, lust for expansion, changing maps, televised ethnic cleansing, and without accountability.

In this book, the author talks about America – a “city on a hill” in the theological sense – and about a structural flaw in the development of the West, its double standards, the paralysis of regional and international institutions, and their inability to stop conflicts before they turn into wars that beget wars. The writer presents a collection of ideas that have preoccupied him in recent years, and he has made them a framework for contemplation, thinking and reflection. Some of which illuminate others, answer questions, and derive lessons from history… and its wounds that never sleep.