I shall not add in these few words to previous comment, having already offered comment on what has been written and said about this book. The book provoked numerous reactions, questions, and criticisms and also enjoyed a considerable degree of endorsement and support. I have expended much eff ort in examining and probing inaccurate, irrelevant subjective criticisms and in rectifying the blemishes that appeared in the original. I also responded to issues that may have been caused by misconception. I delivered my replies, additions, and clarification in a series of discussions, lectures, and articles the most pertinent of which were published in my collection of essays Dunyā al-dīn fī aḍir al-‘arab (Th e World of Religion in the Arab World Today). The first edition was published in Beirut in 1996 by Dar al-Ṭalī‘a, and further editions have appeared since.

I have no fundamental points to add to what I have mentioned regarding the subject matter of this book and the intellectual and cultural context that has narrowed the horizons of comment upon it, except that the spread of retrograde forces over the Arab cultural sphere as it exists today necessitated a different perspective, one adopted in this book: one of history, which has no completion or full accomplishment, which does not recognise origins as much as historical periods and mutations. History is constant movement and the secularism both actual and implicit of the Arabs in the last century is not a special case. It has been a basic constituent element even of the currents of thought that oppose secularism. Critical reflection must pursue the demonstration of truth on the basis of history while contending with irrational and baleful tendencies.

It only remains for me here to thank my readers and the Centre for Arab Unity Studies, who pressed for this new edition and for the correction, in the second edition, of typographical errors.