Most Arab intellectuals were waiting for what Adonis would say about what is happening in Syria. The poet had two letters published in Al-Safir newspaper, in addition to op-ed articles in Al-Hayat. The first letter is addressed to President Bashar Al-Assad, and the second to the opposition. The truth is that both letters went beyond taking a stance on the two sides to addressing all those concerned by the events in the Arab World, tackling the issue in depth without overlooking the events and those responsible for them, whether Assad or those rebelling against his rule, based on the ideology of the Baath Party. He criticized the shortcomings of this party throughout its 40 years of rule, and its failure to spread secularism and establish a “new society” that would produce a system based on the separation of church and state that excludes religious clerics from politics, without this meaning antagonizing religion or depriving of rights those who are religious or any member of society. And he notes that those who claim to be secular quickly revert back to their sectarian roots, after having covered them with Leftists slogans or decreeing that returning to one's roots would allow for the establishment of one's own brand of democracy, far from copying the European model. Such people take the evolution of society out of its historical context and fall into a process of conciliation. Indeed, they neither go back to the past, because moving backwards is impossible, nor do they offer solutions to the problems of the present. Conciliation makes it easy to evade taking a stance, and only means coupling two opposites that cannot be brought together. This has been the case for conciliation ever since the days of Al-Farabi, as it is the case today. Adonis put forward, or repeated, a question that he had reiterated in most of his essays: “why were Arab regimes established, ever since that time [the 1950s], in the name of freedom and democracy, but produced only bondage and tyranny, and were only tantamount to obsession with power and its privileges, while the people who stood alongside them or made sacrifices for their sake became mere ladders, mere tools?”. He concludes that no “society progresses by relying on what has passed, nor by basing itself on it”. The poet in fact goes much further than this, criticizing himself as well as others who supported the Iranian revolution, believing that it would establish a democratic system on the basis of the past and of history. Yet, more than thirty years later, the ruling regime in Tehran has turned from the Shah's dictatorial model, based on the illusion of Westernization, to a tyrannical model established on the basis of the religious past. Such a past, which persists in the evolution of our societies with all of its conflicts and policies, imposes its values and its rules upon us, and directs every one of our steps, be it personal, political or social. Adonis tried to provide a direction to the debate taking place among Arab intellectuals, but he became the target of attacks by the proponents of the past, who see pioneers in Adnan Al-Arour and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and before them Osama Bin Laden. He was also attacked by Leftists who have moved to the Right, unloading their enthusiasm and their Leftist childhood on him. Some of the latter are historians, and some are political and philosophical writers, and strangely none of them has read the text, nor discussed or explained it – or they have read it and unloaded their past enmity towards the poet on it. Adonis's two letters, to the opposition and to Assad, provide an analysis of the structure of Arab societies, far from hasty and improvised stances. It is on the basis of such an analysis that he has developed his criticism of the regime and of the opposition, raising questions that need to be calmly discussed, instead of being faced with prejudgments and with personalizing issues and turning them into verdicts, which in appearance call for freedom and in reality call for tyranny and oppression in the name of democracy.
