Sadik Jalal Al-Azm was an internationally respected scholar and political commentator who offered innovative, often controversial challenges to conventional narratives on issues surrounding Islam and the West, secularism, Orientalism, and the Israel-Palestine issue. He was recognised as a principled defender of human rights and was the main ethical reference for the Syrian revolution.

Al-Azm was educated at the American University Beirut, and at Yale in modern European philosophy and taught at Damascus, Harvard, Princeton, Williams, Brandeis, Oslo, Sendai, Leiden, Antwerp, Hamburg, Bonn, and Berlin, his academic specialization being Immanuel Kant and the critique of religious thought.

Professor Al-Azm was the recipient of the Dr. Leopold-Lucas Prize 2004, the Erasmus Prize 2004, the Mahmoud Darwish Award for Freedom and Creativity 2013, and the Goethe Medal 2015.

This 4 volume set includes the fourth and final volume of essays on Islam and politics written by the author, a foreword by the publisher and a table of contents of all four volumes.