Al-Afif Lakhdar, lawyer, activist and intellectual, was born to an impoverished peasant family in 1934 in the Makthar village, northeast of Tunis. He joined the religious Zeitouna University and later the Faculty of Law, and was practicing lawyer from 1957 to 1961, when he quit his legal profession, moved to Paris and began to comment and participate in Arab political issues.

Al-Afif has made a name for himself in Arab intellectual circles as a critic of both Arab dictatorships and radical Islamism, and as a steadfast advocate on behalf of secularity and freedom of thought. As a result of his stances, he has been the object of intimidation from Arab governments, which have banned his writings and publications, as well as religious groups, which have leveled against him the usual charges of blasphemy, atheism and infidelity.

In 2005, al-Afif issued an anti-terrorism communiqué alongside Dr. Jawad Hashim and Dr. Shaker Al-Nabulsi, which called upon the UN Secretary General to summon to trial all scholars and jurists who, through their Fatwas, incite terrorists to shed the blood of innocent people. The communiqué went so far as to name prominent traditional Islamic scholars, such as the Egyptian scholar Yousuf Al-Qaradawi and Tunisian Rashid Al-Ghanoushi, head of the Tunisian Islamist "Renaissance" movement. Al-Ghanoushi reacted by accusing Lakhdar of authoring a book titled "The Unknown about the Prophet's Life," a sensational work denounced by Muslim jurists, and calling for his death.

For this reason, the Arab Organization for the Protection of the Press and Opinion released a petition against "Obscurant Religious Extremism" calling for protection of Lakhdar's life and freedom, which was signed by more than 600 academics and intellectuals, mostly Arab.

Indeed, Al-Afif's stands have led him to be barred from some several Arab media outlets, especially following his condemnation of the Islamic corporal punishment system still implemented in Saudi Arabia (including the cutting off of limbs as punishment for theft, as a result of which he was banned from writing for Al-Hayat newspaper.

Al-Afif's political activism began in 1965, when he moved back to the region to work with various Palestinian resistance movements shuffling between Beirut and Amman. After the conclusion of the Lebanese civil war, Al-Afif left Beirut with a heavy heart, and shocked his leftist friends by flat-out rejecting all "progressive" justifications of the war, and expressing his distraught over the duplicity of leftist elements in the destruction of   what he called the only "fortress of freedom" in the "stupid and despotic" Arab world.

Al-Afif went on to dedicate himself completely to his writings, with many of his essays and articles appearing on the pages of the London-based, Saudi-financed Arab newspaper Al-Hayat until his ban.   He also delivered many lectures in Cairo and continues to participate in televised discussions on various Arab satellite networks.

Al-Afif's ideas are complex and changing. After the civil war in Lebanon, his attitudes vis-à-vis the old left led him to reverse many of his erstwhile positions. For example, although al-Afif once asserted that the theocratic regime in Iran was a major setback for the cause of progress in that country, he later argued that the Islamic Revolution in Iran is a necessary step towards transcending fundamentalism and entering into modernity, in implementation of Hegel's historical philosophy of "transcendence as a condition for achievement."

Another example of Al-Afif's changing beliefs was the rejection of armed struggle as a means for creating an independent Palestinian state. He now believes that this aim can and should only be achieved through peaceful, non-violent means.

Nonetheless, Al-Afif remains an avid proponent of Communist, Marxist and secular thought, and one of his main areas of focus has been to add to the Arab library Marxist and secularist works. His other area of interest has been on the need to modernize educational systems in the Arab World, and implement curricula reforms that promote critical thought.

Al-Afif warned that societies that are unable to change themselves from within are likely to find that change will be imposed on them from outside.

In 2005, Shaker Al-Nabulsi published a book on Al-Afif titled "Devil's Advocate: A Study of Al-Afif Lakhdar's Thought,"   in which he explained that "Devil's Advocate" was the term Al-Afif   used to describe himself: "He had in mind what French culture meant when using this epithet, that is, to refer to persons who stand outside the mainstream and develop an opinion on a certain issue that is different from what the majority holds to be true. It is also used to designate persons who revise their thoughts every now and then and daringly abandon obsolete and past ideologies. Al-Afif says that only stones do not change."

In October 2003, Al-Afif suffered a stroke that resulted in paralysis of the hands and forced him to stop writing for a while. When he finally recovered, he was still unable to use his fingers, and now dictates his thoughts. He currently lives in a modest flat at a poor Parisian suburb inhabited by a large number of North African immigrants.   He remains a model for many Arab dissidents of an intellectual who is committed to freedom of thought and is not afraid to express his beliefs.

To view Al-Afif's webblog, click here.