Mr. Moderator, ladies, and gentlemen: I should like to begin by thanking MESA profoundly for this kind invitation. I must not forget to say that I was surprised to find that the general title of the colloquium today was “The Post-Liberal Age in the Middle East,” which sounds like a gruesome epitaph on a certain period. I personally belong to the school which holds fast to the liberal democratic tradition and I shall try to point out in the few lines which I have put down—which I will read out now—why I still belong to that school which believes in liberal democracy and secularism.

It is very difficult to trace the concept of Freedom or to analyse its theoretical content across Egyptian history up to 1798, the date of Bonaparte’s Expedition in Egypt.