Director of the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies at the Sorbonne University
He was the first chairman of the Syrian National Council that led the Syrian opposition before the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces was established. He has written more than 20 books on Arab thought, politics and sociology, including The Assassination of the Mind, Islam and Politics: The Abandoned Modernism, Elite Society, The Sectarian Question and Minorities, A Manifesto for Democracy and The Arab Predicament: State versus Nation.
