I met my friend Ioannis Th. Mazi during a difficult period of my political and intellectual journey. It was in April 2012, when everything seemed dark and ominous in the Arab world, following the resignation of President Mubarak from the leadership of Egypt, which had led the country into a prolonged uncertainty that peaked with the violent one-year rule of the office of al-Ikhwan, the guiding office of the terrorist organization of the Muslim Brotherhood and, through it, the violation of freedom, dignity, and respect for fundamental liberties.

I refer to the first relationship directly and closely, through my personal acquaintance with him, since I had known of his work for some time. The connecting link of this contact was my beloved in my heart and in my thoughts deserving student Kyriakos Th. Nikolaou-Patragas, now associate professor at the University of Athens and professor of Islamic studies at EPLO, who has commendably taken up the baton of our anti-Islamist struggle for enlightenment and the socialist completion of the Arab world through his strong and forceful activist presence and his international scientific recognition.

Thanks to this acquaintance, I began an intensive scholarly dialogue with my now-friend Giannis, who lifted my spirits many times during that difficult time. Together we fought and together we celebrated when the nightmare, dark and spider-like, of the Muslim Brotherhood was woven with its definitive historical condemnation. Together we suffered and together we sang the hymn of liberation with the musical backdrop of my Greek friend Mikis Theodorakis, for our shared tools were significant provisions for the revelation of the fascist deception of Islamism.

The book that I am now introducing with a sense of great joy is the result of a long academic journey of a man, who has been and remains steadfast in his ideas—whatever they may have been—with a well-structured theoretical training. Original studies, sometimes pioneering, crucial and decisive for the interpretation of the Middle Eastern phenomenon.

I was the sponsor of this book and I feel justified in this, as I urged—however pretentious this may sound—that the distinguished colleague gather his rich theoretical gleanings as a contribution to humanity's culture and history.

In the following texts, you will observe that alongside the interpretation of current issues, my friend Giannis, with his unyielding scientific integrity, which I have often and personally noted, puts forth texts of high democratic spirit. He exposes terrorism and its instruments, strips away the Ottoman darkness, sounds the alarm of the danger posed by the Erdoğan phenomenon when everyone else was closing their eyes or ignoring it, applauding his fascism, analyzes and examines the Islamic phenomenon, and champions the values of enlightenment, revealing the behind-the-scenes players who weave subjugations and overturn lives, and bleeds for the crime of the Cypriot tragedy and the retreat of his homeland on an international level.

Greece, which I love, like every free person, and to which I owe the most, like all of us, is still providing for my spiritual establishment, and happily has not run dry. My acquaintance with Professor and friend Ioannis Th. Mazi, a noble patriot and humanist, has been and remains one of the significant aspects of my life...

REFAAT AL-SAEED