Dominique Avon is a French historian. He is a scholar of Islam and Christianity and a professor at the Religious Sciences Section of the

École pratique des hautes études The (), abbreviated EPHE, is a French postgraduate top level educational institution, a . EPHE is a constituent college of the Université PSL (together with ENS Ulm, Paris Dauphine or Ecole des Mines). The college is closely linked to É ...

Biography

Dominique Avon has a degree in history. He is Director of Studies at the

(5th Section, Religious Sciences, Sunni Islam). He was a lecturer at the University of Montpellier Paul Valéry, then Professor of Contemporary History at the Université du Maine (France) (Le Mans). He has taught in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

(1992-1994), Lebanon (2004-2005) and the United States (2014). Director of the IISMM (Institut d'études de l'islam et des sociétés du monde musulman), he has coordinated the HEMED thematic community (“Histoire euro-méditerranéenne”), and co-directed, with John V. Tolan, the IPRA (“Institut du pluralisme religieux et de l'athéisme”). He was also president of the AFHRC (“Association française d'histoire religieuse contemporaine”) between 2011 and 2014.'' His research focuses on religion, in particular Islam and Christianity, intellectuals and the history of ideas. He is a member of the GSRL (

Unité mixte de recherche In France, a ''unité mixte de recherche'' (UMR), or joint research unit as translated into English, is an administrative type of research laboratory that is partially supported by CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , C ...

8582).

Work

He has written several books on

Catholic religious order In the Catholic Church, a religious order is a community of consecrated life with members that profess solemn vows. They are classed as a type of Religious institute (Catholic), religious institute. Subcategories of religious orders are: * can ...

s such as the

Society of Jesus The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded in 1540 ...

and the

Order of Preachers The Order of Preachers (, abbreviated OP), commonly known as the Dominican Order, is a Catholic mendicant order of pontifical right that was founded in France by a Castilian priest named Dominic de Guzmán. It was approved by Pope Honorius ...

and on

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

groups such as the

Hezbollah Hezbollah ( ; , , ) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. I ...

(''Hezbollah: A History of the "Party of God"'', written with Anas-Trissa Khatchadourian). He is also the author of ''La Fragilité des clercs'' ("The Frailty of the Intellectuals", untranslated), an essay in which he analyses the thought of

Samuel P. Huntington Samuel Phillips Huntington (April 18, 1927December 24, 2008) was an American political scientist, adviser, and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affair ...

Tariq Ramadan Tariq Ramadan (, ; born 26 August 1962) is a Swiss Muslim academic, philosopher and writer. He was a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at St Antony's College, Oxford and the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, He is ...

Georges Corm Georges Corm (; 1940 – 14 August 2024) was a Lebanese economist. He served as minister of finance in the government of Salim Hoss from 1998 to 2000. Life and career Corm was born to parents of Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian descent. He ...

, Alain Besançon and

Alain Finkielkraut Alain Luc Finkielkraut (; ; born 30 June 1949) is a French essayist, radio producer, and public intellectual. Since 1986, he has been the host of ''Répliques'', a talk show broadcast weekly on France Culture. He was elected a Fellow of the Ac ...

, and criticizes their perceived warmongering tendencies and inability to reason dispassionately about religious matters. The title is a pun on 1927 book ''La Trahison des clercs'' by

Julien Benda Julien Benda (; 26 December 1867 – 7 June 1956) was a French philosopher and novelist, known as an essayist and cultural critic. He is best known for his short book, ''La Trahison des Clercs'' from 1927 (''The Treason of the Intellectuals'' or ...

. ''Hezbollah: A History of the "Party of God"'', published by Harvard University Press, contains a historical account as well as important primary sources about Hezbollah. While it was praised by John Quinn from ''The Risky Shift'' to be "an exceptional dispassionate analysis of Hezbollah’s early and later years", it has been criticized by ''

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...

'' for relying "too heavily on Hezbollah's rhetoric to explain its motives and actions" and by Princeton scholar Samuel Helfont for using "passive constructions" through which "chronology and causality can be blurry".

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people French historians of religion French scholars of Islam French male non-fiction writers {{France-historian-stub