2020 - Monem Mahjoub

In countless articles and more than 25 books, he has tackled issues ranging from language, history and religion to humanism, cultural development and politics. As a result of his critical publications on Muslim fundamentalism, Mahjoub has received several physical and verbal death threats in recent years from supporters of fanatical militias in Libya and Egypt.

Thanks to the ICORN-partnership between the City of Brussels, Passa Porta and VUB (Free University of Brussels), Mahjoub found shelter in Brussels from 2020 to 2022. There he could work in safety on a book of philosophical essays about identity and an essay on the twelfth-century Arab scholar Avempace (Ibn Bajja). Poetry has also been part of Mahjoub's multifaceted writing for a long time. He has been a guest at the Passa Porta Festival 2021 and published Dutch translations of his poetry in Poëziekrant (Ghent).