Al-Hadi Al-Taymoumi poses a crucial question: do we harness history for politics or do we employ politics to serve history? He argues that when politics are employed to serve history we witness in our regions more human development in general and contemporary Arab societies development in particular.

The author sheds light on the politicians’ mal reading of history and relates this to the negative implications of such readings on the Arabs’ understandings of their histories and self-identities. In that context, he is calling everyone and historians in particular to make history reading independent of the political power and domination practices. By this, he suggests, citizens will be liberated and new humanism can have the potential to emerge.