McHUGO, John
John McHugo is an Arabist, international lawyer and former academic researcher into Sufism who is well known in political, legal, cultural and trade circles concerned with relations between the West and the Arab World.
He is a member of the Executive of the Council for Arab British Understanding (CAABU), the Chair of Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine, and a director of the Arab British Chamber of Commerce.
While a partner in the Law Firm Trowers & Hamlins, he specialised in boundary disputes between Arab countries, and latterly in the international law issues affecting Israel and its neighbours.
John is currently putting the finishing touches to his book Rebuilding Babel. Aimed at University students and general readers, it explains relations between the West and the Arabs by providing a comprehensive introduction to the history of both civilisations and their encounter over the centuries, right up to the Obama presidency.
Unlike most books covering these subjects, it also examines the problems of perception that bedevil the relationship between the West and the Arabs today and investigates the moral arguments and cultures of denial. ‘I took great pleasure in showing the deficiencies in the thought of such opposing figures as Edward Said, Bernard Lewis, Natan Sharansky and Sayed Qutb’, says John. ‘I really do think I have found a fresh angle from which to approach these problems’.
‘McHugo is, so far as I know, the only man to re-examine the actual UN debates on 242…a most elucidating paper…McHugo mischievously adds…’ – Robert Fisk, The Independent.
- Follow this link for Robert Fisk’s Independent article featuring John’s work.
- Click here to read John’s article on the web-site of the Negotiations Affairs Department of the PLO, placed there with the permission of OUP, its original publisher.