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Rabat – The Swiss Global Influence Research Center has recently published the list of the 112 most influential figures in the Arabic-speaking world, six of whom are Moroccan.
“Although Islam continues to play a prominent role in Arab debates, public intellectuals can exert influence far beyond theological discourses. This is shown by this year’s ranking of Thought Leaders in the Arab world,” the report points out.
The first Moroccan on the list is Sheikh Saïd Al Kamali (48th), a Moroccan scholar specialized in Islamic history, hadiths, and fiqh.
He is followed by the philosopher Taha Abderrahmane (66th), whose works have focused on logic, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of morality. He is considered one of the leading intellectuals and thinkers in the Arab-Islamic world.
The list also includes André Azoulay (71st), senior advisor to King Mohammed VI, as is the Youtubeur and news technologies enthusiast, Amine Raghib (74th).
The Toplist Arabic 2018 also includes the politician affiliated with the Justice and Development Party (PJD), Abu Zaid Al Idrissi (93th), and finally, the leader of Hirak Rif, Nasser Zefzafi (107th) who is also a potential candidate for the Sakharov Prize of 2018, granted by the European Parliament for Freedom of Thought.
Global Influence defines a thought leader as a “living person who works primarily as a thinker, and is known and influential beyond the borders of their discipline.”
“Anyone who affects people’s thoughts must leave traces in their communications. And for those communications that are publicly available, it’s possible to measure how central certain people are,” the Swiss center explains.
To identify the world’s most influential people, the center chose a method that consists of Coolhunting software supplied by the technology company, Galaxyadvisors.
“This software not only measures whoever ‘shouts the loudest’ (i.e. has the most likes or followers), but can also calculate the strength of the relationships between the relevant people. The so-called betweenness centrality measures the control a node has over the flows of a network,” Global Influence said.
