of the call. Call for book burning In 2013, Islamic scholar Abdelfetah Zeraoui Hamadache called for Adonis books to be burned following a poem allegedly attributed to him, this came after the Salafi leader listened to the poem on social networks, he then issued a fatwa calling for burning Adonis' books in Algeria and in the Arab World. The poem was later proven as counterfeit (the poem is very weak in linguistic structure and differ greatly from Adonis literary style) Adonis commented:"I am sorry that I am discussing a counterfeiting at this level. I hope that the source of the so-called poem is published. This is a shame for an Islamic scholar, the Arabic language and the entire Arab poem heritage." He added: "I am not sad about burning my books because this is an old phenomenon in our history. We are fighting to found a dialogue and a debate in a peaceful way. Founding differences in opinions is a wealth source. This counterfeiting humiliates Arabic." Arab Spring On 14 June 2011, amid the bloody crackdown on the Syrian uprising, Adonis wrote an open letter to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir- "as a citizen" he stresses. Describing Syria as a brutal police state, he attacked the ruling Ba'ath Party, called on the president to step down, and warned that "you cannot imprison an entire nation". He was nonetheless taken to task for addressing a tyrant as an elected president, and criticising the "violent tendencies" of some of his opponents. Adonis said on the subject: In August 2011, Adonis called in an interview in the Kuwaiti newspaper "Al Rai" for the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down because of his role in the Syrian civil war. He has also called upon the opposition to shun violence and engage in dialogue with the regime. Nobel Prize nomination A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Adonis has been regularly nominated for the award since 1988. After winning Germany's major award the Goethe Prize in 2011, he emerged as a front runner to be awarded the Nobel Prize, but it was instead awarded to the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, with Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, commenting that there is no political dimension to the prize, and describing such a notion as "literature for dummies". Adonis has helped to spread Tomas Tranströmer's fame in