Deconstructing March XIV® _______________________ *********************** 3 Steps for change: Bringing women into politics... massively! _______________________ ***********************
Battling God-fearing combattants -2 _______________________ *********************** Mixed courts: an unexplored approach to M.E. peace
Last week, LBC & its young anchorman Malek Maktabi were reminded that “red lines” still exist in the Arab world and that crossing them can have an economical and a political cost. This simple fact was brought to their mind when the Saudi authorities closed down their offices in Jeddah following the airing of the weekly programme “A7mar bil khat al 3arid”, “Bold Red Line”.
Here’s the extract that started the whole commotion.
As you might have noticed, the reporting isn’t really interesting. The anchorman’s sensationalism comes across as cheap and uninteresting. We are shown a young man in his “crib” bragging about his sexual exploits, expressing how important sex is to him and how he stimulates his partner’s desire. Some people have described his crowing as lewd, while others have stressed how immature and teen-like his approach to sexuality is. Read the rest of this entry »
Indoctrination: As we have seen, Anticonfessionalism is a State defused ideology. Not only is it a defining element of our constitution and our institutions, but it’s the most prominent feature of our political discourse. Even those who want to maintain the political system as it is are either uncomfortable with it or are embarrassed to defend it publicly.
All public discussions are dominated by negative views of confessionalism. These views have been diffused through the media for over half a century. They have found their way in history books and civic education books.
The consequence is obvious: an overwhelming majority of Lebanese holds negative views on confessionalism and consider it incompatible with all values they consider positive (the latter values are not necessarily shared). As we will see, these views are not based on facts, on demonstrations, but on a global prejudgment. A critical approach is surely warranted when it involves an analysis of merits and faults. But it ceases to be interesting when it’s a simple expression of adverse or disapproving comments and judgments. Read the rest of this entry »
How fast is Israel heading for trouble? How much can one extrapolate from one crime news heading, a simple human interest story? Could it be an indicator or is it just an isolated case?
One thing is certain, Israeli editorialists and politicians are not taking it so lightly (c.f. Yediot Ahronot article). For them, it’s not just about Nir Katz (24) and Liz Trubeshi (17) who were killed on saturday. It’s about a shooting attack on a gay and lesbian youth center in Tel Aviv. It’s about a hate crime. It’s about an automatic weapon (such as an M-16 rifle) that was used by an Israeli to kill other Israelis because of differences in lifestyle and values.
It’s about a bubble exploding, but unlike Eytan Fox’s הבועה, the needle that burst it is not directly tied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict… but might very well be indirectly link to it. For how long can Israeli society nurture its militaristic culture and breed distrust between some of its sectors, before that starts spreading?
Judging from the reaction of editorialists and politicians, the fear is there, but also the discomfort. How should this attack be called? A terror attack? Can it be called a terror attack although its perpetrator seems to be jewish? This is the kind of hesitation one sees in interviews and opinion papers. It’s not a simple case of semantics, its about classification, operating a distinction between “jewish violence and “palestinian violence”: when violence is so instrumental in separating and defining two groups, what happens when it erupts within one of the groups? what does it say about the opposition between the two groups…
Anti-confessionalism probably lacks historical perspective because it is utterly uninterested in context. It is obsessed with values and rules: it seeks to impose what it claims to be positive, modern (western), secular values (and rules), while claiming to combat what it defines as archaic, religious, oppressive values (and rules). By doing so, it defines itself (anti-confessionalism) and what it combats (confessionalism).
Before going into this dual definition (and its implication), let’s have a glimpse at these very values and value-laden political programmes anti-confessionalism vows to defend and implement.
A glimpse at the muddle
As Maria sang to the children, “let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start”. The whole debate over confessionalism started in the 1940s. Sure, one could trace articles and writing about its many elements to the 1930, and even to the 1920s. But they were still scattered then, and dealt with points that were quite rightly seen as unrelated: secularisation, modernisation, westernisation, nation-building and state building. From the 1940s onwards, all these views converged under the label of “anticonfessionalism” as their proponents defined a common enemy, confessionalism.
This conversion obscures the fact that we are dealing with distinct processes, political programmes and values. This is why we will look into each of them one at a time.
Secularisation: A process in which the various aspects of society (economic, political, legal, and moral) become increasingly specialised and distinct from religion (and religious authority). It is usually accompanied by a societal decline in levels of religiosity. Its proponents usually link the decline of religiosity to the increase of freedoms. In Lebanon, secularisation usually means three things:
Abolishing the personal status laws and courts (up to now, each recognised and established community has its own laws and courts), and replacing them by one civil legislation in matters of family law.
Supporting “secular” education, i.e. state schools and universities (vs schools and universities within religious networks).
AntiConfessionalism! The word seems easy to grasp. The prefix and suffix speak for themselves. Intuitively, one could assume that anticonfessionalism is antonymous & opposed to a specific system, principle, ideology: confessionalism. Up to now things might seem pretty clear. But when you look a bit closer, you discover something completely different. It’s actually quite hard to oppose anti-confessionalism to confessionalism. It’s like opposing black and white. Sure it’s a common assumption that black is the opposite of white, but it doesn’t tell you much about one or the other, and so the opposition turns out to be meaningless.
I have already dealt with the issue of anticonfessionalism two years ago (albeit hysterically) through a “hate mail” sent to Amam05 posted here. The arguments haven’t changed, but maybe I should restate them more serenely.
We might have many bad intellectual habits in Lebanon, but anti-confessionalism is unmistakably the worst. If you’re looking for insight, learning, critical engagement… keep away from anti-confessional literature. On the other hand, if you’re looking for repetitive prose, dogmatism, distilled ideology, decontextualised constructions, baseless assumptions, groundless accusations… Then you should definitely check out the many books, articles and declarations written on confessionalism.
At first, I thought it would be possible to discuss this issue in one post, but judging from the reactions I’m getting, I think it better to discuss one paradox at a time.
Monday: Confessionalism/Anti-confessionalism: Two sides of the same coin.
Sous l’angle de la distribution et de l’exercice du pouvoir au Liban, la division Quatorze Mars/8 mars n’a pas beaucoup de sens. Sa seule pertinence semble se situer au niveau des alliances géopolitiques, mais également au niveau d’une partie de la base populaire qui y croit. Le pouvoir au Liban est partagé entre quatre réseaux clientélistes qui s’appuient sur de nombreuses ressources: financières, bancaires, institutionnelles, locales, étatiques, étrangères…
L’oligarchie quadripartite: les monopoles politiques en milieu musulman
Ces réseaux sont tous confessionnels: deux chiites, un druze et un sunnite. Trois d’entre eux s’appuient, au besoin, sur leurs armes. A cet égard, le Hezbollah est le plus convainquant, suivi par le PSP et puis Amal, comme l’ont démontré “les événements du 7 mai” 2008. Certe, les pressions géopolitiques les obligent à une rivalité, mais celle-ci restre exceptionnelle et circonscrite sur le plan local. D’ailleurs, même en période de crise extrême la collaboration entre ces quatre réseaux continue. Pour ne citer que quelques exemples: les versements au Conseil du Sud ont continué durant la période de démission non-acceptée des ministres d’Amal… les périmètres de sécurité du Hezbollah sont continuellement respectés… la force de police est “équitablement” partagée entres les différents réseaux… Chacun est satisfait de sa part, et s’accommode de la part de l’autre. Toutefois, cette “rivalité” appuyé par l’étranger à trois conséquences malheureuses: elle renforce la mobilisation communautaire, elle consolide les réseaux clientélistes et elle envenime les rapports entre les membres des trois principales communautés sur lesquels ces réseaux s’appuient.
Ces trois conséquences n’auraient pas pu être neutralisées ou affaiblies par les élections en 2005 (sous le signe de l’alliance) et en 2009 (sous le signe de la “compétition”)… Au contraire, elles les ont consacrés ou reconduits.
La compétition politique en milieu chrétien
Les Syriens ont soutenu l’oligarchie quadripartite dans sa conquête et son renforcement du pouvoir. Du côté chrétiens, seuls des réseaux confessionnel locaux ont été autorisés et soutenus. Depuis 2005, deux stratégies différentes s’offraient aux chrétiens pour intégrer le système politique libanais tel que: l’intégrer en tant que “juniors partner(s)” ou transformer l’oligarchie quadripartite en oligarchie pentapartite. Read the rest of this entry »
Vous avez remarqué les points de suspension qui terminent le titre de l’article, ou plutôt le laisse ouvert pour indiquer que beaucoup de choses restent à dire. En fait, il aurait été plus juste de le ponctuer avec un deux-points car cet editorial est un véritable réquisitoire où l’auteur exprime méthodiquement tout son dégout sur les Musulmans, un dégout ordinaire puisqu’il est partagé par beaucoup et peut passer inaperçu: une virulente islamophobie de salon dirons nous en détournant l’une de ses expressions. Pour bien saisir les idées fondamentales autour desquels l’article s’articule, il est conseillé de se poser ces trois questions suivantes en le lisant:
I stumbled across two very telling “portraits” of Lebanese politicians in the press today. As expected, they didn’t reveal much on the two people they were supposed to be informing us on, but they said loads about the journalists who were writing them.
Don’t let the title mislead you. The question is a rhetorical one and the article has little to do with Sami Gemayel. You can scrutinize the article as much as you want, you’ll find no information on his character, no information on his political history, no information on his line of action. At first, it seems a typical form of Lebanese journalist writings, what I call children’s sticker journalism; such writings are based on value judgement, the journalists hands out stickers to reward politicians he aproves of and withdraws stickers from journalists whose “actions” (i.e. “political positioning) he disaproves of. But this article is more than that.
Sami Gemayel is a literary device (usually at the start of a sentence or an argument) for a verbal jab against the Free Patriot Movement (Aoun and his party are after all Michael Young’s consuming phobic obsession), and Maronites in general. Yes, anti-maronitism isn’t dead. The rhetoric developed in the 1960s is still there. Alive and kicking. Walid Joumblatt expressed it two months ago “in private”, when he thought it would remain in the “group” (amongst Druze). Michael Young expresses it openly, in the column of a newspaper. “An alarming number of Maronites today appear to have lost any sense of the collective nature of the Lebanese state”, he tells us. They are suffering from “rural Maronite insularism”. The “resentment, bitterness, isolation, hostility, communal self-absorption” they express “are qualities of a community mired in mediocrity, with no sense of the constructive long-term impact it might have on its environment”. And to finish it all off, Michael Young adds that Maronites are following a “strategy bound to enhance Christian isolation”. Yes, there you have it, the key reference: “Maronite isolationism”… Coming from the same person who accuses the FPM of entering “unnatural” regional alliances with Iran and Syria, and hurting Christian symbols (the presidency and the patriarchy). Is it too much to ask for a minimum of coherence, and some consistency underneath a very “westernized” approach to political analysis? Scratch off the varnish, and you’ll find a massive dose of pure Middle-Eastern communal bigotry expressed through systematic Maronite bashing.
And now a glimpse at Ibrahim Al-Amin’s view of… himself, through his piece on Suleiman Frangieh (Al-Akhbar, 9/7/2009)
You’ll find no “western” varnish in this article at all. Unlike the previous article, there is nothing circuitous over here. Ibrahim al-Amin’s take on Suleiman Frangieh is unabashedly laudatory, and his analysis reflects another typical trait in Lebanese political analysis: the heroic narrative. It’s all about a man standing alone against adversity, a man who’s embarked on a hazardous political journey, a man who knows for what political position he is called for, a man who will meet all the people that are needed to get to that positioning (as if politics was a social event. To understand the logic, think of yourself stranded in the middle of a crowd, incapable of reaching the buffet without tricking people by opening a conversation with them, so that they allow you space next to them, which will bring you a step closer to your champaign glass on the buffet)… Again, you’ll find no information on his character, no information on his political history, no information on his line of action. But Al-Amin will tell you all you want on his political positioning. And his geographic positioning too. Yes, it’s GPS journalism. And not a very precise one. But then Lebanese journalism is all about lack of precision: the reader is supposed to fill in the blanks and read between the lines. Ibrahim Al-Amin informs us that Frangieh is going to settle in Beirut or its suburbs. WorriedLebanese is ready to divulge his exact future whereabouts: it’s Rabieh! Yes, two streets up from Farid Makari, one street up from Elias el Murr, one street down from Michel Aoun.
Let’s go back to GPS journalism. It gives you as much quality information as what you get on Entertainment Channel’s coverage of the Oscar night. You’ll know who talked to who, where they did it, and if they had coffee or shared a meal. Some well informed journalists will even tell you what the two politicians discussed: world affairs, burning issues or regional developments. But what editorialists will really insist on is the great significance of this positioning!
I read Obama’s Cairo speech twice yesterday and just viewed to it on Youtube, from beginning to end; and it still had the same effect on me. Between the time I read it, and the time I saw it, I had skimmed through many editorials commenting it. But this hadn’t altered my views on it. It is by far one of the most impressive PR stunts that I have ever witnessed. Barak Obama had succeeded in extending to the Muslim communities worldwide the message he gave to Americans during the presidential campaign. He sold them “change they could believe in”.
Many things could be said about the American President’s speech in Egypt, and indeed, many things have been said about it. However, what seems to be extremely important is the liberal approach that he has espoused to discuss Islam. Instead of referring to the Muslim World or addressing Muslim countries, Obama preferred to talk on one hand about Islam as a religion, one that should be treated in the very same way other religions are treated, and on the other hand about “Muslim-majority countries”. Now this expression is rather new to me. It’s obviously preferable to the expression “Muslim countries”, because it insists that the “muslim” character comes from the fact that the population is mostly muslim, it’s not a character of the state. Furthermore, the expression “muslim majority” hints that there could be a non-muslim minority in those countries… This expression is undoubtedly a non-essentialist and liberal one. It reflects the way religion is seen in America: it is recognised as an important social feature, but one that doesn’t have a direct tie with the government because of the principle of separation of church and state (first amendment: establishment clause and freedom of religion).
It’s the first time I choose an Arabic title for my posting. I couldn’t find better words to qualify the socio-psychological evolution of the Christian community in Lebanon. It’s quite difficult to translate a word such as احباط (Ihbat) which has a similar etymological structure as the word depression, that can be translated as “frustration” but that is better rendered by the word ”hopelessness”.
Surprisingly enough, very little attention has been given to this macro “psychological” shift amongst Lebanese Christians.
One can explain it by showing the extreme polarisation in Lebanese politics with clear communal cuts everywhere except among the Christians… One can regret its damaging effects: incapacity of discussing politics in most Christian circles, continuous insults and accusations… But one cannot deny it.
A month to the day, Ziad Baroud, Lebanon’s Interior Minister, issued a circular giving every Lebanese citizen the right to remove the reference to his/hers religion from the Civil Registry’s records. The circular instructed the registrar to accept all requests made by citizens to delete the reference to their religion in their records. It added that such a right is protected by the Lebanese constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements that Lebanon has ratified.
This decision (and the laudatory reactions to it) enraged me so much it paralysed me. Here was the perfect illustration of a highly ideological step that was the fruit of a soon to be century old legal and conceptual confusion on Middle-Eastern communalism. Nowhere in the press did I find any critical approach to that decision. All comments were congratulatory. Some pundits even spoke of a step towards the end of religious discrimination!? Who exactly is discriminated against? And obviously, no one spoke of the legal difficulties that are likely to arrise from this decision.
In the two previous posts sharing the same title, I first discussed the press’s reaction to Aoun’s visit and then the predictions surrounding his visit (and its announcement). Now I’d like to share with you my reaction to his visit.
At first I was taken aback. I was very uncomfortable when I saw the pictures of Michel Aoun entering the People’s Palace. Although I think the Lebanese government should have a smarter policy concerning Syria, one that would at least seem to be friendly towards the Syrian Government (Instead of having no policy at all and two different voices within the government, one overly hostile, the other overly friendly), visits by Lebanese politicians to Syria still send shivers down my spine.
But when I saw (and read about) the way Michel Aoun was received by some Christians in Syria, I felt that this visit surely has an important communal significance, at least within two communities, the Christian one and the Sunni one.
Aoun’s visit to Syria presented Syrian Christians with a Lebanese Christian Leader that isn’t hostile to their country, one that had shown his independence by fighting for the independence of his country, but that express no hostility towards Syria after the end of its occupation of Lebanon. What some Syrian Christians said to Aoun during his visit will certainly find an echo within Lebanon’s Christian community.
For Lebanon’s Sunni community, this visit certainly represents the final proof of Aoun’s treachery and traitorousness (after his frontal attacks against the Future Movement and his alliance with Hezbollah). By dealing with the assassins of their communal leader he has become one of his allies, and in becoming one of his allies, he becomes an accomplice in Rafik Hariri’s assassination.
When I heard about the death of Mahmoud Darwish a couple of days ago, I checked out his biography on the net, and that’s where I discovered that he was born in Israel, and he was politically active in Israel until he was deprived of his nationality by the Israeli government when he was studying abroad.
This is a fact that was neither highlighted by the Arab nor the Israeli press. I wonder if the poet had really written about this dual identity that he has, as an Israeli-Palestinian.
Israel celebrated yesterday, it’s 60th anniversary. In a week, Palestinians will be commemorating the Nakba. It’s odd to see these two people commemorating the same event so differently (and on two different dates, the Israelis follow the Jewish calendar while the Palestinians follow the international one) and regardless of what happened on the other side ever since.
There’s something obscene in the way Israelis (and the world press) are celebrating the establishment of Israel without even mentioning the plight of those who paid the highest price for it (and are still paying it till this very day).
And to think that in a week the Palestinian will be commemorating the Nakba (the loss of their state and homes) fantasizing on their return as if time had stopped in 1948 and Israel is merely a mirage that would eventually disappear.
If only there was a way to commemorate this event in its whole, in the same way the book “L’histoire de l’autre was written” (cover shown above).
I stumbled upon a special issue of Controverses a couple of hours ago dedicated to what it calls “Alterjews”, a word specifically coined by and for this publication, deriding Jewish critics of Israel commonly referred to in America and Israel as self-hating Jews. I found one of its sections particularly disturbing. Under the title “Au miroir français” (“Through the French looking-glass”), eight articles unleash a spiteful and systematic attack of what they term French “alterjews”; Theo Klein, Edgar Morin, Rony Brauman, Jean Daniel, Michael Warshawski, Gisèle Halimi, Esther Benbassa, Guy Sorman, are portrayed as biased, contradictory, self-promotional, ridiculous, mediocre, self-hating or delusional. Reading this section of the publication felt like watching a firing squad executing a group of criminals. Not one article, not one paragraph was written in their defense or by a person who’s goal wasn’t to disqualify them with their writings.
A month to the day, Ziad Baroud, Lebanon’s Interior Minister, issued a circular giving every Lebanese citizen the right to remove the reference to his/hers religion from the Civil Registry’s records. The circular instructed the registrar to accept all requests made by citizens to delete the reference to their religion in their records. It added that such a right is protected by the Lebanese constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements that Lebanon has ratified.
