AMERICAN LEBANESE COORDINATION COUNCIL

Published in Al Nahar, August 7, 2006

To Be a Shiite Now ….

By Mona Fayyad
Professor, Lebanese University

We are going through a catastrophic and existential period that will
have long lasting impacts on our country and region for the next century
; and since we are facing such a dangerous juncture I saw it fit to pose
some questions that one might pose within himself or in secret and
would’nt dare publicize, in fear of being accused of being a foreign
agent or a traitor, or even a blasphemor. Conf ronting difficult
questions and putting them out in public could help prevent us from
falling to the precipice that has no return and could help leaders take
the appropriate decisions in order to stop this hellish war whatever the
cost may be.
What is the meaning of being Shiite - for the majority of shiites at this
point- and at this critical juncture ?
To be a Shiite, means that you entrust your fate to the wise and
infallible leadership without daring to ask any question even if just as
a point of understanding.
To be a Shiite means that watch the Al Manar channel, or New TV or NBN,
exclusively and that you enjoy their inspirational songs and their
exclusive news and that you look with enmity to all other channels
because they are either “American” or “Zionist”, as long as they refer
to Israeli forces by their name and do not call them the “forces of the
enemy” , and do not have enough eulogies and is only broadcasting < BR>information.
To be a Shiite means that you do not question the meaning of victory.
Is it the
victory of armies while keeping soldiers - flush with weapons- alive
while destroying all of what is built and the killing of the human
beings that worked hard to build it up a nd constitute the true
protection to the fighter himself ?
To be a Shiite means that you do not question the meaning of resistance
and pride, is it the fleeing from bombing and their stacking up on the
tile floors of schools and their
dust ?
To be a Shiite is to contribute to the creation of a Lebanese “Karbala
2″ as the Iraqi “Karbala 1″ did not perform its role as needed in
building up the Arabs and carrying them on to victory over the enemy.
To be a Shiite is to be a hero that does not hurt nor complain, and does
not have psychological crises, and accepts sacrificing himself and his
country and everything that was accomplished so that he can teach I srael
a lesson, and expose its craziness and ensure its defeat as was
indicated to us by the Syrian Minister on the LBC station that Israel is
the loser with “accentuation on the ponctuation of letters”. You see it
is now hated more than ever before and it is indicted by mos t of the
nations of the world…Now that they see for sure - and the lesson is
still proceeding- the extent of its savagery and folly.
When you are Shiite, you have to accept this logic, and even praise it,
admiring its eloquence, its wisdom and its global role in spreading the
legal education and the enactment international treaties and its role on
a popular level in resistance and liberation. Did ‘nt we see for sure
through this war on us, that “Syria is the cornerstone in this region”
? These are the very words of the minister himself. Of course all this
destruction was necessary in order to ensure with concrete evidence the
validity of this reasoning be cause of the level of our objective
thinking we only work with evidence and empirical experimentation.
To be Shiite is to accept that your country be destroyed in front of
your very eyes- with no surprise- and that it comes tumbling down on
your head and that your family be displaced and dispersed and becomes “a
refugee” at the four corners of the nation and the world, and that you
accept standing up to the enemy with no complaints as long as there is a
fighter out there with a rocket that he can launch at northern Israel
and maybe even at its south without asking about the “why” ? or about
the timing? or about the usefulness of the end result?
To be a Shiite is to accept that you sacrifice all as long as you have
someone that will compensate you with money, and that someone will look
over you as you rebuild what he destroyed. What is your problem with
that ?
You see we are a people of heroes that know nothing but sacrifice an d we
can absorb mental shocks and the death of loved ones and the humiliation
of displacement and the destruction of the infrastructure of the state -
since its is a weak, corrupt and follower state- is it not enough to
have on our side a strong country that we work to sup port its
foundations in confronting the unjust American might and the American
Israeli war machine from hell ? That machine that whose meekness we have
to prove as well as its inability to inflict any harm to the fighters of
“Hizbollah” or its ability to limit their military capabilities and we
will prove that at any price.
To be a Shiite is to keep silent and not to ask what is the purpose of
liberating a country. Is it to destroy it all over again and to make
it possible for it to be occupied once more? and not to ask about the
leadership role: is it to preserve its military power and its men flush
with arms without any care or concern for the normal human being ?
Being a Shiite means that you can only thank the hizb for its heroism
and sacrifice , it is not your role to contribute to “weakening” it or
to “break its word” or to make him know when to back down or compromise
to preserve his victory on the one hand and to prese rve the Lebanese
nation and its openness as well as its development on the other hand!!
That means never to question whether pride takes precedence over the
lives of others and whether stones take precedence over arms.
To be a Shiite means to confer to the leader of the resistance his role
as a loyal hero to the cause of the Arab nation in its entirety, not
whether you like it or not, but whether that nation likes it or nor.
You only have to hear the popular praise of the masses, that was
preceded by the praise the masses heaped on their loyal hero Abdel Nasir
and is still shedding tears for its other hero of Saddam Hussein. And
the masses are still able to h eap praise on any hero that tickles its
dreams and its feelings so that it can sleep tight at night. (You can
here review the literature of the educated in the Safir newspaper and
the Hayat). Or to recover its lost dignity under the boots of rulers
like Saddam as long as we and only we pay the price until your real
awakening.
But the question is to what degree can we rely on these incapable
masses, that are enslaved by their rulers to liberate itself without
even thinking about reconsidering this Jihadist and revolutionary plan
!! Is it empowered ? Is it it wise enough ? Has it prepared the ground
for that? Does it have the tools for resistance and fighting other than
the arms of zeal and emotion and oratory?
If you are a Shiite you are not to ask this leadership how the ground
work was prepared to absorb this indiscriminate war and its “potential”
consequences. Where are the hospitals, the ambulances, never mind the
shelt ers. These are the responsibilities of a state- That was never
consulted in declaring war- so that it can be blamed for its weakness
and lack of wit. You see the state is only needed when it is called upon
to heal wounds, but the wise and existential decisions are not within
its realm.
To be a Shiite means to incapacitate your mind and leave it to Sayyed
Khamene’i to guide you and to decide for you what he wants for arms to
“Hizbollah” and he imposes on you the meaning of a victory that has
little difference from suicide.
To be a Shiite means to defend the meddling of the Iranian minister in
Lebanese state affairs without even trying to care for appearances.
Maybe he came to “warn” the ministers of Hizbollah that “they did not
agree” to the 7 point plan especially the point about the multinational
force so that the door of the resistance would not be shut, and we
remain a country exploited and abused after it was proven that t he
Shebaa Farms are Syrian and would be dealt with in accordance to
Resolution 242 and that there is no concensus on that point. And in
that he is warning them about their putting their Lebanese belonging
ahead of their following to Iran. They have to, in spite of their
noses, put the Iranian nuclear program and the interest of the state of
Iran ahead of the interest of their state, and ahead of the preservation
of the lives of the Lebanese or their possessions, whether these
Lebanese are Shiite or otherwise, but especially if they were Shiites.
Is’nt it a priority to make Iran a regional Shiite super power ? What is
the problem with sacrificing a country called Lebanon ? or the Shiites
of this “Lebanon”?
And in this tense mood if you are a Shiite you have to listen to your
Shiite speaker who is disturbed and angry and who wants to turn the
world on top of the 14th of March, and who wants to forbid the
deployment of multin ational forces. And you hear him distribute labels
of foreign servitude, treason, americanism and zionism left and right,
without raising your lip. You have to absorb his anger and agree with
all his opinions of which we have shared but a small sample.
This is what tak es you as far as possible from thinking who the heck you
are ? are you a Lebanese citizen ? Is you being a Shiite means that you
have to give priority to Iran over Lebanon ? Do you have the freedom to
have your own opinions ? the freedom of _expression ? Is it possible to
think calmly and to ask where are we going with this nation, the
institutions of this state, with plurality, with the coexistence that we
have to defend now ?
If you are a Shiite and you dare write such writings and such think such
thinking, then you must be a foreign agent and a traitor, in favor of
partition and absorption of Palestinians. You must be with the Zionist
and Israeli projects, and you defend the state, with its corruption and
favoritism, and you support the American biased policies, and you accept
its short sightedness, and its support for the terrorism of the zionist
state, and its failure to give the Palestinians their state like all
other cre atures of god, with the excuse of supporting the terrorism of
“Hamas”. And that means you support Israel itself and its satanic war
machine and its extreme savagery and you justify its killing, its
occupation, its folly and you are lucky if you are not accused to be the
one destroying the houses on peoples’ heads and the dismemberment of
children’s corpses and their scattering on the heaps of debris by
raising your voice.
Did I forget any of the symphony ? If I did, please excuse me because I
cannot miss any of the news shows any more, I have to go see who is
being displaced and whose house is being destroyed at the moment that is
if he manages to survive.