[LCM Articles] Editorial - To Be A Shi'ite Now

[Rabih Zbib]

Mr. Chamoun,

I'm stupefied by your admiration for this article and your failure to see
how offensive it is for any Shiite, and only the more so because the
prescription is written by a Shiite.

Here's a response to the good professor, explaining what it would have meant
to be a Shiite to her preference:

http://www.annaharonline.com/htd/DAYA060810-3.HTM

A look at history is always beneficial, and the further back one looks, the
more it is.

Unfortunately, the article is available only in Arabic. Whoever translated
the original article, I am sure, is not interested in translating the
response.

-rabih






On 8/10/06, Walid G. Chamoun <walid at chamoun.org> wrote:
>
>  Editorial in Arabic (attached); English translation (below).  W-
>
>  ------------------------------
>
> I thought you might be interested to share this outstanding editorial that
> was written by a Shiite Lebanese Female University professor. It is also
> posted on LCCC site in both Arabic and English http://www.10452lccc.com.
>
>
> *To Be a Shiite Now ....
> By: Mona Fayyad/ Professor at The Lebanese University
> *
> Beirut, August 8, 2006/Prof. Mona Fayyad - An Nahar Newspaper/--
>
> 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
> wouldn't dare publicize, in fear of being accused of being a foreign agent
> or a traitor, or even a blasphemer. Confronting 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 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 Israel 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 punctuation of letters". You see it is now hated more
> than ever before and it is indicted by most 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 and 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 support 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 preserve 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 heap 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 shelters. 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 the 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. Isn't 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
> multinational 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 takes 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
> creatures 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.
>
> Mona Fayyad is a Professor at the Lebanese University.
>
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