Our acting Minister of Foreign affairs will be dispatched to the Arab league with previously-classified documents proving Syria’s terrorism.
US Ambassador Stevenson exposing satellite imagery of Soviet Missiles in Cuba at the UN
The question is: How will the appeasing Arabs deal with those inconvenient truths?
Hello, my name is Mustapha and I have been blogging about Lebanese society and politics since February 2005. You can also find me on 
Sorry, I had to stop reading at “Bayroot al-3uruuba”! Here’s my problem! We keep paying lipservice to a failed ideology and a reductionist culture, they’ll keep yanking our chains (because they’re chaining us afterall) and dumping on us. Nothing short of withdrawing from the Arab League (for good, not “until further notice” BV) will do us any good.
We are NOT Arabs, we are LEBANESE!
We are MORE COMPLEX than to be reduced to facile and lazy labels!
We do NOT have several identities; we ONLY HAVE ONE (complex, unique, made up of several elements that have all shaped its unique proportions, yes,) but ONE identity nonetheless.
And if Saado and his goons have an issue with Lebanon’s hybridity and complexity, then the better he went to live in Saudi where people are homogenous slaves of exclusivist ideas and a single tribe.
But of course, with peons like those, we’re doomed! it’s pretty much guaranteed!
Beirut is an Arab city capital of the Arab country named Lebanon.
Louis-Noel, we speak Arabic, we have cultural ties with the Arabic world, most of our Lebanese slang is derived from Arabic. There is nothing called the Arabic race, the Arabs are Semitic or Berbers, the Arab identity refers to the language & culture. As much as Lebanese nationalist I am, I will not permit anyone to deny my Arabic heritage.
You are expressing and old fiction that claims that Lebanese Christians are not Arabs, and are descendants of Phoenicians. This fiction was created to isolate Lebanese Christians from their Muslim surroundings.
If the Arabic world was in majority Christian, those people would have been the champions of Arabism…
Nice framing of the story Mustapha (i.e. the Stevenson bit).
Keep it up.
Thx BJ..
well done, the stevenson part.
but sadly Seniora’s government is not JFK’s.. can it be as forceful?
With all due respect Kheireddine, what are you referring to when you make such an assumption that Lebanese are Arabs?
Let me address your presuppositions quickly:
1- “We live in an Arab country named Lebanon”: Lebanon is a Canaanite term meaning “White”, nothing Arab here.
2- “We speak Arabic”, no we don’t my friend. Check out my blogs and my Phoenician dictionary. You will begin to understand what you speak.
3- “We have cultural ties with the Arabic world”: and also with the west, North and East.
4- “Most of our Lebanese slang is derived from Arabic”: I will let Tony, if he wants to, reply to this, since he is a PHD candidate in Semitic Linguistics. Just to make it brief: No, most is not derived from Arabic.
5- “There is nothing called the Arabic race”: I agree.
Listen, I am not denying that the concept that Lebanese Christians are decedent form Phoenicians has been used by some political groups in the past to distance themselves from other Lebanese groups, but enough is enough. This subject must be taken out of the political arena, simply because Politics and Politicians are not experts in culture and linguistics. This subject is purely scientific. This has nothing to do with relegion to begin with.
Lebanon is a multicultural, eclectic and complex society that cannot be tagged with superficial terms such as “Arabic” or “Phoenician” or “whatever”. We have to learn to respect the complexity of cultural diversity that lives in this country. We are “Lebanese”, pure and simple, simply because there isn’t any other term that can define us. This is the only term that can. So if you want to call yourself “Arab”, you can knock yourself out, just don’t try to tell me or any other Lebanese what to call themselves. Whether you are Sunni, Shiaa, Christian, Armenian, Durzi, or whatever, your only term of self identification is “Lebanese” my friend. When will learn to accept each other as Lebanese, time will tell.
kheireddine, you’re too funny, and your arguments are plain silly. I applaud The Lebanese for his patience, but I doubt that your comments warrant (or should be dignified with) a response.
Your statement that “Beirut is an Arab city capital of the Arab country named Lebanon” smacks of the illiterate intransigence with which you’re approaching this topic.. and actually you completely lost me when you said “the Arabs are Semitic or Berbers” ROFLMAF WTIME. The term “semitic” is a linguistic not a racial or ethnic one, it refers to a family of languages. The term Berber on the other hand is geographic and ethnic; a Greek sobriquet given to non-Greeks (later inhabitants of the Coast of Barbary/North Africa, which eventually devolved onto the pre-Arab-Conquest Amazigh groups living there.)
Has there ever been a study in Lebanon that asked people how they self-identify?
If so, what was the percentage that identified first and foremost as Lebanese, and how many put Sunni/Shia/Christian/Druze/etc as their first mark? And what were other choices?
Guy, no actual published work on the topic exist. Obviously, the issue of identity is still a work in process throughout the Middle East (Lebanon is certainly NOT unique in this case; there are Syrianists in Syria, Pharaonists in Egypt, Mesopotamianists in Iraq, and Canaanites in Israel, etc…) But if you’re interested in the topic, I highly recommend Asher Kaufman’s seminal “Reviving Phoenicia”, and Selim Abou’s foundational “Le bilinguisme Arab-Français au Liban.” certainly not an answer to your question, but a good place to start.
Louis-Noel, je vous laisse rêver de votre Liban utopique. Le Liban que nous connaissons va s’effonder de lui même, car les Libanais ne sont pas d’accord sur des points fondamentaux…
kheireddine,
There is nothing Utopian about what I or LNH have said. Actually, what you have said is more Utopic, homogeneous and over-simplified.
There no need for agreement either, and the issue is not that fundamental. What is fundamental is tolerance and acceptance, and certainly not outdated concepts of National and Regional identity, such as Arabism, Phoenicianism or Babyloniasim, etc. These are oversimplified notions, and do not apply to a complex and hybrid society such as the Lebanese society. We have taken something from the Arabs, no denying that, but we have taken more from Phoenician, Aramaic, Syriac, etc. Pride has nothing to do with your heritage. Sometimes it is good, most of the times, not that good at all.
Kheir, that’s very good! So if I understand you well, you would rather see Lebanon disintegrate rather than acquiesce in its sui generis diversity.
btw, I wasn’t arguing for a Pheonician Lebanon my friend; indeed, I find Phoenicianism equally reprehensible and equally rigid and reductionist as I do Arabism. All I said was that if people like Saad (and all of those who spout lazy negationist labels) can’t accept and appreciate Lebanon’s richly layered hybrid nature, they better go live under insipid homogenous systems like Saudi’s; system that are able to provide for them the safety of a monochromatic totalitarian culture. Lebanon ain’t fit for that build.
Lebanon is built on a complex understanding of identity and culture that cannot be pinned down to banal labels and slottings (Arab etc…) Lebanon is not a singular, homogenous, monochromatic, exclusivist construct. Its distinctness and specificity dwell in its diversity and its multiple constitutive elements.
Here’s how one of the most eloquent Braudelians of our time (Amine Maalouf) put it in “Léon l’Africain”:
“I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the scale-master, I, Jean-Léon de Médici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, NOR FROM ARABIA [emphasis mine, lnh]. I am also called the Granadan, the Fezzi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, from no tribe. I am the son of the road; a born wayfarer. My homeland is the caravan; my life the most spectacular of pathways, the most riveting of travels.
My wrists have rubbed in turn against the caresses of silk, the chafing of wool, the gold of princes and the chanis of slaves. My fingers have parted a thousand veils, my lips have made a thousand virgins blush, and my eyes have seen cities die and empires collapse.
From my mouth you will hear Arabic, Turkish, Castilian, Berber, Hebrew, Latin and Italian vulgari, because all tongues and all prayers belong to me. But I belong to none of them. I belong only to God and to the earth, and it is to them that I will one day soon return.”
This is Lebanon Kheir; Ecce Libano!!!!
Like Leo, Lebanon is a homeless penniless vagabond and a rich time-honored patrician, rooted in its millennarian history, snugly nestled between the Mediterranean and the Mountain, with eyes always fixed on the horizon. Lebanon is cosmopolitan, polyglot, wielding with the passion and intimacy of natives Canaanite, Hebrew, Phoenician, Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, and countless Latin vulgari, yet belonging to neither Arabs nor Phoenicians or others…
Take it or leave it, Kheir, because you sure as hell will not be able to tame it and reduce it to your silly lazy and politically soothing soundbites! It endured and traveled through history for 6000 years PRECISELY because of its openness and ecumenical nature, NOT because it was easy to spell (like your Arabs for instance.)
Don’t let the door hit you on your way out!
btw Kheir, what The Lebanese did to you up there is called “lessivage à sec” in plain Lebanese! Thnx LB, couldn’t have said it better myself ;)
Please, get rid of those clichés. Lebanon is still a third world country despite the western varnish & it needs to evolve to become a true democracy.
We are still in the middle ages like our Arab brothers. We have not reached the level of separation of religion & state nor have we been creative and innovative in technology and administration. All we did int he last two centuries is copy here and there. At one point in time, when Beirut was the ”Paris of the Middle East” Lebanon was the best the Arab world had to offer. Unfortunately, ”deux négations ne font pas une nation” comme le disait feu Georges Naccache & it became Chaos on Earth.
Take it or leave it? I already left it 16 years ago & never came back…good luck with Hizbollah, Syria, the palestinian and the israelis…
Ah I forgot, the Sunni extreemist. And the the Aounists and the Geageaists, and the Jumblatists…
Il n’y a pas de quoi être fier; les Québecois et Canadiens, un peuple jeune sans 6000 ans d’histoire, ont batit un état démocratique et moderne. Surtout un état de droit, tolérant et équitable. J’ai appris la tolérance et l’humilité au Québec et non pas au Liban où j’ai été traité de sale musulman à l’école des Frères de Gemmayzeh en 1975 par des camarardes et un instituteur nommmé Chahwane, alors que mon grand-père, ancien premier ministre et élève, avait son nom accroché dans le salon d’honneur et que mon arrière grand-oncle était le patriarche maronite Boulos Massaad. J’avais toujours un rêve libanais malheureusement il est entrain de se dissiper à la vue de cette mascarade qu’est devenue la société libanaise.
This is exactly what i call `the pervert mental masturbation` the ongoing quest for the Identity. I believe that identity is relevant to one`s experience. I refuse to dig out academical books and base my identity on cold historical facts or religious perversions or phonetic languages, semetic might they be or other. If Lebanon would be a person, and you ask it the question, it will tell its experience, a bloody one. As to LN harfouche, yes lebanon cannot be solely arabic but in the same time in order to protect its pluralism, we should allow the personal interpretation of identity. As to kheireddine the arab I challenge you, on a one to one arabic literature `Duel`. Bless you all
De grace Kheir, épargnes-moi tes regrets et tes jérémiades sans objet. Tu as le culot de te vanter de la souplesse culturelle et de la tolérance des Québecois, alors que tu viens de faire preuve d’une intolérance sans bornes vis-à-vis de tes compatriotes libanais! Tu es un hypocrite, mon bon. Tu clames la démocratie, la modernité, la tolérance, mais tu te rues comme un taré à confondre (malgrès eux) les Libanais avec leurs voisins d’arabie (alors qu’en réalité, l’assimilation, l’adoption de la civilisation libanaise avaient fini par rendre tous les conquérant du Liban (surtout les arabes) étrangers à leur ancienne culture, à leur ancienne langue, à leur patrie d’antan. Même de nos jours, tes arabes (ceux dans qui tu tiens à fondre les libanais de force), dans leurs langues parlées ne balbutient plus qu’un arabe barbare mêlé d’aramaïsmes et de locutions cananéènes. putain, même ton noble Coran, la source suprème des normes de la langue arabe, est araméen dans son lexique.
Avec ta conception fermée et restrictive de l’identité, cher Kheir, tu as à peine le droit de faire appel à l’exemple Canadien! Au fait, tes Québecois/Conodzyains viennent de délicieusement sapper ton argument boiteux.
voici une petite lecture pour te garder en forme.
allez, grosses bises ma belle!
http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal_fr/2006/jv1no1a4.html
“As to LN harfouche, yes lebanon cannot be solely arabic but in the same time in order to protect its pluralism, we should allow the personal interpretation of identity.”
Umm, thanks Dory, but isn’t that exactly what I’ve been trying to say? Re-read the excerpt I copied from Maalouf; it encapsulates exactly the point I was trying to make, and what you have just written.
cheerio
Je dois avoir le double de ton âge Louis-Noel. Mon nome est Kheireddine El-Ahdab
Ce npm ne te dois pas quelque chose? Mon grand-père est un des fondateur du liban moderne et ne me traite pas d’hypocrite!
Je dois avoir le double de ton âge Louis-Noel. Mon nom est Kheireddine El-Ahdab
Ce nom ne te dis pas quelque chose? Mon grand-père est un des fondateur du liban moderne et ne me traite pas d’hypocrite!
Jérémiades? parce qu’on m’a traité de sale musulman? Sache ptit gars que le Liban n’aurait pas été possible sans la participation de personnalité comme Kheireddine El-Ahdab et Riad Solh qui ont convaincu les autres leaders musulmans à embraquer dans l’aventure libanaise, alors que les musulmans demandaient à demeurer rattachés à la Syrie. C’est mon dernier mot sur ce blog. Quelle perte de temps de discuter avec ces illuminés!
PS J’ai découvert sur le blog de Louis-Noel qu’il a 44 ans. Il ne les parait pas…du point de vue maturité d’esprit bien sûr.
Pls stop perpetuating the myth that you don’t speak arabic. if you don’t feel arabic, that’s up to you, nobody is forcing you to feel anything.
However the language spoken in Lebanon is not cannanite (phonecian) it is the arabic language heavily influenced by aramaic that was spoken in the area when the new wave of arabs arrived in the 7th century. The aramaic influence of our arabic is what gives us our distinct “flavour”.
In fact each area’s uptake of arabic is heavily influenced by its predessors, for instance in northern africa, the original berber language influences their arabic tremendously. Still arabic none the less.
As for those who claim that you could understand phonecian (cannanite) if you heard it, that claim is totally bogus, have you tried reading any phonecian inscriptions lately? Believe me it takes hours to transliterate and translate them. Ofcourse there are alot of similar words, but that is a function of the close relationships in the Semitic Languages so you will find many closely related words in ugaritic, akkadian, aramaic, cannenite, arabic etc etc.
And no “non-politically motivated” scholar/books ever states that the language spoken in lebanon is not arabic, only the lebanese “scholars” who want to “escape” arabism write stuff like that.
If you are really interested in the linguistics instead of trying to prove a political point then read a decent liguistic book such as “the arabic language” by Kees Versteegh.
and by the way, alot of lebanese don’t speak french believe it or not, so can you guys go easy on the french postings or at least translate them, arabic or english will do.
Kheireddine,
In our constitution, when modern Lebanon was formed, said that Lebanon had two faces, Arabic,and Western. Now, if your grandfather, was part of the formation of this nation, wouldn’t you call that “hypocritic” if you are one of the advocates of the “Arabism” of Lebanon? Let me spare you the answer. It was not hypocritic, because at that time, the founding fathers were well aware of the complex cultural nature of this country, and they addressed it in the first clause of the constitution. If some people want to divide it along religious lines and say that Christians=West, Muslims=Arab, that’s also fine with me. (Yet, the truth tells us otherwise, because there are many Christians descendant from the Arab Ghassanides, and many Muslims who have been living here for ages.) Why then do we still insist of tagging ourselves with one or the other?
I don’t deny that we have a long way to go. But we must preserve our unique cultural asset. This asset will be a catalyst for positive change. If we can accept each other, we can move ahead. Otherwise, we will all be outside the country.
“Je dois avoir le double de ton âge Louis-Noel. Mon nome est Kheireddine El-Ahdab”
ha ha, c’est donc vrai que j’ai à faire à un dément; ce qui explique ta rigidité et ta conception fermée de Liban et de son identité. Allez, essuis-toi la bouche et faire dodo pepère!
btw, I’d be careful with Bloggers’ profiles if I were you pops! keep in mind, if you still have some short-term memory, that most of us use these monkiers and profiles as mere internet personae. Judging from your silly complaints, your tantrums and puerile poutings, I doubt you’re anything near the age you’re claiming to be, let alone related to Kheireddin el-Ahdab.
yalla ciao babe!
Right we are not arabs!
We are JARABS!!!
Whats the fuss about in a millenium with no more boundaries, racial or ethical. You remind me of the story of Geha and his donkey. Stop over analyzing if we are phoenician, cannaanite, egyptian, arabs, perse, turcs, crusaders, french… who cares, its not that we are a kind of a super special race we 4million lebanese!!! For all i know, we never were anything but idiots who constantly burned the soil where we lived in, hence the expression JARAB!
Ralf, you are at least partly right in that you are willing to look at Lebanon and the Lebanese critically. But I’m afraid the issue of identity (not only in Lebanon, but throughout the Middle East) is still unresolved and is still too complex and too important for you to dismiss it and advanced globalism as panacea. The global universe of “no boundaries and no identities” of which you speak (and perhaps prescribe for the Middle East), was made possible by a thousand years of religious and national wars, and a thousand years of critical thinking, reform, and trials and errors and secularism. It was made possible by Europeans who are no longer affected by the threats of neighbors and outsiders hostile to their cultures and their self-perceptions and intent on forcing them into ideological and cultural lock-step. Nationalism (more precisely of the Arab kind) needs to be dealt the deadly blow sustained by Nazism and other 20th century European irredentisms in order for the Middle East (and Lebanon) to begin moving in the direction you are prescribing. With fascistic ideology being replaced by fascistic theology, I think the Middle East is still lightyears away from your utopia.
On to my hunchback friend:
Mr. Ahdab, mon petit bonhomme, tu ne trouves pas que c’est un peu par manque de maturité qu’on laisse parfois échapper des petites menaces en douce, comme ça, genre “saches avec qui tu parles, petit con”, ou bien “Je dois avoir le double de ton âge, petit morveux, alors tiens toi à careau” ou encore, et celle-ci c’est la meilleure, “saches qui est ma famille, je suis un Ahdab, niai niai niai niai”?
Mon pauvre, tu l’est, après tout, le petit hypocrite qui en pense juste à sa petite personne!!! Tu reproches aux autres leur manque de tolérance vis-à-vis ton récit arabisant restrictif, mais tu en fais autant toi-même en leur refusant leurs propres références culturelles et historiques non-arabes.
Et là, dans ton refus forcené à l’égard tous ce qui nuit au forçage culturel que tu prescris (heu, ton fameux arabisme obsolète), il me semble que tu t’inspires plutôt de tes rancunes de petit écolier morveux et gâté que des vérités historiques et des intérêts politiques d’un Liban depuis toujours pluriel.
NB: Aussi je doute fort bien qu’un pauvre prof des écoles des Frères au Liban du début des années 70 ait eu l’audace de te traiter de “de sale musulman” à ta figure alors qu’à l’époque le népotisme, le favoritisme, la corruption et les abus de l’autorité des élites politiques (y compris ceux de ta propre famille), les pots de vin, les langues de bois, les “wasta”, les “m’as tu vu” et “saches qui je suis” (de ta famille et de bien d’autres musulmanes comme chrétiennes) etc.. battaient leur plein. Je doute que ton Prof fictif aurait eu l’audace, voire l’ânerie, d’insulter un écolier issu d’une famille tel la tienne. En somme, non seulement tu es un hypocrite, Mr. Ahdab, tu es aussi un lâche petit menteur, un séctaire rancunier qui regrette les jours anciens, quand sa famille et les autres avatars de l’Empire Ottoman, se régalaient d’un Liban inféodé à leurs débauches et leurs vices.
btw, ton “sale musulman” n’est-il par hasard pas une petite variation (désireuse peut-être) sur les aventures du personnage de Tarek Noueiri dans le filme “West Beyrouth” ?? Hmmm !
Vos propos sur le site de Beirutspring démontre votre bassesse…vous n’êtes qu’un minable, au plaisir de ne plus discuter avec vous!
Juste une précision, mon nom de famille me vient de mon ancêtre, Harun ar-Rammah Najm al-Din al-Ahdab, chevalier et inventeur arabe du XIIIe siècle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_inventions#Torpedo , El-Ahdab est relatif à la forme du sabre qu’il maniait et non-pas à la forme de son dos. Je ne me moquerai pas du nom de famille de cet individu nommé Louis-Noel, car je suis sûr qu’il existe des membres respectables de la famille Harfouche…
J’croyais qu’tu l’avais d’jà eu ton dernier mot Mr. Ajdab! Mais il s’avère que c’que tu as fait c’était plutôt passer pour un con. Allez, à plus vielle nase!
Pauvre minable
LN et KD votre noble vocabulaire et vos belles tournures de phrases ne changeront rien au fait que vous etes des JARABS!!! Et je vous insulte directement tous les deux parce que vous n’avez aucun respect pour vous-meme alors pkoi est-ce que je vous respecterai!!!! LN ta petite lecon d’histoire est fort interessante, tu peux l’encadrer la mettre au dessus de ton lit et etre le seul a croire a cette theorie de debile que le moyen orient est a des annees lumiere relativement au reste du monde. c a cause de frustre/complexes/arrieres comme toi que le MO en est tjs la! Kheiridine, salut moi ton ancetre et toi aussi tu peux lui faire une statue et le mettre au lit cette fois avec toi et si tu veux tu peux aussi inviter tous tes arabes et discuter cette grande civilisation de mangeurs de chameaux. Le monde se prepare a un eclatement culturel et 4 millions de cons se demandent toujours quel envahisseur a viole leur arriere grand mere. Debiles, fils de debiles, petit fils de debiles ca c’est votre vrai arbre genealogique!
Aren’t name-dropping and personal attacks usually signs that the debate has been lost?
alright guys, I’m sure this has been a great discussion, but the servers are starting to complain from the useless insults they’re being stuffed with.
Great insights, but it’s time to move on.
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