Treacherous Arabs and the Agony of Lebanon

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Arab nationalism, anti-Israeli hostility, and pro-Palestinian sentiment were at their zenith. Islamic fundamentalism was still to come later in the 1980s, after the Arab debacles in their wars against Israel and the failure of Arab nationalism. With their feebleness and incompetence, the Arabs in general, in particular Egypt and Syria along with the Gulf Arabs (Saudi Arabia and Kuwait primarily) found that tiny and vulnerable Lebanon with its "alien" Christians was a good avatar for "alien" Israel and a fertile ground to demonstrate that they still had some testosterone in their gonads.

So they sent their hatred, their money and their proxy armed hordes of Palestinians, Syrians, Libyans and multitudes of other Arab mercenaries to prove that Arab nationalism was capable of something, of anything, after their defeat by Israel in the 1967 and 1973 wars. When they couldn't defeat Jewish Israel, they turned their hatred onto Christian Lebanon, which had not joined the wars of 1967 and 1973 because it would have been suicidal for it to do so. They propped up Yasser Arafat with weapons and money into establishing the headquarters of his PLO and satellite organizations in Beirut. They forced Lebanon to cede its southern border with Israel to the PLO in the Cairo Accord of 1969. The PLO began shelling northern Israeli settlements, giving Israel the pretext to retaliate by bombing Lebanese villages. This cycle would continue until 1982 when the PLO was evicted from Lebanon by the Israeli invasion, leaving newly created Hezbollah to take over the enterprise of "liberating Palestine" with its disastrous consequences on Lebanon. Imagine how the liberation of Palestine by the Arabs, as grand and sublime as this objective was, became concentrated to a tiny border strip of the smallest, yet the only democratic and only partly Muslim, Arab country among all the cowardly Muslim Arab dictatorial regimes.

There's too much history to be exhaustive here, but every attempt by the Lebanese to put an end to their torment by regulating Palestinian guerilla activities (e.g. the Melkart Accord) was met with accusations of being anti-Arab, imperialist, pro-Zionist, and isolationist. In the twisted hateful minds of Arab Muslims, Lebanon (being only partly Muslim) had to over-prove its Arab identity by sacrificing itself to the Palestinian cause. Because they're not Muslims, Lebanon's Christians are by definition suspect of "westernism" and must therefore meet a higher standard of Arabity than all the Arab scum around them, which means that Lebanon must go to war alone against Israel to prove itself, while other Muslim Arab countries are under no pressure to prove themselves and have the luxury of making peace with the enemy. Meanwhile, Syria, Jordan and Egypt closed their own borders and denied Arafat and his thugs the right to liberate Palestine from their own borders with Israel, while Lebanon was forced by the Arabs to cede its southern territory to Arafat in the 1969 Cairo Accord. 

Jordan had crushed the PLO in the 1970 Black September massacres, but that was OK because King Hussein was a Muslim. But how dare the Christian President of Lebanon try to rein in the PLO and deny it freedom of action on Lebanese soil? Meanwhile, Syria signed a truce with Israel in 1974 in which it effectively ceded the Golan to Israel, followed by Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994) who signed peace treaties and normalized their relations with the Jewish state. Lebanon to this day remains the only active Arab war front with Israel, thanks mostly to the perfidy of the Syrian Assad regime which maintained calm on its own occupied and annexed Golan, while inciting Quixotic and disastrous liberation wars right next door along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Lebanon at the time was the free press center of the Arab world. Every Arab author, poet, journalist, academic or dissident who had fled the drab totalitarianism of the Arab dictatorships of the time had found freedom and shelter in Beirut. From Beirut, the Arab press and dissidents (e.g. Nizar Qabbani, Adonis) were free to criticize the inept and cruel Arab regimes of Syria, Iraq, Egypt and others, and some of these dissidents were hunted down and assassinated by Syria's Mukhabarat services (e.g. Salim Al-Laouzi, editor of Al-Hawadess magazine, who was kidnapped, his hand melted in acid, and his body found in a ditch in 1980). Yet, Lebanon made up for its military weakness with a strong pro-Palestinian press. In 1974, it was the Christian president of Lebanon, Sleiman Frangiyeh Sr., who introduced Yasser Arafat to the United Nations in New York, which paved the way for the eventual recognition of the PLO by Israel and the international community. Up to that time, the world had thought of the Palestinians as mere refugees and not as a nation trying to salvage the land that was forcibly taken from them by the Jewish terrorism of the 1930s and 1940s.

As the 1975 war between the Lebanese and the Palestinians erupted, the Arabs poured money, mercenaries and weapons into the country to support the Palestinians. At the same time, under the cover of opening up to the world and with their newly found oil money, the Sunni Muslim Arabs engaged in a campaign to Islamize the West: They founded mosques and Koranic schools in every European capital, sent hateful preachers to the West who began brainwashing people, and funded terrorist activities (plane hijackings, assassinations, bombings). By 1979, Shiite Muslim Iran too had fallen to Islamic fundamentalism with the anti-Shah revolution and the advent of the Islamic theocracy. Iran joined in the Islamization campaign and immediately engaged in anti-Western terrorism. It founded Hezbollah in Lebanon (1982) which proceeded to chase all western presence out of Lebanon by bombings (US Marine and French paratroopers headquarters, and US and French embassies), kidnappings (the Western hostages saga), hijackings (TWA Flight 847) and multitudes of killings and assassinations. In fact, Iran was doing the same thing in Paris in the early to mid-1980s.

Lebanon was abandoned by the West who couldn't wean itself of Arab oil. A cowardly West took the blows and the attacks against itself without complaining, so why would it try to rescue a friendly but insignificant Lebanon that was suffering the same fate? Lebanon traveled the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s in the Syrian Gulag that the West had colluded to assign it to for fear of upsetting the Arabs. Today, Lebanon is still reeling from the Syrian occupation which left behind it a culture of malfeasance, crime and corruption.

Fast forward to the late 2010s: Today the Arabs are where Lebanon was back in the 1960s and 1970s. They are for the most part allies of the West, they are promoting themselves as beacons of cultural openness, they have made peace with Israel, and have shelved the Palestinian cause into their darkest closets. And Lebanon is today where the Arabs were in the 1960s and 1970s: In absurd military trenches for the Palestinian cause on whose altar it was sacrificed. Israel remains the eternal enemy of Lebanon while most Arabs have opened Israeli embassies in their capitals. Economically it is a ruined country when it was as prosperous in the 1960s as Dubai is today.

This is not irony. It is not the outcome of mistakes or the meanderings of politics. The descent of Lebanon into the hell it finds itself today is a crime initiated by the "brotherly" Arab countries who then dumped its decaying cadaver into the hands of Iran, the Shiite alter ego of the Sunni Arabs, to finish off the mutilation. And now the Arabs are blaming Iran for what it is doing to Lebanon, without expressing any regrets for what they themselves did to the country long before Iran joined in the macabre ritual. It really doesn't matter whether it is Sunni or Shiite Islam that is the butcher. Whether Lebanon as we know it survives this crime remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: The survival of the last free Christians in the East is at stake and the treacherous West and its perfidious Arab allies know it. 

Theocracies of the 21st Century

The word "theocracy" is from Greek theokratia, literally "the rule of God," from theos "god" and kratos "rule, regime". In other words, any country, nation or state that claims to be "ruled by god" is a theocracy.

According to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition, a theocracy is:
1. Government ruled by or subject to religious authority.
2. A country or state governed in this way.
3. A form of government in which God is recognized as the supreme civil ruler of the state, and his laws are taken as the statute-book of the kingdom.

Because theocracies can hide themselves behind a veneer of pseudo-democracy (as in holding futile and inactionable elections, for example), the definition above should be broadened, i.e. a theocracy can therefore be simply be defined as:

A theocracy is any country founded on the basis of a religious identity. By defining itself as belonging to a religious belief, such a country will automatically exclude members of other religious or non-religious identities and set them to second-class status.

As such, a theocracy does not have to have a clergyman, a pope, an imam, or a high priest at the helm.

The United States: God is not mentioned in the US constitution. Only the far-right evangelist fringe of American society wants the US to be a "Christian Nation", while all other political currents (including conservatives, center, and progressives) reject this definition. That is why the United States is not a theocracy, even though radical southern evangelists want it to become so.

Saudi Arabia: The king and his government are not clergymen. They are civilians belonging to one family, the Sauds. As such it may appear not to be a theocracy. Yet it is founded and deeply rooted in Islam. Its constitution promulgated in 1992 (https://www.the-saudi.net/saudi-arabia/saudi-constitution.htm) sates in its Chapter 1, Article 1, "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic state with Islam as its religion; God's Book and the Sunnah of His Prophet, God's prayers and peace be upon him, are its constitution, Arabic is its language and Riyadh is its capital."

Iran: The Iranian constitution (https://www.shora-gc.ir/files/en/news/2021/6/2/468_245.pdf) states in its Article 1, "The form of government of Iran is that of an Islamic Republic, endorsed by the people of Iran on the basis of their longstanding belief in the sovereignty of truth and Qur'anic justice" [Notice how questionable is the pairing of truth with Qur'anic justice]. But wait, the gems are in the first five provisions of Article 2:

"The Islamic Republic is a system based on belief in:
1. The One God, His exclusive sovereignty and the right to legislate, and the necessity of submission to His commands;
2. Divine revelation and its fundamental role in setting forth the laws;
3. The return to God in the Hereafter, and the constructive role of this belief in the course of man's ascent towards God;
4. The justice of God in creation and legislation;
5. Continuous leadership (imamah) and perpetual guidance, and its fundamental role in ensuring the uninterrupted process of the revolution of Islam.

Israel: There is no question that the "Hebrew State" or "Jewish State" is a theocracy. It is no secret to anyone that the country is founded exclusively on one specific religion, Judaism. In effect, Israeli leaders have never ceased declaring Israel as a Jewish country club exclusively for Jews. For example, Benyamin Netnayahu in 2019 said that "Israel is the national state, NOT for all its citizens, but only for the Jewish people". Israel has two Chief Rabbis, one for the Ashkenazim (European Jews) and one for the Sephardim (Arab and North African Jews). The Sephardi Rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, refers to Africans as "monkeys" and holds enormous sway over the extremist terrorist settlers. In 2007, Israel's former chief rabbi, Mordechai Elyahu, called for the Israeli army to mass-murder Palestinians, which the Israeli army obediently and devoutly does on a daily basis.

Accordingly, Israel is a theocracy disguised as a democracy because it fools the world by holding elections. As I have said before about Lebanon, democracy cannot be reduced to holding elections. Like in all theocracies or autocracies, elections are a facade. Democracy is not only about a fight between right and left, between loyalists and the opposition. Democracy is also about human rights, respecting minorities, upholding the law, maintaining strict independence of the executive, legislative and judiciary, etc. At least the Iranians and the Saudis are frank about what government they have, but not the Israelis.

According to a post by John Clark on Quora.com, "the Zionists who originally promoted the 'return to Palestine', were for the most part secular. The problem is that all definitions of 'jewishness' require a religious aspect, and so, one cannot have a Jewish state which is truly 'secular'. In most modern 'secular states' there is a negative view of such appeals as 'the US is a Christian Nation'... in fact, only the extreme right or religious zealots of the US tend to hold such a view. This view is extended to 'islamic' states. The Zionists wanted it both ways, a 'Jewish' state, but somehow avoid the association with religious zealotry that comes with using 'religion' as a defining element of the nation's self image".

As usual, ambiguity, bigotry, lack of commitment to stated ideals, and sitting on the fence, are hallmarks of Israel. By pretending to be a democracy, it attracts sympathy from genuine democracies that, truth be told, were themselves the butchers of the Jewish population of Europe during the Holocaust and support Israel only out of guilt, not conviction. In fact, modern-day Europeans are Nazis in disguise who are happy to have rid themselves of their Jewish populations (wealthy and sophisticated) which they dumped on the hapless Palestinians (poor and rural). Israel's extremist Jewish terrorist colonists murder Palestinian civilians every day, steal their lands, uproot their millennial olive groves, AND form significant parts of the Israeli government. Indeed, in Israel, civilian law and religious law are confounded, which is the very definition of a theocracy.

Lebanon: The ultimate farce of a democracy (see my post: https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/09/lebanons-presidential-elections.html). With its constitution recognizing 18 religious sects (and no others) as constitutive of the republic, civilian laws are again intertwined with religious laws. Every night on Lebanese television news, men in strange headgear (turbans, mitres, skulcaps, etc.) and long robes deliver statements about the political developments. These statements are in fact instructions to their affiliated politicians and followers. Some of these clergymen (Hassan Nasrallah) even have militias (Hezbollah) affiliated with, and funded by, foreign countries (Iran) with which they terrorize the rest of the population. 

Basically, Lebanon is a federation of mini-theocracies. No wonder that religious problems are all over the place: Disputes about alcohol sales, interference of the religious into civilian and political affairs, distribution of political and administrative posts on the basis of religion, the religious courts take precedence over civilian courts in personal status matters (marriage, divorce, child custody, etc.) As such Lebanon is, like Israel, one huge bigoted theocratic system hiding behind a facade of democracy.

Legitimate Rights over Other Peoples' Lands

If people A can claim legitimate rights to a land they abandoned several centuries ago, a land now inhabited by a mix of people: The majority of people A who stayed and later adopted a new identity, plus others who migrated to the land in the course of subsequent wars and occupations, then according to this narrative:

- Vladimir Putin is justified in invading and reclaiming parts of Ukraine. In fact, it would be quite legitimate for him to claim all of Ukraine. Russia abandoned Ukraine only a few decades ago. Ukraine was merely a region, never a country.

- Italy can reclaim lands it once occupied during its Roman Empire era around the Mediterranean. None of the countries existing today around the Mediterranean ever existed as a country during the Roman occupation. In fact, most of them became "countries" in the last couple of centuries.

- Turkiye can reclaim lands it once occupied as the Ottoman Empire. Same argument as with Italy and the Roman Empire.

- England can claim legitimate rights to parts of the United States, Canada, Australia, India, etc. There never were such countries prior to the English conquest of north America.

- India can claim absolute rights to Pakistan. There never was a country called Pakistan prior to the partition of India in 1947.

- European Christian countries can claim legitimate rights to Palestine since they occupied it for 200-300 years less than a millennium ago. There was once a thriving Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem and surrounding fiefdoms and counties once in the Near East, Palestine included. Why can't the French, the Germans, and others use that argument to invade Palestine, ethnically cleanse it of its inhabitants - Muslims and Jews - and establish Christian settlements where their ancestors once lived?

The point of this hypothetical exercise is that while a Jewish kingdom existed some 2,500 years, based on tenuous fictional accounts recorded in dubious biblical stories, many of which reek of fantasy, it is inconceivable in our world today that recent European converts to Judaism can reclaim lands that another ancient people, the Hebrews, occupied more than two millennia ago.

If we were to accept the biblical accounts as true to reality, then the Canaanite people (ancestors of the Palestinians) who lived in Palestine prior to Joshua's Hebrew conquest have the right to claim legitimate rights to today's Palestine, especially that Joshua's conquest had all the accoutrements of a genocide: The Bible says that he killed every Canaanite man, woman and child, then took their land, supposedly because the loving Yahweh told his pet people they can do such atrocities .

Why do the apologists of Apartheid Israel insist on excluding the founding of Israel from this sort of argumentation, a founding that has all the characteristics of a colonialist violent conquest of somebody else's land?

If the world as we know it today accepts that a people from Europe, massacred and persecuted by their own fellow Europeans, and who declare themselves religious descendants of a Bronze Age people, can claim rights to a land their own dubious ancestors took by massacres and wars from another people, then any country can claim ownership to any land its former citizens once took by force and occupied. 

If Israel is shielded from the same judgment of reason that in principle should apply to all countries, then where do the land-grabbing and killing stop? By what measure of reason, equity and justice is Israel placed above such standard moral criteria that it goes on annihilating another people at will?

Finally, with the democratization of information, the monopoly of information has ended and the brainwashing no longer works. The world now sees the horror that Israel has inflicted, and continues to inflict, on the Palestinian people, the majority of whom live in exile after having been ethnically cleansed form their millennial homes and villages. 

Israel still has a chance of surviving if, and only if, it makes amends to the Palestinian people, compensates the victims of the violent founding of Israel, and demonstrates humane contrition by granting the Palestinian people the undiluted freedom and self-determination they deserve. That would be the ethical thing to do. 

But to continue to subject the Palestinians to crude and barbaric treatment since the founding of Israel over the ashes of historic Palestine, including threats to further ethnically cleanse what remains of Palestine by evicting the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza in order to construct a purely Jewish state - itself the definition of a theocracy a la Iran or Saudi Arabia - is an atrocious proposition and an invitation to unending torment and heartache. 

Benyamin Netanyahu's current government includes ministers whose political platform is the expulsion (a hypocritical term for massive ethnic cleansing) of the Palestinians of the West Bank, Gaza, and those Palestinians of Galilee who stayed after the violent founding of the State of Israel). No one should pretend to not have seen it coming when the racist Zionists, Yahweh's pet people (a supremacist racist notion), chase the Palestinians out of what remains of historic Palestine.

Remember the Crusaders? They claimed between 1099 and 1289 that Palestine was their "Holy Christian Land" that was stolen from them by the Muslim Arab invaders a couple of centuries earlier. So, like the European Jewish converts of the mid-20th century did, modern-day European Christians can argue that they had a kingdom there once, start sending "exodus" ships to the Israeli shores, mount an international campaign of disinformation to sedate other people into guilt, start their own terrorist organizations like the Haganah, Stern, Irgun and others, persecute and chase both the Jewish settlers and their Palestinian victims, and re-establish a modern Kingdom of Jerusalem backed by all of the power and technology that Europe can muster.

But the Crusades did end. When the balance of power turned, they could not hold on to their Kingdom and they were evicted back to Europe. The might of Israel and the backing it forcibly coerces out of a guilty West might ensure its survival for some time, but it is doomed on the long term, especially on account of the violence with which it was founded. Israel has done everything it could to lose any potential friend in the region.

Go ahead and accuse me of anti-semitism. It is such a pedestrian, easy, cheap accusation nowadays that it doesn't stick anymore. Instead of defending the indefensible, I invite guilt-laden Europeans who committed the Holocaust to think of the putrid lives the Palestinians are made to live by the "most ethical country" on earth.

Neutral Lebanon: How Likely?

Since its birth, modern Lebanon has on and off contemplated adopting neutrality as official state policy. Raymond Edde, a prominent Christian political leader and MP, repeatedly called during the 1960s and 1970s to adopt neutrality a la Switzerland, going so far as calling for UN troops to be stationed along the Lebanese borders with Syria and Israel. But neutrality was never really seriously considered in Lebanese political culture, especially by its Sunni Muslim community which wanted to remain committed to Arab causes in general and the Palestinian cause in particular, and in recent decades by its Shiite community with deepening ties to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Taking stock of the decline of Christian communities throughout the Middle East as a result of a resurgent radical Islam in recent decades, the Maronite Catholic Patriarch in Lebanon has been calling for the State of Lebanon to officially declare what he calls “positive” neutrality. The qualifier "positive" is to underscore that such a neutral Lebanon will be engaged and would not be isolationist. The objective is to shield the country and his community against Muslim centrifugal forces tearing the country between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. So far, the proposal has received tepid, if not hostile, reaction from leaders of the Muslim communities in Lebanon.

It is my opinion that Islam as a political ideology has not yet matured enough for the Patriarch’s call to have any chance at becoming reality. The Shiite community, led by pro-Iran Hezbollah and the pro-Syria Amal Movement, is too deeply anchored in its war rhetoric against Israel and also against the Sunnis at large. The Sunni community, being itself under siege from the Shiites, has made vague and lukewarm statements concerning the Patriarch’s call, because it too is deeply anchored in the notion of Lebanon’s “Arab” identity that it is unlikely to support neutrality. There is not one neutral Muslim or Arab country around the world today, and for the Muslims of Lebanon to acquiesce to neutrality seems a very remote possibility.

To answer the question of whether neutrality will be accepted by Lebanon’s Muslim communities, I have taken the liberty to publish abbreviated excerpts from a section (entitled “Neutrality in Islam”) of the paper “Neutrality and Constructivism” published in https://ebrary.net/233041/political_science/neutrality_constructivism

The conclusion of the paper is that Islam is not favorable to the idea of “permanent neutrality”, but might accept it temporarily for pragmatic reasons under certain circumstances.

Make sure to read the final two paragraphs below on "Small States" and "Permanent Neutrality Variables" because they appear as though they  were written specifically for Lebanon, cornered as it has been between the two hostile countries of Israel and Syria.

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Excerpts from the paper:

Neutrality was looked upon as an irrelevant and even immoral concept in early Christian thought, particularly after the introduction of the Just War doctrine by Saint Augustine. The paper focuses on the feasibility and desirability of the permanent neutrality of Afghanistan (a conservative Muslim state surrounded by majority Muslim states, except China) and evaluates neutrality’s place in Islamic International Law and inter-state relations in Islam.

As signatories of the UN charter, Muslim states are subject to many rules of public international law. However, the heavy influence of Shariah law and the presence of powerful Islamist constituencies in majority Muslim states makes it imperative that grand policies either be compatible with, or at least not contradict, the teachings of Islam.

Islamic law research on neutrality is limited to the writings of a handful of Muslim scholars who have written on the subject of neutrality in the Islamic polity. Moreover, other scholars such as Efraim Karsh and David Brackett have also made references to Islam’s hostile attitude toward neutrality.

Hamidullah, one of the earliest writers to discuss neutrality specifically, offers a detailed account of the practice of neutrality, its nuances, and references to it found in traditional sources from the earlier Islamic period. He traces the practice of neutrality in the conduct of the city-state of Madina in relation to its neighboring non-Muslim tribes, the existence of neutral factions during the first internal war among the Muslim leadership (the First Fitna 656-661 AD), and finally the treaties of non-aggression between Muslim rulers and non-Muslim states and territories. Hamidullah quoted examples and passages from the Qur’an and Hadith to conclude that “the notion and the fact of neutrality were not unknown to early Muslims.”

While Hamidullah admits the under-developed status of neutrality within Islam and refrains from providing a definitive statement on the subject, Majid Khadduri, a prominent scholar of Islamic law, believes that in classical Islamic theory, there is no room for such a thing as a policy of neutrality. He argues that “if neutrality is taken to mean the attitude of a state which voluntarily desires to keep out of war by not taking sides, no such status is recognized in the Muslim legal theory. For Islam must ipso jure be at war with any state that refuses to come to terms with it either by submitting to Muslim rule or by accepting temporary peace agreement”.

Other scholars, like Abu Zahra and Zuhayli, take a more pragmatic approach. In the classical view, the world is divided into Dar Al-Islam (world of Islam) and Dar Al-Harb (world of war). According to this view, and based on the interpretation of verses within Chapter 9 (at-taubah) of the Qur’an, “[a]rmed Jihad is to be earned out until all lands are liberated from unbelievers and when all unbelievers submit to the rule of Islam”. However, Abu Zahra and Zuhayli challenge the classical dual division of the world into Dar Al-Islam and Dar Al-Harb. Abu Zahra suggests that there exists a middle ground between the two “worlds” or realms, and he calls it Dar Al-Hiyad (realm of neutrality), and refers to Verse 90 of Chapter 4 in the Qur’an, arguing “that the Qur’an allows the existence of third parties who neither want to fight the Muslims, nor are their enemy”.

Likewise, Zuhayli accepts the existence of the provision of neutrality in Islamic law on the ground that the dual division of the world into the realm of Islam and the realm of war is a purely pragmatic division influenced by the political situation of the time. He further argues, “Islam recognized what resembles the contemporary forms of neutrality as a political reality, if not as a juristic system, in a way comparable to its beginnings in Europe. There is, however, no obstacle in recognizing neutrality as a legal system”.

Non-Muslim scholars Efraim Karsh and David S. Brackett refer to a part of the last sentence of Verse 74, Chapter 4 of the Qur’an, which says that “Allah will afflict them with a painful doom in the world and the Hereafter, and they have no protecting friend nor helper in the earth” to argue that Islam detests neutrality and neutrals. The verse in fact discusses the events surrounding the Expedition of Tabuk in 630 AD. The word “them” in the verse specifically refers to a group of “hypocrites” who travelled along with Prophet Mohammed to Tabuk. Hypocrites, their deeds, and characters have been explored in detail in Chapter 63, Surat Al-Munafiqun (The Hypocrites), in the Qur’an. Karsh and Brackett do not distinguish between hypocrites and neutrals and argue that those whom Prophet Mohammed used to call hypocrites were in fact neutrals.

There seems to be a consensus among contemporary scholars about the recognition and practices of neutrality in the earlier Islamic period. However, whether it is permissible for an Islamic polity to adopt neutrality as its official state policy remains in question. For example, from a broader Sharia perspective, neutrality is not acceptable in case a war arises between a Muslim and a non-Muslim state, particularly when the aggression is initiated by the non-Muslim state… or when maintaining a neutral posture jeopardizes Muslim unity.

On the other hand, there is sufficient textual and historical evidence brought forth by modem scholars in support of the permissibility of some forms of neutrality in Islam, although not the permanent type. While this historical evidence points to the practice of temporary neutrality in the earlier Islamic period, the concept of neutrality under Islamic law has not been further developed into a separate legal and political system. One can conclude that Islam takes a pragmatic approach toward neutrality, condoning neutrality on a temporary basis when it is in the interest of a Muslim polity. 

Scholars and policymakers have described permanent neutrality as a flexible instrument of statecraft, a remedy for removing the causes of war, a diplomatic technique to transform military stalemates into political stalemates, and finally, a by-product of the balance of power or a catalyst for strengthening it. According to Black, neutralization has three primary functions: (1) removing or insulating an area from active hostilities among the great powers; (2) preventing exacerbation of conflict in zones of great powers’ contention and rivalry; and (3) ending active conflict aided by external powers, particularly when neither side is capable of an outright victory.

Small States

In the context of the foreign and security policies of small states, permanent neutrality also offers a rational policy choice for small states to survive in a situation of anarchy by remaining detached from another’s war. If successfully upheld and preserved, neutrality could also function as a source of state identity and provide good offices for conflict mediation. In a nutshell, as an alternative to active conflict, permanent neutrality serves the interest of both the great powers concerned with the stability of the international system and the small states striving to preserve their sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Permanent neutrality variables

Our conjecture is that a policy of permanent neutrality is applicable when a small and, usually, weak state is located in an area of competitive interest of two or more major states. This description teases out three main characteristics of a state suitable for neutralization:

1. Geography: Neutrals or candidate states are located in an area of major power conflict and usually act as a buffer or insulator.

2. Capabilities: Neutrals or candidate states are weak and small and not major players in international politics.

3. Stalemate: The surrounding states have competitive interests inside the neutral or candidate state, but a complete domination by any one state is not likely.

Neuhold has further expanded on neutrality conditions. He argues that there are at least five prerequisites for viable permanent neutrality, including:

1. Existence of a durable balance of power between/among the rival powers surrounding the neutral or candidate state

2. Low and manageable level of hostilities between/among the rival powers

3. Limited strategic importance of the neutral state. No great power would be ready to obtain control of the neutral state at a high price

4. Challenging geography and high cost of conquering and controlling the neutral state

5. Domestic stability, cohesion, and public support for permanent neutrality

This brief literature review leads us to the conclusion that neutrality is a multi-dimensional concept … While neo-realism is better at explaining neutrality as a foreign policy of small and weak states caught in geographical buffer zones, a constructivist approach offers a superior argument for the sustainability of neutrality in the post-Cold War era. Islamic international law also recognizes neutrality largely as a pragmatic policy option, which Muslim polities could adopt under certain circumstances.

 

Of Identity and Names

In Lebanon, people's first names tell a lot about the lack of an authentic identity for the people of the country.

The ancestral language of Aramaic has all but disappeared from the streets of villages and cities, to be replaced by Arabic following the Arab-Muslim invasion of the 7th century. Some church texts and prayers remain in Aramaic (also known as Syriac in its latest mutation).

Yet, the names of cities and villages retain a strong Aramaic flavor. For example, the village of Rashmaya contains the Semitic Aramaic root "rash" which means head or top (which incidentally is related to Hindi RAJ, Latin REX, meaning king or lord), and the root "maya" for water. Or Baalshmoon from "Baal" (Lord) and Eshmoon (name of a Phoenician god), thus giving "Lord Eshmoon". See for more, among other sites: [https://medium.com/@AsAbove_SoBelow/lebanese-villages-their-meanings-roots-8863b218a6c9]. Of course, the name of Beirut comes to us straight from Aramaic-Phoenician where the name Birot, coming from "bir" (pronounced "beer") for "well" and the terminal "ot" for the plural. So Beirut means "the wells".

But the Lebanese people, especially the Christians and among those the Maronites specifically, reject their ancestral identity to the benefit of the most current dominating culture. In fact, this rejection of identity goes back to the coerced conversion from Phoenician to Christian (4th-6th century AD) when Rome brutally imposed the Christian religion during the 5th century by destroying Phoenician temples and traditions considered as pagan. That was when the Phoenicians became Lebanese Christians. 

Nowadays, while this rejection of native identity under pressure from an outside dominant culture applies particularly to urban elites, it has now spread to the Lebanese countryside and the highland villages on account of the ease of transportation and access to the Internet. For the generation that was born in the 1920s under the French mandate, names given to boys and girls were mostly French. Names of that generation were Claire, Violette, Arlette, Chantal, Edith, etc... for women, and Paul, Jacques, Claude, Rodolphe, Philippe... for men. With the current supremacy of English and pedestrian American marketing pressures that Hollywood and other American franchises exercise, you increasingly hear names like Rachel, Rebecca, Jessica, Stephanie... and Steve, Joe, Anthony, Bob, etc.

Lest it be forgotten, Aramaic is considered the mother of all Near-Eastern languages, including Hebrew and Arabic. So back in the time of King Sleiman [westernized as Solomon], son of Dawood [westernized as David] who had great relations with the Phoenician King Hiram of Tyre (as related in the biblical account of the construction of the Temple), I imagine that Hebrews and Phoenicians spoke pretty much the same language, with perhaps regional differences in accent, that later evolved into different dialects and eventually different languages. Jesus himself spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew.

In my own grandparents' generation (born circa 1880s), I often heard names like Dawood (David),  Gede3on (Gideon), Gil3aad (Gilead), Shawool (Paul) and many others. All Christian western names whose origins are in the narrative of the Gospels have roots in Aramaic. Names like Joseph, Simon, John, Matthew etc... were westernized from Yosef, Sem3aan, Yohanna, Matta, etc... So when people of the Near East use Western names, they are in fact using their own original names that were bastardized by the West (Roman Empire, Crusades, Western colonialism, etc.) and returned to them. And in their mercantile ignorance of their own culture, the culturally-submissive Lebanese reject their original ancestral names and prefer the bastardized "modern" western names.

There is a village in the Matn District of Lebanon called Himlaya, where a Saint was sanctified by the Vatican a few years ago. The female saint's name is Rafka. In their mentality of strict for-profit neanderthals, the locals do whatever they can to monetize the saint: they invite tourists (despite the village being a chaotic place with bad roads and garbage strewn everywhere, with neither the villagers nor their municipality undertaking any collective action) to come and visit the shrine of the Saint and buy cheap souvenirs and ointments more reminiscent of paganism than authentic religious faith.

 

Here is an example of the cretinized English that the village priest of Himlaya use at the Shrine. 

"Land is Sacred. Please Commit Calme & Decency" says the sign, obviously Google-translated. A better language was offered to the local priest, but he refused to change it. Lucky that Google Translate did not err even more, we could be faced with something like "Land is Scared. Please Commit Murder & Indecency".

Now Rafka is the Aramaic version of Rebecca. In Hebrew it became Rivka. In fact, I have heard southern Lebanese pronounce it Rifka. As often happens, when a Saint is sanctified by Rome, the name becomes very popular and most girls born around the time of the sanctification are named in honor of the Saint. But not among the characterless, identity-less, Maronites. They insist that the girl be named Rebecca, not Rafka, because the Western version of the name is cool and modern (i.e. it's on television and in American movies), while that of the Semitic "Rafka" is antiquated, archaic, and uncool. As I discovered from pressing them on why "Rebecca" and not "Rafka", you get a sense that they are in fact ashamed of using Rafka, which denotes an inferiority complex via-à-vis the West. Rebecca, on the other hand, conjures up images of American movie stars, entertainers, singers that have invaded every household in Lebanon and around the world. But somehow, the Lebanese are much worse than other cultures in relegating their own identity to the background. It may be a deliberate defensive mechanism of a minority desperately trying to oppose the majority Muslim domination. But in their ignorance, the Lebanese think that "Rafka" is Arabic, which is why they reject it, when in fact "Rafka" is not Arabic, it is their own Aramaic. This is really pervasive: Marie or Myryam instead of Maryam; Steve instead of Estfen; Rachel, instead of Rahil; Paul, instead of Shawool (or Saul), etc. 

In some cases, the Aramaic name may have been exchanged long time ago with the West, but has no modern western cognate, and therefore remains intact because it was not bastardized. In these cases, people use the name "as is" because they are stuck with it. The name of another local saint, Charbel, is a case in point: It has no western cognate. According to Internet sources, there was a Saint Charbel of Edessa around 107 AD (also Sarvillos, Zarvilos, Sarbelius, Thiphael, Charbil, Sharbel, Sharbil, Arabic: شربل, Aramaic: ܩܕܝܫܐ ܡܪܝ ܫܪܒܝܠ.

In his book, "The Maronites in History" (1986, Syracuse University Press), Matti Moosa (who at least is not ashamed of his name; he could have used Matthew Moses to be cool) says in his introduction:

"Maronites today suffer from a serious identity problem. They have not been able to decide whether they are descendants of an ancient people called the Marada (Mardaites) or Arabs or of Syriac-Aramaic stock. Unless the Maronites solve this identity problem, their conflicts with other minority religious groups in Lebanon will never be remedied."