Samir Frangieh calls for Christian renewal against the threat of Lebanon’s demise
The former Christian MP appeals to the country, which has been without a president for 20 months, and torn by a serious political crisis. As in the past, the Christian community must promote unity, sharing and coexistence. A safety net must be created to protect the country. Courtesy of the Lebanese daily L'Orient-Le Jour.
Beirut (AsiaNews/OLJ) – Lebanon is living under the threat of renewed civil war, one that would pit Shia Muslims against Sunni Muslims not only in Lebanon but also across the Arab world. This war, if it does happen, would spell the end of Lebanon.
As Christians, we have a responsibility to do everything possible to prevent another descent into hell and to build a future of peace.
Why are we called to fight this battle whose outcome is decisive for the future of Lebanon? Because the coming war concerns us as much as it does Muslims. "We are part,” as the Catholic Patriarchs of the East highlighted, “of the cultural identity of Muslims, as much as they are part of the cultural identity of Christians." Based on this, we are therefore "responsible for each other before God and history."
Can we fight this battle? Yes, we can. We can do this because historically we have played a pioneering role in promoting coexistence, by actively participating, in the 19th century, to the Arab Renaissance, the al-Nahda, and by rejecting in 1920 the idea of a "Christian homeland", and finally in 1943 by refusing to maintain the French mandate over Lebanon.
We can do this because we were the first, after the break caused by the 1975 war, to work to restore Islamic-Christian coexistence, by initiating, with the Apostolic Exhortation (1997), the work of "purification of the memory."
We can do this because we were the first in the Arab world, with the appeal by Maronite Bishops (September 2000), to lead the battle against dictatorships, setting the stage for the Cedar Revolution (2005), the harbinger of the Arab spring (2011).
We can do this because we were the first in the Arab world to advocate, with the Maronite Patriarchal Synod (2006), the establishment of a civil state to rebuild coexistence around the state and not a community.
This historical role is now being questioned by political forces for whom politics is reduced to a mere power struggle. The switch by some Christians who, after leading the battle for independence, joined the Syrian-Iranian camp they had fought; the support, in the name of minority protection, to the Syrian dictatorship; the choice by a majority of Christian parties for a so-called orthodox electoral law that brings the country back to the situation that existed before the creation of Greater Lebanon; and the conflicts over the election of a new President illustrate the extent to which we have gone backward compared to 2005.
Mashreq of coexistence
To halt this decline and end the danger it poses to our future in Lebanon and the region, we must return to the message that founded our specificity in this part of the world.
We have been fighting for nearly a century to defend the idea that we can live together, Christians and Muslims, equal in our rights and duties and different in our religious affiliations.
We managed to create a Lebanese model of coexistence, which today is taking on, with the violence that is ravaging our region and beginning to spread to Europe, a new dimension, because of the exceptional nature of this experience in which, unique in the world, Christians and Muslims are involved in running the same State and in which, unique in the Muslim world, Sunni and Shia are also partners in running the same State.
In light of the above, we call on Lebanon’s Christians to assume their responsibilities and return to the essence of the Gospel message, which is to teach human beings to live together in peace, and reject any use of religion to create closed identities, which quickly turn, as evinced by the experience of war, into "murderous identities".
We urge them to go beyond established confessional boundaries in order to unify efforts between moderates in all communities against extremists in all communities, and create a safety net that will protect Lebanon from the repercussions of the region’s ongoing conflicts.
We urge them to forge ties with other Arab Christians to think through, with Muslims who are fighting extremism and intolerance, on how to lay the foundation for a Mashreq of coexistence among the peoples that constitute it and whose religious and ethnic diversity should be a source of richness for each and all.
We urge them to connect with the moderate forces in Europe struggling against Islamophobia and all forms of rejection of others in order to promote a new vision of the Mediterranean, a Mediterranean of coexistence among peoples who inhabit their shores. For the latter remains today "the sea of all fractures," surrounded by major conflicts that lead to religious segregations and national and ethnic cleansings from which no one is sheltered anymore."
* Samir Frangieh is a Lebanese politician, a former Maronite MP from Zghorta, in northern Lebanon.
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16/10/2020 17:33
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