You can read more about the protest in the Daily Star and here are some photographs.

On Sunday the 25th, more than 3000 people marched for secularism in Beirut. Civil society groups, feminists, student clubs, and LGBTQ- and cultural activist were brought together in protest of the current Lebanese political system. The atmosphere was festive and spirits were high. The question is can slogans ranging from “Queers for secularism” to “Civil marriage, not civil war” succeed in giving birth to a movement for political and social change?

[some paragraphs on the Lebanese political system and the main demands of the march]

The march on April 25th exceeded expectations. Organized solely at the initiative of civil society organizations and young cultural activists, it was a political rarity in Lebanon. The organizers did not have access to the usual media outlets, mostly reigned in by predetermined loyalties when it comes to political mobilization. The organization and recruitment took place primarily on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.

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It remains to be seen whether this colorful blend of activists can develop into a more concrete political program. And if it does, the question remains whether it will find wider support in a country all too often driven to violence in the name of sect and religion.

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Lebanon’s political system has grave shortcomings and can at best be described as a stunted parliamentary democracy. But in contrast to most countries in the Middle East, Lebanon does not have an official state-religion. At the same time, the majority of Lebanese are protective of their religious identities. For the ideas behind the march to find broader support, the greatest challenge is to shape a vision of secularism which embraces both Lebanon’s religious and non-religious identities.

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As participants in the protest march were shouting: “Neither Turkish, nor Western – Lebanese secularism”. Such a secularism would entail something so rich as to transform the country’s pluralism from weakness to strength. In many ways this problematic resembles the difficulties faced by several European countries trying to reconcile themselves with growing religious divides. The difference is that in Lebanon, it is the secularists who constitute a minority.

Not only are communication and “openness” crucial to civil society, public sphere, and religion, but also, paradoxically, so is publicity’s opposite: secrecy. [Reinhart] Koselleck has argued in a book that appeared three years earlier than that of [Jürgen] Habermas [The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere] that the emergence of secret societies of freemasonry were crucial in the development of Enlightenment critique of the absolutist state. In the mid 18th century masonic lodges saw an immense increase in membership and can be seen as the most important sites for the new sociability of the Enlightenment, besides the more public ones such as coffeehouses, clubs, salons, and literary societies. The important point here is that these lodges were able to erect a wall of protection for their debates and rituals against both intrusion from the state and intrusion from the “profane” world.

Religion is a privileged site for examining an aspect of secrecy that is simultaneously the opposite of the public sphere and foundational for it. Religious movements and religious sites are often suspected of secret conspiracies by the powers that be. And it is precisely the moving away from state institutions and official politics that gives possibilities for fundamental moral critique. It should also be clear that this critique can take an unpleasant and terrorist form, as it did in the Jacobin ideology fo the French revolution. This uncomfortable dialectic is what German theorists like Koselleck and Habermas were interested in after the Nazi period.

(Source: “Secrecy and Publicity in the South Asian Republic Arena,” in Public Islam and the Common Good, edited by Armando Salvatore and Dale F. Eickelman, 31-32. Leiden: Brill, 2004.)

It follows logically from this that the dialectic between the state and political religious movements is more potent the longer the distance between the two. Once they become one and the same, as for example with an Islamist regime, then Islam’s location as a site for the critique of the model of modern state government is weakened. Admittedly, this poses more questions than it answers. But if you have spent too much time dwelling on these issues, then the Van der Veer excerpt can at least offer some food for thought.

An article by Hassan al-Zayn in today’s issue of al-Akhbar managed to eloquently capture an aspect of this sad state of affairs. This is a quick translation of some parts:

This is the [Lebanese] political crew’s understanding of the state: [...] a spectacle concealing behind it several realities; the reality about administrations, their capacities, and their black holes; the reality of disaster. Have citizens been able to observe how these administrations function and have functioned? It is almost self-evident to admit that the state is incapable of playing a role beyond collecting corpses and plane parts thrown up by the sea! What have these administrations done except wait and play the role of the mother of the bride  [i.e. soaking in the attention when it is not her day]. Circling aircrafts; spreading boats at sea; calming families; playing the role of a caretaker who is true to the slogan of honoring the dead by burying them; standing in front of cameras and playing the roles of technocrats; taking care to exonerate the airport control tower and stressing the unlikeliness of sabotage… And, lest we forget: singing the praises of DNA, this charm repeated by “officials” the way conjurers repeat their gratuitous phrases.

[...]

Despite the wizardry performed by the political crew and its success in kidnapping the disaster of the Ethiopian plane, it has not been able to cover up for the poverty of its understanding of the concept of state.

[...]

The political crew has performed a trick no less fragile and cruel than the racist and sectarian talk flying like sparks in a dry haystack. The national carrier is being discussed as if it were a Superman accused of sectarian preferentialism among the sons of a unified country. Having neglected some Lebanese and deprived them of peace of mind, they find themselves forced to fly with incompetent airlines hailing from inferior countries, according to the Lebanese racist pyramid.

[...]

The Black box that the Lebanese are looking for is “the Lebanese state” whose plane has not taken off, but is rather sinking. And the political crew are but ghosts in the forms of captain, survivors, and angels.

“Why do you Lebanese never treat us good?” screamed one Ethiopian woman as security forces prevented her from entering the governmental hospital in Beirut today to identify a body. “We are human beings like you. God created us. Why don’t I have the right to come in and see my sister?” (from The Guardian)

The list of passengers who boarded flight 409 can be found here (in English). You can also get to know some of the passengers on this Facebook group.

PSP’s Women’s Union marketed the project primarily using the language of rights. But the problematic and the way Morcos proceeds to deal with it is a bit more complicated. The full study can be found here, but the main obstacle, according to the banks, was that in Lebanon the father is the compulsory legal guardian (وليّ جبري) for minor children. This is according to “secular” and religious law, both Christian and Muslim. This is a long story, but “secular” in this particular case relates to an article from Majallat al-Ahkam al-Shar`iyya, or Mecelle in Turkish — this being the Ottoman civil code of 1877 which was an attempt to codify the principles of the religious (Hanafi) court. Byzantine indeed!

The issue, hence, risked stepping on spiritual toes and questioning the patriarchal and sectarian foundations of Lebanon (God forbid). Morcos circumvented the problem by shifting the focus from the Gordian knot of guardianship and highlighting instead how allowing a woman to open such accounts not only does not threaten this existing structure, but also contradicts rights accorded to women and enshrined in Lebanese law. A very intelligent solution given the imperfect circumstances. The recommendations in Morcos’s study deal with the woman not from the point of view of her rights as a mother, but as a “stipulator/assignor in trust” in a commercial contract. Her son or daughter is “the beneficiary” and the bank “the assignor.” The achievement, nevertheless, is not to be underestimated. More so because it had to do with asserting rights already accorded to women by law and of which she has been stripped through cultural/economic practices. To meet this recommendation halfway, the banks need to engineer account types to allow it to progress legally.

Which brings me to another aspect of this accomplishment. The other study that fed into the project was led by economist Kamal Hamdan and dealt with a completely different aspect of the issue at stake: economic benefits. The study demonstrates that this bank “service” would lead to an additional 100,000 bank accounts over the next ten years with a cumulative value of $400 thousand. I think this too is key to understanding how concrete results were achieved in less than a year. The project has all the right ingredients, indicating broad political support: a civil society actor linked to a sectarian party, private banks interested in expanding their economic possibilities, public institutions interested in empowering private interests, and outside funding interested in shaping the world in its own image. Far from ideal, but it seems to get things done.

What is happening in many countries of Europe today when it comes to Islam is a curious and complex phenomenon and relegating it to bigotry does not explain anything. Tariq Ramadan has written one of the most reasonable articles I have come across that tries to make some sense of it. He is right to point out that the minaret is a symbol. The Union Démocratique du Centre, who proposed the ban in Switzerland, first considered targeting halal slaughter of animals but did not want to offend Swiss Jews. Minarets, I might add, work better here precisely because they are visible symbols. But symbols of what? This is the crux of Ramadan’s argument:

[...] while European countries and citizens are going through a real and deep identity crisis, the new visibility of Muslims is problematic – and it is scary. At the very moment Europeans find themselves asking, in a globalising, migratory world, “What are our roots?”, “Who are we?”, “What will our future look like?”, they see around them new citizens, new skin colours, new symbols to which they are unaccustomed.

The part of his article that calls for more Muslim participation as a solution is open to debate (wouldn’t more visibility cause more fear?), but still, he brings attention back to the main issue: this is about Europe as much as it is about Islam in Europe. But Ramadan’s article raises more questions than it answers. Identity crisis, fine. But why Muslims? (This issue predates 9/11, so the answer is not “terrorism”) Why not racism, which offers more visible scapegoats?

In addition, Ramadan points a finger at the “flame-fanning” populists, but what about the liberal politicians? What about, for example, the headscarf debate in France and Jack Straw’s comments on the burqa? Don’t they lend more legitimacy to anti-Islam sentiments than raving right-wingers? And how does this relate to Europe’s current wars in majority Muslim countries? And why should Islam in Europe be perceived as an extension of an external, homogeneous Islam rather than as a European phenomenon? Why is it that in Norway, for example, where things are relatively great, it is perfectly normal to find every once in a while reminders in the main stream press that Muslims are Norwegians too — and one need only make such reminders about Muslims and Jews these days? And as far as identity is concerned, why does Europe have to end where Islam begins? Why is it that despite (because of?) a suppressed shared history, Europe and Islam are assumed by many to be inherently incompatible?

These questions are not exhaustive, some are probably irrelevant, and those that are relevant do not have easy answers. But this debate is at its infancy and if Islam in Europe is to have a normal future, one should at least start by asking the correct questions and reframing the debate on premises not dictated by the right. Premises that bring economy, politics, and history — even anti-Semitic history — back into the picture. It is easy to forget that we are talking about a Muslim minority that in most European countries does not pass the 6% mark. A minority that often finds itself, for internal and external reasons, in a weaker socioeconomic position than average. Yet, precisely because the premises of the debate are being set by the far right, a growing number of citizens choose to succumb to public passions that have little to do with facts.

In the meantime, a blogger has taken it upon himself to address the problem and document suicide and other incidents in a new blog: Ethiopian Suicides. Despite the name, the blog is concerned with migrant domestic workers in general and it is the initiative of a concerned citizen. Please, check it out. (hat tip: Moussa Bashir)

Other than Baroud and Nahhas, there are actually some good choices in this makeup (by “good” I mean people who are actually into “governing” while in government). Rayya Haffar al-Hassan (Future Movement) came in as first Lebanese female minister of Finance ever and one of two women in the unity government. No fundamental change is going to come from these quarters. She has been schooled by Hariri and Sanioura and, as she herself has declared, she intends to follow similar financial policies. But to be realistic, she is competent and one can hope this will reflect on the ever ballooning public debt. Fadi Abboud (FPM, tourism) and Hassan Mnaymnah (Future Movement, education) are also promising choices. As for Amal, Hizballah, and Junblat, they have mostly exhibited characteristic lack of creativity in their choice of ministers.

There has also been a lot of focus in the media on Hariri’s snub to the Kataeb. The Gemayyel party has been dealt what is regarded in Lebanon as a third rate ministry, namely Social Affairs. There are two things to note here. The first is that far from being a shock, this comes as the culmination of the problems Kataeb has been having with March 14, not just Hariri. The second point is summarized succinctly by Khaled Saghiyah in today’s al-Akhbar: “The government to Hariri is like the weapons to Hizballah; you can support it as an ally but you cannot partake of it.”

Next on the agenda, a Hariri pilgrimage to Damascus to be followed by a Junblat chaser.

It is all written in the spirit of the flu season and, if you are historically minded (and read Arabic), it makes for a very interesting read. I found the local name given to the flu when it first struck in 1889 rather funny: the goat’s nose. anf ‘l-3anza. Inf ‘l-uenza.

Since we are on the topic of local history, there is a small museum worth seeing in `Ayn al-Mraysah. A certain Ibrahim Najem, a diver/fire-fighter of the neighborhood, damaged his legs during decompression many, many years ago. He has since taken to collecting things that most, in utter fascination with “the new,” would have thrown away. The three rooms that constitute this “museum” are a heap of objects many of which are commonplace. But the gems scattered indiscriminately among them and the pleasure of meeting the wonderful Ibrahim make this trip definitely worth it. Contact details can be found here.

This year’s Beirut International Film Festival promised to be the event of the year for film buffs. It kicked off with no less than Francis Ford Coppola coming to Lebanon to launch his latest film, Tetro. But the atmosphere soon soured when General Security prohibited the screening of two of Paolo Benvenuti’s films. The reason: they offend the church of the Middle Ages. The church here being the Catholic church, of course, because General Security based its decision upon consultation with the notorious Catholic Center for Media (المركز الكاثوليكي للاعلام), also behind the banning of Da Vinci Code.

But the story goes beyond the Catholic Center. Using the worn-out weapon of “safeguarding civil peace” — as if we needed the cinema to whip things up — General Security is now undermining the work of a promising young talent, Simon al-Habr. They have censored a crucial part of his documentary Samaan bil-Day`ah, which deals precisely with the memory of the civil war — a war we are allowed to commemorate but not to allowed to remember. The director has put the censored bit on youtube, so you can see for yourself how threatening it is (includes English subtitles).

In today’s al-Akhbar, Pierre Abi Saab rightfully points out the hypocrisy of the so-called “liberal” “intellectuals” in Lebanon who were quick to jump the gun when the censorship concerned Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, but remained silent about the undermining of local works such as al-Habr’s documentary and Mark Abi Rashid’s Help.

But I think there is another side to this. This censorship, like most censorship, is not only about the content. It is more about who is allowed to do the utterance. For what is utterly ridiculous about censoring al-Habr’s documentary in the name of “safeguarding civil peace” is that the censored recollection of the mountain war is nothing compared to the venom regularly spewed by Lebanese politicians when they evoke the civil war. And those politicians who wield violence, ironically (or not), seem to have more right to the molding of a collective memory of the war. What this kind of censorship effectively does is strip only us, the citizens, of this right.

Je suis un jeune chrétien de Damas; j’ai dix ans; j’ai sucé l’amour de la France avec le lait de ma mère [...] Un mot de votre Excellence à M. le Comte de Sercey et mon bonheur sera assuré! Que Dieu protège la France et la rende de jour en jour plus puissante! C’est le voeu d’un jeune Français de coeur. Damas, 17 juin 1904

I am a young Christian from Damascus. I am ten years old. I imbibed the love of France with my mother’s milk [...] A word from your Excellency to Mr. le Comte de Sercey [French consul general in Beirut] and my happiness will be assured! May God protect France and make her more powerful with every passing day! It is the wish of a young French at heart. Damascus, 17 June 1904

Most reporters on prostitution in Lebanon “venture” to Maameltein or to Hamra and many end up unwittingly marketing prostitution rather than shedding light on its problems. This Meow Lebanon article, for example, makes human trafficking sound almost benign. A better researched report from Executive magazine (via Qifa Nabki) deals with some of the problems of semi-legal prostitution of the super nightclubs, such as the practice of withholding women’s passports and restricting their movements. But with its artsy photographs (many from Amsterdam!) and its detailed description of the logistics, it feels at points like something out of a tourist guide. The fact that it does not venture beyond Maameltein and Hamra either contributes to the relatively “rosy” picture of the business.

The darker side is very dark. There is a certain hierarchy to prostitution in Lebanon, topped by the super nightclubs and their well-off clientele. Lebanese, Egyptian, and other Arab sex workers come next, many working the seedier places such as the older bars of Hamra. Further down the ladder lie the less known facets of prostitution. A recent article (h/t: Antoun) begins to scratch the surface by touching on forced and family aspects of the business. Far less common are discussions of under-aged prostitutes, both boys and girls. As one descends the prostitutional ladder, leaving Maameltein and Hamra behind, the value of the human body drops radically. The markets of Khaldeh and Sabra Palestinian Camp offer bodies as young as 14 for the equivalent of $6.5-$20.

A very fragile and invisible group occupies the lowest rung: female workers from Africa and Asia. Though some light is being shed on the abuse domestics in Lebanon are subject to, not enough is being said about the destitution and deception that leads some to prostitution. One can only imagine how fragile the position of a domestic worker would be if she ends up out of cash and living illegally in Lebanon. And there is no dearth of people willing to take advantage of that. I know from a friend who is active in human rights that some who come to the country as domestic workers end up offering sexual services in Ouzaii, Khaldeh, and Dawrah for as little as $6.5. Others are deceived into coming to Lebanon for the sole purpose of prostitution, as is the case with Burundi and undoubtedly many more.

The Lebanese authorities are complicit in all these various forms. Whether in the semi-legalized glamor of Maameltein or the desert of human rights of Palestinians and foreign laborers, the hand of the law is there: overlooking, encouraging, taking bribes, setting visa categories, and perpetuating the depraved conditions that make the oldest profession in the world a flourishing business in Lebanon. As far as reporters go, however, the lower down the ladder one goes, the less sexy the topic becomes. So do not expect to see photographs of the brothels of the poor adorning the pages of a glossy magazine.

The honorary place Israel will be receiving at the Toronto International Film Festival is the culmination of this campaign. The festival’s new City to City program will be kicked off by a focus on Tel Aviv. As a sure sign that the pre-Gaza’09 world is not the post-Gaza’09 world, however, this has elicited a reaction that goes beyond the usual fringe group:

The emphasis on ‘diversity’ in City to City is empty given the absence of Palestinian filmmakers in the program. Furthermore, what this description does not say is that Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages, and that the city of Jaffa, Palestine’s main cultural hub until 1948, was annexed to Tel Aviv after the mass exiling of the Palestinian population. This program ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps in the Occupied Territories or who have been dispersed to other countries, including Canada. Looking at modern, sophisticated Tel Aviv without also considering the city’s past and the realities of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, would be like rhapsodizing about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto.

You can read the open letter and list of signatories here. The great surprise was seeing Jane Fonda among the signatories. The same Jane Fonda who entertained Israeli troops in east Beirut during the siege of 1982 and expressed her identification with Israel’s struggle — which got her on the Lebanese Internal Security’s list of banned movies (pdf list courtesy of Sean).

Rather than testify to some evasive form of Lebanese coexistence, however, these intersectarian marriages point to a double standard in the lives of some elite. Though her choice of spouse would lead one to expect a political career free of sectarian jingoism, when Nayla Twayni was campaigning in Ashrafiyah last spring, she more than once responded to attempts at undermining her “Orthodoxness” with counterattacks stressing al-`asab al-urthuduksi. The expression translates to “Orthodox vein,” which signifies a sense of belonging to a group. But the Arabic word `asab has a heavier thud to it, sharing its root with words such Ibn Khaldun’s `asabiyah, `asabi (nervous or quick to anger), and ta`assub (fanaticism). It remains to be seen, though, whether the same `asab will be struck with the electorate when the politician in question is a female entering into wedlock with a man with whom she will be spawning Shiite children.

If the recent election and marriage of Nayla bring some flagrant contradictions into relief, they are by no means unique to her. One is left wondering: is this a simple case of the elite cynically and hypocritically catering to and exploiting mass sentiments? Perhaps. But the use of this double standard of identification does not separate the elite form the masses as much as it separates the elite from themselves. The sort of individualism that we normally associate with European liberalism — the freedom to make one’s personal choices — finds an echo only in the personal aspect of the lives of the elite. In their public lives, however, their perpetuity remains bound to a system that reproduces them as an elite. This entails not only reproducing them as a category of the population — and hence the vigorous patriarchy — but also reproducing the communities that make them relevant as political leaders. The political significance of, say, the Pharaon family would be put to the test if there were no electoral body to be summoned as an “Orthodox” body to vote for members of the family as representatives — lack of political acumen notwithstanding.

As such, this public aspect of the political elite cannot be reduced to a cynical mask, for it is an integral aspect of their existence and probably even self-image as leaders. This dichotomy — between the personal and the political — is an ironic reversal of Hannah Arendt’s ideal types of the public and private spheres. With a suspicion of the private — the sphere of necessity, constraint, sameness, and passions — Arendt saw in the public realm as exemplified by the Greek polis the place for the exercise of decision, freedom, difference, and reason. In the case of the Lebanese elite, private lives are open to the virtues of the public sphere, as Arendt sees them, while their public lives are entangled in a most murderous web of political passions.