What Will Lebanese Christians' Choices Be?

By Salim Nazzal

ccun.org, December 13, 2008

 
Separate visits by two major Lebanese Christian leaders to Iran in the past two months could provide a major indicator of the direction that the wider Lebanese Christian community will take in the future. 
 
The first visit was made by General Michel Aoun, the leader of the liberal trend, which adopted a strongly supportive position regarding the Hezbollah-led Lebanese resistance.
The second visitor was the president of the Lebanese republic, Michel Suleiman, who is a traditional Christian Maronite. Despite the fact that he visited Tehran as a president, by visiting Tehran's weaponry production facilities and fueling rumors of a possible military purchase, he offered an indication of a breakthrough in Lebanese Maronite culture showing more openness towards other countries in the region.  
 
As we must always look to history when we need to understand the present, let me explain two apparently contradictory factors in the history of the Lebanese Christians, in particular the Lebanese Maronite who form the majority of the country's Christians and who played a major role in the creation of modern Lebanon, particularly during the period of the patriarch Areeda in the First World War.
 
 The first fact is that Lebanese Christians (and the Christians of historical Syria) played a major role in the birth of the Arab national movement, which began in the days of Boutros Al-Bustane and Nasef Al-Yazege in the 19th century. In this period, they revived and modernized the Arabic language which was the platform on which pan-Arab thinking was based, as well as playing a crucial role in awakening Arabs to the dangers of the Zionist movement as early as the very beginning of Zionism (George Antonius, Najeeb Nasser). The second fact is the skeptical tendency of Lebanese Maronite Christians towards their Arab and Muslim surroundings
 
Though it is beyond the aim of this article to cast much light on the history of these two factors, one cannot help but point out briefly that both were the product of the Ottoman period. During this era (though varying from period to period) Christians found themselves dealt with as second-class citizens which made some of them look for protection from the Western forces which were ready to help within the framework of Julius Caesar's (divide and rule) famous principle, dividing to influence during the Ottoman period and dividing and ruling in the post-Ottoman period. The Lebanese Maronites' leading role in reviving Arabism in a secular form arose not only from their early contact with Western culture but was also a self-defense mechanism conceived to contribute towards making a state for all Lebanon's citizens.

The pan-Arab thinker Constantine Zurich, who came from a Syrian Christian orthodox background, has emphasized the importance of modernizing and democratizing the Arab world, arguing that doing so would reduce the traditional concerns regarding the creation of a state for all its citizens on an equal footing. He summarized this point in asserting that the majority must ensure that the minority feels secure, while the minority must not look outside the country for help and protection.
 
A number of issues, recent and historic, have, in my view, consolidated the Lebanese Maronites’ tendency towards openness: the first of these reasons is the defeat of the aggressive Bush-era neoconservative policy in the Middle East and the consequent defeat or weakening of the Arab faction which supported that policy.
 
Secondly, past experience has shown that those Lebanese Christians who allied themselves with Israel or America against the region made a fatal mistake. In the year 2000, the Lebanese Maronites saw that the Southern Lebanese army had been humiliated and treated badly by Israel, which was a major lesson to Christians that their security lay in being loyal to their region rather than to outsiders.
 
 Israel has never cared about the Maronites; the peaceful Maronite villagers in Kufr Burum in the Galilee were ‘ethnically cleansed’ by Zionist terror groups who then went on to destroy the village and bomb it from the air. Thirdly, the violence in Iraq against Iraqi Christians must have been another reason to opt for the pan-Arab stance, which integrates Arabs regardless of faith. It has demonstrated beyond doubt that religious fanaticism and divisions could only lead the Arab region into further civil wars and conflicts, which benefit only the graveyards and the enemies of Arabs.
 
In the light of this history, General Aoun's visit to Tehran and later to Syria was important because it represents a new Lebanese Christian approach towards the region, demonstrating that Arab Christians are a fully-integrated part of the Orient and that all Arabs would lose out if Arab Christians were marginalized. However the new Christian outlook proceeds from the Vatican directive issued during the period of the late Pope John Paul II, calling on Lebanese Christians to interact with their surroundings.
 
 Yet while this open attitude is a move towards returning the Lebanese Christians to their historical role as pioneers in Arab progress, a skeptical tendency has reappeared among other Christians in the country. At a meeting held by the Phalange party on its 72nd anniversary, Amin Al-Jumayl, the Lebanese President between 1982 and 1988, previously known as a moderate Maronite leader, called for the establishment of federation in Lebanon, an idea which might have surprised many observers less had it come, for instance, from the leader of the Lebanese forces Samir Geagea, who is known to hold a more radical right wing stance. 
 
It is obvious that while the 8th of March Christians have chosen to follow the Vatican's guidance and resume the liberal traditions of their 19th century forbearers, another faction has chosen to stick with the old-fashioned skepticism which has cost the country's Christians and the Lebanese generally so much blood and suffering previously, especially during the civil war of 1975.
 
The question of which group will have the upper hand in the future is difficult to answer. There is increasing evidence, however, that the progressive, open faction is getting stronger.  This week, General Aoun begins a historic visit to Syria, the country which he declared war against in 1988.  Aoun considers his visit to Syria important due to the historical bonds that link the two peoples; Saint Maron, the founder of the Maronite sect, was, after all, a Syrian whose followers moved to the mountains of Lebanon. During his visit, General Aoun is scheduled to meet with members of the Maronite and other Christian communities in Aleppo and Damascus, meaning in the view of some in the Lebanese media that he is behaving as if he were the leader of the Arab Orient's Christians. He has denied this, but did not conceal his concern for the Christians across the region as being an integral part of it, rather than connected to "the crusaders or the French in the region," in his own words.
 
It is certain that this argument is highly unlikely to convince those politicians who are still prisoners of the past and thus unable to search sincerely for a better political formula to resolve Syrian-Lebanese relations. Indeed, criticism of Aoun's Syrian visit came quickly from the 14th of March Christians who still hold the same old hostile position towards Syria. 
 
However, apart from the daily politics and amid the talk about a dialogue between cultures the Lebanese and the Arab Christians, as the previous Phalange Party leader Karim Bakradoni said, can play an important role in creating real dialogue between the East and the West.
 
Yet this cannot happen without the adoption of a stronger Arab and Muslin position in condemning the murders of Iraqi Christians and without providing the Arab Christians with all the support needed to help them assuming their illuminating role in the Arab Orient. A strongly supportive Arab position would certainly weaken the skeptical voices among some Lebanese Christians who still believe that their security comes from outside the region. Although the Lebanese Christians' choice is first and foremost the responsibility of their leaders, it is also crucially related to the availability of greater choice in the region; more democracy and more progress towards creating a state for all citizens would no doubt empower Lebanese Christians, who view themselves as Arabs who would defend the Arab causes, with Palestine being foremost among these.
 
 
*Dr. Salim Nazzal is a Palestinian-Norwegian historian in the Middle East, who has written extensively on social and political issues in the region. He can be contacted at: snazzal@ymail.com