From Beirut to the Beltway

Aoun: Nasrallah enlightened us

Michel Aoun gets his enlightenment from a fundamentalist militia leader.

Change and Reform bloc leader MP Michel Aoun rejected statements criticizing Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s recent speeches on the anti-Islam movie and said the Hezbollah chief enlightened public opinion about the intentions of those who made the movie.

However, Aoun was not enlightened enough to locate a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard in Lebanon:

"Sometimes they spread [news] to distract people, like this story of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. If there are such guards [in Lebanon], let them show us. Has any Lebanese seen a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the [country]?”

Mind you, it was the the Guards commander Mohamad Ali Jafari himself spreading this distraction.

Nasrallah and defending the prophet

Finding himself increasingly irrelevant, Nasrallah wants to re-introduce himself as an Islamic leader by calling for protests against an anti-Islam film. The man who serves as Iran's military and ideological proxy in Lebanon, and who has been supporting the massacre of thousands of innocent Muslim civilians in Syria, has found a familiar calling: defending Islam against the self expression of an idiot.

The events of the past week were not surprising. Every time an unimaginative idiot in some country "insults Islam", we see hordes of angry and insecure young men deciding to fill their seemingly meaningless existence with violent protests. While their actions are arguably not representative, the vengeful sentiment is alarmingly prevalent and speaks of extreme backwardness and narrow mindedness that is probably the reason the so called "Arab Spring" in some countries hasn't given birth to hope and will never do.

When people seeking political gain and with venom in their hearts and minds decide to play with the fire of ignorance, instead of urging enlightenment, the orcs of hell are unleashed.  What's ironic about all this is that those protestors inadvertently proved the author of the video right by choosing violence. Had they digested that Islam preached peace (and there are examples), their reactions would have been different. People in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere instead acted upon the familiar method of former despots and fanatics, who believe in violence and oppression.

The violence of last week proves that the region has a long way to go before any truly "democratic" and peaceful mentality takes root, or whatever formula works for the region that could bring about the long-desired peace and prosperity. The "Arab Spring" now looks more like an overdue knee jerk reaction. What is the point of asking for change without a fundamental understanding of basic human values? How can you expect the "West" to support your cause when you kill the very western men who championed your cause for freedom from a despot?

These are confusing times for many in the Middle East. With the people jumping on the bandwagon of protests with no one illuminating their way forward, the Islamists have been winning the day by default. They have a vision, and others don't, mostly because average kids in many of those countries have not been brought up to believe in the power of the individual and in critical thinking. Instead, they are told to worship religious icons unconditionally. And if they do grow up believing in some liberating values, they look to apply them outside the confines of their geographic and societal borders. Meanwhile, at home, any success they achieve is never recognized or worshipped for values it applied, but for pride it allegedly brought an abandoned home.  When you have societies trained to view anything practiced in western societies with suspicion and through the prism of illogical conspiracy theories, it's a lot easier for the types of Nasrallah and his Sunni counterparts to recruit followers and advance their agendas, which were doubtfully inspired by the love or the defense of a prophet.

Future Movement praising Berri; will they ever learn?

I wanted to write about this ever since I heard former Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora praising Nabih Berri's latest speech. Today, when Bahia Hariri did the same, it became obvious that the Hariri camp will never learn.

Many in the Future Movement are praising the parliament speaker as a "patriotic" leader, slobbering over his words, which supposedly contained "reassuring" messages.  

Berri on Friday spoke against sectarian strife, called for "unity", and lavished the Saudi King with praise over his call to establish a center for dialog among sects.

Berri was careful not to come across as too conciliatory in his speech, delivered in commemoration of the disappearance of Imam Moussa Sadr some 34 years ago in Libya. His speech contained the usual nonsense about international conspiracies to divide Syria (another "Sykes-Picot") and destroy that country's "regional role" in safeguarding "resistance" movements.

However, because Berri "did not describe the Syrian revolution as terrorism, and did not say that Bashar Assad is here to stay", Sinioria saw in this a "very bold" position.

The Hariri camp would probably prefer to deal with Berri and Amal over Hizbullah any day, but I was hoping (against hope) that their political advisors had finally learned that positive reinforcement in Lebanese politics is equivalent to being pushovers.

Just look at who got pushed out of the country, and into Twitter. It wasn't Berri or other lackeys feeding the Shia public lessons from a vanished Imam. It was the head of the Hariri establishment himself.

One person said it like it is: former MP and former Amal member, Mohammad Abdel Hamid Baydoun. In an interview with a radio station, he warned March 14 and the Future Movement against getting deceived again by Berri, calling him a "deceptive politician and one of the symbols of the Syrian tutelage over Lebanon and the period during which Hariri was assassinated".

Baydoun reminded March 14 of Berri's accomplishments: shutting down parliament, the May 7 2008 events, and turning against Saad Hariri. He accused Berri's Amal and Hizbullah of tarnishing the image of the Shia community in the Arab world after they tied the fate of Lebanese Shias to that of the Syrian regime, and after they wrecked relations with Sunnis and the Syrian opposition.