🇱🇧 | Curious about history, geopol, econ, tech, culture, religion, and the Levant. “Where liberty dwells, there is my country.” 🗽🏛️
Mare Nostrum
Joined December 2017
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Many of you have heard about Lebanon’s golden era of the 1950s and 1960s, before the country descended into civil war.
You have also probably heard critiques of that period, namely that it was mostly a mirage in which a narrow clique of mostly Christian urban elites prospered while the rest of the country wallowed in poverty.
But what if that was not entirely true? What if this Lebanese prosperity was more widely shared than often assumed, and was, in fact, not solely a Christian story?
Here is a Druze perspective on pre-war Lebanon and a commemoration of some of the great - and, like much about pre-war Lebanon, often forgotten - Lebanese Druze individuals who made outsized contributions to Lebanon’s Belle Époque. (🧵)
T. 📚☕️ retweeted
لم تكشف جريمة الكرك في الأردن خطر التطرّف الديني فقط، بل أعادت طرح سؤال أعمق عن موقع المسيحيين والأقليات في مجتمعات المنطقة.
ديانا مقلد تناقش…
The Karak attack in Jordan exposed not only the dangers of religious extremism but also raised a deeper question about the place of Christians and other minorities in societies across the region.
Diana Moukalled discusses…
@dianamoukalled
T. 📚☕️ retweeted
Quand j'ai déménagé au Japon il y a une vingtaine d'années, la première chose qui m'a marqué, c'est que tout était japonais.
Les téléphones portables étaient Sony, Sharp ou Panasonic.
Les téléviseurs étaient Toshiba.
Les voitures étaient Honda et Toyota.
Les trains étaient Hitachi et Kawasaki.
Les escaliers mécaniques, les climatisations et les ascenseurs étaient Mitsubishi.
Toute l'infrastructure matérielle du pays semblait construite sur place.
Un ami marocain m'a dit qu'il avait eu la même sensation en venant en France pour la première fois il y a fort longtemps.
Des voitures françaises, des trains français, des ascenseurs français. Les téléviseurs étaient Thomson, les ordinateurs de l'administration étaient Bull. Il y avait même des téléphones portables Alcatel et Sagem. (J'en avais un, c'était pas ouf, et pas le sommet de la classe comparé au Nokia 3310, mais ça existait. Sagem vendait plus de mobiles en France que Nokia en 2004.)
En venant du Maroc, tout cela semblait très impressionnant et nouveau.
Nvidia produisait ses puces en France La toute première, en 1995, puis la RIVA 128 de 1997 qui a sauvé la boîte de la faillite : les deux sont sorties des usines de SGS-Thomson, l'ancêtre de STMicroelectronics. Nvidia était alors une start-up d'une centaine de personnes qui cherchait quelqu'un pour graver ses puces, et c'est chez nous qu'elle l'a trouvé. L'année suivante elle a pris TSMC en second fournisseur, puis l'a gardé seul. Nvidia vaut aujourd'hui deux fois l'ensemble du CAC 40.
20 ans plus tard notre environnement matériel et donc industriel est de moins en moins français. Thomson a cédé ses téléviseurs au chinois TCL en 2004, Alcatel ses mobiles la même année, Sagem a disparu des rayons en 2008. Nous avons aussi lâché la course aux puces : l'alliance Crolles 2, qui devait faire de l'Isère la pointe européenne de la gravure, est morte fin 2007 quand Philips et Motorola s'en sont retirés, et ST-Ericsson, dernière tentative européenne de fabriquer des processeurs de smartphone, a fermé en 2013 avec près de trois milliards d'euros de pertes. Les puces qui entraînent aujourd'hui les modèles d'IA sortent presque toutes de Taïwan.
Même histoire en robotique. Nao, le petit humanoïde conçu à Paris par Aldebaran, est devenu le robot officiel de la RoboCup, la coupe du monde des robots. Aldebaran a été vendu au japonais SoftBank en 2012, revendu à un groupe allemand en 2022, placé en redressement judiciaire en 2025. Les robots industriels de Renault, eux, étaient déjà passés sous pavillon italien à la fin des années 1990.
Cela ne fait pas mal par patriotisme blessé, pas même par ses conséquences sur la prospérité et l'emploi, peut-être même pas comme rappel constant des choix désastreux faits en conscience par une élite politico-industrielle sans vision.
Cela fait mal car alors que nous entrons dans un nouveau monde de tensions géopolitiques, notre capacité à maîtriser notre propre infrastructure industrielle est la seule garante de notre liberté.
Ce n'est plus théorique. Les Chinois menacent de couper les accès aux terres rares si nous ne laissons pas leurs produits finir d'achever notre industrie. Les Américains coupent les accès aux modèles IA les plus avancés quand ils craignent qu'ils puissent être trop puissants pour en laisser l'usage à leurs vassaux.
Nous sommes entrés dans le XXIe siècle et ses tensions en bazardant progressivement tout ce qui garantissait notre liberté et notre prospérité, sur l'autel de croyances absurdes. L'idée que la production intellectuelle était supérieure à la production matérielle. L'idée que la mondialisation garantie par l'US Navy serait là pour toujours.
Ces croyances absurdes n'ont pas encore disparu. L'idée simple et évidente que la France ne restera un pays riche et libre ce siècle que si elle triple son parc nucléaire et transforme son énergie abondante et bon marché en centres de calcul et en industries robotiques paraît encore, pour une grande partie de l'élite, incongrue ou blasphématoire.
Le parallèle a souvent été fait, mais il faut le répéter inlassablement : nous sommes la Chine des Qing qui refuse la machine à vapeur, nous sommes l'Empire ottoman des oulémas qui interdit l'imprimerie.
Nous sommes une vieille civilisation qui refuse d'acter sa décadence et les actions indispensables pour retrouver son rang.
Il est tard, mais pas trop tard.
T. 📚☕️ retweeted
Syria is not Afghanistan, but there is a subtle and gradual process taking place. I’m resharing this analysis by @Daraj_media because it’s excellent.
Emirati leaders never mince words.
I think the odds are stacked against them, for the reasons outlined in my earlier thread on Jordanian Christians, but I wish them victory in the “culture war” and success in their project of political, cultural, and religious renaissance.
Their vision represents the best hope for religious minorities to remain in their ancestral homelands in the Arab world and, arguably, for Islam to thrive as a civilization in the 21st century.
(The latter point is more contentious, but at the very least, the UAE can point to the distinction of being the first Muslim-majority country in the modern world to become a fully fledged First World state.)
T. 📚☕️ retweeted
أن نحارب الإرهاب دون محاربة التطرف كمن يسقي البحر ماءاً عذباً في انتظار تحول البحر إلى نهرٍ عذب
Jordan has proven to be the best place in the modern Arab world for native non-Muslim minorities living in their ancestral homelands under Muslim rule.* That is very much to the credit of the country, its leadership, and the way they govern.
Let’s be honest, though: this is not the product of any uniquely tolerant features of Jordanian society that set the country apart from the rest of the region. The considerable degree of acceptance and coexistence there is a consequence of the nature of Hashemite rule, and it is conditional on its persistence.
Otherwise, a significant share of Jordan’s population has Islamist leanings, and the Muslim Brotherhood has traditionally been one of the country’s largest organized opposition movements. If Hashemite rule were ever to end, or the monarchy were reduced to a largely ceremonial role, it is the Islamists waiting in the wings, people like Dr. Eyad, who would be best positioned to take power.
They would not necessarily persecute Christians, to be sure, and nothing in his statement suggests that they would. Yet, they would call them by the classical Islamic term Nasara, which many Christians find demeaning (much as Black Americans would not appreciate being called the N-word). And they would treat them not as equal citizens, but as belonging to a subordinate category of protected subjects. Dr. Eyad calls them musta’minin (مستأمنين), though the term more familiar to Western audiences is dhimmis.
Jordanian Christians do not say this openly, but this is precisely why they do not put all their eggs in the Jordanian basket. Many send their children abroad for education and work, while those with the means often seek and secure foreign citizenship. (@DalrympleWill wrote about a similar practice among Syrian Christians in the 1990s in From the Holy Mountain.)
(*Lebanon is, in fact, the best place in the Arab world for native non-Muslims, but it has a unique history and political model. It was established with a Christian majority and a political order that granted each community internal autonomy and a share in the sovereignty of the state. No single community, therefore, lives under the mercy or rule of another.)
الاعتداء الآثم على النصارى في الكنيسة في الكرك عملٌ غير مسبوق في هذا البلد، ونسأل الله أن يكون الأخير من نوعه.
المسلم لا يؤذي مستأمِناً يعيش معه مستأمنا إياه على نفسه وماله وعرضه،
و (المسلم من سلم الناس من لسانه ويده) كما قال نبينا ﷺ.
من كان غيوراً على الدين بحق فلْيَدْعُ جيرانه ومعارفه وأبناء بلده ممن هم على غير ملة الإسلام إلى دين الله تعالى، وليحبب إليهم دين الله بحسن خلقه وعدله، وليتَّقِ الله فيهم ولا يتجاوز أمره سبحانه.
(لا ينهاكم الله عن الذين لم يقاتلوكم في الدين ولم يخرجوكم من دياركم أن تبروهم وتقسطوا إليهم إن الله يحب المقسطين)
أما هذا العدوان بغير حق فإفساد للدين والدنيا.
ولا حول ولا قوة إلا بالله.
For well-meaning Muslims who ask what they can do to make minorities feel more secure, the honest answer is that there is probably little more they can do than what the Jordanian leadership is already doing. That is going above and beyond what prevails elsewhere in the region, and I think I can speak for many minorities when I say that we feel a particular affection for the Hashemites precisely for that reason.
Meanwhile, Dr. Eyad represents the aspiration to return to a classical, pre-modern understanding of Islam, one that dominated the Muslim world from the era of the early caliphs until the 19th century, when the late Ottoman state began modernizing and adopting Western norms of citizenship.
After a century-long flirtation with Western constructs, that older conception has experienced a major revival since the 1970s, albeit in a modernized ideological form. Increasingly, it appears that the future belongs to it. It is thus difficult to regard the 20th century as anything more than an unusual historical interlude, a kind of Muslim analogue to China’s “century of humiliation.”
The tragedy, however, is that this very flirtation with Western constructs opened a kind of Pandora’s box for minorities: it liberated them, but also set them on a path toward eventual disappearance from the region as Islam resurges.
A Jordanian Christian, or a Lebanese Druze like me, is not going to accept life as a dhimmi after having experienced the promise of equal citizenship and gained exposure to the wider world. Even though our ancestors lived under that classical Islamic paradigm for more than a thousand years, we simply cannot accept reverting to it.
For us, the experience of the 20th century was like taking a bite of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. We now know too much about the world beyond our own societies. We may not say it aloud, but we want to live in the world shaped by Allenby and Gouraud, and by Muslim reformers like Mustafa Reşid Pasha and Muhammad Ali Pasha, not the one shaped by figures like Umar and Muawiya, or, indeed, Sayyid Qutb and Hassan al-Banna.
This is why, beyond the romanticism of the moment, with so many waxing lyrical about Jordanian coexistence, I suspect that non-sovereign religious minorities across the Arab and Muslim worlds have no lasting future in their ancestral homelands, particularly as the world shaped by Allenby and Gouraud fades away.
That is the uncomfortable truth.
The debate below is illustrative.
On the one hand, you have a liberal, secular Muslim like Nadim, who seeks to relegate classical Islamic constructs to the history books and argues that Muslims should embrace modern concepts of statehood and equal citizenship.
In the comments and quote posts, by contrast, you find dozens of criticisms directed at Nadim for seeking to “fossilize” Islam, whose teachings and constructs are meant for all time.
Needless to say, the Islamists are closer to a more traditional understanding of Islam, at least in their stated ambitions. Although often repressed today, they represent orders of magnitude more Muslims than people like Nadim and are therefore likely to prevail in the long run.
The only solution for those on Nadim’s side is a sweeping internal religious reform that reinterprets Islam’s relationship to political authority to make it more compatible with the modern secular state. Such a project, however, will face considerable resistance because it will be regarded as a departure from established religious understandings.
A likely counterargument from Islamists is this: if the Prophet Muhammad himself established a political community governed by Islamic principles, on what grounds should Muslims reject that legacy as a model for the present? I suspect Nadim and his camp will struggle to offer a convincing answer to this challenge.
T. 📚☕️ retweeted
Anyone who calls himself an ally of the United States should be insulted by this. Allies are told that American power stands behind pluralism, protection of minorities and accountability for atrocity. Barrack’s version offers none of those: minorities are managed, massacres are explained away, and terrorist groups are given “paths.” If that is American policy, it should be debated openly. If it isn’t, the president should find an envoy who understands the difference between mediating and carrying water.
The Druze of Sweida, the Kurds of the northeast and the Lebanese deserve better than a salesman. So does America’s reputation.
My latest
nowlebanon.com/the-envoy-who…
An ordinary Jordanian guy from Karak writes an ordinary post mourning the victims of a recent terrorist attack targeting a church in his region, alongside other victims of terrorism from Karak, including the late Jordanian fighter pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh.
Al-Kasasbeh was one of the heroes who lost their lives fighting ISIS on the frontlines. Unfortunately, he was captured by the group after his plane crashed in Syria and was infamously burned alive in a haunting, televised execution video in 2015. It was one of the most notorious atrocities perpetrated by the organization.
Guess who decided to show up underneath this otherwise ordinary post to take issue with the pilot being mourned, hurling all sorts of names and epithets at him?
I’m glad they now feel comfortable and secure enough to come out of the woodwork and openly air their views.
It serves as a healthy jolt to neighbouring peoples - Jordanians, Iraqis, and Lebanese alike - about what the Syrian war ultimately came to be about, who won it in the end, and the danger this poses to our countries and societies in the medium and long term.
We need such periodic reminders so that we do not let the lingering vestiges of years of propaganda from the Islamist media complex (Al Jazeera and co.) lull us back to sleep like sheep while the wolves roam freely around us and among us.
Anyway, I’m digressing. May the victims rest in peace, and solidarity with the Jordanian people and the Hashemite monarchy. 🇯🇴🕊️
T. 📚☕️ retweeted
The US Embassy in Beirut has published a security alert for the Lebanese Capital, specifically the Dahieh area.
The warning cites a volatile security situation, due to the risk of armed activity, airstrikes and rocket fire in the following days.
T. 📚☕️ retweeted
أهل السويداء ليسوا متّهمين بالجملة، وكرامتهم وأمنهم ليسا ورقة يلعب بها البعض لحسابات سياسية درزية أو محلية.
كلام توم باراك عن السويداء والكبتاغون والآخرين والتحضير لهجوم عسكري، مرفوض وخطير. ويبيح دماء من تم ذبحهم بمجزرة لا تغتفر. أمّا إطلاق الاتهامات بحق منطقة وأهلها، فيغذّي التحريض ويُخشى أن يُستخدم لتبرير اعتداءات جديدة ودماء أهلنا لم تجف. المطلوب حماية المدنيين ومحاسبة مرتكبي الجرائم بحقهم، لا وصمهم والتشكيك فيهم.
ولجريدة «الأنباء»: نشر هذا المقطع بلا مساءلة واضحة لمضمونه يستحق الإدانة. الخلاف مع أي مرجعية في السويداء، أو الموقف المؤيد للسلطة السورية، لا يبرّران ترويج خطاب يفتح باب تعميم تهم العمالة وتجارة المخدرات على أهلنا ومشايخنا.
نطالب الفريق السياسي المعني برفض هذا الخطاب صراحةً، وننصح «الأنباء» بحذف المقطع المنشور بهذه الصيغة. لا تسمحوا بأن تصبح منابركم منصّة للتحريض على السويداء وأهلها ومشايخها.
ونعود ونؤكد اننا نرفض التدخل الإسرائيلي ومشاريع تقسيم الدول، ونرفض بالوضوح نفسه تخوين أهل السويداء أو استباحة أمنهم وكرامتهم. حقوقهم لا تتوقف على خياراتهم السياسية، والعدالة لا تكون انتقائية.
@
T. 📚☕️ retweeted
🇵🇸🇱🇧🇦🇹✝️ The Lebanese singer Fairouz فيروز on the Rooftop of the Austrian Hospice in Jerusalem
1. Fairuz and her troupe performed several concerts in Palestine during the 1960s, featuring 78 dancers, actors, and singers under the direction of Sabri Sharif.
2. Fairuz returned to Palestine in 1964 to sing at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem during Pope Paul VI’s visit.
3. The Austrian Hospice in Jerusalem’s Old City was built in 1863 as a guesthouse for Austrian pilgrims. During World War II, it was converted into an internment camp.
4. After 1948, the guesthouse was transformed into a hospital administered by the Jordanian government. It remained the only hospital in the Old City until 198year incomplete in the original text.
If Wahhab is doing endorsements, so am I.
I hereby call on all Israelis of conscience to vote for Yitzhak Goldknopf and United Torah Judaism next week.
The Haredi man will never bend the knee and become a slave to the godless secular state.
Todah.
Funnily enough, I’ve made this argument before with non-Druze friends - that, contrary to popular belief about their insular nature, I think Lebanese Druze probably have the highest interreligious marriage rates - and virtually all were unconvinced.
I didn’t have any hard data to back it up, but I based it on anecdotal experience and communal size:
1. I know a good number of people from my parents’ generation and my own who married out, and the intermarriage rate seemed much higher than what I had observed or heard anecdotally from my non-Druze Lebanese friends.
2. This anecdotal experience struck me as arithmetically plausible, considering the Druze make up only 5% of the population. This means that any Druze who moves out of Druze areas, whether to Beirut (where Druze make up ~1% of the population) or to the diaspora (where their share is statistically negligible), will find themselves surrounded by non-Druze. For those abroad, even if their social circle consists entirely of Lebanese people, 95% of them will statistically belong to other communities.
(Sunnis, Shias, and Christians do not experience the same dynamic in Beirut or abroad, provided their social circles remain predominantly Lebanese.)
The obvious paradox is that this does not intuitively appear to be the case to most Lebanese because, when they travel through Druze villages in Mount Lebanon, they encounter a rather insular people leading a much more traditional rural life, with many men, for instance, still wearing Ottoman-style sherwals.
This turns out to be a great example of survivorship bias: the typical Lebanese mental model of the Druze is built around the part of the community that has remained in the villages and held on to its traditions.
And yet, it overlooks the other large part of the community that has left the villages and tends to assimilate much faster due to its small numbers everywhere else, precisely because its members are statistically invisible in the places where they live.
The best analogue to this paradox that I’m familiar with would be American Jews. They have a reputation for clannishness among many Americans, and if you were to walk through parts of New York or other large cities and see small clusters of Orthodox and Haredi Jews who mostly keep to themselves, that would naturally reinforce this view.
However, this perception belies the fact that Orthodox Jews represent a minority within the larger American Jewish population, which, in turn, is far more dispersed across the country and has fairly high intermarriage rates, with more than 40% of married American Jews having non-Jewish spouses, according to a 2020 Pew survey.