Baptised Nagging

 

lebjournal.com – In the past three years, opportunist Christian politicians have used and abused fear mongering techniques against their constituents to gather the most public support they can in a race for such a scarce resource. These politicians fought their lives out on TV screens asking for a better Christian representation, Christian prerogatives and Christian rights.

There’s nothing outright illegitimate with propaganda techniques, especially in societies that commend free-speech [un]like Lebanon. Such societies always leave space for different point of views, giving the public the burden of choice. They often end up polishing opinions, but that’s beyond the scope of what we’re discussing here.

The major problem with all of this verbal diarrhea that we have witnessed in the past three years – and that is likely to continue for the next while – is that the Christian constituency started believing the turd that it is being fed by these opportunists. Christians now believe they are victims of segregation and “dhimmitude.”
Not only these claims are unsubstantiated with actual evidence, most Christians do not feel the need to question this particular type of turd they are being fed because obviously, it suits their narrow-minded interests. These demagogues will go out of their way to prove that the Christian paranoia rhetoric is well-founded, and start linking regional conspiracies of inter-communal fights to sustain their claims. From the Shiite-Sunni divide to the Iranian-American schism, everything becomes interlaced to explain the intra-communal fight that is currently happening.

Therefore, in our thesis today, the intent is not to laugh off the claims that Christians are marginalized, but to assert it. Since asserting it alone is not provocative enough, we will take it a notch further to justify it.

Tribally, Christians had been ruling the country since the end of the French mandate in 1943, and the job they have done leaves a lot to be desired. Religious quotas in Lebanese parliament were distributed along a ratio of 6 Christians to 5 Muslims, and that, obviously, had no demographical backup; or to be more accurate, hasn’t been revised for any demographical change since the 40s. From a bird’s view on the 58-90 era, it took a bloody civil war to convince Christians that a redistribution of power is necessary. One can easily deduce that the first reason that Christian “rights,” no matter how vague that sounds, should not be given back is out of punishment for past behavior.

The second reason plays along the same intra-communal theories these demagogues like to subscribe to. On the eve of the war, all Christian leaders were defeated; not necessarily by Muslim leaders, but the end result translated into the main Christian parties being out of the political game. Syria’s allies who were strong enough amongst their constituents, were all Muslims, and they ended up governing the country for the 15 years that followed. Therefore, the second reason that Christian rights are not to be given back is that Christians lost the war.

The third and most important reason is the same “fairness” these Christians preach. The current demographics of Lebanon show a population divided amongst three major communities: the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Christians. However, the religious quota distribution in parliament is still divided evenly between Muslims (Shiites and Sunnis) and Christians, which is clearly unfair, at least according to the demographics of the country. If anything, it is the role of Lebanese Muslims to ask for their rights given what Christians are getting. This is the third reason as to why Christian nagging has absolutely no foundation.

Christian nagging can only be cured by a reality pill that brings back those Christians from the land of polished turd that their opportunist leaders have taken them to.

-SN

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