Hezbollah dubbed “enemy of Arabs and Muslims”

More than two-thirds of participants in a four-day online survey that ended yesterday believe Hezbollah, Iran’s cat’s-paw in Lebanon, is the new adversary of Arabs and Muslims.

The one-question survey by Aljazeera.net asked: “Do you think Hezbollah has turned out to be an enemy of Arabs and Muslims?”

A total of 453,943 respondents (or 72.8%) said yes, compared to 169,605 (or 27.2%) who said no.

Almost half of the respondents (49.18%) were from Saudi Arabia. The others were from Lebanon, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Turkey, Jordan, the UAE, Palestine, Morocco, the UK, Germany, France, the U.S., Canada and Australia.

One-question surveys are event driven, allowing respondents to give an immediate response with just one click to an important event.

In this case, the survey that closed yesterday got underway last Saturday, when Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, whose militiamen are openly fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s army, told supporters Assad’s war “is ours, and I promise you victory.”

In his televised weekend address to Hezbollah loyalists in Mashghara, Nasrallah said his party would not let Assad fall to the U.S., Israel and the (Sunni) Takfiris.

He said, “Syria is the linchpin and backbone of the Resistance” and his party “cannot stand, arms folded, while its back is broken.”

To underscore the Syrian regime’s military alliance with Hezbollah, Assad’s office says he is set to give an interview to Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV channel tomorrow, Thursday.

The interview would be broadcast simultaneously on Syria's official television channels at 9 p.m. local time (18:00 GMT), the president's office announced on its Facebook page.

Today, member states of the UN Human Rights Council will consider a resolution condemning the presence of foreign combatants in Qusayr, as fighting over the strategic town in Homs province intensifies.

The draft resolution, referring to Hezbollah, condemns the presence of foreign fighters siding with the government as a serious threat to regional security.

It demands access for United Nations and other humanitarian agencies to all civilians affected by the conflict by authorizing cross-border delivery of humanitarian aid as an urgent priority.

Hezbollah seems to be shrugging off the international outcry over its involvement in the Syria war and a 24-hour ultimatum set yesterday by General Salim Idriss, chief of staff of the Free Syrian Army, to end it.

Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP news agency today Hezbollah has sent extra fighters to link up with Syrian elite Republican Guards troops in the assault on the rebel stronghold of Qusayr.




“The preparations indicate they are gearing for a major offensive” on neighborhoods in the north and west of the town the rebels have been holding for a year, he said.



“Despite the intense bombardment, the rebels are resisting fiercely,” Abdul Rahman said.



He said Sunni militiamen from Lebanon had joined the battle on the side of the Syrian opposition fighters.

“The fighting is becoming more and more sectarian (Shiite vs. Sunni) in character,” he added.



Strategically placed close to Syria’s border with Lebanon, Qusayr is home to 25,000 people, most of them Sunnis.

Syria’s regime is dominated by Alawite Shiites, while the majority of the population is Sunni.



Control of Qusayr is essential for the rebels as it is their principal transit point for weapons and fighters from across the border in Lebanon.



It is also strategic for the regime because it is situated on the road linking Damascus with its coastal heartland.

Syria: Michel Kilo’s public appeal to the Pope

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Your Holiness, reach out   بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

By Michel Kilo

Michel Kilo, the Syrian Christian thinker, writer and human rights activist, penned this appeal to Pope Benedict XVI on the occasion of his three-day visit to Lebanon. The appeal, which I rephrased in English, appeared yesterday in Arabic on all4syria.info:

Your Holiness, I wish to address you in the name of God, who Muslims call “the Gracious, the Merciful.”

I am not, Your Holiness, a believer in all what religions put forward. But I believe they preserved the human race by sanctifying human life, which is imprinted with the very image of its Creator.

In my view, the obligation to preserve human life is the greatest of the Divine messages.

Without it, we wouldn’t have witnessed today’s humankind, or lived its inventiveness and achievements. We wouldn’t have formed entities replete with flaws and shortcomings.

Without it too, individuals wouldn’t have sanctified the life granted them by their Creator, who tolerates their thoughtlessness and numerous mistakes because He is “Gracious, Merciful.”

I am, Your Holiness, Syrian, Arab and Christian. I am a citizen in a region that managed, throughout its long and tortuous history, to fuse its human, religious, cultural and political components.

True, the region was not all too familiar with the concept of tolerance. But is still upheld and breathed tolerance hundreds of years before John Locke published his book “A Letter Concerning Toleration.”

I have no doubt in my mind Your Holiness is aware of and thankful that this region coined most terms that founded human civilization. I am referring to terms like religion, abstract thought, numbers, agriculture, domestication of animals, metals melting, statehood, ways to control nature, writing, music, painting and dance…

Your Holiness is also aware that the message of Islam -- the region’s last religion -- recognizes and reveres its two preceding monotheistic faiths, Judaism and Christianity.

Suffice to read Your Holiness what the Quran says of Jesus (Issa) --“And we gave Issa, the son of Mary, clear arguments and strengthened him with the Holy Spirit” [Chapter Two, Verse 87] – or Mary -- “And when the Angels said: O Mary! Allah hath chosen thee, and made thee pure, and hath preferred thee above (all) the women of creation.” [Chapter Three, Verse 42].

Your Holiness would surely note the difference between these wordings and all that was penned about Jesus and Mary over time.

Your Holiness, as soon as you mention Jesus, a Muslim would immediately and piously say “Issa, peace be upon him.” If you mentioned his mother’s name, the Muslim would solemnly refer to “Maryam, peace be upon her.”

Lastly, Your Holiness is aware that Christianity survived in this Levant, its cradle for over 2000 years. It did so alongside other religions and spiritual persuasions, the most important of which is Islam. And Islam is imbued with some things Christian.

Muslims are akin to Christians in some aspects of their tolerant religion. Otherwise, they would not have respected our presence in their midst, even though their religion prescribes Da’wa or Islamic missionary activity.

But they always believe in God’s mercy, which commits them to be merciful towards God’s creation.

True, this has not always been the case. Equally true, this has mostly been the case in the largest part of history.

Otherwise, how would one explain the continued presence of Christianity in the Levant after the Crusades, which the Muslims called the wars of the Franks simply to avoid defaming the Cross?

And who protected Christianity and Christians after the Franks were routed by Muslim armies that co-opted Christian fighters?

I tell Your Holiness in all frankness that the mutual sense of belonging is what protected both sides.

Didn’t Syrian cities’ Christian welcome with open arms their cousin Muslim forces as they strove to engage the Byzantine Church’s Crusaders? And didn’t a Christian fighting in the Muslim army exclaim during the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah: “I swear by al-Kaaba that I have slain Rustam.”

The Christian fighter was referring to the powerful commander of the large Persian force confronting the Muslim army.

Today, innumerable attempts are being made to sever this historic partnership.

The attempts are mounted by an assortment of Christian and Muslim sides as well as by hardliners and fanatic institutions and organizations that have espoused confessional views.

On the Muslim side, such views are formulated in the most retarded and intransigent parts of the Islamic world. They don’t challenge Christianity only, but primarily nonradical Islam.

In the Christian corner, there are extremist Churches that perceive the Muslim as an enemy with whom they have been forced to live. They don’t see him as a partner or kindred who shares the belief in God and His mercy.

There are clergymen who consider themselves combatants engaged in a belated battle that should have been settled a long time ago. Today, these churchmen are the chief stokers of the fire engulfing the two sides’ believers. The fire they are stoking is no different than the fire stoked by foolhardy Muslims.

The problem is that these clerics are turning their back on Your Holiness, perhaps without you knowing. They are waging their battle under banners they claim are your own. They say you share their views and you are part of a world hostile to Arabs and Muslims. They advocate a ravaging confessional war that has had no place in our Levantine history. They wish for an armed conflict to mirror the inter-Christian wars that once broke out in Europe. They see themselves as fighting on Europe’s side and on the side of Your Holiness and what you represent.

You have, Your Holiness, to restrain them and put them in their place with unequivocal language.

You have to bring them back to their senses, reminding them there is no, -- and will not be -- a Christian-Muslim war.

They have to be told that Christianity does not back any war on anyone, especially not the war the Syrian regime is waging on its people in the name of fighting terrorists. It is an open secret that the regime has always embraced, nurtured and trained terrorists before making common cause with them inside Syria and elsewhere on Arab and Muslim territory.

The Quran orders: “And slay not the life which Allah hath forbidden” [Chapter 17, Verse 33].

The Syrian regime’s warplanes are not killing the enemies of Jesus Christ. They are bombing peaceful cities and villages without possibly distinguishing between a terrorist and a child or woman or elderly or youth. This means hundreds of unarmed and innocent civilians are probably killed for every insurgent who took up arms in self-defense against the regime’s oppression and blind violence.

The Syrian regime is not fighting a battle in defense of Christianity to earn the sympathy of Christian Churches and clerics. It is fighting to defend its tyranny, benefits and oppressive and abusive policies while claiming to be secular.

In fact, the regime’s only religion is a cult of personality.

The regime is not fighting a battle to defend Christians either. Christians are under no risk except from the foolishness of some of its Churches and clerics. Such foolishness got them to the stage of blessing and celebrating the killing of children, women and elderly people in the false belief that they are party to a salvation war against terrorism and extremism. They don’t see regime violence as being either terrorist or extremist. It’s also as though a genocidal regime’s victory justifies sacrificing the life of a single human being.

How could such Churches claim to be faithful to Jesus of Nazareth, the greatest opponent of violence in human history?

Return the Church to its senses, Your Holiness.

Remind the Church that what kept Christianity in the Levant after the Franks’ wars was the stand Christians took in support of justice. Together with their Muslim cousins, Levantine Christians faced up to submission. They cannot today tolerate regimes that are incapable of ruling people seeking freedom and democracy without using artillery, tanks and warplanes to suppress them.

The Levant’s Christianity is in great danger, Your Holiness, not because it is threatened by Muslim fundamentalism, but because it is manipulated by Christian fundamentalists and a mentality adopted and practiced by some Christian churchmen. Their inhuman and immoral policies and stances are a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth.

The visit of Your Holiness could mark a turning point in the history of Christianity and Islam. Don’t participate or approve of the temples’ demolition over the heads of Arab Christians. Stretch out your blessed hand to spare Arab Christians the follies of their Churches and clerics.

No one's innocent in the film 'Innocence of Muslims'

By Jamal Khashoggi

Khartoum protest from The Guardian

The author is a leading Saudi media figure and one-time editor-in-chief of the Saudi daily al-Watan. He served as media aide to Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud while he was ambassador to the United Kingdom and to the United States. He has been named by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud to head his upcoming AlArab TV news channel. Khashoggi wrote this think piece in Arabic for today’s edition of pan-Arab al-Hayat.

I just finished viewing on YouTube the longish trailer for the movie “Innocence of Muslims,” which is overtly insulting to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and thus caused outrage and waves of violent protests in the Muslim world.

May God forgive whoever tweeted me the link to the trailer on YouTube in the hope I could intervene to have it removed. I wish he didn’t.

In a way, he was inducing viewing of the trailer, much as did the ignorant and dimwits who attacked U.S. embassies in Cairo, Benghazi and elsewhere.

I was extremely angered – or rather disgusted – by the film excerpts. I didn’t think insolence could push anyone on the face of this earth to be so abusive to God’s Messenger and my beloved Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

Nevertheless, I won’t join or support calls for any uncontrolled protest, let alone attack an American embassy.

On the contrary, because of my fervent commitment to the beloved Messenger of Allah and his teachings, I urge that all assailants of the foreign embassies and those behind them be severely punished.

We, Muslims, must have the courage to condemn our people’s crime before condemning the crime of our enemies.

Surely, the film is neither the first of its kind, nor the last. A researcher can write a doctoral thesis on the history of abuses by Jewish and Christian individuals against Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

Islam grappled with Judaism and Christianity – more precisely, with leaders of the two faiths – straightaway. But followers of the two religions deemed budding Islam to be exceptionally tolerant in victory, leading many of them to convert to the Muslim faith. That’s how Islam spread across Bilad al-Sham, Iraq, Egypt and the rest of North Africa.

The continued existence of Christian communities in such a Muslim expanse attests to Islam’s tolerance. Had Islam spread by coercive conversion, an exodus of non-Muslims would have ensued.

The opposite happened in Spain in the late 15^th Century, when the victorious Christians offered Muslims the choice of baptism or exile.

The historical face-off that lasted 14 centuries, and was both military and cultural, took twists with attacks on Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in books, essays and poems, starting with the Critique of Islam by monk John of Damascus, who died in 749.

John of Damascus’ “critique” derided God’s Messenger as a false prophet and impersonator who plagiarized from the New Testament and the Torah. Much of the venom in his writings is repeated in the film.

Strained relations between Islam and Christianity lasted from the Siege of Damascus in 634 until 9/11 in 2001, if not until this day.

Many in our ranks and in theirs refuse to acknowledge changes in history and the human race. But tackling this complex philosophical issue requires a book, not an article, to address.

The torrents of abuse against Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) – at times on official papal directives and at others by overzealous fundamentalist monks – were non-stop.

Even enlightened people fell into the Islamophobia trap, people like “reformer” Martin Luther, who led the most renowned disputation movement in Christianity, and Dante, the Italian who disparaged Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in his epic poem The Divine Comedy.

In the 9^th Century, Christian activists such as the Martyrs of Cordoba and the “suicides of Andalusia”, insisted on slandering God’s Messenger in public even at the risk of being executed.

This went on unabated until modern times – with The Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie, the Danish cartoons controversy, the film “Submission” by Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and to cap it all the new film “Innocence of Muslims.”

I reiterate: the vilifiers won’t stop.

Modern day works -- donning the Western cloak of “freedom of expression” – have also defamed Christian and Jewish sanctities, save for the Holocaust. The Holocaust is protected from any misgiving by “laws” smartly introduced by Jews and approved by legislative bodies across the Western world.

The issue of denigrating Islam is not one of creativity and freedom of expression. Most works critical of Islam are politically motivated.

While there is no more a pope at the Vatican directing a monk to write a book satirizing the morality or personality of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), there is a conservative far-Right that detests foreigners and emigrants and encourages such works.

The latest film is a point in case.

It is the brainchild of an alliance that brought together an Israeli filmmaker, an American producer and extremist Coptic scriptwriters.

Those who put the film together are not innocent. They too have their political agenda. Their unholy alliance to cram the film with unparalleled bad-mouthing of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) knew exactly what they were doing. They deliberately made the film to evoke the reaction they intended.

The other side to the saga concerns the conservative far-Right Muslims, who also hate foreigners and followers of the other religions and sects. They too abhor openness and forgiveness, even within their own societies.

Theirs is a strange mix of cultural, religious and ethnic bigots bent on violence and the use of force. Al-Qaeda represents some of their lot; hence its flag on the perimeters of the U.S. embassy in Cairo last Tuesday.

Politicians in the West often find it difficult to cope with their extremist groups. They can pass laws to restrict or ban them, such as in the case of the Nazi movement. But, in other instances, these politicians find themselves in a situation where they have to cajole national and legitimate far-Right movements, such as France’s National Front.

In his effort to capture the far-Right National Front vote in the presidential runoffs, for example, former President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to get tough on immigration and security. But National Front leader Marine Le Pen’s followers refused to back him.

Our Arab politicians, chiefly in the Arab Spring countries, are repeating Sarkozy’s error by cozying up to extremists in the hope of winning their votes or avoiding their evil.

Either way, the extremists will end up turning against them and biting the hand that feeds them. It’s what they did to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi last Tuesday and to other Arab leaders who thought they could “Dance with Wolves.”