Islamic Project And Its Position in the Lebanese Conflict

The Lebanese crisis is still gaining steam. Shall we call it a political, a constitutional, an economic or a sectarian crisis?, or is it an extension of the so called ” the war of others on our territories!?”. It can have all these labels, starting from the Israeli aggression on Lebanon last July, recognizing the International Court, Paris 3 conference for supporting Lebanon and the reformist paper presented to it, to the sit-ins staged in the name of the general Trade Union .


It is clear for all that the Lebanese opposition is aiming at toppling the existing government and hindering the institutions or dismantling them if possible, to achieve various targets: General Michel Aoun’s aspiration to assume power in Baabda palace, president Omar Karami’s desire to return to the Grand Serail, Hezbollah’s restoring the south or Pro-Syrian loyalists who want to restore their security and political role in the Lebanese arena. But the ambitions of all these partners should answer this key and legitimate question: Why do you hold continuous demonstrations and sit-ins, and civil disobedience according to president Lahoud, and closing roads and burning wardrobes according to president Karamy!!. They say: for holding a national unity government and to participate in power, although some of them were participating in the government and all of them – including General Aoun’s movement, Hezbollah and an Amal Movement- voted for a yes-confidence to the government in the past even during the tough days of the Israeli war on Lebanon. So, what made them turn the table against past allies?, and what is the real slogan of the movement of protesting and civil disobedience, because people no longer believe the slogans currently raised by the opposition. Also, these opposition demands and slogans do not deserve at all such huge efforts and costs which will be paid by people and citizens to reach them.


Some opposition spokesmen speak about the confrontation as if the homeland is only a tent in a desert, and they are in a tug of war in a childish and naïve way, like their saying “We have long breaths and we still can demonstrate, and we can continue that way for a month or two… a year or more, till the government is toppled, and that president Siniora is the one who is tired before and more than us”. All this may be right but it does not indicate that the political course of the opposition is right, and because PM Siniora’s fatigue is out of the feeling of national responsibility towards the deteriorating political, social and economic situations, and because others, like Jumblatt and Gagaa, are supported by the “clean money” that fund their paid political sit-ins and movements.


There is another element that should be discussed and be given attention: that the national and Islamic fabric has reached its lowest levels. The opposition parties may not be responsible for or didn’t intend to make this deterioration, but this does not deny their responsibility for it or their duty in working for ending it. If every one is blaming the US occupation in Iraq for the widespread sectarian aggravation there, who is to blame for this inside Lebanon?, unless some of us became puppets in the hands of the occupation to carry out its schemes and conspiracies, whether we realize this or not.


I’d like to point out that the attitude of the Free Patriotic Movement for example, doesn’t concern me because its issue is related to its leadership. What I focus on are those who have a great Islamic project, who give a priority to resisting the Zionist project, but they are attracted and attract their supporters to trivial issues like the national unity government or the system of the International Court, forgetting that there are international, specifically US, schemes against those bearing the Islamic project, and specially those who managed to confront the Zionist project which is allied with the current US administration.


Let’s refresh our memory and go back a little to recall a few pages from our modern Islamic history, during the 1940s when the Muslim Brotherhood group participated in confronting the Zionist project when the state of “Israel” was emerging, resisting the British forces in the Suez Canal, the blows dealt to the Islamic movement. after that; and the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the wedge that was driven in the Islamic body through the Iranian Iraqi war, and the think tanks established by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the US National Security Advisor; there was also what happened on the Afghan arena: the US role in defeating the Soviet forces, the emergence of the Taliban Movement to replace the Afghan militant factions; aborting the Islamic project in Algeria and canceling the election results, and the 9/11 bombings and attempts to liquidate the Islamic movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the ongoing war against any Islamic action through distorting or eliminating it. The Sudanese Islamic experience managed to confront the US blockade and the efforts exerted for toppling it: through raising the crisis of Halaib with Egypt in the North, and with the Sudan Liberation Movement in the south, then it opened the crisis of Darfur in the West. Also, Iran managed to confront the US blockade, sometimes under the claim of sponsoring terrorism and sometimes under the claim of ending its nuclear program. The Islamic movement in Palestine (Hamas) is still suffering from the Arab blockade and the international rejection although it won free and fair elections. The latest blows emerged in the Somali crisis when America gave Ethiopia the green light to eradicate the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) government after the UIC managed to establish a popular authority on the rubble of chaos and conflicts of the warlords in a poor country whose only flaw was driving the US forces out of it after an unsuccessful intervention in 1993.Nowadays, the Islamic arena is facing a new dilemma in the Iraqi scene, while the representative of the Dawa Shiite Islamic Party welcomes increasing the US forces in Iraq. Is this just a coincidence after Saddam Hussein’ was executed by hanging in the morning of Al-Adha Feast!?.


We hope that those adopting the Islamic project in Lebanon to give a priority to the Islamic interests, and their project, and not to fall as preys to marginal issues or interests of others on our land, to prove that we have learnt from the lessons of the past.