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Life as an Arab Christian in the Middle East · UK Column Radio

0:38
All right, let me try not to butcher your name.
0:40
Marian Shadowbati, thank you for joining me in the trenches.
0:45
You are welcome. I am really happy to be here and
0:49
I've watched a lot of your episodes and I think we're going
0:52
to have an exciting conversation.
0:55
Is it loud where you are? Most days, some days not.
1:01
Depends. I'm in central Lebanon so for
1:07
most people that don't know Lebanon, Lebanon is pretty much
1:11
after the civil war divided into a sectarian more or less divide
1:16
even though they're not like unbroken lines of sectarianism.
1:21
Like no like in the in what we call a Christian area you would
1:24
find Muslims but it's predominantly Christian.
1:28
The type of culture is closer towards Christian culture and
1:33
more Islamic dominated regions. The the day-to-day life is more
1:39
closer towards the Islamic kind of day-to-day life.
1:42
A lot of regions are really mixed at this point.
1:47
So I'm in Mount Lebanon, which is basically what they call the
1:52
Maronite stronghold. So it's a Christian Maronite
1:57
stronghold. Historically, the war has been
2:00
between Maronites and the Druze and the and the Islamic sects.
2:05
However, this was solved decades ago, only to resurface during
2:09
the Civil war in 75. But ever since it's really been
2:14
mixed into it. But centrally here we don't
2:18
really hear much and we don't see much of the the wars really
2:24
'cause it's how do I say that gently?
2:28
It's the location in which the leading group, which is a
2:34
sectarian group. So even the church here has had
2:37
that position in various periods of history.
2:42
Their ally to the Israelis, Bashir Ishmael, who wanted to
2:47
make peace with the Israelis and was assassinated by the
2:52
Lebanese, was from the region I'm from.
2:56
So they more or less, it's kind of considered the safe hub in
3:02
the Middle East. It's where it doesn't get bombed
3:05
no matter who gets bombed. However, I think this is going
3:09
to change very soon. I expect that to strategically
3:15
change. But for now, it's been more or
3:18
less quiet. Yeah.
3:21
What is your background? I'm Lebanese, born and raised.
3:28
I was born here, raised here. I did immigrate as as most
3:34
Christians here do. So every Christian household in
3:38
Lebanon specifically has at least one or two members of
3:43
their family that have immigrated.
3:46
I lived in Canada for a good seven years, 8, seven and a
3:50
half. And then I went to Germany for
3:52
about a year and then I decided I want to come back home.
3:56
This is where I belong. This is where I have something
3:59
to offer. So I decided to come back.
4:03
But I am very much born and raised here, very attached to
4:08
the land and the history of the land and our existence in the
4:12
land. And when I say our existence, I
4:14
don't speak here from a sectarian perspective.
4:17
I speak from a purely national Arab perspective because I do
4:23
believe that the Arab national identity is a cumulative
4:30
collective, all-encompassing identity.
4:33
If you eliminate any component of it, you break it down.
4:38
And so I, I don't think eliminating any component, which
4:43
is one of the things that the West has tried to do in more
4:47
ways than one, is to break that Arab identity, turn it into this
4:51
Islamic identity, into a takfiri identity, into an identity
4:55
that's so devoid and separated from the Christian West or the
5:01
civilized W, which is really, to put it nicely, it's bullshit.
5:07
Because Christianity started here, civilization started
5:13
around here, right? Somewhere between Africa and the
5:17
Arab world, we saw the rise of civilization and its growth,
5:23
even if in separate ways, we saw the growth of civilization from
5:28
that part of the world. And so when we talk about
5:32
breaking down that Arab identity, we're inherently
5:36
talking about making sure that no Arab nation would rise for
5:41
another century, right? First, that's the idea.
5:44
That's the threat, really. So I don't know if that answered
5:49
your question. Well, I actually would like to
5:53
know a little bit more about your background because you're
5:55
very, very vocal on social media.
5:58
So you're a type of activist journalist, is that right?
6:01
Yeah, I've been working in journalism for the past 4-5
6:06
years, but I did not reach journalism because it's, it's my
6:12
dream job that I've always wanted to do.
6:14
And in fact, a bit back into my history, I was a musician.
6:20
I came from a very different place.
6:23
It's my search. It's my, it's my personal search
6:26
for identity that drove me towards, towards journalism,
6:32
towards the work that I do. It's my search for who I am.
6:35
Where do I belong? Why were we raised the way we
6:39
were raised? Because where I was raised, we
6:41
were raised in a concept where a Muslim is different from you,
6:46
right? It's, it's like a whole gun.
6:49
And I had to question it when I, when I emigrated, I had to
6:54
question because when you, when you get to Canada, suddenly
6:57
everyone that speaks Arabic is your brother, right?
7:00
And I'm like, why was that not the case in Beirut?
7:05
What was different than Meywood? And I realized it's, it's the
7:09
legacy of The Crusaders that we still carry here in Mount
7:12
Lebanon and in a lot of places and in the region where the idea
7:18
is that we seem to believe that we are remnants of that Great
7:25
Western Civilization kind of legacy and we want to keep it
7:33
safe or something. So we developed over generations
7:41
A mindset that's not Arab, a mindset that is actually an
7:47
enemy of our own identity, right?
7:50
And I think this is not something that only we have
7:53
done. I think we see that in a lot of
7:55
places in the world. I think we even see that in
7:58
Africa. Maybe you can talk a bit about
8:00
that. You have where you see a lot of
8:03
Africans kind of from a position of self hating their own history
8:09
and identity to say, look, we are better than this.
8:13
And then they take a model that's very different from their
8:15
social fabric and structure and say, well, this is what we want
8:19
because this is the way, you know, and that's kind of the
8:23
idea. But we're talking here over
8:25
hundreds of years. So when I went to Canada and I
8:29
figured that, well, we are Arab. Shocking, right?
8:36
A Christian Maronite is an Arab. And that does come as a shock
8:39
because there's the whole argument here that, oh, we are
8:42
Phoenician. But this is something that was
8:44
pushed very often by the West because even if you look at
8:47
Phoenicia, it's a civilization. First of all, it's not, It's not
8:51
a nation. Second of all, if you look at
8:54
Syria, the hub of the Phoenician civilization was actually in
9:00
Syria, not not in Lebanon, right?
9:03
And so when, when we look at that and when we think about
9:05
that and we realise how that identity is being used and
9:10
abused to propagate geopolitical strategy, to turn us into tools
9:16
for that geopolitical strategy, what do we do with that then,
9:21
right. And that was the question that I
9:22
found myself in front of. And the second question I found
9:27
myself in front of was because I, I, I grew up Christian.
9:33
My mother taught us a lot about Islam growing up.
9:35
She's Christian. But her idea was we live in a
9:39
country where everybody lives here and what you don't know,
9:42
you fear, right? So she kind of broke it down to
9:45
us from a younger age. But it was never really
9:49
religious growing up until I went to Canada and I was faced
9:56
with my own journey there, which which everybody, I, I believe,
10:01
faces their own personal journey at some point in life.
10:05
You go through your ups and downs, you figure out who you
10:07
want to be, what you want to be, how you want to think, right?
10:10
And then you're bombarded with all of these ideas, especially
10:14
in a place like Canada where the liberal mentality is really at
10:18
its peak. So what I really faced was who I
10:23
want to be and what values do I want to hold and what fits with
10:27
my understanding of the world and narrative.
10:30
And I found myself defending faith from a perspective of
10:38
understanding human value, right?
10:42
That was the initial position. And then I started introspecting
10:46
into who I am, the way I grew up, my faith, my religion, and I
10:50
found myself getting feeling more, more at home, more safe in
10:57
my own faith, in my own religion, the way I understand
11:00
it not, not in the way that the West wants us to understand it.
11:07
Christianity is not an enemy of Islam.
11:09
They're not opposites, they're not contradictory, They're not
11:14
at war with each other. It's misconception of what
11:18
Christianity is and that I don't know the whole idea that Jesus
11:24
Christ believes that only Christians will make it to
11:26
heaven. What is this?
11:28
What is this, right? We there's nothing like that in
11:32
our faith. Nowhere, nowhere.
11:34
He he does speak of love for all, right?
11:40
He does say that those, that those that have faith in me are
11:43
closer, closer in their worldly life and in their afterlife to
11:50
God, right? But that has to do with
11:54
understanding the commandments that he gave.
11:57
It's, it's not about going to church.
12:00
It's about living like a Christian, right?
12:02
And when we look at that and when we look at the commandments
12:06
of Jesus Christ, then we look at Islam.
12:08
And really there is, there's a lot more similarities than there
12:15
are differences because we do believe in the one same God.
12:19
We do have faith in the one same value system, even if it
12:24
manifests differently, right? So that's, that's really where I
12:30
came from and I where I came to journalism from, from the idea
12:36
that we must defend our identity because our identity is really
12:39
truly one of the most civilized, founded in humanitarian
12:46
understanding of what it means to be human and not in the
12:50
geopolitical argument of defending human rights and, and
12:53
military intervention. These are two different
12:55
concepts. They stole our language, our
12:59
terminologies, our value scale and turned it into a tool
13:04
against us. And we stood for a long time
13:08
saying, OK, I don't know how to deal with this because you're
13:12
using a language that for me means one thing and for you
13:16
means another. And I don't know how to argue
13:17
that, how to fight that. But truly over time we realise
13:21
that on the ground, no, there is a way to fight that and it's
13:24
called the resistance. You're saying that Christianity
13:29
and Islam are allies and and and have and have many overlapping
13:36
values. Is that correct?
13:38
Correct. And that's how that's what
13:42
you've experienced growing up in the Middle East as a Christian.
13:46
Very much so. Very much so, actually.
13:50
A couple of my best friends are very devout Muslims and we can
13:55
spend every day together without really any conflict.
14:01
But if they are so overlapping, what is the point of being a
14:04
Christian or being a Muslim? It has to do with your faith,
14:09
right? So here it goes back to the
14:10
question of is Christ the Son of God?
14:14
This is what we believe. We believe that he was crucified
14:18
and that he resurrected on the third day, right?
14:21
This is what we believe. Islam does not believe in that.
14:24
Muslims do not believe in that. However, that difference in
14:28
faith in in the very details of the ideology of faith does not
14:35
create a problem on the day-to-day life in a structural
14:42
social fabric. It really does not.
14:45
And even if you go into into Islam a bit deeper, you realize
14:49
that they call Christ the soul of God.
14:58
They value Christ as a prophet, they value Mary.
15:06
And there is one thing significant in Islam is that
15:11
whenever they talk about their faith, they talk about it as a
15:16
continuation of everything that came before it.
15:19
They go back to Adam and Eve. They go back to Abraham, right?
15:22
And so when you do that, when you do that historical mapping,
15:27
you inherently put the people or the followers of that faith in a
15:33
position where they have to accept everyone that came before
15:36
them. They don't consider anyone that
15:39
came before them an enemy of their faith, right.
15:43
And in doing that, we saw that Christianity and Islam have been
15:47
able to coexist for centuries really.
15:49
And had that not been the case, there would not be any one
15:53
church left to toll the bells because the region has been
15:59
under Islamic, different Islamic rules for a long time.
16:03
And despite all of that, you still find a church in almost
16:07
every town in every area in the Middle East.
16:11
What about the Crusades? The Crusades. the Crusades is
16:15
the most interesting thing to talk about really, because the
16:18
Crusades even considered Christians that did not Latinize
16:23
to be equal enemies to them as the Muslims.
16:26
So we were equally killed, really, as Arab Christians, we
16:30
were equally killed by the Crusades.
16:32
We were equally fought by the Crusades.
16:34
Our culture was fought by the Crusades because we were put in
16:40
position. We either give up our own
16:42
rituals and our own manifestation, ideologies,
16:46
etcetera, and accept Latinization as the one true
16:50
form of Christianity in the face of the indigenous Christians of
16:53
the region, right? Or we are enemies of The
16:58
Crusaders. And so this is pretty much what
17:02
happened. A lot of the Christians actually
17:04
fought alongside Muslims in the Crusades.
17:07
And we see that in Haifa. We see that in eclipse.
17:11
We see that in a lot of parts of Lebanon and Syria.
17:19
So growing up as an Arab Christian in in the Levant
17:25
effectively actually is a fairly peaceful experience.
17:31
Hello. When we talk about peaceful
17:34
experience, we have to say here that the West has infiltrated
17:39
both Christianity and Islam. So in a lot of places where
17:45
Islam has been infiltrated by a British or American Techfiri
17:53
ideology or kind of a Muslim Brotherhood, a British version
17:58
of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology, no, we did not see
18:03
peace. Because among the chief things
18:06
that I was talking about in the beginning for for the West, it's
18:11
important that the region gets emptied of Christians really,
18:17
and turn it into this evil Islamic region.
18:22
And in a lot of places they have succeeded.
18:24
And in a lot of places we see that the church is complicit in
18:29
that. For example, during the war in
18:32
Syria, immigration was opened through church facilities,
18:38
through entire churches. And there are regions where
18:40
entire churches were uprooted from one place to another
18:46
because it was easy, it was fast.
18:47
Instead of telling the people, we will help you defend your
18:53
land, your identity, your belonging, you have the right to
18:56
stay here. People were being told, let us
18:59
get you out. It's the only safe option for
19:01
you. You will have a better life.
19:03
Why would I have a better life in a faraway place?
19:08
Or you wouldn't help me, You know, fight the enemies of both
19:13
our faith and our land and identity on this, on this land
19:19
where I belong, where my children belong, where my
19:21
ancestors have belonged, Right. So these these questions came up
19:26
a lot as I was growing up. And I think when we talk about
19:35
Christians living peacefully in the region, we have to be very
19:39
careful about who was attacking Christians in the region at what
19:45
point and for what cause, right? So when I look at, I don't know,
19:55
when I look at Christians living in southern Lebanon alongside,
20:02
let's say, the Islamic resistance, I don't see anyone
20:07
that was threatened by that. And they live a very normal
20:12
life, really. If you go to sewer which is
20:16
within the influence of the Islamic resistance, you can go
20:22
for one of the best beach parties you can imagine, I'm
20:25
sure, and no one will talk to you about this.
20:30
The truth is when we do the same and we go to HTS, which is now a
20:34
non terrorist organization, right?
20:37
When we go to HTS in the masters, how how do Christians
20:41
feel? How do Sunnis that are non
20:43
takfiris feel about that right? And see here it's a very
20:48
delicate subject. Islam is 1 big title that is not
20:54
all the same and it has been infiltrated for God's sake.
20:58
We have Christian Zionism and I think it's one of the most evil
21:05
versions of faith that could exist.
21:10
So Islam has its version of Zionism and it's it's really
21:14
Dakfiri Islam. Why, generally, is that whole
21:18
region so hated by the West? I don't think it's particularly
21:28
hated by the West. It's the most desired by the
21:32
West. But the truth is, is that this
21:34
region, whether it's the Levant or the greater Arab Peninsula,
21:38
it has been one of the regions that fought for its existence
21:44
deeply for centuries. And truly the West, even until
21:48
now, has not been able to break that.
21:52
So every century, every year, if you want to say, has its own
21:57
version of resistance. The three emerges in ways that
22:02
fit the needs or the requirements of of the time.
22:07
So if we look at if we look at what the West wants from this
22:12
region A it it definitely wants a non Arab nation to rise.
22:18
There is there is no room for an Arab nation in the eyes of the
22:21
West, right? If an Arab nation does come to
22:24
be united, strong, powerful, do you imagine the capabilities of
22:31
this region with the riches of this region?
22:34
Same thing to Africa, right? Do you imagine these areas
22:39
rising to their true potential? What happens to the West?
22:43
A. They can no longer steal and
22:45
exploit our riches. B.
22:49
Who will do the work for them in their countries, in their
22:51
continents? Who runs the US or Canada or
22:57
Europe? And I'm not talking about who
22:59
runs it financially. I'm talking about who runs it on
23:03
the ground, who makes things work.
23:07
I mean, it's really not not white Europeans that do that.
23:14
And in Canada it's known. It's known that it's the Arabs
23:19
that helped build a lot of regions in Canada anyways, and
23:25
not to go into the detail of that, but if we rise as a nation
23:29
to our full potential, we actually become one of the most
23:33
encompassing in terms of social fabric and components within
23:39
that social fabric. We become one of the most
23:43
capable nations because we have experiences from all over the
23:47
world, in all fields of the world, and we become an area
23:54
that blocks Western exploitation, not just of this
23:58
region, but the rest of Asia. The influence of the West in all
24:03
of Asia and all of Africa is very much tied to what happens
24:08
here. So if this nation is independent
24:14
and neither left, neither kind of West leaning or right leaning
24:18
or East leaning right, it's independent in its own identity,
24:22
what happens? What happens to the rest of the
24:26
world and the rest of the world from a perspective of Western
24:28
influence, Right? And this is not new.
24:31
This really goes back to the Crusader era, and some would
24:35
argue even before, but yeah, this is what we're looking at.
24:40
And This is why it's very much desired, and This is why it's
24:43
very much infiltrated. And it's infiltrated over
24:47
centuries in many different ways, to an extent that some
24:51
people cannot see these things as infiltrations anymore, but as
24:56
natural occurrences, which they really are not.
25:00
But as I said a moment ago, the Western perspective of the Arab
25:06
world is severely impoverished. I mean, if you if you speak
25:11
about Arabs, it's just a bunch of brown Muslims and that's it.
25:14
I mean, it's as it's as crude as that.
25:17
But I mean, anybody who knows a basic bit of history of the
25:20
region will know that it's exceptionally multi ethnic,
25:23
multicultural and it has a long, long, long history going back to
25:28
biblical times. When you say nation, then what
25:32
do you mean? When we talk about the Arab
25:43
nation, we're talking about the world in a post psych pico
25:49
perspective. The borders that we live in
25:53
today, while they have their benefits and they've had their
25:58
benefits for some time, they're truly colonial at core.
26:03
And what that means is that they are made to serve their roles,
26:09
and these roles serve Western influence and not local
26:14
benefits. So when we break down the world
26:17
as we know it after World War 2, we can see that an Arab nation
26:25
is something that truly is not understood by the West.
26:30
However, the Jesuits, the Jesuits have understood that
26:36
understood that very well. And they were one of the first
26:38
ones to come to that region and study it as a whole and not as a
26:46
divided segments. And they were the ones that
26:49
influenced a lot the decision making in the West for Sack.
26:53
Speaker So when we talk about the Arab nation, we talk about
26:59
something that is not inherently colonial.
27:01
We talk about the actual identity and the history and the
27:05
tribal extension of the people of the region with their shared
27:10
cultures and histories. For example, it is one of the
27:14
things that are very well known is that people from Jabala Amin,
27:19
which is southern Lebanon extended all the way to
27:22
Palestine. Jabala Amin, the people of
27:26
Jabala Amin go back in history to Yemen and most Christian
27:33
Maronites in Lebanon extend back to Syria.
27:37
A lot of the Baka extends to Quran.
27:39
And my family specifically, we come from Al Khalil from
27:43
Bawskar. So when when you look at that,
27:47
this is the Arab nation we're talking about, we're talking
27:49
about going back in history to what used to what used to exist
27:56
before the worst kind of too cold and held it in in, in their
28:03
hands and kind of strangled every aspect of its life.
28:09
So now if I go back to my family and I tell them, listen, now
28:13
we're originally from Palestine, they will not be happy about it,
28:18
right? Because we're Christian
28:19
Marinites, we're from Mount Lebanon.
28:20
Well, not really. We're we're not, you know.
28:25
But but Miriam, I mean, if you follow social, social media, we
28:29
all know Palestine didn't ever exist.
28:35
Yeah, because there isn't the letter P in Arabic.
28:43
If we go back to to understand why the Zionist movement wanted,
28:52
wanted Palestine and actually they did not want Palestine.
28:56
They wanted Greater Israel, which is from the river, the
29:00
inside rivers all the way to the sea and taking off.
29:06
First of all, I'm going to go back in history before going
29:08
back in. In theory, if you go back to
29:11
Bludan, the Conference of Bludan in 1946, it was held in Syria
29:15
and it was I think under President Shukri Kawatly at the
29:19
time in Syria, it was in 1946. So it was before, before the
29:24
Nakba and the British offered, offered to say, well, we're
29:30
going to give that piece of land right over to the to the Jews.
29:38
You know, it's really funny because this is something that
29:41
people never look back into the conference of Budan.
29:44
There was a whole negotiations in the conference that says,
29:49
well, we do not believe that bringing the Jews from Europe to
29:55
this region is the right thing to do for the Europeans to solve
29:58
their Jewish problem. What come again, it's it comes
30:05
as a shock if you bring that forward today because nobody
30:07
talks anymore about how well Europe had a Jewish problem,
30:12
regardless of whether I believe it was a Jewish problem or all
30:17
of all of that debate of what was going on in Europe.
30:19
But they had a problem with what do we do with the Jews in the
30:23
region because nobody wants them in New York.
30:26
And so they decided to bring them over here.
30:28
Why did they bring them over here?
30:30
Now that's a different question. The reason is, in my humble
30:33
opinion, is that they needed to create something called the
30:36
barrier state. The barrier state, I believe
30:38
goes back to Napoleonic kind of mentality where it's it's a
30:45
location you take over a piece of land, you bring in a people
30:49
that is impossible to integrate in the region.
30:53
You give them an upper hand militarily and financially.
30:58
And whenever anything in its surrounding tries to raise its
31:01
head up, you shoot it down. And so I think that's precisely
31:07
what Israel is. It's a barrier state.
31:09
It has succeeded for the past 100 years, but I don't think it
31:13
will succeed much longer anymore.
31:16
And it's not biblical either. No, no, definitely not biblical.
31:22
If we look at the biblical history, the Jews, the
31:26
Christians and the Muslims of the region are the semis.
31:30
It was the Jews that later became parts of them became
31:33
Christian and part of those Christians that became Muslim.
31:36
It's not somebody that came from elsewhere.
31:39
It was the people of this land that moved from Judaism to
31:42
Christianity to Islam. Judaism, Christianity and Islam
31:45
don't come in confrontation with each other.
31:47
They come in continuation of each other.
31:52
They come in in in a sequential following is what I mean.
31:55
And so they came after each other.
31:56
They didn't come at the same time.
31:58
And then people fought about. They came really and
32:02
sequentially after each other. And people moved from one faith
32:07
to another for many reasons, some for financial, some for
32:11
social, some for true belief. But all of that is to say that
32:18
it's the Jews of this region, the Christians of this region,
32:21
the Muslims of this region that have biblical right to this
32:24
land. That's about it.
32:27
That otherwise the people of Israel in the Bible, they're not
32:30
an actual people. You know what I mean?
32:33
It's a it's not an actual piece of land with an actual people.
32:38
This is just a Christian Zionist perspective of it.
32:43
In fact, if anything, Christianity came for all the
32:48
people in the world. Christ came to save everyone,
32:53
regardless of whether they knew or they did not know what they
32:56
were doing right. This is the salvation we believe
33:00
in. This is the salvation He spoke
33:01
of on the cross. And His most sincere
33:05
commandment, in my opinion, is pretty simple.
33:08
It's there is no greater love than to sacrifice oneself for
33:13
those you love, right? And and this in our modern
33:16
understanding, it's what martyrdom is.
33:19
It's what martyrdom is in Islam as well.
33:23
It's to sacrifice yourself for what you think or you believe
33:28
God has intended for the human being to live in value and
33:32
dignity. And in doing that, we realized
33:35
that there is really nothing biblical about current Israel
33:38
and Zionism in occupied pops time.
33:43
There's nothing biblical about it.
33:45
It's about solving a Jewish problem.
33:47
It's about creating barrier state.
33:48
And it was. It's about geopolitical
33:49
influence. Are there Jews in Lebanon?
33:57
There used to be, There used to be.
34:00
We still have synagogues in certain areas in Lebanon.
34:04
However, most of them left the country or changed from Judaism
34:11
to Christianity or Islam. But there are still the the
34:16
towns that used to it's residents used to be Jews
34:22
continue to have those names. So whatever is begins with the
34:26
word Qribic in Lebanon is used to be Jewish Jewish town.
34:33
Probably a lot of the Jews from Lebanon moved to Damascus after
34:41
the nectar because one of the things that things that the
34:46
British were doing is that they were pushing all of the Jews of
34:55
the region into Israel, not just by choice but by force.
35:02
So that's one of the things that I think it, it would be good if
35:04
you can have an Arab Jew to talk about that.
35:10
Even the Iranian Jews talk about that.
35:12
They did the same thing in in Yemen after the takeover of, of
35:18
Yemen. They flew several jets from
35:23
Yemen to Israel. And these are Jews that have
35:26
been there for centuries and they did not intend to go to
35:29
Israel until, well, late in the, well, early in the 2000s.
35:37
So really Judaism faced a lot of backlash in the region after,
35:45
after the Nakba. And that however, even if we as
35:51
Arabs, we use the term when we want to kind of talk about
35:57
Israel, we address them as Jews, We don't address them as
36:01
Zionists. However, it is known that we are
36:05
not talking about Jews that remained in our lands because
36:09
even the Jews of Syria address them in the same way of Syria
36:13
before, before the Israelis became the Jews of Syria just
36:17
last year. It's the same logic in which the
36:22
Yemenis talk about in Masada, which are the Christians and and
36:29
their reference when they talk about Masara, they're not
36:31
talking about the Christians of the region.
36:33
They're talking about the Western world, which has
36:37
historically identified itself as the Christian world, right.
36:42
So these have to come in their contexts.
36:46
But yeah, to answer your question, I don't think there
36:49
are any Jews left in Lebanon. I believe the last of them left
36:56
somewhere in the late 90s or so, but yeah.
37:01
Just to be clear, when we talk about Jews, we are including
37:06
ethnic Jews as well as Jews by faith.
37:11
Yeah, yeah. We're talking about Jews because
37:19
most of the Jews here, they're not people that join Judaism.
37:27
They're historically Jewish. You said earlier that that that
37:31
Christianity and Islam are allies and and can coexist.
37:38
Is therefore Judaism the enemy? No, no, that's not the enemy.
37:47
To the extent of my knowledge, Jews and Damascus have had their
37:53
own space. They've lived next to the
37:57
Christian quarters and they've lived next to the Muslim quarter
38:02
and all the the masters. Historically, Jews and Altups
38:09
have lived right next door to the Christians, especially the
38:14
Armenian Quarter Christians. To the Muslims it was never
38:21
really problematic. However Jews do have a more
38:28
closed off religion than Christianity and Islam, and much
38:35
like really any minority but Judaism has its own.
38:40
It also depends on what kind of sucks in Judaism because also
38:43
Judaism is not like this one big thing right?
38:50
They did live in more Jewish life, but they did interact with
38:56
the rest of the world and they were not threatened by the rest
38:59
of the world. Then.
39:00
Had that been the case, to put it clearly, no Jews would have
39:04
existed in the region for over 5 centuries.
39:10
Had that been the region, the case, the Ottoman Empire would
39:13
have eradicated all Jewish presence in the region.
39:18
If, if you know, what I'm trying to put forward is really they
39:23
have existed and the fact that they still exist in Alkyl and in
39:27
in Damascus and in other places, it's proof that no, there isn't
39:33
even in Iran, which Iran is Persian, right?
39:38
It's not Arab, but it's, it has a mix of Islamic, Christian and
39:42
and Jewish communities. And it doesn't seem to be
39:45
problematic to me. So who is the enemy?
39:50
Who is the enemy? Enemy is not religion.
39:54
The enemy is a project. The enemy is imperialism,
39:59
hegemony. The enemy is anyone who wants to
40:02
exploit our land, our faith, our history against us and to drown
40:09
us in fights and in killings that only serve their purposes
40:16
and not ours. That is our enemy.
40:18
The enemy is really. Now I think we can call it the
40:23
Zionist movement, we can call it Western interests, Western
40:29
interests that are being enforced geopolitically,
40:33
geostrategically, through blood. They're not just being enforced.
40:42
Everybody has geopolitical interests anywhere in the world,
40:49
but to achieve it through dialogue, through negotiations,
40:51
is one thing, and to achieve it through blood is another.
40:55
And economic warfare is as much blood as military warfare is.
41:04
But why does Israel see all of its neighboring countries as the
41:10
enemy? Because it is the enemy of all
41:15
of its neighboring countries. They are not the enemy of
41:22
Palestine. But when you occupy a land, you
41:28
kill its people, you oppress them, you strip them away from
41:32
their dignity, from their value, and you seek to eradicate them.
41:37
And you seek to do much of the same to anyone in the
41:40
surrounding, to make people live subjugated to you.
41:46
People will not accept that the Arabs, true Arabs, because
41:51
collaborator governments tend to speak as if they're the Arab
41:55
representatives, but they're as far away from Arab values as
42:00
could be true. Arabs will never accept to be
42:06
faced with an option that strips them from their dignity, and
42:10
they say yes to it. And truly any free human will
42:14
not accept that. And the truth is, is our
42:17
history, our faith, our culture in all its representations.
42:23
If we go now, because it was just Muharram and Ashura, if we
42:26
go to, to, to Karbala and, and we see what happened in Karbala
42:31
with Imam Hussain, we see that this is a people that is willing
42:36
even in the face of the greatest of emperors, because this is
42:42
where Christianity did great. This is where Christ did even in
42:44
the face of the greatest of emperors.
42:46
They said no. They said no.
42:48
There is one truth. There is one thing that is right
42:51
to do in the face of this oppression and we're going to do
42:54
it. You can try to kill us, but
42:57
we're going to do it. We might die, but there will
42:59
come someone that will continue this path.
43:02
And this has been true for thousands of years, and it will
43:07
continue to be true. By that logic, even if we're all
43:11
hearted, there will be a generation that will come back
43:14
out and say, well, Nope, you're still wrong, right?
43:19
That's that's what we believe. That was, that's what history
43:22
has showed us. So Israel does see everyone who
43:24
is surrounding as an enemy because it's an occupier.
43:28
I think that's pretty straightforward.
43:30
But what's happening in Europe, I mean, there's a huge Islamic
43:33
problem that's taking over Europe that's fairly, it's
43:36
fairly well documented. Yeah, that's a that's a backlash
43:40
from what the Europeans have fed in our region for years.
43:45
And we have warned about that. We have said takfiri Islam is a
43:49
monster that you are feeding against us, but it will blow
43:53
back in your faces and it's blowing back in your faces.
43:57
And this has nothing to do with Islam.
43:59
This has nothing to do with Islam.
44:00
This is a political Islam that the West has fed for decades
44:05
against our people. And this is what they're coming
44:07
up with, right? Islam here as we know it.
44:12
They're they're really mostly regular people.
44:20
They're really regular people. But when you feed al Qaeda, when
44:23
you feed the Muslim Brotherhood, when you feed the Taliban, when
44:28
you feed HTS, when you remove the prescription of Jabhat al
44:31
Nusra, who used to play soccer with beheaded men, right?
44:37
They used to use their hands to play soccer.
44:39
This is, this is well documented.
44:41
These are the people that the West has decided to remove
44:44
prescription against. So when you do that, guess what?
44:49
That's why you're bringing all of the psychopaths and your
44:51
regions. You're bringing all of the
44:52
psychopaths that will at some point not be wanted here, not be
44:55
allowed here. They're going to go back.
44:58
What are they going to do there? What monster are you feeding?
45:03
A friend of mine, I don't know if you know him, Kovac
45:07
Amasilium, he, he said that what you're seeing is not really
45:12
Islam, It's it's more Islamist. What what did he say?
45:16
Islamism, which is very radical and very political.
45:20
I call it taxirism. It has nothing to do with Islam.
45:24
It's as far away from Islamic teachings.
45:27
It's actually any any Muslim scholar you bring with happily
45:32
tell you it's devoid of Islamic teachings.
45:34
It's actually contradictory to Islamic teachings.
45:39
This is Western Islam. This is where they fed.
45:44
If it blows back in their faces, you cannot blame me, the Arab,
45:49
you cannot blame Islam. It's only you who fed that.
45:53
And I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to the watch.
45:59
Miriam, as we know, you know, many, many people outside of the
46:05
Middle East simply don't understand the nuances and the
46:08
complexity of the region. And many more don't even know
46:13
much about the Napa. And they just think, you know,
46:18
it was Muslims that got removed, but it was also Christians that
46:21
got removed from from what is now Israel.
46:28
What is Christianity like in your region?
46:32
Is it very small? Is it under attack?
46:35
Is it growing? We are under attack, but we're
46:38
not under attack by Muslims. We are under attack by the West.
46:41
As I said before, they want us gone from the region in in Al
46:46
Quts. We saw it through the Nakba, by
46:49
murder, by blood, by direct killing, and we saw it after by
46:54
immigration eradication, as I call it.
46:57
We see the same here in Lebanon. Do you know how easy it is for
47:00
an Arab Christian to get a visa anywhere and how difficult it is
47:04
for an Arab Muslim to get a visa anywhere?
47:07
They're not the same. I remember I was, I was still in
47:11
Canada. I didn't get my Canadian
47:13
passport by the time I wanted to go to the US to visit someone
47:18
and I had to go given my Lebanese passport, right.
47:21
And at the time I, I gave in my passport.
47:24
And you know, they asked you these silly questions.
47:27
Have you been to Syria? Have you been to whatever 'cause
47:31
they were, it was still the, the war in Syria.
47:34
It was during the time of the wars and in Aleppo.
47:41
And then I literally while he was asking, I look at him and
47:44
I'm like, listen, I'm a Christian Maronite.
47:45
And he's like, oh, OK. And he stamped my passport, no
47:48
questions asked. That's that's how simple it is.
47:52
Yeah, that's how simple it is. That's how fast they want us
47:56
out. That's how much they don't want
48:01
us to return. We are given better offers in
48:05
terms of jobs. We are pushed to want to be more
48:10
Westernized. We are pushed away from our Arab
48:14
identity even in faith. We are really pushed generation
48:20
over generation to look at ourselves and feel Western.
48:25
And of course, Christians are pushed by the rhetoric of if you
48:31
stay here, you will face the fate of Muslims because, well,
48:34
we cannot control them and we cannot tell who's who, right?
48:37
The truth is the Christians and clubs, they come out to defend
48:42
the Loxa just as much as they would come out to defend the
48:45
Church of Natives just as much. Is that the truth is, is that is
48:51
that perhaps also a reason why Israel exists?
48:54
It's to attempt to westernise your region.
48:59
Yes. It doesn't matter if it
49:01
westernizes it or dumps it into a chaos of takfirism.
49:06
The idea is to eliminate the Arab identity.
49:08
And that's why Syria fell. That's why there was a global
49:12
war in Syria. That's why today what Al Jelena
49:15
is trying to do is to strip Syria of its Arab identity.
49:19
And that's what I said in the beginning of this talk.
49:22
If you remember, Arab identity is all inclusive.
49:27
And that being said, eliminating a component of it eliminates or
49:31
breaks down the Arab identity. Does Israel have a right to
49:36
exist? No, no, it's an occupation.
49:48
Unless you allow me to come over to your place, take over your
49:51
home, tell you to get out and give me a right to exist there,
49:55
the answer is no. But what do you say to those
49:59
people who are living there now? It's not their fault.
50:03
The people who are living there now, let me be clear, there was
50:06
never an intention for the Arabs to create an Israeli Nekwa.
50:13
It is the Israelis that are putting themselves in a position
50:17
where every individual in Israel has become a soldier, has become
50:22
a genocide enabler. Those that have an issue, well,
50:28
they're welcome to leave. The airports are open.
50:31
I don't think anyone has destroyed airports in in Israel.
50:37
And one of the reasons is we want them out.
50:41
We want them alive, but out. And that's something Al Quran
50:46
said during one of the exchanges, prisoner exchanges.
50:50
He told he looked the Israeli captive in the eye who was being
50:53
released and told him, listen, we want you to be well, but we
51:00
want you to be well outside of our land.
51:03
This is our land. Give us our land and everyone
51:07
else in it will be safe. But you cannot occupy my land
51:11
and ask me not to fight for it. That's.
51:16
Really stupid. What impact did the October
51:18
Seven event have on the Arab world?
51:23
Before October 7, the Arab world was moving towards
51:27
normalization, and at the time normalization had significance.
51:30
It was the liquidation of the Palestine cost.
51:35
After October 7, any normalization today has 0
51:39
significance, the cause of Palestine.
51:42
Not only will it not be liquidated, it has become
51:46
central, necessary and undoubtedly the most significant
51:53
for the region to be able to survive.
51:58
So October 7 has really changed the course of history for the
52:03
Arab world and for the region. Despite all the pain and the
52:08
losses and the sacrifices, the truth is that what happened
52:14
since October 7 has brought us closer towards our liberation
52:20
and our dignity than has Arab normalization after that did.
52:26
So yeah. But the Arab world doesn't seem
52:30
very unified. That's what I was talking about
52:34
earlier. Arab collaborator governments
52:39
have nothing to do with the Arab world.
52:42
They're generally merely tribes, especially in the Gulf region.
52:46
They're merely tribes that were given power by the Brits or
52:49
otherwise to take control over pieces of territory that has
52:55
riches that they wanted to exploit.
52:57
And this is precisely what they do.
52:59
So they're practically have slaves.
53:02
They just have bigger houses. That's it.
53:08
The Arab world, I believe, has made its position loud and
53:13
clear, from Algeria all the way to Lebanon to Syria, to Iraq, to
53:23
Yemen. And even if we look deep inside
53:27
Jordan and we look deep inside Egypt, we will see there is a
53:31
divide, a true divide. And there the Jordanians and the
53:35
Egyptian governments are terrified of any coup that might
53:40
happen because it will turn the tables over their heads.
53:43
The truth is that the Arab people will find their way
53:48
towards liberation and dignity because now they see that truly
53:53
US and Israel, we are not fated to live subjugated to them.
53:59
We have other options. Even if it comes at A at a high
54:04
cost, the cost is still lower than the cost of being
54:08
subjugated to them. However, you will always see a
54:10
divided people. Any revolution has had divided
54:13
people. Vietnam, South Africa, any
54:18
revolution, any liberation movement worldwide historically
54:23
has seen opposition from its own low skin and blood.
54:28
What's going on between Israel and the rest of the Arab world?
54:34
Is it a forever war? No, it is a forever war.
54:40
It has been a forever war, but every forever war ends and I
54:47
don't think the West can sustain this war much longer.
54:51
I don't think we're at war with Israel.
54:52
Had we been at war with Israel, we would have been liberated a
54:57
while back. We're at war with NATO.
55:01
We're at war with the US. We're at war with all of the
55:03
Western Project Western hegemony.
55:05
We're at war with everything that the West has created post
55:08
World War 2. That's what we're at war with.
55:15
Is it going to be a forever war? No, because one thing is true is
55:19
that this is a war of attrition for them.
55:22
For us, it's a war of dignity. And we might be able to strip
55:28
them of all their riches much faster than they can eliminate
55:32
all of us. So we'll see how long it will
55:35
last. And definitely comes at a very
55:39
high cost. And the cost is still going to
55:42
rise, I believe. But we're looking at a war that
55:46
will end because we're not going to back off.
55:52
That's the one. And I'm guessing Israel will be
55:54
the loser. Definitely, definitely.
56:00
Because if it's not, then the war is not going to end.
56:04
So yeah, it's it's the barrier state.
56:07
They were used as tools. Some Jews that joined the
56:11
Zionist movement, they're not aware of that, and now is a good
56:14
time for them to be aware of that and find their way out.
56:18
Otherwise they're stuck in a game they didn't want to play
56:22
maybe. Or they're there by choice.
56:24
And if you're there by choice, it is what it is.
56:30
A lot of people also don't quite understand that Zionism is
56:34
actually mostly driven by Christianity, not Judaism.
56:39
Yeah, the Zionist movement is mostly pushed forward by
56:42
Christian Zionists, which is hilarious really, because there
56:46
is no such thing as Christian Zionism in in from a Christian
56:52
perspective, you're either Christian or a Zionist.
56:55
They really cannot be integrated into each other.
56:59
It's impossible. And Christian Zionists has have
57:03
proved that it's impossible. These Christian Zionists are
57:07
devoid of Christianity, they're devoid of the teachings of
57:10
Christ, and they're devoid of any understanding of history or
57:14
geopolitics to say the least. Is there a future for
57:21
Christianity in the Arab world? We are in an existential crisis,
57:27
that's for sure. But I have faith that
57:31
Christians, even away from their institutional leadership, they
57:39
will rise up. They will defend their
57:41
existence. And I am even more confident
57:45
that it will be the Muslims that will defend our continued
57:50
existence in this land, despite despite some complicity from our
57:56
end and despite us choosing in a lot of places to self preserve
58:04
instead of fighting for what we believe.
58:08
What we believe is truth. Do you think that there will be
58:13
an increased need for sectarianism?
58:18
No, we are heading towards a lesser need for sectarianism and
58:24
I believe we are heading more towards the return of a new,
58:30
cleaner Arab resistance and a much more foundational Arab
58:37
identity than anyone has anticipated for now.
58:43
Yes, I mean a large portion of what you're talking about is
58:47
tightly integrated into identity.
58:51
Of course, it's mostly all integrated into identity because
58:55
we do share the common identity. And I say this very comfortably
58:58
because we are, we are an Arab world that is part of the
59:02
Islamic world. And while these two are separate
59:07
things, because the Islamic world is much wider than the
59:09
Arab world, the Islamic world and the Arab world are
59:14
foundational into each other. The Quran is in Arabic, the holy
59:19
sites are in the Arab world. Islam is the bigger sect if we
59:26
want to say that in the region, but it is not a threat to any
59:32
other sect or ethnic group. And the truth is that within the
59:39
Arab world there is no option but for us to rise in a unified
59:46
identity. Otherwise we will always be
59:48
slaves and tools for the West under hegemony.
59:53
But it it is quite nuanced. I mean you you have the axis of
59:57
resistance which is effectively 3 or 4 countries then.
1:00:01
They are part of the Levant, which is part of the sort of
1:00:04
Arab Peninsula, which is part of the Arab world, which is part of
1:00:10
the Middle East, which is part of the Islamic world.
1:00:14
That's what I said. It's it's foundational into the
1:00:17
Islamic world, but they are still separate things.
1:00:21
There is no doubt in Iran that we are Arabs and that they are
1:00:25
Persian. But there is also no doubt that
1:00:29
the Muslims here and the Muslims in Iran shared everything in
1:00:34
Islam Islamically. But there is they they, they
1:00:38
don't necessarily contradict each other.
1:00:41
Your faith and your value scale is, could be, and most in most
1:00:47
cases is separated from your language that you speak on a
1:00:51
daily basis, from the food you eat, from the lifestyle you
1:00:54
might have, in terms of the details of the lifestyle, from
1:00:58
from a lot of things that have historical ties to your national
1:01:01
identity. They don't necessarily need to
1:01:05
clash. In a lot of places.
1:01:06
Sometimes they will, but in a lot of places they don't.
1:01:10
But that's the nature of the world.
1:01:12
It's not. It doesn't come from a kind of
1:01:17
complete perfectionist point of view.
1:01:21
Well, to feed into what you've been talking about, I've got a
1:01:25
friend who is a Christian and he grew up in Saudi Arabia with his
1:01:31
family for 20 years and they went to church every week and
1:01:36
found themselves absolutely in alliance with with the Muslims.
1:01:41
And he said that he will happily go back to Saudi to to raise his
1:01:45
family there because there is a collection of values that is
1:01:50
shared and and and he doesn't find that collection of value
1:01:55
shared, for example, in the US. Yep, I completely fall in line
1:02:01
with your friend there. We, that's what I was trying to
1:02:04
say. We share a value state.
1:02:06
We truly do. We share.
1:02:11
A lot of how we see the world is truly shared between
1:02:16
Christianity and Islam. The foundation of our faiths are
1:02:20
based on love and how we understand it, dignity and how
1:02:25
we understand it, righteousness, justice in the face of
1:02:32
oppression, right? These are the foundation of our
1:02:36
faiths where while I said we we do differ in the faith itself
1:02:40
per SE. We believe that Jesus is the Son
1:02:43
of God, crucified and resurrected.
1:02:47
They do not, and that will always be a point of kind of
1:02:52
disagreement, but that does not create conflict in our
1:02:58
day-to-day life at all. But also in in the Middle East,
1:03:07
there's very little of this LGBTQ nonsense with men trying
1:03:10
to be women and women trying to be men.
1:03:12
And not not the common. Inversion of reality which?
1:03:16
Which? Which is very, very, very
1:03:18
destructive. Yeah, it does exist, more in
1:03:21
Lebanon than in any other place, but the truth is it doesn't have
1:03:27
a foundation for growth. Even within the LGBTQ community
1:03:32
here, you generally do not find leniency towards the psychotic
1:03:39
version of transgenderism or whatever 'cause now you can also
1:03:46
go from like human to animal or whatever, and you don't find
1:03:51
that welcomed even within the LGBTQ community generally in the
1:03:58
Middle East. And the structure of society
1:04:04
still maintains high values. And in doing that and
1:04:07
maintaining those high values, it comes to show that whatever
1:04:13
you do, it's the values that lead the society and not the
1:04:16
wishful thinking or the hopes or the fantasies that are leading
1:04:20
society. And it's also the needs of
1:04:22
everyone's daily life requirements that lead the
1:04:25
society and and the need to face a huge enemy that might kill you
1:04:29
at any moment. That's the complexity of the
1:04:32
life here puts you in constant face off with your values.
1:04:38
And to understand that is to understand what it means to live
1:04:45
and coexist with other faiths, not as coexistence, but as one,
1:04:52
as as a united entity in the face of such evil.
1:04:59
OK, so if we come in for a landing, Miriam, what is the
1:05:01
moral of the story? The moral of the story is that
1:05:09
our era by the entity IS is at risk.
1:05:12
It's what's being fought. Our enemy is not Islam as
1:05:18
Christians, and the Islam's enemy is not Christianity.
1:05:22
There is no Islam that that happily calls on the beheading
1:05:27
of Christians. This is takfir ISM.
1:05:30
This is British born, British race, US funded version of
1:05:37
Islam. We have nothing to do with it.
1:05:40
We are fighting it. In fact it's Muslims that are
1:05:42
fighting it more than anyone else.
1:05:46
So the moral of the story is when you look at the Arab world,
1:05:51
when you look at Islam, when you look at Christianity, when you
1:05:53
look at the region, stop looking at it in bulks and start looking
1:05:58
at it for what it is. Are Christians under threat?
1:06:02
Yes. But from who?
1:06:05
Muslims are killing Christians. What Muslims do?
1:06:09
Ask the questions. Because the war we are at today
1:06:15
is a war for our humanity. That's for our identity, our
1:06:18
culture, but mostly for the rest of the world.
1:06:20
It's a war for our humanity. Because what are you going to
1:06:23
tell your children when you say you watched a live genocide
1:06:27
unfold, millions of Arabs being killed over decades, and you
1:06:34
thought you were doing the right thing?
1:06:37
How do you explain that right? How do you absolve yourself from
1:06:41
that? OK, Miriam, how can I follow you
1:06:46
and your work? You can definitely follow me on
1:06:49
Twitter. You can follow me on sub stack.
1:06:53
On Twitter it's Miriam Miri AM 00961, and on a sub stack it's
1:07:02
Miriam Sharabadi. I hope I don't butcher your
1:07:06
name, but let me do this. Miriam Charabati, thank you for
1:07:09
joining me in the trenches. Thank you, Jeremy.
1:07:12
It's been a pleasure.