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Lebanon backs Hezbollah against Israel.
Lebanon’s prime minister voiced concern Wednesday about “escalating” Israeli war threats, and said his government will support the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah if a new war breaks out with the Jewish state.
Saad Hariri’s comments come amid heightened tensions in the Middle East following some of the sharpest exchanges in years between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
Responses in the national medias of countries that are on the new list of states whose citizens will receive heightened security attention entering the US in the wake of the Flight 253 attack.
In forcing the administration to be reactive and blindly discriminatory in the aftermath of the bombing attempt, Al Qaeda may have scored an even more significant ideological victory than would have been afforded by an attack on a plane.
[Quoting an American analyst] “The vast majority of the Lebanese have nothing, and want nothing, to do with terrorism. And we should want them and welcome them here in the United States,” he said.
The extra check means, he said [Abdul Rahman Al-Zamil, president of the Riyadh-based Export Development Center], Saudi companies would not be able to send their executives and representatives to the US easily.
“No doubt, the new measures will also affect delegations that play a big role in boosting trade ties,” he said.
Al-Zamil said most countries would avoid participation in exhibitions or conferences in the US in order to avoid a possibility of their officials and representatives being harassed and getting into trouble in the US.
“This measure is going to affect major projects in the Kingdom, as some products related to these projects are being manufactured in the US and engineers from Saudi Arabia have to go there to inspect them. Importing these products from other countries will affect the standards set by the projects,” he pointed out.
Top 10 good news stories from the Muslim world in the last year, according to Juan Cole.
10. Saudi Arabia opened its first coeducational college campus, the King Abdullah Science and Technology University.
9. Qatar is on track to average 7.5 percent per annum growth for the next few years.
8. A Pew Forum on Religion and Life poll finds that American Muslims are unusual in the degree to which they are integrated into mainstream American society and demonstrate moderate attitudes, condemning religious extremism and violence.
7. The information revolution is making strides in the Arab world.
6. Albania has averaged 10 percent a year growth for each of the last four years, and was the fastest-growing economy in Europe in 2009.
5. The small Gulf oil monarchy of Kuwait took steps toward greater democracy and rule of law.
4. Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world at about 230 mn., had successful parliamentary elections in 2009, further consolidating the country’s decade-old democracy.
3. Turkey, which averaged 5.8 percent a year economic growth between 2002 and 2008, was slowed but not devastated by the world’s financial crisis.
2. Stability returned to Lebanon.
1. The greatest political awakening in Iran for 30 years.
For the first time in Lebanon, a woman has been allowed to open a bank account.
The change in banking policy that now allows women to open accounts comes after an advocacy campaign led by the Institute of Progressive Women and other groups.
As’ad Abu Khalil gives a thumbnail sketch of Hizbullah’s new “Political Document” from a leftist perspective.
Two stories about Hezbollah.
Hezbollah publishes new manifesto that tones down Islamist doctrine and goals, drops demand for an Islamic republic in Lebanon.
Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who read the new “political document” at a news conference, said it was time the group introduced pragmatic changes without dropping its commitment to an Islamist ideology tied to the clerical establishment in Iran.
“People evolve. The whole world changed over the past 24 years. Lebanon changed. The world order changed,” he said via a video link.
Hezbollah promotes mutaa marriage, even for virgins and women who have never married.
Hezbollah’s recent encouragement of this phenomenon highlights the compromises it had been required to make in order to remain the preeminent force among its domestic Shiite constituency. As the party gained strength due to its effectiveness in fighting Israel, it was forced to cope with the reality that many Lebanese Shiites did not share the Iranian-inspired religious beliefs of Hezbollah’s leaders. They came to dominate a community that was shaped by the secular leftist trends of the 1970s and 1980s, and the cosmopolitan culture embodied by Beirut.
Lebanon’s Shiite clans seek end to some old traditions.
It started with a small traffic incident and ended in yet another murderous showdown in the age-old vendetta wars between the powerful Shiite Muslim clans who rule Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley.
But unlike past feuds, this time clan elders and the militant group Hezbollah stepped in to defuse tensions, handing over to authorities the suspect accused of murdering a rival clan member and agreeing on a pact to end the revenge killings.
The “gentleman’s agreement”, drawn up earlier this month, marked a first step in clan efforts to do away with their reputation as outlaws who have long ruled supreme in the remote arid plain of the northern Bekaa, a Hezbollah stronghold traditionally ignored by successive Lebanese governments.
“Our customs date to pre-Islamic times and dictate that each family is responsible for the security of its members,” said Moflih Allaw, a member of one of the most powerful clans in Hermel and whose relative was involved in the recent killing.
“If someone from a clan was murdered, a member of the opposing clan had to die and that was part of our tradition,” added Allaw, 67, a local councillor in Hermel who helped formulate the recent pact.
An interview with Osman Bakhach, a deputy chairman of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Lebanon. The reporter is Mahan Abedin.
MA: But surely you can’t deny the fact that the Americans wish nothing but ill-will towards Hezbollah. They would like nothing better than to see the group disarmed and, better still, disbanded altogether.
OB: The Americans will have no problem in disarming Hezbollah when the group’s mission expires. For now and until further notice, Hezbollah is a useful instrument in the hands of the Iranian and Syrian regimes and ultimately the Americans’ requirement to balance Israeli hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East.
If a lethal high-tech, spare-no-expense modern military could disarm Hezbollah, the Israelis would have already done so. I was also surprised to see the assertion – one that had not occurred to me – that America is seeking ‘balance’ and perhaps containment of Israel, rather than being assumed complicit in expansionist Israeli projects.
Women in Lebanon are campaigning to take domestic violence cases out of religious courts.
As lawmakers struggle to form a government three months after Lebanon’s parliamentary elections, women’s rights activists await the opening of parliament to debate a new bill on domestic violence.
In Lebanon’s multi-confessional democratic system, cases of domestic violence are ruled on in one the country’s 15 religious courts, or family courts.
The new bill proposes to take domestic violence out of the (mainly Christian and Muslim) religious courts and into the civil system and will cut across confessional lines.
(via)
Lebanese claim UAE tourists are ‘Jihadi’ terrorists.
After a discussion of a conspiracy theory that Iranian agents in Lebanon are attempting to undo good relations between the two countries, comes this:
Lebanese security agencies recently carried out a census of Gulf nationals who came to Lebanon.
Most of the Gulf tourists who arrived in Lebanon during the summer were granted six-month visas instead of three-month permits because the month of Ramadan and Eid Al-Fitr, so most still have valid entry permits.
It is estimated that some 700 UAE nationals entered Lebanon during the summer months and have not left.
The news reports said that some of these radical movements were affiliated with Al-Qa’ida and wanted to turn Lebanon into a new launching pad for the rest of the region, and especially for Iraq.
There are several “lost” nationals who are thought to be dispersed in several locations in Lebanon, including in Palestinian refugee camps such as Ein Al-Hilweh, Al-Burj A-Shimali, Mieh Mieh and Al-Buss.
I can imagine the Lebanese are on heightened alert after Al Qaeda’s rocket attack into Israel last month.
Brazilian samba troupe offends Muslim sensitivities say a group of Lebanese scholars.
The Brazilian troupe has been performing throughout Lebanon since September 23 as part of a festival and planned a final performance in Tyre on Thursday evening.
Roberto Medeiros, ministerial adviser and cultural attache at the Brazilian embassy in Beirut, told AFP that measures had been taken to respect the sensitivities of the mainly Muslim population in Tyre, including having the dancers cover their bodies rather than perform in skimpy clothes.
“We met with the local authorities and informed them that the dancers would dress respectfully with all their bodies covered,” Medeiros said.
Yassin, however, said he had been shown photographs of the costumes and still deemed them inappropriate.
“We fear that once they start dancing nude in the streets, there will be trouble,” Yassin added. “Our society will not accept such a parade.”
Al Qaeda-linked group claims responsibility for launching two rockets into Israel.
A militant group claiming links to al-Qaeda said on Monday it was behind the firing of rockets into northern Israel last week.
….The statement was signed by the Ziad al-Jarrah division of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades and the posting’s headline linked the group to Sunni Muslim militant network al-Qaeda.
Ziad al-Jarrah, a Lebanese militant, was one of the group of 19 who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001 in the United States. Abdullah Azzam was a preacher close to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
Reminds me of a bit of analysis that Rob at Arabic Media Shack produced last Fall:
Some readers are probably thinking WTF are you talking about? Israel wants a strong Hezbollah? Yes, because if the Party of God’s military capabilities were to collapse, then Israel will be faced with an even more fanatical enemy who is literally dying to “get some.” Unlike Hezbollah who has to balance their desire to fight with other domestic political considerations, the Salafis answer to no one but God. They don’t care if half of Lebanon gets destroyed in the process because those people are all infidels anyway in the Salafi mindset.
And that’s why Lebanon wants a strong Hezbollah.
Land grabs in eastern Lebanon: Heavily armed Syrian farmers have been encroaching on and stealing Lebanese land, according to Lebanese villagers.
The root of the problem lies in the fact that Lebanon and Syria have not begun demarcating the border on the ground. The two countries agreed in August 2008 to take formal steps to demarcate their shared borders as part of a series of decisions to normalize relations between them.
But so far nothing has been done in that direction. The border itself is a product of the 1920 French Mandate, which established Greater Lebanon; it follows the peaks of the Ante-Lebanon range and separates fertile Lebanese land from the more desert-like Syrian territory.
In 1976, after Syria’s military invaded Lebanon, Syrian farmers followed suit, taking fertile Lebanese land with the protection of the troops sent by Damascus. Although the Syrians left Lebanon in 2005, their farmers kept the land and are continuously expanding into Lebanon, the Arsal treasurer says.
A new book presents stories from Lebanon’s lesbian and transgender community. Excerpts here.
Lebanon enjoys a relative degree of sexual tolerance and freedom compared to the rest of the Middle East, but when two gay men were beaten up by police in broad daylight and nobody said or did anything to stop it, Beirut’s gays and lesbians decided to stand up. Last week, more than 200 gay and lesbian Lebanese gathered in peaceful protest of the police beating, as well as protesting Article 534 of the Penal Code, which condemns “unnatural sexual intercourse”, marking the first ever gay protest in the Arab world, according to organizers.
More here.
Christopher Hitchens is beaten up in Beirut.
USAID is being used to fund a project by a ‘bin Laden supporter’ in northern Lebanon.
Three rockets fired across border into Northern Israel. Probably a local commander coming unglued over the outrage in Gaza.
What a week! This week on MMW, we get riled up about how Samira Laouni is treated in the press, tsk-tsk over shame cartoons, profile a new Lebanese LGBTQ magazine, read some great Malaysian literature, pick apart Everywoman’s headscarf fashion, wonder what M.I.A. is doing with her fashion line, cover the Iraqi cartoon controversy, and trot out yet another link parade.
Aziz noted the blogging rabbi who was demanding (Shi’i) Muslims denounce some kind of memorial to an assassinated member of Hizbollah.
I think Arabic Media Shack pretty much kills the rabbi’s complaint.
Muslim Americans are invited to denounce yet another bad thing. I decline.
Huh? Israeli government feigns ignorance of cluster bomb use in the Lebanon War?
(via Sleeper Cell.)