Books of mass destruction

This is only my second post and I don’t want to become tagged as a political blogger because that is certainly not who I am but the words just kept flowing so here it goes:

If I were in Tripoli last night, I would have heard screeches, thousands and thousands of distinct troubled voices screaming in a synchronized plea for help. I would have recognized a voice or two, I’m not a big expert on Arabic literature but had I been I might have recognized more authors. Yes authors, trying to escape as their books are torched in the Tripoli library. Perhaps some of them even decided to burn in the fire rather than go out to the Lebanese streets and face gunshots, bombs and the worst health hazard of all: empty political speech. 

You might ask yourself why am I overreacting to a zero casualty incident? Keep in mind that torching libraries has marked the end of some civilizations over the years. Many historians see the torching of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad by the Mongols as the start of Arab civilization’s decline. Books have always intimidated fanatics since they were the only source of information in a time where darkness prevailed and knowledge was a privilege only few could afford. Yet these events got me thinking, who would be simplistic enough nowadays to torch a library for whatever reason? Now when at the touch of a finger one can access most of what was ever written, not only that but also carry it around in one’s pocket to share with everyone.

Matter of fact is that fanatics often act out of pure instinct and aggression, some sort of animal instinct that does not obey reason or logic. I cannot put myself in their shoes and try to figure out what goes through their minds, I am a man of words and thoughts, conceivably in their world, the gun and torch could be the only tools of expression. In my world I learned to dissect foreign thoughts, challenge them, acknowledge their strengths and perhaps even eventually embrace them. That is mostly due to my high school education which was following the French curriculum and not the Lebanese one. Not being a particularly religious man has always made it difficult for me to understand how people could be so attached to opinions forged by priests and religious figures. Monotheists argue that the basis of their faith comes from holly books and words of prophets. There haven’t been any new prophets in the past millennium as far as I know. So who gives these new religious leaders the right to speak in the name of god? Their subordinates do. An even better word is subjects because it reminds me of the old monarchs in the middle ages who proclaimed themselves as god’s representatives on earth and everyone else as their subjects. Therefore while the world is advancing beyond moon conquest, we are reemploying the concept of medieval society and creating lords with absolute power, a power and legitimacy given to them by the subordinated people themselves.  

Burning your opponents to death is reminiscent of Middle Ages, not that the other practices going on in this region lately aren’t. As far as I can tell, Lebanon has always been a multicultural region, not really a melting pot since every group insists on keeping its particularities and very little change ever comes our way. We all live in proximity of each other yet we do not even share the areas, the sects have segregated to their respective quarters more than ever before. Yes the dichotomy of western Vs. eastern Beirut has thankfully faded (well officially at least) only to be replaced the many new modes of population triage. The situation is as tense as ever before and every day promises new gloomy surprises as the despotic politicians argue over oil, foreign policy and whatever new resource they can loot. What bothers me even more is how quickly all political parties rush to condemn every attack or bombings accusing the west, the east, the north and whoever, yet no one has taken a proactive role in trying to change the situation. The same tyrants have been ruling the cedar land since the 1970s and now many years later, we have to face the facts: there have been minor reconciliation campaigns that couldn’t demolish the walls of sectarianism but only reshape them into different camps. No lessons have been drawn from the country’s consecutive destruction and extremism in on the rise in all sects, the government (if there is going to be one) needs to take a proactive role in bringing it down before it is too late that is if we haven’t reached the point of no return already.   

How can we answer to extremism? We live, we educate our kids about tolerance, we read books, perhaps we should even start a project of reviving whatever was available in that Tripoli library and uploading copies onto a virtual online library for everyone to see and showcase how the books vanquished the fire of ignorance. Yet change starts from the base of the pyramid before reaching the top and we need to realize that the images of young girls and boys loading guns, screaming political slogans on TV and holding pictures of leaders is a survival warranty for our sectarian system because it will live on in them. Let us try to save the next generation the only way possible because in the war against fanatics, education is the single most effective weapon and change can come from school books.