In reaction to the tragedy on the Syrian coast, many voices have mixed regret and apology lately: We had not anticipated the force of sectarianism that was just exhibited.
Where did this disregard that defies infinite past episodes come from?
It would be unwise to ignore a lousy human tendency that disregards flatters: keep quiet about the shortcomings of our world and its flaws. It is deeply unsettling and unnerving to acknowledge that there is something deeply wrong with one’s home, family, and community. Painting a rosy picture of “our” beloved, oppressed people, on the other hand, brings peace of mind and reassurance.
However, sectarianism, in a sense, is us. It is not religion, nor is it a vice that has been deeply rooted in our society since the time of our forefathers. It is a political, and therefore cultural, relationship; both its name and dynamics are modern- albeit a relationship that is not cut off from sources of inspiration in the traditional communal loyalties of our societies. The manner in which we received modernity and built our states, politics, and the economy, have reinvigorated these loyalties, rather than leading us beyond them.
Following our inclination to disregard, militant ideologies built around antagonism reinforce this image. The colonial, Zionist, and satanic enemies must be portrayed as the ultimate negative to reinforce our certainty that we are the ultimate positive. In this positive we embody, there can be no "shameful" phenomena like sectarianism, tribalism, and the like.
Taking this equation to its conclusion, this same enemy proceeds to "plant the seeds" of flaws that prove difficult to conceal. Because it is an absolute evil and absolute enemy, it plants the seeds of division and sedition, including sectarianism, in our soil. Thus, this "scourge" becomes a consequence of our integration into the global market, capitalist "penetration,” and Ibrahim Pasha's Western-influenced reforms. Mind you, if this interpretation is true, it would follow that freezing history and suspending life are necessary for foiling the conspiracy against us.
Because this sectarianism has been portrayed as extrinsic and nascent, the result of the "enemy’s" actions, another consciousness- national, secular, or democratic- can be tasked with healing it. We can only arrive at this consciousness through conflict with the "enemy" who had sowed the seeds of our schism, and with it, of our backwardness and underdevelopment. This frame allows for downplaying the issue through defunct folklore: the Christian, Fares al-Khoury, once prayed in the Umayyad Mosque, and before him, the Druze, Sultan al-Atrash, announced a revolution against the French, while the Alawite, Saleh al-Ali, finished, on the Syrian coast, what the Kurd, Ibrahim Hanano had started in Aleppo.
But if the effort demanded of us is to awaken those luminous moments and leap an entire century in the past in order to bring these gentlemen back to the embrace of our "united people," this same "enemy," chasing us with its evils, prevents us from doing so. It comes at us with its Orientalist machines that tell us we are somewhat sectarian! To complete the picture of absolute evil, our intellectuals find something to spark their imagination in every page a Westerner writes criticizing the West, modernity, reason, and enlightenment, whose contradictions we are decades away from.
With Donald Trump portrayed as the exclusive equivalent of these meanings, only Columbia University students who insist on "decolonization" escape the curse of what the West has come to mean.
To the actions of the "enemy," which is by no means innocent, are added the actions of the "regime," which is not innocent either. But the "regime," like the "enemy," is external, it has broken with the authenticity and kindness of spirit that descended upon us from the heavens and shaped our being. Mind you, the worst thing the "regime" does is reformulate "authentic" tribal relationships through the state apparatus, its services, and its opportunities.
Behind interpreting the universe according to "the regime" (that is often portrayed as aiding and abetting the enemy, though if it pretends otherwise), lies another naive strict binary: there is the regime- the founder of shameful shortcomings- and the people or masses, its victims. This conception builds on exaggerations of our unity as a people and nation, and turns difficult future tasks, whose outcomes are not guaranteed, into comforting parts of our present. Accordingly, all we have to do is go from wiping the blood off our knives to choosing something else, "democratic,national democratic" or "secular democratic" change...
In all of this, there is almost no space for issues of our own making: the "religion of the state,religion of the head of state," and "sources of legislation." Similarly little space is left for pushing back against transnational ties, reaffirming that nations and their states alone protect the weakest communities, and subjecting ideological excess to the law, which is the only refuge of the weak. Fighting the "enemy" to our breath is nothing more than another nail in our coffin. The preeminence of a single cause undermines, if not erases, the causes of rights and freedoms. The weak, by definition, have a multiplicity of causes and are reassured only by a world with few weapons and no armed discourse. Isn't it striking, from the Levantine perspective, this overnight transition from the clamor around "Al-Aqsa Flood" to "brotherly slaughter"?
All of that- from the state’s religion to the renewal and prevalence of communal loyalties to transnational consciousness and the single cause- is totally antithetical to what is called the West and to its suggestions and we do it deluding ourselves that it completes the battle. However, to avoid being surprised again by sectarianism at least, we are supposed to look into our own conditions and ideas, as well as our contribution to strengthening this sectarianism through actions intended to stifle it.
