The Big Lie

Stop the hypocrisy. Lebanon is a terrible place for the free word.

My mother, a fan of May Chidiac, told me this today: “We Lebanese are used to the freedom of expression. This is why it’s impossible that the perpetrator be Lebanese”. This is a very common misconception. In fact, our politicians brag all of the time that Lebanon takes pride in its freedom of expression, and that (this is my favorite), the Lebanese will not be afraid of freely expressing their opinions.

To listen to all these people talk, you’d think that boldness and free speech is in the Lebanese DNA. With all due respect to all of us, it is not.

Take a look at our Lebanese Blogosphere. For those of you who don’t know what that means, it is the collection of all the blogs that have to do with Lebanon and the Lebanese people. You can find a nice summary of them here. See if you can find a single blogger who proudly wears his/her full name. Hardly any.

Why is it so? It’s because we DON’T have freedom in our DNA. What we really have is FEAR. The Reporters Without Borders can be “deeply shocked” at May Chidiac’s fate. The Lebanese on the other hand are upset, very upset, but they’re not “deeply shocked”. When I first put up my picture here on my profile, my friends and colleagues were “deeply shocked”. “Are you insane?” seemed to be their instinctive reaction.
It’s part of being Lebanese and it’s not only about politics. This lady writes mostly about social issues, but just because she’s a bit “open minded”, she thought it would be better to hide her identity. It doesn’t matter that she lives thousands of miles away from Lebanon, it’s just the way things are. Another Lebanese Blogger from the same list hides his identity because of his sexual orientation.

This is Lebanon, the country that banned “The Davinci Code”, the country where you could be arrested for “devil worshiping” if you were listening to Muse, the country that shutdown a TV station, the country where religious figures are sacrosanct, the country where journalists die if they side a bit out of the conventional.

Lebanon is a great and beautiful country, but we have a very long way to go before we understand the true meaning of free speech.