❊ Congratulations, Lebanon Now Has a “Flipflop Controversy”

This post by Angie in Now Lebanon could have simply passed as a fun “only in Lebanon” kind of story and receded into the background. In a nutshell, a Shiaa man was selling in his shop flip flops that looked like this:

Neighborhood Christians — who apparently didn’t care that this halloween flipflop was probably designed by a western Christian and built in officially atheist China — took offense at the fact that there are crosses on the shoe. So they forced the place to shut down for a couple of days until the issue was resolved.

Angie’s post itself, crafted with her usual style of deliberate kitschy sensationalism, is not what really caught my attention. It was the unusual reaction and sometimes-nasty comments by people who supported the shutting down of the place. One Christian blogger (fresh out of attending the World Catholic Youth Day) even wrote an angry 900-word post berating Angie for finding the matter ridiculous.

From the comments I read (and Elie’s post), I could detect two strands of Lebanese Christian anger that are slightly related to each other:

• The “How come only Muslims get to be overzealous in protecting their religious symbols” anger.
• This is essentially an argument about fairness: If Shiaas get to shut down TV programs that mock Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Sunnis get to burn Danish Embassy buildings in protest against Danish cartoons, surely the Christians can at least peacefully protest and shut down a peddler of goods deemed as offensive to Christians
• The “If Christians don’t stand up for their rights they will be eaten alive by Muslims” argument.
• This is a natural manifestation of the existential worry Christians are feeling in a region where Muslims are a majority. It is compounded by the rise of regional Islamism (and the resulting Christian malaise in places like Iraq and Egypt), and Lebanese developments like the large buyouts of Christian lands by Muslims, as acutely manifested in the tension in Lassa.

The anger is general, and unfortunately, it’s not going to go away. The fact that it is occasionally taken out on a Shoe seller, a Now Lebanon writer, Lady Gaga or Dan Brown should be celebrated as a simple and harmless letting off of steam. (Which, as regular readers will have noticed, is a reversal of my official stance on these things)

Thankfully, many calm heads still exist. So hopefully, if both Muslims and Christians chill out and grow thicker skins, perhaps we are not going to eye-for-an-eye each other into complete blindness.