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The global expansion of communication and information offers boundless access to a world that has moved beyond its medieval witch hunts. Lebanon must now choose: embrace this forward march, or keep watching its people turn away from a country they no longer recognize as their own.
In 1915, in the aftermath of the great genocide of Eastern Christians, Jamal Pasha introduced the concept of the enemy—an invention that proved devastatingly effective in silencing free thought, and with it, existence itself. If, as René Descartes wrote, “I think, therefore I am,” then erasing our existence first required stopping our ability to think.
Ottoman Justice
The pasha entrusted with what were then called the Armenian and Lebanese “problems” declared France the enemy above all else. Anyone caught cooperating with this enemy faced trial before a military court in Aley. This court, whose authority extended to civilians, became a source of widespread fear. Because many Christians attended French-language schools, they were automatically suspected of collaboration.
Unable to find clear evidence of intelligence with the enemy, the pasha broadened his definition to include any contact. Even the slightest innocent correspondence bearing a French address could lead to arrest and brutal interrogation. The Aley tribunal became infamous as a place from which no one ever returned. Simply mentioning the name of France struck fear into people’s hearts. No one wanted any connection—even to a friend or relative—accused of contact with this terrifying enemy.
Having proven its effectiveness, this tool of intellectual terror was adopted by Baathist, leftist, Arab nationalist, Nasserist, and Islamist regimes to enforce their oppressive rule. No method proved more cunning at isolating the population from the outside world—and at instilling fear under the guise of law, justice, and legality.
Intellectual Terrorism
Faced with a shortage of collaboration cases, security services shifted their focus to charges of contact with the enemy. To intimidate smaller targets, they made examples of prominent figures. In 2022, Hezbollah-affiliated forces targeted the Maronite Archbishop of Haifa and the Holy Land —echoing Jamal Pasha’s 1915 execution of Archbishop Youssef Hayek on similar charges.
A simple photograph of a 20-year-old woman posing alongside a young Israeli in a beauty contest was enough to terrorize her, her family, and her entire community. But once the threat became clear, everyone learned how to evade the inevitable. It was then that the witch hunters’ cunning reached new heights. After targeting intelligence (al ta‘amol) and contact (al tawasul), they invented a new charge: empathy (al ta‘atuf).
This tactic is the most Machiavellian of all—it no longer targets actions or communication but simply feelings. When people can be judged for what they feel, the only way to protect themselves is to stop feeling altogether—and, by extension, to stop reflecting... to stop thinking. This threat makes it clear that only our biological presence is tolerated, completely stripped of any cultural or identity dimension.
The Illusion of Secularism
Islamists claim tolerance toward the People of the Book, and Arab nationalists assert their secularism. They accept the Christian faith and its religious practices—so long as these carry no cultural or identity markers and, above all, involve no distinct political beliefs.
Yet after marginalizing Christians’ history, language, and cultural ties, messianic Islamism (Hezbollah) and secular Arab nationalism have turned their sights on Christian doctrine and spirituality. They pressure Christians to adopt ideas that contradict their core values and the very essence of a faith rooted in absolute love.
In the New Testament, the enemy is mentioned solely to subvert the very logic of aggression. Christianity is a radical call to love and a transcendence of violence.
As we read in the Gospel according to Matthew: “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you” (Matthew 5:44–45). Similarly, in the Gospel of Luke: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27–28). And in the words of Saint Paul: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink” (Romans 12:20).
When the language of violence does appear in the New Testament—as it does, rarely, in Luke 19:27—it is symbolic, found in parables or apocalyptic imagery. In this instance, it is the parable of the king. It is not a command, but a narrative illustrating eschatological judgment—not a call to human violence.
Acculturation
A long process of acculturation has brought us to the point where we routinely denounce those labeled as enemies. “To liquidate a people,” wrote Milan Kundera, “you begin by destroying their books, their culture, their history.” By erasing memory, language, and cultural reference points, foreign concepts can be introduced—and even adopted—despite being fundamentally incompatible. As George Orwell warned, “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
The choice of words is crucial. “Make them swallow the word, and you’ll make them swallow the thing,” Vladimir Ilyich Lenin once said. By endlessly repeating the same empty, meaningless phrases, people eventually begin echoing them unconsciously. As Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda in the Third Reich, famously said, “If you tell a lie long enough and keep repeating it, it becomes truth.”
Television journalists and social media hosts relentlessly echo the word “enemy,” along with its savage and brutal labels, casting probing looks at their guests—ready to strike if they don’t join in the tirade of this medieval rhetoric. Their judgment seems numb or poisoned, as Victor Klemperer described in his study of Nazi propaganda, likening words to tiny doses of arsenic.
The Worldview
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world,” wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1922. It is precisely on language that the ideologues of messianic Islamism and secular Arabism have concentrated their efforts—for it is through language that social reference points are shaped. “Language is a guide to social reality,” observed Edward Sapir. And as Benjamin Lee Whorf noted, one cannot overlook the connection between habitual thought, behavior, and language.
French culture, along with Lebanon’s Francophone and Anglophone schools and media, has provided a degree of freedom from the official discourse and its carefully engineered vocabulary. As Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote, the diversity of languages is not merely a diversity of sounds and signs, but a diversity of worldviews.
Our ancient Syriac texts reveal a view of history—and of the world—that stands in profound opposition to the narratives crafted by 20th-century propaganda. But how many still know the language? And among them, how many dare to speak their minds?
This is where the global expansion of communication and information comes into play, opening wide access to a world that has moved beyond its medieval witch hunts. Lebanon must now choose: embrace this evolution, or keep watching its people turn away from a country they no longer recognize as their own.
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