Dear Editor,
Being a Lebanese whose father was a Moslem and mother a Christian, I feel I can express a few ideas in relation to Mr Saab's article in Forum's December issue.
I cannot explain how Mr Saab states so positively that "Arab nationalism had to have recourse to the most retrograde . . . instrument: Islam." It is unbecoming, to say the least, to call Islam, which is a great religion with a tremendous mystical literature and a great history, "retrograde" because some Moslems might be retrograde. Would Mr Saab accept the accusation that Christianity is backward because some Christians are fanatics? Nowadays, with the free world adopting more and more socialistic measures, the only absolute difference between the communists and us is religion.
When Mr Saab states "that our immediate survival depends on the eternal duel between Baghdad and Cairo," is he aware that any lasting conflict between the Arab states will only harm all of us and eventually serve only Israel's expansion?
It does not take "a selection of eight or ten thinkers at a maximum" to save Lebanon, or any other country. There were thousands of them in France who rather helped the country to sink until De Gaulle put some order in the house. And De Gaulle did not turn French Catholics against French Protestants, or did not rely on any "eternal conflict." He spoke of the unity of France, even if France has been composed of Basques, Spaniards, Corsican Italians, Germans of the Frankish invasions, Latins of Julius Caesar and all the immigrants who keep pouring in.
It is not Emmanuel Mounier who is going to save us, although he may be able to influence us for the best. But Mounier takes off from problems or situations which are typically French. If we want to be saved, spiritually as well as materially, we have to find solutions which answer our specifically Middle Eastern situation. And the only inspiration I see is in the message of Love, given by Christ, and the spirit of Charity and Tolerance which characterizes Islam.
ETHEL [sic] ADNAN
Instructor in French and the Humanities
Dominican College
San Rafael, California.
Middle East Forum 36:2 (February 1960). Adnan is responding to a deeply chauvinistic article by Edouard Saab "Lebanon and the UAE-Iraq Conflict," Middle East Forum 35:10 (December 1959), 15-17.
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