This post is dedicated to you
Pierre Gemayel’s assassination was not a surprise. Along with what I said before we are the least moral of all which again come at no surprise.
Let me start with the law. Unlike the Webster definition of law, comes the Arabic word “Qanoun” law, which to my knowledge doesn’t have an Arabic root, unfortunately the word Qanoun is greatly misinterpreted because of its alien nature to the language and recent introduction to our Arabic vocabulary, similarly you wouldn’t find a unified consensus about the definition of the word democracy. Alqathafy the Libyan leader once said democracy means remaining in your seats ”deemo al-karasi”, a metaphor that means remain in authority. Ironically Qanoun is also a musical instrument, which adds to the flavor of misinterpretation. Qanoun “قانون” is not an Arabic word and that’s why we don’t really know how it’s supposed to be worked. That’s why we sometimes permit our self to override the law and find it morally justifiable to do so, in a utilitarian sense most of the time, however I don’t think Arabs have the disciplines to impose it on their own before others. That’s only a simple dimension of the problem.
I could have lost you my reader by now but that’s ok. Not to worry, all I wanted to say in a nutshell is that Qanoun is not an Arabic word and that is why we have a problem with it.
The problem seems that we don’t appear to understand that the law is a written promise of some sort. Now, according to wiki’s definition of hypocrisy “Hypocrisy is the act of pretending or claiming to have beliefs, feelings, morals or virtues that one does not truly possess or practice.” Isn’t our law hypocritical? Thank god Arabs know what hypocrisy is, that’s because we have a root word for it, not an imported Latin term like “hypocrisis ” or something that could be translated into Arabic and may sound like a meaningless Arabic word “Hibouqratiya” “هيبوقراطية” luckily we have Munafiq “منافق” for hypocrite.
A law that states justice and equality yet discriminates between citizens is just clear hypocrisy.
2 comments:
I was not suprised by what happened to Pierre, nor do I hold any type of feelings towards him personally..and I'm being honest here
I'm condemning the act itself..I'm fearing that in Lebanon; they're getting so used to wars that they can't deal with being at peace!?!
..still I can't point fingers, whether Syria is the reason or not, I still see them struggling in proving to be a unified lebanon.
some of the things you mentioned in your post about hypocrisy is so true.. but isn't politics hypocritical? we're all hypocrits, arabs and non! it's just a given!
have you seen Fahrenheit 9/11?
The states is the world's leader in Hypocrisy.
they say something and do another..exactly like Arabs.. the only difference is that their not as stupidly obvious as arabs are.
and that is... my friend... what I think :)
peace.
This is really fascinating. Linguisitcs say that words evolve to serve specific cultural values.
I did't know that the word "law" didn't have Arabic origins.. although it makes sense. In general what always comes up in our early Arabic and Islamic written traditions is the concept of "justice" rather than "rule of law". Our justice is fundamentally different from western justice is that its based on a person, whereas the western justice is based on a written code. Our literature always talks about the "just ruler", the "just king", the "just tribal chief" who simply know what's right or wrong. I'd say it's our cult of personality that delays us from devloping our writtern-law based systems.. perhaps.
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