A temple of fear
This David Ignatius column, Breaking The Assassins, is well worth reading.
What is this struggle about? Listen to some Arab voices. Yesterday the front page of the Beirut daily An Nahar carried an open letter from the Syrian-born Lebanese poet known as “Adonis,” perhaps the most famous writer in the Arab world. It was written to the paper’s celebrated editor, Ghassan Tueni, whose outspoken son Gebran had been murdered the previous day by a car bomb. “We are witnessing the destruction of the soul and the spirit,” wrote the poet, whose real name is Ali Ahmed Said. The people who killed Gebran want to create “a temple of fear.”
The headline atop the newspaper’s front page said this: “Gebran didn’t die and an-Nahar will continue.” For a paper that had already lost its fearless columnist Samir Kassir to a car bomb in June, it was a defiant statement to the assassins: Kill us all. We aren’t going to stop publishing the truth.
It is amazing to me that with examples like this of pure courage in the Arab world, some people remain totally dismissive of the possibility that democracy can succeed in places like Iraq, Lebannon and the greater middle east.
I don’t deny that it will be a struggle. Certainly there is a chance that our hopes for the region will fail. Even so, with people like these willing to sacrifice everything for freedom I have to conclude that the possibility, perhaps even the liklihood, of success is very real. And I know whose side I want to be on, in my small and limited fashion.
I will almost certainly never have to face such a situation. The least I can do is honor those who stand up against fear and for freedom.
