To the Lebanese who were posting about Black Lives Matter and how they oppose racism two days ago and are suddenly calling out Lebanese citizens of Armenian origin as ‘refugees’ and threatening to take back the nationality (like how and wtf) after yesterday’s “Ana Heik” talk show on Al Jadeed:
Let’s do a crash course in vocab and some history.
First and foremost, please do everyone a favour and stop fetishizing the Ottoman Empire. I say this as a Lebanese before as an Armenian.
It’s really not nice that we constantly have to remind you why the Martyrs’ Square in downtown Beirut is called as such or the number of Lebanese lives lost as a result of the Turkish government’s organized famine of Mount Lebanon or the forced unpaid labour enforced upon the Lebanese as the Ottomans governed the region.
But as a Lebanese of Armenian origins, the Armenian Genocide is also a part of my identity – not just history – that I cannot simply deny or erase. As you celebrate the Ottoman Sultanate, you celebrate the killing and looting of non-conforming subjects of the empire. How?
The Armenian Genocide (1915 – 1923) was the systematic and pre-planned annihilation of the Armenian people from their ancestral homeland of Armenia – what you now call eastern Anatolia in Turkey. This is when the Young Turk Government was in power in Constantinople. But the fact is that the massacres had started long before 1915. Read about Hamidian Massacres – yes, a massacre named after a Sultan. He must have been really bad, no? I mean he is known as the Red Sultan in history. Red stands for blood if you’re still not sure.
The same way Jamal Basha (Djemal Pasha) – The Ottoman military leader – earned the title of “el Saffah” (the Butcher or Bloodthirsty).
I wish it was just the Armenians that fell victim to the violence of the Ottoman Sultanate. There’s also the Syriacs, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Kurds and many other minorities of the empire.
Anyways, back to you feeling so superior about being more Lebanese and getting to decide who is Lebanese and who isn’t.
The Armenians who were forced to leave their homes in death marches – the keyword here is forced, as in they didn’t have a choice – and those who survived the concentration camps and mass killings found refuge in the Arab lands of the Empire.
Now, if you consider the Ottoman Empire (and Turkey as neo-Ottomania) as the Caliphate and the protector of Islam and this is why you religiously support the fascist agendas of Turkey you need to look back. I would say start by checking the fatwa of Sheikh al-Bishri of al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo – one of the world’s leading Islamic institutions – countering a 1909 Turkish fatwa that calls for killing Armenians. The Azhar fatwa called out such acts un-Islamic and urging Muslims to protect minorities. If that’s not enough, check the decree issued by the Sharif of Mecca in 1917, calling on Arab Muslims to protect Armenians. So cut the Islamic world bluff. Islam is a religion of peace and justice.
In his “Open Letter from a Christian Poet to the Moslems”, Gibran Kahlil Gibran summarizes it perfectly when he writes:
“I hate the Ottoman state, for I love Islam, and I hope that Islam will once again find its splendor.
What is it in the Ottoman state that so attracts you, since it has destroyed the edifices of your glory?
…Did Islamic civilization not die with the start of the Ottoman conquests?
Has the green flag not been hidden in the fog since the red flag appeared over a mass of skulls?”
Let’s carry on. The Armenians sought refuge in Syria – not Lebanon- post 1915. Fact check – Lebanon did not exist yet (please don’t go all Said Akel on me). It was in 1920 that the concept of Greater Lebanon (Dawlat Lubnan al Kabeer) was introduced and Lebanon as a political state came into being.
Moreover, it was only in January 1925 that the Lebanese citizenship law was introduced. This is long after the Armenians were already settled in Lebanon. Ya3ni, you and I became Lebanese on the same day. Let that sink in. Please stop questioning our Lebanesehood, you are making a fool of yourself.
Lastly, calling Armenians ‘refugees’. Hmm. So, let’s go over the legal term of what a refugee means.
The UNHCR describes a refugee as “someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group”.
While we are citizens of Lebanon, our grandparents were indeed refugees who left home to survive. Thank you for calling us refugees. You just accepted that we had “well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group”. Basically, you just recognized that the Armenian Genocide is fact. Thank you, habibi.
Final note, racism comes in all forms and colors. Don’t be a racist.
Bas hek.
N.B. The attached picture is that of my grandfather, Usta Levon the shoemaker, who is the only member of his family to survive the genocide and start life from scratch, (re)establishing the Avedanian dynasty here in Lebanon.
www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10161536927919815&set=a.10151267296924815&type=3&theater
