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Who says Christians and Muslims can't live together?

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 08/10/2019 18:29
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25/01/2018 09:20

In the rural Lebanon of my childhood, people of both faiths dwelt side by side and helped each other in times of conflict
Thu 30 Dec 2010 11.00 GMT

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Lebanese civilians walk inside damaged building in Yaroun village
I worship Allah and I am not a Muslim. I celebrate eid, and it is not a Muslim festival. I attended al-madrasa, but it was not a Muslim school. How might one explain what some perceive as contradictory terms? Allah, eid and madrasa are the Arabic words for God, festival and school, respectively. Therefore as an Arabic-speaking Christian these terms were part of my childhood vocabulary and so should have retained their apparent meanings. However, Allah, eid and madrasa have in recent times become associated with Islam and Muslims; they continue to be exploited and at times misused by the media.

Consequently, I have begun to feel alienated from the Arabic that was connected to my cultural upbringing. It is not unusual for a language to change and for its words to acquire different meanings over time. Nor am I the only person to feel alienated from her childhood linguistic and cultural associations. What is significant about the development of the above-mentioned terms is that their evolution seems to correlate with the decline of cross-cultural communication, religious tolerance and multi-faith communal co-habitation, ie people of different faiths living in the same community.

I grew up in a Lebanese farming village called Yarun, which was (and still is) inhabited by both Christians and Muslims. Yarun has a church and a mosque. Its patron saint is Saint George and, although I cannot tell you the name of its mosque, I can clarify that the Muslims in Yarun belong to the Shia sect. Furthermore, words such as burqa or hijab were unknown to me as a child – I only became acquainted with them in London. When Muslim Yaruni women went to al-hajj, they would wear scarves upon their return. As a child, I knew therefore that a hajji was a Muslim woman who covered her head because she had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. A Yaruni hajji was respected for what she believed and she did not show non-Muslims any hostility for not covering their heads. It was in London that I first encountered reproachful and contemptuous glances from the so-called pious Muslim women who seem to object to my uncovered and often unbound hair. Moreover, although hajj and hajji are the Arabic titles of masculine and feminine Muslim pilgrims, they are also used by Christians – some of the most devoted Christian couples in Yarun are affectionately known as hajj and hajji.

Yarun is a small village of no particular significance. It is situated on the Lebanese-Israeli border. Although Yarun dates from Phoenician times, that distant history must remain buried in its ancient rocks. In my living memory, Yarun was only mentioned once in the western media: when the village fell victim to the first systematic area bombardment by Israeli forces in July 2006. But the village's claim to fame, in my opinion, should not be Israeli bombardments: after all, these are not at all unique, since they occur on a regular basis (and often did when I lived there).

Yarun prides itself on the fact that Christians and Muslims still live side by side – even after 15 years of bloody fighting during the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). Remarkably, the Yaruni community remained steadfast during the war; no blood was shed between Muslims and Christians and the only victims of the war were either shot by Israelis or were killed outside the village. What might this suggest? It suggests that the basis of cohabitation has more to do with cultural heritage than religious beliefs or political convictions.
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