I saw a spark beneath the ashes and I am afraid it will soon become a blazing inferno." These are the immortal words of one Nasr Bin Sayyar, a famous Arab poet and a governor during the Umayyad state.
Few years before the Umayyad dynasty crumbled before the onslaught of the Abbasid army in 750 AD, Bin Sayyar had written those words, part of what became one of his most famous poems, to the Caliph Marwan II to warn of the growing discontent of the people and the rise of the opposition's strength.
Marwan ignored the warning and all the other signs. But he surely must have remembered those cleverly said words of Bin Sayyar when the Abbasid commander led him to the gallows.
Looking around the Arab world today, one can almost hear Bin Sayyar sounding the alarm again. One can almost hear those famous words again reverberate from Lebanon on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to the western shores of the Arabian Gulf.
In tiny and beautiful Lebanon, the people continue to watch — much like apathetic spectators of an absurd play — their leaders fight again; this time over the soon to be issued indictment in the Rafik Hariri assassination probe.
Lebanese leaders are famous for brinkmanship politics. But this time the country sits on a powder keg. Are we on to another dirty civil conflict? Quite possibly. But the difference this time is that it will drag down the entire Arab region with it.
The current Lebanese crisis, which is expected to escalate as we approach the end of the year, revolves around the so-called ‘bogus witnesses' — a group of people whose testimonies on the assassination of the former prime minister were the basis of a number of reports on the findings of the United Nations Special Investigation Commission.
The UN Special Tribunal is widely believed to have already determined that Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite group, was behind the murder of Hariri, who was the most powerful Sunni leader.
Hariri's party, led now by his son and present Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri, is determined to go ahead with the UN court saying Lebanon, and Hezbollah in particular, must accept the decision of the court. It has full praise for the ‘integrity and neutrality' of the court and its prosecutors.
Hezbollah, on the other hand, says the court is "an American-Israeli ploy" to discredit the group. Group officials have warned that the court decision will only lead to a "sectarian war" in the tiny country, infamous for the uneasy and often troublesome co-existence of 18 Muslim and Christian sects.
A spokesman for the younger Hariri warned Hezbollah against "igniting this sectarian war which nobody knows where it will lead." In Lebanon, it seems, they take the term ‘sectarian war' lightly. It is sort of part of everyday conversation, more like talking about the weather in some other places.
Missing the point
The smart and very young Hariri spokesman, a boyish looking member of parliament by the name of Oqab Saqr, might honestly not know where the ‘sectarian war' would lead to. But many others, older and wiser, certainly do. And this is exactly the point.
Lebanon is nothing but a mirror of the sectarian cold war that has been raging in the region for quite some years. Inexperienced politicians and intellectuals-for-hire have been refuelling this raging blaze. It is doubtful that many of them have even heard of Nasr Bin Sayyar. Otherwise, they would have realised that the region in 2010 has passed the stage of little ‘spark' beneath the ashes which scared Bin Sayyar so much. We are actually two inches away from ‘the inferno'.
In the last few years, many have written about the ‘sectarianism' that engulfs the Arab world. And many have warned of the dangerous impact of turning every political clash into a sectarian confrontation. Too many signs have been cited and too many warnings cried to the point they have just become tedious.
Those warnings, some of which were issued by governments and heads of states, no longer deter firebrand Friday preachers, provocative religious satellite channels, or politicians who thrive on religious division, from pouring oil on the fire. Some of the Friday sermons and TV talk shows sound like they have been taken from the hate-filled speeches of the early crusaders.
A crazy little Kuwaiti cleric, living in the UK, almost sparked riots in Kuwait last month when he abused Ayesha, the wife of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). The government had to step in and revoke his citizenship to stop the protests and street rallies.
Ironically, these hate-mongers are getting stronger and have more followers.
On the other hand, governments in the region are so weak and gutless they cannot stand in the face of the fundamentalist tide, from both sides of the sectarian spectrum — a tide which doesn't recognise the right of the ‘different other' to live, breath the same air, or even walk on the same pavement.
Saqr, the naïve Hariri spokesman, has the right to wonder about the results of a sectarian conflict. He doesn't know that that conflict has already reached "the others".
One only has to look at the map of the Arab world to realise how many states will be engulfed by ‘the inferno'. Only few countries will probably be spared.
Saqr can browse quickly though the Arab news websites and discussion forums to see that Bin Sayyar's ‘spark' has grown into a full-fledged fire in more than one state.
In the last few decades, the Arabs were counting on civil society groups to stand up to the onslaught of political Islam. Those groups, a mixture of liberal, old leftist and religious moderates have proved that they are also spineless and disorganised and lack the stamina and the guts to stand up for what they think is right. Secular forces have been defeated. Period. I pity those who still think there is hope for a secular society ruled by civil law in the Arab world.
Should we then just surrender and wait for some commander to lead us to the gallows? Certainly not. There is a glimmer of hope the sectarian war might be checked. That hope lies in the ability and willingness of two powerful players who have yet to play their natural roles — official regimes and the influential business community.
The business elite should realise they will be the first victim of an all-out conflict in the region. Investments will be wiped out. We might as well kiss any hope of economic growth goodbye. The business community must pressure governments to stop as quickly as possible the current absurdity. The regimes on the other hand need to do more than ‘advise' and ‘warn'.
Policy-makers need to take a decision to stop this sectarian nonsense. Some of those governments must also break their tacit alliance with the religious current.
Both groups, the business community and policy-makers, cannot afford to sit this fight out. They have to move now. The ‘inferno' is travelling fast. And Lebanon is just the first station.
