Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East: The Case of Lebanon

http://www.youtube.com/p/D141E8114DC5A8FA?hl=sv_SE&fs=1

Dr. Franck Salameh, assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies at Boston College, talks about his book. The book proposes a new reading of modern Middle Eastern history and suggests alternate solutions to the region’s problems. The book is an attempt to rehabilitate and bring back to the fore of Middle East Studies the issue of language as a key factor in shaping (and misshaping) the region, with the hope of rediscovering a broader, more honest, and less ideologically tainted discussion on the Middle East. Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East has a special focus on Lebanon, because Lebanon has traditionally acted as the region’s template for change and a barometer gauging its problems and charting its progress.

Dr. Antoine Emile Khoury Harb: Lebanon, A Name Through 4000 Years

From the Daily Star, February 2004

Dr. Antoine Emile Khoury Harb, ph.D in history and archaeology, secretary general of the Fondation du Patrimoine Libanais, is an authority in the history of the Lebanese people and patrimony. In 2000 he published his doctoral thesis, a research aiming to verify that there is such an entity as Lebanon and to define it, in Arabic. Recently, thanks to the initiative of the AUB Alumni Association in the US, the book has been translated into an English edition: “Lebanon, A Name Through 4000 Years: Entity and Identity”. The Association had seen with desolation the US government questioning Lebanon’s identity and right to its territory, and saw in the book a highly important document to set things straight. Five hundred copies of the English edition were mailed to US congressmen this New Year as a proof that Lebanon is hardly the “geographic mistake” Kissinger claimed it to be.

Undaunted by the torrential rains, a handful of history lovers made it to the Convent of the Franciscaines in Badaro on February 16 to listen to Harb presenting an overview of the material of his book.

Free Lebanon and Eternity

By: Dr. Charles Malik

From Charles Malik’s book “ Lebanon In Itself “ Translated from Arabic by Dr. George Sabra and Revised by Kenneth Mortimer (The Murex Series By Notre Dame University, Louaize, Lebanon.)

When Lebanon labored in the United Nations to establish the dignity, rights and basic freedoms of the human being in the unique and magnificent formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the depths of Lebanese being spoke through the mouths of its representatives. The story of that labor has not yet been written; in its existential hidden aspects and secrets it will never be written.The Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins as follows: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…”

And Article One states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

The truth is that without that dignity and those rights, without that freedom and brotherhood, without that reason and conscience, Lebanon would not have been, and it would not have been able to live and endure in defiance of the ages and epochs.

That is what we have many times said, declared and recorded before the whole world, and what we have, finally, worked to incorporate in those texts. I assure you that the annual world celebration on December 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a celebration of Lebanon Day. The whole world knows Lebanon’s contribution; it testifies to it on that day, but, alas, we have not yet put it at the forefront of our official national holidays!