{"id":1952,"date":"2020-01-12T13:08:49","date_gmt":"2020-01-12T17:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/?p=1952"},"modified":"2020-01-12T13:19:10","modified_gmt":"2020-01-12T17:19:10","slug":"since-when-does-god-need-a-political-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/2020\/01\/12\/since-when-does-god-need-a-political-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Since when does God need a political party?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

P.S: This post was written by Bambi on Tuesday, November 19, 2019 before\na trip to the Middle East and before the latest development in the area. As she\ngot too busy, she did not have the time to post it. Thus, it is only being posted\nnow as it is, that is without any editing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The post begins below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few weeks ago, Bambi came across a picture from the South border of Lebanon, similar to the one below. Next to the Lebanese beautiful flag (that looks like the Canadian flag to a great extent), we can see the yellow flag of the Hezbollah party:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
From the Washington Pos<\/em>t (an older picture)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Why is that still the case, even after 19-20 years since the end of a\n20-year-Israeli occupation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any sovereign country, the only flag that tourists, migrants, and\/or\nenemies should see must be the official flag of a country. The latter usually\nhas a single army.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bambi is not an expert of Lebanese political parties. She knows that there\nare too many of them, from the left to the right wings. There are even some\nparties that have an ecological platform, including a green party. Nevertheless,\nthere are two of them that are the strongest (Hezbollah and one allied to it)\nand maybe a third closed to the Hezbollah as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To come back to the yellow flag of the Hezbollah, the latter literally means\n\u201cGod\u2019s party<\/em>\u201d. Do you see the irony that Bambi sees? In her mind, God is\nall about love, forgiveness, kindness, and peace. It is surely not about rifles\nand weapons. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even resistances, they do not have to take a violent form all the time and\nendlessly. They can take all sorts of forms, from poetry to arts, from pacific\nactions to deep reflections. We have all resisted in our own ways to this or\nthat injustice. We even resist to collective stupidity sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyhow to come back to the Hezbollah flag, a Wikipedia page describes it as follows: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe first letter of \u201cAllah\u201d reaches up to grasp an\nassault rifle, which has elements of the H&K G3 battle rifle and the AK-47\nassault rifle combined. The logo also incorporates several items, includingy a\nglobe, a book, a sword, and a seven-leafed branch. The text above the logo\nreads \u0641\u0625\u0646 \u062d\u0632\u0628 \u0627\u0644\u0644\u0647 \u0647\u0645 \u0627\u0644\u063a\u0627\u0644\u0628\u0648\u0646 fa-inna \u1e25izbu ll\u0101h hum al-\u0121\u0101lib\u016bn<\/em>) and\nmeans \u201cThen surely the party of God are they that shall be triumphant\u201d (taken\nfrom the Quran), which is a reference to the name of the party. Underneath the\nlogo are the words \u0627\u0644\u0645\u0642\u0627\u0648\u0645\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u0625\u0633\u0644\u0627\u0645\u064a\u0629 \u0641\u064a \u0644\u0628\u0646\u0627\u0646 al-muq\u0101wamah al-isl\u0101m\u012byah f\u012b\nlubn\u0101n<\/em>, meaning \u201cThe Islamic Resistance in Lebanon\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wikipedia page continues: \u201cThe flag was designed\nby Mr. Ali Salih who is an artist from Brital, with the assistance of Mr. Abdul\nar-Rahman Mazl\u016bm from the same village. The flag has some similarity with the\nemblem of Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two questions beg each other here: 1. Who said that God needs a party, a\nheavily armed one on top of that? And 2. Why would a so-called resistance have\nto be just Muslim or\u2026rather Islamic? How about Lebanese for a change? How about\nthe country\u2019s own army? An army that is as diverse as Lebanon? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bambi asks these questions, knowing that there is a risk in doing so. People\ncan be too narrow-minded sometimes. You criticize an entity like Hezbollah. So,\nyou must be fond of Israel then. A bit like when we used to criticize the\nIsraeli occupation, someone could say to us, well you prefer the Syrian\noccupation, don\u2019t you? Or you criticize the latter, then you prefer the former.\nWe criticize Iran, so we are fond of Saudi Arabia or vice versa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The truth of the matter is that we can love all the above. At the same time,\nwe can dislike them all, for almost the same EXACT reasons: Extremism breeds\nextremism. Often, these entities project their hate onto each other. Usually,\ninnocent populations (here and there) suffer from extremism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another milder example may be: You love Canada so you cannot love Lebanon or\nvice versa. You love your mom. So, you do not like your dad. You like Montr\u00e9al,\nso how can you love Toronto at the same time ??\nOr both Montr\u00e9al and Qu\u00e9bec City? Well, Bambi loves all Canada at once from\nCoast to Coast to Coast, including Sackville. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To come back to the picture above, with all due respect to all the political parties of the world, that is including the political wing of the Hezbollah (despite the weird name of the latter), Bambi thinks the following: Only one flag should be flying above the Lebanese nation and its borders, from the North to the South to the East (the beautiful Mediterranean sea is to the West side). Yes, the Lebanese flag ONLY.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

P.S: This post was written by Bambi on Tuesday, November 19, 2019 before a trip to the Middle East and before the latest development in the area. As she got too busy, she did not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1952"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1960,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952\/revisions\/1960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}