| I understand now what you are saying. I don't agree or disagree. Honestly I don't know enough about the topic. See, for middle eastern, words like "muslim" or "chrisitans" or "jews" doesn't represent your spiritual beliefs. It represents ethnic belonging. To put it in a western perspective, your religion is not a mutable characteristic. I'm born "christian", but my level of belief in Jesus Christ has nothing to do with it. You're saying the factions that fought in Lebanon didn't emphasize a islamist rhetoric until the 90s. From what I know from the earlier days of the war, there was a lot of talk of pan-arabism and arabic identity, not talk of an Islam nation, so what you're saying sounds plausible. But from our middle eastern perspective, lebanese muslims allied themselves to other muslims from syria and palestine to topple the christian-led government. I was communicating the point that the factions involved were based on ethnicity. People picture "wars" like soldiers in battlefields and there was some of that. But a LOT of the Lebanese war was undisciplined militiamen mass killing villages based on ethnic lines. On both sides. Plenty of massacres in christian villages because they were christians. Plenty of massacres in muslim villages because they were muslim. From our point of view, we saw was christian and muslims killing each other. > radical Islamist Palestinians who had left Palestine and wanted an Islamic state in Lebanon The first time I read that quote, I didn't react to the words "radical Islamist", but read "palestinians had left palestine and wanted a state in lebanon". I guess this shows my bias after all :D Now I'm curious what caused the change in the palestinian rhetoric. I'll try to read some more about it. Thanks for opening my eyes to this. |