Societal integration, dialogue and progress – Towards a common vision for Iraq
This lecture was delivered in two parts during a joint consultation between the World Council of Churches and the Middle East Council of Churches.
Dr. Michel E. Abs
Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches
Multiethnic, multireligious and multiconfessional societies go often through crises of integration that can sometimes be fatal.
We all know how basic identity is essential in defining man - the individual or man - the group and how much it has an influence on the fate of the individual and the group. In many cases, we find that a person is ready to sacrifice his life and possessions in order to protect and preserve this identity. It equates to his presence.
Accordingly, highly diverse modern societies at all levels, whether ethnic, religious or sectarian, pose great challenges to those working in human sciences and national policy-makers that would maintain civil peace and social harmony.
For decades, humanity has witnessed racial, ethnic and religious conflicts that led to the destruction of societies that were prosperous for years before they were engulfed by the weevil of social decay. The friction between the components of the identity that is inconsistent in its composition is dangerous in the absence of a just, capable and conscious state. The friction of identities and their conflicts has proven to be the most effective means of destroying societies and throwing them into poverty and dependency.
The conspiracy theory says that there are those who take advantage of the diversity enjoyed by societies with weak power and abundant resources in order to stoke differences between their components and control their resources.
If this conspiracy theory is correct, part of it is the result of a society that did not know how to preserve its unity, manage its diversity, and anticipate matters to prevent this diversity from turning into a holocaust for society in its present as well as in its future.
On the other hand, if we look closely, we find that the advanced industrial societies, which produce the goods that we consume, are no less diverse than the societies engulfed in conflicts of every kind. The international migrations and the labor recruitment policies of the industrialized countries have transformed these societies into an ethnic, religious and cultural mosaic more diverse than the societies that did not join the industrial progress and acquire the technological ability.
However, we can go further than that and confirm that many of these societies that live in conflicts are of little diversity and may be satisfied with two or three groups in order to enter the hell of civil conflicts.
History has provided amazing evidence about the ability of some societies to fragment and self-kill. The Lebanese experience tells us that when the culture of acceptance of diversity disintegrates, every ethnic-religious group will become like fire eating itself if it does not find something to eat. The lethality that occurred in Lebanon between branches of the same ethnic-religious group was much more severe than the lethality that occurred between two religious or ethnic groups.
Therefore, the collapse of the culture of accepting diversity and accepting the other, son of my society - which is nothing but the other self - is an indication of the disintegration of the social contract and consequently the transformation of society into a forest in which the strong destroys the weak. They are societies that move backward from the cultural state to the instinctive state.
In a case like this, rationality ceases, logic fades, tolerance suffocates, and no voice rises above the sound of battle, and the priority becomes eliminating the different other at the expense of society, its security and stability.
It is the abolitionism fever that afflicts societies in periods of their history, and it may affect one group, so it is divided and goes into oblivion.
Here the crucial question arises: What is the way to prevent such an epidemic, preserve the unity of society, and ensure its prosperity and the well-being of its people?
It is the Word, O people! The Word that distinguishes man from the rest of the creatures!
The word means logic, it means dialogue, it means mutual understanding, it means coming towards the other.
Is it a coincidence that in the beginning was the Word?
The word means to be able to communicate your messages to the other and to receive his messages. The word means the absence of lethal means of dealing, the substitution of logic in the place of emotion, and the establishment of a culture of respect for the word of the other, and consequently his belief, regardless of your opinion about this belief or your position towards it.
The word is to be the kind word from which hate speech is ashamed and before it, the words of discrimination between the members of the same society vanish.
In the dialogue, none of the interlocutors is required to embrace what the other interlocutor believes. What is required of him is to accept that there are those who do not think like him and who do not follow his doctrine, and to respect these differences.
Building a normal society, based on inclusive citizenship, is through cultural change, and this can only be done through education and media. The guarantor of all this path is the law.
Hence the axes of this conference, which brings together representatives of the components of Iraqi society, which is great in its cultural, religious and ethnic composition. And the greater in its knowledge, creativity and accomplishments.
Unfortunately, what happened in Iraq proves beyond dispute that technological and scientific progress, if not accompanied by progress on the level of social integration, remains vulnerable to collapse at any moment. Society is an integrated whole that advances in its entirety, and regresses if one of its dimensions remains without the progress reached by the other dimensions. In this context, Lebanon constitutes a model that is not very different from Iraq, where the non-advanced dimensions - political and cultural, and by culture I mean the system of values, mentality, frame of thought and patterns of social behavior - ruled on the advanced dimensions - industry, economy, medicine, education and banking. We must point out here that the socio-cultural dimensions - values, mindsets, patterns of thinking and behavior - are the most difficult to manage and change, while the technological dimensions remain fast-paced.
The destruction that comes in the form of social disintegration is much easier than the social construction represented by the reconciliation between groups that leads to civil peace, prosperity and well-being.
Education constitutes the backbone of this path, as it is the basic framework for building and refining minds and guiding them to new ways of thinking, leading to the construction of a new human being. Education in childhood is like an engraving in stone, folk wisdom says. Develop school curriculae, extracurricular and university programs, the results of which will acquire community unity and an integrated human being. If you want to destroy a society, you must destroy its educational sector. The opposite is true, and the experience of societies that were able to emerge during three decades from tragic conditions to a socio-economic renaissance is still ahead.
As for the media, which is called in English the new value shaping force, that is, the new force for forming the value system; it is the most influential tool in the formation of the collective and societal mind, negatively or positively. One of the political leaders went to say: Give me media without ethics, and I will give you a stupid and submissive people. If we consider ourselves today in the era of knowledge, the media is the basic tool for individual and collective knowledge, so its use is an effective tool in building a healthy society and a lethal tool in destroying society. The media has been classified as the most important means of socialization, and it is more effective in this than the family, the peer groups, the school and the university. If the media is not aware of the danger of every word, whisper, and blink of an eye that it circulates through its tools, society will be in danger, knowing that it is impossible today to control and monitor the media and communication in these vast networks. We all know how easy it is to manipulate minds, feelings and public opinion through various media and communication.
As for the state, based on the constitution, it is the greatest guarantor of civil peace and social integration, and consequently, the formation of social capital.
Justice is the basis of social peace, so we see in courtrooms the slogan “justice is the foundation of governance,” since injustice and deprivation of rights are the main causes of social conflicts and popular uprisings. In a just state, the deadly dimensions of identities are negated, as the application of the law is the only available means to obtain rights. In a just state in which every citizen obtains his rights, the various identities within a single society are transformed into a means of cultural enrichment, not a means of disintegration and destruction.
Hence, we considered that dealing with the constitutional dimension in the context of our concern in social cohesion in Iraq is essential. The state is the guarantor of the interests of individuals and groups, and it frames the movement and dynamics of society, and its absence means ruin and the loss of society. When we say the state, we mean the just state in which all its citizens are represented as much as possible.
In conclusion, I hope this meeting will be a building block for the new Iraq, an Iraq that we never imagined would reach what it has reached. We wish all the interlocutors, who are among the elites of Iraqi society, to formulate a better tomorrow for a society that has suffered from injustice. A society that deserves life because it hoards in its history, culture, human and material resources the ingredients for a decent life. Your society was the victim of an opened and blatant conspiracy that ended with an apology for which I will not give the description it deserves, but I can say about it that it is neither logic nor justifiable. The whole world saw how Iraq was besieged, how it was destroyed, how all services declined, how its children were killed, how it became prey to poverty and disease, how the number of disabled people rose, how conflicts spread in it, and how it reached what it is today.
Here, I allow myself to ask a question branching from our basic problem: Is there accountability for those who commit all these sins against peoples?
In the light of the absence of an answer to this question, as well as the inability to hold accountable those who committed mistakes and sins, the only answer is to treat the effects of these crimes.
The response is to reconstruct what was destroyed in terms of souls and stones, and to devote ourselves to curing the disease by dealing with its roots and learning from our mistakes, as “the believer is not stung twice from the same snake hole”.
The response is to lay new foundations for social solidarity, leading to the rehabilitation of social capital and the value system. This goal has constituted a basic strategic dimension within the strategic framework that we have drawn up for our work for the coming years in the Middle East Council of Churches, the first of which is the Human Dignity Project, which we have recently completed and are preparing for its implementation.
Honorable attendees,
Other societies have gone through what we are going through today in the Antiochian Levant, and they have been able to cross their turbulent skies of disintegration and hatred, which lasted for nearly a century, and today they are the most stable and prosperous peoples. Experience is the exemplar of peoples, so that these peoples are able to learn.
Therefore, I assure you that crossing into a normal and cohesive society is not impossible.
It needs the Word!
What are the implications of what was stated on a common vision for Iraq that its sons are creating, who insist on living in it and making it a better place for life?
It is obvious that people living in the same geographical area and interacting with each other despite differences between them, to reach a common vision for the future of this place called the homeland. It is where the heart is and where they want to see their children and grandchildren grow up within institutions that preserve people’s achievements and incubate their future.
At home, you obviously care for yourself because you want to live a decent life, but you work, whether you like it or not, for generations not yet born!
Your differentiation from the other does not alienate you from him... It makes you differ with him perhaps, but you are condemned to create a common life as a fellow citizen, living with him on the same spatial environment for thousands of years, or at least hundreds of them.
History began in Iraq, in Beth Nahrain. Is it conceivable that this people were not once one and united, but were differentiated from each other by virtue of historical transformations, conquests, and natural internal dynamics that happen in every nation on the face of the globe?
Differ as much as you want, my Iraqi people, and separate as much as you want and branch out as much as you want, but for me, I the Lebanese who has known many Iraqis ever since my early childhood you are one people and one civilization in its very being the composition of which changed due to migrations. This civilization was looted without discrimination; its scholars were killed and migrated to all parts of the world without discrimination too.
It is obvious, after the tragedies you have gone through, that you sit together and debate about the future of what brought you together six millennia ago, and made of you the cradle of civilization, as the president of a powerful country described you while he was about to slaughter you.
I will not enter into politics or into the recent past. The past is transformed into lessons and digging into it, and opening the books of the past is a project of sedition and a useless path.
The only way to build social unity and, consequently, national unity is to reach a common vision of what will be the homeland of tomorrow, that is, by setting the perceptions of the various components of society with each other and comparing their orientations and by working selectively with the different aspirations that are on the table.
The vision or aspirations inevitably means a strategic view of the nation's future. It is the dream and it is the people's right to turn it into reality. Do not withdraw from the dream and do not give up your right to try to achieve it. Facts and achievements are the results of dreams whose owners succeeded in transferring them into reality, to varying degrees, of course.
The Iraqis have the right to dream, like all the peoples of the Antiochian East, which were systematically destroyed, one country after the other, starting with Palestine, then Lebanon, then Iraq and ending with Syria. The same methodologies of sedition and lethality were used, and the same results were reached by those who feast on people flesh and bones. Would it not harm you, as it harms us, to see the production and creation of our ancestors displayed in all museums in the world, as if our civilization was in ruins and our peoples were in captivity?
Allow me to use in this brief introduction the metaphor that I adopted in addressing the Christians on the day I started my service in the Middle East Council of Churches: Either you are a tight bundle that is unbreakable, or you are broken stick by stick. I added at the time that what I say to Christians applies to all the people of the region called the Levant.
Flexibility in dealing, abandoning excessive subjectivity and dealing with partners in the homeland with the logic that we are in the same boat and it will not benefit anyone to hide in his cabin while the boat is sinking is the correct approach to reach a common, unified vision for the future of the homeland.
We must keep in mind that common life and fortifying community partnership with a new social contract is the most effective way to bring our societies to the shore of safety.
I say what I say to my Iraqi fellow citizens, and Lebanon’s experience is first and foremost in my mind. It has been said for a long time that there was a Lebanization of Iraq, and now they say that there is an Iraqization of Lebanon.
Let us learn from each other's experiences, because our destiny is one, and our culture is one since Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, sought immortality until today. The Land of the Cedars will always open its hands, welcoming everyone who visits it in search for immortality.
If our legends have been in common since pre-historic times, then it is a fortiori that our destiny is common, and that what is being plotted for us is also common.
There is no escape for any of the components of our eastern societies from cohesion and synergy, otherwise the fate will be bleak, but we are a people who believe in the resurrection and the renewal of life.
Let us embody this renewal in what we will accomplish in the coming days, and God is the Grantor of success.