RIGHTS-LEBANON: Read the Koran – Never Sing It

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kim Ghattas

BEIRUT, Nov 3 1999 (IPS) - “I saw eleven stars and the sun and the moon, saw them kneeling before me,” says the Koran, beautifully, but to Lebanese singer Marcel Khalife the verse means trouble.

Khalife’s sin was to put the verse to music, which irritated the Lebanese Sunni Muslim hierarchy, who accused the singer of blasphemy, for violating an Islamic code forbidding the use of Koran’s verses in lyrical works.

A Beirut court was expected to start the hearing Wednesday, but postponed it till December 1. “I will be there (in Court) to express my view. I’m ready for any possible outcome I will go to prison if I have to. But I insist that I did not do anything wrong,” Khalife told IPS before the suspension.

Khalife, a Christian, is a well known and beloved singer in Lebanon as well as in the several Arab and western countries. A figure of the left and a defender of the Palestinian cause, he is also very popular among Muslims.

Renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote words from Kahalafe’s song in 1992. The poem, titled ‘Ana Yusuf’ (I am Joseph) compares the oppression of Palestinians in some Arab states to Joseph’s suffering in the hands of his own brothers, as told in both the Koran and the Bible.

The case against Khalife was first brought up in 1996 but when it triggered a wave of denunciations by intellectuals. Judicial proceedings were then stopped, reportedly on orders from then-prime minister Rafik Hariri.

On the first day of this new judicial year, however, Beirut’s new Chief Magistrate Abdel-Rahman Shehab, a Sunni Muslim, pulled the case out of the drawer again.

Some local analysts explain his religious zeal in reasons other than spiritual. Allegedly, the judge wants to please religious Sunni leader Mufti Mohammed Rashid Qabbani, who was behind the initial complaint in 1996 and who reportedly made Shehab’s appointment possible this year.

But Qabbani explained that refloating the case became necessary after al-Azhar – the Egypt-based highest Sunni religious authority – issued a decree forbidding “any musical arrangement of a Koranic verse, in order to prevent any violation of Islam.”

This time the accusation again prompted a wave of protests not only from Lebanese intellectuals but also from human rights groups around the Arab world and also from the London-based Amnesty International.

Interestingly enough, the judge presiding the case is a Druze woman, a third religion not party to the dispute, and whose room for compromise is very narrow.

If found guilty of blasphemy, Khalife would face a prison term anywhere between six months and three years, which is likely to anger many in Lebanon as well as in the Arab world.

If a compromise ruling states instead that he did not mean blasphemy, but that the song does offend Muslims sensitivity, then the Government will be forced to ban it, which may turn out to be embarrassing, as nobody expects Khalafi to censor his own song.

If, in turn, the singer and his song are both found innocent, then the powerful Sunni establishment will feel angered, triggering a strong reaction. Whatever the case, however, Khalife’s reputation will grow among his followers and the song will become a legend.

Asked whether he would prepared to apologise, in order to bring the problem to an amicable end, Khalife said he had nothing to apologise for.

“I did nothing wrong,” he argues. “Creativity and art are not a crime, and need not be proven innocent. What is a country without creation, without music, without art? What is Beirut, this year’s Arab cultural capital, without respect for culture?” the singer asks in his soft voice, tinted with sadness.

“Everybody, from left to right-wingers, Christians and Muslims, oppose the case raised against me. That proves that I have done nothing wrong,” he added.

But others feel that Khalife, aware since 1996 that the song was deemed offensive to Islam, should have stopped singing it, as a show of respect for his fellow Muslim compatriots.

But many Muslims, including Shiite clerics, do not feel that Darwish’s poem ‘Ana Yusuf constitutes blaspheme, in spite of quoting Koran verses.

“The performance of a poem including a verse from the Koran is not an offence to the sanctity of the Holy Book when it deals with humanitarian concerns” said leading Shiite Muslim cleric Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.

The question seems to be that of where lies the frontier between respect of others’ religion and one’s own freedom of speech.

The same problem arose in October at an open-air art installation in Beirut, when a Venus sculpture was put up within the vicinity of a mosque. As Islam forbids human representations, mosque-goers complained to organisers, who refused to remove it arguing that the statue sat on public ground.

A few days later however, a compromise was found and the Venus was quietly moved slightly out of sight of the entrance to the mosque.

Another question the Lebanese are pondering is where religious hierarchies’ powers start and end, in a country with such a religious diversity as Lebanon.

“The political class in Lebanon is so discredited that people are looking elsewhere for reference. They’re looking to the Army but also to the clerics and the clerics are aware of that and they are using it” said Fawaz Trabulsi, who heads the History department at the Lebanese American University.

“Last year, they killed the civil marriage bill , now they have abolished sexual education in schools and have imposed religious education in public schools. This is dangerous because religions deals with absolutes” he added.

The problem probably lies in the Constitution, which states that the citizen’s status is determined by her-his association with any of the country’s 20 recognised confessions.

Last year, former president Elias Hrawi attempted to end his term with a historic achievement – introducing civil marriage. But his campaign was vehemently opposed by both Christian and Muslim clerics and the project was set aside.

“Clerics from all religions converge in opinion and accommodate each other wonderfully, to keep power in religious hands,” Trabulsi pointed out.

In a country where belonging to the wrong religion was once a good enough reason to be killed, post-war reconstruction has unfortunately not focused enough on reconstructing the bridge between religions.

That is not say that confessional killings would occur again, but if they don’t it might simply be because Christians and Muslims don’t interact enough, as they still live separate existences in the different geographical areas where the civil war (1975-90) pushed them.

“Religious teaching in schools stresses the differences between people, because I don’t think they’re teaching Islam in Christian schools and vice versa” Trabulsi said.

For the scholar, Lebanon is always a decade late in certain social and political developments – while religious fundamentalism is retreating in countries such as Iran or Algeria, it is surfacing now in Lebanon.

“Those opposing forces this growing religious influence are too weak. Hundreds will stand up for Marcel (Khalife), because it is Marcel, but not for the sake of civil society, not yet,” he says.