Samir Khalaf: the messanger of Western colonization in Beirut. I don't have time to elaborate on this, but feel obligated to write something. Samir Khalaf sent one of his silly pieces (in English) to appear in An-Nahar in Arabic (it was translated by the paper for today's issue). This is a man who grew up all his life in Lebanon, and yet can't speak Arabic, let alone write it. He was a professor at the American University of Beirut when I was a student there, but I never took classes with him. I heard that I would politically not get along with him at all. Once Tarif Khalidi sent me to talk to him about my MA thesis, and he looked in pain when I mentioned Marxism. He later settled in the US, and when he did not get the job he wanted at Princeton, he suddenly discovered Zionism. And he blamed his situation at Princeton on Zionism, although I am willing to bet all my fruits in my house that he never ever stepped foot in a Palestinian refugee camp only a mile or two from his house in Beirut. And let me also raise this issue: if Zionists were behind his not getting the job at Princeton, why was that? It is not that he is some great champion of the Palestinian cause? Did he ever utter a word of support for the Palestinians for the Zionists to obstruct his job pursuits? Who are you fooling. Unfortunately, the late Edward Said (who was friends with him) gave him the political cover that he did not deserve--it was ironic that he once chaired a panel on Orientalism at a Said conference in Beirut. I mean, Khalaf's work is but a Lebanese branch of classical Orientalist dogmas--but without the language skills, without the erudition, and without the rigor. At a closed conference that the Canadian government held in the early 1990s (Michael Hudson, Ghassan Tuwayni, Charles Rizq, George Corm, and I were among the guests), Khalaf in a moment of candor expressed his views on matters Shi`ites. He said that Shi`ites in Lebanon are just impatient. He said that if only Shi`ites could be patient--that yes they are garbage collectors, shoe shiners, and farmers but that in 30 years or more they will be what Christians are: lawyers, engineers, and doctors. He said that this will come and that Shi`ites need to relax and just wait. When one Shi`ite member of the audience protested he stressed that he is not sectarian or prejudiced, and that he held no animus toward Shi`ites. When he was growing up, the family's maid was Shi`ite after all, he added. When I read his lousy piece today, I could only think of that because the piece is dripping with sectarian contempt. His thesis is that Fu'ad Sanyurah represents a "civilized Muslim" while those who oppose him are the Muslim sand niggers, that Khalaf does not believe belong to Ras Beirut. Notice his nostalgia in his schmaltzy writings on Lebanon for Beirut of pre-civil war Lebanon. He can't understand why things can't go back to the Beirut of class and sectarian exclusivism of the pre-war period. This is the sectarian vision of Samir Khalaf. And look at his really amateurish sociological observations about charisma--and look how he talks about it as if it is merely an Arab phenomenon. The West--his idealised and unreal West--is based only on reason. Notice that this man who knows really really nothing about Arab affairs, and certainly nothing about Arab culture, puts Nasser and Bin Laden in the same basket. I am not fan of Nasser, but come on. You can't compare Bin Laden to Nasser, this is like comparing Samir Khalaf to Max Weber or to C. Wright Mills--Khalaf is the Bin Laden in the analogy. Samir Khalaf: even the King of Jordan had to learn Arabic. Oh, and you are so lame and so uncourageous for remembering to criticize the Syrian regime now. You had ample opportunities to criticize the Syrian regime in the past.