Lebanese clerics go at it

I like it when Lebanese clerics go at it. The recent feud is between Ayatullah Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah and Maronite Patriarch Sufayr--who has an impressive hat collection. Sufayr has been urging that a cabinet made of the majority in parliament be formed without any participation by the minority. But Sufayr is too dumb to realize that Sunnis and Shi`ites will use his own argument in the future to justify excluding Christians from government. When the Sunnis and Shi`ites reach an agreement, they will use Sufayr's own arguments to rule without regard to Christians in Lebanon (whose demographic weight is bizarrely inflated by Ta'if rules whereby the Christians are supposed to be 50% of the population when they are probably less than a third of the resident Lebanese). So Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah made an Iftar speech the other day and it was reported in the press. But Al-Manar TV yesterday aired a clip that was not reported: in which Fadlallah said that "the glory of Lebanon has not been given to him" and that it was given to those who resisted Israel (this is a reference to a saying by the Maronite patriarchate that the "glory of Lebanon has been given to the Patriarch"--any Maronite Patriarch as if Lebanon has a glory outside of the Hummus dish). Fadlallah also added that if the person (in reference to the patriarchate) wants a majority rule, let us extend that to all of Lebanon and let the numbers speak. He invoked the notion of numerical democracy. Stay tuned. Al-Manar website has now removed any reference to the speech from its site.