Christopher Hitchens on Beirut
by Joey Ayoub
Famed author and essayist Christopher Hitchens debated the morality of religion in an IntelligenceSquared Debate back in 2007. To illustrate his point regarding religious hatred, he gave several examples among which was Lebanon.
“Supposed we were to go to Beirut, the pearl of the Levant, the most civilized and beautiful and cultured city of the Middle East and see what happens when, for politicized reasons, a sectarian constitution is in place which says that the president of Lebanon must always be a Maronite Christian, that the speaker of its Parliament must always be a Shi’a, that its vice president must always be a Sunni, that the Druze must have their share and so on.. leaving out at the very bottom I’m afraid such forces as Kurds and Armenians.. by making everyone defined in their citizenship by their faith. Do I need to elaborate what that’s done to retard, to bankrupt, to beggar, to disfigure, and to degrade what could have been an ideally plural and diverse and happy society.”
Christopher Hitchens, IntelligenceSquared Debate, 27,03,2007
Starting at 5:37 and ending at 6:28.
3 Responses to “Christopher Hitchens on Beirut”
So true! I love Hitchens!
Reading his last book” Morality”,which I highly recomand
[...] provide a fresh perspective, one that we Lebanese tend to forget in the mess we live in. I recently posted a video of the late Christopher Hitchens saying [...]