A Speech on Hatred
Dr. Michel E. Abs
Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches
How I hate you, you who are other than myself,
How I wish you were not there, for you take from my space and drink from my water and breathe from my air,
Your existence is not legitimate in my opinion, as you are one of the mistakes of history and nature.
You are a coincidence that I wish had not happened.
What brought you from nothingness into existence, you who do not resemble me?
Your color is different from mine, as is the shape of your ears, lips, eyes, and hair color,
The way you sit and walk and all of your bodily gestures I find abhorrent.
Your food is not my food, and your drink is not mine.
Your dress is different, your home is different, as are your customs and traditions.
Your words are not mine, nor is your language, your accent, or even your laughter or the tone of your voice, which annoys me.
Your values are not like my values, and so is your artwork, your music, your painting, your sculpture, and all the elements of your culture.
Your way of thinking and logic I reject and find them depraved and meaningless.
I find your civilization primitive, inherited from ancient times, and it fills no place in the perspective of that which I admire.
How dare you, you who are different from myself and who long to imitate my way of life? ...be it even in your dreams!
How dare you enter my schools, universities, hotels, swimming pools, and public places?
You are not like myself, and you have nothing that resembles me, or my civilization or my culture!
You are in my book a margin we do not want to read!
You are in my dictionary a thing that has no name!
In my opinion, you are nothing more, and the only reason that drives me to want to understand you is its possible “usefulness” for my own purposes!
You who are different from myself, in race, ethnicity, religion, caste and class, I do not even see you!
These are examples derived from racist or discriminatory thinking that are manifested in hate speech, which reaches to the point of the oblivion of the other.
Yes, the psychological and moral abolition of the other, which may sometimes be a prelude to existential abolition.
People are different in their civilizations, cultures, and identities.
Nationalities are different from each other, groups of the same community may differ from each other, and they may condone each other. Moreover, if there is no awareness that man is the son of his communal togetherness within which he interacts with others, then diversity may turn into fatal discrimination.
Discrimination between people is as old as humanity, but the problem is that in the sixth millennium that witnessed the birth of civilization in Sumer, there are still people and groups who adopt racism as if civilization began yesterday or as if societies were formed only yesterday.
Discrimination is a psychosocial disease that is not limited to the relationship between culturally different people, it also includes groups of the same society, and not even classes are excluded from this discrimination.
It is alienation!
The alienation of man from himself, from his society, and from his humanity.
To evaluate, classify, or deal with a person based on criteria other than those that take into consideration your relationship to him, this is a form of backwardness, and a sign of social disintegration that would lead a society to destruction.
How abhorrent are the feelings of discrimination, they are no more hideous than their effects.
The thing that is a subject of worry really is the fact that these feelings and these practices, as well as the hate speech accompanying them, are thriving in an era of prosperity despite all the activities carried out by international organizations of all kinds.
The International Movement of Labor Displacement and Asylum has fueled feelings and racketed up a discourse that does not bid well for the future of humanity transforming it as it is into mosaic societies due to the waves of expatriate labor and international transformations.
As a Christian institution that has worked in promoting human rights since its inception, and is working today to reconstitute social capital and preserve human dignity in a society that has lost the minimum necessities of a decent life, we draw our point of view from the origins of our Levantine Christian faith and as well as from the values that the Incarnate Master proclaimed before He walked the road to Calvary there to blead on the Cross for the salvation of humanity from its preeminent sins, including racism, discrimination and hatred.
It is mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 35:25-40) that the Incarnate Christ said, “I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. Naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me.” Should we perchance ask as did the disciples: “When did we see you as a stranger and took you in, or naked and clothed you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and came to you?” Then the King will answer and say to them: “Verily I say to you: Since you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
As it is also stated in the Holy Bible: “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering (Hebrews 13:2-3)
I cite here also a text from the Antiochian liturgical prayer for the eve of Good Friday, a text centered on the stranger:
“Joseph, when he saw the sun dimming its rays and the veil of the temple being torn at the death of the Savior, approached Pilate, and pleaded with him crying out:
Give me this Stranger, who from his childhood has been alienated as a stranger.
Give me this Stranger, whom his kind slain as a stranger.
Give me this Stranger, whom I was astonished to see as a guest of death.
Give me this Stranger, who knows how to read the poor and strangers.
Give me this Stranger whom the Jews have alienated from the world out of envy.
Give me this Stranger, so that I can hide Him in a place.
Give me this Stranger, who, being a stranger had no place to lay His head.
Give me this Stranger, who, when his mother saw him dead, cried: O my son and my God, though my wings are wounded, and my liver is torn when I see you dead, I am confident in your resurrection, and I will exalt you.
With these words, the pious Joseph prayed to Pilate, who took the body of the Savior, and with fear wrapped it in a shroud and laid it in a tomb, He is the Giver of eternal life great
Mercy to all.”
The Master identified himself with the burdened, the marginalized, the downtrodden, and the strangers to reconcile the human race with himself and thus avoid the catastrophes that it is experiencing at present, and which may prepare for the worst among them, a greedy and blind humanity.
The Incarnate Master is the Master of Love that removes obstacles between human beings of different affiliations, and the more human society estranges itself from Christianity, the more it estranges itself from love and denies itself and its own humanity.
The masks are many, the barriers are more, and there is no way to remove these masks and overcome those barriers except through education into love.
We lack love.