Al-Rahi Meets Sarkozy: Change Must Not Be Hastily Introduced to Arab World

Doesnt make sense!

I am not sure why the West should not be hasty to introduce change. The Westerners are not the ones protesting. The Arabs are.

The West is only watching and hoping to bring in some democracy to Arab states that have been under the leadership of dictators like Bashar.

Patriarch Rahi should be talking to the Arabs.

Dear All

watch your next words carefully
choose your words carefully while commenting on this post

very dangerous statement, monseigneur sfeir should educate him about two strategic matters in the middle east and especially bilad el sham...
1)"tahaluf el aqallyat" is dying
2)the dictators were protecting minorities(supposed to).. now the minorities are protecting the dictators... till when monseigneur rahi they can???????
DONT HIDE BEHIND ALAWI/SUNNI CONFLICT WHEN U ARE SIDING CLEARLY WITH THE DICTATOR,,,,,THE LESSON OF IRAQ RING ANY BELLS?

The "Patriarch" is a stakeholder of the religious-feudal establishment that dominates much of the Arab world, including Lebanon. He doesn't want change, because change will ultimately lead to secular societies, to separation of church and state, and to pushing him and his church out of the center of political life.
If there is one revolution that needs to happen in Lebanon, it is to get rid of unelected dinosaurs like him out of our lives. He and his fellow Christian and Muslim clergybastards are the fundamental problem behind all of our miseries as ordinary people who want nothing but governments that serve us, and not lord it over us.
He stands against women's rights, he stands against civil marriage, he stands against secularizing the political system in Lebanon.... What then does it want? To stay where we are, and have alternating 20 years of religious massacres and 20 years of political instability. Great future!

We have a just, fair and strong Patriarch that is stating very strong discourses.

This is amazing. I am a big fan of el Batrak, but this does not make any sense. How many generations have to suffer under dictatorial rule before change can happen? I am sure his eminence did not deliver the same message as was reported.

It is very relevant for the patriarch to mention minorities and their plight in the region...the church is worried about the rise of islamic fundamentalism and is understandably wary of it....

“Whoever goes to Syria sees that it is calm” Aoun
“Syria is steadily pursuing the path of reform” Adnan Mansour

“Genocide is taking place there and not democracy or reform,” Patriarch al-Rahi

Although Al Rahi's concerns are justified, the answer to these concerns cannot and will not be the hegemony of a small group over a larger population. This old school thinking (stability with thugs and bloody dictators) is going by the wayside with the introduction of the Arab world into the 21st century.

Assad and his regime have no place at the table after this bloody crackdown. Al Rahi would be well advised to pick his future friends carefully.

The concern about minorities during the changes comes from the painful Christian Iraqis experience.
If we reflect one moment though, the Chaos that ensued the fall of the butcher of Iraq could not have been this extended and dangerous without the direct supprot and interfernce of the Syrian regime and of the iranian regime.
With the fall of Asad there will be no neighbors to Syria who would be able to incite trouble. The situation will be different. Even if extremists takeover some areas they will have difficulties in getting support from Iran.
Whatever regime succeeds Assad will be better than this Monster who pretend to protect the Christians. Al Ra3y should pray and side with what is right regardless of the outcome.

When are you going to say something about Lhassa ya Rai?? Start speaking directly. Lhassa is a crime against the church by the Hezz. DO SOMETHING!!!

GMA : " By the way, I remind you here that the Syrian regime had said that it came to ‎Lebanon to save its Christians from extermination . I want to ask this regime who , apart from ‎it , in fact wanted to exterminate us ? " ‎

SHN : " This is Muslim land and the Christians were brought in as invaders ".

His comments imply some sort of support for the status quo ; the Assad regime.

there is a grammatical error in the following sentence, please correct it, 'live' instead of 'leave'

He said: “International policies should pave the way for the people to leave in peace.”

Youseph haddad, you know perfectly well that the most of the chaos in post saddam Iraq, was caused by Sunni anger at the fall of their hero saddam, and the fear of Shiite/Iranian domination. The al Qaida and Sunni insurgency were coming from Saudi, Yemen, Syria and even tripoli in Lebanon. It was funded by the wahabi and salafists movements. The same groups working in the Syrian uprising. Yes Iran played it's role and syria opened the borders but the end result was absolute chaos and destruction, and ethnic cleansing and massacres of the christains by Sunni extremists.

This is what is install for Syria if they are not careful, and the batrak in all his wisdom and holiness is cautioning peace and real reform instead of the geopolitical mid east war being waged by the USA, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran. They lost Egypt and they are now trying to even up the score with Syria.

Gos bless and protect our patriarch.

"God"

Religious leaders should stay out of Politics ONE AND FOR ALL, be them Christian, Muslim, Shiite, or Druz, Jews what ever.. attend to your respective concregation spiritual enlightenment and Peace demands instead, and let political issues be resolved by more competent secular educated people well versed in world politics instead (Having said that I apreciate the scarcity of them in Lebanon in Government at the momemt). About the minorities fears in the Middle East they are totally unfounded and quite artificially induced by the dictatorship regimes themselves, these regimes have always purported to protect minorities from the majority "monsterous mob" while in fact they have divided and conquered their people and stayed in power for such a long time because they manipulated everyone through their closely controlled and sensored media, these mostly military leaders had no ideo of good governance and democracy that's why they created all these distractions to escpae accountability....

... What these tyrannical regime were in fact doing is apeasing some of their followers in a crossection of different religious communities at the expense of others so that when they chose to comit their financial heists of the Country's resources they would have their goones that have gotten used to lucrative hand me downs from the regime raise all sorts of excuses why this great injustice should not be lifted and tried to implicate their own communities with their wrong doings. In other simpler words the minority of people that supported the Assad regime were a crossection of different communities Alawite, Christian, Sunnis, ... they were the ones closely associated with the regime and were earning their monthly thirty peaces of silver to spy on and implicate their communities in any of the Assad family regime's numerous crimes committed in their name, and provided a sustainable 40 year unaccountable rogue tyrannical rule. As for Iraq...

..As for the attacks on the Christians in Iraq they were orchestrated all in Tehran as most of the other attacks namely in Egypt and most probably executed by Iran's zombies be them Shiites (Hezbollah,..) or Sunnis (Hamas...), they were a part of the greater scheme of inciting pluralistic countries (where multi-faith communities have lived together for thousands of years) the likes of Lebanon, Iraq, Syria (to a lesser extent since Assad was the "declared Iranian Ally), to have the Sunnis attack Christians having ultimately the free world engaigng the Sunnis, so while both fought eachother the Iranian regime bought itself time to develop its nuclear weapon and further pick up the pieces in the ME through its turbaned sacrifical tools the likes of Nasrallah (In Lebanon), Al Sadr (in Iraq) while all along training more zombies (Sunnis and Shiites) in Quom and in Al Quds terrorist brigades inside Iran and sending them out to wreak havock on ME countries and their oil installations