To the Editor - in- Chief of the website “Middle East 24”
Greetings,
On Sunday, May 22, 2022, your website published on its front page an article by Mr. Ali sbeity, entitled “the Dahesh Sect is the Strongest Sect in Lebanon”, in which he exposed Dr. Dahesh and Daheshism to defamation, libel, slander and insult, comparing him and his followers to the corrupt Lebanese politicians and their despicable acts, lies and deceptions, considering them “the most powerful Dahesh sect in Lebanon”. At the end of his article, he hoped for the return of a president like president Bechara El-Khoury, who “had expelled Dr. Dahesh from Lebanon” “to expel the Dahesh of today [meaning the corrupt politicians] out of the country to put an end to the supernatural phenomena in everything” (as he stated verbatim at the end of the article).
We, as Daheshists, who had the honor of representing Dr. Dahesh by a general power of attorney; and as Lebanese citizens, who aspire to have a country where the rule of law, justice and equality prevail, far from all forms of charlatanism and lies, request you, in the service of truth and public opinion, to publish the following response to the article of Mr. Ali Sbeity:
First: Mr. Ali Sbeity must know, if he does not already know, that President Bechara El Khoury is the one who laid the foundations to the state of corruption with his entourage, sowed its seeds in all of the state’s departments, and harnessed the judiciary to his own ends and those of his relatives and self-seeker partisans. He was the one who impoverished the people and entrenched intolerance and sectarianism, and was the first president to be expelled from the presidency in a massive popular revolution. Bishara El-Khoury and his corrupt regime is the godfather of the rotten political class, of today.
Second: Dr. Dahesh and his companions, among the distinguished intellectuals known for their broad knowledge and high morals, were victims of injustice and abuse and the trampling of the provisions of the Constitution and laws inflicted by Beshara El-Khoury upon them, as well as upon other victims of injustice that constitute an eternal stain on his reign. Mr. Ali Sbeity must know, if he does not already know, that the Council of State itself, despite its subservience to the political authority represented by President Bechara El Khoury and his regime, could not but declare the unconstitutionality and illegality of the measures used by Bechara El Khoury in the process of persecuting Dr. Dahesh and expelling him from the country for sectarian and despicable familial reasons. Dr. Dahesh regained his full rights after the Cabinet, headed by the reputed honest and incorruptible Prime Minter, Prince Khaled Shehab, and the Legislative and Consultative Committee headed by the honorable judge, Dr. Antoine Baroud, recognized that Dr. Dahesh was a victim of injustice.
Third: Dr. Dahesh is a genius endowed by Divine Providence with a supernatural spiritual power that performed prodigies at his hands for one purpose, which is to prove the existence and immortality of the soul, reward and punishment, and confirm the heavenly teachings preached by the revealed heavenly religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Thousands of people have witnessed and attested to the authenticity and reality of these phenomena, and the newspapers photographed them during their occurrence. Dr. Dahesh is also a writer, author of more than 150 books on various topics, and founder of an international museum of fine arts in New York. And the Daheshist creed, which many embraced, calling for a return to the sincere practice of virtue and abstaining from vice in thought, word and deed, rejecting religious fanaticism and violence, and venerating individual freedom, especially the freedom of belief, Lebanon and the world desperately need it to confront the fanatic, rotten ideas and the exclusivist takfiri currents.
Fourth: The new Lebanon, which we yearn for, could not rise on participating in a major crime committed by Bechara El Khoury, and the holders of paid pens who worked to distort the image of Dr. Dahesh participated in it. Rather, it must be based on lifting injustice, condemning the oppressor, not the victim, and standing by the clear truth, the rights and respect for individual freedoms of thought, belief and expression. By so doing, dignity could be restaured to the Lebanese state and the Lebanese people, and the sun of a new Lebanon could rise again. The crime committed against Dr. Dahesh was described in the 1940's of the past century as “The Crime of The Twentieth Century”. Therefore, the description that applies to the corrupt political class of today is the description of “the Khoury sect” - after President Beshara El-Khoury not the Daheshist sect. Daheshism is a lofty, reformist, spiritual belief that did not corrupt, and did not participate in corruption, but rather reformed and is far from materialism and material interests that destroyed politics and distorted the purity of the face of religions alike.
Khalil and Fares Zaatar
Attorneys at Law