The Passion of Mohamad Sibai
by Mazen Abdallah

Oh, Mohamad, how I feel for you. Here you are, walking along in Hamra, minding your own business where out of nowhere those goddamn gays have to go and hold hands. Right the where they knew you would be looking at them. How painful it must be for you to live in a world where two men hold hands like it's the most normal thing ever.

But they're just a couple gays, Mohamad. They're not the problem. The problem is the people who will sneer at you, and call you 'sexist' and other awful names from their ivory towers. These new-agey liberals who want to secularize anything. What's next, Mohamad? Are they going to make it illegal for you to say gay people are a disgusting abomination?

You know what your problem is? You lack empathy. You have the classic mentality that you're from a dying age, and that the new order is coming to sweep you up with its Caligulan sex orgies. You're the last sane man in a world gone gay-crazy. You are Will Smith in I Am Legend, except the vampire things are the characters from Will and Grace and Lady Gaga.

Let's try something Mohammad. Let's pretend you loved someone. You just feel this love, this sensation. Now let's pretend someone finds out you love this someone. Let's pretend this someone tells your parents and they kick you out of the house. Let's pretend people see you together and they kick seven shades of shit out of you.  Now do you understand what it's like to live in a world gone mad? Now do you understand what it's like to be a victim, you sanctimonious little shit?

See, I get mad Mohamad because you're delusional. For the most part, you're still the majority here. Repudiating you, calling you names, telling you off - it's like yelling at a tidal wave. You make me mad because you're part of the majority of bigoted, oppressive and dogmatic old men who want to force us to live our lives by arcane scripture. Scripture that is so reprehensible in its magnitude, that religious scholars are swearing to people it can't be literal. Muslims are watching brutal, totalitarian regimes crumble and they're wondering if they made the right decision because they might have opened the door to fundamentalist Muslims. People don't just doubt religious law Sibai, they're prepared to take their chances with firing squads over it.

I get mad at you Mohamad, because you're not just some puffy-chested macho man who thinks if he goes into gay bars he'll see orgies of naked, lisping men in bondage leather. Because that guy just says they make him sick. No, you're the puffy-chested macho man who thinks he's an academic. You think that you've reached the conclusion that they're repulsive abominations because you're a man of knowledge, a man of letters. The only thing I hate worse than a bigot is a bigot who thinks he's a scholar.

But a child of four can tell you that you insult anyone who reads your piece with logical fallacies, poor writing style and quoting a pre-Cold War comedian as an actual source. You have the gall to pretend you're some manner of journalist, putting forward a well-argued piece, bravely standing against the tide of political correctness. You're not. You have no basis in fact, reason, science, social science and hell even pseudo-science. I shan't bother pointing that out to you, dozens of folks smarter and more educated than I have already taken the trouble to do so, and I thank them.

And to Outlook, I say this. Really? This is what passes for a staff writer? Someone who has archaic and backwards views of an offensive nature? I know, I know, freedom of speech. He deserves his opinion, right? Of course he does, who are we to take it from him? But then, who are we to give him a podium for it. Who are we to put his name next to the name of an institution that aims to stand for tolerance and progressive ideas, that presents itself as a bastion of free thought. You think the guy writing columns in the newspaper should be the exact same scumbag who our country is littered with? When you do that, you end up with gossip rags and right-wing tabloids. Sure guys, The Sun has the freedom of speech to publish all the articles it wants about smelly immigrants and drunken whore celebrities. It's just that that makes it a pile of garbage.

Do me a favor and demand a little more of your writers and stop giving me the post-modernist spiel. It's a newspaper, not a kindergarten coloring exercise. You want to include him and make him feel special so much, give him a participation sticker.

Finally, to the people that read Sibai's article and took time out of their day to write comments on Facebook and fire off emails to Outlook. Thank you. Thank you for speaking out against this sort of hate speech appearing in what is supposed to be a respectable newspaper. And thank you for showing me there are lots and lots of people who are the complete opposite of Mohamad Sibai. I sometimes forget that, and there's no excuse for lazy defeatism, but thank you regardless.