From Galerie Semaan to Galeries Lafayette… What Kind of Islam Are We Presenting to the World?

Galerie Semaan and Galeries Lafayette are separated by a vast distance that a phone screen can bridge in seconds. Here, an attempt to prevent security forces from carrying out their duties; there, an attempt to storm a department store amid unrest and looting. The countries, circumstances, and people involved are different, yet the same question arises: when did anger become a license to attack, and when did the group become more important than the law that protects its members and everyone else?

Placing the word “Islam” between these two scenes, however, requires another kind of courage: the courage to ask questions and, at the same time, to reject ready-made accusations. Religious identity cannot be established from a face appearing in a video, nor can religious motivation be inferred from a name, skin color, or accent. Anyone who wishes to hold those who appropriate religion accountable must first refrain from appropriating it themselves and turning it into a collective indictment.

In the Galerie Semaan area, Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces announced that young men riding motorcycles had attempted to prevent a unit from the Central Criminal Investigations Department from raiding a warehouse containing medicines unfit for use. The ISF confirmed that the unit had completed its mission, seized the medicines, and sealed the warehouse. These are the officially reported facts that must serve as our starting point, while determining individual responsibility remains the task of investigators and the judiciary.

In France, reports described an attempt to storm Galeries Lafayette amid unrest accompanying protests against the rising cost of living, which also involved vandalism and the looting of stores. But these incidents provide no evidence of the participants’ religious affiliation or that Islam was their driving motivation. Their actions can be condemned unequivocally without inventing an identity for them or placing a turban on theft when there is no evidence that such a turban was ever worn.

The common denominator that can reasonably be identified, then, is the use of strength in numbers to defy shared rules. It is the belief that having a crowd standing behind you entitles you to obstruct an institution or violate someone else’s property rights. The danger begins when such behavior finds political and media defenders who search for every possible explanation except the simplest one: an act has been committed that calls for accountability, regardless of the banner under which it was carried out, the grievances invoked, or the slogans raised by those responsible.

In Lebanon, the problem strikes much closer to our daily lives. The state does not face tests of its sovereignty only at its borders, but also outside a pharmaceutical warehouse, at a security checkpoint, and when executing a judicial order. Sovereignty that comes to a halt before a gathering of motorcycles requires more than ceremonial speeches. It requires an authority that understands that entering any neighborhood to perform its duties is an obligation, and that citizens’ safety cannot depend on the consent of those who wield influence.

When medicines are involved, the show of force becomes even more outrageous. Patients do not concern themselves with the power arrangements protecting a warehouse, but with the medicine that will enter their bodies. A mother waiting for treatment for her child cannot be expected to settle for reassurances from a political party. What she needs is testing, oversight, accountability, and a process that establishes whether a violation occurred and who bears responsibility for it, free from alarmism and from compromises that swallow up people’s rights.

Does a security officer become an aggressor simply because he attempts to perform his duty? Does a raid become an affront to a neighborhood’s dignity merely because an official security unit enters it? By this logic, the entire country could be shut down: every street has its dignity, every warehouse its protective community, and every offender a group ready to explain why arresting him would be such a sensitive matter. In the end, the ordinary citizen is left alone, without protection, paying for everyone else’s privileges and immunity with his health, safety, and money.

This is where the responsibility of movements that derive their legitimacy from religious discourse comes into play, foremost among them Hezbollah in the Lebanese experience. Political responsibility demands an unequivocal declaration that party affiliation does not shield anyone who breaks the law and that obstructing the judiciary cannot be justified under any circumstances. Equally, however, ownership of a warehouse or responsibility for a particular act cannot be attributed to an individual or organization merely because allegations are circulating. Investigations must establish the facts, and accountability must follow the evidence.

There must also be an end to portraying every demand for accountability as an attack on Shiites. A Shiite who wants safe medicines and a functioning state needs no one’s permission to demand his rights. He is no less attached to his community because he refuses to allow a motorcycle to take precedence over a security patrol. Protecting people begins with subjecting the powerful to the same rules that apply to those who have neither influential connections nor weapons.

In France, the rising cost of living does not justify looting a store, just as looting does not invalidate peaceful protesters’ right to demonstrate. Anyone who smashes a shop window and steals its contents attacks business owners, employees, and customers, while harming the very cause in whose name he claims to be angry. Social justice does not need a stolen handbag to advance, nor does an attack on someone else’s livelihood become legitimate simply because it takes place amid collective chanting.

Conversely, a video clip must not become a referendum on whether Muslims are fit to live in society. Such a leap feeds prejudice and leaves the crime without serious analysis. Responsibility is individual, and establishing it requires facts. A Muslim who works, pays taxes, raises children, and respects neighbors should not automatically be treated as a suspect every time riots break out in a European city.

This brings me to the question that matters to me: what image do we want to present of our Islam, we who reject tutelage over our faith just as we reject tutelage over our country? The image of a citizen who respects the rights of others while demanding his own, or that of an identity invoked to justify every transgression? This question is addressed to those who speak in the name of religion and demand political obedience from people as though it were a test of faith.

It is not enough for them to declare that Islam is innocent of the abuses committed in its name, only to remain silent when its symbols are used to threaten others. Defending religion requires withdrawing protection from those who use it as a shield against accountability. Religious devotion worthy of respect is expressed through honesty, the protection of rights, and a willingness to be held accountable, not through the ability to shout louder than a police officer, a judge, or a defenseless citizen.

In Lebanon in particular, communal and political affiliations have become systems of mutual protection. Every leader denounces the immunity enjoyed by his rival while quietly negotiating immunity for his own followers. Then they all come together to complain about the weakness of the state, as though that weakness had fallen from the sky. The state grows weaker when they obstruct its ability to act, and regains strength when it successfully carries out a lawful mission and the judiciary pursues its work to the very end.

That is why the completion of the raid in the Galerie Semaan area deserves to mark the beginning of a process, rather than become a news item we celebrate and then forget. We need to know what happens to the seized medicines, the results of the tests, the responsibilities established by the investigation, and the measures that will prevent similar violations in the future. Those who obstructed the operation must likewise be held accountable on the basis of evidence. An institution builds its authority through sustained, consistent action, not through a photograph taken outside a door sealed with red wax.

More importantly, we must not redefine entire populations on the basis of the worst scenes involving some of their members. Beirut’s southern suburbs cannot be reduced to a group obstructing a security patrol, just as France cannot be reduced to its rioters, nor Muslims to those who invoke religion or have that identity attributed to them by their opponents. Such precision gives criticism its strength, because it prevents those truly responsible from hiding behind sweeping accusations that implicate innocent people and obscure the issue.

The same principle applies to abuses of official authority: anyone who demands a strong state must also demand that its power be subject to oversight. Police officers must be held accountable, judges must rely on evidence, and defendants must enjoy the right to a defense. Under these conditions, the state becomes an authority citizens can accept, and partisan protection loses its justification. Replacing mob disorder with arbitrary state power merely leaves people captive to the same fear, even if those generating it have changed.

As for my Islam, I need neither a motorcycle to guard it nor a shop window shattered in its name. I carry it in the responsibility I take for my actions, in my respect for the lives and rights of others, and in my willingness to be held accountable like any other citizen. Those who wish to serve religion should prevent it from becoming a pretext for evading the law. Faith is sacred; actions, individuals, and political parties must remain open to questioning and accountability.