Lebanon's Daylight Saving Time debate highlights sectarian tensions

A single hour was enough to expose the reality of a society that may be worse than its leaders. With shields, crosses and crescents, the Bible and Quran, fierce battles were waged on social media. Thankfully, they remained hypothetical.

The buried battles of sectarianism emerged from people's minds and were manifested in their tweets, with mutual accusations of fanaticism and ignorance. Here are some original Tweets:

Sanaa Chahine tweeted: “why don't the ignorant, reactionary fanatics understand that the two timings don't matter to us because our fast is related to sunrise and sunset.”

Another tweet by Abbas Zahri said: “is it possible that 19% make a barrier? It is like the army checkpoint at the time of the civil war, they were killing us based on identity, now they are killing us based on timing? Show me your watch. Winter time? Park on the right, stand against the wall and shoot him.”

A random person also tweeted: “the story of the Muslims has become an attack on the crusaders, I mean on the Christians, and the broken cross and church bell were removed from their place. My question is, why are your (Christian) channels everywhere, audible, visible, and written, in short, all your capabilities are used to tarnish the reputation of religion and Muslims in general.”
“Your time is running out,” another person tweeted.

Mazen Saadeh also said in a tweet that, “the 19% sectarian channels did not seem to abide by the decision of PM Mikati to provide any scientific or convincing reason just to heal their sectarian instincts. However, you still have two days and the madness of #We_will_not_commit, and you will return to the PM’s decision.”

A last tweet by Lara Ballout stated that, “There is no objection on the time... there is an objection on Islam... what a shame.”

Suddenly, the battle of "tell me the time, and I will tell you who you are" came to an end, and the sectarian madness fell silent. All the repulsiveness that we witnessed on social media – what will you say about it today? 

Will you apologize, remain silent, or hide your deep-seated resentment and instinctive culture until the next round of madness?

It is a culture of resentment and sectarianism that exposes you which sometimes catches you off guard.