Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Chapter Abstracts
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction. The Arab Lefts from the 1950s to the 1970s: Transnational Entanglements and Shifting Legacies
- 1 Unforgettable Radicalism: Al-Ittihad ’s Words in Hebrew Novels
- 2 Beating Hearts: Arab Marxism, Anti-colonialism and Literatures of Coexistence in Palestine/Israel, 1944–60
- 3 Free Elections versus Authoritarian Practices: What Baathists Fought For
- 4 Dealing with Dissent: Khalid Bakdash and the Schisms of Arab Communism
- 5 A Patriotic Internationalism: The Tunisian Communist Party’s Commitment to the Liberation of Peoples
- 6 Internationalist Nationalism: Making Algeria at World Youth Festivals, 1947–62
- 7 Travelling The orist: Mehdi Ben Barka and Morocco from Anti-colonial Nationalism to the Tricontinental
- 8 Marxism or Left-Wing Nationalism? The New Left in Egypt in the 1970s
- 9 Non-Zionists, Anti-Zionists, Revolutionaries: Palestinian Appraisals of the Israeli Left, 1967–73
- 10 ‘Dismount the horse to pick some roses’: Militant Enquiry in Lebanese New Left Experiments, 1968–73
- 11 The ‘Che Guevara of the Middle East’: Remembering Khalid Ahmad Zaki’s Revolutionary Struggle in Iraq’s Southern Marshes
- 12 Crisis and Critique: The Transformation of the Arab Radical Tradition between the 1960s and the 1980s
- 13 The Afterlives of Husayn Muruwwa: The Killing of an Intellectual, 1987
- Afterword. The Arab Left: From Rumbling Ocean to Revolutionary Gulf
- Index
13 - TheAfterlives of Husayn Muruwwa: TheKilling of an Intellectual, 1987
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Chapter Abstracts
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction. The Arab Lefts from the 1950s to the 1970s: Transnational Entanglements and Shifting Legacies
- 1 Unforgettable Radicalism: Al-Ittihad ’s Words in Hebrew Novels
- 2 Beating Hearts: Arab Marxism, Anti-colonialism and Literatures of Coexistence in Palestine/Israel, 1944–60
- 3 Free Elections versus Authoritarian Practices: What Baathists Fought For
- 4 Dealing with Dissent: Khalid Bakdash and the Schisms of Arab Communism
- 5 A Patriotic Internationalism: The Tunisian Communist Party’s Commitment to the Liberation of Peoples
- 6 Internationalist Nationalism: Making Algeria at World Youth Festivals, 1947–62
- 7 Travelling The orist: Mehdi Ben Barka and Morocco from Anti-colonial Nationalism to the Tricontinental
- 8 Marxism or Left-Wing Nationalism? The New Left in Egypt in the 1970s
- 9 Non-Zionists, Anti-Zionists, Revolutionaries: Palestinian Appraisals of the Israeli Left, 1967–73
- 10 ‘Dismount the horse to pick some roses’: Militant Enquiry in Lebanese New Left Experiments, 1968–73
- 11 The ‘Che Guevara of the Middle East’: Remembering Khalid Ahmad Zaki’s Revolutionary Struggle in Iraq’s Southern Marshes
- 12 Crisis and Critique: The Transformation of the Arab Radical Tradition between the 1960s and the 1980s
- 13 The Afterlives of Husayn Muruwwa: The Killing of an Intellectual, 1987
- Afterword. The Arab Left: From Rumbling Ocean to Revolutionary Gulf
- Index
Summary
Introduction
On Wednesday 18 February 1987, amid raging street battles tearing apart West Beirut, the left-leaning Lebanese daily al-Safir headlined its front page as follows:
A War of Position Between Amal and the Progressives and Communists in its
Second Day: 30 Killed and 120 Wounded
A New Political and Security Map for West Beirut
Kanaan Personally Supervises the Ceasefire and an Invitation to Jumblat and the
Leaders of the Parties to visit Damascus Today.
The civil war was entering one of its darkest moments, with the conflict between former allies spiralling out of control. The head of the Syrian intelligence in Lebanon, Ghazi Kanaan, was in charge of asserting the Syrian regime's control over the unfolding events of the Lebanese civil war. The battles of February 1987, which ended with the entry of the Syrian army into West Beirut, were to become a crucial step in the establishment of the Pax Syriana, the regional and domestic arrangement that ended the civil war and established the parameters of the post-war settlement that followed.
Under the main headline was a short piece entitled ‘The Assassination of Husayn Muruwwa’ and signed ‘al-Safir’. The piece broke the news of the assassination of the Lebanese intellectual and member of the Central Committee of the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP), Husayn Muruwwa (1910–87). The murder was attributed to the ‘civil war’ that had been raging since 1975, a war of which the latest episode was covered in the headline above. Muruwwa, an intellectual and writer, and a symbol of tolerance and openness, was killed by unnamed attackers, ‘without memory’, who ignored the achievements of their victim, according to the unsigned eulogy.3 An absurd and violent war had led ignorant assassins to their tolerant victim – this was the story on the morning of Wednesday 18 February 1987.
The political headline and the eulogy coexisted uneasily on the front page of the leftist daily, and called for some clarification of their possible connections. The ‘official’ interpretation was provided on the same page by the owner and chief editor of al-Safir, Talal Salman, for whom the assassination was the result of the absurd violence raging in Beirut, a violence that could only stop with the intervention of Damascus.
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- Information
- The Arab LeftsHistories and Legacies, 1950s–1970s, pp. 243 - 258Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020