FLAGS 4: THE LEBANESE FLAG ENCOMPASSES ALL BY ENCOMPASSING NO PARTICULAR NATIONALITY

We have seen that Egypt’s flag was not made with any consideration for the Copts. In fact it alienates them from the Egyptian state. It refers to Arab identity, and in this sense it is difficult to accept that it represents the Copts as it represents the Arabs of Egypt. It goes back in its basic structure to the coup of Colonel Nasser on 23 July 1952, the so-called July Egyptian Revolution, and is called the Egyptian revolutionary and liberation flag. Its current form was adopted in 1984. The coup’s Arabism is largely symbolised in it. It is a tricolour made of the three equal horizontal bars in red, white, and black, and it bears in its centre (in the white bar) the eagle of Saladin (Al-Nasir Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi), the founder of the Ayyubid Dynasty in 1171, who has been taken by the Egyptian Muslims as their national hero because he managed to defeat the Crusaders and recapture the city of Jerusalem in the 12th century. Saladin’s eagle has become Egypt’s national emblem. It is said that the red bar symbolizes the Egyptians’ blood in the war against colonization; the white bar, the purity of the Egyptian’s heart; the black bar, below the white, the manner in which darkness is overcome. This seems to be a new interpretation: the original interpretation is that red refers to bloodshed in numerous wars, white to abolition of the monarchy, and black should commemorate the monarchy and the period of British colonialism. Saladin’s eagle is represented holding a shield composed of three parts on his chest: the side ones are black while the central one is yellow. And for good measure, the eagle is made to stands above a panel that reads “جمهورية مصر العربية”, which means “The Arab Republic of Egypt”.

It is hard to evade the conclusion that the Egyptian flag is a flag by the Arabs of Egypt for the Arabs of Egypt, and is in complete denial of the existence of the Copts and the Nuba who do not share in Arab identity or nationalism, who do not like the adjective Arab attached to the Republic of Egypt, and who do not necessarily celebrate Saladin or his eagle. Saladin is not a Coptic hero; and his persecution of the Copts, particularly in his beginnings, is well known. It is rude to say the least, and it cannot but alienate the Copts.

A country’s flag must represent all and not one nationality within the multi-national state. Better still to use symbols that are do not alienate some of the country’s major components. This was not lost to the Lebanese who are composed of different nationalities: Maronites, Sunna Arabs, Shiite Arabs and Druz. Nothing in the Lebanese flag, which was adopted in 1943, points to Arab identity, and it is entirely derived from Lebanese nature and its struggle for independence. It is made of two horizontal red stripes enveloping a horizontal white stripe: the white colour is said to represent the snow that covers the mountains of Lebanon in winter, and symbolises purity and peace; and the two red stripes represent the blood shed by the Lebanese in their struggle for freedom and independence. In the middle of the while stripe, which is broader, is placed the Cedar (cedrus libani), which covers the mountains of the country and has long been a symbol for Lebanon, and symbolises holiness, eternity and peace.

Unlike the case with the Egyptian flag, with which the Copts cannot identify, all Lebanese, with all their nationalities, can identify with their flag because it was not made by one nationality to the elimination of all others: it represents the multinational country not one nationality.