The victim, the Stockholm issue, and the bag of need

           The complex of the bag of need affects intellectuals from minorities such as Christians, Druze, Kurds and others. As examples, we can mention Edward Said, Michel Aflaq and others who lived mainly in the Muhammadan environment,The bag of need was a historical metaphor from the covenant of Omar, which Caliph Omar applied to the polytheists in the Levant, Jerusalem and other regions after the invasion and conquests starting in the year 15 AH, that is, the beginning of the era of humiliation and rejection.

The bag of needs complex practically means that the polytheist minority carries an empty bag in which he puts the needs of the believers to transport them to wherever the believer wants, i.e. a free porter, Thus, over time, these minorities develop psychological complexes whose content is a feeling of deficiency and inferiority in front of the religious majority due to chronic fear and historical dependence, This manifested itself in several ways, including the absolute adoption of the speeches of the dominant majority, then the practice of flattery and praise, which developed with a Baathist Arabist politician like Michel Aflaq into considering Arabism and Islam as one thing, i.e. political submission to religion, especially what is called Sunni centralism.

This complex is formed in the early years of life, when the child feels, for example, in school that he is treated differently than others, where he has to, for example, repeat slogans and chants that disguise his sectarian or political affiliation, as is happening now in schools and as happened in the days of Assadism and Nasserism, when students were forced to answer a question posed by the teacher, such as the question: Who is our president? And the collective answer, in a loud voice similar to a scream, is that Hafez al-Assad will remain forever, In this case, the student’s mind is unable to interpret or understand that, especially when family upbringing affects his mind and concepts at home in a way that is opposite to the content of the shouting of slogans, With time, repetition, and repetition, the student believes that this contradiction and defect is due to him, not to the educational system and practices at school, as it is unreasonable for everyone or the majority to be wrong while the student and his family are right, This feeling robs him of any self-confidence and consequently hatred and contempt for himself,Therefore, after reaching maturity, these people search for ways to restore their self-respect, including, for example, belonging to the Marxist International or the Syrian Nationalist movement, which rejects sectarianism, which caused this psychological complex, These trends carried a rosy dream and hope for these minorities to find an escape from religious persecution or Sunni centralism, which came mainly from the Umar era and the religious doctrine that produced it.

In addition to the “bag of need” complex, another complex was born in the souls of minorities. This complex was the Stockholm complex, which makes the victim    feel obligated to defend the perpetrator to the death,In other words, there are two complexes: the “bag of need” complex,   which is manifested in the excessive adoption of the trends of the overwhelming majority  and not transcending them through criticism, evaluation, or analysis of its discourse and beliefs, Then, the Stockholm complex, which is manifested in the necessity of defending the perpetrator, The thinker George Tarabishi approached this by calling those afflicted with these psychological complexes “castrated or eunuchs,” meaning that he considered these minorities castrated, and because they are castrated, they become helpless in the face of the overwhelming majority, This consecrated the decline of the concepts of enlightenment and rationality in this region, then consecrated the overwhelming majority’s feeling of numerical superiority through arrogance and delusional self-inflation, then narcissism in its ugliest forms, This contributed to the accumulation of negatives, the entrenchment of delusions, and the swelling of fanaticism that they have lived with for decades.

The development and behavior of minorities outside the muslim   religion is no different from the development and behavior of minorities within the muslim  religion, for example, the Shiites, who, like others, were afflicted with castration and the Stockholm complex, then the need  bag complex, and the reason was Sunni centralism , These psychological complexes forced many members of minorities to submit and obey Sunni centralism, despite this centralism’s contempt for minorities, and despite this centralism’s superior view of them, The coercion to submit and to consider these minorities as infidels, immoral, and impure, or as columns of the West and its agents, became deeply rooted in the souls of minorities, to the point that some minorities turned into “more of a monarchy than a king,” currying favor with their oppressor and despiser and submitting to him in a very suspicious manner, All of this was for the sake of gaining acceptance from this centralism and proving their always questionable patriotism.

    This surrender development was due to many factors, including the transcendence of these minority intellectuals over sectarian and religious identities and their transition to the space of universal values ​​such as secular trends, This is despite the fact that objecting to sectarianism is rational, objective and necessary, They deliberately ignored the reality of Sunni centralism, due to their unwillingness to confront and because their tendencies are contrary to the principle of violence, dominance and authoritarian hegemony unknown to these infidels, who did not realize the expected results of their transcendence and reluctance to confront, which led them to emigrate. They preferred emigration and escape to confrontation. Sunni centralism did not realize the true essence of this transcendence and interpreted it as the defeat of misguidance in the face of truth and righteousness.

 It was difficult for this centrality, which was traditionally centered around dominance and victory by the sword, subjugation and violence, to absorb the values ​​of transcendence, which established extremism and consequently established dependency, submission and obedience to that centrality, In addition, there was the phenomenon of regression, which represented a mechanism by which the self carried out a process of regression or psychological return to a previous stage of development, There was also the phenomenon of the killing of the spirit of rebellion and confrontation among them, then other factors, including repression, which represented an unconscious psychological process that took place within the scope of the unconscious and prevented painful or forbidden desires from emerging into the realm of consciousness, Then regression, which represented a mechanism by which the self carried out a process of regression or psychological return to a previous stage, Then compensation, which represented a psychological process carried out by the self with the intention of overcoming feelings of anxiety, weakness and inferiority through excellence in another field, Then impersonation, which represented an unconscious defense mechanism by which the individual tends to merge with another personality, Then justification, which represented the most important unconscious defense mechanisms carried out by the neurotic person by accusing others of behavior, The wrongdoer instead of directing the accusation towards the real cause.
This brief presentation does not aim to incite minorities against Sunni centralism and call for political rebellion and intellectual uprising against them, but rather to carry out a constructive revolution against this centralism and expose, analyze and study it, The peoples of this region cannot enter the door of enlightenment and modernity except through criticism, evaluation and deconstruction of all the political, cultural and social discourses on which this centralism was based, Here we must admit that this centralism does not desire criticism and does not want it, because criticism, according to its claim, undermines it, as it has a monopoly on the sacred. Emptying life of politics and filling it with religion through what is called overwhelming supremacy has the same disastrous effect as sanctification.

Our position on those who emigrated oscillates between understanding their emigration and not understanding it, They were very influential in the field of civil life, such as Antoun Saadeh, who was terrorized to the point of physically eliminating him, He emigrated several times before his assassination and returned to receive a bullet in his chest, There is also George Tarabishi, Adonis, and many others in this era and in ancient times, such as the Abbasid era, In the Abbasid era, there was Hunayn ibn Ishaq and his son Ishaq ibn Hunayn, who translated hundreds of books from Greek and contributed greatly as individuals to the field of science and culture, Hunayn’s life was not comfortable, as he was imprisoned several times.

  In short, the fugitive immigrants from minorities, especially Christians, indirectly caused the escalation of the Mohammedan religious centralism in this era, Perhaps they could have influenced that centralism towards modernity and enlightenment, They were the pillar of secular civilization, and the country is now turning into a fundamentalist Mohammedan sectarian entity, We do not think that immigration was a priority for them, but they were in fact forced to immigrate, especially in the present and in the recent and distant past, such as the year 1886. There are still a few hundred thousand of them in the country, out of several million, The situation in Iraq is similar. These people are sitting on their bags, preparing to immigrate, as happened in Iraq and Palestine, is happening in Egypt, happened in Sudan, Lebanon and others!