Remembering Lokman And Honoring His Struggle
February 8, 2021 | By Alberto M. Fernandez
In the wake of his murder last week, some apologists for the terrorist group Hizbullah have sought to downplay Lokman Slim as some sort of nobody. He was actually a bigger man than most of the big names that make headlines from Lebanon because he combined three extremely powerful, rare – and for Hizbullah – dangerous personal attributes: He was a man who could not be bought, he was a man without fear, and he was a man with something to say.
I first met Lokman 20 years ago when, as a mid-level US diplomat based in Amman, I visited Beirut book publishing houses. My purview at the US Embassy in Jordan included the State Department's Arabic Book Program, which had once been based in Beirut, before the Lebanese Civil War. Lokman and his sister Rasha, a dynamic figure in her own right, ran a wonderful Arabic publishing house, Dar al-Jadeed.[1] The beautifully designed books selected by Lokman and Rasha reflected their discerning tastes and wide interests: political and religious reform, art, literature, free inquiry. Lokman, his friends and family had other projects and initiatives during the years, all of them connected to his primary concerns, which were always human dignity, justice, and freedom, both inside Lebanon and in the region.