It’s hard to be a hipster in Lebanon as cops might mistake you for a terrorist if you have a long beard, just like what happened with Lebanese Rapper AA the Preacherman back in January. Kayan Bartender Mazen Hariz has the same problem as he gets mistaken for a Jihadist at checkpoints and was once threatened by a police officer.
Of course such mistakes do happen here and abroad but Lebanese cops should be more respectful towards such “suspects” and anyone they arrest, and more importantly should apologize in case they mistreat an innocent civilian.
“My beard is like my girlfriend,” he says during a cigarette break from a shift at the Kayan bar in east Beirut.
It took seven months to grow, and needs 30 minutes of attention every morning. First, hot water, then shampoo, conditioner, blowout and then sometimes straighteners. But not too often because that’s not good for the beard.
Girls like it, he says. But the Lebanese police at checkpoints, which have sprung up on his route to work, aren’t so enthusiastic. He says cops stop him every day.
“They say, ‘What’s this, why do you have a beard?’ ” he says.
Lebanon is a small country, yet its social spectrum is broad. It ranges from cosmopolitan hipsters like Hariz to a very different tribe that’s also fond of long beards: Islamist extremists, who’ve attacked the army and planted car bombs. Hariz says it’s annoying that people assume he’s an extremist because of his beard.
“Maybe I’ll cut it,” he says, reluctantly.
You can read the full article [Here].
Hipsters, terrorists, they’re all the same so the fewer the better 😉
Euh doesn’t Patriach Nasrallah Sfeir has a long beard? As do most members of the clergy…
The Lebanese army is so uneducated to suspect anyone with a long beard as a jihadist.
This so-called blog was literally plagiarized from NPR.
I see no direct reference, nor acknowledgment to the original author. Here is the link to the original piece penned by Alice Fordham:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/11/12/363517898/whos-that-lebanese-man-with-a-beard-hipster-or-jihadi
Shame on you “Najib”
Fufen,
This whole post is based on that article you pasted and the reference is mentioned at the end. Read properly next time.
Sir, if you read my comment properly, I said that there was no “direct reference”. By that, I meant a direct credit or mention at the end of your blog post and NOT a link, which in and of itself hardly serves as a reference. Discrete links – if not clicked – may mislead your readers into believing the article was your work. Trust me, there’s nothing wrong with my reading abilities.
Fufen,
First of all you claimed it’s a so-called blog then you say I plagiarized a post and that there’s no direct reference to the original post and shame on me.
If you don’t like the blog or don’t consider it one feel free not to visit. As for plagiarism, I suggest you revisit the definition of this term before accusing me of it because I’ve never written anything without the proper credits and references. There’s no such thing as direct or indirect, you either reference the author or not and in my case I quoted a part of the original article and linked it at the end.
More importantly, and since you are saying that the article may be my work, the topic discussed has already been raised several times on the blog and on my social media channels and I’ve linked to a post from January 2014 (10 months before the NPR article) on a rapper who was mistaken for a terrorist and I raised the issue.
https://blogbaladi.com/lebanese-rapper-double-a-the-preacherman-mistaken-for-a-terrorist/
All in all, the whole aim from the post is to raise against the awareness on this issue and shed the light on the article at hand because it concerns us all. If the author felt that I plagiarized her work I ll gladly remove the article or correct it accordingly. There’s nothing wrong with that and I’ve done it few times.
Thank you.