Word: christianed
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...Staff writer Christian B. Flow can be reached at cflow@fas.harvard.edu...
...Last Friday night at a game hosted by a team from Achrafieyeh, a Christian neighborhood in Beirut, the home crowd shouted: "God, Achrafieyeh and the Doctor!" in reference to a Christian leader who once attended medical school. They also tried to distract a rival player with a gay slur intended to be particularly insulting to Muslims. "Toot, toot, toot! Khaled is a fruit...
...that's a problem, because in Lebanon, politics have a way of turning ugly. The country fought a devastating civil war from 1975 to 1990, mostly along religious lines: Christian vs. Muslim. Today the battle lines are forming once again between, on the one side, Christian and Sunni Muslim groups allied with the U.S.-backed government, and ranged against them, Shi'ite Muslim and Christian groups that form an opposition movement supported by Syria and Iran...
...These tensions - heightened by concern over the possibility of another war with Israel - often spill onto the court. Because Lebanon's Shi'ites generally prefer soccer (perhaps reflecting their status as a traditionally disenfranchised minority), the main hoops action tends to be Christian vs. Christian, and Christian vs. Sunni. In fact, basketball is an extension of politics to such a degree that when General Michel Aoun, a Christian leader, turned against the country's mainline pro-government Christians, one of the first things he did was start a new basketball team, the Blue Stars...
...Still, basketball in Lebanon has had its transcendent moments, such as in 1999 and 2000 when Sagesse, a Christian team, won the Arab club championships two years in a row and the whole country shut down in celebration. And the players here - a mix of locals with a bit of imported American talent - are professionals in the best sense. "It's the opposite of America," said Demetric Shaw, a player visiting Lebanon from Fort Worth, Texas. "Here the fans fight, but the players never...