After Saturday comes Sunday

After Saturday comes Sunday (Arabic: min sallaf es-sabt lāqā el-ḥadd qiddāmūh, lit. 'When Saturday is gone, one will find Sunday') is a traditional Middle Eastern proverb. It has been documented in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, albeit in the form sállẹf ẹs-sábt bẹtlâqi l-ḥádd qẹddâmẹk (lit. 'Loan Saturday [out], and you will find Sunday before you').[1][2] According to some journalist accounts, the proverb is prominent among the Maronites with the meaning that the Muslims will do away with the Christians after they have dealt with the Jews, implying the pending elimination or expulsion of minorities living in the Muslim world.[3][4] Israeli folklorist Shimon Khayyat has interpreted it as a threatening message, stating: "Since the Jews are now persecuted, it is as inevitable that the Christians' turn will come next as it is Sunday that will follow Saturday".[5][6] Recent uses of the proverb have been attributed to Arab Christians expressing a fear that they might soon be ostracized on a scale akin to that which was seen during the Jewish exodus from Muslim-majority countries. It is often reported to be used by Muslim fundamentalists as a slogan to intimidate local Christian communities.[5][7][6]

Usage and background

Classical Arab proverb

The proverb appears to have been used in the sense of one's actions having inevitable future ramifications, the way that Sunday inevitably follows Saturday.[1][2] A similar metaphor has been recorded as early as 1915 when an Armenian priest, being marched off in the Turkish extermination convoys during the Armenian genocide is recorded as telling his Kurdish neighbour, who had insulted him: “We are the breakfast, you will be the lunch. Don't forget.”[8][9]

Folklorist Shimon Khayyat, collecting proverbs predominantly from interviews with Syrian and Lebanese Jews who emigrated to Israel after 1950, but also from manuscript and printed sources, wrote that the phrase is of Middle Eastern Christian origin, and that it means "since the Jews are now persecuted, it is as inevitable that the Christians' turn will come next as it is that Sunday will follow Saturday."[5]

Shimon Khayyat records several regional variants of the expression:

  • sallif issabt bitlāqī il-ḥadd qiddāmak: 'Let Saturday pass first, then you will find Sunday before you.'
  • ugb il-sabit laḥḥad yiǧī: (Iraqi Arabic):'After Saturday comes Sunday.'
  • man qadam (i)l-sabt ylāqī (a)l-ḥadd 'uddāmū (Egyptian variant): 'Whoever lets Saturday go first, will see Sunday in front of him.'[5]

The Lebanese-American scholar Sania Hamady cites the proverb in the form: "Lend Saturday, you will find Sunday ahead of you". In her analysis, this illustrates a utilitarian view of Arabic reciprocity: one gives in the expectation of receiving. The proverb in this view is entrenched in the value-system of taslîf wa-muwâfât (advancement and repayment of favors). Where there is "Service for service, merit goes to the beginner", Arabs have an incentive to assist others because he who is first to proffer a service acquires thereby merit as the initiator in the system of social exchange.[10]

History of usage

According to a publication by the American Foreign Policy Council, the proverb in the form 'After Saturday, Sunday', was brandished as a popular slogan among supporters of Haj Amin al-Husseini's faction during the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine. The message is reported to have meant that once the Jews had been driven out, the Christians would be expelled.[11]

At that time, it is attested as a Lebanese Christian proverb in pro-Zionist Christian circles among the Maronite community, who read the Palestinian revolt against Great Britain and Jewish immigration as a foretaste of what they imagined might befall their community were Lebanese Muslims to gain ascendancy.[12][13]

On the eve of the publication of the White Paper of 1939, in which Great Britain decided on a restriction on Jewish immigration to Palestine the Palestine Post, founded by the Zionist newspaper man Gershon Agron, reported that the provisions of the policy were injurious not only to Jews, but to Christian Palestinian Arabs, who held twice the number of government jobs than local Muslim Arabs. Morris in this context speaks of the British authorities favoring the Christians with contracts, permits, and jobs, further alienating the majority.[14] The Palestinian Christians were, the article continued, worried that their jobs might be axed. The correspondent then concluded:

'Apart from this consideration of enlightened self-interest, the Christians are anxious for their future as a minority under what will amount to Moslem rule. In fact, some Moslems have been tactless enough to point out to Christians that "after Saturday comes Sunday."[15]

According to Benny Morris around 1947–8 in Palestine, 'all (Christians) were aware of the saying: 'After Saturday, Sunday .[16]

According to a 1956 field report by American Universities staff, the phrase had been circulating for roughly a decade by that time in the Near East with the sense: 'after the expulsion of the Jews, whose Sabbath is on Saturday, the Christian Westerners will follow.'.[17]

A certain Royce Jones stated that it was a Jordanian slogan used on the eve of the Six-Day War, and that it expressed an intention to commit genocide on Christians.[18][19] Royce's letter was cited by Yosef Tekoah before the UN Security Council as proof of the relief Christians in Bethlehem supposedly felt with the Israeli conquest of the West Bank. The Jordanian representative Muhammad el-Farra dismissed the use of the proverb as 'cheap propaganda' and cited as testimony Bethlemites affirming their allegiance to Jordan.[20]

According to blogger Gerald A. Honigman,[21] the phrase was first given prominent circulation in English by Bernard Lewis in the form: 'First the Saturday People, then the Sunday People,' in an article written for Commentary in early 1976. Lewis claimed that the phrase was heard in the Arab world on the eve of the Six-Day War (1967), and argued that recent developments in Lebanon suggested that the Arabs had reversed their priorities.[22]

As a slogan attributed to Palestinian Muslims

Many sources register this proverb's appearance as an Islamic slogan daubed on walls or putatively on the Palestinian flag during the years of the First Intifada (1987–1997).[23][24][25][6] Many Christian Zionists have cited this as a Palestinian graffito that highlights the putative threat of Muslim extremists to Christians, arguing that it means Israel is only the first step for an Islamic war on Christianity.[26] The proverb has been asserted to be indicative of a tension within the Palestinian resistance as Hamas emerged to vie with the PLO for the hearts and minds of people.[27]

Mordechai Nisan of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs claims the slogan had been used on a PLO flag when the Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu visited the Holy Land in 1989.[24][28] Nisan opines that there is a Muslim-Arab war being waged against Israel and the Jews, and that Christians all over the world cannot escape being involved:

When the Muslim jihad pursues its Jewish victim, it manipulates and blackmails the West into submission. When the two tangle, the third party never escapes the consequences of the brawl.

The magazine Democratic Palestine, organ of the Palestinian Marxist group, PFLP warned at the time of the first Intifada that Hamas could present a distorted picture of the Palestinian struggle in the world's eyes, as witness its motto: 'The Quran is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian People'. So too, it added, the slogan 'After Saturday comes Sunday' might be understood as suggesting that Hamas might turn to the Christians after finishing with the Jews.[29]

Ilana Kass and Bard E. O'Neill also cite it as a Hamas slogan during the First Intifada with the rise of Islamic groups. In a 'worst-case scenario' Christians might be faced down were the Jews destroyed. Christians in such an Islamic state would be second-class citizens.[30]

Israel Amrani, in a 1993 interview with, and commentary on, the Anglican spokeswoman for the PLO, Hanan Ashrawi, called her 'a strange bird in the flock for which she speaks.' Describing a rift in the Palestinian movement between the fundamentalist Hamas and the secular PLO, and arguing that the former movement was opposed at the time to women appearing in public, he cites the proverb as a 'famous Muslim saying: 'sometimes interpreted to mean that after the fundamentalists finish the Jews, they'll deal with the Christians.'[31]

Paul Charles Merkley of Carleton University cites reports from the end of the First Intifada (1993) that the proverb was used as graffiti on walls in Gaza and the Muslim-Arab sections of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.[6]

The proverb has some currency in the Bethlehem area—Andre Aciman mentions a sighting of it as a graffiti some time in the early 1990s in Beit Sahur[32]—and many sources, Israeli and foreign, cite its use there as evidence that Christian fears of Islamic fundamentalism are what drive Christian Bethlemites to emigrate or request Israeli citizenship.[32][33] As the first Intifada drew to an end with the Oslo peace talks, it was not only Christians but also Muslims from the West Bank who sought to apply for Israeli citizenship.[27] Donna Rosenthal cites a West Jerusalem resident and Greek Orthodox woman, whose family came from Bethlehem, using the proverb to explain the reasons why she chose to live in Israel.[34] Nadav Shragai supports this view, citing Israeli journalist Danny Rubinstein, while adding that a muezzin of the town was heard remarking in 2012: "After Saturday comes Sunday," in the sense that 'after they're done with the Jews, they'll be coming after the Christians,' phrasing that was 'considered unacceptable even in the rapidly Islamizing Bethlehem.'[35] The Arab scholar Salim Munier, who has undertaken research on Palestinian Christians, disagrees, arguing that the emigration from the area is grounded primarily in financial considerations, secondly in peer pressure, and only thirdly in a sense of religious or cultural suffocation.[35]

Consecutive metonymy of Jews and Christians

It is sometimes interpreted as a metonymy of the First they came ... narrative , to mean that after Muslim fundamentalists finish dealing with the Jews—who celebrate Sabbath on Saturday—they will next deal with the Christians—who celebrate Sabbath on Sunday.[31][35][36]

Other uses

A story title of Sonia Sanchez 'after Saturday Night comes Sunday' uses the row of days to symbolize The Black Woman's Burden and the relationship between love as in Saturday Night Live and (failure of) marriage and family life later.[37]

French Israeli filmmaker and pro-Christian activist Pierre Rehov refers to the saying in a 2007 documentary First Comes Saturday, Then Comes Sunday.[38]

References
  1. Entry 2861 "من قدم السبت يلقى الحد قدامه". Ahmed Taymor Pasha (Arabic: بقلم العلامة المحقق أحمد تيمور باشا), Folkloric Saying (Arabic: بقلم العلامة المحقق أحمد تيمور باشا), Al Ahram Center for Translation and Publishing, 5th Edition, 2007, ISBN 977-157-012-9.
  2. Michel Feghali (1938). Proverbes et Dictons Syro-Libabais. Travaux et Mémoires De L'institut D'ethnologie XXVI. Paris: Institut D'Ethnologie. pp. 347–348. Give to Saturday and Sunday will be ahead of you. For encouraging someone to give service and help someone else. You will be treated well or badly according to your actions.
  3. Laura Zittrain Eisenberg, My Enemy's Enemy: Lebanon in the Early Zionist Imagination, Wayne State University Press 1994 p. 13
  4. David Hirst, Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East, Nation Books, 2010 p.39.
  5. Khayyat, Shimon L. (1985). "Relations between Muslims, Jews and Christians as Reflected in Arabic Proverbs". Folklore. Taylor & Francis. 96 (2): 199. doi:10.1080/0015587X.1985.9716348. JSTOR 1259642.(subscription required)
  6. Paul Charles Merkley, Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, McGill-Queen's Press, 2001, pp.118,126: 'Muslim fundamentalists in Algeria have publicly declared their intention to "liquidate Jews, Christians, and unbelievers." In this spirit, we are to understand the slogan often seen on walls in Gaza and the West Bank, and in Muslim-Arab sections of Jerusalem and Bethlehem:"After Saturday, comes Sunday- or, more explicitly, "On Saturday we will kill the Jews; on Sunday, we will kill the Christians,' source MECC News Report 6 nos and 12 (November/December 1993.
  7. American Universities Field Staff, Reports: Southwest Asia series, vol.5 1956 p.4.
  8. Avedis Hadjian, Secret Nation: The Hidden Armenians of Turkey, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018 ISBN 978-1-786-72371-0 p.162
  9. Carel Bertram, A House in the Homeland: Armenian Pilgrimages to Places of Ancestral Memory, Stanford University Press, 2022 ISBN 978-1-503-63165-6
  10. Sania Hamady, Temperament and Character of Arabs, Twayne Publishers 1960 p.30
  11. 'Israel.' in The World Almanac of Islamism: 2014, Rowman & Littlefield 2014 pp. 181-196.
  12. Hirst, Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East, Nation Books, 2010 p.39. Speaking of the Maronite elite, Hirst writes: 'For the likes of these, the Rebellion was less a natural response to what the British and Zionists had been doing to the Palestinians than it was a reminder of the melancholic warning a Lebanese Christian proverb -'After Saturday, Sunday' –conveys: once the Muslims have done away with the Jews, the Christians' turn will come. One of their Zionist confidants reported that, in their eyes, it was 'proof of what rule by a Muslim majority would mean'; and they were 'terribly afraid lest the Arabs win this war.'
  13. Laura Zittrain Eisenberg, My Enemy's Enemy: Lebanon in the Early Zionist Imagination, Wayne State University Press 1994 p.13: 'Lebanese Christians have a proverb suggesting that once the Muslims do away with the Jews, they will turn on the Christians: "After Saturday, Sunday."
  14. Benny Morris,1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War, Yale University Press, 2008 pp.12–13.:'A major fault line ran between the Muslim majority and the generally more prosperous, better-educated Christians, who were concentrated in the large towns. The British authorities favored the Christians with contracts, permits, and jobs, further alienating the majority. Through the Mandate, and especially in such crisis periods as the Arab Revolt of 1936–1939 and 1947–1948, Muslims suspected Christians of collaborating with the "enemy" and secretly hoping for continued (Christian) British rule or even Zionist victory. These suspicions were expressed in slogans, popular during the revolt, such as "After Saturday, Sunday"—that is, that the Muslims would take care of the Christians after they had "sorted out" the Jews. This probably further alienated the Christians from Muslim political aspirations, though many, to be sure, kept up nationalist appearances. "The Christians [of Jaffa] had participated in the 1936–1937 disturbances under duress and out of fear of the Muslims. The Christians' hearts now and generally are not with the rioting," reported the Haganah Intelligence Service.'
  15. 'Britain Advised to Delay White Paper,' The Palestine Post, 4 May 1939 p.1
  16. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press 2004 p.25.
  17. American Universities Field Staff, Reports: Southwest Asia series, vol.5 1956 p.4:'There is a decade-old saying in the Near East that 'after Saturday, comes Sunday,' meaning that after the expulsion of the Jews, whose Sabbath is on Saturday, the Christian Westerners will follow'.
  18. Yonah Alexander, Nicholas N. Kittrie, Crescent and star: Arab & Israeli perspectives on the Middle East conflict,AMS Press, 1973 pp.262, 266:" 'After Saturday comes Sunday, an Arab tells me' – the proverb meaning that after the Jews are massacred it will be the turn of the Christians.'(p.262)
  19. Royce Jones, "Into Jerusalem, on to Bethlehem,' Sunday Telegraph 12 June 1967:'On the eve of the six-day war the slogan in Jordan was:"Sunday comes after Saturday. On Saturday we murder the Jews; the next day the Christians." That was plainly understood to mean what it said'.
  20. UNISPAL, 'The situation in the Middle East,' Archived October 19, 2014, at the Wayback Machine S/PV.1423, 7 May 1968 paras 44,77.
  21. 'Double Dhimmitude, Part II,' 9 January 2011
  22. Bernard Lewis, 'The Return of Islam,' for Commentary January 1976: 'In the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, an ominous phrase was sometimes heard, "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people." The Saturday people have proved unexpectedly recalcitrant, and recent events in Lebanon indicate that the priorities may have been reversed.'
  23. Mario Apostolov,Religious Minorities, Nation States, and Security: Five Cases from the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean, Ashgate, 2001 pp.68-69.
  24. Mordechai Nisan, Identity and Civilization: Essays on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, University Press of America 1999 p. 161.
  25. Lela Gilbert, Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner, Encounter Books 2013 p.7
  26. Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, Oxford University Press 2009 ISBN 978-0-195-36802-4 p.vii.
  27. Daphne Tsimhoni, 'Palestinian Christians and the Peace Process: The Dilemma of a Minority,' in Ilan Peleg (ed.) The Middle East Peace Process: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, (1998) SUNY 2012 pp.141-160.
  28. Alan Cowell, 'Peace in Bethlehem, Little Good Will,' The New York Times, December 25, 1989.
  29. Harold M. Cubert, The PFLP's Changing Role in the Middle East, (1997) Routledge 2014 p.178 n.29, citing 'The Islamic Fundamentalist Movement in Palestine: Focus on Hamas,' Democratic Palestine No.51, July–August–September 1992 p. 15:'Hamas could serve to distort the image of the intifada and the Palestinian national movement in the eyes of the world. To further illustrate the real face of Hamas, it is sufficient to point to some of Hamas' seemingly silly but actually dangerous mottos, like: 'the Quran is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people'. Another slogan, 'After Saturday comes Sunday*, could be understood as an indication that after finishing with the Jews, Hamas will turn to the Christians. How can such mottos serve the Palestinian struggle?'
  30. Ilana Kass, Bard E. O'Neill, The Deadly Embrace: The Impact of Israeli and Palestinian Rejectionism on the Peace Process, University Press of America, 1997, p.252.
  31. Israel Amrani, 'Hanan Ashrawi,' Mother Jones, March/April 1993.
  32. Andre Aciman, 'In the Muslim City of Bethlehem,' in The New York Times Magazine on December 24, 1995.
  33. Daphne Tsimhoni, Christian Communities in Jerusalem and the West Bank Since 1948: An Historical, Social, and Political Study, Praeger, 1993 p. 183.
  34. Donna Rosenthal, The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land, Simon and Schuster, 2003, p.308.
  35. Nadav Shragai, 'Why are Christians leaving Bethlehem?,' Israel HaYom 26 December 2012.
  36. Nissan Ratzlav-Katz 'Be Thorough, Israel,' National Review Online, August 7, 2006
  37. Tanisha C. Ford,"Talkin' 'bout a Revolution": The Music and Activism of Nina Simone, 1950-1974, University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2005, p. 67
  38. First comes Saturday, then Comes Sunday Middle East Studio. middleeaststudio.com, undated.
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