THE GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD

On March 23, 1942, Doctor Dahesh (the pen name of Salim Moussa Achi) proclaimed the birth of Daheshism.

To many, including Mrs. Marie Hadad, noted Lebanese scholar and painter, he was the Beloved Guiding Prophet tasked with a Divine Mandate to reform the religious landscape.

To the government and reigning clergy of Lebanon, his effectiveness at eradicating the cancer of sectarianism proved him a big threat:

In fact, Doctor Dahesh proved to be such a threat to the artificially-imposed sectarian mindset—which is still claiming the lives of many a brave soul whose only crime is that they dared to speak truth to corrupt power—that President Bechara El Khoury and his cabal would orchestrate a barrage of made-up, despicable slanderous and libelous lies that invaded the Lebanese media sphere, infecting minds and weaponizing people’s innate sense of decency and turning it into unabashed, indiscriminate condemnation of a man who was jailed, tortured, and exiled without ever seeing the inside of a courtroom. No one inside Lebanon understood that they had been gaslit by their leaders to condemn a man whose message could have been, and may still be their salvation!

Consequently, incited by the clergy, President Bechara El Khoury — brother-in-law to Marie Hadad — would enact an elaborate scheme to eliminate him by the end of 1944.

That scheme included: buying off the newspapers; assassination attempts; incarceration without due process of law; the illegal removal of his citizenship; torture and exile to Aleppo, then Azaz, Syria. It would all culminate in his being abandoned on a deserted road under cover of darkness — without food, money, or identification papers — in Turkish territory, as World War II was still raging on...

Doctor Dahesh would eventually claw his way back to Beirut from certain doom, and hide in the Hneine Palace, which is located right across from the presidential palace — home of his sworn enemy: President Bechara El Khoury.

From inside the Hneine palace, Doctor Dahesh would launch an underground magazine called The Black Books. There were, in total, 66 Black Books whose publication ran from 1945 until 1952. Mrs. Marie Hadad would bravely sign her name to every issue.

In them, using words, and photographs, Doctor Dahesh would systematically expose the corrupt president and his wife, Laure Khoury, sister of Marie, and chief architect behind the campaign to eradicate Doctor Dahesh — ultimately fueling public outcry and massive demonstrations that forced the president to resign on September 18, 1952.

President Camille Chamoun would subsequently restore Doctor Dahesh's citizenship.

And so, introducing...