"After Saturday comes Sunday" (, ) is a Middle Eastern proverb signifying that Muslim persecution of Christians will follow persecution of Jews. It has been documented in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, albeit in the form ().Entry 2861 "من قدم السبت يلقى الحد قدامه". Ahmed Taymor Pasha (), Folkloric Saying (), Al Ahram Center for Translation and Publishing, 5th Edition, 2007, . 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.Laura Zittrain Eisenberg, My Enemy's Enemy: Lebanon in the Early Zionist Imagination, Wayne State University Press 1994 p. 13David Hirst, Beware of Small States: Lebanon, Battleground of the Middle East, Nation Books, 2010 p.39. 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". 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.American Universities Field Staff, Reports: Southwest Asia series, vol.5 1956 p.4.
Usage and background
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. 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.”Avedis Hadjian, Secret Nation: The Hidden Armenians of Turkey, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018 p.162Carel Bertram, A House in the Homeland: Armenian Pilgrimages to Places of Ancestral Memory, Stanford University Press, 2022
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."
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.'
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.Sania Hamady, Temperament and Character of Arabs, Twayne Publishers 1960 p.30
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.'Israel.' in The World Almanac of Islamism: 2014, Rowman & Littlefield 2014 pp. 181-196.
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.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.'"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'."
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, 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 that local Muslim Arabs did. Morris in this context speaks of the British authorities favoring the Christians with contracts, permits, and jobs, further alienating the majority.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. 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.""Britain Advised to Delay White Paper", The Palestine Post, 4 May 1939 p.1
According to Benny Morris, around 1947–8 in Palestine, "all (Christians) were aware of the saying: 'After Saturday, Sunday".Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Cambridge University Press 2004 p.25.
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".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".
In 1967, Royce Jones wrote in the Sunday Telegraph 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.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)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." Jones'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.UNISPAL, "The situation in the Middle East", S/PV.1423, 7 May 1968 paras 44, 77.
According to blogger Gerald A. Honigman,"Double Dhimmitude, Part II", 9 January 2011 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.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."
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).Mario Apostolov, Religious Minorities, Nation States, and Security: Five Cases from the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean, Ashgate, 2001 pp.68-69. 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.Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, Oxford University Press 2009 p.vii. 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.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.