Blog Post 2
Lebanon’s community is made up of different political parties using different religions to assert some form of dominance over sections of Lebanon. These political parties have found a way since the day Lebanon received its independence to use religion to control the population. The main religion and basically the only religion being present in the times of colonization by France was Christianity in its different forms. After the first world war and having France and Britain come out as the winners of the war, an agreement between these two powerful countries was made. This agreement was known as the Sykes-Picot agreement. Mark Sykes representing Great Britain and Francois Georges Picot representing France agreed on dividing the Ottoman Empire in a certain way. Lebanon ended up receiving some additional land that was situated to its North. That land in specific had Muslims leaving in it. Adding this land to Lebanon’s land caused a lot of problems with the way religion was distributed in Lebanon. Lebanon was mostly Christian and the sudden addition of a new religious group started creating problems in the way relationships in the country were being handled. The presence of a new religion meant things on a national level would progressively become harder to happen because all of the religions demanded that they would be treated equally. Lebanon’s government didn’t recognize there was a necessity of separating politics and religion and this crucial mistake that started from the first days of its independence would create a lot of problems later on. Political parties started slowly increasing this problem and making sure the split between Muslims and Christians was more and more evident. These political parties would take decisions that would benefit one religion over the other but sadly these same decisions were terrible on a national level. These growing tensions between these political parties made things really bad for the country to operate correctly.
These religious political parties can be split into two major categories,
March 8 Alliance: Hezbollah, Free Patriotic Movement,
Amal Movement, Tayyar Al Marada, and the Tashnaq and the March 14 Alliance
mostly known by the Future Movement, Lebanese forces, Kataeb Party and
independence movement. The March 8 Alliance can be summarized by Shia Muslims
parties with the exception of the Free patriotic movement that is Christian. On
the other hand, the March 14 alliance is much more diverse than the March 8
Alliance, with the Future Movement being Sunni Muslims and Lebanese forces, Kataeb
Party, and the independence movement were Maronite Christians. The rest of the March
14 Alliance holds Shia Muslims and Armenians but these groups aren’t as
dominant. These parties have a lot of differences and supporting different
ideologies led to a civil war breaking out in 1975 caused by one of the
Christian parties targeting a bus filled with Palestinian citizens. This caused
the Muslim parties to respond and that ended up causing a civil war that
lasted 15 years and every Lebanese citizen dealt with some form of torture
throughout that period.
Lebanon to this day is run by religion and all forms of politics are completely dominated by religion. No decisions can be taken unless all religious parties agree that they were all benefiting from that certain decision on a national level. Some political parties will make sure to stop any plans that can benefit the country as a whole but don’t benefit them equally to the other parties. Citizens are missing out on a lot of opportunities that can help with the development of the country but are simply getting stopped by these political parties. This religious distribution is also applied among jobs. Jobs have to be equally distributed in the government for any citizen from any religion to be able to apply to it. For example, for each Christian being hired in a governmental position, another citizen that belongs to each of one of the religions has to be hired as well. Another idea that seems truly weird and out of place is the way Lebanon’s government is divided between the Muslim and the Christian side. To explain it in a really simple and direct way: The president has to be a Maronite Christian; The prime minister, a Sunni Muslim, and. The president of the National Assembly, a Shi'a Muslim. The main competition in Lebanon as to which religion is dominating is between Christians, Shia Muslims, and Sunni Muslims. Because of this old separation and feud between religions, the population itself has grown to form aggression between each religion. I visited Lebanon over Spring Break and it’s like people never seem to learn that blaming this other religion for an ongoing problem the entire population doesn’t help anybody but on the contrary makes everyone’s life just harder. A lot of hate has grown in the population itself which is what these political parties want. The more divided this population is the more control these political parties have. People supporting these political parties become simple robots following directions and commands to a point that if these political parties were to ever want to go ahead and have another civil war people would support that decision without thinking about the consequences of it.
The country has become geographically split into territories for each different religion. When I was visiting Lebanon and to see the reality of things in a much more evident way I simply asked my parents to let me know which religion the city we were visiting was a part of. I really hate to admit it but each city we were driving through was claimed by a certain religion and my parents would add that this part is much more extremist than the rest basically saying people from other religions aren’t allowed to live alongside them. The amount of harm this religious split has left on the country is truly sad and I don’t think it will ever be reversed. Muslims seem to be more conservative and refuse advanced or any new forms of development that might have important effects on the country and that can be seen through the neighborhoods they live in, it’s almost like a village and not a city. You get to feel the village spirit and how generous and nice they are but they aren’t too prone to development. While Christians took complete inspiration from the West and that can be seen through their individualistic mentality and ideologies. They come off as more open-minded and accepting of new things and encourage development and want to see Lebanon thrive the best way it can. Somehow both of these communities live together and Lebanon has been able to see some prosperity throughout its years. It hasn’t been doing too well lately and that’s more to blame on foreign affairs and how outside factors seem to be ruining the flow of the economy.
The idea of separation of Church and State has been seen a lot throughout history and a lot of philosophers encouraged the separation. Roger Williams back in 1636 first discussed this idea and later on John Locke was credited for restating the idea addressed by Williams. Regardless, both of these philosophers emphasized the amount of freedom a person had looking at the way the Church and the government of a State had control over their lives. During the 17th and 18th centuries, these philosophers started understanding these types of influences, The Church still had political power. The Church had authority over the citizen, a religious figure had authority over the citizen and his day-to-day life. A lot of philosophers argued that someone’s faith shouldn’t have to do with how they should deal with the State. This picked up in the colonized territories of America, where Thomas Jefferson included these ideas that were going around about the separation and made sure they were written in the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. These clauses go over the practice of any religion and the presence of the needed disconnect between religion and the authority of a State. Most countries, disregarding what their dominant religion is, put aside all religious matters aside and keep religion off the authority of the State. Lebanon can become one of these countries and apply this separation, it would be more “the wall of separation of the Mosque and the Church from Lebanon’s authority as a State”. You get the idea, a much-needed separation has to be made so the country can move forward without having setbacks such as not including all religious political parties in a decision and having the excluded political parties create any tension. People should be hired based on their skills and capacities and not randomly be assigned because a citizen who is Christian has been hired in one of the government’s branches so the rest of the religious political parties have to hire someone without even making sure they are fit for the job. This is dumb and quite childish, grown men that are too old to be running any form of government are playing around with the country’s power. This doesn’t make any sense and this whole religious idea is brewing a much-needed revolution in Lebanon.
The upcoming generations are completely getting rid of this old and dumb mentality and are focusing more on the development of Lebanon as a whole. If all differences were put aside and religion were to be less regarded as the way to separate the population, Lebanon would be in a much better state. I am hopeful that day will come and the future generations of Lebanon will accept each other without distinguishing religion and being able to live together wherever they want in that amazing land. For now, they have to endure the consequences of their parents' and their grandparents’ decisions but I know that later on that suffering will pay off and will create powerful open-minded generations that respect each other and do their best to push Lebanon to become a great country, greater than it ever was.