Lebanon has long been mired in conflict and setback due to sectarian antagonism in the country. Despite a brief between 1958-1964, successive governments have been in effect run by tribal chiefs dressed in suits. Such a system of politics encourages division. Instead of politicians competing for votes across the country (or town) and running on national issues, Lebanese politics often comes down to: what is good from my sect? Such thinking led to the 1975-1990 Civil War (and civil wars prior) and street-fighting between Sunnis, Shiites and Druze in 2008.

But the tribal hold extends to general society as well. Religious identity is paramount in Lebanon. Politics is so charged with that identity because people confront it everyday. Lebanese have their religion placed on their identity cards and marriage, divorce and inheritance are governed by respective religious leaders and are binding on a person even if they no longer consider themselves, say, a Christian.

If Lebanese society was more secular, people intermixed more often, the power of religious authority was subdued, and religious identity downplayed then that would eventually bequeath a more tolerant culture between Lebanese which itself would probably usher in a more harmonious, secular and national-based politics.

Lebanese may be moving in that direction. As mentioned above, Lebanon has no civil marriage. If a Muslim and Christian want to wed they must do so overseas and then return. While the state cannot officiate such weddings, it does recognize them. While Muslim authorities do grant divorces, the Maronite Catholic church doesn’t and a couple married under the church’s authority is out-of-luck. A Muslim widow can inherit only half of her husband’s estate. No wonder many Lebanese are growing impatient with such a system that not only places restrictions on their marriages within their tribe, so to speak, but also for those seeking marriage outside of the faith.

Although not mainstream and something that has long existed in some numbers, inter-faith marriages may be becoming more frequent. In recent years, the Maronite church warned against Christian women taking Muslim husbands in response, presumably, to a feared increase in the practice. And Lebanese society recently was abuzz with the marriage of T.V. host Malik Maktabi, a Shia Muslim, to prominent parliamentarian Nayla Tueni, a Greek Orthodox Christian.

Lebanese seeking such marriages are currently flying abroad, usually to nearby Cyprus. But many are demanding the right at home and a majority support civil marriage. On Valentine’s Day earlier this year, civil rights activists staged mock civil marriages in a Beirut bar. Their increased effort toward lobbying the state for such a law may eventually bring about their objective.

A recent decision by the Interior Ministry gives cause for reasonable expectation of such a move in the near future. As mentioned, Lebanese carry around religion-specifying identity cards. During the civil war being caught in a Christian neighborhood with your I.D. nothing your Muslim faith often got you killed immediately, and similar cases took place vice-verse. War or no war, such a practice strengthens sect identification at the cost of national unity. And now the Minister Ziad Baroud has ruled that Lebanese can remove their religious classification from their I.D. cards.

Does this mean Lebanon is finally leaving behind its self-destructive sectarian past? Only time will tell. The Maktabi-Tueni marriage is it self a two-faced coin in reflective the possibility of progress on one side and sectarian reality on another. Maktabi is one of the few Muslims employees of the Lebanese Broadcasting Company (LBC). LBC is owned by the sectarian and right-wing Lebanese Forces whom fought against Muslims in the aforementioned Civil War, and LBC and its radio counterpart frequently espouse sectarian Christian rhetoric, have greatly offended Lebanese Muslims at times and, specifically, utter subtle hostility to Shias. And Tueni’s late father was an unabashed proponent of the sectarian Christian belief that Christians are superior, by birth or culture or both, to Muslims and that Christian entitlement to disproportionate representation in parliament is justified on “quality versus quantity” grounds. A doctrine also preached by the Lebanese Forces (Lebanese electoral law exclusively reserves for Christians 50% of the parliamentary seats even though the Christian population is no more than 35%).

The fact that Tueni did not inherit her father’s prejudice is a sign of progress and of hope for the future generation.

Source: The Economist.