Lebanon

A country of 10,452 square kilometers, located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, bordered by Syria on the north and east and Israel on the south, Lebanon has 18 religious confessions officially recognized by the Lebanese constitution. Some of these religious groups joined the indigenous people of Lebanon in their endeavor to find a refuge in its mountainous terrain away from persecution, where they could freely practice their political and religious beliefs. They preferred a harsh life in the mountains to the comfort of city life so as to be able to preserve and defend their religious beliefs and their cherished freedom. Over the years, due to the religious freedom that distinguished the country, Lebanon became a “mosaic of religions.” But, as is well known, a mosaic is fragile by definition.

Accordingly, confessional diversity and different ways of worshipping God have long been the main features of the Lebanese scene. While traveling through Lebanon in the 14th century, Ibn Battuta remarked on the exceptionally large number of people devoted to worshipping God. He was struck by their faith and their piety. Christianity and Islam, from the first appearance of the latter (i.e., in the seventh century), have been at home together in Lebanon.

The Ottoman Empire (1516–1917) respected the existing confessional distribution of the population and accorded Mount Lebanon, inhabited mostly by Christians, a certain level of autonomy. It was the Maronite Patriarch, Elias Hoyek (1843–1931), who represented the various Lebanese religious confessions in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles and articulated their aspiration for a free and independent Lebanon.

In the Lebanese religio-political system, the top posts of government are distributed along confessional lines. This distribution has existed since 1943, when after abolition of the French Mandate, independence was attained and the National Pact was concluded between leaders of the religious groups. It became formally part of the written constitution by the Ta'ef Agreement in 1989. This pact is based on confessional power sharing. It has also been the basis of efforts to establish a consensual confessional democracy in a permanent and final Lebanese nation-state with a special mission: freedom of religion and coexistence among religious groups.

So far, it has not been a practical proposition for the Lebanese political state to abolish the confessional system. In fact, it has become an essential part of the fabric of the “modern” state. To this day, the Lebanese president is a Maronite Christian (Lebanon is the only Arab country with a Christian president), the House speaker is a Shi'ite Muslim, and the prime minister is a Sunnī Muslim. Most other posts in parliament, government, and public service, and even in the syndicates and other such bodies, are distributed on a confessional basis. In some cases, religious groups are licensed as political parties, which means that Lebanese politics are also subject to the mosaic of these different Lebanese communities.

While Arabic is the official language of the Republic of Lebanon, many Lebanese are fluent in French and English as well. Syriac, Armenian, and Kurdish are also languages spoken by some of the communities that make up the Lebanese mosaic.

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