Thanks to a travel grant kindly extended to me by CMES for the Summer of 2005 I was able to travel to Lebanon to conduct final research for my dissertation entitled Secularism Under Siege in Lebanon’s Second Republic.

Barely a week after my arrival I was invited by the Tayyar al-Mujtama al-Madani – also known as the Movement Sociale – to attend a national conference on secularism in Bikfayye, the capital of the Metn. (see www.aalmana.org). Over 50 students, young professionals and academics from all denominations attended the two-day conference at which I was asked to deliver the keynote address.

I tried to highlight the historical obstacles to secularism in Lebanon, highlighting the pervasive ideological conflation of secularism with atheism, the role of (French) colonial policy during the Mandate as well as the thwarted attempts at secularization in recent decades in Lebanon.
After the lecture I immediately opened up the floor for what turned out to be a very impassioned and interesting debate which revealed the rich diversity of opinions amongst Lebanese proponents of secularism.

Another, recently formed secular NGO I consulted was Hayya Bina (see www.hayyabina.org). I visited their headquarters where I engaged in a discussion with Hayya Bina’s head, Luqman Sleim, who also is the publisher of Dar al-Jadid and the scion of a prominent Shite human rights lawyer, the late Muhsin Sleim. Located in Haret Hreik next to the headquarters of Hizbollah this petit NGO has continued to fight the intrusion of religious discourse into politics. Sleim has made the headlines for his bold confrontation with Hizbollah, though his apologetic stance towards the Jewish state and neoconservatism have lessened his credibility. Unlike Bishop Haddad’s Tayyar al-Madani, Hayya Bina’s campaign for secularism and de-confessionalization in Lebanon may thus be held hostage to Israeli-steered US foreign policy which itself has been a boon to fundamentalism.

I also participated in the foundational meetings of a new inter-confessional public advocacy group called "Nahwa al-Muwatiniya" [Toward Citizenship] led by Gilbert Doumit and Sophia Bitar, and met with Jawad ‘Adra, the director of Information International, one of the largest research centers and survey institutes in Lebanon.

Professor Sophia Saadeh, the daughter of Antun Saadeh and an outside advisor of my thesis was gracious enough to give to me as a gift the entire 12-volume corpus of Antun Saadeh’s writings and speeches published by her own family publishing house.

During my stay in Lebanon I also consulted with Professor Masoud Daher, one of the most prolific historians in Lebanon and Professor Nawaf Salam, a leading political scientist at the American University in Beirut who has recently been appointed to a critical committee of constitutional lawyers and politicians charged with designing a new electoral law for Lebanon. The perennial Gordian knot in Lebanon has been how to devise an electoral system which fosters national integration without in fact causing minorities to feel under-represented. Moreover, in the absence of any limits on electoral spending, vote buying has constituted an additional source of tension, along with the blatant sectarian galvanizing practiced recently by Sunni, Shia, Christian and Druze communal heads.

Through the good offices of Dr. Salam I obtained a copy of an unpublished, very hard to find thesis from 1980 by the Lebanese historian Issam Khalife which treats the topic of my thesis, albeit covering a different period and with recourse to a different methodology.

I also obtained further valuable documents from the Syrian National Socialist Party (SSNP) and the Lebanese Communist Party (LP) and scheduled meetings with leading officials. These two parties – though increasingly marginalized - have a long record of supporting a secular agenda and as such constitute a sine qua non for my thesis.

Lastly, I met with Alessandra and George Asseily, a prominent Lebanese entrepreneur and pre-war head of the Lebanese industrialist’s association. Mr. Asseily is also the patron-founder of the Center for Lebanese Studies at Oxford University which will be organizing a conference in June 2006.

On my way back I met the Greek Catholic Bishop of Aleppo as well as the newly appointed, open-minded Mufti of the Syrian Republic in order to discuss the planning of a large Muslim-Christian forum which is to take place in Syria in 2006.

This trip allowed me to feel the pulse of the dramatic recent events which have unsettled Lebanon in the past year. The genesis of new alliances which might transcend the usually monochrome confessional makeup however has been restricted to small, widely scattered fori rather than broader political parties unfortunately. As regards the latter, a precarious confessional cantonization seems to be prevailing, with sectarianism arguably even gaining new strength as outside powers from Tel Aviv to Tehran seek to exploit local agents for their own interests.

A radical reconfiguration of the political landscape does not seem to be in the offing as long as no political force is at hand to fuse the many but dispersed seeds of secularism into a national, unified movement. One omen for the current mood is provided by the name the most recent youth organization in Lebanon selected for itself: "Youth in fear of the country".

Mark Farha is a PhD candidate in History & Middle Eastern Studies at CMES.