Confessions of a Confessional State:The Sectarianization of Lebanon from 1819 to 1926

By Ethan Lazuk

Abstract - Due to their reliance on Eurocentric criteria, Western actors have consistently held misconceptions about Lebanon. This was especially true during the period from 1819 to 1926, when Western policymaking, which was grounded in these misconceptions, caused significant structural changes to Lebanese society. Such changes included more than just superficial colonial institutions. Rather, the entire social fabric of Lebanon was rethreaded with Eurocentric criteria, transforming a geometric pattern of interconnected communities into an unprecedented mishmash of arbitrarily sectarianized groups, from heterogeneous harmony to homogenized hatreds. At first the changes were small and reflected merely a local response to the myopic activities of Western missionaries, who were only able to comprehend their surroundings using inapplicable Eurocentric criteria. As the use of these criteria became more persistent, though, the stimulation of structural changes in Lebanese society increased, and soon its equilibrium was entirely disrupted. And so began a positive feedback loop, in which Western misconceptions of Lebanese society fueled structural changes, which in turn caused more consequential Western misconceptions. The final result was that the fundamental structure of its society became so dramatically altered during the period from 1819 to 1926 that Lebanon has been futilely searching for balance in a state of disequilibrium ever since.

Introduction:The structural changes to Lebanese society occurring from 1819 to 1926 marked a process of sectarianization (Weiss 2010). A decentralized society ruled by “an elite hierarchy in which secular rank rather than religious affiliation defined politics” slowly became transformed into a de facto colonial state in which religion was “the primary marker of political identification” (Makdisi 2000; p.6-7). Sectarianization was not a unified process, nor did it affect all segments of Lebanese society equitably. Instead, it was an ambiguous trend with varying levels of causality, and causing various results. Causality at the colonial level came largely from the misconceptions of missionaries and other Western actors with regard to Lebanese social structures and communal interrelationships. The Ottoman Tanzimat, or 19th century cultural modernization drive, represented the imperial level of causality. While at the local level there was the multitude of defensive reactions from Lebanese communities towards the ubiquitous influx of perplexing changes frantically consuming their society from every angle in a blind feeding frenzy of ignorance. Sectarianization was not a purebred creation of an organized process, but an aggregate byproduct of misconception and ill-intention, an inbred bastard child of distant machinations and directly taken missteps.

The confluence of colonial, imperial, and local causalities quarantined the sectarian plague inside Lebanon. Yet, these causalities and their effects were highly disparate phenomena. Any attempt at amalgamating them into a rationalized process, if only for analytical purposes, would misconstrue their disjunctive nature, thus lending false form to an amorphous apparition of truly deadly character. But during the period from 1819 to 1926 sectarianization was partially definable according to a common denominator at all three levels of primary causality. This common denominator was the invocation of Eurocentric criteria by Western actors, forming the bases of their misconceptions of Lebanese society, and dictating their flawed policymaking there (Makdisi 2000; 2010). Western missionaries, mercantilists, and military men alike formulated policies according to their own misperceptions, the grandest theme being native Christian oppression at the hands of uncultured Muslim heathens. Ottoman authorities, having their cultural screws tightened by European notions of progress, looked upon Lebanon as a stagnant society, a backward relic fool heartedly grasping to an antiquated religiosity. Native Lebanese elites, guided by the light of self-interest, drifted within the confines of outside misconceptions, flowing limply out to sea with the Western tide, and moving ever-farther away from their native shores.

Methods: The research methodology tests for a causal relationship between one or more independent variables, represented by sociological theories, and the dependent variable, represented by flawed Western policymaking based on Eurocentric criteria. The independent variables are tested using historical case studies of contextualized events occurring between 1819 and 1926. The dependent variable is implicated in each case study by Western policymaking. For results, each case study is then categorized as either “positive” if causality for the Western policymaking is assignable to one or more of the independent variables or “negative” if causality remains undetermined.

This is a qualitative research effort because it uses abstract measures, meaning the sociological theories as independent variables. The measurements, or data, produced will be nominal. These qualitative and nominal characteristics thus require an increased consideration of validity and precision in the research methodology. Validity of measures is achieved if there is “a relationship of equivalence between a measure and its concept” (Shively 2011; p. 48). In other words, to achieve validity of measures in this research the sociological theories used as independent variables must sufficiently convey the meaning of the implicated causality. Although absolute validity of measures is impossible in qualitative social science research, given the inherent margins of error for theoretical concepts, an adequate level of validity is achievable (Shively 2011). The independent variables in this research effort prove adequately valid because each theory pertains either to Western misconceptions of the greater Middle East or to

sectarianization in Lebanon specifically, thus establishing a conceptual correlation between the independent variables and the case studies, i.e. “face validity.”

In addition to validity of measures, which this research is shown to have, proper social science research requires precision of both measures and measurements. Precision of measures is achieved by “keeping the units of measurement relatively fine” (Shively 2011; p.58). For this research, fine units of measurement would require sensitive differentiations between the independent variables according to their specific implications for the dependent variable in each case study. Given current research aims, that would be unfeasible. Regardless, even though precision of measures is beneficial, it is ultimately less important for proper research than is thorough data collection. The measures used in this research, though individually distinct, have a shared purpose of confirming the fundamental source of causality for the dependent variable. That is to say, the general use of the independent variables is to measure the same concept. Narrowly focusing on the idiosyncrasies of each sociological theory used would actually be disadvantageous because “white noise” would result in the data.

It has already been mentioned that this research has nominal measurements, which means “simply to assign the [cases] studied to categories” of independent variables (Shively 2011; p.62). Nominal measurements are the lowest of the three basic levels of precision, surpassed by ordinal and then interval measurements, because their range of practical application is limited to conceptual categorization, while any comparative studies are precluded. For this research, we are able to enhance our measurements from nominal to ordinal precision just by assigning ordinal values. A scale of values can be created by assigning a value of +1 to each affirmed independent variable in a “positive” case study, 0 to neutral case studies, and -1 to each “negative” case study, thus providing an ordinal basis for comparative purposes. In the final results, an aggregate value of +1 or greater would confirm the research hypothesis, with higher values equaling higher degrees of confirmation. Conversely, a final value of 0 or less would disprove the research hypothesis. Perhaps most importantly, by using basic ordinal values for measurements we leave open the possibility of increasing the level of precision later on, when any superfluous data collected here may prove useful for answering additional research questions.  Independent variables:The process of choosing sociological theories to be used as independent variables was attempted outside the bounds of ideological bias, where the validity of measures was the lone consideration. Four different independent variables were ultimately chosen: 1. Orientalism; 2. Arab Nationalism; 3. Middle Eastern Social Stratification; and 4. Sectarianism. Collectively, these four measures are categorically applicable to the relationship between Western actors and native Middle Eastern elements. This categorical relationship lends interchangeability to the measures as potential sources of

causality for the dependent variable. Individually, each measures tests a unique source of causality. All potential sources, though, affirm the research hypothesis with regard to the dependent variable. It was on account of the general potential for confirmation amongst all four independent variables that they were chosen for this research.

1. Orientalism –Although Orientalism theory has been perennially expanded and detracted from ever since the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said first popularized it in 1978, the fundamental tenets have remained consistent. In essence, Orientalism is the idea that Western scholarship of the East or “Orient”, specifically the Arab World, has been wrongfully based on “alleged ontological and epistemological distinctions between the invented collective identities” of Western and Eastern peoples (Nayak 1).  As a theory, Orientalism supports the “effort to understand Europe’s encounter with the rest of the world by focusing on the question of representation, on the discourse(s) which shaped how Westerners perceived the non-West (and thus themselves as well)” (Lockman 2010; p. 206). In this research, Orientalism can be said to demonstrate causality if the Western policymaking framework described in the case study represents a deliberate conceptualization by Western actors of Lebanese people as being fundamentally distinct from or incomparable to Western people.

2. Arab Nationalism –Arab Nationalism “had [its] origins in the late nineteenth-century Ottoman system and in the pattern of European influences on the fertile crescent” (Lapidus 2006; p. 535). “In the absence of territorial states, fertile crescent societies were fragmented into family, tribal, ethnic, linguistic, religious, guild, and residential communities. . . . European cultural and educational influences helped give rise to new ‘nationalist’ political consciousness, and European intervention created the divisions into national states that have lasted to the present day” (Ibid.). Arab Nationalism was therefore an effort by the Middle Eastern intelligentsia to create a united Arab identity, using Western knowledge to counter Western (neo)colonial influence. It was a defensive response to the “unresolved tensions among national states, ethnic identities, and Islam” initiated by the societal changes resulting from Western actors. At a theoretical level, Arab Nationalist movements are best understood as being the aggregate of two different interpretations of nationalism (ed. Hutchinson & Smith 1994; p.47). The first interpretation is nationalism as a “form of secular millenarism that has arisen from Kantian conceptions of human beings as autonomous, which, in turn, has led to politics replacing religion as the key to salvation” (Ibid.). Nationalism is thus a powerful yet destructive force, galvanized whenever social breakdown involves a “collapse in the transmission of traditional values, and the rise of a restless, secular, educated generation, ambitious for power but excluded from its proper estate.” Alternatively, the second interpretation of

nationalism invokes “the need of modern societies for cultural homogeneity,” making nationalism an essential prerequisite for modernization. This interpretation of nationalism “is not the awakening of an old, latent, dormant force. . . . It is in reality the consequence of a new form of social organization,” one that depends on the cooperation of “high cultures” for viability and sustenance (Ibid.). As an independent variable, Arab Nationalism, because it is inherently a native response to societal changes wrought by Western actors, demonstrates causality in a given case study if Western policymaking shows explicit encouragement or intensification of nationalist movements in Lebanon.            3. Middle Eastern Social Stratification –The theoretical framework of Social Stratification used in this research was created in the 1960s by the Dutch scholar Nieuwenhuijze. This theory holds that the notion of social stratification “is Western, not to say European, in origin” (Nieuwenhuijze 1967; p.6). While for Europeans “articulation of society is preponderantly noticeable as stratification,” in the Middle East “the way in which society achieves its own distinctive articulateness cannot be called stratification. . . . Rather it is a complex of convergent diversification according to mutually determining rating categories and social functions” (p.77). These rating categories, invoked by Nieuwenhuijze within the context of convergent diversification in Middle Eastern society, are elaborated in the context of early-20th century Lebanon by anthropologist Fuad Khuri. In his work, Beirut: From Village to Suburb, Khuri explains how the absence of historical documents in Lebanon “to account for local history allows the people to see themselves in the historical perspective they desire.” Such subjectivity ultimately means that for Lebanese people “local history becomes a projection of cultural affinity, reflective of self-image,” but ignorant of objectivity (Khuri 1984; p.22). As an independent variable, causality is attributable to Social Stratification if the case study reveals that Western policymaking was inadvertently premised on the misconception that Western-style social stratification existed in Lebanese society, especially with regard to matters of ethnic and/or religious hierarchies.

4. Sectarianism -Sectarianism as a sociological theory is described by Ussama Makdisi in his anthropological study of Lebanon, Culture of Sectarianism:

Sectarianism is a modernist knowledge in the sense that it was produced in the context of European hegemony and Ottoman reforms and because its articulators at a colonial (European), imperial (Ottoman), and local (Lebanese) level regarded themselves as moderns who used the historical past to justify present claims and future development. (Makdisi 2000; p.7)

This phenomenon in its theoretical format emerged out of the sectarianization process in Lebanon between 1819 and 1926, a period when “Britain, France, and the Ottomans regulated different aspects of the colonial

encounter,” consequently opening up “the space for a new form of politics and representation based on a language of religious equality” (p.6-7). Native Lebanese people were thus presented “with avenues for reinterpreting their own history, their own communal self-definition, and ultimately their own rigid social order” (p. 8). But when these incipiently formed groups started competing for power, in a society increasingly controlled by colonial and imperial influences, violent conflict became a looming inevitability. The sectarianization process, from which comes the theory of Sectarianism, is itself a result of societal changes caused by Western actors in Lebanon. Sectarianism thus demonstrates causality as an independent variable if the dependent variable, or Western policymaking, explicitly invokes the preexistence of sectarian criteria in its conceptualization of Lebanese society.  Historical background:The timeframe for this research is between 1819 and 1926. Relative to the greater history of the Eastern Mediterranean region of which Lebanon is an integral part, a century long historical analysis is modest. In the introduction to his book, Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary explains why “People living around the Mediterranean had good reason to think of themselves at the center of human history,” as this region represented both “the eastern edge of the world defined by sea-lanes and the western edge of the world defined by land routes.” The merging of these sea and land conduits created an intercommunicating zone that operated like “an organizing force drawing diverse people into one another’s narratives and weaving their destinies together to form the germ of a world history,” a history which eventually yielded Western civilization (Ansary 2008; p.1-4).            This formation of “the germ of world history” occurred roughly 5,000 years ago. As mentioned, the research period from 1819 to 1926, relative to five millennia of documented history, is but a smidgeon of time. Although incorporating a comprehensive overview of the Eastern Mediterranean region into this research would prove infeasible, it still must be understood that the century-long period researched here represents the end product of 5,000 years of historical processes, defined by the perennial intermixing of world histories, cultures, and peoples. Historical research of the preceding 5,000 years has been well documented, but the effects on the native characteristics of this multiple millennia-old cultural complex from the introduction of 19th and 20th century European influences remains a lightly-researched topic with regard to anthropological and sociological data. But as modern-day scholars begin exploring these important historical periods with regard to indigenous perspectives and anthropological and sociological principles, this research hopes to offer a positive contribution toward these budding areas of scholarship.

Case studies:

1. Missionaries - The first case study discusses the promulgation of Western religious and political ideas following the initial arrival of American missionaries to Lebanon in 1819 (Makdisi 2010). For Western religious actors, Lebanon was thought to be ideally suited for missionary work because of the pseudo-sense of familiarity many Europeans and Americans had with it as an ancient Biblical land. Not only does the English word “Bible” come from the town Byblos in north Lebanon, but because the pre-state boundaries of Lebanon overlapped and comingled with the Christian holy lands in Palestine, the literalist interpretations of Western Evangelicals enabled them to vicariously visit Lebanon via Biblical descriptions. It should come as no surprise then that for Western Evangelicals Lebanon was conceptually identified less with its ambiguous actualities, and more within the context of easily relatable Eurocentric criteria. Furthermore, beginning in the 19th century, improved communication and transportation technologies transported record numbers of painters, poets, and other descriptive artists to Lebanon, whose outputs consequently “brought the Orient into the homes of ‘Christian readers’ on an unprecedented scale” (p.15). Unfortunate still, the growing sense of Western familiarity with Lebanon was accompanied by a greater reliance on Eurocentric criteria, meaning increasing misconceptions regarding Lebanese society.

Regarding missionary activities specifically, the role Orientalist thinking played in policymaking is evidenced by the fact that Western missionaries consistently made reference to the Crusades in order to conceptualize their own situation. The proselytizing efforts of Western missionaries were described as a crusade in the sense that most Western travelers in Lebanon “imagined themselves to be involved in a historic clash between Christian progress and Islamic despotism, a clash in which they alone held the keys to knowledge and interpretation” (Makdisi 2010, p.16). The clash of civilizations narrative is perhaps best known today due to Samuel Huntington’s 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, which followed in the footsteps of Middle East historian and Orientalist Bernard Lewis. But the origins of such ethnocentrisms actually lay much deeper in Western history (Lockman 2010). For the West, Islam has traditionally played an exceptional role as the civilizational “other” relative to the rest of the non-Western world. Despite the fact that Westerners “had and still have all sorts of images of other peoples, cultures and religions in their heads . . . it is only the image of Islam which has historically evoked both a profound sense of cultural difference and a deep sense of threat” (p.37). The overt opposition of Western missionaries to Islam, as evidenced in their crusading terminology, demonstrates how Orientalism played an integral role in their negative opinions and misconceptions of native Lebanese people and their society.

Also implicated in this case study is Social Stratification theory, especially with regard to the missionaries’ misperceptions of religious hierarchy in Lebanon. “In Mount Lebanon’s rural inhabitants, the travelers saw revolutionaries and counter revolutionaries, papists and highlanders – in

short, all that related to the dynamism of European history” (Makdisi 2000; p.17). It is even accurate to say that Social Stratification had a greater effect than Orientalism in bringing about societal changes in Lebanon. Preoccupied with the differences between Middle Eastern Islamic and European Christian society, or as they saw it between the Islamic and Christian faiths themselves, Western missionaries sought out “those religious communities which were perceived to be the farthest from Islam,” meaning Lebanese Christians (p.20). Orientalist tendencies in missionary thought thus caused their subjective targeting of non-Muslim communities in Lebanon, while Eurocentric criteria underlining misconceptions of Social Stratification meant that such selective targeting was based entirely on imagined cultural affinities. Social Stratification explains how Western missionaries imposed their conception of a proper social hierarchy on Lebanese society, one where Christians occupied the upper echelon of piety, largely because the success of their proselytizing efforts “depended on creating a coherent typology of Maronites, Druzes, Greek Orthodox, Shi’a, Sunni, and Greek Catholics,” or in other words a stratified society comprehensible by Eurocentric criteria, which consequently had an indelible effect on the structure of Lebanese society:

Naturally, they borrowed freely from one another, and they filtered their own varied experiences through a common conceptual language of native difference and separateness. . . . They were conceptualized in certain terms (tribal, free, stagnant, separate) that did not correspond to the way the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon perceived themselves. Such a discourse, which traditional native knowledge could scarcely penetrate, had a tremendous impact on local society. (Makdisi 2000; p. 23)The policymaking of Western missionaries in Lebanon was thus

grounded in the conceptual influences of Orientalism and Social Stratification theory. Lebanon remained a distinctly non-Western civilization, where Islamic barbarism and cultural backwardness persistently threatened the moral integrity of Christian communities and (European) lifestyles. Their perceived familiarity with Lebanon according to Biblical imagery premised on Eurocentric criteria ultimately meant that, for Western missionaries, native Lebanese society, though odd in its appearance and structure, was similar enough to European society to be conceptualized in similar terms. Such misconceptions based on the application of Eurocentric criteria caused the first significant structural changes to Lebanese society, i.e. the imposed creation of a religious hierarchy, which transcended native tribal and communal arrangements, and, of course, placed European-style Christianity high above the rest.

2. European mercantilists and militaries -The second case study describes the exacerbation of these incipient societal changes via the galvanization of European mercantilism thanks to Ottoman economic concessions for European powers, while Christian favoritism on the part of Western merchants resulted in the further “transformation of the

original uneven local locations” of Christian and Muslim communities “into a pattern of unequal socio-economic development” (Traboulsi 2005; p.15). The initial stratification shift of Lebanese society, stemming from the artificially imposed religious hierarchies of Western missionaries, had now become an economic shift, one which “strained relations” between the Christian and Muslim communities “and culminated in the civil war of 1860” (Khuri 1984, p.31). As a further region-wide result of Western-caused civil violence in Lebanon, Ottoman authorities were introduced to “the international stage, and the pressure of European powers,” eventually leading to modernization drives like the aforementioned Tanzimat. Simultaneously, there ensued inside Lebanon “a bitter competition between the colonial designs and interests of France and Britain,” which served to exacerbate existing societal changes, and further fracture its increasingly brittle communities (Traboulsi 2005, p.37). This case study thus deals with European mercantile, as well as military, sources of societal change in Lebanon beginning with the Ottoman Tanzimat in 1839 and extending to the Lebanese civil war of 1860.

Throughout the course of the 19th century, “various parts of the Middle East were drawn, to a greater or lesser extent, into the international network of trade and finance.” At the international level, this meant the immigration of European businessmen and technicians to places like Lebanon, while at the local level a transition from subsistence to cash crop agriculture occurred (ed. Lapidus 1969; p.108). Lebanon experienced both phenomena via the growth of its silk trade, which was responsible for transferring Maronite Christians, working as sharecroppers, to the agricultural domains of landowning Druze, a minority Islamic sect preponderant in 19th century Lebanon (Khuri 1984; p.29-30). Cash crop production throughout the Middle East increased markedly as a result of newly reduced trade tariffs associated with the 1839 Ottoman Tanzimat reforms. As time went on, Maronite sharecroppers reinvested their accumulated earnings from the silk industry into land purchases from Druze lords, “an activity which strained relations between the two communities and culminated in the civil war of 1860” (p.31). One result of this conflict was the relocation of countless migrants and refugees from rural villages to urban centers. Such migrations were perhaps “the outstanding feature of urban history of this period,” which saw the growth of “heterogenetic seaports” like Beirut, Lebanon’s future capital city (ed. Lapidus 1969; p.108).          

Prior to the 1860 Lebanese civil war, Western actors in that country were ultimately acting in a civilian capacity, the bulk of them being missionaries or mercantilists. High numbers of native Christian casualties from the civil war, however, gave the impetus for European military intervention into Lebanon. With bloody anti-Christian riots in Damascus, Syria in 1860, violence soon spilled over into neighboring Lebanon, erupting into a full-fledged civil war (Traboulsi 2007; p.36). Perturbed by the notion of Muslim hands tainted with Christian blood, and more importantly the disruption of their Mediterranean silk supplies, France and Britain immediately issued munitions to various groups of Lebanese fighters, arming

their own special interests in what soon became a de facto proxy war. In addition to sending weapons, British and French military forces were sent into Lebanon, while demands from European governments on the Ottoman Empire to quell the violence were also forthcoming (p.37). Overall, French and British intervention in Lebanon was in direct response to domestic textile production, as industrialization required a consistent supply of raw materials like silk. Secondarily, these two powers were responding to the intolerability of Christian persecution, especially by heathen Muslims.

European powers intervened in Lebanon as a response to a perception of sectarian conflict, religiously based violence yielding Christian persecution. Regardless of the primary commercial interests at stake, the religious dimensions of the civil war ultimately prompted a direct European military presence. Ironically, what European powers did not think to ask was why inter-religious violence had never before occurred in Lebanon during the previous one thousand years of peaceful Muslim-Christian coexistence? The 1860 Lebanese civil war did result from inter-religious violence, but what created the tensions between Muslims and Christians in the first place?

Communal divisions between Christians and Muslims in Lebanon have their origins in the imposition of religious hierarchies by Western missionaries according to Eurocentric criteria, as demonstrated by the first case study. The Christian favoritism of these missionaries, though mostly inconsequential by itself, nonetheless established a trend, a policymaking framework followed by later Western actors. The Ottoman Tanzimat reforms have been cited as giving impetus to cash crop production in Lebanon. Another important clause of these 1839 reforms was the nullification of Muslim privileges in the Empire, and the equalization of all religious groups with regard to political and economic opportunity. We have seen how the silk industry caused power realignment in Lebanon, where Druze rule became more limited by Maronite economic empowerment. But this de facto social equalization through indigenous processes, which may have been tenable in its own right, was disrupted by increasing European mercantilism in Lebanon, which stridently followed the budding Western tradition of Christian favoritism. Lebanese and Damascene Christians “represented an uneven commercial competition to the interests of Muslim merchants in internal trade, and benefited from privileged relations with Europe as importers and representatives of foreign commercial firms” (p.36).

The bloody anti-Christian riot in Damascus, and the spillover of inter-religious violence into Lebanon, was not the sudden ignition of long-standing religious animosities. Rather, such riots were spurred by the secular grievances of Muslim merchants against their new Christian competitors, who were not reaping the benefits of a newly equalized economic system, but were inordinately empowered by European favoritism. It thus follows that the causality of Western responses to the Lebanese civil war stemmed from the earlier effects of Orientalism and Social Stratification theory, but ultimately European intervention followed the logic of Sectarianism. Ignoring the historical contextualization of the 1860 civil war, Europeans looked to

Lebanon and saw not the expected results of rapid economic changes affecting societal structures, but an isolated incident of religious incompatibility, a simple continuation of that perennial crusade between the Christian West and the Muslim East.

3. Lebanese nationalism - The timeframe for the third and fourth case studies is roughly from the rise of the Ottoman Committee for Union and Progress, or Young Turks, in 1908 to the de facto institution of sectarianism in Lebanon’s “confessional” constitution in 1926. The focal event of the third case study is the growing debate between native Lebanese ideologues as to the proper national identity for their state.

Traditionally, the prevalent opinion of scholarship regarding Lebanese nationalism has been that there were two general nationalist movements operating in early 20th century Lebanon: Lebanese Nationalism and Arab Nationalism (Firro 2004). Lebanese Nationalism was a pro-Western, meaning pro-French, movement among Lebanese Christians, and represented a defensive response to the potential absorption of Christian cultural traditions into the dominant Islamic cultural complex of the Middle East. Conversely, Arab Nationalism was an anti-Western movement among Muslims who sought to incorporate Lebanon into Greater Syria, a larger geographical entity with a dominantly Sunni-Arab identity. This traditional dichotomy, however, between a pro-Western Christian nationalism and an anti-Western Muslim nationalism, is overly simplified, itself tying in with traditional Western misconceptions about Sectarianism, while also ignoring the high degree of socio-cultural nuance in Lebanese society, a society manifested by 5,000 years of globalized history.

First off, debates over nationalism in Lebanon were inherently inorganic. For Lebanese Christian intellectuals, nationalist fervor was the direct result of Western missionary rhetoric. Though their efforts to convert “Eastern Christians” to Western Evangelical Protestantism were fruitless, Western missionaries did contribute positively to Lebanese society by building schools and other educational infrastructure, making missionaries into “the Arab avatars of modern education” (Makdisi 2010, p.60). As early as the 1830s, native Lebanese Christians were in these schools, if not studying the missionaries’ theological agendas, at least learning to reconcile between religious and scientific knowledge, as well as about Western political traditions and social ideas (p.61-62). Education was one of the few positive externalities resulting from the introduction of Western actors into Lebanon, and it had great effect on the growth of Lebanese Nationalism.           Although early 20th century intentions were for a Sunni Muslim Greater Syrian state, original conceptions of Greater Syria came from Lebanese Christian students in Jesuit missionary schools during the 19 th

century. Obviously the intention of Christian students for Greater Syria was not to create a Sunni Muslim entity. Rather, these students looked deep into the pre-Islamic and pre-Arab past of the ancient Mediterranean region, tying

in with the 5,000 year old sea-faring culture of the Canaanites, better known as the Phoenicians (Firro 2004, p.1-2). After the idea of Greater Syria became disassociated from the Lebanese Nationalist movement, only to be adopted by Arab Nationalism, the ambitions of Christian nationalists were downsized to a distinct Lebanese geographical entity, while the notion of an ancient Phoenician identity remained integral to Lebanese Nationalist ideology. Tying the movement to Lebanon’s pre-Islamic past was an adept political tactic used to give legitimacy to non-Muslim rule in the Middle East (p.23). And so, contrary to traditional ideas about Lebanese Nationalism, which preference Sectarianism theory, the movement itself, while involving many Christian advocates, was not overtly Christian. In fact, Lebanese Nationalism was a movement seeking to establish the geographical integrity of a non-Syrian Lebanese state with non-Muslim rule, while premised on the cultural notion of religious pluralism, rather than Sunni Islamic dominance. If anything, Lebanese Nationalism can be defined simply as a means to gaining Christian political power within the context of a changing Lebanese societal structure increasingly being pushed toward conformance with tenets of European structures regarding Social Stratification by intrusive Western actors relying almost exclusively on Eurocentric criteria to form their conceptualizations of Lebanese society.            Just as Lebanese Nationalism was a heterogeneous movement, so too was Arab Nationalism (Firro 2006). Support for Greater Syria was not universal amongst Arab Nationalists. In fact, support for a Lebanese geographical and cultural entity distinct from neighboring Syria, as well as opposition to a universal Sunni identity, were both well represented perspectives in the Arab Nationalist movement. After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE, the Muslim community, called the umma, was of divided opinion over the question of the Prophet’s rightful khalifa, or eligible successor as the leader of the Muslim community (Ansary 2007). The Sunni-Shi’a split in Islam was the immediate result from two different camps of thought regarding this issue of succession. Sunni Muslims, now comprising 80 percent of the 1.57 billion Muslims worldwide, favored choosing a khalifa based on qualifications of knowledge and experience. Shi’a Muslims, on the other hand, wanted the khalifa to be of the Prophet’s familial bloodline. Currently, only three Arab countries have majority Shi’a populations: Bahrain, Iraq, and Lebanon. In Lebanon specifically, Shi’a communities have existed in the southern regions for centuries. In fact, when the Safavid Dynasty of Iran adopted Shi’a Islam as a state religion in the 16th century, ulama, or religious scholars, from tiny south Lebanon were brought in to the mighty Persian Empire in order to improve the dearth of Shi’a scholars there, hence the historical ties in the present-day between Iran and Lebanese Shi’a parties like Hezbollah (Weiss 2010; p.8). In 20th century Lebanon, Arab Nationalism had its own Sunni-Shi’a ideological dichotomy. However, this was not a result of differences in opinion regarding eschatological questions of rightful khulifa’. Rather, it was caused from secular concerns regarding the continuity of respective cultural traditions.

           Truthfully, there were many Shi’a Muslims that supported Lebanese Nationalism over Arab Nationalism because the former would better preserve Shi’a cultural autonomy, as well as ensure the continuity of localized traditions over pan-Arab ones. Therefore, for most Lebanese Shi’a at the turn of the 20th century, the importance of communal traditions and cultural ties eclipsed broad religious identities (Firro 2006). In those rarer instances where Lebanese Shi’a supported a Greater Syrian state, it was on account of their sustained exposure to Arab Nationalist political ideologies in Sunni-oriented religious schools, which oftentimes were the only available alternative to Western missionary institutions for these increasingly marginalized Shi’a communities (Makdisi 2010). But as nationalist movements progressed inside Lebanon, Muslim communities, especially Shi’a ones, started fragmenting along cultural fault lines, setting the stage for sustained civil discord (Firro 2006). To make matters worse, there was a simultaneously occurring phenomenon whereby an artificial aggregation of homogeneous urban communities segmented along ethnic and religious lines resulted from the dissolution of traditionally heterogeneous rural communities, a key contributing factor to Lebanese social fragmentation.            All of the phenomena mentioned in the third case study were inorganically created. Ideological movements occurring in Lebanon in the early 20th century were neither in accordance with past historical trends nor conceived as native responses to natural conditions. The influences of Western actors underpinned everything (Makdisi 2000; 2010; Firro 2004; 2006). Before the 1860 civil war, inter-religious communities in Lebanon were relatively harmonious, and Sectarianism was a nonfactor (Makdisi 2000). Muslims went to church to attend Christian wedding ceremonies, while Christians celebrated Islamic holidays together with their Muslim neighbors. But the divisiveness of nationalist movements in Lebanon, which split up cooperative communities into competing entities, attested to the indelible effects on Lebanese society from the misconceptions of Western actors who were promulgating Eurocentric criteria. Though nationalist movements were comprised of native Lebanese people, the premise behind these phenomena was entirely Western. There was a direct line of causality between early 20th century ideological trends in Lebanon and the continuously compounding influences of Orientalism, Sectarianism, Nationalism, and Social Stratification as introduced by Western policymaking. Although these movements were local phenomena in the sense that participants were native Lebanese people, this is not to say that these movements were devoid of Western influence. The very notion of nationalism is an importation from Western ideologies, and while these movements may not have been led by Western actors, it was the history of Eurocentric criteria in Western policymaking that led to them.             4. Confessionalism -The final case study evaluates the process of French attainment of a colonial mandate over Lebanon and the drafting of a national constitution

establishing a confessional system of government there. The time period in which these events took place is between the start of World War I in 1914 and the creation of the Lebanese nation-state under French auspices in 1926.

As a result of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, in which France and Britain arranged for their respective post-war mandates in the Middle East, all while the war was ongoing, Syria and Lebanon were tentatively designated as French territory, an arrangement ratified officially in 1920 at the San Remo Conference (Zamir 1997). Even though Syria was geographically its largest prize, “Lebanon was the cornerstone of French policy in the Middle East . . . [With] France’s traditional religious and cultural ties with the Catholic communities of the Levant, especially the Maronites, and its moral obligation to protect them” being the basis for the French mission civilisatrice in Lebanon, i.e. de jure Christian favoritism (p.240-43). Despite whatever noble intentions France had mandated for its Lebanese mandate, the same historical misconceptions pertaining to Sectarianism, Orientalism, and Social Stratification that had been misguiding Western actors in Lebanon since 1819 continued to operate unabatedly, only now such policies had the dishonorable distinction of being official French foreign policy.

The actions of French officials in Lebanon during the mandate period can be summed up “as divide-and-rule policy.” Following a decade of processes whereby Western actors introduced Eurocentric criteria into the framework of Lebanese society, forever offsetting its equilibrium, French officials now sought to formally codify the shameful legacy of Western misconceptions by incorporating them into the Lebanese constitution. The new vision for Lebanon was a Confessional system of government, meaning the de facto institutionalization of Sectarianism. Confessionalism was a system of proportional representation according to ethno-religious identity or “confession” (Zamir 1997). As a policy it advocated that the make-up of all governmental institutions should reflect the ethno-religious make-up of Lebanese society. French colonial logic followed that in a multi-confessional country like Lebanon, with a history of sectarianism and religiously-based civil conflict, ensuring that political power would always be distributed equitably amongst all of the polarized confessional groups required the institutionalization of proportional representation. And so the Lebanese constitution ordained that there would always be a Maronite Christian president, a Sunni Muslim prime minister, and a Shi’a Muslim speaker of the parliament. France’s long-standing Christian favoritism in Lebanon would thus live on through a Maronite-dominated government, but this arrangement was far from coincidental.

The hierarchical population theme of Maronites first, Sunnis second, and Shi’a and other minorities third started with flawed census data from 1932. As a result of imprecise recording mechanisms, groups sitting on the lower rungs of the economic ladder were casually passed-over, artificially inflating the percentages of more affluent groups, many of which having

recently benefitted from European mercantilism. Given that Lebanon was France’s mandate, it perhaps should not be surprising that the initial electoral processes yielded results favorable to French interests. What is surprising, though, is that the 1932 census still remains the most current population data for Lebanon for official government use, 70 years later. Present demographics for Lebanon are vastly incomparable to the already flawed data of 1932, where Shi’a Muslims now represent a majority of the entire population (Firro 2003). Ironically, even though the supposedly equitable Confessional system is still in place, Maronite dominance has not changed, meaning that Western policies of Christian-favoritism, or at least Muslim-opposition, have not changed either. The existence of political organizations like Hezbollah, operating as de facto governments to those people marginalized by the Confessional system, is a blatant testament to the long-term detrimental effects of colonial machinations. The Eurocentric criteria underlying the policymaking frameworks of Western actors in 19th

and 20th century Lebanon have left that country and its society with “a legacy it has been unable to overcome” (Zamir 1997). The French-made Confessional system was both the conclusion to a legacy of overt changes to Lebanese society by Western policies starting in 1819, as well as the introduction to a modern legacy of covert changes manifested by the residue of Eurocentric criteria polluting the progression of a fledgling nation-state. Sectarianism thus went from a mere causality behind misconceived Western policymaking to a fundamental truth regarding Lebanese society.

Conclusion:The first case study demonstrated how Western missionaries introduced an artificial social hierarchy into Lebanon based on misconceptions, with Orientalism and Social Stratification as causalities. This case study was therefore “positive” with an ordinal value of +2. The Lebanese civil war of 1860 was the focus of the second case study, where we saw how earlier missionary policymaking carried over into economic and military activities. Although Orientalism and Social Stratification were underlying Western policymaking, the ultimate causality was Sectarianism. And so the second case study was also “positive” with an ordinal value of +1. In the third case study discussing Lebanese nationalist movements, we saw how the influences of Western actors became manifested in native Lebanese political ideologies. Although this case study did not demonstrate explicit Western encouragement of nationalist movements, it also did not disavow Western misconceptions from influencing those movements. The third case study is thus “neutral” with an ordinal value of 0, representing the implicit influence of all four independent variables, but not in the direct manner required of a “positive” case study. In the fourth case study, French policymaking in Lebanon with regard to a Confessional constitution demonstrated Sectarianism as an explicit causality, with evidence of significant influence from Orientalism and Social Stratification following closely. The fourth case study is definitively “positive,” and while the exact ordinal value is uncertain,

the explicitness of Sectarianism as causality means we may assign a value of at least +1, with the potential for a value as high as +3. The aggregate ordinal value of all four case studies was thus at least +4, representing a “positive” outcome in support of the hypothesis. The first case study was most supportive of the hypothesis, having two affirmed independent variables as causalities, while the third case study was least supportive with a “neutral” ordinal value of 0. However, the implicit aspects of the latter case study put it closer to a “positive” rather than “negative” designation. According to the data, the time frame from 1819 to 1926, at least as it pertains to the four case studies used, saw significant affectation of Lebanese society by Western policymaking, which was definitively based on misconceptions stemming from Eurocentric criteria. These findings would be useful for further research efforts that aim to explore the effects of Western actors in greater detail, now that the theory of Eurocentric criteria can be definitively accepted as causality for Western policymaking in Lebanon.

In nominal terms, these results show a guilty confession from this Confessional state, whereby societal changes occurring in Lebanon between 1819 and 1926 were directly caused by Western actors behaving contrary to the de facto laws of Lebanese society, and solely in accordance with the illegality of Eurocentric criteria. While native Lebanese actors responding to these changes, such as in cases of nationalist movements, were not exempt from complicity in the promotion of such Eurocentric criteria, the fault lies overwhelmingly with Western policymaking. And based on examinations of current Western policies in Lebanon, notably those of the United States and its proxy-war between the Lebanese Armed Forces and Hezbollah, a showing of contrition by Western actors is far from conclusive. It is safe to assume that as long as Western policymaking continues to rely on Eurocentric criteria, while hopelessly grasping at imagined solutions to misconceived sectarian situations, and the guilty confession of Western actors remains drowned out by the enveloping cacophony of their own self-righteous rhetoric, the prospects for Lebanon will be forever darkened from a society beholden to the Eurocentric criteria beloved by Western actors, and coarsely manifested through their perennial misconceptions. As history attests, Lebanon is not to prosper by Western policymaking, but by its absence.

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