Lebanon: The Rise and Fall of a Secular State Under Siege

✍ Scribed by Mark Farha

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 330
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Why has secularism faced such challenges in the Middle East and in Lebanon in particular? In light of dominating headlines about the spread of sectarianism and the so-called death of Arab secularism, Mark Farha addresses the need for a thorough examination of the history of secular thought and practice in the region. By offering a comprehensive, systematic account of the underlying ideological, socio-economic, and political factors involved, Farha provides a new understanding of the historical roots of secularism as well as the potential causes for the continued resistance a fully deconfessionalized state faces both in Lebanon and in the region at large. Drawing on a vast corpus of primary and secondary sources to examine the varying political parties and ideologies involved, this book provides a fresh approach to the study of religion and politics in the Arab world and beyond.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half-title
Title page
Copyright information
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction and Conceptual Framework
Political Confessionalism: Modern Blessing or Ancient Bane?
Characteristics of Lebanon's Castes and Client Groups: Ṭā'ifiyā
Conceptual and Analytic Approach
Structure and Outline
1 Definitions and Genealogies of Secularism
Working Definition of Secularism for the Purposes of This Book
2 Prototypes of Secularism in Lebanon
The Premodern Identity and Social Structure of Lebanon: In Search of Proto-Secularism
Origins and Formation of the Lebanese State: The Two Switzerlands: A Concise Comparison of Two Distinctly Related Consociational Models
Napoleon Bonaparte and His Arab Acolytes: Nineteenth-Century Enlightened Despotism?
The Rupture of Revolution: Did Secularizing, Republican Reform Spark Sectarianism?
Inherited Sin or Inescapable, Saving Grace? Tracing the Lineage of the Lebanese Confessional System
Birth of the Vaṭan
Occidentalist Defamation of Secularism: Missionaries, Masons, and the Mutanawwirūn
From Anti-imperial Dissent to National Consent: World War I and the Formation of a Trans-Sectarian National Consciousness in Lebanon
3 Way Stations of the Lebanese Republic
Confessionalism as a Colonial Legacy or Domestic Necessity?
The First Republic of 1926: Constitutional Contradictions and Lacunae
Respective Rates of Confessional Accommodation to the New State
The ''Ṫayf'' (''Ghost'') of Ṫā'if
The Proposed Reform of the Electoral Districts and Demographic Dilemmas
Twentieth-Century Lebanese Parties and Secularism: A Brief Outline of the Debate (1926-2006)
The Old and New Zu'amā' Emerging from the Civil War
4 Socioeconomic Globalization and Secularism 1990-2005
The Merchant Prince: The Impact of the Postwar Ḥarīrī Era
Family Farms and the Patronization of Privatization after 1990
Social Stratification, Status, and Intersectarian Relations in Postwar Lebanon
Embattled Freedom and Secular Sphere of the Media 1977-2004
Promise and Peril of (Rentier) Capitalism Serving As a Catalyst of Secularization
The Escalating Saudi-Syrian Rivalry for Lebanon and Its Fallout for Secularism
Conclusion: The Secular State between Political and Social Reform
Conclusion: Secularism and Lebanon in the Eye of the Sectarian Storm
Secular Signposts in the Evolution of the Polity
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Travelogues
(Historical) Dictionaries
Books in Arabic
Books in English
Books in French
Books in German
Journal and Newspaper Articles
Articles in Edited Books
Report
PhD Dissertations and Theses
Interviews
Newspapers and Journals:
Index