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02-12-2022, 03:40 PM
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After 100 years, many Lebanese are asking themselves: Why continue to live a lie?
In 1920, French Gen. Henri Gouraud was optimistic and, along with the Catholic Maronite Patriarch Elias Hoayek and Sunni Grand Mufti Sheikh Mustafa Naja, expanded the predominantly Christian-inhabited Mount Lebanon by creating a new geographical entity, which the French official and the two clerics named Greater Lebanon. They added the coastal towns of Beirut (then chiefly Greek Orthodox); Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre, and their hinterlands (then mostly Sunni); and the Bekaa Valley(whose populations included Shiites, Sunnis, and Christians).
Overnight, Mount Lebanon’s 80 percent Christian majority was reduced to 55 percent, which was the basis of flawed political apportionments on Sept. 1, 1920. Importantly, a demographic parity was reached between Muslims and Christians as early as 1943, when Lebanon gained formal independence.
The country made a crucial error by preserving an unwritten sectarian system that granted the top posts of the presidency to Maronites, the premiership to Sunnis, and the speakership of parliament to Shiites.The country made a crucial error by preserving an unwritten sectarian system that granted the top posts of the presidency to Maronites, the premiership to Sunnis, and the speakership of parliament to Shiites. The French believed that power sharing would best serve the new republic, granting the three leading religious communities high-level posts.
All 18 officially recognized religious communities were allocated specific positions that, in effect, created a unique democracy based on consociationalism. A consociational state rests on a carefully divided internal setup along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines, with none of the divisions large enough to form a majority group that would or even could dominate the rest, but which remains relatively stable because leaders consult among each other to maintain a balance of power. In Lebanon’s case, consociationalism was meant to maintain internal stability among the newly created state’s Christian and Muslim elites....
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/18/partition-is-the-only-solution-to-lebanons-woes/
After 100 years, many Lebanese are asking themselves: Why continue to live a lie?
In 1920, French Gen. Henri Gouraud was optimistic and, along with the Catholic Maronite Patriarch Elias Hoayek and Sunni Grand Mufti Sheikh Mustafa Naja, expanded the predominantly Christian-inhabited Mount Lebanon by creating a new geographical entity, which the French official and the two clerics named Greater Lebanon. They added the coastal towns of Beirut (then chiefly Greek Orthodox); Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre, and their hinterlands (then mostly Sunni); and the Bekaa Valley(whose populations included Shiites, Sunnis, and Christians).
Overnight, Mount Lebanon’s 80 percent Christian majority was reduced to 55 percent, which was the basis of flawed political apportionments on Sept. 1, 1920. Importantly, a demographic parity was reached between Muslims and Christians as early as 1943, when Lebanon gained formal independence.
The country made a crucial error by preserving an unwritten sectarian system that granted the top posts of the presidency to Maronites, the premiership to Sunnis, and the speakership of parliament to Shiites.The country made a crucial error by preserving an unwritten sectarian system that granted the top posts of the presidency to Maronites, the premiership to Sunnis, and the speakership of parliament to Shiites. The French believed that power sharing would best serve the new republic, granting the three leading religious communities high-level posts.
All 18 officially recognized religious communities were allocated specific positions that, in effect, created a unique democracy based on consociationalism. A consociational state rests on a carefully divided internal setup along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines, with none of the divisions large enough to form a majority group that would or even could dominate the rest, but which remains relatively stable because leaders consult among each other to maintain a balance of power. In Lebanon’s case, consociationalism was meant to maintain internal stability among the newly created state’s Christian and Muslim elites....
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/18/partition-is-the-only-solution-to-lebanons-woes/