Rethinking Sectarianism: Violence and Coexistence in Lebanon

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Lebanon and analysis of Lebanese media, this article argues that sectarianism is a cultural practice that posits a necessary link between religious identity and intentions. The resulting sectarian hermeneutics leads both ordinary Lebanese citizens discussing political events and acts of violence and participants in interconfessional dialogue sponsored by the state or by NGOs to assume that individuals' intentions can be reliably inferred from their official religious status within Lebanon's confessional system. The article explores activities promoting interreligious dialogue in Lebanon and shows that, in postwar Lebanon, sectarianism and anti-sectarianism, far from being antithetical to one another, in fact share an underlying logic. Both are preoccupied with defining a fixed relationship between religion and politics and between religion and violence. As a result, anti-sectarianism reproduces the understanding of identity and action as determined by religious sect that underpins the sectarian discourse it purports to combat. In so doing, it sidelines the state's responsibility for social and economic inequality between religious communities.