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By Kamal Salibi
This present day Lebanon is among the world's such a lot divided international locations - if it is still a rustic in any respect. yet sarcastically the faction-ridden Lebanese, either Christians and Muslims, have by no means proven a keener cognizance of universal identification. How can this be? The Lebanese historian Kamal S. Salibi examines, within the gentle of contemporary scholarship, the historic myths on which his country's warring groups have established their conflicting visions of the Lebanese country. The Lebanese have continuously lacked a standard imaginative and prescient in their earlier. From the start Muslims and Christians have disagreed essentially over their country's ancient legitimacy: Christians as a rule have affirmed it, Muslims have tended to stress Lebanon's position in a broader Arab heritage. either teams have used nationalist rules in a harmful video game, which at a deeper point contains archaic loyalties and tribal rivalries. yet Lebanon can't have the funds for those conflicting visions whether it is to boost and preserve a feeling of political neighborhood. during his full of life exposition, Salibi deals an immense reinterpretation of Lebanese historical past and gives insights into the dynamic of Lebanon's contemporary clash. He additionally provides an account of ways the photographs of groups which underlie smooth nationalism are created.
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Example text
Thus in Lebanon, from the very beginning, a force called Arabism, acting from outside and inside the country, stood face to face with another exclusively parochial social force called Lebanism; and the two forces collided on every fundamental issue, impeding the normal development of the state and keeping its political legitimacy and ultimate viability continuously in question. Each force, at the internal level, claimed to represent a principle and ideal involving a special concept of nationality; yet in each case one had to look behind the articulated argument to discover the real nature of the quarrel.
There were Christians as well as Muslims among those, but the majority were naturally Muslim; in a society which was predominantly Islamic, more Muslims than Christians could aspire for political power. Among the urban lower classes, which were predominantly Sunnite Muslim, what really counted was the sentiment of Islamic solidarity, particularly a t a time when 50 A HOUSE OF MANY MANSIONS there was no longer a n Islamic state to provide the body of the faithful with a paramount leadership, and when Islam stood threatened by Christian imperial powers from the West, by Jewish ambitions in Palestine, and by Christian Arabs such a s the Maronites who seemed to be making common cause with the imperialists against their fellow Arabs.
They also emphasized the importance of the role played by Christians in Arab society in Islamic times. To all this, thoughtful Muslim Arab nationalists were more than willing to concede; yet they continued to speak of Arabism and Islam in the same breath, while the Christians did not. Among ordinary Muslim Arabs, the more Islamic the interpretation of Arab nationalism, the more popular it became. Moreover, a s Christians or a s Muslims, the Arab nationalists of the period were a n assortment of different elements, to each of which Arab nationalism was significant in a different way.