Lebanese Confessionalism and the Creation of the Shi's Identity
تاريخ النشر: 01/01/2010
الناشر: دار المنهل اللبناني للطباعة والنشر
نبذة المؤلف:This is book on the Shi’is of Lebanon. However, when you read any book on the Lebanese history, it is almost most certainly you would read about Mount Lebanon with its two basic communities that is the Moronites and the Druze.
Until almost the beginning of the twentieth century, then the ...attention shifted from the Druze to the Sunnis who became the major players through the events leading to the Lebanese independence in 1943. Prime sources have covered these three communities with extremely little paid to the Shi’is
Things began to change and more attention began to be paid and to increase since late seventies onward. However, all sources covering the Shi’is with minor exception referred the resurgence of the Shi’is either to the Israeli invasions, or to the Islamic revolution in Iran.
None have studies the political dynamism of the Shi’is in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such a period had in fact witnessed the early seeds of this resurgence. The geographical location of the Shi’is particularly Jabal “Amil played a major role for heavy interaction between the them and the them and the surrounding communities on one hand and the Ottoman walis on the other.
The Shi’is were not immune from such as competition and they had to deal with surrounding events in a way that preserved their special status.
However, since the Shi’i areas were integrated in the Greater Lebanon, political interaction took a different direction. Being citizens belonging to the third largest community in a confessional system played and gave a helping hand to flourish.
In fact confessionalism is the so called democratic Lebanon has strengthened sectarian feelings and allegiances at the expense of strengthening the notion of national identity. إقرأ المزيد