Muḥammad Jawād Maghnīyah’s thought on non-Shī‘ites is generally in tune with Shī‘ite reformism, with special concerns raised by his Lebanese background. Christians are one of these concerns. Maghnīyah has little to say about Christianity as a religion or local Christians as a community, let alone as a confessional group with political power. He construes relations rather at a personal level, through deep attachment to Jesus and appreciation of individual Christians, as seen, for instance, in his autobiography, Tajārib MJM. Relations with Sunnites are more complex. Though dedicated, in the reformist spirit, to rapprochement (taqrīb), Maghnīyah is caught in the perennial Twelver dilemma of trying to find acceptance in the larger Muslim community while holding different (Shī‘ite) views. He deals with this religious problem by emphasizing a shared system of law, moderating positions offensive to Sunnis, and appealing to unity in the face of imperialism, while also using his theological writings to portray Shī‘ism as the religion of reason and progress par excellence, implicitly over Sunnism. Maghnīyah is acutely aware of the political problems of Shī‘ite poverty and powerlessness, having personally experienced these in his early life. His approach, however, is never communal or sectarian. He overlooks the hard facts of the confessional structure of the Lebanese state and speaks instead about justice and equality based on a universalistic humanism made out of a reinterpreted Shī‘ism and leftism, along with a good dose of Muhammad ‘Abduh. Maghnīyah’s attitude is partly a result of his times. He died before the rise of the Shīʻah as a formidable political force and was probably unable to imagine it. Any rise of the Shīʻah would then have to be part of a transformation of Lebanese society, and indeed humanity overall. Having thus come to terms with Christians, Sunnis, and a skewed political system, Maghnīyah was able at the end of his life to affirm his loyalty to a multi-confessional Lebanon by rejecting Khomeini’s “Rule of the Jurist” and declaring, as he had done in the 1960’s, that a just non-Muslim is to be preferred as head of state to an unjust Muslim. The paper concludes by arguing that perspectives like those of Maghnīyah are still important for Lebanese Shīʻah today despite political gains, not directly due to his influence but because the immovable position of Shī‘ites as a small minority of Muslims worldwide makes participation in nation-states the only option for advancement.