This paper examines the views of two Shi‘i voices in Lebanon on the multi-confessional state and its sectarian system. It compares the discourse of the jurist Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din with that of Hizbullah from the 1980s until the beginning of the twenty-first century. The late Shi‘i Lebanese jurist Muhammad Mahdi Shams la-Din was deeply engaged during his career with the sectarian system and the structural injustices that it engendered. Revisiting, during the 1990s, his earlier works on “Consultative Majority-Based Democracy” and his concept of Islamic government: wilayat al-umma, he investigated the idea of a civil government in Lebanon that goes beyond the sectarian power-sharing arrangements and introduces reforms that would divide the power between Christians and Muslims equally, while religious institutions would flourish in the realm of civil society and simultaneously be excluded from the governmental realm. Hizbullah, a Shi‘i political movement that presently wields extensive power over Shi‘ites, occupies a central role in politics, and exercises control over state institutions, has shifted its approach to the Lebanese state and the sectarian system: Since the early 1990s the party renounced its militant Islamic ideology in favor of pragmatic integration in the Lebanese system, shedding away its reservations against the perceived ‘illegitimacy’ of these institutions because of Christian hegemony. Consequently, it forged alliances with ideologically opponent Christian Maronite leaders. However, since 2005, Hizbullah has been portrayed by its critics as challenging the Lebanese state and exercising militarized political hegemony over other Lebanese confessional groups. By comparing the two discourses, the paper traces the changes within the Shi‘i political discourse and addresses questions such as why did Shams al-Din defend the war-ending agreement of Ta’if in 1989, despite its institutionalization of sectarian arrangements while Hizbullah opposed it? And how does Shams al-Din’s alliance with the state officials and call for giving political guarantees to Christians differ, in essence, from Hizbullah’s alliance with Christian leaders? How does Shams al-Din’s call for Shi‘i national integration differ from Hizbullah’s participation in political institutions? The paper aims to bring out the discursive differences between Hizbullah’s pragmatically expedient approach to the state and to Christians, which varies between co-optation and coercion, with the juristic discourse of Shams al-din, who sought to theorize – beyond a sectarian state – a government that manages sectarian tensions in a multi-confessional society without atomizing religion in the public sphere, and without disrupting the delicate balance among the various rival confessional groups.

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.

This paper examines the anti-sectarian politics of the Shi‘i modernist, reformist intellectual Ahmed ‘Arif al-Zayn (1884-1960) during the French Mandate of Lebanon. As the founder, publisher, editor of and a major contributor to the journal al-‘Irfan, al-Zayn was a central figure in the early 20th century history of the Shiites in Lebanon. Al-Zayn was well known as a staunch opponent to the French Mandate and the sectarian political system it was establishing. Contemporary archival sources indicate that the Mandatory authorities were concerned with the potentially dangerous effects of his ideas amongst the Shi‘i community of Jabal ‘Amil – the historical name for what would become Lebanon’s “South”. As an alternative to Shi‘i incorporation into Lebanon, up until the late 1930’s al-Zayn promoted in al-‘Irfan the idea of Jabal ‘Amil’s inclusion within an independent, Arab-led polity in Greater Syria. Al-Zayn was in a seemingly contradictory position, however, in which he promoted a political agenda for a specific sect (the Shi‘is) against a sectarian political system. Al-Zayn skirted this contradiction by speaking not merely for and about Shi‘is but about Jabal ‘Amil as well; a region which also includes Christian and Sunni populations as well. The pages of al-‘Irfan are filled with articles on the history of Jabal ‘Amil which simultaneously seek to insert the Jabal ‘Amil and the Shi‘is into the historical narratives that constitute the foundational myths of Lebanon while also emphasizing the non-sectarian character of pre-Mandate politics and daily life. Through portrayals of Jabal ‘Amil in al-‘Irfan, whether edited primary sources or historical essays, al-Zayn sought to demonstrate that a post-Ottoman politics and society could be formed that would be mutually beneficial to all religious groups. This paper examines the non-sectarian politics of Ahmed ‘Arif al-Zayn by examining his contributions to and the editorial decisions he made while publishing al-‘Irfan from 1909 until Lebanon’s independence in 1943. I argue that Ahmad ‘Arif al-Zayn should be considered first and foremost as a political activist and that this fact is most evident in his quest to subvert France’s imperialist designs for Lebanon by his consistent attacks on sectarianism and his advocacy of a viable alternative. Al-Zayn’s position is indicative of a genuine, non-sectarian political perspective amongst the Shi‘is years before institutional political forms took hold, sectarian or otherwise. This political perspective unproblematically placed intra-confessional solidarity alongside cross-confessional cooperation and tolerance in a manner that could be drawn upon to great benefit today.

This paper examines the historical writings of Muhammad Jabir al-Safa. Considered the first modern Shiʿa historian and a central figure in the early 20th century history of the Shiʿa in Lebanon, al-Safa wrote the most widely circulated historical text on Jabal ʿAmil, entitled Tarikh Jabal ʿAmil during the 1930s. Al-Safa’s historical narrative influenced the ways in which others came to write the history of the region and the Shiʿa in particular. Although al-Safa did not speak of a Lebanese national entity in particular, he placed an importance on the history and past of the Shiʿa of Jabal ʿAmil. This paper examines the ways in which al-Safa constructed the history and political reality of Jabal ʿAmil in the post-Ottoman era of French colonial presence and Amir Faysal’s Arabist cause of the 1920s and 1930s. As a supporter of Arab nationalism, how did the political situation of the time impact and inform his narrative of history? How did al-Safa’s methodological approach to divide history into public and private history allow him to inscribe the Shiʿa into a larger historical narrative? More importantly, how did al-Safa inscribe Jabal ʿAmil in regional politics and his larger notion of world history? This paper will examine the multidimensional nature of al-Safa’s historical texts to gain a better understanding of Shiʿi historiography and the interpretative framework he used to inscribe a history for the Shiʿa residing in what was to become Lebanon. This paper will reveal how, on the one hand, al-Safa did not see Jabal ʿAmil and the Shiʿas in the periphery but rather as central to the politics of the region. On the other hand, this paper will argue that al-Safa’s writings complicate our notion of sectarianism by historicizing the inter-confessional nature of Jabal ʿAmil, while advocating for the Arabist cause. By looking at al-Safa’s work, this paper will reveal how al-Safa’s notion of history was informed more by the regional and political happenings of the time and not by an idea of a unified Shiʿi sectarian entity. Through a thorough examination of his texts, I reveal the complexities behind making sectarian demarcations during the Mandate period. This paper will examine the role al-Safa’s writing had on the way Shiʿi Muslims of South Lebanon came to conceptualize their place in the nation as a community and a sectarian entity in the future.