Tactics for Subverting Sextarian Citizenship in Lebanon

 

By Matthew Heinrichs

In February 2020, a video circulated on social media showing a distraught Lina Jaber grieving near her daughter’s grave. Lina, a Shia woman, was barred from seeing her children for almost three years by her ex-husband before her daughter’s death, after the judge adjudicating her divorce in the Shia Jafari court granted full custody to her ex-husband. While Lina’s sister claims that the children’s father signed a decree allowing visitation, he prohibited Lina from visiting them, knowing that Lina would be unable to afford an attorney to challenge him. In January 2020, Lina’s daughter Maya was killed by a gunshot under circumstances that remain unknown, after which Lina’s ex-husband barred her and her family from attending Maya’s funeral, burying her within his fenced garden to keep Lina from even leaning on her daughter’s grave.[1]

Similar stories appear regularly in Lebanese media outlets due to Lebanon’s system of personal status laws. In Lebanon, the state recognizes 18 official religious sects, 12 Christian, 5 Muslim and 1 Jewish. Personal status laws (PSLs) are administered by 15 religious courts, who divide citizens into sectarian jurisdictions with no civil alternative. This system was codified in Decree No. 60 L.R., of 1936, which “guaranteed the recognized sects the right to manage their own sectarian courts and to follow separate personal status laws” (33).[2]

These religious courts decide matters of personal status (i.e., marriage, divorce, child custody, etc.) for Lebanese citizens of their sect. Each of these 15 religious courts has a separate set of laws for men and women, meaning that in practice, there are 30 types of citizenship in Lebanon based on the markers of sex and sect.[3] Each of these markers are assigned at birth, with sect being assigned patrilineally, meaning that the child inherits the sect of their father. 

As an in-depth 2015 report from Human Rights Watch explains, women face legal and other obstacles within all 15 courts with varying degrees of severity, with stories like Lina’s being among the most severe. Laws in every court lend preference to fathers in child custody decisions and limit the ways in which individuals, particularly women, can access divorce.[4]

Furthermore, these laws induce precarious situations for Lebanese citizens, particularly women and children. Judith Butler describes precarity as the “politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support more than others, and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death” (33).[5] Within the Lebanese PSL system, citizens are exposed to and experience precarity differently based on factors such as sex, sect and class.

 

Sextarianism Defined

            Rather than exclusively focusing on sect as a category for division, Maya Mikdashi argues that sex and sect are both integral to studying the Lebanese state and the administration of PSLs, offering the term “sextarianism” to better describe the functioning of Lebanese citizenship and statecraft.[6] She argues that “sex along with sect are articulated and operate together to form the legal infrastructure of biopolitical citizenship in Lebanon” (2).[7] In other words, sect and sex inform the rights and privileges of each individual citizen, who is treated more as member of their sect and sex rather than as a member of a collective Lebanese nation.

            As I just discussed, the 30 forms that citizenship might take in Lebanon’s system of personal status laws make up this sextarian form of citizenship. Based on a person’s assigned sex and their official sectarian affiliation, they are assigned to a specific religious court and specific laws apply to them. This system further upholds intra-sectarian understandings of the Lebanese condition, thereby separating citizens into distinct communities with different rights and privileges. This system further induces the politically induced condition of precarity, as individuals, and particularly women, are exposed to varying levels of harm by religious courts, like in Lina Jaber’s case.

 

Overt Forms of Resistance

            In his seminal book, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, James Scott made a clear distinction between more covert forms of resistance, which he called everyday resistance, and more overt forms of resistance.[8] Similarly, in this study, I have identified two main groups of tactics individuals use to subvert Lebanon’s system of sextarian citizenship. These groups are overt forms of resistance and the sextarian bargain.

Overt forms of resistance tactics in this case are those that work outside the sextarian system with the main aim of resisting sextarian citizenship. Such acts include striking sectarian affiliation from one’s identity card, seeking a civil marriage in Lebanon, and participating in demonstrations for civil marriage, a civil personal status law or women’s nationality rights. For the remainder of this section, I will focus on individuals who sought civil marriages in Lebanon.

            While normally impossible to access civil marriage in Lebanon due to the religious establishment’s monopoly on personal status laws, some Lebanese citizens have found legal grounds for the Lebanese state to honor a civil marriage performed in Lebanon.

In February 2013, Kholoud Succariyeh and Nidal Darwish made history when the Justice Ministry supported the couple’s 2012 civil marriage conducted in Lebanon.[9] Prior to their wedding, the couple struck their sectarian identities from the civil registry to take advantage of a 1936 decree on the books from the French Mandate which stipulates that people without an official sectarian affiliation may have a civil marriage recognized by the state. In total, 13 more couples were able to register civil unions in this way during the following weeks before a new Interior Minister halted the registrations, leaving dozens without certified marriage licenses. Shortly after their marriage, Lebanon’s Grand Mufti made a statement condemning civil marriage and the couple began receiving death threats. As a result, they sought asylum in Sweden in 2016 with their young son, the first Lebanese citizen to be born without a sect.[10]

In 2019, the debate was resurrected when Abdallah Salam, a Sunni and member of the legal team advising Kholoud and Nidal, married Marie-Joe Abi-Nasif, a Maronite Catholic and fellow lawyer, in a civil ceremony.[11] They employed the same tactics as Kholoud and Nidal to strike their sectarian affiliation from the civil registry to then perform a civil marriage.  The children of well-known figures in Lebanese politics, they used their high-profile wedding to send a “message” to Lebanon’s sectarian elites in favor of the implementation of civil marriage laws.[12]

Other civil ceremonies have taken place since but have not been recognized in Lebanon. However, in these cases, by striking their assigned sect from their identity cards and having a civil ceremony in Lebanon, these couples explicitly resist the sextarian system’s monopoly on Lebanese citizenship.

           

The Sextarian Bargain

            I call the second, more covert group of tactics I identified the “sextarian bargain”. I define the sextarian bargain as the use of various tactics provided through legal loopholes and caveats to work within the sextarian system to undermine sextarian citizenship and improve one’s situation. The sextarian bargain is the combination of Mikdashi’s sextarianism with Deniz Kandiyoti’s patriarchal bargain. Kandiyoti argues that in classic patriarchy, women use various means of accommodating, conforming to and resisting patriarchal structures in order to maximize their own power within a group or situation.[13] In this way, they accommodate and internalize their oppression and position while also enacting their agency to better their position in the group. In much the same way, Lebanese both accommodate and resist sextarian citizenship by bargaining with the system – internalizing the rules of the system, accommodating it when it is useful to them, and resisting it when there are gains to be made. In other words, they push the boundaries of the sextarian system from within.

            I have identified several actions that make up the sextarian bargain. These include changing one’s sect on one’s identity card, having a civil marriage abroad and maintaining intersectarian romantic relationships. While this is a non-exhaustive list of possible actions that make up the sextarian bargain, I will explore how conversion and civil marriages abroad constitute tactics of the sextarian bargain.

            As the Lebanese state guarantees citizens the freedom of religion and the freedom of thought, Lebanese citizens are free to change their religion, as well as the PSLs they follow, through religious conversion. While they may only change to one of Lebanon’s 18 recognized sects, this allows Lebanese citizens to negotiate which religious court’s personal status laws are more amenable to their needs. Mikdashi describes religious conversion in these cases as a “bureaucratic practice” in which religious practice, social recognition and bureaucratic personal status become arbitrary as individuals negotiate the bureaucracy in order to obtain the laws that are more beneficial to them (284).[14]

Several current and former politicians in Lebanon have participated in this practice in order to maximize their rights. For example, former Prime Minister Riad el-Solh, a founder of the modern state and one of the major players in the National Pact of 1943, converted from the Sunni sect to the Shia sect to gain better inheritance rights for his daughters.[15] In another case, Walid Jumblatt, leader of the Druze sect’s Progressive Socialist Party, converted from the Druze sect to the Sunni sect so that he could marry his wife.[16] While both men officially converted within the sextarian system, they remained leaders within their sectarian communities. They bargain with their sextarian citizenship to make de facto gains.

            Having a civil marriage abroad is another way in which Lebanese citizens participate in the sextarian bargain. While the Lebanese state refuses to recognize civil marriages performed in Lebanon, it recognizes and accepts civil marriages performed abroad and will use the civil law where the marriage was performed to adjudicate matters of divorce, child custody, etc. Leila, a 23-year-old Shia woman, took advantage of this caveat in Lebanese law to marry her non-Muslim French husband in a civil ceremony in Cyprus. She told me:

“We decided to do a civil marriage because we come from different countries and different religions and everything. […] We found that the easiest way [was] to go to Cyprus because it is still European, and it is still civil marriage, and it will get us in the family book of France easier.”

 

Since their civil marriage was recognized in Lebanon, Leila’s husband was more easily able to obtain a long-term visa and find work in Lebanon, thereby defying the religious establishment’s monopoly on marriage. Not only does their marriage expose the weaknesses of the Lebanese legal system, which relies on other countries’ civil laws to govern its own citizens; it also allows those with the financial resources to circumvent Lebanon’s personal status law system while maintaining their sextarian citizenship. Couples who marry abroad conform to the sextarian system, using it to make de facto gains and reduce their own precarity in the realm of personal status laws.

 

Subverting Sextarian Citizenship?

            Using a variety of actions, ordinary Lebanese citizens subvert sextarian citizenship and the system of personal status laws that is attached to it. At times, these actions come in the form of a sextarian bargain in which ordinary Lebanese citizens accommodate and internalize the sextarian system in order to use its caveats and loopholes to improve their rights. Such actions may include obtaining a civil marriage abroad, engaging in the “bureaucratic practice” of religious conversion or having intersectarian romantic relationships. At other times, individuals may enact overt forms of resistance – removing themselves from the sextarian system like Kholoud and Nidal, or by voicing their discontent in protests.

            The results of this subversion remain to be seen. While many Lebanese continuously voice their frustrations with the precarious situations that personal status laws put them in, actual legal changes remain elusive. For the moment, the sextarian bargain serves to allow ordinary Lebanese to better their lot through means that the Lebanese state allows – to make individual de facto gains. It has not, however, led to the crumbling of the sextarian system itself, which remains rigid in the lives of Lebanese people. Paying attention to the ways in which ordinary people navigate the sextarian system and personal status laws, and the ways in which individuals bargain with the system to make de facto gains, thus lessening their own precarity, is crucial for learning how individuals, particularly women, accommodate and resist patriarchal and other systems of oppression.    

About the author

In August 2020, Matthew Heinrichs graduated with a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University, Sweden. His thesis project, Social Change through Daily Life – An Exploratory Study on University Student Opinions on Personal Status Laws in Lebanon, explores how university students perceive the system of religious personal status laws in Lebanon and the lack of a civil personal status law for all citizens. His current research focuses on how Lebanese citizens interact with and negotiate Lebanon’s system of personal status laws.

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[1] Mneimneh, Razan. “Lebanese mother not allowed to visit daughter’s grave due to custody laws.” Stepfeed. February 27, 2020. https://stepfeed.com/lebanese-mother-not-allowed-to-visit-daughter-s-grave-due-to-custody-laws-9380

[2] Salloukh, Bassel F., Rabie Barakat, Jinan S. Al-Habbal, Lara W. Khattab, and Shoghig Mikaelian. Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon. London: Pluto Press, 2015.

[3] Mikdashi, Maya. “Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State.” The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History Edited by Amal Ghazal and Jens Hanssen. (June 2018).

[4] Geagea, Nayla, Lama Fakih, and Youmna Makhlouf. “Unequeal and Unprotected: Women's Rights under Lebanese Personal Status Laws.” Human Rights Watch, January 19, 2015. https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/01/19/unequal-and-unprotected/womens-rights-under-lebanese-personal-status-laws#page.

[5] Butler, Judith. Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.

[6] Mikdashi, Maya. “Sextarianism: Notes on Studying the Lebanese State.” The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History Edited by Amal Ghazal and Jens Hanssen. (June 2018).

[7] Ibid., 2

[8] Scott, James C. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Yale University Press, 1985.

[9] Sewell, Abby. “Civil marriage stalled at Interior Ministry: newlyweds.” The Daily Star. 5 Jul. 2019. https://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2019/Jul-05/486817-civil-marriage-stalled-at-interior-ministry-newlyweds.ashx

[10] Domat, Chloe. “Lawyer couple use own wedding to advocate for civil marriage in Lebanon.” Al-Monitor. 31 Jul. 2019. https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/07/lebanon-civil-marriage-debate-resurfaces.html?fbclid=IwAR0xzHCyPn40pQGaaMnIJ8rDgdw7KiL2s7_2AmA_NlmkSW7fW0wlLeQfNt8

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Kandiyoti, Deniz. “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” Gender and Society 2, no. 3 (September 1988): 274-290.

[14] Mikdashi, Maya. “Sex and Sectarianism: The Legal Architecture of Lebanese Citizenship.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 2 (2014): 279–93. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-2773851.

[15] Ibid., 283-5

[16] Ibid., 283-5