Photography by Ryan Roco

Text by Natasja Sheriff

Audio editing by Nathan Schradle

Almost a year has passed since violent clashes erupted in Myanmar’s western Arakan state, with Burma’s Rohingya community bearing the brunt of the violence. Although not a new phenomenon—the Rohingya within Burmese borders have been denied citizenship and have suffered persecution for decades—the attacks of June 2012 represented the start of a new phase of violence that would eventually lead to the deaths of 167 people and the displacement of more than 120,000.

The conflict attracted international attention, not least because of the involvement of Arakanese Buddhists and Buddhist monks, so recently seen as heroes of Burma’s pro-democracy movement and the 2007 “Saffron Revolution.” Media reports pitted Buddhists against Muslims, creating a simple, dichotomous narrative of religious struggle and sectarian violence.

Yet witnesses inside Burma saw evidence to suggest a more complex crisis; struggles of nationalism and identity underpinning the persecution of the Rohingya community, and reports of Burma’s security forces complicit in the violence.

As Francis Wade noted in his November article for The Revealer:

“…the vehemence of Arakanese nationalism, born partly of antipathy towards the British colonial policy of bringing thousands of migrant workers into the state from India, and which has evolved over the decades to include resistance to attempts by the government to stamp a Burman identity on the state – has developed into an animosity toward all non-Buddhist there. “We are wedged between Islamisation and Burmanisation,” Thein Tun Aye, spokesperson for the Rakhine[1] Nationalities Development Party, told the BBC recently.”

When photographer Ryan Roco travelled to Arakan in November, he set out to use photography as a means of investigation, to explore the reality on the ground. “I don’t want to set out to places like this to fulfill a checklist,” says Roco.

“I spent a lot of time in Arakan alongside a friend who was doing human rights research, so I had the opportunity to hear a lot of testimonies from both Rohingya and Rakhine; their words gave a penetrating look inside the conflict that I felt had yet to be understood by anyone who had covered it and certainly had yet to be interpreted visually.

“As a photographer, trying to interpret the reality of the situation, there’s a lot at stake. Many chose to offer highly stylized abstractions that load context within the caption and this can provide a bridge to the reality in those hidden places. But I think this is also dangerous in that it can feel contrived and even deceptive.

“I wanted to pursue a more honest approach with my time there. Accepting that there were going to be holes in my story; there were going to be things that were happening, that I was learning about, that I would not have visuals for. What I found in my edit, when I returned from Arakan State, was that the holes in my story spoke as much as the information I did present.

“With the images I am showing, with seemingly disjointed and disconnected photos, I can offer a nuanced interpretation of what’s happening there and address how there are gaps in the coverage, gaps in the access and large amounts of things we, the international community, don’t know and don’t understand about what’s happening there.”

Roco’s investigation revealed a multifaceted conflict, with unseen victims and unheard testimonies on both sides of the religious divide.

Since 2012, as attention shifted to conflict elsewhere in Burma—the ongoing civil war between Kachin rebels and the Burmese government and attacks on Muslims in Central Burma—news from Arakan has waned making it difficult to understand how the situation has evolved outside the refugee camps. Two publications released in April, one by Human Rights Watch and the other by the Burmese government’s Rakhine State Conflict Investigation Commission, have renewed interest in the region.

The situation for Rohingya refugees has not improved since Roco’s visit, and news emerges almost daily of attempts by Rohingya refugees to flee to neighbouring countries.

“I think we need to bring these things back into the spotlight,” says Roco.  “I think that it’s an illusion in Burma that as we see media coverage fade that it means the situation has been resolved, and I think in Arakan state that’s far from true.”

In a series of 10 photographs, taken between October 30 and November 4, 2012, Ryan Roco shares his perspective on the crisis in Arakan State. The accompanying audio features a telephone conversation between Ryan Roco and Natasja Sheriff that took place on February 28, 2013.

Ryan Roco is a photographer and human rights researcher. He has been based on the Thailand-Burma border for the last two years covering issues of human rights, identity and conflict in Burma and its borderlands. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC Burmese, PBS Newshour, Human Security Gateway and Human Rights Watch among others.

With support from the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs.

Rabwah, Pakistan. Wall panel shows where the Ahmadiyya community is present worldwide. Photo by Saba Imtiaz.

By Saba Imtiaz

The elections in Pakistan—a landmark in Pakistan’s history, representing the first transfer of power from one democratically elected government to the next—are over. For many voters, this was the first time they daubed their fingers in election ink, queued up outside polling stations in the heat, and witnessed election rigging. But as Pakistanis voted, and then stayed glued to their TVs to watch the results, approximately 200,000 Ahmadi Muslim voters were left out of the fray.

In a country where every vote counts, candidates for 272 parliamentary seats knocked on doors, and courted shopkeepers and businessmen to gain their support. But in this election—and in many preceding it—they did not ask Ahmadis to vote.

Given that hundreds of votes can change an election result this seems surprising. But political parties don’t need to make the effort, since Pakistan’s Ahmadis did not plan to vote in the May 11 polls, or in any foreseeable election for that matter. And it looks like this isn’t going to change, even though in Sindh alone the number of Ahmadi voters seems to have shot up to over six thousand.

To vote or not isn’t the question

The Ahmadiyya Jamaat, which represents the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam, does not vote in parliamentary elections; a matter of policy since 1974, when the Pakistani constitution officially excommunicated Ahmadis from Islam. The issue of a separate electorate further complicates that: a short order issued in former president Pervez Musharraf’s regime effectively made a separate electorate for Ahmadis, which the community says is discriminatory given that there is a joint electorate in force in the rest of Pakistan. In essence, Ahmadi voters are on a separate list, and have to register themselves as such—thus signing the declaration that they are non-Muslims, and which they dispute—even though Hindus and Christians are part of the same voters’ list as Muslims.

In a policy statement issued this year, the Ahmadi community called on the government to take steps to “effectively restore the right of vote to Ahmadis.”

But with a vocal right-wing that has long opposed the Ahmadis, it appears unlikely that any government will do so.

Saleemuddin, the spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan, says that a delegation of the community met with the Election Commission of Pakistan last September to discuss the issue. “The chief election commissioner, the secretary and the director-general were there, and they were all very surprised at how this [the separate electorate] was done,” he said.

But nothing was done to resolve the issue, and Ahmadis remain on a separate list.

Earlier this year, a long-overdue petition by former bureaucrat who served as the chief secretary of Sindh province and was among the first batches of civil servants in Pakistan, Kunwar Idris was heard in the Supreme Court on the separate electorate. Idris, who filed the petition in 2007 in an individual capacity, says he went to over 20 hearings at the Supreme Court’s Karachi registry and then in Islamabad, but he withdrew his petition based on the attitude of the court. “It went on for years,” Idris said. “The bench was always changing, and the attorney-general did not seem serious about the case. The judges also seemed reluctant.”

The potential Ahmadi vote bank

Whether the increase in Ahmadi voters is accurate or not, it highlights an oft-ignored issue: that Ahmadis could potentially be a deciding factor in the elections, especially if the community decided to vote en bloc. According to Saleemuddin’s own analysis, there are several constituencies where the Ahmadi vote could be a deciding factor. “We’re the ones who helped (Zulfikar Ali) Bhutto win in Punjab in 1970. Until there was a joint electorate and we were not being persecuted, we participated whole heartedly in the elections; our members were in the provincial assembly.”

But despite the decision by the Ahmadi community to withhold their vote, their faith nonetheless became a campaign issue. A video that showed a girl questioning the London-based leader of the Ahmadiyya community, Khalifa Mirza Masroor Ahmad, about the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), went viral. The Khalifa said that Ahmadis did not vote because they were on a separate list and that when Imran Khan had first formed the PTI he sent an emissary to the community for their support.

Right-wing religious parties jumped on it, bashing Khan for asking for Ahmadis’ support. In response, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf leader Imran Khan said that he or his party had “never asked anybody to especially ask for Qadiani (a term often used to refer to Ahmadis since the movement was born in the town of Qadian, India, and is considered derogatory) votes for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. This would be against the Representation of the Peoples Act, 1976 and instructions of the Election Commission of Pakistan.” Khan’s party said that it did not plan to seek an amendment of the laws excommunicating Ahmadis from Islam.

The PTI swept the polls in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where parties had used the alleged video as part of their campaign against Khan. But the strong statements from the PTI also kill any hope that Khan would support progressive legislation to reverse the excommunication of Ahmadis from Islam in Pakistan.

In 1974, as protests demanding the excommunication of Ahmadis from Islam swept Punjab, the US Embassy wrote in a missive released by WikiLeaks that “while regime almost certainly would prefer not to do so; Embassy now feels that (the Zulfikar Ali) Bhutto government probably will have to acquiesce in legislative action declaring Ahmadiyyas a non-Muslim minority.”

At the time, Ahmadis had a prominent presence in the military and government. Today, the community is a target for violence by extremist groups, with attacks on their places of worship and graves and targeted killings of Ahmadis in Sindh and Punjab.

The excommunication of Ahmadis – further strengthened by an ordinance passed by military leader General Zia-ul-Haq that criminalized Ahmadis identifying themselves as Muslims – has led to them being virtually excluded from public life. While the constitution guarantees the right to vote and select one’s representatives, for Ahmadis, this remains out of the question.

Saba Imtiaz is a freelance journalist in Karachi, Pakistan. She reports on politics, culture, human rights and religion for local and foreign publications and is currently working on a book about the conflict in Karachi. Her work is available on her website, http://sabaimtiaz.com and she can be contacted at saba.imtiaz@gmail.com.

With support from the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs.

Featured image via nation.com.pk.

The appeal comes days after the FDA lowered the age restriction for EC from age 17 to age 15. What’s the difference between a girl age 15 and a girl age 14 and 11 months? Evidently, as FDA commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg tells us, the answer is not an arbitrary one. Hamburg asserts that scientific data has shown that 15 year old girls “were able to understand how Plan B One-Step works, how to use it properly, and that it does not prevent the transmission of a sexually transmitted disease.”

Catholics for Choice, responding to the use of medicalized discourse, reminds us that EC has been proven to be safer than aspirin.

Have you ever thought about which religion is most generous to the homeless? This homeless man has. Is that a 100-dollar bill I see in the agnostic bowl?? Christians, we suggest you freshen up on the “Good Samaritan” parable!

In response to NBA player Jason Collins’s announcement that he is gay, ESPN basketball reporter Chris Broussard issued the following televised statement:

“I’m a Christian. I don’t agree with homosexuality. I think it’s a sin, as I think all sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman is.“ Though NY Magazine deleted their online column titled “Coming Out, Cashing In,” CNN reminds us that Collins’s decision to come out as the first openly gay athlete of a major U.S. sport could be a lucrative one. If only “coming-out” for everyone involved rolling in the dough! Unfortunately enough, homosexuality bears an uncanny resemblance to diabetes.

In other news, Glenn Beck has successfully crossed racial boundaries and galvanized African-American support for the NRA by attributing MLK Jr.’s death to “the worst kind of gun control.” Alas! Anti-gun control sentiment is not just for old white dudes who enjoy going to the shooting range!

– Chris Smith

A review of Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, Emily Raboteau, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2013, 320 pp.

Emily Raboteau’s Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora is an intimate journey into a vast array of longings for a utopian homeland.  These longings find their most common expression in the hope for the land of promise, Zion.  Often Raboteau’s communities express this hope religiously, but even when the hope is not expressed with overtly religious language their desire for a homeland cannot be mistaken.  The reality of home historically eluded the grasp of descendants of Africa throughout the Western world, so they put their faith in a mythical Zion of distant lands.  Like the flood victim in Bessie Smith’s song “Backwater Blues,” who felt the floodwaters had called her “to pack my things and go,” the oppression that the African diaspora suffered under white supremacy incited many communities and individuals to seek safety in the promise of a foreign place.  In this way, the metaphor of Zion is an African utopia, but the theme of home and belonging transcends the African diaspora and speaks to all who feel out of place and long to go.

Much of this longing, at times “shapeless, persistent and intrusive,” is represented in Raboteau’s own experience.  The daughter of a black father and a white mother, Raboteau offers the reader her own desire for home as a lens.  Her father, Albert Raboteau, a prominent professor of Religious studies and one of the most important scholars on African American religion, serves as her muse.  Through her own story, the reader begins to understand that U.S. American society has often understood people only insofar as they recognizably fit into the binary racial categories of black and white. Raboteau, a mixed race person, does not fit into that U.S. racial binary–and she has the scars to prove it.  From the moment Israeli security personnel interrogate and strip search her before a flight to Israel, to the time she is assaulted by the flying bottle of a drunk man in New York City—a place where the people she views as kin see her as an Arabic threat to Western civilization—she experiences rejection from her own nation.  In this context, she expresses a deep longing for a connection to a place and people.  Her Jewish childhood friend finds that place and people in Israel.  It’s in Israel, where Raboteau encounters black Jews, that she embarks on her own journey through which the reader meets a cast of sojourners whose visions are simultaneously beautiful and terrible representations of the elusive search for home.  Zion is, as one Rastafarian shares with Raboteau, “an inborn place.”  Thus, the journey necessarily ventures through the complexities of self-identity and belonging.

Raboteau successfully avoids what she describes as the “ridiculous cliché ‘the tragic mulatto’ whining about not belonging.”  Her mixed race identity, however, makes her physical presence a perpetual site for inquiry.  As she puts it, “My mixed race had made me a perpetual question.”  Nearly each new encounter begins with the question, “What are you?”  As she narrates such experiences, she reminds the reader that her search is situated in a tradition that has made the self a legitimate site for intellectual reflection.  At times her narration reads similarly to W.E.B. Du Bois’ classic Soul’s of Black Folk.  It is no overstatement to say that in Du Bois’ text is perhaps the most appropriate comparative example, in style and content, of an African American author who uses the self as a lens through which to understand a land and a people.  In his essay “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” Du Bois suggested that his presence always provoked the unuttered question, “How does it feel to be a problem?”  Like Du Bois did in the U.S. South, Raboteau reveals her own curiosity, and sometimes terror, in order to provide the reader with insight into five communities of the African Diaspora:  Israel, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Ghana, and the U.S. Southern Black Belt.

Raboteau’s quest is much more anthropology than autobiography.  While her own vulnerability provides an essential entryway into the journey, her book transcends her own story.  She makes clear that while she too has a stake in the quest, the story she tells is not solely her own.  Rather, she studies the elusive Zion from the perspectives of those who dwell in the mythical lands of promise.  Searching for Zion is a reminder of the spiritual romanticism and existential disappointment that one finds in searching for home in a land far away.  She writes, “At its root, my quest wasn’t about identity, it was about faith.”  This faith might best be described as a belief in the future as articulated in the multi-geographical experiences of the communities she visits; a spiritual and political faith, but not necessarily a religious one.  While some communities welcomed her into explicitly religious rituals, others made only political proclamations.  Each in its own way, however, persistently directed her back to her own faith journey for answers.

Her upbringing, liminal racial status, and gifts as a storyteller enable her to narrate what will undoubtedly become an important text for students in Religious Studies, African American Studies, African American Religion, and Intercultural Studies courses.  For example, she grasps the historical significance that no other utopian myth of the African Diaspora had a longer tradition than the one found in the African American romance of Ethiopia.  For at least a century, Ethiopia became the symbolic representation of the homeland for African Americans like David Walker, Maria Stewart, Frederick Douglass, Phyllis Wheatley, and Marcus Garvey, to name a few.  The fact that most African Americans’ ancestry is West African rather than East African mattered not in the nineteenth century.  In Raboteau’s study, twenty-first century Rastafarians also idealize the Ethiopian cradle of civilization.  Taking the romanticization of Ethiopia a step further, Rastas venerate the deceased Ethiopian ruler Haile Selassie as the political incarnation of Christ.  Neither their faith in Ethiopia or Selassie, however, is anything like the reality Raboteau finds in the Zion of Rastas in Ethiopia.  This Zion was always wet and full of poverty.  More importantly, the repatriated Rastas could not stomach the idea that their Christ had severely oppressed his people and that their land of Zion, Shashemene, never lived up to the lofty expectations they had had for it.

Shashemene was not unique in this regard.  Raboteau finds reasons for disappointment in every supposed paradise.  Many Ethiopian Jews carried disdain for Palestinians, many Jamaican Rastas cared nothing for gays and lesbians, the Rastafarian community in Ethiopia had little sense of purpose.  That said, Raboteau saves her most poignant articulation of disenchantment for Ghana.  When Raboteau arrives in the land that welcomed African American professionals like W.E.B. Du Bois, the repatriated African Americans she encounters express frustration, fatigue, and a desire to return to the U.S.  Ghana, a site of spiritual pilgrimage for many African Americans searching to be connected to their enslaved ancestors is, quite disappointingly, also on the list of  countries with high rates of human trafficking of women and children.    The land that should remind African Americans of progress, that slavery is a problem of the past, is today a nation with a slavery problem.  She finds that Africa, even West Africa, is not Zion but another myth.

Raboteau’s search for Zion leads her right back to where she started, the United States of America.  The U.S. Southern Black Belt, in the wake of hurricane Katrina and the election of the first black President, brings the reader full circle to a people cast as refugees in a land that is supposed to be their own.  As Bessie Smith concluded in “Backwater Blues,” even though the disasters of life called me to “pack up my things and go,” at some point, she laments, “I can’t move no more. There ain’t no place for a poor old girl to go.”  For those who have been rejected by the society of their citizenship, Raboteau’s search reveals that home is an elusive concept.  When home becomes a utopian vision grounded in the religious imagery of Zion it may be an impossible destination.  In the end, one wonders if the search for Zion is a search for a promised land or a search for self?  After reading Searching for Zion, perhaps it is safe to conclude that it is both.  Raboteau’s text gives voice to the quest for belonging and as such is a twenty-first century contribution to the ongoing struggle for peoples displaced by the modern problem of race.  It suggests that the struggle is a journey, one that requires faith to persistently believe there’s a homeland for everyone, even if we have yet to find it.

David F. Evans is the Assistant professor of History and Intercultural Studies at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg, VA.  His teaching and scholarship makes visible the, often invisible, oppressive racial and religious ideologies that have annexed Christian communities to nationalist systems.  In concert with his teaching and scholarship, he practices a local “eco-lutionary” lifestyle that promotes a sustainable future for the diverse people of the Shenandoah Valley Watershed.

cover image from The Forward, via http://forward.com/articles/169812/where-black-and-jewish-identity-merge/?p=all

The narrative of the lone Jewish woman leader standing strong against the forces of history is irresistible, of course, but it should not be forgotten that she was controversial.

By Maurice Chammah

Earlier this month, Carmen Weinstein, who for decades had led Egypt’s dwindling Jewish community, died at her home in Cairo. She was 82. Obituaries ran in The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. But the irony was she never in her life granted these publications interviews. Lucette Lagnado, a Wall Street Journal reporter and a bestselling-memoir-writing Egyptian Jew herself, wrote of Weinstein, “I found her tough, acerbic, abrasive, combative-and brave. I tried to woo her, citing my background as a fellow Cairene-Jew. But she had no use for journalists and regarded us with suspicion.”

I profiled Weinstein for The Revealer last year, and found that she took an interest in me only because I had written about a Passover seder on my own blog, and had not told her I had a journalistic interest in her community (the difference between a blog and a more official publication seemed clear to her, if not to me). One afternoon when my mother was visiting me in Egypt from the U.S., we had all shared a coffee in the back office of her family’s print shop in downtown Cairo, near a McDonald’s and dozens of clothing stores. Her desk was piled high with stacks of paper that framed her queen-like, austere presence. As I told her how my father, a Jew, had left Syria — choosing the path she had always refused, leaving a place of birth because it was no longer welcoming — I detected some warmth and understanding. And I do mean “detected.” You really had to be paying attention.

She had a reputation for having a very tough shell, which in numerous articles written since her death has become a major point of her glorification. The narrative of the lone Jewish woman leader standing strong against the forces of history is irresistible, of course, but it should not be forgotten that she was controversial. She essentially staged a coup to gain control of the Jewish community while the former leader was out of the country. She feuded with the Brooklyn-based Historical Society of Jews From Egypt, over whether the community’s artifacts properly belonged in Egypt or the U.S.

Carmen Weinstein, in an undated photograph, who died on Saturday April 13, 2013, aged 82. Photo via AP/Samir W Raafat.

Last year I learned that other older women in the community were afraid of speaking to researchers about their heritage for fear that Weinstein would somehow retaliate against them (I never learned how, though they were clearly afraid). When I asked her if she would like help to tell the community’s story, she was eager to change the subject. She stood strong to keep the community from being represented falsely, but often that meant keeping them from being represented at all.

Some speculated that her caution was due to the country’s turn towards Islamic leadership and what it might mean for the Jews (you can still buy the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” off the street in downtown Cairo). Others speculated she didn’t want anyone to know just how small the community had become, because it would give credence to the idea that Egypt’s Jews were basically extinct. She regularly estimated the size of Egypt’s Jewish community to be in the hundreds, when numerous others tended to speak of dozens. There is much intermarriage, and it is impossible to know for sure. “Exactly how many Egyptian Jews are left is a point Weinstein, scholars and other activists sharply debate,” the magazine Egypt Today explained in 2005. “The figures range from Weinstein’s assertion as head of the community that the number is in the 100s, to a low of 20 claimed by an Israeli scholar who says there are eight in Alexandria and 12 in Cairo.”

As it becomes clear just how few Jews are left, there is nostalgia for a once-thriving Jewish community from many quarters. President Mohamed Morsi released a statement, saying Weinstein “was a dedicated Egyptian who worked tirelessly to preserve Egyptian Jewish heritage and valued, above all else, living and dying in her country, Egypt.” The new president of the community, Magda Haroun, is the daughter of a man who fiercely opposed Zionism, according to Egyptian newspapers, but she has said that her main goal would be to “preserve the Egyptian Jewish heritage…to give it back to Egypt, because it belongs in Egypt.” Last month, a documentary on the Jews of Egypt started playing in several Cairo cinemas, after the Morsi government lifted a ban. All of these events have the ring of nostalgia, of recognizing the fact that the end has really come.

In death, Weinstein becomes a legend because the community is nearly gone, not in spite of it. She’ll be remembered as the last standard-bearer of an alternative narrative to the dominant one about 20^th century Arab Jews, in which they all left for Israel and America after being kicked out of their homes.

In certain ways, though, her glorification will ring strongly with the narrative foundations of political Zionism. These include two tenets: 1. The Jews are dying out in Arab countries, and 2. They have responded by becoming tough and determined.

Weinstein herself always bristled at the suggestion that Jews are unwelcome in Egypt. She believed in the idea that the Jews would always have a place, whether under Mubarak or a new government.

At the same time, though, she fixated on the inevitable end of Egyptian Jewry. She titled the community’s online newsletter “Bassatine News,” after a cemetery in Eastern Cairo that she took particular care to keep sacred and untouched. The Times reported that she would pay squatters to leave the grounds. Now, this is where she has been laid to rest.

Maurice Chammah is a writer and musician in Austin, Texas who studied journalism in Egypt as a Fulbright student, 2011-2012. More about him at http://www.mauricechammah.com. He writes regularly for The Revealer.

With support from the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs.

Says the Vatican, via Greek-Melchite Archbishop Cyrille Bustros, to Jerusalem:

“We Christians cannot speak of the promised land as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people,”Bustros continued. ”This promise was nullified by Christ. There is no longer a chosen people – all men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.”

Scott Korb, our former books editor and author of the new book Light Without Fire: The Making of America’s First Muslim College has an op ed, with Suhaib Webb, at The New York Times today, “No Room for Radicals.”  They write:

Yet what’s most obvious to anyone who has spent time in these communities is that whether they are devotional or educational, focused on the arts or on interfaith cooperation and activism, this mediating set of American Muslim institutions is keeping impressionable young Muslims from becoming radicalized.

This month Oliver Sacks, neurologist and author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and most recently Hallucinations, spoke with Danielle Ofri, Associate Professor of Medicine and Editor in Chief of the Bellevue Literary Review about ethics in medicine and writing.  You can watch the interview here.

The Family Medicine Committee of the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education has proposed dropping from their curriculum training on family planning and contraception.  At RH Reality Check, you can send them a letter telling them how ridiculous they’re being.

A veteran of the war in Iraq has decided to end his life by stopping eating and drinking.  Democracy Now! profiles Thomas Young.

From Women in Theology, a great post by Elizabeth on why women scholars need to “Keep Speaking Like a Woman.”

Bakary Sambe at Qantara.de about Mali the second class status of African Muslims.

Amanda Marcotte at Alternet on the ways Christian Churches are “trying to get hip with the kids.”

Tonight!: Don’t miss our last event of the semester, “Digital Judaism: Tablet to Tablet,” an event that closes out our two-year series on digital religion, thanks to a generous grant from the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion & International Affairs.  Owen Gottlieb, Rachel Wagner, Ayala Fader and Jeffrey Shandler will speak on a panel, moderated by our co-Director Faye Ginsburg.  5 pm at 19 Washington Square North.  Co-sponsored by NYU Abu Dhabi.

Today: The Family Medicine Committee of the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education has proposed dropping from their curriculum training on family planning and contraception.  At RH Reality Check, you can send them a letter telling them how ridiculous they’re being.

Queer Scout Badge by Mary Tremonte, $4 at Justseeds.org

The Family Research council is sponsoring a webcast, “Stand with Scouts Sunday,” where churches will be able to “learn what you can do to preserve Scouting as its founders envisioned it – as a resource for young men to develop in morally, mentally, and physically healthy ways, free to be boys and teens without the invasion of cultural controversies.”  We highly recommend you watch this video.

Wait, at least they aren’t threatening bloodshed, or claiming that their religion is being attacked as a “thought crime,” right?

Gay marriage undoubtedly has been a source of contention between the Religious Right and members of the Republican Party. Cue Libertarians and the Tea party to come save the day.  Maybe with them there will be fewer domestic-left-leaning terrorists.

Os Hillman reminds us that “it’s not a sin to be a black person or live as a black person according to the Bible” and thus gay marriage is not a civil rights issue, but a moral one. Legalizing same-sex marriage, as Hillman writes, is a “slippery slope” as it might lead to the civil-liberty recognition of “polygamists” and “pedophiles.” Why is it that gay marriage repeatedly gets linked to other “unnatural” behaviors that fall outside the charmed circle?

Speaking of rights:  The Boston Marathon has now been linked to abortion thanks to James Robison, American Televangelist and founder of the Christian organization Life Outreach International. Robison writes that because “relativism in our society today purposely blurs the distinctions between good and evil,” we must, as the prophet Haggai implores us, “Consider our ways!” Will someone please hand this guy a Nietzsche book?

Wolf Trace subdivision, via heidifore.com

A new book looks at the way a California megachurch reflects its landscape.

Sacred Subdivisions: The Postsuburban Transformation of American Evangelicalism
Justin Wilford (NYU Press, November 2012, 233 pp.)

By Fred Folmer

When someone says “suburb,” what comes to mind? Identical split-level houses? Cul-de-sacs? Impeccably groomed lawns? Big box stores? Malls? Automobiles as far as the eye can see? Malaise and alienation? For many, it’s probably some combination of all of the above. It’s also likely that many observers of religion would place “megachurches” or other large houses of worship among the images that indelibly describe suburban life. In fact, the two seem to have gone together from the beginning; in an important sense, large evangelical churches have helped to define the very parameters and fabric of American suburban life.

And although a number of historians of American religion have chronicled this trend, questions remain concerning the specific nature of the entanglement of these respective forms of religious and spatial life. How, for instance, do suburban spatial arrangements themselves help to shape belief and practice? In what ways have the two elements actually constituted one another? Further, as suburbs have pushed farther and farther away from urban centers and become “exurbs,” how has this movement helped to shape evangelical religious personhood (and/or vice versa)?

Such intriguing issues are at the heart of Justin G. Wilford’s Sacred Subdivisions: The Postsuburban Transformation of American Evangelicalism (NYU Press, 2012). Wilford uses the tools of cultural geography to argue that large churches—which he calls “postdenominational”—have, in this “exurban” or “postsuburban” moment, helped to upend the usual urban/suburban binary of center and periphery. Instead, he argues, there is a situation of spatial and, concomitantly, social and religious fragmentation in which people must “make meaning” in variegated, private settings that are highly differentiated in terms of their usage and function. To describe this scenario, Wilford deploys the image of an archipelago, describing small islands of locally articulated “sacred” spaces amid a secularized landscape. Such “sacred” settings might include small groups and niche ministries of the church, along with countless spaces that are frequently taken to be “secular,” such as workplaces or shopping venues.

As such, Wilford argues, adherents of megachurches become “free agents.” “The localized places of everyday life,” he writes, “are left open for sacralization in countless ways, as evidenced by the ever-increasing offerings at evangelical megachurches for evermore finely tuned demographic niches.” In this situation, the church space—the traditional “public” center of religious life—actually functions as a periphery, whereas small groups that meet in private, individualized spaces are now, in postsurburbia, the figurative center. Such an inversion echoes the postsuburban evolution of spatial life: In a suburban setting, a city had retained its place as a “center,” but in postsurburbia, the center has largely evaporated, with private homes and self-defined experiences taking the city’s place as focal points of the lives of individuals. Sacred Subdivisions, then, seeks to describe a highly fragmented spatial, social and religious situation in which there’s not one public center but potentially millions of private ones.

Wilford’s approach, which takes into serious account the religious implications of this cultural and geographic situation, seems long overdue, particularly given the prominence of megachurches and their significant entanglement with surburbia and postsurburbia. And the book’s central insight—that the postsuburban setting represents a new expansion of the private sphere, an effacement of public “center,” whose nature is at once social, personal, religious and spatial—is striking, original and forcefully argued. That said, one limitation of the book is that while Wilford applies his argument and conclusions to the generalized category of postsuburban evangelical churches, the book is largely a case study of one particular, and famous, example: Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in southern California. Nonetheless, the geographic trend is clear: Among the largest 50 “postdenominational” evangelical churches, Wilford notes, “all but six are set on the residential fringe of large metropolitan areas.” As Warren grew Saddleback in the exurban swaths surrounding Orange County, California, his strategy took into account the kinds of people who might have found themselves in such a geographic situation, namely “people under transition” and “people under tension”—people, in other words, who were experiencing the kind of social and spatial fragmentation that exists in a postsuburban landscape. Saddleback and other churches responded, Wilford argues, by attempting to find a way to turn the tables on this situation—to “connect these fragments in a way that make the transitions and tensions of postsuburbia not just bearable but meaningful.”

Wolf Trace subdivision, via heidifore.com

Given Saddleback’s massive growth since its founding, it seems that it has done something right along these lines, at least if “rightness” is measured strictly in numbers. Part of what helped the church to draw in so many people, Wilford argues, has been a strategy that has upended another commonly held assumption about centers and peripheries. While it’s common to speak of contemporary religious life in terms of “seekers,” such a usage typically refers to the individual, not the institution, as the one who is doing the seeking. Wilford suggests that Saddleback has reversed this scenario; by catering to individuals’ tastes, needs and preferences, the church, in effect, becomes the seeker. “It is not a matter of churches presenting their organization to the ‘seeking’ masses,” he writes, “but rather of actively seeking the masses out.”

This insight may press the point about “inversions” a little too hard; after all, if churches are trying to cater to “consumer” tastes, and consumers find the church based on those tastes, aren’t both parties doing at least some seeking, much in the same way consumers and producers in any marketplace seek one another out? Nevertheless, postsuburban megachurches, according to Wilford’s argument, have been more flexible and more receptive to their constituents’ needs and tastes than have their mainline or Catholic brethren, and this flexibility is largely responsible for their enormous growth. At Saddleback, this institutional seeking of the “religious customer” has taken a number of forms, including the development of a vast array of tastes: several alternative rock services, a “Spanish-language adult contemporary service,” an African American gospel service, a service featuring traditional hymns. If this menu seems to echo various spaces of consumption—a mall, perhaps, or a tourist resort that has lots of various dining and activities options—that’s quite literally by design. Wilford notes that Saddleback’s campus is intended to “mirror the architectural design of its surrounding environment,” a landscape well known for the prominence of its shopping spaces and opportunities for consumption. The line between consumption and religion—and, moreover, between what has been “sacralized” and what hasn’t—frankly seems so porous as to be nonexistent.

This is where Wilford’s argument becomes rather problematic, because he implies that there can, indeed, be a demarcation between what is “sacred” and what is not. For instance, his frequently used imagery of “sacred archipelagos” suggests that even though there isn’t one central location of sacredness, there are many places that are “sacred” and others that remain “secular.” Too, in the book’s early chapters Wilford addresses secularization theory extensively, arguing that in spite of the limitations of such theory, its proponents’ articulation of the separation of various social systems—“such as the state, market, institutional education, science, and, most importantly, religion”—into discrete spheres remains quite valid. He makes this argument in contradistinction to other theorists such as the anthropologist Talal Asad, who argues in Formations of the Secular that the delineation of what is “religious” is so frequently untenable that “modern hybrids” (such as the constant entry of “religion” into debates about politics or education) greatly attenuate the boundaries of these various spheres. This renders secularization theory largely null and void. For Asad, calling something “religious” or “secular” is a matter of articulation of power, and not an ontological distinction; further, the “religious” can always creep in, even where it’s been discursively, or legally, shut out.

Wilford’s rejoinder to Asad on this idea—a legalistic argument that discusses the way religion is kept out of public policy debates in favor of secular arguments—frankly misses Asad’s larger point about the ways that the “religious” can’t ever be truly cordoned off from the way persons imagine their social worlds, or their personhood. Moreover, this response demonstrates how wedded he appears to be to the distinctiveness of his categories, an adherence that hampers the effectiveness of his analysis. It is hard not to notice, for instance, that a “sacred” and “secular” distinction seems to become lost as persons engage Saddleback as part of their lives, “consuming” its spaces, its music, its voluminous publishing and recording enterprises—these practices appear to blend seamlessly, just as they were designed, into everyday life worlds of movement, and of buying and consuming and feeling the postsuburban environment. It is therefore hard to see the usefulness of trying to draw lines between sacredness and secularity, or indeed of employing these as terms of analysis at all. And while it’s very likely true that Saddleback attendees may make this distinction themselves, it’s not clear from Wilford’s narrative the terms by which this is happening, or how they go about marking off these boundaries. Rather, Wilford employs words like “sacredness” as if the meaning of such words were self-evident—as if “sacredness” could ever truly be a term of sociological definition, rather than a theological one—even though, let’s remember, that he states that people “sacralize” their environment in “countless ways.” What are these ways? What do these “sacralizations” truly have to do with the postsuburban environment in which they live, worship, work, recreate and consume? In part because Wilford has interpreted the categories of “religious” and “secular” to be more substantive than they are, his book can only take us so far in understanding the answers to these questions.

Wilford offers a somewhat more fruitful analysis as he discusses the way that Saddleback’s public venues actually decrease in importance as people join and become more deeply involved with its ministries. Such movement, as Wilford notes, is as much a spatial trajectory as it is a social one. Although many congregants start by attending one of the central worship services—in a “Worship Center” that holds nearly 3,000 people—as they move “toward a deeper ‘commitment to Christ,’ they move spatially away from the church campus and toward specialized, personal ministries.” These personal ministries take the form of small groups that typically meet in private homes; every group is provided with Saddleback study materials: books, DVDs, audio recordings and so forth. This is where the deepest religious commitment takes place, and where the tie to Saddleback is cemented. The groups, Wilford writes, “make a big church feel small”; the relations nurtured in these groups “eventually bind individuals to the institution of Saddleback.” Notably, then, a deeper commitment to Christ, vis-à-vis the institution of Saddleback, necessarily involves not merely spatial movement away from the “church center” but also trajectories on multiple fronts. In addition to the geographic dispersion, there’s also a movement toward greater privatization—as Wilford discusses at length, the site of the deepest commitment becomes the home, where the small groups meet and where embodied, tangible relations and connections can be built. There’s also a concomitant dependence of Christian commitment upon the Saddleback-provided study products that circulate through the “community” similar to the way other media do.

As trenchant as this analysis can be, Wilford largely overlooks some significant issues of class and power that are apparently involved in this multiple shift toward privatization, spatial/social fragmentation and media circulation. One involves the content and purpose of the small-group sessions themselves; as he notes, a central purpose of the church—of Christian commitment itself, as Saddleback has defined it—is to help people forge a sense of integration amid a fragmented and potentially isolating environment. The church’s focus thus seems primarily therapeutic, as one might expect in a socio-spatial environment where a shared sense of public or central space has largely been effaced in favor of private, personal well-being. And indeed, the numerous spaces and programs meant to cater to a broad array of tastes—whatever “your” pleasure or desire—would seem to point toward a focus on “you,” as does the therapeutic nature of many of the church’s ministries; there are, for instance, numerous “relational” groups that focus on multiple populations (men, women, divorced persons) and psychological issues (grief, depression). Even the church’s global outreach programs apparently have at their core an expressive individualism; as Wilford describes, one of the church’s key global outreach programs is really an opportunity to work on the self, an “ultimate self-improvement project.”

Wolf Trace subdivision, via heidifore.com

And so once again we see that the affinities between what the church does and what the so-called “secular marketplace” does—in the form of myriad psychologically oriented products—are so strong that the line between them seems blurred at the least. While there are frequent references to Saddleback’s therapeutic thrust, Wilford barely addresses at all an inextricably linked, and key, question: Who has the resources to live a life that is almost fully “in private,” apparently without aid of a more visible and robust public sphere? What is the social and class positioning of persons who are primarily concerned with cultivating “the self,” and with consuming (whether in a “sacred” or “secular” register) according to a finely developed, and highly individuated, catalog of tastes and preferences? How did these tastes and preferences develop in the first place—do people come with these tastes fully formed, and the church sets out to meet them, or does the church actually play a role in producing such tastes?

Such questions have a strong spatial element, too: What kinds of persons, or bodies, are mobile enough to have the resources to live in such a fragmented, dispersed geographic landscape—to be able, for instance, to drive the isolated distances in a highly spread-out place? Moreover, even the geographic sites of personal and group cultivation have a class element to them: What kinds of homes might be considered appropriate spaces for worship? Are some considered more appropriate than others? Is there some element to the specific affects and atmospherics of the home environment that would somehow be integral to the “ministry” that goes on there? Given the importance that the church places in nurturing certain kinds of spatial forms, I strongly suspect that there might be, but Wilford largely leaves questions such as these on the table.

And so if one is trying to describe, as indicated in the title, a “transformation” in American evangelicalism, the argument falls somewhat short if it doesn’t include the idea that a spatial transformation (or blending, or co-opting) of the environment very likely includes some and excludes others, and that this exclusion—which appears to exist on many levels—is almost certainly helping to shape Christian teaching as it is understood at Saddleback. This elision is particularly glaring in the book’s final section, where Wilford argues repeatedly that Saddleback’s more openly political moves, such as hosting a presidential forum, are actually not political at all, but rather aimed at cultivating the individual self. As he writes, “politics is the means, but a local, apolitical, and intimate evangelicalism is the end” (emphasis in original). This is another symptom, perhaps, of Wilford’s taking supposedly distinct spheres as more bounded and substantial than they are; this tendency results not only in undervaluing what might be considered “religious” but also what might be considered “political.” Because while it may be true that an “intimate evangelicalism” is indeed the end, an “intimate” set of social priorities—what literary scholar Lauren Berlant has described as an “intimate public sphere”—is hardly an apolitical one, given its strong implications for the choices that people make about how and where they live their lives, with whom they will associate, and what they buy. These choices have environmental and social effects that resonate far beyond the world of postsuburbia. And even if “politics” were reduced to mere statecraft—and it should not be—such choices would certainly affect how people vote, and how the line between public and private is drawn. Wilford does briefly acknowledge some of these social effects; toward the end of his book, he describes a world in which the common good makes increasingly little sense, where citizens have been reformulated (or reduced) to being mere “taxpayers,” and where collective politics are frequently considered only “through the prism of economic growth.” Unfortunately, such descriptions are short, and ancillary rather than central to the arguments he is making. But the implications for all kinds of belonging in such a world—political as well as social, religious and spatial—are significant, and they deserve to be emphasized.

Fred Folmer, a graduate of New York University’s M.A. program in religious studies, is a librarian at Connecticut College.

Supporters of the Lebanese model routinely praise it as fairly representing the country’s religious make-up. Critics, however, point out that codifying Lebanon’s religious divisions in law has caused the sects to self-segregate, perpetuating the merging of religious and political identities in ways that may well lead to a repeat of the recent civil war. There is a widespread sense of frustration, particularly among young, educated Lebanese.

By Irina Papkova

Lebanon. For decades, the very word evoked sectarian bloodshed, conjuring images of Christian-Muslim hatred and sectarian destruction. Despite the fact that the civil war in this tiny Mediterranean country ended more than twenty years ago, my decision to relocate here provoked panic in some quarters, together with warnings that I am going to be living “on a tinder box” of religious hatred ready to explode at any moment. Such fears do resonate in a country whose capital is located a mere fifty kilometers from the carnage of Damascus, and whose population is divided roughly into four mutually suspicious religious camps (Sunni, Shiite, Druze, and Christian).

Tensions in Lebanon are indeed rising. Refugees from Syria stream through the streets of Beirut, some in luxury cars, others in tattered rags, begging for food. Their presence is like a match waiting to light the fuel of Lebanese sectarian tensions – with the influx of refugees, the population of Lebanon has grown about 10% in the last year alone, with the majority of those arriving being Sunni or Shiite Muslims. The delicate balance of Lebanese politics rests on a power sharing arrangement between the Shiites, Christians and Sunnis, all of whom are assumed to have approximately the same demographic weight. Add in the 400,000 recently arrived Syrians, and the balancing act becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.

So it is tempting to write about the dangers facing Lebanon, to forecast doom and gloom, and to capitalize on the poignancy of yet another Middle Eastern country facing potential collapse in the wake of the Arab Spring. But the Lebanese story is not typical of the region. There is no tyrant to topple in this parliamentary democracy. The economy, though badly affected by the war in Syria, continues to grow. For all the outside pressures, the Lebanese seem set on avoiding descent into civil war – they’ve been there before, and want none of it. And, in a region where Islamist governments are rapidly becoming the new normal, Lebanon is poised to modify the role of religion in public life by allowing civil marriage for the first time in the country’s existence.

In late November 2012, Kholoud Succariyeh (a Sunni Muslim) and her fiance Nidal Darwish (a Shiite) made Lebanese history by getting married by a notary in a civil ceremony in their hometown in the Bekka valley. To Americans embroiled in our own controversy over gay marriage, and long used to civil marriage as a normal state of affairs, the importance of Kholoud and Nidal’s courageous step may not be immediately evident. But in Lebanon, their attempt to go outside the religious communities to register their marriage carries enormous implications.

According to Lebanese law, family matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance are all delegated to religious authorities representing the country’s eighteen officially recognized denominations. Until Nidal and Kholoud appeared on the scene, both civil marriage and marriage between people of different sects were unequivocally understood to be illegal. For decades, mixed-faith couples, and those not wishing to get married in religious ceremonies, have gotten around these restrictions by exploiting a loophole in the law: Lebanon does recognize marriages registered in other countries (with the exception of gay marriage). This has led to the uniquely Lebanese phenomenon of couples heading for Cyprus or other countries that do allow inter-faith marriage and/or civil marriage, and then returning to Lebanon and applying for legal recognition of their wedded status.

So why is Kholoud and Nidal’s ceremony such a game changer? The couple decided to attempt the marriage on Lebanese soil based on another legal loophole. In the period between the two World Wars, the country was governed by France under a League of Nations Mandate. After independence, many of the Mandate-era laws remained in force. Article 60 of one such law, dating from 1936, grants civil rights – including civil marriage – to people with no official religious affiliation.  Until recently, this meant little since another law required that all citizens indicate the sect they belong to in their identity cards. In 2009, however, then- Minister of the Interior Ziad Baroud issued a decree allowing the removal of religious affiliation from all official documents. Hypothetically, civil marriage has been possible in Lebanon since 2009, at least for citizens willing to strike their religious status from the record.

Poster in Beirut advertising a rally against sectarianism in Lebanon. Photo by Irina Papkova.

This past February, I spent an evening in a Caribou Coffee shop located in Beirut’s Hamra neighborhood, conversing with a 30-something lawyer and civil marriage activist who preferred to remain anonymous, and whom I refer to here as Walid. According to Walid, the idea for Nidal and Kholoud to register their marriage under Article 60 arose as a response to Baroud’s decree. Walid is a member of an informal coalition of young professionals united through the Facebook page “Civil Marriage in Lebanon,” or “CML.”  At some point in their investigations into the history of marriage both in Lebanon and elsewhere, the group’s members came upon Article 60, and by 2011 concluded that Kholoud and Nidal should take the pioneering step of marrying in a civil ceremony.

Already significant enough in its implications for personal status law in Lebanon, Kholoud and Nidal’s marriage also reflects a broader movement in favor of reducing the role of religion in the country’s political life. In the Middle East’s only functional democracy outside of Israel, the citizenry is slowly beginning to ask for more secularism, not less, in sharp contrast to developments in places such as Egypt and Tunisia. One can feel this most strongly in Hamra, a neighborhood paradoxically known to American television viewers as a supposed center of jihadist activities.

In October 2012, the television show “Homeland” featured Hamra as the supposed meeting site of Shiite Hezbollah militants. In reality, most of the people who live in Hamra are anti-Hezbollah Sunnis. The neighborhood is the center of left-wing intellectual life in Beirut, sheltering Marxists and other secular-leaning ideologues under the umbrellas of its many cafes. In contrast to the dusty street scene portrayed in the “Homeland” episode (which was shot in Haifa, Israel, much to the outrage of the Lebanese), Hamra today is a booming commercial and entertainment hub, sprouting luxury apartments and new restaurants and bars like mushrooms after a spring rain. Here, the forward-looking energy of a post-war Lebanon seeking to reinvent itself is evident on every corner. And so I should not have been surprised, while on a stroll through Hamra in May 2011, to find the streets plastered with posters advertising a rally in support of changes to Lebanon’s sectarian system.

The May 2011 protestors marched under the banner of “Laique Pride,” a slogan that evokes both the French term for secularism familiar from Lebanon’s francophone past and popularly known emancipatory movements such as “Gay Pride.” The event drew a few hundred people, but it ended abruptly when news broke that ten people had been killed by the Israeli army during pro-Palestinian protests near the border with Israel that same afternoon. Yet it was hardly a flash in the pan: in 2011, organized rallies in favor of transforming Lebanon into a secular state were a regular feature of Beirut’s street life.  Earlier, on March 6th, some 8,000 protesters marched through the center of Beirut in an effort coordinated with similar events in the cities of Baalbek and Saida (the first a stronghold of Hezbollah, and the second effectively the capital of militant Sunni movements). On March 18th, anti-sectarian activists set up a tent in downtown Beirut’s Riad el-Sohl Square, staging a sit in much in the style of Occupy Wall Street. On March 20th, more than 30,000 protesters marched several kilometers from the predominantly Christian east Beirut district of Achrafiye to the Ministry of the Interior located in Hamra.

If Lebanon is constitutionally a secular state, what is it exactly that the anti-sectarian movement seeks to change? In order to accommodate the country’s religiously divided population, Lebanon recognizes eighteen official “sects,” roughly split among Sunnis, Shiites, Druze and various Christian denominations. Matters of personal status such as marriage and inheritance are only some of the areas in which the answer to the question of “what sect do you belong to” has real consequences. Following a tradition that dates back to 1943, the Prime Minister must be a Sunni Muslim, the President a Maronite Christian, and the Speaker of Parliament a Shia Muslim. Most political parties are based around sectarian identities, and historically the distribution of parliamentary seats has been designed to proportionally reflect the eighteen sects.  The sectarian label in one’s passport also determines which government jobs one can or cannot get, as state employment is regulated by confessional quotas. In the army, high ranking positions are similarly distributed according to sect.

Supporters of the Lebanese model routinely praise it as fairly representing the country’s religious make-up. Critics, however, point out that codifying Lebanon’s religious divisions in law has caused the sects to self-segregate, perpetuating the merging of religious and political identities in ways that may well lead to a repeat of the recent civil war. There is a widespread sense of frustration, particularly among young, educated Lebanese.

One warm February evening in 2013, I sat on the terrace of Hamra’s organic and environmentally-friendly cafe Brisk, talking with 25-year old digital media strategist and activist Assad Thebian. Thebian, who is Druze, became palpably angry as he told me that the sectarian system has prevented the Lebanese from understanding themselves as members of one nation. “How am I, a Druze,” he said, “supposed to be attached to a country where I can’t become president, but the Maronite Christian kid I grew up with next door can?”

Thebian describes himself as a “concerned citizen,” fighting against sectarianism any way he can without attaching himself to any political party or secularist NGO. But he volunteers in support of organized campaigns and maintains strong ties with those activists who do pursue their goals through the non-profit sector. Towards the end of our conversation, he asked me if I knew about Shaml, a Beirut-based NGO dedicated to non-violence and non-sectarianism. When I told him that yes, I’d heard about Shaml, Thebian jumped up and headed towards the far end of Brisk. A moment later he returned, dragging over a tall, slim young man whom he introduced as Hussein Mehdyy. “Hussein is with Shaml, he can talk to you now, I’ve got to go to a cousin’s birthday party, yallah ‘bye.” And with that, Thebian disappeared into the night.

In stumbling English accompanied by a winning smile, Hussein gamely sat down across from me in Thebian’s stead, and we talked for a while about Shaml and its activities. For the moment, Shaml views achieving the right to civil marriage as a key step toward the larger goal of dismantling the sectarian system entirely. “We’ve been working on [civil marriage] since 2009,” Hussein told me, “and in 2011 we submitted a draft law to the parliament, but the parliament hasn’t discussed it actively.” In anticipation of the day that the legislature will deal with the question, Shaml keeps the anti-sectarian cause alive by participating in mass protests, staging sit-ins, and holding informational events to spread the message. “We participate in all the marches [organized by Shaml in conjunction with other NGOs],” he said. “They’ve become like a yearly festival. It’s a good step, reminding society that we need a secular state.”

Anti-sectarian graffiti in Hamra, Beirut. Photo by Irina Papkova.

Once or twice a year, a loose coalition of NGOs organizes marches in favor of dismantling the sectarian system. To get a better understanding of how these protests function, I spent an evening at another Beiruti cafe, talking with 25-year old Maya, an activist who was involved in the protests’ inception. “It was the energy of the Arab Spring,” Maya told me, which inspired civil society activists to join forces in mobilizing supporters across the country through personal and social networks. Looking back, the March 2011 protests did have all the hallmarks of a mass movement resonant of the Arab Spring demonstrations that broke out at the same time in neighboring countries. So revolutionary was the atmosphere in Beirut that I remember nervously observing events from outside and being relieved that I was not in the country at the time.

But the routinization of protest has been accompanied by a precipitous drop in participation – in sharp contrast to the tens of thousands who gathered in 2011, the most recent march in May 2012, drew only a few hundred participants. Nearly all of the people I spoke with about the movement expressed the feeling that mass protests alone were not an effective means of changing Lebanon’s sectarian laws. To some, the petering out of participation signals the failure of the cause entirely. When I contacted Yalda Younes, a key member of a Laique Pride, a group that had been prominent in the anti-sectarian movement’s early stages, she refused to grant me an interview on the grounds that “the movement is kind of sleeping this year, as there are not enough people taking the lead in it.”

Dismantling Lebanon’s sectarian system is a daunting proposition on any day, given the entrenched opposition of political and religious authorities afraid of losing power and privilege. Less obviously, many citizens are actually satisfied with the status quo. Sipping an overpriced cappuccino at Beirut’s uber-intellectual Cafe Dar, Maya acknowledged that “people are benefitting…the system actually does represent minorities. This is an activist movement, it does not have the support of the masses.” So the marches have lost momentum, not least because of contradictions among the organizing activists themselves.

The civil society groups coordinating the anti-sectarian protests are promoting very different agendas. Shaml, for instance, is broadly interested in non-violent social change, with secularism as an important but secondary element of the NGO’s program. Other concerned NGOs have included the feminist groups Nasawiya and Jinsiyati, and the American University of Beirut’s Secular Club. In 2011, the coordinating committee also encompassed the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a leftist and therefore pro-secular political party that also happens to be strongly in favor of the Assad regime in Syria. As an ally of Assad, the SSNP is politically allied to Hezbollah, whose political platform involves the eventual transformation of Lebanon into a state run by sharia law. According to several of the sources I spoke to, SSNP’s participation in the secularist movement (which was over by 2012), was a constant source of contention, leading on occasion to physical confrontations between protest organizers.

If the activists coordinating anti-sectarian rallies had come up with a unified position on what dismantling the sectarian system actually means, these internal contradictions may not have been so damaging. But their failure to do so has led to some bemusing episodes. For example, on February 26, 2012, a group of approximately 400 people gathered together in front of the Beirut headquarters of Lebanon’s electricity provider, Electricite du Liban (EdL). The organizers informed reporters from Daily Star Lebanon that their goal was to “reignite” the secular Lebanon movement. The protesters did chant anti-sectarian slogans as they marched through the streets. However, their demands also included higher wages, rent control, and improvements in electricity service, transportation, education, and women’s rights. This may have seemed logical to some participants: according to one 19-year old protester, “sectarianism is responsible for everything” (a phrase I heard often during the course of my research for this story). The protest’s organizers crowned the event by hanging a funeral wreath on EdL’s gates, a dramatic gesture to be sure, but not one that clarified the relationship between sectarianism and poor electricity service.

Still, though the anti-sectarian protests no longer attract the crowds, as they did in 2011, there is a sense of change in the air. Both Walid and Maya told me separately that while the mass protests have been largely symbolic and substantively ineffective, Lebanon is a country in which small initiatives often lead to real change; which brings us back to Kholoud and Nidal. Their individual decision to test the boundaries of Lebanon’s legal system elicited a storm of controversy, but also revealed important elements within the political and religious establishment open to the possibility of at least modifying the sectarian system by legalizing civil marriage. Lebanon’s Grand Mufti issued a fatwa against civil marriage, branding any Muslim politician that supports it an apostate. The Ministry of the Interior opposes the idea. But the patriarch of the Maronite Christian Church has publicly endorsed it, as has Lebanon’s president Michel Sleiman and the Ministry of Justice. The wheels of bureaucracy in this country turn slowly, but as I write this it looks as though Nidal and Kholoud’s marriage will be legally registered, a small but significant victory for the anti-sectarian movement.

There are other indications that the movement towards the reform of Lebanon’s sectarian system is alive and well. My exploration of this topic began with a chance sighting of anti-sectarian posters in Beirut’s Hamra’s district. It seems fitting to end the piece with another Hamra-related episode. The neighborhood’s westernmost boundary ends with a gate that leads into the verdant gardens of the American University of Beirut. In early March, I went to AUB for a lecture on civil marriage organized by the University’s Secular Club. The speaker was Ogharite Younan, a prominent civil society activist deeply involved drafting a law on civil marriage submitted to the Lebanese Parliament in 2011. In 2003, Younan co-founded the Lebanese Association for Civil Rights, which has emerged as the primary resource in Lebanon for training civil society activists, particularly in the areas of non-violence and non-sectarianism. When I talked to her in 2011, she had just submitted the draft law to parliament, and told me that in her view, the path towards change was not through mass protest movements, which are too diffuse and unfocussed in their goals. Rather, “change should come through persuasion.”

Judging by the turnout for Younan’s speech at AUB, a significant portion of Lebanon’s elite youth is ready to listen. When I arrived at the university’s West Hall, the auditorium was filled to capacity with AUB students. Outside, I met one of the event’s organizers, 21 year old engineering student Karim Khansa. We sat down on the steps of West Hall, and chatted for a while about the AUB Secular Club, it’s members dreams and aspirations. For Karim, who is Shiite, the civil marriage issue is but part of a larger effort to transform Lebanon into a society where everyone will consider themselves Lebanese, placing national affiliation above sectarian concerns. The job of the AUB Secular Club, he told me, lies in “pushing for anything that will unite us….and convincing people to think for themselves, rather than blindly following leaders.” For him, AUB is the ideal place to start, since the university brings together students from all of Lebanon’s sects, demonstrating Lebanon’s diversity and encouraging cross-sectarian friendships that will, he hopes, lead to the diminution of the barriers between “us” and “them.” He may be right: the AUB Secular Club was founded by students from highly religious families, some even deeply involved with Hezbollah. These young people have thrown down a challenge to their parents’ generation, envisioning a Lebanese future free of sectarian divisions.

Irina Papkova is a Research Fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkeley Center For Religion, Peace and World Affairs. She received her Ph.D. from Georgetown University and has previously taught at Georgetown and George Washington Universities. Her book, “The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics,” was published by Oxford University Press and Woodrow Wilson Center Press in 2011.Irina’s current research includes religion and politics in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Lebanon. She is a regular contributor to The Revealer.

With support from the Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs.