Radical Secularism and Worldview Dilemmas in Countering Sectarianism in Lebanon

In August 2020, a big explosion in the port of Beirut destroyed one‐third of the city, injured thousands, and killed hundreds. The catastrophe came after years of a political and economic crisis in Lebanon that became especially exposed in 2015 when the government and parliament failed to conclude a new contract for a landfill after the old one expired, resulting in an unbearable stench from the garbage piling up in the streets. Angry protestors filled downtown Beirut—the site for political events and government institutions around Martyr Square—demanding a total change in the political system and the ouster from power of all politicians. The slogan “all means all means all of them” (killun yaani killun) expresses the sentiment that all Lebanese politicians should be expelled from power—the elected opposition in the parliament as well as the members of the ruling parties. The slogan was formed by the “You Stink” movement during the “garbage crisis” (Shehadi 2021) and has been popularized by the protestors ever since.

To help solve the economic crisis, in October 2019 the parliament passed reforms that, among other changes, taxed the use of WhatsApp, a popular social media application. The passage of the tax led to demonstrations in downtown Beirut that were larger than those held in 2015. The number of demonstrators is unknown, but estimates indicate that approximately 100,000 people gathered to protest the politicians and to voice the slogan “all means all.” The demonstrators did not target only the government and the ruling parties. They wanted to replace the entire political system with something new, a nonsectarian political system for which they had simple slogans but no details or plan for implementation. While the media talked about “the WhatsApp‐demonstrations,” the demonstrators themselves preferred the name “October Revolution” to signal their desire for a completely new political system (Yahya 2020). As in 2015, the demonstrators in 2019 failed to change the system. Although they did force the resignation of the government, it was replaced by the same political system with the same parties and the same political elites (Lebanese Center for Policy Studies 2021).

The day after the August 2020 explosion, downtown Beirut was again filled with demonstrators who blamed a corrupt, dysfunctional, and sectarian political system for the blast. Again, the demonstrators used the slogan “all means all,” again the government resigned, and again the political system prevailed.

According to reports, the many demonstrations since 2015 gathered broad support from across Lebanese society and across the many different religious communities. As noted, the protestors and political activists demonstrated against the opposition as well as the ruling parties. However, they agreed on a radical critique of the political system and the need for change. The reasons for this are many, including tough measures passed by the political elites who joined forces to prevent change. The October Revolution faded because of violence that erupted between groups and was perhaps orchestrated by the authorities.

One question about the Lebanon case that has received little attention is: Why did many people who enthusiastically protested leave the demonstrations as quickly as they joined them? Why did they not persist until their demands were fulfilled (Lebanese Center for Policy Studies 2021)?

This article investigates this question by focusing on the relation between religion and politics in Lebanon. The Lebanese democracy is embedded in the consociational constitution, which distributes executive power and parliamentary representation based on the size of the nation's 18 publicly recognized confessional communities (Henley 2016). While this system was put in place to create a balance between Lebanon's different communities and religious sects, many scholars argue that it has led to sectarianism, conflict, and a fragile balance of power between the political elites recruited from the confessional communities. This has led to political paralysis that prevents the enactment of necessary political and economic reforms for the benefit of the Lebanese people (Halawi 2020; Nagle 2020).

One political alternative for Lebanon is a liberal democratic system with separate public and private spheres, in which the role of religion is limited to the private sphere. This seems to be the logical remedy for a political system that is torn apart by sectarian conflicts rooted in religious communities. This secular perspective has been constitutional in European states for centuries and is seen by modern philosophers in the liberal tradition as a precondition for a democratic state.

However, many have contested secularism, including scholars of political theology who argue for a bigger role for Christian institutions in the public sphere and the development of the state. Such a position also has been advocated recently by politicians from Christian movements in Europe and the U.S., who argue that the root of true democracy is based on evangelistic interpretations of Christian values (Schmitt 2006; Tjalve 2021).

To outline the dilemma of secularism—that secularism often creates tensions between politics and religion instead of preventing religious‐based conflicts—the article briefly explores the arguments of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. Perhaps more than any other scholar, Habermas has insisted that secularism is the foundation of the democratic state. The article also discusses the critique of Habermas by the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, who has argued for a radical redefinition of secularism (Habermas and Ratzinger 2006; Habermas 2011; Taylor 2011).

As Habermas and Taylor point to problems related to the secular democratic states in Europe and North America, the article concludes by asking if the challenges related to secularism arise exclusively in non‐Western regions or rather are an intrinsic aspect of secularism itself. The article argues that the concept of worldview helps us to understand the pitfalls of secularism and discusses how the crisis in Lebanon is a very clear example of these pitfalls. Radical secularism—as suggested by Taylor—and the concept of worldview might be fruitful ways to start to rethink the relationship between politics and religion in Lebanon and elsewhere.

In recent years, the concept of worldview has received growing interest within the social sciences, not least in relation to the analysis of conflicts that entail clashes between different symbolic value hierarchies through which people understand their existence (Sheikh 2019). There are several interpretations of worldview, all of which, nonetheless, agree on taking Immanuel Kant's philosophy as the starting point. The interpretations part ways from there, as some go down the road of the sociologist Max Weber and the philosopher Michel Foucault, while others pursue a philosophically hermeneutic path based on Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard, as well as existential philosophy heavily influenced by Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, and Hans‐Georg Gadamer (Alessiato 2011; Sheikh 2019; Thornhill and Miron 2022). A valuable conceptual history of worldview was published in 2002 by philosophy professor David K. Naugle (Naugle 2002).

This article draws primarily on the theory of worldview developed by the German philosopher Jaspers, who in 1919 published a pioneering work on the subject entitled Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (The Psychology of Worldviews), which had a great impact on what came to be known as “existentialism” (Jaspers 2018), a philosophical school that developed in France and Germany in the twentieth century. The book has been translated into several languages. Unfortunately, however, it has not been translated into English, which probably is one reason that Jaspers is lesser known than, for example, the German philosopher Heidegger and the French writer Jean‐Paul Sartre, who is also associated with existential philosophy.

Jaspers' work is interesting in debates about religion and politics because it helps to explain why people who belong to worldview‐based groups or communities often are resilient in adapting to rapidly changing political orders such as modernization processes involving secularism. The late Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington paid tribute to modernity but documented empirically and masterfully in his book Political Orders in Changing Societies how the road to modernity—modernization—was extremely challenging and often disrupted by conflict (Huntington 1968). Jaspers's conceptualization of worldview is a theoretical contribution to understanding why this is the case. His concept of worldview has two components—the subject's view of the world and the world as an object forming an image in the subject. These positions are summarized clearly by Naugle:

As attitudes change due to the subject's development and socialization, so do emotional and mental conditions and world images change in space and time. Worldview is a dynamic phenomenon that evolves during the lived life of a person. It is not just a result of an intellectual process controlled by rationality. “The rational attitude is fed by perception but can ossify and become lifeless. Because it is suffused with intuitive and aesthetic attitudes, it can never be divided, but neither can it comprehend the totality of things” (Jaspers as quoted in Naugle 2002: 126). In other words, worldview is changeable but at the same time, it is a limited interpretation of the world. In his analysis of attitudes, Jaspers distinguishes between contemplation and praxis, which is the subject acting in concrete life. Here he is influenced by his reading of Kant, who stated in his Critique of Judgment—in which he coined the concept of worldview—that the subject can have an idea of eternity and the totality of things but is never able to have a solid cognition of the totality of the world because of limitations in its attitudes:

To state it differently—through its worldview, the subject is striving for the interpretation of the eternal totality of things. But from the subject's concrete perspective on the world in which it is living and acting, its worldview will always be limited because its senses are limited, which means that a comprehensive universal worldview only exists as an idea and never in the living world across peoples.

As noted, worldviews are changeable. Importantly, however, they are also stable; if they were in constant flux, the subject would be fragmented. In defining the shells (Gehäuse) of worldviews, an important concept in Jaspers' theory, Thornhill and Miron observed that they “take the form of objectivized cages (Gehäuse), in which existence hardens itself against contents and experiences which threaten to transcend or unbalance the defensive restrictions which it has placed upon its operations” (Thornhill and Miron 2022). As a shell, a worldview provides needed feelings of security and belonging in a changing society. But along with a worldview comes the risk of one becoming hardened, leading to extremism, fundamentalism, or dogmatism. According to Jaspers, worldviews often change only slightly as a consequence of communication and dialogue with others, while more radical changes occur in limited situations (Grenzsituationen)—experiences of finality, confrontations with death, or dramatic existential phenomena such as falling in love. In these circumstances, the subject experiences new images of the world that can greatly alter its worldview. In limited situations caused by dramatic crises, the subject can be shaken by worries and anxiety about its world being in a state of dissolution. The subject may feel at risk of estrangement from its community, which forces it to form a new shell and a different worldview. “The process of living,” says Jaspers, “thus includes both a dissolution and a formation of shells. Without dissolution rigidity would set in; but without shells there would be destruction” (Jaspers as quoted by Naugle 2002: 125).

As people with shared worldviews might establish associations, sects, parties, or communities, they will mutually seek confirmation of their worldview. The processes of formation and dissolution of worldviews are social events bound to societal developments, which is important as worldviews are so intimately related to feelings of security and communal belonging. Of course, that is not to say that the subject is just a function of society (our analysis of attitudes and their significance shows this is not so), but it underlines the idea that a worldview is not something that a subject can pick and choose at will. Inspired by the Danish religious thinker and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, Jaspers analyzed the existential choice that played a crucial role in Kierkegaard's early work Either/Or (Kierkegaard 1992; Jaspers 2018). In the first part of Either/Or, the main character has a nihilistic worldview and despairs because he cannot make any sense of life. In the second part of the book, the main character's friend—a lawyer—urges him to choose himself as the person he is and in the context of which he is a living part and to take responsibility for himself as well as for the general society, which at the time meant living as a responsible Christian citizen in Danish civil society. The book is a comprehensive analysis of why such a choice is not easy. Jaspers builds on Kierkegaard's insights by pointing out that a worldview is not something one just picks and chooses. He again distinguishes between (on the one hand) contemplation, in which one can grasp antinomies and deal with them in a purely intellectual way, and (on the other hand) existential life choices that immediately affect who you are, how others see you, and your relationship to community, as well as the challenge of giving up oneself to be able to choose a new life, a new worldview, a new reality. Kierkegaard discusses this anxiety, which he understands as an ontological condition of human existence, in The Concept of Anxiety (Kierkegaard 2015; Jaspers 2018).

This brief outline of Jaspers' theory of worldview does not, of course, do justice to his work. However, the purpose of bringing in Jaspers here is simply to highlight those of his basic concepts and observations that help us to understand why demonstrators and activists on the one hand enthusiastically gathered in demanding a revolution, and on the other hand, quickly abandoned the revolution. Before discussing how Jaspers illuminates the political conflict in Lebanon and the relationship between politics and religion, we turn to a brief overview of Lebanon's political history, its political system, and how that system has performed in recent years, followed by a discussion of the concept of secularism.

While European states evolved in the early modern period (i.e., following the Renaissance, the Thirty Years' War, and the development of the state system after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648) and without interference from external powers and international organizations, the story of the establishment of the modern Arab states is notably different. The Arab states did not exist until the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent establishment of the modern Middle East in connection with the peace accords after World War I. At the same time, the League of Nations was created, which made it possible for the new states to be mandated territories administered by France and Britain (Fieldhouse 2006). In the aftermath of World War II, the United Nations was established, which had a major impact on developments in the Middle East. In addition, as noted by Brown in 1984 and later by Hinnebusch and Ehteshami, there is no other region in the world that has been penetrated as deeply by the major powers (Ehteshami and Hinnebusch 1999).

Yet even before the construction of the Middle Eastern states, the European great powers of the nineteenth century exerted considerable influence in the region and affected the area's modernization. The Ottoman Empire reacted to the European interventions with its own reforms and modernization efforts, called tanzimat. Thus, in their transition from the traditional to the modern world, the provinces in the Ottoman Empire were influenced both by the European great powers and the Ottoman rulers (Halliday 2005; Hinnebusch and Gani 2020).

This was also the case for Mount Lebanon, which formally became a semi‐autonomous province in Ottoman Syria in 1861 following bloody clashes between the Druze, who had controlled the area for centuries, and the Christians—mainly Maronites—who challenged them in the nineteenth century. Such clashes culminated with massacres of Christians in 1860. The Druze religion developed out of Islam to become an independent religion in the early eleventh century in Egypt; later a Druze community settled in Mount Lebanon. The Maronites originated from the Levant, became part of the Orthodox Catholic Church in 517 CE, and today are located primarily in Lebanon and Syria. After the Maronites settled in Mount Lebanon, war arose in the middle of the nineteenth century between them and the Druze. Both Great Britain, who supported the Druze, and France, who supported the Maronites, participated in the war. A European–Ottoman treaty created a new order. In the second half of the century, France took the primary role in seeking to create a political balance of power between the Druze and the Christians in Mount Lebanon (Hudson 1968; Makdisi 2000).

Thus, modernization in Lebanon followed several different paths. However, the idea of creating a political system based on a balance between different faiths was introduced by European and Ottoman powers long before Lebanon was established as a state (Hudson 1968; Makdisi 2000). After World War I, Lebanon came under the control of the French mandate for Lebanon and Syria. In September 1920, the French separated Lebanon from Syria and established it as a state under the French mandate's control. At that time the Maronites were the largest group in Lebanon, but the population also contained many Muslims, Druze, and members of other Christian sects. In 1926, still under the French mandate, the Republic of Lebanon was formed with a democratic constitution and a parliamentarian political system. Section 24 of Lebanon's constitution states that Christians and Muslims shall have equal representation in the parliament and provides for proportional representation of sects in both religious groups (Diss and Steffen 2017; Lebanon's Constitution 2022).

In 1943, based on an unwritten agreement called the National Pact, Lebanon established itself as a consociational state with representation in parliament from all religious communities and power sharing in the executive branch (Lijphart 1969). The Pact states that the president is always a Maronite, the prime minister is always a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of the Parliament is always a Shia Muslim. The idea behind this system was to ensure that the major groups in the highly divided Lebanese society would share power and influence in government. By ensuring that all 18 publicly recognized denominations were represented in parliament, the Pact sought to avoid tensions and conflicts between them (El‐Khazen 1991; Fakhoury 2016). Lebanon became an independent state in 1946.

The power‐sharing model never worked as intended, as the conflicts in 1958 and 1975, leading to the 15‐year civil war, clearly have demonstrated. Interventions from Syria, Israel, Iran, the United States, and France intensified the conflicts, as did the presence of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees—including the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was in Beirut from 1971 until 1982. Negotiations in the Saudi Arabian city of Taif in 1989 paved the way for an agreement that ended the civil war the following year. With some significant changes, the consociational model continued to form the basis of the political system following the civil war.

Israel ended its occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. Following a UN Security Council resolution in 2004 and large demonstrations against the Syrian presence in Lebanon, Syria also withdrew its troops from the country. The Taif agreement provided for the disarmament of all militias but Hezbollah was exempted on the grounds that they were defending Lebanon against Israel (Bahout 2012).

In February 2005, Rafiq al‐Hariri, the Sunni Muslim leader and Lebanon's prime minister, was assassinated by a bomb blast in central Beirut. Al‐Hariri was one of the most influential politicians following the civil war. Many theories about who killed him circulated immediately and continue to do so. A UN Tribunal was set up later the same year to investigate al‐Hariri's murder. Its investigation, concluded in 2020, found one person guilty—a low‐ranking man from the Shia Muslim party Hezbollah. However, Hezbollah denied any involvement in the murder, and the person found guilty has never been arrested. The assassination was highly consequential. A couple of weeks after the murder, two big demonstrations were organized, leading to the formation of two blocs in Lebanese politics named after the dates on which the demonstrations were held. The first is the “March 8 Alliance,” consisting of the two Shia Muslim parties Hezbollah and Amal together with the Free Patriotic Movement, a Maronite party. The other bloc is the “March 14 Alliance,” which for many years was led by the Sunni Muslim Saad al‐Hariri, son of the assassinated prime minister and head of the Future Movement, who was supported by the (Christian) Lebanese forces (LF) and the Druze Progressive Socialist Party. Both blocs, which are still dividing politics in Lebanon today, also include several smaller parties (Fakhoury 2016). The other significant consequence of the assassination was the Syrian withdrawal noted above, which occurred after pressure from the international community, led by the U.S. and France.

Following the formation of the blocs and the Syrian withdrawal, conflicts between the Sunni and Shia Muslims intensified. The U.S., Israel, and the conservative Arab monarchies on the Arabian Peninsula saw the Iran‐supported Hezbollah party as an enemy and a terror organization and wanted to significantly weaken its position in Lebanese politics. Saad al‐Hariri tried to exploit the sympathy and popularity he enjoyed after his father's assassination to gain more power. The U.S. and the Arab Gulf states supported him but the only result was an intensified conflict between the two blocs led by Hezbollah and al‐Hariri's party, the Future Movement (ICG 2010). Hezbollah is controlled by a very strong top‐down power structure, with a militia that is considered more powerful than the Lebanese Army. One‐third of Lebanon's population is Shia Muslim. Most Shia Muslims support Hezbollah because, with Iran's support, the party efficiently provides social services to its followers and protects Lebanon from Israel (Khatib 2021). The Lebanese citizens were reminded of Hezbollah's protection when a war between Hezbollah and Israel erupted in the summer of 2006. The war lasted for a month and caused a lot of destruction including the bombing of Dahiya, the southern part of Beirut; approximately a half million Shia Muslims living there had to flee. With Iran's help, the destroyed area was rebuilt in less than a year, and the inhabitants who had fled returned (Ohrstrom and Quilty 2007). Paradoxically, the summer war left Hezbollah stronger because it was able to withstand the invasion of South Lebanon by the Israeli air force and army, which withdrew as part of the international negotiated ceasefire without accomplishing its goal of destroying Hezbollah (Salem 2007).

After the war, confrontations between the Future Movement and Hezbollah continued. When the al‐Hariri‐led government tried to dismantle Hezbollah's telecommunication system in May 2008, Hezbollah sieged the Sunni Muslim‐dominated areas in West Beirut and placed Saad al‐Hariri under de facto house arrest, his attempt to weaken Hezbollah by strengthening Lebanon's Sunni Muslim constituencies having failed. It was a clear demonstration of power by Hezbollah that showed it had no intention of surrendering its weapons, as the Sunnis and the international community demanded. An agreement subsequently was reached in Doha, Qatar and a unity government was formed. From then on it was clear to the Sunnis that they could not beat or control Hezbollah or rule without its consent (ICG 2010).

The 2008 crisis resulted in close cooperation on security across all parts of the Lebanese government. All leaders in the two dominating political blocs seem to have reached a consensus that the only way to avoid a devastating conflict and risk a new civil war was to work together on controlling and containing threats against the political system and the state, whether they came from jihadist forces, foreign states, or domestic opposition outside the political system. There are many indications that the political elites from across all the parties in Lebanon currently meet to contain threats against the state. This is a very challenging time for Lebanon. The country contains approximately 300,000 Palestinian refugees and one million Syrian refugees, and Hezbollah's military engagement in Syria assisting the regime in its fight against Sunni Muslim jihad groups raises the risk that such groups will retaliate against Hezbollah inside Lebanon. However, despite these challenges, the state, the army, and the intelligence agencies have been able to cooperate with Hezbollah to lessen violence and terrorism. When Saad al‐Hariri was detained during his travel to Saudi Arabia and forced to resign as prime minister, all the parties, including Hezbollah (whom al‐Hariri accused of plotting to assassinate him) and the Maronites demanded his return to Beirut. It was later learned that the detainment was orchestrated by the Saudi throne to weaken the position of Hezbollah, a plan that was successfully thwarted by cooperation among Lebanon's political elites (The New Arab 2017).

Thus, when it comes to security matters the Lebanese state is surprisingly resilient considering all the other problems the nation faces: conflicts between religious sects, high unemployment, and (after the October 2019 revolution) disastrous inflation and a bank crisis that has left banks emptied of U.S. dollars.¹ The economic crisis and other conditions after the port explosion have left up to 80 percent of the Lebanese population below the poverty line. The economic crisis also has exacerbated the problem of providing public services. Electricity only works a few hours daily, families need to store water, and there is a desperate need for fuel. The government has sought support and loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but the negotiations have been very difficult because of the state's enormous debt, high degree of corruption, and failure to pass needed economic and political reforms (Ali 2022).

To sum up the situation in Lebanon, one could say that as efficient as the political elite is in maintaining power and protecting Lebanon from security threats, it is equally inefficient in developing the economy, tackling social problems, and providing public services to its citizens. Especially among the youth, there is increased dissatisfaction with the political elites and the political system among both political activists as well as the common people. Political activists and other citizens believe a new political system is critical to the future of Lebanon. But what kind of political system do they want?

Lebanon has a long history of mass demonstrations. However, the protests during the garbage crisis were a new type of development. People from across the country and representing all communities joined the protests, demanding an end to the sectarian political system and the widespread corruption. They agreed on their opposition to sectarianism and their demand for political transparency. Their “You Stink” movement organized the garbage protests and introduced the popular slogan “all of them means all,” which has been repeated at all the demonstrations that followed. The name “You Stink” refers, of course, to the garbage piling up in the streets but is also a critique of the sectarian regime (Yahya 2017).

During the municipal elections the following year, another group called Beirut Madinati (meaning “Beirut, my city”) became very popular, not only in Beirut but across Lebanon. The political elite, through legal and illegal means, prevented Beirut Madinati from winning seats in Beirut's city council (Louthan 2017). Still, the group's existence and popularity indicated that activist movements in civil society increasingly were protesting the political system. Demonstrators again filled the streets in Beirut, Tripoli, Saida, and Sour in 2019, and in Beirut after the port explosion the following year. A range of movements and parties has been formed during these demonstrations. While “You Stink” was a youth movement without a clear political program, Beirut Madinati is more organized, with clear political goals, including Beirut's transition to becoming a sustainable green city. The group is secular in its political discourse (Louthan 2017).

Another secular group is Laïque Pride. (Laïque is French for secular and Pride refers to the gay rights movement.) The group demands an end to the confessional system, equal rights for women, media freedom, and separation between religion and politics. It became active at least a year before the Arab uprisings in 2011 and helped to organize the demonstrations in 2019 and 2020. During the 2018 parliamentary elections, a coalition of independent candidates gathered around a slogan extracted from the national anthem: “All of us! For our Country, for our Glory and Flag.” This slogan expressed the importance of unity, acknowledging that despite people belonging to different religious communities or a secular movement, they joined in demanding the end of sectarianism and the creation of a new political system. The alternative to the multiconfessional consociational system is a secular and—for some—nationalistic political program (Heller 2021).

Many other groups and movements, such as Citizens in a State and Minteshreen, are explicitly secularist. According to its website, “Minteshreen is a progressive social liberal party that seeks to build a modern, democratic and secular state based on social justice, the rule of law and the respect for human rights” (Minteshreen homepage). These two parties have clear liberal and secular programs; as noted above, many other groups and movements are reluctant to formulate concrete political ideas and confine themselves to criticizing the current system (Heller 2021).

Although the activists and protestors rely on a form of secularism to replace the consociational system, it is not at all clear how that should be realized and how the religious communities in a new political order should be integrated and recognized. A discussion of secularism as a precondition for liberal democracies is helpful in understanding this secularism dilemma and in answering the question of why protestors and activists agree on the demand for a radical change of the political system while they are demonstrating but fail to follow through on such demands when the demonstrations have ended.

In 2004, the Catholic Academy in Bavaria organized a debate between Habermas and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who the following year was named Pope). Habermas opened the debate by quoting Ernst‐Wolfgang Böckenförde, a legal philosopher and constitutional lawyer who served many years as a judge on the German Federal Constitutional Court: “Whether the free, secularised state erodes normative preconditions that this state itself cannot guarantee”? Habermas offered the following clarification of Böckenförde's question:

In other words, what should bind citizens together in a community or nation that is loyal toward, and committed to, the state and its constitution—what Habermas calls “constitutional patriotism”—in the thoroughly secularized state? If the state cannot achieve that, i.e., provide its own normative and ethically binding value contexts, and must instead resort to other (potentially religious) worldviews for unifying and binding the state, “difficulties” arise with the “fact of pluralism” (Rawls 2001: 11‐12). For which worldview should be privileged and asserted while others are subject to the demand for secularization? While the multiconfessional state has difficulties with national coherence and is vulnerable to fragmentation by sectarianism, the “free, secularized state” seeks to replace a shared worldview with a “constitutional patriotism” based on a rational choice, thereby risking the erosion of a collective feeling of belonging to the state.

This is the dilemma that Habermas addressed in his introduction to the debate. It is hardly surprising that he rejected the problem in principle, arguing that the secular state can form its own normative foundation and thereby create the constitutional patriotism that is necessary for the maintenance of a free and democratic state that does not come into conflict with the “fact of pluralism.” Habermas believed that the problem can be solved empirically. In this context, it is important to note that the secular liberal democratic state envisaged by the proponents of constitutional patriotism is referred to as a “Willensnation” (nation of will)—a nation in which all citizens, regardless of their faith, gender, ethnicity, etc. choose the nation of their own will. It results from a social contract, made possible by what John Rawls labeled “overlapping consensus” (Asad 2003: 150).

According to Habermas, limiting emotions, beliefs, and religious convictions to the individual's relationship with themself is a precondition for a free, secular state. In modernity, religion can be cast aside as an individual and private matter that does not in principle interfere with politics and public affairs and institutions. All citizens enjoy the right of freedom of religion, but their faith is a private matter between their God and themselves and a relationship with which the state should not interfere. This is essentially Protestant theology as it was developed in the Reformation based on the thinking of Martin Luther—that no institutions are needed as faith is considered exclusively personal and private grounded only in the Holy Scriptures (Griffith 2017). Thus, the liberal democratic constitutional state can assert its worldview neutrality insofar as it makes religion a private matter. With its foundation in this Protestant interpretation of the social position of religion, might the effort to make universal the liberal world order have a touch of Protestant missionizing, which is perhaps one of several reasons that it encounters opposition in non‐Christian communities? Add to that the experiences among peoples in the Middle East with Western nations implementing secularism as a tool to control and contain religion (Asad 2003; Halliday 2005).

Two basic problems with the European concept of secularism as it specifically manifests itself in European modernity can be identified. The first is about belonging to a community, which—as pointed out earlier—involves feelings of security. The other is about the state's insistence on controlling and defining language in both the public and private spheres. If one insists that the liberal constitutional state must be worldview‐neutral and that religion must be relegated to the private sphere, the questions raised by Habermas and Böckenförde are essentially these: What is it that binds the citizens of a state together and makes them collectively recognize the state, the constitution, and the modern project? What causes citizens to internalize the principles of the constitution or the regulations and rules of the state and develop a positive emotion‐based commitment to them? Where does this patriotism come from if it is not from a shared worldview? As discussed above, Habermas's answer is “constitutional patriotism,” wherein “citizens not only acquire the constitutional principles in their abstract content, but concretely from the historical context of their own national history” (Habermas and Ratzinger 2006, translated from Danish edition).

Another answer is that such connection comes from the contexts in which citizens are socialized, and it is in these contexts that cultural habits, traditions, and customs—and often also religious convictions—are important for the development of a commitment to the community. But that is precisely what is expressed in a worldview, which as noted is never simply a result of an abstract cognitive intellectual process but is just as much formed by feelings of belonging to a community. In his introduction to the debate with Ratzinger, Habermas pointed to the problem:

According to Habermas, there must be a solidary social bond, a sense of belonging to a community, which can take many forms, including that of a group or a congregation. This social bond is a worldview with a discursive and cognitive element that can take the form of a political ideology or creed. This bond also has an emotional element, a sense of belonging to a community where this worldview is shared. In the modern secular European state based on a (supposedly) worldview‐neutral constitution, the fundamental question must, therefore, still be: What causes citizens to feel a binding and solidary sense of belonging to the worldview‐neutral state? Habermas would reply that it is the rational argument, i.e., ultimately communicative action in the form of rational discourse, that results in a sense of affiliation with the state. In European rationalism the discourse of secular reason is the only one accepted in public political debates, while religious discourse is considered irrational and relegated to the private sphere; thus, reason and secularism get the last word, according to Habermas. He wrote: “A liberal political culture can even expect secularised citizens to participate in the efforts to translate relevant contributions from a religious to a publicly accessible language” (Habermas and Ratzinger 2006, translated from Danish edition). In other words, the enlightened, secularized citizen with the rational argument must convince the religious citizen that insofar as the religion of such person can offer relevant contributions to the bourgeois public, the religious language must be translated into the language of reason. But this rational argument is only convincing if it is accompanied by a feeling of belonging to a community or a nation that is caring for its members.

In Formations of the Secular (2003), the Saudi Arabian‐born anthropologist Talal Asad addresses the problem of the privatization of religion caused by secularism. He concludes that secularization is a process of modernization aimed at securing the power of the state by controlling the definitions of politics. His book draws on medieval and modern philosophy as well as academic debates on religion. It ends with a stimulating discussion that provides more questions than answers and deconstructs much of what has been written on secularism. Asad argues for a distinction between “the secular,” which he defines as an epistemological concept, and “secularism,” which he defines as a political doctrine. Secularism is a process whereby the state aims at protecting the individual from violence. However, it does so by using violence to create the private and the public spheres, and by banning religion in the public sphere to control the language of religion. The state has a monopoly not only on the use of violence; it also has a monopoly on defining the distinctions between the private and the public, between religion and politics, and between the sacred and the profane. Asad deconstructs the many binary oppositions put forward by the state through processes of modernization and enlightenment, supposedly to promote tolerance and inclusiveness but instead fostering intolerance and exclusiveness (Asad 2003). Asad asks what the deprivatization of religion would mean and concludes with a question: “My conclusion so far is that those who advocate the view that the deprivatization of religion is compatible with modernity do not always make it clear precisely what this implies…. What authority do religious spokespersons have in this matter?” (Asad 2003: 187).

Another anthropologist, Saba Mahmood, has investigated how liberal conceptions of secularism in Egypt led to religious discrimination against the Copt and Bahai minorities. Her fieldwork‐based research is published in Religious Difference in a Secular Age (2016), which documents the violence of top‐down secularization through modernization. Some of the problems highlighted in Mahmood's analysis of secularization in Egypt are the same as those discussed in our analysis of secularism in Lebanon (Mahmood 2016). However, Egypt is a very different state from Lebanon. While Egypt's constitution defines the nation as an Islamic republic (though still secular), Lebanon's constitution defines the nation as a multireligious state organized in a consociational form. In Lebanon, religious discrimination, and debates over the line between politics and religion, play out very differently than in Egypt or in European nation‐states.

In another debate, this one between Habermas, Judith Butler, Cornel West, and Charles Taylor (with Craig Calhoun moderating), one topic raised was the distinction between discourses of reason and discourses of religious worldviews. Taylor, while criticizing Habermas for limiting religion to the private sphere, argued for what he called “radical secularism”: “There is no reason to single out religion, as against nonreligious, ‘secular’ (in another widely used sense), or atheist viewpoints” (Taylor 2011: 37). In their introduction to The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, in which Taylor's essay appears, the editors explain Taylor's position:

In A Secular Age (2007), Taylor investigates in detail the tradition of secularism based on Protestantism, and in the debate with Habermas, he makes the point that secularism the Western way turns religion into a special case. When secularism as a political doctrine is promoted in Muslim countries or states like Lebanon with multiple religious communities, resistance is triggered among people dependent on these communities, regardless of the quality of social services and security that such communities may provide.

Caroline R. Nagel analyzes sectarianism in Lebanon as a political struggle between secularism and religion. She quotes from Ussama Makdisi's studies on the politicization of religious sects in Mount Lebanon in the nineteenth century and up to Lebanon's independence, concluding:

Nagel's conclusions are consistent with our present discussion of the secularism dilemma as well as with the points raised by Asad and Mahmood (Asad 2003; Mahmood 2016).

In the autumn of 2020, the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, an independent think tank, launched an investigation into why the October Revolution quickly lost support (LCPS 2021). The investigation was part of a series of studies that examined the course of the demonstrations by posing the same questions to several researchers and activists. The second study asked why so many people abandoned the demonstrations after a single month and prior to the outbreak of COVID‐19 in Lebanon. There were many factors at play, such as the authorities' use of violence and intimidation, violence initiated by the regime's thugs, and the fact that many disillusioned opposition members were already leaving Lebanon (Halawi 2020; Nagle 2020). Another factor that surfaced in the study was a concern for one's community. As noted most explicitly by respondent Rania Masri, despite great anger against the regime among a broad segment of the population, people were reluctant to abandon the communities that lent them a certain degree of social security (LCPS 2021). In the absence of a clear political alternative that could offer a different social community, many chose to abandon the demonstrations. People agreed with the criticism of sectarianism, corruption, the abuse of power, and political impotence in relation to implementing necessary reforms. But without a socially grounded alternative, people's fear of losing the social bonds on which they relied and that are anchored in religious communities was greater than their faith in the revolution's potential to bring about something better.

Two other respondents in the study, political activists and professors Mona Fawaz and Mona Harb, noted that many of the youth activists in Lebanon are aware of the dilemma posed by a radical critique of the political system that must consider the risk of creating fear among people in religious worldview‐based communities. To resolve the dilemma, Fawaz and Harb observed that political activists argued for “leaderless resistance” and sought to “adopt loosely organized arrangements to coordinate their activities, allowing for comfortable spaces to debate and experiment. Largely leaderless (a point often used against them), these activist groups frequently reject or contest hierarchical structures, sometimes erring instead on the side of impulsivity” (Fawaz and Harb 2020).

In Questioning Secularism, anthropologist Hussein Ali Agrama's well‐researched book based on extensive field studies in Cairo, the author observed similar strategies by activists at the Tahrir Square demonstrations during the Arab uprisings in January 2011. The activists protested in different physical spaces in ways that expressed indifference toward the secularist strategy of controlling distinctions between politics and religion. Agrama conceptualized this as bare sovereignty because, like state sovereignty, it stands prior to religion and politics, but unlike state sovereignty, it “stands apart from the modern game of defining and distinguishing religion and politics and does not partake of it.” He added, “in that sense,” the protest movement “represented a genuinely asecular power” (Agrama 2012: 231–235).

In both Egypt and Lebanon, it is yet to be seen if this expression of asecular power can be developed into a viable strategy. It seems almost impossible to avoid the secularism dilemma, which requires reflection on how one critiques secularism as a political doctrine in modernization processes. Taylor's concept of radical secularism is at least one idea to develop further in a deconstruction of the myth of the contradiction between reason and religion. In his debate with Taylor, Habermas admitted that reason is in play in religion:

Still, Habermas insisted that “secular reasons lack links to socialization in a community”; they are not embedded in a worldview “rooted in the social dimension of membership, socialization, and prescribed practices” (Mendieta and Vanantwerpen 2011: 62). He also insisted on neutral space for political discourse. Referencing Carl Schmitt's idea of political theology, Habermas opposed the idea that the concepts and values of sovereign states are nothing but secular versions of Christian concepts and values. He worried about the risks of a mass democracy that “preserves the authoritarian kernel of sovereign power with its legitimizing relation to sacred history” (Habermas 2011: 22). Habermas maintained that political discourse and decision making must unfold in a space not influenced by religious or other “cultic” worldviews. Agrama offers a convincing critique of this supposed contradiction between political theology and reason, noting that it confirms a Western enlightenment‐based fixation on religion as irrational (Agrama 2012: 231). At the end of the debate, however, Habermas and Taylor agreed that “neutral” might be a better concept than “secular” and that political constitutional decisions must be agreed upon in neutral spaces. In this way, it seems that the disagreements between Habermas and Taylor on the one side, and the proponents of the anthropological perspective on the other, are narrowed and could evolve into new reflections of the relationship between reason, politics, and religion.

But what are neutral zones or spaces? With his concept of radical secularism, Taylor argues that rather than interpret secularism as the “separation between church and state,” secularism should be seen as signifying a proper relationship between the democratic state and the diversity of worldviews. Based on the slogan of the French Revolution, Taylor defines the three goals of the democratic state as liberty, equality, and fraternity. He argues:

The neutral zone is simply the state and “[t]he official language of the state [is] the language in which legislation, administrative decrees, and court judgments must be couched” (Mendieta and Vanantwerpen 2011: 50). The distinctions made by Habermas between the private and the public spheres in relation to religion and politics, and between the language of secular reason and religious discourse, are—according to Taylor—essentially wrong and unnecessary because of the principle of the neutrality of the democratic state that (ideally) secures equality between multiple worldviews with reference to the goals of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

From the writings and debates of Habermas, Ratzinger, Nagel, Taylor, Asad, Mahmood, and Agrama, one may conclude that the secular state comes into conflict with itself in regard to establishing an ethical‐based worldview, which, according to Jaspers, is an ontological condition for human existence. The origin of this secularism dilemma can be traced to a rigid interpretation of secularism as the separation between church and state, and to the oppositional divide between religion and politics that follows. This interpretation is rooted in European Reformation and Enlightenment philosophy. The concept of radical secularism offers a new interpretation of the relationship between politics and religion that provides an opening for equality between multiple worldviews and deconstructs the privileging of secular reason over religious discourse. Instead, the language of all worldviews—including religious ones—is a natural contributor to the public debate about the political identity of the state, provided that such worldviews are respectful of the democratic state's goals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. These goals are only obtainable to the extent the state is worldview neutral.

The article's analysis of the major demonstrations in Lebanon from 2015 onward confirms that secularism as an exclusive strategy for implementing a more transparent and just political system creates conflict. In part, this is because absent a guarantee of alternative worldview‐based social affiliations acceptable to members of religious communities, secularism causes people to fear losing the social affiliations that such communities provide. Paying greater attention to these dynamics of power explains why Lebanon, against all odds, is even able to remain a state. The surprising resilience of the Lebanese state is due to the ability of the elites of religious communities to maintain a degree of support from their constituencies despite their inability to provide Lebanese society with essential goods and services and a strategy for a sustainable future.

Instead of “leaderless resistance” or the promotion of an alternative political system based on the European interpretation of secularism, the opposition in Lebanon should coalesce around a political vision that respects the necessity of recognizing the equality of all worldviews in public debates. This vision, one based on radical secularism and the premise of the neutrality of the democratic state, seems to be the only way to transform a Lebanon divided by sectarianism into a united people with common political goals for the future.