❊ You Can’t “Overthrow” Sectarianism For The Same Reason You Can’t “Overthrow” Hate

Racha of Lebanese voices:

many think they’ve had enough, it’s time to UNITE Lebanese people, not to overthrow the government, but to overthrow the sectarian laws that rule this country. Still, not enough. We need to overthrow the sectarianism that resides in the Lebanese hearts as well.

I’ve been writing a lot lately about Lebanese sectarianism, and it seems many of you think that I’m a fan of a system that institutionally divides power among sects. For the record, I am not. I’m a big believer in secular rule because of the many benefits it offers; all our disagreements are not on whether the sectarianist system is good or bad, but on what’s the best way to remove it.

The #UniteLB people will march on February 27th to “overthrow” and “take down” the sectarian system. I am hesitating on whether to characterize that aim as an act of over-ambition or naivety. But before you rush and call me a kill-joy, let me hasten to say that I do believe that something good can come out of this.

If enough people actually make the physical effort to gather on Sunday, political parties will notice that this topic is indeed a popular issue and they’ll start tailoring their message accordingly. With luck, they’ll even start creating new laws and abolishing old ones to please this constituency, which in their minds, would have come out of nowhere.

But this is too boring, too mundane, too politics-as-usual, some might say. This is completely different, they might add, we want a revolution! My response to that would be: You can revolt to remove a person from power, but you cannot revolt to take sectarianism out of people’s hearts and mind. For that you’ll need the less glamorous long term treatments of reconciliation, dialog, and slow progress.

The truth is, we live in a political system that is more or less representative of the people’s demands. If the people really wanted secularism that much, there will be enough of us to vote in secular representatives into parliament. In the past, people complained of a sectarian monopoly on the media. Today, we have a new opportunity: A Social-media-driven national political party.