On The Ouwet Front , a well-read Lebanese blog unofficially affiliated with the Lebanese Forces, one anonymous user recently posted the following comment:   “Islamizing Lebanon began long ago, and while the Shia publicly support having an Islamic Republic, Sunnis have chosen the silent and discreet way of Islamizing society and [state] institutions without anyone noticing.” 

What he had to say, however, is worth citing not for its profundity, but rather because it so succinctly expresses one of the most abject fears of the Lebanese Christian community – a fear that easily bridges the chasm between feuding Christian factions.  This week, talk of the “Islamiziation” or “Sunnization” of Lebanon promises to underlie the stormy debate among Christians on the now-vacant office of the president. 

Arguably, the greatest fear of the Christians today is losing more of what power they have left in the Lebanese system.  These fears are compounded by the overwhelmingly Sunni make-up of the rest of the Arab world, and what is perceived as an increasing trend towards conservatism in many of these states. In Lebanon, the Taif Accord of 1989, which brought the 15-year Lebanese civil war to a close, dramatically reordered the offices of the executive.  Many of the prerogatives of the president, historically a Maronite Christian, were passed to the Council of Ministers, headed by a Sunni prime minister.

Though at the time of signing, most Christians opposed the Taif Accord, proponents of the agreement argued that it adequately assured the Christians an influential role in the goings-on of the government by leaving them the highest office, that of the presidency, and by promising a fifty-fifty Muslim-Christian split in both the Council of Ministers and the 128-member parliament. 

However, because the Christians were no longer, demographically speaking, the majority they were at the time of independence, the Taif Accord also undermined this nominal overrepresentation of the Christians.  That Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has managed to ensure the daily operations of government in recent days, even without a president in office, is a powerful example of just how much power passed from the presidency to the Council of Ministers in 1990.  Furthermore, the redrawing of electoral districts during the post-Taif era – which many Christians condemned as gerrymandering – arranged for over two-thirds of Christian deputies to be elected by Muslim majorities.  

The “plot” thickens

Christian political pundits who have done the math, like George Freiha, writer and onetime chief-of-staff to President-elect Bachir Gemayel, say that 47 of the 64 Christian deputies elected in the 2005 parliamentary elections were elected by Muslim majorities, both Sunni and Shia.  It is for this reason, he argues, that there are so many Christian deputies who belong to Muslim parliamentary blocs.  There are, for example, 13 Christian deputies in Saad Hariri’s 36-member Future Movement bloc, three Christian deputies in Nabih Berri’s 15-member Development and Liberation Bloc, and even one Maronite aligned with Hezbollah.   

Demographic and political realties like this have led many, perhaps unfairly, to level charges of “Sunnization” against leaders like Siniora and Parliamentary Majority Leader Saad Hariri.  In early July, for example, the Council of Maronite Bishops issued a strongly worded statement expressing its concern over the buying up of Christian land by mostly Sunni foreign investors, the proposal to remove Good Friday from the list of national holidays and a declining percentage of Christians in the Internal Security Forces.  Bishop Bechara al-Rahi, one member of the council, went even further in an interview with the Lebanese daily As-Safir and explicitly accused Siniora of seeking to “Islamize” Lebanon.

Summer 2007 rumor-mongering also linked Hariri, with next to no evidence, to the Fatah al-Islam militants battling the Lebanese army in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared from May to September.  Hariri was funding Fatah al-Islam, the conspiracy-theorists said, to build up a Sunni militia to compete with Hezbollah’s Shia one.

Religious and political leaders like Rahi and Deputy Ghassan Mokheiber have also taken issue with a draft law that calls on Lebanon to join the Convention on the Rights of the Muslim Child.  The law, Rahi said, disregards the Christian presence in the country and makes Lebanon an "Islamic state and an Islamic society."

Mokheiber, however, one of the most outspoken critics of the law, spoke to NOW Lebanon to clarify.  “There is no such thing as a policy on or against ‘Sunnization,’” he said.  “What we are criticizing is introducing Islam or any other religion as a source of legislation in the Lebanese legal system… It would be unconstitutional.”

General Michel Aoun, the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, of which Mokheiber is a member, has once again raised the specter of “Islamiziation” or “Sunnization” of late, albeit in slightly less explicit terms than Rahi.  The General, former President Emile Lahoud and other Christian opposition leaders have used the presidential crisis and ensuing void to strategically resurrect rumors of a Sunni plot to naturalize the over 300,000 Palestinian refugees residing in Lebanon today, the vast majority of whom are Sunni. 

The March 14 coalition “wants the [presidential] void to make Lebanon ready ‘to be served,’ to do whatever they want with the country,” Aoun said in a New TV interview on Sunday, “mainly by waiving the right of return of the Palestinians, which will have serious repercussions on Lebanon.” 

Lahoud, on the commemoration of Independence Day last week, likewise warned that there were “plots” threatening national unity, “the most serious of which is the plot to settle the Palestinian people in Lebanon.”

However, speaking to NOW Lebanon, Mohammad Chattah, personal advisor to the prime minister, defended Siniora and his Council of Ministers, calling the “outrageous” idea of settling the Palestinians in Lebanon “preposterous.”  “It is absolutely untrue,” he said. “The constitution says that it is illegal.”

Chattah admitted that he was not surprised that Aoun and Lahoud had made these statements in light of recent events.  “The settlement of the Palestinians in Lebanon is a very sensitive issue,” he explained. So, invoking it at a time like this is an effective “scare tactic.”

How to spin it

Given the current political climate and the desperation of the Christians – and indeed, the Lebanese at large – to elect a president no matter what, inflammatory opposition intimations that might best be allotted to the Sunnis and their “plots” are certainly intelligent and strategic.  They are, however, also sly, misleading and thoroughly hypocritical. 

Aoun appears to have seized this tactic in a bid to exploit Christian fears and win back some of the supporters he lost after signing his infamous Memorandum of Understanding with Hezbollah. Oddly enough, Aoun has refrained from drawing any analogies between the alliance of March 14 Christians with Hariri and his own alliance with Hezbollah, a group whose founding charter still calls for the establishment of an Islamic republic in Lebanon. 

Freiha offered a more frank and honest assessment on behalf of the Christians.  He agreed with Aoun that Hariri and Siniora probably received news of the presidential void with pleasure.  “Siniora has become the Emperor of Lebanon,” he said.  That, however, was as far as Freiha went with Aoun. “The main fault falls on the Maronite community and the Maronite leaders who are running the show,” he argued.  “Nobody can convince me that Hariri or Siniora actually pushed the Maronite leaders not to meet and select a president with the Patriarch.” 

And meanwhile, Siniora has been keen to stress that he will be keeping a low-profile until a new president is elected, in hopes of assuaging some Christian fears that he will abuse his power. Speaking to Saudi daily Okaz on Saturday, he affirmed that, “No one would replace the president… in any way, and thus, we should extend our utmost efforts to elect a president at the soonest chance possible.” He also reminded the public that the passage of presidential powers to the government is “only an interim procedure pending the election of a new president," and fully in line with the constitution.

In the final analysis, accusations of “Islamism” or “Sunnization” are too dangerous to be used lightly.  Conspiracy theories about Hariri funding Sunni extremists like Fatah al-Islam, or accusations that Siniora is trying to force legislation through parliament in order to bring Lebanon into some sort of Sunni alliance with the Gulf, do little more than drive Lebanon into what The Economist has quite aptly termed “paranoid politics.”  Mokheiber, despite his alliance with Aoun, actually seems to have the best solution to these hyperbolic accusations at the moment.  “It is simple,” he said. “What is to be done is to elect a president, and that we need to do as soon as possible.  There is no other answer.”