- Institute of Ismaili Studies,
Aga Khan Centre,
10 Handyside Street,
King's Cross,
London,
N1C 4DN,
United Kingdom
Alexander Henley
Institute of Ismaili Studies, Graduate Studies, Faculty Member
- Georgetown University, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Post-DocUniversity of Oxford, Faculty of Theology and Religion, Faculty Memberadd
- Religion and Politics, Lebanon, Arab Christian Studies, Nationalism, Identity politics, Middle East Studies, and 12 morePolitics and Religion, Critical Religion, Middle Eastern Studies, Religion, Religious Leadership, Maronites, Muftis, Sectarianism, Lebanese Civil War, Druzes, Jordan, and Islamic Studiesedit
- Programme Leader, Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities (GPISH) at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in... moreProgramme Leader, Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities (GPISH) at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, since 2020.
Associate Member of the Oxford Faculty of Theology & Religion.
Editorial Board member for "Contemporary Levant", a journal of the Centre for British Research in the Levant, published by Taylor & Francis.
Past experience:
- Marie Curie Research Fellow, Faculty of Theology & Religion, University of Oxford, 2018-2020. Tutor at Mansfield College.
- Lecturer in Islam and the Study of Religion, Faculty of Theology & Religion, University of Oxford, 2016-2018. Director of Studies and Tutor at Pembroke College.
- American Druze Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 2015-2016.
- Brookings Visiting Professor, Qatar University and Brookings Doha Center, Spring Semester 2015.
- Associate Editor, "Contemporary Arab Affairs", a Routledge journal of the Beirut-based Center for Arab Unity Studies, dedicated to publishing Arab scholarship on the Middle East in English, 2014-2015.
- Teaching Fellow, Dept of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, Harvard University, 2013-2014. Proctor and Adviser at Wigglesworth Hall.
- Doctoral Research Fellow, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, 2012-2014. Sponsored by Prof Roger Owen.
- Religion Editor, "New Middle Eastern Studies", a journal of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, 2010-2013.
- PhD in Arab World Studies, University of Manchester, 2014. Fully funded by the UK's Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World. Examined by Prof James Piscatori (Durham) and Dr John Zavos (Manchester); supervised by Dr Michelle Obeid, Dr Ronald Buckley, and Prof Morgan Clarke (Oxford).edit
This paper was originally presented as part of a symposium on Mitsutoshi Horii’s book "‘Religion’ and ‘Secular’ Categories in Sociology: Decolonizing the Modern Myth" (2021), held at the “Critical Approaches to the Study of Religion”... more
This paper was originally presented as part of a symposium on Mitsutoshi Horii’s book "‘Religion’ and ‘Secular’ Categories in Sociology: Decolonizing the Modern Myth" (2021), held at the “Critical Approaches to the Study of Religion” Conference at Queen’s University Belfast in June 2022.
Research Interests:
This article examines a secular liberal state’s demand for religious representation of minorities, exploring how one heterodox Muslim community has responded to this demand in a context of intense public scrutiny. In order to gain... more
This article examines a secular liberal state’s demand for religious representation of minorities, exploring how one heterodox Muslim community has responded to this demand in a context of intense public scrutiny. In order to gain recognition and rights as a legitimate religious community in modern Lebanon, Druze leaders created a new figurehead to look something like the head of a Christian church. Their project offers a striking case of how a secular democracy can end up generating the “religion” it expects to find; how the politics of religious representation can transform Muslim communities that lack a church-like structure; how ambiguous the notion of “religious representation” turns out to be when these Muslims try to do it from scratch; and how much harder heterodox Muslims often have to work to gain recognition within a world religions paradigm.
Research Interests:
Why has Religious Studies failed to gain ground in Middle Eastern universities? This article aims to move beyond a lens of underdevelopment to think about the significance of Muslim opposition to the discipline. When we suppose that... more
Why has Religious Studies failed to gain ground in Middle Eastern universities? This article aims to move beyond a lens of underdevelopment to think about the significance of Muslim opposition to the discipline. When we suppose that studying religion and religions is an obvious thing to do, we risk casting those who deliberately
avoid it as somehow irrationally refusing to see what is in front of them. But what if their objections reveal something troubling about the received terms through which we talk about cultures around the world? By taking seriously a certain Islamic perspective on the terms of Western scholarship, this article highlights ways in which it supports Timothy Fitzgerald’s critique in The Ideology of Religious Studies (2000). It poses a challenge to the idea of value-free study of religion, religions and the religious as conducted through any discipline. This author’s hope is that a focus on Muslim voices may bring these concerns home in particular to the fields of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, where the terms of comparative Religious Studies have been embraced as an escape from Orientalism.
avoid it as somehow irrationally refusing to see what is in front of them. But what if their objections reveal something troubling about the received terms through which we talk about cultures around the world? By taking seriously a certain Islamic perspective on the terms of Western scholarship, this article highlights ways in which it supports Timothy Fitzgerald’s critique in The Ideology of Religious Studies (2000). It poses a challenge to the idea of value-free study of religion, religions and the religious as conducted through any discipline. This author’s hope is that a focus on Muslim voices may bring these concerns home in particular to the fields of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, where the terms of comparative Religious Studies have been embraced as an escape from Orientalism.
Research Interests:
Lebanese religious leaders are often treated as authentic representatives of their sects and are given broad powers over religious affairs. However, their leadership is not organic, nor are they necessarily popular, as these individuals... more
Lebanese religious leaders are often treated as authentic representatives of their sects and are given broad powers over religious affairs. However, their leadership is not organic, nor are they necessarily popular, as these individuals are trained and selected by elite institutions. These figures do not incite sectarian hatred, and even aim to reduce it, but the way they are empowered and their monopoly on spiritual matters inhibit social integration among various religious communities and reinforce sectarian divisions.
Research Interests:
Muslim communities in Lebanon have developed radically new institutions of religious leadership since the advent of the confessional state. These leaderships were created or refined over the course of Lebanon's first five decades... more
Muslim communities in Lebanon have developed radically new institutions of religious leadership since the advent of the confessional state. These leaderships were created or refined over the course of Lebanon's first five decades (1920s–1970s), often building on pre-existing institutional norms but shaped by common patterns of integration into a state-centric system of confessional representation. Such institutions have played a key role in representing and reinforcing the sectarianisation of Islam in the country. On the other hand, their proximity to the state has made them prominent advocates of peaceful coexistence and political participation. This paper shows (1) how three Islamic religious leaderships have become institutional expressions of a distinctive Lebanese sectarianism, and (2) how they have in the process become defenders of the nation-state. Focusing on the Sunni office of mufti, this leadership is surveyed alongside its Shi‘i and Druze counterparts to highlight their convergence on a single institutional model. These developments began in response to a French colonial demand for interlocutors with religious communities, and gained urgency as these interlocutors negotiated communal autonomy in religious affairs. The project of communal self-governance – which included jurisdiction over personal status law – called for centralized religious institutions that could manage nationwide bureaucracies. Thus a Sunni mufti, Shi‘i sheikh, and Druze sheikh al-‘aql were each elevated to leadership of new religious hierarchies. While competition among these three leaderships played a part in their development, this paper uses the history of the 1975–90 civil war to show how their common enculturation into the life of the state has generated a strong centripetal tendency in their political behavior.
Research Interests:
The colonial view of Levantine society as a mosaic of religions established lasting precedents for communal self-governance and power sharing in modern states. Yet it ironically disguises the extent to which the region’s religious... more
The colonial view of Levantine society as a mosaic of religions established lasting precedents for communal self-governance and power sharing in modern states. Yet it ironically disguises the extent to which the region’s religious geography was reimagined by colonial rule. Principles of religious freedom and minority rights combined with a perception of ‘oriental religions’ to create a unique and powerful place for religious leaders to govern. The borders that would define national societies in Palestine-Israel, Lebanon, and Syria also remade the boundaries by which the religious mosaic was structured. This article will highlight institutional change in the Maronite Christian and Sunni Muslim communities, showing how each reformulated its religious leadership in response to the creation and enforcement of Lebanon’s borders with Palestine and Syria from 1920 to 1948. The ‘traditional’ religious leaderships of today are in no small part products of the same colonial ‘lines in the sand’ within which nations were formed.
Research Interests:
Chapter in The Struggle to Define a Nation: Rethinking Religious Nationalism in the Contemporary Islamic World, ed. Marco Demichelis and Paolo Maggiolini
Research Interests:
In the present edited volume, a serious of internationally recognised scholars adopt an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of ‘religious nationalism’ and the ‘nationalization’ of religion, through focusing on case studies and the... more
In the present edited volume, a serious of internationally recognised scholars adopt an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of ‘religious nationalism’ and the ‘nationalization’ of religion, through focusing on case studies and the religious affiliations and denominations of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The aim of this book is to reconsider the ongoing debate between different communities of the so-called Islamic World regarding the nature of the nation and state, and the role of religion in a nation-state’s institutional ground, both as a viable integrative or segregating factor. It is through focusing on the state dimension, as the subject of collective action or socio- cultural and political representation, that the book proposes to reconsider the relationship between religion, politics and identity in the perspective of ‘religious nationalism’ and the ‘nationalization’ of religion in the contemporary Islamic World.
Research Interests:
Intrinsically linked to the power-sharing Maronite Catholic community, and historically tied to the fate of Lebanon, the Maronite Church was deeply involved in, and affected by, the 1975–90 Civil War. This study seeks to understand the... more
Intrinsically linked to the power-sharing Maronite Catholic community, and historically tied to the fate of Lebanon, the Maronite Church was deeply involved in, and affected by, the 1975–90 Civil War. This study seeks to understand the changing role of the patriarchs during this time, recognizing that their relative withdrawal from politics – declining to assert the temporal authority of their predecessors – does not equate to the marginalization of the church as a whole. Analysing the internal politics of the church as a microcosm of the community’s struggle, the study examines in detail a threefold relationship between the patriarchate, the papacy, and the monastic orders.
Mashyakhat ‘Aql al-Durūz fī Lubnān: Bahth fī Usūlihā wa-Ma‘nāhā wa-Tatawwurihā [The Office of Sheikh al-‘Aql of the Druzes in Lebanon: An Investigation into Its Origins, Meaning and Development] Said Abou Zaki (Beirut: Dar el-Machreq,... more
Mashyakhat ‘Aql al-Durūz fī Lubnān: Bahth fī Usūlihā wa-Ma‘nāhā wa-Tatawwurihā
[The Office of Sheikh al-‘Aql of the Druzes in Lebanon: An Investigation into Its
Origins, Meaning and Development]
Said Abou Zaki
(Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 2021, 392 pp.)
[The Office of Sheikh al-‘Aql of the Druzes in Lebanon: An Investigation into Its
Origins, Meaning and Development]
Said Abou Zaki
(Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 2021, 392 pp.)
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Book contents: Introduction : Une approche anthropologique du leadership au Liban / Franck Mermier et Sabrina Mervin PREMIÈRE PARTIE : À LA CONQUÊTE DU NATIONAL 1) Charisme, pouvoir et communauté politique : la figure de Michel... more
Book contents:
Introduction : Une approche anthropologique du leadership au Liban / Franck Mermier et Sabrina Mervin
PREMIÈRE PARTIE : À LA CONQUÊTE DU NATIONAL
1) Charisme, pouvoir et communauté politique : la figure de Michel Aoun / Philippe Abirached
2) Samir Geagea : le guerrier, le martyr et le za'îm / Emma Aubin-Boltanski
3) The ascent of Rafiq Hariri and Sunni philanthropy / Hannes Baumann
4) L'ascension politique de Rafic Hariri : ampleur et limite de l'émergence d'un leadership sunnite unifié / Victor Gervais
5) Intimité, mise en scène et distance dans la relation politique au Liban / Isabelle Rivoal
6) Transformations du leadership tripolitain : le cas de Nagib Mikati / Bruno Dewailly
7) À l'ombre du leader disparu : Antoun Saadé et le Parti syrien national social / Franck Mermier
DEUXIÈME PARTIE : SOCIALISATIONS PARTISANES
8) Représentations du leadership et mémoires vives chez les militants aounistes / Bruno Lefort
9) L'action des Forces libanaises à Aïn al-Remmané : un intense travail de réhabilitation et de socialisation politique / Chantal Mazaeff
10) Le paysage scout chiite / Catherine Le Thomas
11) Fonction idéologique du vocabulaire de parenté dans la fausse nécrologie de Samir Gaga / Arkadiusz Ponka
TROISIÈME PARTIE : SPHÈRES RELIGIEUSES
12) Charisme et distinction : l'élite religieuse chiite / Sabrina Mervin
13) Walking the Tightrope: Patriarchal Politics in Contemporary Lebanon / Fiona McCallum
14) La cérémonie du taklîf dans les écoles de la mouvance Hezbollah : du rite de passage à la liturgie politique / Catherine Le Thomas
15) Les rituels de Achoura à Nabatiyé : institutionnalisation et rivalités politiques / Michel Tabet
QUATRIÈME PARTIE : AU PRISME DU LOCAL
16) Le Hezbollah face aux clans et aux grandes familles de la Bekaa-Nord : les élections municipales de 2004 dans la ville de Baalbek / Aurélie Daher
17) Zahlé : de la za'âma nationale à la za'âma dépendante / Melhem Chaoul
18) La place du leadership traditionnel dans les partis politiques modernes : le cas de la za'âma des Arslan / Chawkat Ichti
19) Réflexions autour de la za'âma maronite au Liban-Nord / Chawki Douayhi
Introduction : Une approche anthropologique du leadership au Liban / Franck Mermier et Sabrina Mervin
PREMIÈRE PARTIE : À LA CONQUÊTE DU NATIONAL
1) Charisme, pouvoir et communauté politique : la figure de Michel Aoun / Philippe Abirached
2) Samir Geagea : le guerrier, le martyr et le za'îm / Emma Aubin-Boltanski
3) The ascent of Rafiq Hariri and Sunni philanthropy / Hannes Baumann
4) L'ascension politique de Rafic Hariri : ampleur et limite de l'émergence d'un leadership sunnite unifié / Victor Gervais
5) Intimité, mise en scène et distance dans la relation politique au Liban / Isabelle Rivoal
6) Transformations du leadership tripolitain : le cas de Nagib Mikati / Bruno Dewailly
7) À l'ombre du leader disparu : Antoun Saadé et le Parti syrien national social / Franck Mermier
DEUXIÈME PARTIE : SOCIALISATIONS PARTISANES
8) Représentations du leadership et mémoires vives chez les militants aounistes / Bruno Lefort
9) L'action des Forces libanaises à Aïn al-Remmané : un intense travail de réhabilitation et de socialisation politique / Chantal Mazaeff
10) Le paysage scout chiite / Catherine Le Thomas
11) Fonction idéologique du vocabulaire de parenté dans la fausse nécrologie de Samir Gaga / Arkadiusz Ponka
TROISIÈME PARTIE : SPHÈRES RELIGIEUSES
12) Charisme et distinction : l'élite religieuse chiite / Sabrina Mervin
13) Walking the Tightrope: Patriarchal Politics in Contemporary Lebanon / Fiona McCallum
14) La cérémonie du taklîf dans les écoles de la mouvance Hezbollah : du rite de passage à la liturgie politique / Catherine Le Thomas
15) Les rituels de Achoura à Nabatiyé : institutionnalisation et rivalités politiques / Michel Tabet
QUATRIÈME PARTIE : AU PRISME DU LOCAL
16) Le Hezbollah face aux clans et aux grandes familles de la Bekaa-Nord : les élections municipales de 2004 dans la ville de Baalbek / Aurélie Daher
17) Zahlé : de la za'âma nationale à la za'âma dépendante / Melhem Chaoul
18) La place du leadership traditionnel dans les partis politiques modernes : le cas de la za'âma des Arslan / Chawkat Ichti
19) Réflexions autour de la za'âma maronite au Liban-Nord / Chawki Douayhi
Research Interests:
Christian Religious Leadership in the Middle East: The Political Role of the Patriarch
Fiona McCallum
(Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010, vi + 298 pp.)
Fiona McCallum
(Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010, vi + 298 pp.)
Research Interests:
In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shiʿism and the Making of Modern Lebanon
Max Weiss
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010, 341 pp.)
Max Weiss
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010, 341 pp.)
Research Interests:
https://www.themaydan.com/2019/08/roundtable-religion-in-muslim-traditions-workshop-may-4-5-2019-williams-college/#journal1 While there has been a rich body of scholarship in Religious Studies and Anthropology that has provided us with a... more
https://www.themaydan.com/2019/08/roundtable-religion-in-muslim-traditions-workshop-may-4-5-2019-williams-college/#journal1
While there has been a rich body of scholarship in Religious Studies and Anthropology that has provided us with a complex understanding of the emergence of the category of religion in the modern world, this issue and its implications have largely remained under-studied and under-theorized in the field of Islamic Studies. With this basic assessment of the field and a desire for deeper and more sustained interrogation of this issue, I organized and hosted a workshop at Williams College titled "'Religion' in Muslim Traditions" from May 4-5, 2019. I invited nine scholars-both nationally and internationally located, from graduate students to senior scholars-to participate in a forum that could serve as a space for informal dialogue and open-ended exploration.
Included below is an overview of the background ideas, goals, and motives of the workshop. That summary is followed by a brief writeup by each participant, providing a basic overview or abstract of their presentation at the workshop, as well as some big-picture reflections and take-aways from the workshop. Finally, this broad presentation on the workshop concludes with two brief solicited responses written by Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst and Brannon Ingram, reflecting on the core ideas presented below.
While there has been a rich body of scholarship in Religious Studies and Anthropology that has provided us with a complex understanding of the emergence of the category of religion in the modern world, this issue and its implications have largely remained under-studied and under-theorized in the field of Islamic Studies. With this basic assessment of the field and a desire for deeper and more sustained interrogation of this issue, I organized and hosted a workshop at Williams College titled "'Religion' in Muslim Traditions" from May 4-5, 2019. I invited nine scholars-both nationally and internationally located, from graduate students to senior scholars-to participate in a forum that could serve as a space for informal dialogue and open-ended exploration.
Included below is an overview of the background ideas, goals, and motives of the workshop. That summary is followed by a brief writeup by each participant, providing a basic overview or abstract of their presentation at the workshop, as well as some big-picture reflections and take-aways from the workshop. Finally, this broad presentation on the workshop concludes with two brief solicited responses written by Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst and Brannon Ingram, reflecting on the core ideas presented below.
Maronites in Lebanon and the Middle East: 'minority' or not?
Chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East, ed. Paul Rowe.
Chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East, ed. Paul Rowe.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Article in magazine issue on the Arab Spring, by Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Affairs, 2016.
Research Interests:
Chapter in the Critical Religion Reader, ed. Melanie Barbato, Cameron Montgomery, Rajalakshmi Nadadur Kannan
Research Interests:
Chapter in the Critical Religion Reader, ed. Melanie Barbato, Cameron Montgomery, Rajalakshmi Nadadur Kannan
Research Interests:
This project looks at modern formations of sectarianism through the institutionalization of religious leadership in the Lebanese state. The central argument is that the Lebanese state’s “recognition” of eighteen Islamic and Christian... more
This project looks at modern formations of sectarianism through the institutionalization of religious leadership in the Lebanese state. The central argument is that the Lebanese state’s “recognition” of eighteen Islamic and Christian sects has led to the transformation of sectarian identity politics as represented by institutions of leadership. These developments are traced to historical processes of communal self-definition in Lebanon’s multi-confessional public space, and to a new discourse of religion arising from colonial encounters. Changing understandings of religion, religions and religious leadership have reconfigured the powers of indigenous institutions, creating a cross-confessional clerical elite based on a common model with roots in both Islamic and Christian traditions. The dissertation looks in detail at the significance of this national clerical elite to our understanding of the Lebanese civil war (1975-90). It analyzes the activities and discourse of Sunni mufti and Maronite patriarch on opposite sides of the war’s front-line, showing them as firmly grounded in a common language of the nation-state, engaged in a nationwide struggle between civil and uncivil ideologies.
Research Interests:
Lecture to the Eastern Christianity & Islam Lecture Series of Oxford's Oriental Institute, on 2 May 2017
Research Interests:
Paper presented at the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) annual conference at the University of Edinburgh, July 2017. It was part of a panel entitled: "The Struggle to Define a Nation: Rethinking Religious Nationalism... more
Paper presented at the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) annual conference at the University of Edinburgh, July 2017. It was part of a panel entitled: "The Struggle to Define a Nation: Rethinking Religious Nationalism in the Contemporary Islamic World". It has been published as a chapter in the volume of the same name.
The term "religious nationalism" in Lebanon tends to be used as a synonym for sectarianism, since religion is generally regarded as a divisive factor in the country of eighteen official confessions. This paper’s study of Lebanese religious leaders, however, highlights the emergence of a common religious nationalism in official public discourse. Muslim and Christian religious leaders have developed a language of pious citizenship and faith in the nation-state, using a shared vocabulary of thoroughly modern concepts – combined with appropriate Islamic or Christian content – to invoke a sense of civic and religious responsibility as one and the same. This discourse of religious nationalism will be analysed here as the product of two broad processes in Lebanese history. Over the long term, it arises as an indirect result of state confessionalism, whereby certain offices of religious leadership have been incorporated into an official public culture, making them not only representatives of the sect to the state but also representatives of the state to the sect. In the shorter term, and especially since the 1975-90 civil war, this religious nationalism has come into focus as a direct response to sectarian discourses propagated by various parties and militias. This analysis is based primarily on a comparison of public statements – especially holiday sermons published and broadcast in national media – issued by the Mufti of the Republic and the Maronite Patriarch through the 1975-90 period. These documents are set against the backdrop of wartime ideological production and the twentieth century histories of the two religious institutions.
The term "religious nationalism" in Lebanon tends to be used as a synonym for sectarianism, since religion is generally regarded as a divisive factor in the country of eighteen official confessions. This paper’s study of Lebanese religious leaders, however, highlights the emergence of a common religious nationalism in official public discourse. Muslim and Christian religious leaders have developed a language of pious citizenship and faith in the nation-state, using a shared vocabulary of thoroughly modern concepts – combined with appropriate Islamic or Christian content – to invoke a sense of civic and religious responsibility as one and the same. This discourse of religious nationalism will be analysed here as the product of two broad processes in Lebanese history. Over the long term, it arises as an indirect result of state confessionalism, whereby certain offices of religious leadership have been incorporated into an official public culture, making them not only representatives of the sect to the state but also representatives of the state to the sect. In the shorter term, and especially since the 1975-90 civil war, this religious nationalism has come into focus as a direct response to sectarian discourses propagated by various parties and militias. This analysis is based primarily on a comparison of public statements – especially holiday sermons published and broadcast in national media – issued by the Mufti of the Republic and the Maronite Patriarch through the 1975-90 period. These documents are set against the backdrop of wartime ideological production and the twentieth century histories of the two religious institutions.
Research Interests:
Inaugural lecture for the American Druze Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Henley began by highlighting how religious communities served as the building-blocks of modern... more
Inaugural lecture for the American Druze Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.
Henley began by highlighting how religious communities served as the building-blocks of modern Lebanon. He then focused his discussion on one of these building-blocks—the Druze community—and the history of the Sheikh al-Aql, its top religious office. Henley explained how the Sheikh al-Aql—similar to the muftis or patriarchs of Lebanon's other communities—is the figurehead of the sect, a symbol of its distinctive identity, and the defender of its sovereignty, yet also the product of a very Lebanese idea of what a religious leader should look like. Lebanon's communal building blocks, Henley argued, were reshaped by the state-building process, transforming rather than simply preserving their institutions. Henley closed by impressing upon the audience that neither religious leaders nor the sects they represent are "fixed in time" or isolated from the modern world, but rather are defined by constant negotiation with their surroundings.
Follow link for full video.
Henley began by highlighting how religious communities served as the building-blocks of modern Lebanon. He then focused his discussion on one of these building-blocks—the Druze community—and the history of the Sheikh al-Aql, its top religious office. Henley explained how the Sheikh al-Aql—similar to the muftis or patriarchs of Lebanon's other communities—is the figurehead of the sect, a symbol of its distinctive identity, and the defender of its sovereignty, yet also the product of a very Lebanese idea of what a religious leader should look like. Lebanon's communal building blocks, Henley argued, were reshaped by the state-building process, transforming rather than simply preserving their institutions. Henley closed by impressing upon the audience that neither religious leaders nor the sects they represent are "fixed in time" or isolated from the modern world, but rather are defined by constant negotiation with their surroundings.
Follow link for full video.
Research Interests:
Paper presented at Brown University on 19 September 2015 as part of a conference on "Sectarianism in Islam and Muslim Communities" organized by the North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS). ABSTRACT: Muslim... more
Paper presented at Brown University on 19 September 2015 as part of a conference on "Sectarianism in Islam and Muslim Communities" organized by the North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS).
ABSTRACT: Muslim communities in Lebanon have developed radically new institutions of religious leadership since the advent of the confessional state. These leaderships were created or refined over the course of Lebanon’s first five decades (1920s–1970s), often building on pre-existing institutional norms but shaped by common patterns of integration into a state-centric system of confessional representation. Such institutions have played a key role in representing and reinforcing the sectarianization of Islam in the country. On the other hand, their proximity to the state has made them prominent advocates of peaceful coexistence and political participation. This paper shows (1) how three Islamic religious leaderships have become institutional expressions of a distinctive Lebanese sectarianism, and (2) how they have in the process become defenders of the nation-state. Three leaderships are surveyed comparatively to highlight their convergence on a single institutional model. These developments began in response to a French colonial demand for interlocutors with religious communities, and gained urgency as these interlocutors negotiated communal autonomy in religious affairs. The project of communal self-governance – which included jurisdiction over personal status law – called for centralized religious institutions that could manage nationwide bureaucracies. Thus a Sunni mufti, Shi‘i sheikh, and Druze sheikh al-‘aql were each elevated to leadership of new religious hierarchies. While competition among these three leaderships played a part in their development, this paper uses the history of the 1975-90 civil war to show how their common enculturation into the life of the state has generated a strong centripetal tendency in their political behavior.
ABSTRACT: Muslim communities in Lebanon have developed radically new institutions of religious leadership since the advent of the confessional state. These leaderships were created or refined over the course of Lebanon’s first five decades (1920s–1970s), often building on pre-existing institutional norms but shaped by common patterns of integration into a state-centric system of confessional representation. Such institutions have played a key role in representing and reinforcing the sectarianization of Islam in the country. On the other hand, their proximity to the state has made them prominent advocates of peaceful coexistence and political participation. This paper shows (1) how three Islamic religious leaderships have become institutional expressions of a distinctive Lebanese sectarianism, and (2) how they have in the process become defenders of the nation-state. Three leaderships are surveyed comparatively to highlight their convergence on a single institutional model. These developments began in response to a French colonial demand for interlocutors with religious communities, and gained urgency as these interlocutors negotiated communal autonomy in religious affairs. The project of communal self-governance – which included jurisdiction over personal status law – called for centralized religious institutions that could manage nationwide bureaucracies. Thus a Sunni mufti, Shi‘i sheikh, and Druze sheikh al-‘aql were each elevated to leadership of new religious hierarchies. While competition among these three leaderships played a part in their development, this paper uses the history of the 1975-90 civil war to show how their common enculturation into the life of the state has generated a strong centripetal tendency in their political behavior.
Research Interests:
Religious leaders consistently come to the fore in Lebanon when political change or instability looms. In a country synonymous with sectarian politics, how do religious actors in different sects relate to the state? This paper will... more
Religious leaders consistently come to the fore in Lebanon when political change or instability looms. In a country synonymous with sectarian politics, how do religious actors in different sects relate to the state? This paper will identify a national clerical elite made up of official “heads of sects” with a common vision of the nation-state. This case will be made with particular reference to the 1975-1990 civil war, fought substantially between Christians and Muslims over reform of the political system.
The confessional state recognises a senior cleric in each community as its official head and representative with special privileges. These include the (Sunni) Mufti of the Republic, the President of the Higher Shi‘i Council, the Druze Sheikh al-‘Aql, and the Maronite Patriarch, as well as a number of others from smaller sects. Many of these offices pre-existed the modern state in some form, and each is therefore constituted differently, but all have legislative sovereignty and considerable independence of action.
Although not constrained by the state, each of these official religious leaderships has bought into a vision of nationhood and statehood based on the “Lebanese formula” of inter-religious coexistence and power-sharing. This common vision finds expression when the state, or the political and social order it represents, comes under threat. The civil war, as a prolonged period of threat to this order, provides particularly clear evidence of this, as the official religious leaders pursued consistently statist politics throughout. This they did despite the prevailing sectarian logics in their respective camps, and in the face of considerable danger from within their own communities.
Rather than seeing religious actors in a divided society like Lebanon simply as products of their religious differences, this paper exposes cross-cutting structural cleavages in the religious sector. The national clerical elite are differentiated from other clerics, whether competing unofficial religious leaders or lower-level employees in the official religious hierarchies. During the war, this manifested in stark opposition within each community between the statist line of the official religious leaders and other clerics who gave material and moral support to the militias. Using the scholarship on militia hegemony, this paper advocates an alternative reading of the war as centred not on military front-lines but on a nationwide struggle between civil and uncivil politics. Whereas religious actors are often marginal to military confrontation, they were central to this ideological confrontation.
The confessional state recognises a senior cleric in each community as its official head and representative with special privileges. These include the (Sunni) Mufti of the Republic, the President of the Higher Shi‘i Council, the Druze Sheikh al-‘Aql, and the Maronite Patriarch, as well as a number of others from smaller sects. Many of these offices pre-existed the modern state in some form, and each is therefore constituted differently, but all have legislative sovereignty and considerable independence of action.
Although not constrained by the state, each of these official religious leaderships has bought into a vision of nationhood and statehood based on the “Lebanese formula” of inter-religious coexistence and power-sharing. This common vision finds expression when the state, or the political and social order it represents, comes under threat. The civil war, as a prolonged period of threat to this order, provides particularly clear evidence of this, as the official religious leaders pursued consistently statist politics throughout. This they did despite the prevailing sectarian logics in their respective camps, and in the face of considerable danger from within their own communities.
Rather than seeing religious actors in a divided society like Lebanon simply as products of their religious differences, this paper exposes cross-cutting structural cleavages in the religious sector. The national clerical elite are differentiated from other clerics, whether competing unofficial religious leaders or lower-level employees in the official religious hierarchies. During the war, this manifested in stark opposition within each community between the statist line of the official religious leaders and other clerics who gave material and moral support to the militias. Using the scholarship on militia hegemony, this paper advocates an alternative reading of the war as centred not on military front-lines but on a nationwide struggle between civil and uncivil politics. Whereas religious actors are often marginal to military confrontation, they were central to this ideological confrontation.
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This paper gives an account of the Ottoman Mufti of Beirut's transition to ‘Grand Mufti of Lebanon’ that shows how the introduction of a colonial vocabulary to public administration led not only to the re-labelling of existing... more
This paper gives an account of the Ottoman Mufti of Beirut's transition to ‘Grand Mufti of Lebanon’ that shows how the introduction of a colonial vocabulary to public administration led not only to the re-labelling of existing institutions, but at times to their transformation. In this case, imported Western concepts of ‘the religious’, and of ‘religions’ in the plural, produced a reorganisation of Lebanese public space and eventually the reconstitution of social reality at large. These two concepts can be linked to two distinct phases in the elevation of the muftiship: first to the head of a newly conceived religious corps, and then to the leadership of ‘a religion’ in Lebanon. This paper is part of a dissertation on a cross-confessional clerical elite that I argue to be defined by a common investment in the Lebanese state. The dissertation demonstrates how this cohort of official Muslim and Christian religious leaders was created by colonial and post-colonial sectarianisation (1920 onwards) and consolidated by sectarian civil war (1975-1990).
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This paper traces the transformation of official Islamic religious leadership in Lebanon through the 20th century, challenging the myth that such “traditional leaders” are mothballed relics of a distant Ottoman past. In the process, it... more
This paper traces the transformation of official Islamic religious leadership in Lebanon through the 20th century, challenging the myth that such “traditional leaders” are mothballed relics of a distant Ottoman past. In the process, it will show how religion can be a misleading category of analysis in social science. Timothy Fitzgerald, Talal Asad and others (see Religion and the Secular, 2007) have made the case that the terms “religion” and “religious” are theological in content, and do not usefully describe social phenomena. By comparing the development of Sunni and Shi’ite institutions with Christian equivalents, I argue that political categories such as the modern state are more relevant than historical patterns associated with (a) religion in general or (b) Oriental religions in particular.
(a) Political commentators on Lebanon in the 1950s and 60s talked about secularisation, and since the 1980s about its failure and the “religious resurgence”, to account for the fall, rise, or fluctuations of religious authority. When different Lebanese religious institutions are compared, however, such theories do not explain their historical changes. I argue that this is because their defining common factor is not religion, but the Lebanese political system.
(b) By looking at Lebanese Sunni, Shi’ite and Maronite Christian authorities together, this paper also seeks to counter narratives of their religious particularism by demonstrating a common historical process associated with the confessional state. The notion that religions have distinctive essences contributes to a misleading, even dangerous, polarisation of sect and nation as opposing identities: the first primordial, the second modern. Rather than idiosyncratic vestiges of a foregone era, I argue these religious institutions to be the product of modernisation in Lebanon.
(a) Political commentators on Lebanon in the 1950s and 60s talked about secularisation, and since the 1980s about its failure and the “religious resurgence”, to account for the fall, rise, or fluctuations of religious authority. When different Lebanese religious institutions are compared, however, such theories do not explain their historical changes. I argue that this is because their defining common factor is not religion, but the Lebanese political system.
(b) By looking at Lebanese Sunni, Shi’ite and Maronite Christian authorities together, this paper also seeks to counter narratives of their religious particularism by demonstrating a common historical process associated with the confessional state. The notion that religions have distinctive essences contributes to a misleading, even dangerous, polarisation of sect and nation as opposing identities: the first primordial, the second modern. Rather than idiosyncratic vestiges of a foregone era, I argue these religious institutions to be the product of modernisation in Lebanon.
This paper explores the roots of Maronite isolationism in the community’s historic geopolitical and religious identity, recognising the central role of the Church and arguing its internal politics to reflect in microcosm the dilemmas... more
This paper explores the roots of Maronite isolationism in the community’s historic geopolitical and religious identity, recognising the central role of the Church and arguing its internal politics to reflect in microcosm the dilemmas facing the community at large. The character and identity of Maronite Christianity are bound up with the land of Lebanon as an historic refuge, and as resting-place of Maronite saints and martyrs. Standing at the intersection of East and West, the Maronites also set great store by their traditional allegiances. Although firmly grounded in the East, they have frequently sought protection through association with the West – notably by alliance with France and communion with Rome. The creation and independence of Greater Lebanon as a modern state have successively recast Maronite relationships with neighbours and the West, posing the new question of Lebanese identity. Conflicting identities in Lebanon led to confrontation in the 1975-90 Civil War. On the face of it, the war was characterised by a radical Muslim-Christian polarisation, but internally each sect saw progressive fragmentation as multiple unresolved identities sought expression. Rather than descend into the tangled web of Christian party politics, which were complicated by local, family, economic and strategic interests, this paper proposes that the politics of the Church demonstrate most clearly the key dilemmas and alternative solutions, as well as their historical roots. ‘The religious organisation of the community has provided it down the centuries not only with a constant frame of reference, but also with a receptacle for its historical experience’ [Salibi, 1988: p.229]. Insecurity placed a premium on traditional legitimacy, and religious institutions were compelled to step forward. Embodying Maronite identity, they spoke and acted from their received experience. Interestingly however, not all Church institutions acted in unison; rather, they represented opposing strands or interpretations of identity, each equally authentic in its recourse to communal memory. The monastic orders advocated, in the words of their former superior, ‘a principle of vocational self-defence, because for them, to defend their existence is to defend, at the same time, their values and doctrine’ [Naaman, 2005: p.71]. Thus a driving sense of insecurity found expression in a militant refusal to integrate. The patriarchs, on the other hand, preached reconciliation according to the principles of the 1943 National Pact. Following their predecessors’ formative national roles, their view reflected an historic investment in Lebanon as primary defence against regional insecurity.