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As for the letter, it does not acknowledge the existence of a people, but of religious sects headed by clerics and party leaders of the sect in question, and it is up to them to decide the fate of the members of their sect. Since Lebanon’s independence in 1943, the “charter” has been imposed by two leaders representing two sects, one of whom is the president of the Maronite Republic and the second is a Sunni prime minister. And since this “pact” was not presented to the Lebanese people through a referendum to approve or reject it, this means that the “charter” on which the Lebanese state is governed, is an illegitimate body from the beginning, and we cannot impose a democracy on it, even ‘Consensual Democracy’, which many praise. The great jurist Edmond Rabat, in his book on the history of the Lebanese sects, emphasized the illegality of the 1943 pact, and considered that the claim that Lebanon was established within the reality of a “pact” is incorrect, because at the same time people were not asked or approved of this letter.
On the other hand, we cannot call peoples “mullahs and sects”, as some journalists do, because the word “people” is intimately related to the concept of the nation-state and its geographical borders, and not to religious heritage. Therefore, sociologists select the word community to denote these primitive groups. Sects are groups or groups that have existed since before the national state and have nothing to do with the concept of “people” or peoples.
The main affiliation of sects and sects is not homeland but religion, and what separates them from other identities is not geographic space and national identity, but their religious identity, which means that they are attached to their sect and religion wherever they are in the world, and they are not in solidarity with their brothers in national identity.
In every nation in the world, we find citizens who belong to different religions. However, collective identity is citizenship isolated from religion and beliefs that is left to the freedom of the individual, but when we define national identity with the sectarian “pact”, we turn to the concepts of religious status and racial religious identity. Not to the concept of a people.
The national state is based on the freedom of belief and the freedom of decision of the citizen, while we find that the freedom of the individual does not exist in the sectarian “pact”.
On the other hand, the national state is based on the freedom of belief and freedom of decision of the citizen, while we find that the freedom of the individual does not exist in the sectarian “pact”, since it is chained from its birth by the decisions of his sect, and his forced presence within his sect, with no possibility of changing his status, and is subject to the decisions of the leaders of his sect. Control their “flock”, especially with the end of the civil war (1975-1990), and the assumption of power by the warlords, and share the spoils of the state with them without restriction or deterrence, all in the name of the “Letter”. Adherence to the Charter aims to control sects and sects over state institutions and decision-making centers at the expense of the citizen and the nation. For this, democracy is rejected and the citizen is labeled as a mere “number” that has no meaning. They did not forget that the illegal “pact” is also numerical! If democracy is denoted by “numerical”, then the pact, whose hierarchy and importance is also based on number, is not saved.
When the French authorities decided, at the end of the First World War, to create a new state called Greater Lebanon after annexing the Syrian governorates, including the capital Beirut, they wanted Lebanon to be sectarian with Christian “numerical” hegemony, and for that They sought to annex the Syrian “Valley of the Christians” to the state of Greater Lebanon, but the Maronite clergy opposed this issue, stating that the Greek Orthodox community would become more “numerically” than the Maronites, thus meriting the presidency with the powers before “Taif”. This was replaced by the annexation of the Bekaa and the south, which was overwhelmingly Shiite and marginalized at the time, due to the dominance of feudalism. The covenant hierarchy is based on the number within each sect, as it was in 1943, so is this the numerical reality of the covenant today? Isn’t the refusal to carry out a census since 1936, that is, before independence, proof not only of the illegitimacy of the Charter, but also of the collapse of the existence of its pact from its foundations?
The same applies to state administrations, including the army. Article 95 of the original constitution was amended in accordance with constitutional law on November 9, 1943, and which is still in effect today, despite the fact that the “Taif” constitution made an amendment to it, saying: “temporarily and as a petition For justice and reconciliation, sects are fairly represented in public office and the ministry is formed ”.
Justice in this constitutional article only means sharing the functions of power between the sects according to their “number”, and not for any other reason. The collapse of the “letter” was not the product of a popular revolution that led to the downfall of its legitimacy, but rather because numericalism-based “justice” within the sects has been shaken and severely flawed by the civil war, and it cannot be covered or overlooked. As for the citizen who supposedly demands a national state, he is not heard, and his youth and youth pack their bags, generation after generation, to escape the bitter reality.
The difference between “letter” and democracy is not based on the “number” of the latter, but on the identity that is required to create. In the “Charter” and the “National Accord”, religious / sectarian identity is the criterion, while the will of the people as equal citizens before the law, regardless of their religion and beliefs, is the basis of the democratic system.
* University professor
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