Shia-Catholic Coexistence and Cross-Religious Engagement Among Youth in Southern Lebanon

Session: Virtual) Oral Panel—Health and Social Science

This ethnographic research project on Shia-Catholic coexistence in Southern Lebanon centers on young adults’ voices and actions. Traveling between a militia-filled Muslim village and a Christian village to conduct over thirty-three qualitative interviews over three months, I examine the interreligious relationship in which young adults engage. I advance an understanding that ordinary youth of different social identities have the ability to enact and bolster long-term peacekeeping. In the case of Ghazieh and Maghdouché, the vast majority of young adults re-conceptualize identity and religion to detach from sectarian master narratives, and they instead articulate a narrative underscoring shared fraternal connection with religious neighbors. In the process, many young adults treat temporalities and spaces as inclusive, surpassing the sectarian to become neutral or religiously sublime. I determine a general “common life” or “single life” (‘aysh mushtarak or ‘aysh wahid) marked by friendships, shared spaces, and mutual reliance. Lebanon’s history of sectarian conflict does not impel the youth I interview to reproduce sectarian narratives. This postwar generation—which rejects divisive war-era master narratives that enemize the religious other—craves an alternative Lebanon, one that disintegrates the sectarian sociopolitical structures. Yet considering the crises plaguing Lebanon and the desperation of young adults to flee, I dare to theorize the country’s demise.