The sad Truth about Lebanon and it's Religious divide

MUST READ: (from Global Secular Humanist Movement) The sad Truth about Lebanon and it's Religious divide, yet another proof and fact, to keep RELIGION out of Governments by any means necessary!!

With a total surface of 10,452 km2 and 4 millions people, there are 17 state-recognized religious sects. This is their percentages according to the CIA fact-book: Muslim 59.7% (Shia, Sunni, Druze, Isma'ilite, Alawite or Nusayri), Christian 39% (Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Syrian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Chaldean, Assyrian, Coptic, Protestant), other 1.3%. Lebanon is a parliamentary democratic republic in which the highest offices are proportionately reserved for representatives from certain religious communities.

Yes, we vote our representatives according to their religion -and not their abilities- who then vote the higher posts also according to the candidate's religion, for example the President must be a Maronite Christian, the Speaker of the Parliament a Shia Muslim the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim. And the political parties are not even worthy of being called political parties, they are over 70 and most of them are restricted to a certain religion. So you can imagine how terrible our economy is...

I don't even know where to start with how religion rules everything in Lebanon, even the basic things such as getting into a university or applying for a job. We don't even have civil marriage in Lebanon. During the civil war we killed people according to what their ID said that their religion is (yes we have our religion written on our ID). There are Christian schools as well as Muslim ones who teach children that the opposite of a Christian is a Muslim. Lebanon is mostly seen on the news for being into so much wars, specially back in 2006 against Israel. Now, because Jews are considered bad people in the Koran (or at least that's the alibi they use) Hizbollah has taken it as his responsibility to fight the state of Israel. Now I mentioned the religious alibi and not the humanist way of viewing this war because if it was so, any Lebanese no matter what religion he belongs to, should be allowed to participate in the fight against Israel or let's just say go to the borders and fire a gun, but he's not.

The resistance became strictly Shiite which wasn't the case before.The problem is that young people are not learning from their parent's mistakes. Even when asked what are you? a typical Lebanese guy/girl will answer you by their religion and never by "Lebanese". It's scary what this country is becoming, I would turn on the TV sometimes and see college students throwing rocks at each other because their political party lost at the campus elections. And Atheists as myself are seen as, or at least in my case, an embarrassment to their family.

I'm not sure if this is what you asked me to write, so just tell me on what subject would you like me to present more facts or arguments and I'll be more then glad to do so. And excuse my English, I'm still working on it.


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Written by Sayde Bahsa from Lebanon, about her country when asked about how is it there ? Thank you Sayde!