Religious Pluralism, Interfaith Dialogue and Postwar Lebanon

Abstract

In Lebanon, civil society organisations engaging youth in interreligious activity face a twofold challenge: how to build a rich, sustainable, socially engaged religious pluralism based on mutual empathy and trust among young people, and how to do so against a backdrop of often-ossified post-war identities, geographies and patterns of living. This chapter contributes to the academic literature on interreligious engagement in Lebanon by presenting a snapshot of the most recent youth work of two of the most active organisations in this area: Adyan and Dialogue for Life (DLR). We argue that these organizations help to build a third way between calls for the re-confessionalisation and de-confessionalisation of Lebanese politics. A challenge remains of how to translate values of emotionally engaged religious pluralism, cultivated in ‘spaces apart’ within civil society, into both everyday life in Lebanon and into the state’s institutions.