Abstract
This paper is premised on the understanding that the relationship between media and religion is not new. Media, defined broadly as systems as communication, have always been involved in the mediation of religion through the articulation and circulation of a wide range of religious and spiritual symbols, meanings values and ideas, through, among other means, sermons and the spoken word. Using a historically contextualised perspective and preliminary findings of ongoing research with young Shias in Lebanon, this paper addresses the relationship between the Hizbullah-backed satellite television station Al Manar and the everyday politics of Lebanon’s Shias, underscoring that the processes of mediation do not take place in isolation of historical, political and cultural contexts. In detailing the confessional nature of Lebanon and its media, this chapter shows that Al Manar has become one of the de facto voices of the Shias in Lebanon, linking their ethos of resistance to that of the wider Shia community, thus playing a key role in the styles within which this community is imagined.
Highlights
Modern Lebanon is a bundle of paradoxes (Kraidy 2005)
Despite being one of the smallest nation-states in the Arab World, the legacy of colonial rule, its delicate demographic balance, fragile political system, incursions by Israel, Syrian claims over it and its involvement by proxy in the PalestinianIsraeli question have all combined to contribute to a deep identity crisis over what it means to be Lebanese, a crisis that has been exacerbated by myriad ‘signature identities’ (Harik 2003) flagged under different banners – secular, religious, progressive and reactionary, which ‘locate the primary position of a person on the social map’ (Ibid, 9)
Before discussing which forms of identities are produced when discussing Al Manar and Lebanon’s Shias, we provide a brief review of the literature on media and identity
Summary
Modern Lebanon is a bundle of paradoxes (Kraidy 2005). Relations between its diverse confessions have moved between peaceful co-existence and open warfare, while discourses in the Arab world and the West about Lebanon have oscillated between romantic idealisation of its role as a cultural bridge between the East and West and revulsion over persistent inter-communal strife in the 1970s. An overview of the communal history of the Shias of Lebanon implies that there is more at stake than the emergence of a resistance identity to Lebanon’s de facto allencompassing legitimising identities, and which were perceived by Hizbullah to have been imposed by outside powers, including the US and Israel, confirming some academic views that the cultural constructions of Islam have often taken place against the presence of powerful enemies, colonialism and colonial culture.
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