Lebanon

Introduction

Lebanon is a Middle Eastern country bordered by Syria and Israel. A country of 10,452 square kilometers, located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, bordered by Syria on the north and east and Israel on the south, Lebanon has 18 religious confessions officially recognized by the Lebanese constitution. Some of these religious groups joined the indigenous people of Lebanon in their endeavor to find a refuge in its mountainous terrain away from persecution, where they could freely practice their political and religious beliefs. They preferred a harsh life in the mountains to the comfort of city life so as to be able to preserve and defend their religious beliefs and their cherished freedom. Over the years, due to the religious freedom that distinguished the country, Lebanon became a “mosaic of religions.” But, as is well known, a mosaic is fragile by definition (Bleaney, pp. 84-154).

The same banking laws that insulated Lebanon from the recession have made the country an attractive haven for money launderers, as what few monitoring procedures that are in place are insufficient and easily bypassed; the usual complicated body of law resulting from legislatively closing one loophole after another simply has not developed in Lebanon. Colombian cocaine cartels and Turkish heroin cartels both traffic their goods through the country while laundering their money. The trafficking networks also make use of Lebanese expatriates living abroad in North and South America, West Africa, and Europe. This paper in connection, to the Lebanon will analyse the hisotry, culture, economy and several other factors of Lebanon.

Discussion and Analysis

Accordingly, confessional diversity and different ways of worshipping God have long been the main features of the Lebanese scene. While traveling through Lebanon in the 14th century, Ibn Battuta remarked on the exceptionally large number of people devoted to worshipping God. He was struck by their faith and their piety. Christianity and Islam, from the first appearance of the latter (i.e., in the seventh century), have been at home together in Lebanon. The Ottoman Empire (1516-1917) respected the existing confessional distribution of the population and accorded Mount Lebanon, inhabited mostly by Christians, a certain level of autonomy. It was the Maronite Patriarch, Elias Hoyek (1843-1931), who represented the various Lebanese religious confessions in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference in Versailles and articulated their aspiration for a free and independent Lebanon. In the Lebanese religio-political system, the top posts of government are distributed along confessional lines. This distribution has existed since 1943, when after abolition of the French Mandate, independence was attained and the National Pact was concluded between leaders of the religious groups. It became formally part of the written constitution by the Ta'ef Agreement in 1989. This pact is based on confessional power sharing. It has also been the basis of efforts to establish a consensual confessional democracy in a permanent and final Lebanese nation-state with a special mission: freedom of religion and coexistence among religious groups (Senker, pp. 37-65).

So far, it has not been a practical proposition for the ...