Speaking of Lebanon as an “Abrahamic laboratory” may seem excessive.
The country is weakened by economic collapse, confessional divisions, and a fragile state. Yet it is precisely within this vulnerability that the question becomes meaningful. Lebanon remains one of the rare spaces in the Middle East where traditions stemming from Abraham are not merely the subject of interfaith discourse, but a lived historical and social reality, shaped as much by war as by memory.
By “Abrahamic,” one should not understand a consensual formula. I mean a space structured by the co-presence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, with their sites, institutions, and wounds. And by “laboratory,” not a utopia, but a field of trial. A place where proximity is negotiated in everyday life, in schools, law, neighbourhoods, and cities, and where one can observe what allows or prevents coexistence without dissolution.
“Lebanon has never been a paradise of coexistence. Nostalgic narratives tend to forget communal hierarchies, episodes of violence, and foreign interventions. But the opposite reading would be equally misleading. Reducing Lebanon to its fractures would mean overlooking what has nonetheless persisted: a lived religious proximity without any project of erasure.”
A coexistence without illusions
Lebanon has never been a paradise of coexistence. Nostalgic narratives tend to forget communal hierarchies, episodes of violence, and foreign interventions. But the opposite reading would be equally misleading. Reducing Lebanon to its fractures would mean overlooking what has nonetheless persisted: a lived religious proximity without any project of erasure.
In the broader Levantine world, certain sacred practices have historically crossed confessional boundaries. Some shrines were visited by multiple communities. Saint George, for instance, has been venerated at the intersection of Christian and Muslim registers, often through his identification with al-Khiḍr. These circulations did not erase doctrinal borders, but they showed that such borders were not everywhere impermeable.
This porosity never prevented violence. The massacres of 1860 between Druze and Maronites remain a stark reminder. Yet that same period also preserves the memory of a counter gesture. In Damascus, Emir Abdelkader, then in exile, intervened and protected thousands of Christians, with some estimates suggesting up to 15,000 people sheltered or saved. In the Levant, the history of violence is sometimes inseparable from the history of protection. Proximity could produce fear, but also moral obligation toward the other.
After 1860, the Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon introduced a system of regulated communal representation, often seen as one of the early frameworks of modern confessional institutionalization. The Greater Lebanon of 1920, and later the National Pact of 1943, extended this logic through an informal distribution of key offices, with a Maronite president, a Sunni prime minister, and a Shiite speaker of parliament. This system is rightly criticized for paralysis and clientelism, yet it also reflects the difficulty of imposing lasting unity through the suppression of religious identities.
“In Beirut, Wadi Abu Jamil was home to an active Arabic-speaking Jewish community. The Maghen Abraham synagogue, completed in the 1920s, symbolized this presence. Restored in the late 2000s, it now stands as a reminder of a complex memory. A building can be repaired, but its public use remains constrained by instability and by the political charge carried by the word “Jew” in a country in long conflict with Israel.”
A diminished plurality
Lebanon is often reduced to a Muslim-Christian binary. Yet Judaism was fully part of its urban and social history, and without this memory the very notion of the “Abrahamic” becomes incomplete. Until the 1970s, Beirut was a Levantine crossroads where universities, publishing houses, and newspapers brought together religious and political sensibilities.
In Beirut, Wadi Abu Jamil was home to an active Arabic-speaking Jewish community. The Maghen Abraham synagogue, completed in the 1920s, symbolized this presence. Restored in the late 2000s, it now stands as a reminder of a complex memory. A building can be repaired, but its public use remains constrained by instability and by the political charge carried by the word “Jew” in a country in long conflict with Israel.
The civil war accelerated the erasure of this visibility. The 1985 abduction of Isaac Sasson, then president of the community, was part of a broader series of kidnappings targeting Lebanese Jewish leaders, contributing to the intimidation of an already shrinking minority. This raises a difficult question. Can a space still be described as “Abrahamic” when one of the three traditions that structured it has almost disappeared from its social landscape? Lebanon forces this question to be faced directly. It may still be Abrahamic, but in the mode of absence, trace, and loss.
“The occupation of southern Lebanon continued until the 2000 withdrawal, leaving deep marks on collective memory and on the political-military landscape. Within this context, Hezbollah gradually consolidated its position. The Israeli intervention does not explain everything, but it acted as a decisive historical accelerant.”
A tragic laboratory
The civil war between 1975 and 1990 was a rupture that profoundly reshaped territories and social relations, without producing full-scale homogenization. Boundaries often remained porous. The war cannot be understood without the 1982 Israeli invasion, known as “Operation Peace for Galilee,” which led to the siege of Beirut and a lasting reconfiguration of internal balances.
The occupation of southern Lebanon continued until the 2000 withdrawal, leaving deep marks on collective memory and on the political-military landscape. Within this context, Hezbollah gradually consolidated its position. The Israeli intervention does not explain everything, but it acted as a decisive historical accelerant.
Since the 2000s, an already fragile equilibrium has come under renewed strain. Hezbollah is not only a regional actor aligned with Iran. It is also a social and confessional organization embedded in large parts of Shiite society. Its military strength introduces an autonomous armed capacity outside the state monopoly of legitimate violence, thereby reshaping the internal political contract itself.
What is eroding today is perhaps not religious diversity as such, but the spaces that once made it livable. Schools, universities, cafés, newspapers, workplaces, and mixed neighbourhoods are gradually thinning out. The danger is less open conflict than a slow process of de-cohabitation. People do not necessarily hate each other more. They simply encounter each other less.
The Bible does not explicitly place Abraham through present-day Lebanon. Yet his journey from Harran toward Canaan belongs to the broader Levantine space where memories of the Patriarch accumulated. Lebanon is neither the last Abrahamic paradise of the Levant nor a miraculous proof of peaceful coexistence among the children of Abraham. It is perhaps its last tragic laboratory. A place where Judaism, Christianity, and Islam still exist together, sometimes in presence, sometimes in trace, sometimes in absence.
The question is therefore no longer whether religious differences can be abolished. It is whether enough shared spaces still remain for them not to become impenetrable frontiers.
