By Abdallah Salam 

Three months ago, I flew to Beirut to attend a landmark event for personal freedoms and human rights in the Arab world, an event that gives hope in coexistence at a time of sectarian strife in the Middle East, an event that announces a new relationship between citizen and state in Lebanon, where archaic institutional structures still dominate the sociopolitical landscape. I attended the wedding celebration of a trailblazing couple: Kholoud Succariyeh and Nidal Darwish.

 

Their civil marriage contract, signed in Lebanon, became the first of its kind registered in Lebanese state records, as officially announced on April 25 of this year. Previously, Lebanese who wanted a civil marriage had to do so abroad. Only religious marriages – sanctioned by a religious authority, governed by a religious law, and falling under the jurisdiction of a religious court – could take place in Lebanon.

 

Appalled by this situation, activists had been mobilizing for civil marriage in Lebanon since the early 1950s. However, the last proposal for an optional civil marriage law was put forth in 1998, and again failed. Civil marriage has since seemed a hopeless cause.

 

The tide turned early last year when a Lebanese intellectual, Talal al-Husseini, presented a study with a startling conclusion: Civil marriage has been allowed under Lebanese law for decades, but the law has not been enforced. His finding was based on the fact that the Lebanese Constitution guarantees “absolute freedom of conscience.” It was also based on decree R.L. 60 issued in 1936 by the French High Commissioner, which states that personal status issues – marriage, inheritance and adoption – are governed by civil law, not religious family law, in the case of those with no administratively declared sect.

 

Intent on getting married civilly, Succariyeh and Darwish, Lebanese citizens who were registered as Sunni and Shiite respectively, removed reference to sect from state records and concluded a civil marriage contract before a notary public named Joseph Beshara. The contract advanced through the ranks of state bureaucracy to the desk of Interior Minister Marwan Charbel.

 

While Charbel declared that he would not register the marriage, pro-civil marriage statements flooded social media. Politicians from different religious backgrounds supported the push for civil marriage – most notably President Michel Sleiman, former Parliament Speaker Hussein al-Husseini, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, and the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.

 

However, the religious head of the Sunni community, Mufti Mohammad Rashid Qabbani, proclaimed that any Muslim official who approved of civil marriage would be considered an apostate. The Council of Maronite Bishops, presided by Patriarch Beshara Rai, claimed that instituting civil marriage necessitated amending the Constitution, a process that is notoriously difficult. Several other religious personalities followed suit.

 

Fortunately, there was light at the end of the tunnel. The Higher Advisory Commission of the Justice Ministry, comprised of senior judges, unanimously concluded that citizens who removed references to sect from state records could obtain a civil marriage in Lebanon by stating clauses from a civil code of their choosing in their contract.  The judges explained that decree R.L. 60, by referring to civil personal status law, included this corpus of law as a constituent part of Lebanese law. In other words, the judges determined that civil personal status law already existed in Lebanon, and that the marriage contract of Succariyeh and Darwish could be registered in state records as a result.

 

More than any other, it is the Lebanese of the post-Civil War generation, my generation, who have won. They have been the most enthusiastic for civil marriage and will benefit most, in a practical sense, from what has now become possible. It is also a victory for Lebanese advocates of the rule of law, constitutionalism, and a culture of textual interpretation that accounts for the needs of an evolving society. Not least, it is a victory for Lebanese advocates of pluralism: the idea that all must be respected in their chosen way of life.

 

That said, removing reference to sect from state records, a process that began in April 2007, deserves at least as much attention as the civil marriage victory. Even though it is a simple and easy procedure, it is a highly significant one in Lebanon – a country that has known war, and continues to know tragedy, along sectarian lines.

 

By not declaring a sect to the state, a Lebanese establishes a direct relation to the state: as a citizen without a sectarian intermediary.

 

Of course, a Lebanese who removes the reference to sect from state records can still be religious in belief and social identity, and can maintain strong ties to religious institutions independent of the state. This was demonstrated by a prominent religious figure, Archbishop Gregoire Haddad, who removed reference to sect from his state records. In fact, when Lebanese started removing any reference to sect, a few bureaucrats mistakenly replaced it with the terms “no religion” or “no sect.” This mistake was corrected and now only a slash is written to indicate a decision not to declare one’s sect.

 

Alarmingly, the administrative practice in Lebanon is for individuals to be registered at birth by default under the sect that one’s father was registered under. This practice goes back generations. No Lebanese has ever been given a choice of not declaring a sect. Essentially, they were forced into sectarian administrative cages and thus prevented from coming together as one people.

 

These cages have now been unlocked. Lebanon has now been transformed from a state where 18 different sectarian labels are the most basic administrative categories to a state where “declare” and “nondeclare” are the two fundamental administrative categories.

 

Upon removing reference to sect from his state records, Lebanon’s foremost historian, the late Kamal Salibi, said before many people: “All my life I have defended Lebanon’s sectarian system of government. I am now convinced of the need to move on.”

 

At a time of Sunni-Shiite tension, a couple from these two sectarian backgrounds has broken the barrier and registered the first made-in-Lebanon civil marriage. At a time when Lebanese parliamentarians may consider an electoral law project that obliges citizens to vote only for candidates from their own sect, ordinary Lebanese citizens have removed reference to sect and paved the way for a modern state. At a time when many Arab countries are witnessing turbulent uprisings, Lebanon is having its silent revolution.