Opened in 2008, the Lebanon Mountain Trail (LMT) links Lebanon’s North to its South through 470 km of paths and a network of Muslim, Druze, and Christian homestays. Although similar heritage trails exist elsewhere the world, the LMT runs through a landscape fractured by sectarian division and scarred by war. Drawing on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2019 that included walking alongside Lebanese and international hikers over the trail’s 1,100+ km length, this dissertation explores how the practice of long-distance hiking creates and mediates feelings of national and cultural belonging– feelings of territorial, social and national attachment – under fraught circumstances. This research found that Lebanese hikers developed a new and heightened sense of belonging to Lebanon as nation and to regions of the country where they had previously felt unwelcome. These attachments were produced by bonding experiences along the trail that created a shared ritual frame in which hikers perceived Lebanon as if it were unified and acted as if sectarian differences were not a divisive category. By walking the trail together, hikers constructed and inhabited their own fleeting dreams of Lebanon as they would have wished it to be. They imbued this as if Lebanon with a variety of different personalized meanings, ones that enabled hikers to resolve ambiguities in their own lives. For most participants, these attachments were time delimited and could only be sustained by returning to the dream worlds they enacted on the trail through repeated trekking. For others the experience was so profound that they incorporated elements of the experience into their everyday live. While this research adds to the existing literature on the study of trekking and trails as engines for cultivating belonging, it breaks new ground by examining how this occurs in landscapes where evidence of past wars is ever present and sectarian divisions still unresolved. The ability of the LMT to produce such attachments for Lebanese hikers complicates our understanding of the relationship between walkers and the landscapes they encounter, giving the cultural landscape as much significance as the natural landscape.

This research project examines sectarianism and sectarian violence in Pakistan between 1996-2005. It represents a departure from the security-focused research on sectarianism and provides contemporary analysis of sectarian violence by contextualising it. This thesis distinguishes sectarianism as an analytical concept from sectarianism as a phenomenon in Pakistan. The existing literature on sectarianism and sectarianism in the Pakistani context is critically examined, and this research is located within that body of knowledge. In this thesis, sectarian violence is understood as being conducted to reproduce and reinforce exclusivist sectarian discourse. This premise is analysed through the framework of identity formation and identity politics, and spatial understandings of identities. The study examines the locations of sectarian violence in Pakistan, and analyses the spaces where sectarian identity discourse is enforced and maintained through violence. Consequently, the concept of sacred space and sacred time are analysed as locations of sectarian violence. The contestations of public space by competing identity discourses, and the spatial manifestations of those competing identities are analysed. This dissertation also attempts to draw out whether sectarian violence is only located within and through the organised sectarian groups, or whether the sectarian violence indicates wider fault lines in the Pakistani society.

This research project examines sectarianism and sectarian violence in Pakistan between 1996-2005. It represents a departure from the security-focused research on sectarianism and provides contemporary analysis of sectarian violence by contextualising it. This thesis distinguishes sectarianism as an analytical concept from sectarianism as a phenomenon in Pakistan. The existing literature on sectarianism and sectarianism in the Pakistani context is critically examined, and this research is located within that body of knowledge. In this thesis, sectarian violence is understood as being conducted to reproduce and reinforce exclusivist sectarian discourse. This premise is analysed through the framework of identity formation and identity politics, and spatial understandings of identities. The study examines the locations of sectarian violence in Pakistan, and analyses the spaces where sectarian identity discourse is enforced and maintained through violence. Consequently, the concept of sacred space and sacred time are analysed as locations of sectarian violence. The contestations of public space by competing identity discourses, and the spatial manifestations of those competing identities are analysed. This dissertation also attempts to draw out whether sectarian violence is only located within and through the organised sectarian groups, or whether the sectarian violence indicates wider fault lines in the Pakistani society.

This thesis explores Shi’a-Sunni relations in Gulf politics during a period of regional upheaval, starting with the 2003 invasion of Iraq through the Arab revolts of early 2011. It seeks to understand the conditions under which sectarian distinctions become a prominent feature of the Gulf political landscape, focusing on the three Gulf countries that have been affected most by sectarian tensions: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. The study analyzes the contagion effect of the civil war in Iraq, the 2006 war in Lebanon, and the Arab Spring on local sectarian dynamics in the three states. Specifically, it explores the role of domestic institutions—parliaments and other quasi-democratic structures, the media, and clerical establishments—in tempering or exacerbating sectarianism. It finds that the maturity and strength of participatory institutions in each state played a determinant role in the level of sectarianism resulting from dramatic shifts in the regional environment since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I conclude, therefore, that the real roots of the so-called “rise of the Shi’a” phenomena lie in the domestic political context of each state, rather than in the regional policies of Iran or the contagion effect of events in Iraq or Lebanon. Although the Gulf Shi’a took a degree of inspiration from the actions of their co-religionists in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon, they ultimately strove for greater rights in a non-sectarian, nationalist framework. The rise of sectarianism in the Gulf has been largely the product of excessive alarm by entrenched Sunni elites or the result of calculated attempts by regimes to discredit Shi’a political actors by portraying them as proxies for Iran, Iraq, or the Lebanese Hizballah. What is qualitatively different about the post-2003 period is not the level of mobilization by the Shi’a, but rather the intensity of threat perception by Gulf regimes and Sunni Islamists.

Cette thèse vise à dévoiler les obstacles à une libre circulation de l’information au Liban, un pays longtemps considéré comme une île de liberté par rapport à son entourage. Dans ce contexte, le confessionnalisme constitue l’obstacle le plus solide et le plus dangereux non seulement à la libre circulation de l’information au Liban, mais également à la construction d’un pays au vrai sens du terme. A côté du confessionnalisme, les obstacles à une libre circulation de l’information au Liban sont nombreux. Tout d’abord, les textes législatifs où nous trouvons de nombreuses limitations à la liberté d’expression dans la presse écrite et également dans l’audiovisuel, puis une jurisprudence qui ne met pas en avant le concept sacré de la liberté d’expression, une forte censure par l’Etat, et une autocensure dans un contexte de violence. La géopolitique du Liban n’aide pas non plus, d’un côté Israël un pays en état de guerre avec le Liban ou dans les meilleurs des cas en état de cessez le feu. Et de l’autre, la Syrie, un pays qui a toujours considéré le Liban comme l’un de ses départements. A cela s’ajoute une histoire sanglante d’un petit pays qui peu après son indépendance du mandat français tombe dans une guerre civile qui détruit ses institutions et met en question la légitimité de l’existence même de cet état nouveau et la possibilité d’une vraie coexistence entre ses dix-huit communautés. Cette guerre risque de se déclencher à nouveau même vingt ans après l’accord de Taëf qui était censé instaurer la paix dans le pays. / This thesis aims to uncover the barriers to the free circulation of information in Lebanon, a country long considered an island of freedom in relation to its surroundings. In this context, sectarianism is considered the greatest and most dangerous obstacle, not only to the free flow of information, but equally to the building of a country in the true sense of the term. In addition to sectarianism, the obstacles for the free circulation of information in Lebanon are numerous. These include legislative texts that place many restrictions on freedom of expression on the press and audiovisual media, a jurisprudence that does not advance the concept of freedom of expression, a strong censorship from the state, and the self censorship of the press in an environment of violence. The geopolitics of Lebanon does not help either. On the one side, it is bordered by Israel, a country at war with Lebanon or in the best cases, in a state of ceasefire. On the other side, it is bordered by Syria, a country that has always considered Lebanon as one of its territories. Added to this is a bloody history of a small country that shortly after independence from the French mandate, falls into a civil war that destroyed its institutions and called into question the legitimacy its existence. It also called into question the possibility of a true coexistence between its eighteen religious sects. This war may be triggered again even twenty years after the Taif Agreement that was supposed to bring peace to the country.

This thesis examines the Iraqi Shia community's evolving approach towards and their position in the Iraqi state, especially after the American-led invasion in 2003. The focus is on concepts of nationalism, sectarianism, and identity within the Iraqi state and the Shia community. This thesis is subdivided into two main parts, the first of which considers the time period before 2003. Contemporary Shia identity and standing in Iraq was forged in the crucible of pre-2003 Iraq, so a thorough background in this time period is essential for understanding events after the invasion. Since the founding of the modern Iraqi state, and even during Ottoman times, Shias have traditionally been excluded from positions of power. This political division reflected the socioeconomic divide between the wealthier Sunni and poorer Shia communities. This situation resulted in sharp barriers between Sunnis and Shias. Although the Sunni-dominated monarchy was not actively trying to incorporate the Shias, economic and educational progress eventually reached some in the Shia community beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, and several of these sectarian barriers faded. Partly due to a secularizing trend, the 1950s and 1960s (the "intermezzo" republican period) witnessed the greatest amount of intermingling between these sects in...

In pursuit of the conversion of others, cross-cultural missionaries often experience their own “conversions.” This thesis explores the ways in which one particular missionary, the Welshman Timothy Richard (1845–1919), was transformed by his encounter with China. Focusing specifically on the evolution of his understanding and practice of Christian mission during the first half of his career with the Baptist Missionary Society, the study is structured chronologically in order to capture the important ways in which Richard’s experiences shaped his adaptations in mission. Each of Richard’s adaptations is examined within its appropriate historical and cultural context through analysis of his published and unpublished writings—all while paying careful attention to Richard’s identity as a Welsh Baptist missionary. This approach reveals that rather than softening his commitment to conversion in response to his encounters with China, Richard was driven by his persistent evangelical convictions to adapt his missionary methods in pursuit of greater results. When his experiences in Shandong and Shanxi provinces convinced him that Christianity fulfilled China’s own religious past and that God’s Kingdom promised blessings for souls in this life as well as in the next, Richard widened his theological horizons to incorporate these ideas without abandoning his essential understanding of the Christian gospel. As Richard adjusted to the realities of mission in the Chinese context, his growing empathy for Chinese people and their culture increasingly shaped his adaptations, ultimately leading him to advocate methods and emphases on the moral evidences for Christianity that were unacceptable to some of his missionary colleagues and to leaders in other missions, notably James Hudson Taylor. As the first critical work of length to focus on the early half of Richard’s missionary career, this thesis fills a gap in current scholarship on Victorian Protestant missions in China, offering a challenge to the simplistic conservative/liberal dichotomies often used to categorize missionaries. The revised picture of Richard that emerges reveals his original understanding of “the worthy” in Matthew 10, his indebtedness to Chinese sectarian religion, his early application of indigenous principles, his integration of evangelism and famine relief work, his relative unimportance in the China Inland Mission “Shanxi spirit” controversies of the 1880s, and—most significantly—his instrumental rather than evangelistic interest in the scholar-officials of China. By highlighting the priority of the Chinese (religious) context for Richard’s transformation, this thesis also contributes to the growing volume of historiography on Christianity in modern China that emphasizes the multidirectional influences present in the encounters between Christianity and Chinese culture and religion. Finally, connections between Richard’s evolution and changes taking place within the larger missionary community are also explored, situating Richard within wider discussions of accommodationism in mission, the rise of social Christianity, and evangelistic precursors to fulfillment theology.

L’analyse socio-historique de l’émergence du pouvoir politique au Liban, son essence même et son instrumentalisation conditionnent l’exercice de la régulation démocratique des conflits dans une société plurale dont le système politique repose sur un compromis historique, celui du Pacte de 1943.Ni Orient, ni Occident, ni vainqueur, ni vaincu.Les difficultés d’élaboration d’un projet consensuel et de mise en oeuvre d’une coalition gouvernementale, dans le modèle libanais de démocratie consociative ont favorisé la confrontation de la logique individuelle à la logique communautaire sans espace de subsidiarité.Cette thèse tend à démontrer que des Accords de Taëf jusqu’aux années post Doha, malgré la confirmation de l’autonomie segmentaire, le non dépassement des contradictions entre esprit de consensus et concentration du pouvoir sans réelle distribution de celui-ci a conduit à la définition d’un consensus minimal qui fragilise la stabilité du pays à travers des crises politiques successives.La démocratie consociative libanaise, forte de l’ouverture vers un espace public transcommunautaire, montrera-t-elle sa capacité à évoluer, en luttant contre le décalage existant entre les institutions du consensus représentées par ses élites politiques et la dynamique sociale ? / This analysis of the socio-historical birth of political power in Lebanon, its own nature as well as its implementation, concerns the different ways of viewing democratically regulated conflicts in a multi-directionally and politically oriented plural society based on a historical agreement signed in 1943.There is a challenge to compromise East and West, a balance without obvious loser and winner.The difficult project of creating a consensus among a governmental coalition while respecting the Lebanese model of democracy required personal and group compromises without room for subsidiarity.While taking into consideration the segmentation, the need to do not overlap the contradiction of consensus and opposing ideas among politico-communitarian cleavages, this work aims at demonstrating that the accord of Taef followed by the after Doha, lead to a fragile consensus which weakens the stability of the country during the following political crisis.The Lebanese consociate system re-enforced by opening to a transcultural public space may show its capacity to evolve, mature, within the existing gap between the consensus institution proposed by the elite and the social pressure.

The tiny nation-state of Lebanon has been marred by political instability and violence over the past 35 years. Most scholars blame the consociational structure of the bureaucratic system as the main culprit for the precarious state of the republic. It is an understatement to say that the delicate power-sharing balance divided between the Christian and Muslim sects has been one of the most detrimental elements to government stability and socioeconomic development. Underneath these sectarian affiliations, however, lie numerous patronage systems all vying for power and control over the Lebanese system. These systems not only act to support their Lebanese sectarian leader, but many have reached across the border and found the open hands of foreign powers. The actions of these foreign entities have also constituted a divisive role in undermining the unification of the nation into a cohesive and functioning state, particularly during the post-civil war time period. The end of the 15 year civil war through the passage of the National Reconciliation Accord heralded in a sense of promise for a future free of war and political mismanagement through the abolition of the consociational system. This promise, however, has yet to be fulfilled. This thesis is an examination into the role and impact of Syrian and Saudi Arabian patronage ties in the Lebanese system. By looking at the states through the actions of their clients we can come to a better understanding of both why and how the goals of Ta'if have yet to be achieved and potentially come to understand the needs facing Lebanon's future. / text

With the dawn of the modern era and the advancement of globalization in all forms and domains, interfaith dialogue and reconciliation have become an essential enterprise in our diverse and diversifying world. In this emerging and extensive enterprise, ecumenical engagement and interdenominational reconciliation are of great importance, for they foster cross-communal tolerance and harmony, mitigate sectarian differences, curb exclusionary rhetoric and discriminatory policies, and cultivate a conciliatory and constructive religious environment. This study focuses on institutional efforts to advance Islamic ecumenism in recent decades and examines Iran’s state-backed World Forum for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought aka Tehran’s Ecumenical Society (TES). It aims to investigate the context and forces that led to the formation and evolution of this ecumenical organization, analyze its structure, methodology, strategy, and performance across the past three decades, explore its negotiation with Iranian domestic and regional policies, and discuss the array of shortcomings and proposals and possibilities to tackle them. Drawing on the vast literature of interfaith and ecumenical studies, statecraft, foreign policy, and organizational studies, and by examining TES’s available documents and publications, this dissertation conducts multidisciplinary research on the most important Islamic ecumenical institution, contributing to the fields of faith-based organizations, Middle East politics, Islamic studies, and interfaith relations. This work demonstrates the many ways a government-led ecumenical society inevitably gets instrumentalized to advance the state’s ideology and interests at home and abroad. The politicized manipulation of the ecumenical body, strategy, and initiatives by a Shi’ite theocracy equipped with an Islamic ideology and an aim for regional supremacy undermines its capacity to foster an inclusive ecology, develop critical and rigorous theoretical literature, and devise innovative and effective initiatives. / Religion