To achieve this, I used observation of Sunnis in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Tripoli of various political trends and sociological profiles and in-depth, comprehensive interviews with inhabitants, key personalities and Sheikhs from the middle and old city of Tripoli(2).
For almost a century, Tripoli has been accumulating difficulties. Economic, political and social factors (Nehmeh, 2013), united for more than a century, aggravated by the failure of Lebanese politics and the civil war, have created a climate of general insecurity. Victim of poverty, segregation, marginality, fatalism and inequality, Tripoli presents the image of a city incubating «terrorism», while its poor disadvantaged and injustice-stricken population is claiming constantly its «right to the city» by all means and with all possible political alliances. With the death of Rafic Hariri, and disappointed several times by their leader Saad Hariri(3), the majority of Sunnis in Tripoli feel betrayed by their representatives. Accompanied by the Syrian crisis in 2011, Islamism popularised the Salafi Jihadist currents in Tripoli and promoted the emergence of multiple violent radical movements, which clearly bore a desire for Khilafa and a rejection of the modern state. From now on, this community is divided into several groups of various affinities and political alliances, among them the radical Islamists and violent radical Islamists.
The feeling of injustice puts some Sunni groups in motion, gives them the courage to confront and act strongly and fuels resentment. It is based on a lack of recognition in social and political life, where inconsistent differences and inequalities between citizens are constantly exposed. Shared indignation brings them closer to each other and unites them to face the arbitrariness and domination of the Lebanese Government.
Among them, some aspire to an Islamic State and others are less enthusiastic about this idea. The aspiration to an Islamic State has its roots in the «social vacuum» (Barel, 1982) that these Sunnis excluded from Tripoli live. The latter no longer find their place in a society that has become alien to itself, their daily lives no longer have any meaning and they no longer recognise themselves in social bands.
The relationship to the idea of an Islamic State oscillates between desire and rejection. Indeed, this notion of «Islamic State» does not have consensus among my interlocutors and therefore seems problematic in their way of defining it.
For the most part, the notion of an Islamic State refers essentially to the demand for the application of Koranic laws in a State that remains Muslim, inclusive, unifying and moderating. For them, the state’s role is the guardianship of religion, where the Koranic law itself would be perceived as the guarantor of social and legal life, in a state where everyone is free in his beliefs in the private sphere. This group of «inclusive» Muslims is composed mainly of individuals who have lived through the Lebanese war and have passed from one ideology to another, they are not far from the 50 years or beyond. They believe in justice through democracy and Islam, and they believe that an Islamic State, and not the Islamic State (ISIS), could be just and equal, they see a utopia in an Islamic State that can govern fairly, a state where the laws applied will be the Koranic laws. They support the idea of an Islamic State, which is well supported by the various Islamist movements, like the Muslim brotherhood in Turkey. Such as an Islamised society, without really wanting the realisation of an Islamic State as implemented by Islamist regimes by force by Islamising the whole population.
It is a very different aspiration from the «Islamic State» claimed by the «hot-tempered Islamists» which includes: Islamist, Salafist and/or arbitrary Jihadist movements since the 1980’s. It impregnates the political imaginary of the Tripolitan Islamist movements and imposes Islam by violence. This group is mainly formed of young people between 18 and 30. Their first engagement is reflected in the Syrian revolution and they have known only the Islamist ideology and known sectarianism in Lebanon. The essential difference between these two groups is above all a generational one, and their different experiences among struggle to defend political causes and struggle to defend communities. Then, a conceptual divide them, for the former, the Islamic State is the first guarantor of freedom of choice for non-Muslims, while for the latter the Islamic State must impose religion by force.
However, for both the «Sunnis inclusive» and the «hot-tempered Islamists», Islam structures their sense of justice and specifies by its laws the rules of justice.
These rules are essentially for these Sunni groups to occupy an influential political position and become political actors. They challenge a political inequality
based on belonging to the Sunni community as political revindication. Although this revindication is not inherently structured by Islam and conveyed by Islamic law, it has become that, after the failure of the progressive and Marxist nationalist currents to make this reclaim.
Fighting against injustice (Guienne, 2001), Tripoli has done so for a long time. Some Sunni groups in Tripoli have changed ideology and banners, but no cause and no fight. In an aspiration for justice (Rawls, 1987), now according to an Islamist ideology, the Sunnis groups claim a «just» State (Ricoeur, 1995). Inclusive Sunnis designate the «hot-tempered-Islamists» as responsible for the situation of division and violent extremism. They are mostly against their practices which in their eyes have no connection to Islamic governance.
These inclusive Sunnis believe that Tripoli is not a fertile land for building an Islamic State according to the Daech model. Tripoli is a socially and religiously mixed city, with a rich social and historical heritage, as Mahmoud Mikati, an official in the municipality of Tripoli and a resident of the old city, says.
Even the Jihadist Salafists, who form a sub-group of «hot-tempered Islamists», are completely in favour of an Islamic State imposed from above and by force, however, they find that Daech, in its present form, cannot extend to Lebanon, since it does not have the image of a resistant group of liberation, and that many doubts hang over this organisation, as Sheikh Salem al-Rafei, a Salafi Jihadist Sheikh in Tripoli, said in an interview with him on November 10, 2014.
Nevertheless, through the demand for an Islamic State, the two groups aspire to a just and egalitarian state, that is, in conformity with the Koranic law and respecting equality as presented in the Quran. Thus, the principles of justice and equality are part of a political and social framework of an Islamic State and not of the Islamic State (Daech) for the first group, but both aspire to proportionate regards, equal promises and equal shares.
Bibliography
1- Barel, Y. (1982). La marginalité sociale. Paris: PUF.
2- Guienne, V. (2001). Du sentiment d'injustice à la justice sociale. Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, 1(110), 131-142.
3- Nehmeh, A. (2013). Qiyas al-Herman al-Hadari li estekhdam al-Baladiyat wal masaleh Al-Hadariya. Estratijiyet al-Tanmiya al-Hadariyeh li Moalajet al-Faket fi al-mentaka al-Arabiya. Doha: ESCWA.
4- Rawls, J. (1987). Théorie de la justice. Paris: Le Seuil.
5- Ricoeur, P. (1995). Le juste. Paris: Esprit.
(1) This feeling has a historical roots starting by Sykes-Picot agreement. The latter caused a problem of belonging to inhabitants in Tripoli.
(2) My fieldwork was carried out in Tripoli over different periods between 2014 and 201.
(3) His visit to Syria, the reconciliation between Jabal Mohsen and Tebbeneh and his participation in the new government.