2 - Prototypes of Secularism in Lebanon

Summary

Chapter 2 examines whether the sixteenth-century emirate of the cosmopolitan ruler Fakhr ad-Dīn II may have heralded the first premodern manifestation of a proto-secular, quasi-nationalist form of nondiscriminatory rule. The author follows a similar line of inquiry in plotting the trajectory of secularism in the subsequent period of the nineteenth-century emirate and the introduction of Napoléonic reform that was global in nature. To further underscore this point, a brief yet indicative comparison with the genesis of the Swiss confederation is adduced. The chapter ends with a review of the generation of nahda secularists in the nineteenth century, probing the reasons why their avant-garde ideas did not find a greater reception.