Religion and violence

On top of the question of the violence suffered mostly by women, there is the issue of legal responsibility at the heart of the family. For all religious denominations, the man is the sole guardian of the children and also of his wife. An adult woman has the right to decide to marry or become engaged, but the man on whom she depends (father or husband) has the authority to forbid her to travel or exercise her profession. After the death of her husband, her paternal grandfather and/or uncle takes ipso facto this responsibility. Without their authorisation, the widow cannot make the smallest decision in relation to her minor children. Some religious authorities explain that this law is intended to “protect” the woman, in allowing her to rebuild her life with a new person without having the problem of raising her own children. Its opponents respond that it deprives the mother of her natural, innate right to protect her children and herself and underestimates her affective and intellectual capacity to assume responsibility.

Women are victims of sexual discrimination in a conservative environment, being recognised only as “daughter of” or “wife of”. In the Arab world, the gulf between women's state of subordination, of sexual dependence and legal inequality vis à vis men, and the number of educated women occupying high level posts of responsibility in areas as varied as medicine, engineering and law, is most flagrant in Lebanon. And if open discrimination in matters of salary and equality of opportunity is evident in the private sector, this is not the case in the public sector, which respects the law on equal pay.

The recognition of civil marriage is seen by the male and female promoters of equality as one of the solutions to seize on. On this issue, paradoxically, Lebanon recognises only religious marriage contracted on national soil, but it recognises civil marriage contracted abroad. Given this legal void, and taking advantage of an arrangement adopted during the French mandate, male and female Lebanese citizens have asked to be able to contract civil marriage in Lebanon, erasing mention of their religion in the state registers. These few cases, appearing at the beginning of the 2010s, have caused arguments. In 2013 the President of the Republic Michel Sleimane pronounced himself in favour of the possibility of civil marriage, which seemed to be the wish of a small majority of the population, according to an enquiry. A draft law based on the provisions of a previous one debated in 1998, was discussed in the Council of Ministers. The Prime Minister Naguib Mikati opposed it and the Republic's mufti, Sheikh Mohammed Rachid Wabbani, decreed that any Muslim dignitary who spoke in favour of civil marriage would immediately be declared “apostate and outside the Muslim religion.”