Nativism (politics)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nativism is the political policy of promoting the interests of native inhabitants against those of immigrants, including by supporting immigration-restriction measures.

 

In scholarly studies nativism is a standard technical term. Those who hold this political view, however, do not typically accept the label. Dindar (2009) wrote, "nativists... do not consider themselves as nativists. For them it is a negative term and they rather consider themselves as 'Patriots'".

Arguments for immigration restriction

According to Fetzer (2000), opposition to immigration commonly arises in many countries because of issues of national, cultural, and religious identity. The phenomenon has been studied especially in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as in continental Europe. Thus nativism has become a general term for "opposition to immigration" based on fears that the immigrants will distort or spoil existing cultural values. In situations where immigrants greatly outnumber the original inhabitants, nativistic movements can allow cultural survival. The claim that immigrants can "swamp" a local population is related to birth rate relative to nationals. Contemporary opponents of immigration blame it for such problems as unemployment, crime (especially through gangs), harm to the environment, housing shortage, and overwhelming social services such as hospitals, police.

Immigration restrictionist sentiment is typically justified with one or more of the following arguments and claims about immigrants:

• Government expense: Government expenses may exceed tax revenue relating to new immigrants;
• Language: Isolate themselves in their own communities and refuse to learn the local language;
• Employment: Acquire jobs that would have otherwise been available to native citizens, depressing native employment; create an oversupply of labor, depressing wages;
• Patriotism: Damage a sense of community and nationality;
• Environment: Increase the consumption of scarce resources; their move from low- to high-pollution economies increases pollution;
• Welfare: Make heavy use of social welfare systems;
• Overpopulation: May overpopulate countries;
• Culture: Can swamp a native population and replace its culture with their own;
• Housing: Increase in housing costs: migrant families can reduce vacancies and cause rent increases.

By country

Australia

Many Australians opposed the influx of Chinese immigrants at time of the nineteenth-century gold rushes. When the separate Australian colonies formed the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, the new nation adopted "White Australia" as one of its founding principles. Under the White Australia policy, entry of Chinese and other Asians remained controversial until well after World War II, although the country remained home to many long-established Chinese families dating from before the adoption of White Australia. By contrast, most Pacific Islanders were deported soon after the policy was adopted, while the remainder were forced out of the canefields where they had worked for decades.

Hostility of native-born white Australians toward British and Irish immigrants in the late 19th century was manifested in a new party, the Australian Natives' Association.

Since early 2000, opposition has mounted to asylum seekers arriving in boats from Indonesia.

Brazil

The Brazilian elite desired the racial whitening of the country, similarly to Argentina and Uruguay. The country encouraged European immigration, but non-white immigration always faced considerable backlash. On July 28, 1921, representatives Andrade Bezerra and Cincinato Braga proposed a law whose Article 1 provided: "The immigration of individuals from the black race to Brazil is prohibited." On October 22, 1923, representative Fidélis Reis produced another bill on the entry of immigrants, whose fifth article was as follows: "The entry of settlers from the black race into Brazil is prohibited. For Asian [immigrants] there will be allowed each year a number equal to 5% of those residing in the country.(...)".

In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were negative feelings toward the communities of German, Italian, Japanese, and Jewish immigrants, who conserved their language and culture instead of adopting Portuguese and Brazilian habit (so that nowadays Brazil has the biggest communities in the Americas of speakers of German and Venetian), were seen as particularly tendentious to form ghettos, had high rates of endogamy (in Brazil, it is regarded as usual for people of different backgrounds to miscegenate), among other concerns.

It affected more harshly the Japanese, because they were Asian, and thus seen as an obstacle of the whitening of Brazil. Oliveira Viana, a Brazilian jurist, historian and sociologist described the Japanese immigrants as follows: "They (Japanese) are like sulfur: insoluble". The Brazilian magazine "O Malho" in its edition of December 5, 1908 issued a charge of Japanese immigrants with the following legend: "The government of São Paulo is stubborn. After the failure of the first Japanese immigration, it contracted 3,000 yellow people. It insists on giving Brazil a race diametrically opposite to ours". In 1941, the Brazilian Minister of Justice, Francisco Campos, defended the ban on admission of 400 Japanese immigrants in São Paulo and wrote: "their despicable standard of living is a brutal competition with the country's worker; their selfishness, their bad faith, their refractory character, make them a huge ethnic and cultural cyst located in the richest regions of Brazil".

Some years before World War II, the government of President Getúlio Vargas initiated a process of forced assimilation of people of immigrant origin in Brazil. The Constitution of 1934 had a legal provision about the subject: "The concentration of immigrants anywhere in the country is prohibited; the law should govern the selection, location and assimilation of the alien". The assimilationist project affected mainly German, Italian, Japanese and Jewish immigrants and their descendants.

During World War II they were seen as more loyal to their countries of origin than to Brazil. In fact, there were violent revolts in the Japanese community of the states of São Paulo and Paraná when Emperor Hirohito declared that Japan surrendered and he was not a deity, which was thought as a conspiracy trying to hurt Japanese honor and strength. Nevertheless, it followed hostility from the government. The Japanese Brazilian community was strongly marked by restrictive measures when Brazil declared war against Japan in August 1942. Japanese Brazilians could not travel the country without safe conduct issued by the police; over 200 Japanese schools were closed and radio equipment was seized to prevent transmissions on short wave from Japan. The goods of Japanese companies were confiscated and several companies of Japanese origin had interventions, including the newly founded Banco América do Sul. Japanese Brazilians were prohibited from driving motor vehicles (even if they were taxi drivers), buses or trucks on their property. The drivers employed by Japanese had to have permission from the police. Thousands of Japanese immigrants were arrested or expelled from Brazil on suspicion of espionage. There were many anonymous denunciations because of "activities against national security" arising from disagreements between neighbours, recovery of debts and even fights between children. Japanese Brazilians were arrested for "suspicious activity" when they were in artistic meetings or picnics. On July 10, 1943, approximately 10,000 Japanese and German immigrants who lived in Santos had 24 hours to close their homes and businesses and move away from the Brazilian coast. The police acted without any notice. About 90% of people displaced were Japanese. To reside in Baixada Santista, the Japanese had to have a safe conduct. In 1942, the Japanese community who introduced the cultivation of pepper in Tomé-Açu, in Pará, was virtually turned into a "concentration camp" (expression of the time) from which no Japanese could leave. This time, the Brazilian ambassador in Washington, D.C., Carlos Martins Pereira e Sousa, encouraged the government of Brazil to transfer all the Japanese Brazilians to "internment camps" without the need for legal support, in the same manner as was done with the Japanese residents in the United States. No single suspicion of activities of Japanese against "national security" was confirmed.

Nowadays, nativism in Brazil affects primarily migrants from elsewhere in the Third World, such as the new wave of Levantine Arabs (this time, mostly Muslim from Palestine instead of overwhelmingly Christian from Syria and Lebanon), South and East Asians (primarily Mainland Chinese), Spanish-speakers and Amerindians from neighboring South American countries and, especially, West Africans and Haitians. Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake and considerable illegal immigration to northern Brazil and São Paulo, a subsequent debate in the population was concerned with the reasons why Brazil has such lax laws and enforcement concerning illegal immigration.

According to the 1988's Brazilian Constitution, it is an unbailable crime to address someone in an offensive racist way, and it is illegal to discriminate someone on the basis of his or her race, skin color, national or regional origin or nationality (for more, see anti-discrimination laws in Brazil), thus nativism and opposition to multiculturalism would be too much of a polemic and delicate topic to be openly discussed as a basic ideology of even the most right-leaning modern political parties.

Canada

Nativism was common in Canada (though the term originated in the U.S.). It took several forms. Hostility to the Chinese and other Asians was intense, and involved provincial laws that hindered immigration of Chinese and Japanese and blocked their economic mobility. In 1942 Japanese Canadians were forced into detention camps in response to Japanese aggression in World War II.

Throughout the 19th century, well into the 20th, the Orange Order in Canada attacked and tried to politically defeat the Irish Catholics. The Ku Klux Klan spread in the mid-1920s from the U.S. to parts of Canada, especially Saskatchewan, where it helped topple the Liberal government. The Klan creed was, historian Martin Robin argues, in the mainstream of Protestant Canadian sentiment, for it was based on "Protestantism, separation of Church and State, pure patriotism, restrictive and selective immigration, one national public school, one flag and one language—English."

In World War I, Canadian naturalized citizens of German or Austrian origins were stripped of their right to vote, and tens of thousands of Ukrainians (who were born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) were rounded up and put in internment camps.

Hostility of native-born Canadians to competition from English immigrants in the early 20th century was expressed in signs that read, "No English Need Apply!" The resentment came because the immigrants identified more with England than with Canada.

In the British Empire, traditions of anti-Catholicism in Britain led to fears that Catholics were a threat to the national (British) values. In Canada, the Orange Order (of Irish Protestants) campaigned vigorously against the Catholics throughout the 19th century, often with violent confrontations. Both sides were immigrants from Ireland and neither side claimed loyalty to Canada. The Orange Order was much less influential in the U.S., especially after a major riot in New York City in 1871.

Hong Kong

Nativism in Hong Kong is often used as a synonymy with localism, which strives for the autonomy of Hong Kong and resist China's authorities influence in the city. In addition to their strong anti-communist and pro-democracy tendency, It often holds a strong anti-mainland sentiments, especially the influx of the mainland tourists and immigrants, seeing them as a threat to Hong Kong identity and culture.

European countries

For the Poles in the mining districts of western Germany before 1914, it was nationalism (on both the German and the Polish sides), which kept Polish workers, who had established an associational structure approaching institutional completeness (churches, voluntary associations, press, even unions), separate from the host German society. Lucassen found that religiosity and nationalism were more fundamental in generating nativism and inter-group hostility than the labor antagonism.

Once Italian workers in France had understood the benefit of unionism and French unions were willing to overcome their fear of Italians as strikebreakers, integration was open for most Italian immigrants. The French state, which was always more of an immigration state than Prussia, Germany or Great Britain, fostered and supported family-based immigration and thus helped Italians on their immigration trajectory with minimal nativism.

Many observers see the post-1950s wave of immigration in Europe was fundamentally different from the pre-1914 patterns. They debate the role of cultural differences, ghettos, race, Muslim fundamentalism, poor education and poverty play in creating nativism among the hosts and a caste-type underclass, more similar to white-black tensions in the US. Algerian migration to France has generated nativism, characterized by the prominence of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his National Front.

Pakistan

The Pakistani province of Sindh has seen nativist movements, promoting control for the Sindhi people over their homeland. After the 1947 Partition of India, large numbers of Muhajir people migrating from India entered the province, becoming a majority in the provincial capital city of Karachi, which formerly had an ethnically Sindhi majority. Sindhis have also voiced opposition to the promotion of Urdu, as opposed to their native tongue, Sindhi.

These nativist movements are expressed through Sindhi nationalism and the Sindhudesh separatist movement. Nativist and nationalist sentiments increased greatly after the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971.

Taiwan

Nativism flourished in Taiwan in the 1970s as a reaction against the influx of mainland Chinese to the island after the Kuomintang's defeat in 1949. Nativists felt that the political influence of mainland Chinese was disproportionately large. The term is especially found in the field of literature, where nativist literature was more traditionally minded than the modernist literature written largely by mainland Chinese.

United Kingdom

London was notorious for its xenophobia in the 16th century, and conditions worsened in the 1580s. Many immigrants became disillusioned by routine threats of violence and molestation, attempts at expulsion of foreigners, and the great difficulty in acquiring English citizenship. Dutch cities proved more hospitable, and many left London permanently.

Regarding the Irish in 20th-century Great Britain, Lucassen argues that the deep religious divide between the Protestants and Catholics was at the core of the ongoing estrangement of the Irish in British society.

United States

Early Republic

Nativism was a political factor in the 1790s and in the 1830s-1850s. There was little nativism in the colonial era, but for a while Benjamin Franklin was hostile to German Americans in colonial Pennsylvania; He called them "Palatine Boors." However, he reversed himself and became a supporter.

Nativism became a major issue in the late 1790s, when the Federalist Party expressed its strong opposition to the French Revolution by trying to strictly limit immigration, and stretching the time to 14 years for citizenship. At the time of the Quasi-War with France in 1798, the Federalists and Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, including the Alien Act, the Naturalization Act and the Sedition Act. The movement was led by Alexander Hamilton, despite his own status as an immigrant from a small Island. Phillip Magness argues that “Hamilton’s political career might legitimately be characterized as a sustained drift into nationalistic xenophobia.” Thomas Jefferson and James Madison fought by drafting the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. The two laws against aliens were motivated by fears of a growing Irish radical presence in Philadelphia, where they supported Jefferson. However, they were not actually enforced. President John Adams annoyed his fellow Federalists by making peace with France, and splitting his party in 1800. Jefferson was elected president, and reversed most of the hostile legislation.

1830-1860

The term "nativism" was first used by 1844: "Thousands were Naturalized expressly to oppose Nativism, and voted the Polk ticket mainly to that end."

Nativism gained its name from the "Native American" parties of the 1840s and 1850s. In this context "Native" does not mean indigenous Americans or American Indians but rather those descended from the inhabitants of the original Thirteen Colonies. It impacted politics in the mid-19th century because of the large inflows of immigrants after 1845 from cultures that were different from the existing American culture. Nativists objected primarily to Irish Roman Catholics because of their loyalty to the Pope and also because of their supposed rejection of republicanism as an American ideal.

Nativist movements included the Know Nothing or American Party of the 1850s, the Immigration Restriction League of the 1890s, the anti-Asian movements in the West, resulting in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the "Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907" by which Japan's government stopped emigration to the United States. Labor unions were strong supporters of Chinese exclusion and limits on immigration, because of fears that they would lower wages and make it harder for workers to organize unions.

Historian Eric Kaufmann has suggested that American nativism has been explained primarily in psychological and economic terms due to the neglect of a crucial cultural and ethnic dimension. Furthermore, Kauffman claims that American nativism cannot be understood without reference to an American ethnic group which took shape prior to the large-scale immigration of the mid-eighteenth century.

Guardians of Liberty, 1943, by Bishop Alma White

Nativist outbursts occurred in the Northeast from the 1830s to the 1850s, primarily in response to a surge of Irish Catholic immigration. In 1836, Samuel Morse ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York City on a Nativist ticket, receiving 1,496 votes. In New York City, an Order of United Americans was founded as a nativist fraternity, following the Philadelphia Nativist Riots of the preceding spring and summer, in December, 1844.

The Nativists went public in 1854 when they formed the 'American Party', which was especially hostile to the immigration of Irish Catholics and campaigned for laws to require longer wait time between immigration and naturalization. (The laws never passed.) It was at this time that the term "nativist" first appears, opponents denounced them as "bigoted nativists." Former President Millard Fillmore ran on the American Party ticket for the Presidency in 1856. The American Party also included many ex-Whigs who ignored nativism, and included (in the South) a few Catholics whose families had long lived in America. Conversely, much of the opposition to Catholics came from Protestant Irish immigrants and German Lutheran immigrants who were not native at all and can hardly be called "nativists."

This form of nationalism is often identified with xenophobia and anti-Catholic sentiment (anti-Papism). In Charlestown, Massachusetts, a nativist mob attacked and burned down a Catholic convent in 1834 (no one was injured). In the 1840s, small scale riots between Catholics and nativists took place in several American cities. In Philadelphia in 1844, for example, a series of nativist assaults on Catholic churches and community centers resulted in the loss of lives and the professionalization of the police force. In Louisville, Kentucky, election-day rioters killed at least 22 people in attacks on German and Irish Catholics on Aug. 6, 1855, in what became known as "Bloody Monday."

The new Republican Party kept its nativist element quiet during the 1860s, since immigrants were urgently needed for the Union Army. Immigrants from England, Scotland and Scandinavia favored the Republicans during the Third Party System, 1854-1896, while others were usually Democratic. Hostility toward Asians was very strong from the 1860s to the 1940s. Nativism experienced a revival in the 1890s, led by Protestant Irish immigrants hostile to Catholic immigration, especially the American Protective Association.

Anti-German nativism

From the 1840s to 1920 German Americans were distrusted because of their separatist social structure, their German-language schools, their attachment to their native tongue over English, and their neutrality during World War I.

The Bennett Law caused a political uproar in Wisconsin in 1890, as the state government passed a law that threatened to close down hundreds of German-language elementary schools. Catholic and Lutheran Germans rallied to defeat Governor William D. Hoard. Hoard attacked German American culture and religion:

We must fight alienism and selfish ecclesiasticism.... The parents, the pastors and the church have entered into a conspiracy to darken the understanding of the children, who are denied by cupidity and bigotry the privilege of even the free schools of the state.

Hoard, a Republican, was defeated by the Democrats. A similar campaign in Illinois regarding the "Edwards Law" led to a Republican defeat there in 1890.

In 1917–1918, a wave of nativist sentiment led to the suppression of German cultural activities in the United States, Canada and Australia. There was little violence, but many places and streets had their names changed (The city of "Berlin" in Ontario was renamed "Kitchener" after a British hero), churches switched to English for their services, and German Americans were forced to buy war bonds to show their patriotism. In Australia thousands of Germans were put into internment camps.

Anti-Chinese nativism

In the 1870s in the western states Irish Americans targeted violence against Chinese workers, driving them out of smaller towns. Denis Kearney, an immigrant from Ireland, led a mass movement in San Francisco in the 1870s that incited attacks on the Chinese there and threatened public officials and railroad owners. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first of many nativist acts of Congress which attempted to limit the flow of immigrants into the U.S.. The Chinese responded to it by filing false claims of American birth, enabling thousands of them to immigrate to California. The exclusion of the Chinese caused the western railroads to begin importing Mexican railroad workers in greater numbers ("traqueros").

20th century

In the 1890s–1920s era nativists and labor unions campaigned for immigration restriction. A favorite plan was the literacy test to exclude workers who could not read or write their own foreign language. Congress passed literacy tests, but presidents—responding to business needs for workers—vetoed them. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge argued need for literacy tests and its implication on the new immigrants:

It is found, in the first place, that the illiteracy test will bear most heavily upon the Italians, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, and Asiatics, and lightly, or not at all, upon English-speaking emigrants, or Germans, Scandinavians, and French. In other words, the races most affected by the illiteracy test are those whose emigration to this country has begun within the last twenty years and swelled rapidly to enormous proportions, races with which the English speaking people have never hitherto assimilated, and who are most alien to the great body of the people of the United States.

Responding to these demands, opponents of the literacy test called for the establishment of an immigration commission to focus on immigration as a whole. The United States Immigration Commission, also known as the Dillingham Commission, was created and tasked with studying immigration and its effect on the United States. The findings of the commission further influenced immigration policy and upheld the concerns of the nativist movement.

Following World War I, nativists in the twenties focused their attention on Catholics, Jews, and south-eastern Europeans and realigned their beliefs behind racial and religious nativism. The racial concern of the anti-immigration movement was linked closely to the eugenics movement that was sweeping the United States in the twenties. Led by Madison Grant's book, The Passing of the Great Race nativists grew more concerned with the racial purity of the United States. In his book, Grant argued that the American racial stock was being diluted by the influx of new immigrants from the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the ghettos. The Passing of the Great Race reached wide popularity among Americans and influenced immigration policy in the twenties. In the 1920s a wide national consensus sharply restricted the overall inflow of immigrants, especially those from southern and eastern Europe. The second Ku Klux Klan, which flourished in the U.S. in the 1920s, used strong nativist rhetoric, but the Catholics led a counterattack.

After intense lobbying from the nativist movement the United States Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921. This bill was the first to place numerical quotas on immigration. It capped the inflow of immigrations to 357,803 for those arriving outside of the western hemisphere. However, this bill was only temporary as Congress began debating a more permanent bill.

The Emergency Quota Act was followed with the Immigration Act of 1924, a more permanent resolution. This law reduced the number of immigrants able to arrive from 357,803, the number established in the Emergency Quota Act, to 164,687. Though this bill did not fully restrict immigration, it considerably curbed the flow of immigration into the United States, especially from Southern and Eastern Europe. During the late twenties an average of 270,000 immigrants were allowed to arrive mainly because of the exemption of Canada and Latin American countries.

Fear of low-skilled immigrants flooding the labor market was an issue in the 1920s (focused on immigrants from Italy and Poland), and in the first decade of the 21st century (focused on immigrants from Mexico and Central America).

An immigration reductionism movement formed in the 1970s and continues to the present day. Prominent members often press for massive, sometimes total, reductions in immigration levels.

American nativist sentiment experienced a resurgence in the late 20th century, this time directed at undocumented workers, largely Mexican resulting in the passage of new penalties against illegal immigration in 1996.

Most immigration reductionists see Illegal immigration, principally from across the United States–Mexico border, as the more pressing concern. Authors such as Samuel Huntington have also seen recent Hispanic immigration as creating a national identity crisis and presenting insurmountable problems for US social institutions.

Noting the large-scale Mexican immigration in the Southwest, the Cold-war diplomat George F. Kennan in 2002 saw "unmistakable evidences of a growing differentiation between the cultures, respectively, of large southern and southwestern regions of this country, on the one hand", and those of "some northern regions". In the former, he warned:

the very culture of the bulk of the population of these regions will tend to be primarily Latin-American in nature rather than what is inherited from earlier American traditions ... Could it really be that there was so little of merit [in America] that it deserves to be recklessly trashed in favor of a polyglot mix-mash?

Mayers argues that Kennan represented the "tradition of militant nativism" that resembled or even exceeded the Know Nothings of the 1850s. Mayers adds that Kennan also believed American women had too much power.

21st century

By late 2014, the "Tea Party movement" had turned its focus away from economic issues, spending, and Obamacare, and towards President Barack Obama's immigration policies, which it saw as threatening to transform American society. It planned to defeat leading Republicans who supported immigration programs, such as Senator John McCain. A typical slogan appeared in the Tea Party Tribune: “Amnesty for Millions, Tyranny for All.” The New York Times reported:

What started five years ago as a groundswell of conservatives committed to curtailing the reach of the federal government, cutting the deficit and countering the Wall Street wing of the Republican Party has become a movement largely against immigration overhaul. The politicians, intellectual leaders and activists who consider themselves part of the Tea Party have redirected their energy from fiscal austerity and small government to stopping any changes that would legitimize people who are here illegally, either through granting them citizenship or legal status.

In his 2016 bid for presidency, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump has been accused of introducing nativist themes for his controversial stances on temporarily banning foreign Muslims from entering the United States and erecting a substantial wall between the US-Mexico border to halt illegal immigration. Journalist John Cassidy wrote in The New Yorker Trump is transforming the GOP into a populist, nativist party:

Trump has been drawing on a base of alienated white working-class and middle-class voters, seeking to remake the G.O.P. into a more populist, nativist, avowedly protectionist, and semi-isolationist party that is skeptical of immigration, free trade, and military interventionism.

Donald Brand, a professor of political science, argues:

Donald Trump’s nativism is a fundamental corruption of the founding principles of the Republican Party. Nativists champion the purported interests of American citizens over those of immigrants, justifying their hostility to immigrants by the use of derogatory stereotypes: Mexicans are rapists; Muslims are terrorists.

Language

Sticker sold in Colorado

American nativists have promoted English and deprecated the use of German and Spanish. English Only proponents in the late 20th century proposed an English Language Amendment (ELA), a Constitutional Amendment making English the official language of the United States, but it received limited political support.

Supremacism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Supremacism is an ideology which holds that a particular class of people is superior to others, and that it should dominate, control, and subjugate others, or is entitled to do so. The supposed superior class of people can be an age, race (classification of human beings) species, ethnicity, religion, gender (social construct), sexuality, language, social class, ideology, nation, or culture, or any other part of a population.

Sexual

Some feminist theorists have argued that in patriarchy, a standard of male supremacism is enforced through a variety of cultural, political, and interpersonal strategies. Since the 19th century there have been a number of feminist movements opposed to male supremacism, usually aimed at achieving equal legal rights and protections for women in all cultural, political and interpersonal relations.

Racial

Centuries of European colonialism in the Americas, Africa, Australia, Oceania, and Asia were justified by white supremacist attitudes. During the 19th century, the phrase "The White Man's Burden", referring to the thought that whites have the obligation to make the societies of the other peoples more 'civilized', was widely used to justify imperialist policy as a noble enterprise. Thomas Carlyle, known for his historical account of the French Revolution, The French Revolution: A History, which inspired Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities, argued that European supremacist policies were justified on the grounds they provided the greatest benefit to "inferior" native peoples. However, even at the time of its publication in 1849, Carlyle's main work on the subject, the Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, was received poorly by his contemporaries.

Before the American Civil War, the Confederate States of America was founded with a constitution that contained clauses restricting the government's ability to limit or interfere with the institution of "negro" slavery. In the Cornerstone Speech, Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens declared that one of the Confederacy's foundational tenets was white supremacy over black slaves. Following the war, a secret society, the Ku Klux Klan, was formed in the South. Its purpose was to "restore" white supremacy after the Reconstruction period, even though there still was white, Protestant supremacy in the United States, at the time. The group preached supremacy over all other races, as well as supremacy over Jews, Catholics, and other minorities.

Cornel West, an African-American philosopher, writes that Black supremacist religious views arose in America as part of black Muslim theology in response to white supremacism.

During the early 20th century until the end of World War II, known as the pre-1945 Shōwa era, in Japan, the propaganda of the Empire of Japan used the old concept of hakko ichiu to support the idea that the Yamato were a superior race, destined to rule Asia and the Pacific. Many documents, such as Kokutai no Hongi, Shinmin no Michi, and An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus, discussed this concept of Japanese supremacy.

In Africa, black Southern Sudanese allege that they are subjected to a racist form of Arab supremacy, which they equate with the historic white supremacism of South African apartheid. The alleged genocide in the ongoing War in Darfur has been described as an example of Arab racism.

In Asia, ancient Indians considered all foreigners as barbarians. The Muslim scholar Al-Biruni wrote that the Indians called foreigners impure. A few centuries later, Dubois observes that "Hindus look upon Europeans as barbarians totally ignorant of all principles of honour and good breeding... In the eyes of a Hindu, a Pariah (outcaste) and a European are on the same level." The Chinese viewed the Europeans as repulsive, ghost-like creatures, and even devils. The Chinese writers also referred to the Europeans as barbarians.

Germany

From 1933–1945, Nazi Germany, under the rule of Adolf Hitler, promoted the idea of a superior, Aryan Herrenvolk, or master race. The state's propaganda advocated the belief that Germanic peoples, whom they called "Aryans", were a master race or a Herrenvolk that was superior to the Jews, Slavs, and Romani people, so-called "gypsies". Arthur de Gobineau, a French racial theorist and aristocrat, blamed the fall of the ancien régime in France on racial intermixing, which he argued had destroyed the purity of the Nordic race. Gobineau's theories, which attracted a strong following in Germany, emphasized the existence of an irreconcilable polarity between Aryan and Jewish cultures.

Religious

Christian

Some academics and writers claim that Christian supremacism was a motivation for the Crusades in the Holy Land, as well as for crusades against Muslims and pagans throughout Europe. The Atlantic slave trade has been attributed in part to Christian supremacism as well. The Ku Klux Klan has been described as a white supremacist Christian organization, as are many other white supremacist groups, such as the Posse Comitatus and the Christian Identity and Positive Christianity movements.

Muslim

Some academics and writers also allege Muslim or Islamic supremacism. Others claim that the Qur'an and other Islamic documents always speak of tolerant, protective beliefs, which have been misused, misquoted, and misinterpreted by both Islamic extremists and Islamophobes. Examples of how supremacists have exploited the name of Islam include the Muslim participation in the African slave trade, the early 20th century pan-Islamism promoted by Abdul Hamid II, the jizya and rules of marriage in Muslim countries being imposed on non-Muslims, the majority Muslim interpretations of the rules of pluralism in Malaysia, and "defensive" supremacism practiced by some Muslim immigrants in Europe. Some writers posit that Islam, unlike other religions, positively commands its adherents to impose its religious law on all peoples, believers and unbelievers alike, whenever possible and by any means necessary.

Jewish

Some academics and writers allege Jewish supremacism, often in relation to Israel and Zionism. Author Minna Rozen writes that 17th century Jews who lived in Jerusalem were supremacist in their views that they were superior over other Jews. Ilan Pappé, an Israeli historian, writes that the First Aliyah to Israel "established a society based on Jewish supremacy." Joseph Massad, a Professor of Arab Studies, holds that "Jewish supremacism" always has been a "dominating principle" in religious and secular Zionism. The Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center condemn writings about "Jewish Supremacism" by Holocaust-denier, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, and conspiracy theorist, David Duke, as antisemitic – in particular, his book: Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question. Kevin B. MacDonald, known for his theory of Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy", has also been accused by the ADL and his own university psychology department of being "antisemitic" and white supremacist in his writings on the subject. However, prominent rabbis have, in fact, explicitly made claims regarding purported Jewish superiority.

Sectarianism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sectarian battle between the Sunni Ottoman and Shia Safavid empire at the Battle of Chaldiran, 1514.

Sectarianism is a form of bigotry, discrimination, or hatred arising from attaching relations of inferiority and superiority to differences between subdivisions within a group. Common examples are denominations of a religion, ethnic identity, class, or region for citizens of a state and factions of a political movement.

The ideological underpinnings of attitudes and behaviours labelled as sectarian are extraordinarily varied. Members of a religious, national or political group may believe that their own salvation, or the success of their particular objectives, requires aggressively seeking converts from other groups; adherents of a given faction may believe that for the achievement of their own political or religious project their internal opponents must be converted or purged.

Sometimes a group that is under economic or political pressure will kill or attack members of another group which it regards as responsible for its own decline. It may also more rigidly define the definition of orthodox belief within its particular group or organization, and expel or excommunicate those who do not support this new found clarified definition of political or religious orthodoxy. In other cases, dissenters from this orthodoxy will secede from the orthodox organisation and proclaim themselves as practitioners of a reformed belief system, or holders of a perceived former orthodoxy. At other times, sectarianism may be the expression of a group's nationalistic or cultural ambitions, or exploited by demagogues.

The phrase "sectarian conflict" usually refers to violent conflict along religious or political lines such as the conflicts between Nationalists and Unionists in Northern Ireland (religious and class-divisions may play major roles as well). It may also refer to general philosophical, political disparity between different schools of thought such as that between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Non-sectarians espouse that free association and tolerance of different beliefs are the cornerstone to successful peaceful human interaction. They espouse political and religious pluralism.

While sectarianism is often labelled as 'religious' and/ or 'political', the reality of a sectarian situation is usually much more complex. In its most basic form sectarianism has been defined as, 'the existence, within a locality, of two or more divided and actively competing communal identities, resulting in a strong sense of dualism which unremittingly transcends commonality, and is both culturally and physically manifest.'

Religious sectarianism

In 1871, New York's Orange Riots were incited by Irish Protestants. 63 citizens, mostly Irish Catholics, were massacred in the resulting police-action.

Wherever people of different religions live in close proximity to each other, religious sectarianism can often be found in varying forms and degrees. In some areas, religious sectarians (for example Protestant and Catholic Christians) now exist peacefully side-by-side for the most part, although these differences have resulted in violence, death, and outright warfare as recently as the 1990s. Probably the best-known example in recent times were The Troubles.

Catholic-Protestant sectarianism has also been a factor in U.S. presidential campaigns. Prior to John F. Kennedy, only one Catholic (Al Smith) had ever been a major party presidential nominee, and he had been solidly defeated largely because of claims based on his Catholicism. JFK chose to tackle the sectarian issue head-on during the West Virginia primary, but that only sufficed to win him barely enough Protestant votes to eventually win the presidency by one of the narrowest margins ever.

Within Islam, there has been conflict at various periods between Sunnis and Shias; Shi'ites consider Sunnis to be damned, due to their refusal to accept the first Caliph as Ali and accept all following descendants of him as infallible and divinely guided. Many Sunni religious leaders, including those inspired by Wahhabism and other ideologies have declared Shias to be heretics or apostates.

Europe

Painting of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, an event in the French Wars of Religion

Long before the Reformation, dating back to the 12th century, there has been sectarian conflict of varying intensity in Ireland. This sectarianism is connected to a degree with nationalism. This has been particularly intense in Northern Ireland since the early 17th century plantation of Ulster under James I, with its religious and denominational sectarian tensions lasting to the present day in some forms. This has translated to parts of Great Britain, most notably Liverpool, and the West of Scotland, the latter being very close geographically to Northern Ireland, and where some fans of the two best-known football clubs, Celtic (long been affiliated with Catholics) and Rangers (long affiliated with Protestants), indulge in provocative and sectarian behaviour.

Historically, some Catholic countries once persecuted Protestants as heretics. For example, the substantial Protestant population of France (the Huguenots) was expelled from the kingdom in the 1680s following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In Spain, the Inquisition sought to root out crypto-Jews but also crypto-Muslims (moriscos); elsewhere the Papal Inquisition held similar goals.

In most places where Protestantism is the majority or "official" religion, there have been examples of Catholics being persecuted. In countries where the Reformation was successful, this often lay in the perception that Catholics retained allegiance to a 'foreign' power (the Papacy or the Vatican), causing them to be regarded with suspicion. Sometimes this mistrust manifested itself in Catholics being subjected to restrictions and discrimination, which itself led to further conflict. For example, before Catholic Emancipation was introduced with the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, Catholics were forbidden from voting, becoming MP's or buying land in Ireland.

Ireland was deeply scarred by religious sectarianism following the Protestant Reformation as tensions between the native Catholic Irish and Protestant settlers from Britain led to massacres and attempts at ethnic cleaning by both sides during the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the Home Rule Crisis of 1912. The invasion of Ireland by English parliamentarian forces under Oliver Cromwell in 1659 was notoriously brutal and witnessed the widespread ethnic cleansing of the native Irish. The failure of the Rebellion of 1798, which sought to unite Protestants and Catholics for an independent Ireland, helped cause more sectarian violence in the island, most infamously the Scullabogue Barn massacre, in which Protestants were burned alive in County Wexford. The British response, which included the public executions of dozens of suspected rebels in Dunlavin and Carnew, along with other violence perpetrated by all sides, ended the hope that Protestants and Catholics could work together for Ireland.

After the Partition of Ireland in 1922, Northern Ireland witnessed decades of intensified conflict, tension, and sporadic violence between the dominant Protestant majority and the Catholic minority, which in 1969 finally erupted into 25 years of violence known as “The Troubles” between Irish Republicans whose goal is a United Ireland and Ulster loyalists who wish for Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom. The conflict was primarily fought over the existence of the Northern Irish state rather than religion, though sectarian relations within Northern Ireland fueled the conflict. However, religion is commonly used as a marker to differentiate the two sides of the community. The Catholic minority primarily favour the nationalist, and to some degree, republican, goal of unity with the Republic of Ireland, while the Protestant majority favour Northern Ireland continuing the union with Great Britain.

The sack of Magdeburg by Catholic army in 1631. Of the 30,000 Protestant citizens, only 5,000 survived.

Northern Ireland has introduced a Private Day of Reflection, since 2007, to mark the transition to a post-[sectarian] conflict society, an initiative of the cross-community Healing through Remembering organisation and research project.

The civil wars in the Balkans which followed the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s have been heavily tinged with sectarianism. Croats and Slovenes have traditionally been Catholic, Serbs and Macedonians Eastern Orthodox, and Bosniaks and most Albanians Muslim. Religious affiliation served as a marker of group identity in this conflict, despite relatively low rates of religious practice and belief among these various groups after decades of communism.

Africa

Over 1,000 Muslims and Christians were killed in the sectarian violence in the Central African Republic in 2013–2014. Nearly 1 million people, a quarter of the population, were displaced.

Australia

Sectarianism in Australia was a historical legacy from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, between Catholics of mainly Celtic heritage and Protestants of mainly English descent. It has largely disappeared in the 21st century. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, religious tensions are more centered on Muslim immigrants amid the backdrop of Salafist or Islamist terrorism.

Asia

Battle of rival ascetics in 1567. Hindu-Muslim conflicts provoked the creation of a military order of Hindu ascetics in India.

Pakistan

Pakistan, one of the largest Muslim countries the world, has seen serious Shia-Sunni sectarian violence. Almost 80 - 85 of Pakistan's Muslim population is Sunni, and another 10 - 20% are Shia. However, this Shia minority forms the second largest Shia population of any country, larger than the Shia majority in Iraq.
In the last two decades, as many as 4,000 people are estimated to have died in sectarian fighting in Pakistan, 300 in 2006. Among the culprits blamed for the killing are Al Qaeda working "with local sectarian groups" to kill what they perceive as Shi'a apostates.

Sri Lanka

Most Muslims in Sri Lanka are Sunnis. There are a few Shia Muslims too from the relatively small trading community of Bohras. Divisiveness is not a new phenomenon to Beruwala. Sunni Muslims in the Kalutara district are split in two different sub groups. One group, known as the Alaviya sect, historically holds its annual feast at the Ketchimalai mosque located on the palm fringed promontory adjoining the fisheries harbour in Beruwala.

It is a microcosm of the Muslim identity in many ways. The Galle Road that hugs the coast from Colombo veers inland just ahead of the town and forms the divide. On the left of the road lies China Fort, the area where some of the wealthiest among Sri Lankans Muslims live. The palatial houses with all modern conveniences could outdo if not equal those in the Colombo 7 sector. Most of the wealthy Muslims, gem dealers, even have a home in the capital, not to mention property.

Strict Wahabis believe that all those who do not practise their form of religion are heathens and enemies. There are others who say Wahabism's rigidity has led it to misinterpret and distort Islam, pointing to the Taliban as well as Osama bin Laden. What has caused concern in intelligence and security circles is the manifestation of this new phenomenon in Beruwala. It had earlier seen its emergence in the east.

Middle East

The Al-Askari Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, after the first attack by Wahhabi affiliated Al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2006

Ottoman Empire

Sultan Selim the Grim, regarding the Shia Qizilbash as heretics, reportedly proclaimed that "the killing of one Shiite had as much otherworldly reward as killing 70 Christians." In 1511, a pro-Shia revolt known as Şahkulu Rebellion was brutally suppressed by the Ottomans: 40,000 were massacred on the order of the sultan.

Iraq

Sunni Iraqi insurgency and foreign Sunni terrorist organizations who came to Iraq after the fall of Saddam have targeted Shia civilians in sectarian attacks. Following the civil war, the Sunnis have complained of supposed discrimination by Iraq's Shia majority government, which is bolstered by the news that Sunni detainees were allegedly discovered to have been tortured in a compound used by government forces on November 15, 2005. This sectarianism has fueled a giant level of emigration and internal displacement.

However, the Shia majority oppression by the Sunni minority has a long history in Iraq, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the British imposed upon Iraq a rule of Sunni Hashemite monarchy that suppressed various uprisings against its rule by the Christian Assyrians, Kurds, Yazidis and Shi'ites. After the monarchy's overthrow, Iraq was ruled by the de jure secular Baathist Party, while de facto a minority Sunni absolute rule that heavily persecuted the Shia majority. Since 2003, Shi'ite majority first time since ever gained any say in the government, however at the price of being a constant terrorist target by the Sunni minority that can't accept multireligious, plural and democratic state.

Syria

Wounded civilians arrive at a hospital in Aleppo

Sectarianism has been described as a characteristic feature of the Syrian civil war. The sharpest split is between the ruling minority Alawite sect, a Shiite Muslim offshoot, and the country's Sunni Muslim majority.

Saudi Arabia

The Saudi government has often been viewed as an active oppressor of Shia Muslims because of the funding of the Wahabbi ideology which denounces the Shia faith. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi ambassador to the United States, stated: "The time is not far off in the Middle East when it will be literally 'God help the Shia'. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them."

According to The New York Times, "The documents from Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry illustrate a near obsession with Iran, with diplomats in Africa, Asia and Europe monitoring Iranian activities in minute detail and top government agencies plotting moves to limit the spread of Shiite Islam."

On March 25, 2015, Saudi Arabia, spearheading a coalition of Sunni Muslim states, started a military intervention in Yemen against the Shia Houthis.

As of 2015, Saudi Arabia is openly supporting the Army of Conquest, an umbrella group of anti-government forces fighting in the Syrian Civil War that reportedly includes an al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front and another Salafi coalition known as Ahrar al-Sham.

In January 2016, Saudi Arabia executed the prominent Saudi Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

Lebanon

Overview

Sectarianism in Lebanon has been formalized and legalized within state and non-state institutions and is inscribed in its constitution. The foundations of sectarianism in Lebanon date back to the mid-19th century during Ottoman rule. It was subsequently reinforced with the creation of the Republic of Lebanon in 1920 and its 1926 constitution, and in the National Pact of 1943. In 1990, with the Taif Agreement, the constitution was revised but did not structurally change aspects relating to political sectarianism. The dynamic nature of sectarianism in Lebanon has prompted some historians and authors to refer to it as "the sectarian state par excellence" because it is an amalgam of religious communities and their myriad sub-divisions, with a constitutional and political order to match.

Historical background

According to various historians, sectarianism in Lebanon is not simply an inherent phenomena between the various religious communities there. Rather, historians have argued that the origins of sectarianism lay at the "intersection of nineteenth-century European colonialism and Ottoman modernization". The symbiosis of Ottoman modernization (through a variety of reforms) and indigenous traditions and practices became paramount in reshaping the political self-definition of each community along religious lines. The Ottoman reform movement launched in 1839 and the growing European presence in the Middle East subsequently led to the disintegration of the traditional Lebanese social order based on a hierarchy that bridged religious differences. Nineteenth-century Mount Lebanon was host to competing armies and ideologies and for "totally contradictory interpretations of the meaning of reform" (i.e. Ottoman or European). This fluidity over reform created the necessary conditions for sectarianism to rise as a "reflection of fractured identities" pulled between enticements and coercions of Ottoman and European power. As such, the Lebanese encounter with European colonization altered the meaning of religion in the multi-confessional society because it "emphasized sectarian identity as the only viable marker of political reform and the only authentic basis for political claims." As such, during both Ottoman rule and later during the French Mandate, religious identities were deliberately mobilized for political and social reasons.

The Lebanese political system

Lebanon gained independence on 22 November 1943. Shortly thereafter, the National Pact was agreed upon and established the political foundations of modern Lebanon and laid the foundations of a sectarian power-sharing system (also known as confessionalism) based on the 1932 census. The 1932 census is the only official census conducted in Lebanon: with a total population of 1,046,164 persons, Maronites made up 33.57%, Sunnis made up 18.57% and Shiites made up 15.92% (with several other denominations making up the remainder). The National Pact served to reinforce the sectarian system that had begun under the French Mandate, by formalizing the confessional distribution of the highest public offices and top administrative ranks according to the proportional distribution of the dominant sects within the population. Because the census showed a slight Christian dominance over Muslims, seats in the Chamber of Deputies (parliament) were distributed by a six-to-five ratio favoring Christians over Muslims. This ratio was to be applied to all highest-level public and administrative offices, such as ministers and directors. Furthermore, it was agreed that the President of the Republic would be a Maronite Christian; the Premier of the Council of Ministers would be a Sunni Muslim; the President of the National Assembly would be a Shiite Muslim; and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament a Greek Orthodox Christian.

The Lebanese Civil War, 1975–1990

During the three decades following independence from the French Mandate, "various internal tensions inherent to the Lebanese system and multiple regional developments collectively contributed to the breakdown of governmental authority and the outbreak of civil strife in 1975”. According to Makdisi, sectarianism reached its peak during the civil war that lasted from 1975–1990. The militia politics that gripped Lebanon during the civil war represents another form of popular mobilization along sectarian lines against the elite-dominated Lebanese state.

Christians began setting up armed militias what they “saw as an attempt by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to seize Lebanon – those militias would be united under the Lebanese Forces umbrella in 1976”. Lebanese Sunni groups splintered into armed factions as well, competing against one another and against the Christian militias. The beginning of the Lebanese Civil War dates to 1975, when a Maronite militia opened fire on a bus full of civilians in response to an assassination attempt of a Maronite leader by PLO-affiliated Muslims. On May 31, seven weeks after fighting began between militias, Beirut witnessed its first sectarian massacre in which "unarmed civilians were killed simply on the grounds of their religion."

Syria entered the conflict in June 1976, in order to avoid a PLO takeover of Lebanon – Syria’s entry into the war resulted in a de facto division of the country into zones controlled by Syria, the PLO, and Maronite militias. Shi’a militias were also created, including the formation of Amal in the late 1970s and later when some Amal militants decided to create a more religious Shi’a militia known as Hezbollah (Party of God).

The Lebanese Civil War became a regional dilemma when Israel invaded in 1982 with two avowed aims: destroy the PLO military infrastructure and secure its northern frontier. In March 1989, Prime Minister (and Acting President) General Michel Aoun launched a “liberation war” against the Syrian army with the backing of the PLO and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. In doing so, General Aoun internationalized the Lebanese crisis by “emphasized the destructive role of the Syrian army in the country”. His decision resulted in multilateral negotiations as well as efforts to strengthen the role of the UN. By 1983, what had begun as an internal war between Lebanese factions had become a regional conflict that drew in Syria, Israel, Iran, Europe and the United States directly - with Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and the Soviet Union involved indirectly by providing financial support and weaponry to different militias.

After fifteen years of war, at least 100,000 Lebanese were dead, tens of thousands had emigrated abroad, and an estimated 900,000 civilians were internally displaced.

The Taif Agreement

After twenty-two days of discussions and negotiations, the surviving members of the 1972 parliament reached an agreement to end the Civil War on October 22, 1989. The Taif Agreement reconfigured the political power-sharing formula that formed that basis of government in Lebanon under the National Pact of 1943. As noted by Eugene Rogan, "the terms of Lebanon's political re-construction, enshrined in the Taif [Agreement], preserved many of the elements of the confessional system set up in the National Pact but modified the structure to reflect the demographic realities of modern Lebanon." As such, several key provisions of the National Pact were changed including: it relocated most presidential powers in favor of Parliament and the Council of Ministers and, as such, the Maronite Christian President lost most of his executive powers and only retained symbolic roles; it redistributed important public offices, including those of Parliament, Council of Ministers, general directors, and grade-one posts evenly between Muslims and Christians thereby upsetting the traditional ratio of six to five that favored Christians under the National Pact; it “recognized the chronic instability of confessionalism and called for devising a national strategy for its political demise. It required the formation of a national committee to examine ways to achieve deconfessionalization and the formation of a non-confessional Parliament," which has not yet been implemented to date and it required the disarmament of all Lebanese militias; however, Hezbollah was allowed to retain its militant wing as a “resistance force” in recognition of its fight against Israel in the South.

Spillover from the Syrian conflict

The Syrian conflict which began in 2011 when clashes began between the Assad government and opposition forces has had a profound effect on sectarian dynamics within Lebanon. In November 2013, the United States Institute of Peace published a Peace Brief in which Joseph Bahout assesses how the Syrian crisis has influenced Lebanon’s sectarian and political dynamics. Bahout argues that the Syrian turmoil is intensifying Sunni-Shia tensions on two levels: “symbolic and identity-based on the one hand, and geopolitical or interest based, on the other hand." Syria’s conflict has profoundly changed mechanisms of inter-sectarian mobilization in Lebanon: interest-based and “political” modes of mobilization are being transformed into identity-based and “religious” modes. Bahout notes that this shift is likely due to how these communities are increasingly perceiving themselves as defending not only their share of resources and power, but also their very survival. As the conflict grows more intense, the more the sectarian competition is internalized and viewed as a zero-sum game. Perceptions of existential threat exist among both the Shiite and Sunni communities throughout Lebanon: the continuation of the Syrian conflict will likely increase these perceptions over time and cause terrorism.

There are notable divisions within the Lebanese community along sectarian lines regarding the Syrian Civil War. The Shi'ite militant and political organization Hezbollah and its supporters back the Assad government, while many of the country's Sunni communities back the opposition forces. These tensions have played out in clashes between Sunnis and Shi'ites within Lebanon, resulting in clashes and deaths. For instance, clashes in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon left three dead when fighting broke out between Assad supporters and opponents.

The largest concentration of Syrian refugees, close to one million people as of April 2014, can be found in Lebanon and has resulted in a population increase by about a quarter. According to the United Nations, the massive influx of refugees threatens to upset the “already fragile demographic balance between Shi’ites, Sunnis, Druze, and Christians.” The Lebanese government faces major challenges for handling the refugee influx, which has strained public infrastructure as Syrians seek housing, food, and healthcare at a time of economic slowdown in Lebanon.

Political sectarianism

In the political realm, to describe a group as "sectarian" (or as practising "sectarianism") is to accuse them of prioritizing differences and rivalries with politically close groups. An example might be a capitalist group who are accused of devoting an excessive amount of time and energy to denouncing other capitalist groups rather than their common foes.