A Portrait of Jnoud El Rab: A Case of Religious Extremism in Lebanon

Abstract

In the past three years, Lebanon have witnessed the emergence of Jnoud El Rab, a group portrayed by media and some individuals as an extremist Christian group due to their actions and statements against Syrian and Palestinian refugees, and individuals who do not follow the true Christian faith, and other groups like the LGBTQ community. The recent literature shows that religious extremism is a multi-layered perpetuated by political, global, social, individual, and religious levels. Religious extremism in Lebanon has been studied through related to the state’s weakness and salient sectarian identities. There has not been a comprehensive recent literature on the emergence of Christian extremism in Lebanon or on the emergence of Jnoud El Rab. Therefore, in my thesis, I attempted to draw a portrait of Jnoud El Rab and identified the factors that qualify them as a religious extremist group based on the literature. In my research questions, I have conducted in depth interviews with two members of the group as well as undertaken a discourse analysis of the content on their Facebook and YouTube pages. Studying Jnoud El Rab and situating them into the literature of religious extremism will not only allow us to improve our understanding of the dynamics of the group but also to broaden our understanding of Christian religious extremism in a country like Lebanon