Living with institutionalised Islam : a case study of Southern suburbs of Beirut.

Abstract

This thesis is a study of how Shia Muslims relate to Islam in its institutionalised form. I do an ethnographic study of life around mujammaʿ al-Qaim, which is located in the southern suburbs of Beirut popularly referred to as Dahiya. By analysing Hizbollah as both a state and non-state actor, I study how spaces like al-Qaim come to institutionalise Islam. In doing so, I locate Hizbollah and by extension al-Qaim on the margins of the modern Lebanese nation-state. Building and complicating the work done by Naveeda Khan on the neighbourhood mosques of Pakistan, I study the aspirations and scepticisms pious Shia share with spaces like al-Qaim. The ethnographic vignettes share life trajectories of peoples who aspire, are sceptical, and share an open-ended relationship with Hizbollah through spaces like al-Qaim.