A few observations

Submitted by BB King (United States), Nov 1, 2011 at 00:46

Lebanon like Israel has a parallel court system i.e., civil courts and religious courts. There are a total of four main court systems in Lebanon: Judicial, Administrative, Military and Religious. So if a Lebanese citizen doesn't like the religious court system there are other options. I don't know why you believe that inter-faith couples upon returning to Lebanon they will be persecuted, seeing as that there are many apostates in Lebanon including atheists and agnostics who practically make up the bulk of the communist party hence, atheism is tolerated. Even the Muslim apostate Ibn Warraq finds that Lebanon objected to the Islamic law of apostasy and accepted people fleeing persecution for changing their religions within its territory (http://www.iheu.org/node/1541). Read around the 11^th paragraph for info on Lebanon. The Lebanese Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion and Lebanon does not recognize Sharia or Islam as the state law or state religion.

In regards to your query regarding the number of inter-faith marriage statistics you are asking me to do the impossible. Lebanon has not had an official census since 1934 so the statistics only exist in govt. records, which I have no access to. What I can provide you is this. In 2009 523 inter-faith Lebanese couples were married in Cyprus as were 1,533 inter-faith Israeli couples (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-10-18-cyprus-weddings_N.htm)

But since you love statistics here is one that will surprise you. Lebanon ranked first in the Middle East in guaranteeing civil rights to its citizens. (http://www.thenational.ae/thenational/news/uae-news/courts/uae-justice-system-ranked-above-us-in-annual-index). The report on Lebanon starts on paragraph 9 the preceding paragraphs are about UAE.

You also implied that I love sharia law. That's not true! I am an atheist and a secularist. If I loved sharia I would've moved to a sharia-law abiding nation.

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