The Shiite Alternative: What If We Are Starting from the Wrong Place?

There is an idea that is becoming almost axiomatic in Lebanese political life today. Whenever the discussion turns to restoring the state, the future of Hezbollah, or rebuilding the national balance, the debate sooner or later comes back to the same question: how do we build an independent Shiite political dynamic?

It is difficult to challenge this question. It seems logical, even self-evident. Any national project naturally needs an independent Shiite presence, and the monopoly of any single force over the representation of an entire community must come to an end. But the most dangerous ideas are not those that appear to be wrong. They are those that seem so self-evident that we stop questioning them.

What if the question itself is the problem?

What if the path to the state does not run through the construction of an independent Shiite political dynamic, but precisely the other way around? What if such a dynamic, with all the diversity and autonomy it represents, is not the starting point but one of the natural outcomes of a genuinely successful national project?

When the priority becomes cultivating Shiite political figures, bringing them together, investing in them, or turning them into the emblem of this new phase, the center of gravity shifts, almost without our noticing, from the state to the community. Politics once again becomes an attempt to rearrange balances within a single community rather than to redefine the relationship between all Lebanese citizens and their state.

This is where a paradox worth considering emerges.

We say that we want to move beyond the sectarian system, yet we begin our political project from within a community. We say that we want to build a state of citizens, yet we begin by searching for representatives of the various communities. We say that we want to free the Lebanese from the logic of communal identities, yet we ask each community to produce its new representative before the national project has even begun.

This contradiction may not be intentional, but it deserves reconsideration.

Hezbollah did not become what it is simply because it monopolized the political representation of the Shiite community. Over the course of decades, it built an integrated system of military power, social services, institutions, religious narrative, and regional ties. Such a system cannot be confronted by creating another, more moderate sectarian system. It must be confronted by building a state that becomes the natural point of reference for security, services, the economy, justice, and belonging.

The question, therefore, is not whether we need independent Shiite figures. We certainly do. The question is: where do we place them?

At the heart of a new Shiite project? Or at the heart of a new Lebanese project?

The difference between these two options is not merely formal. In the first, these figures are made responsible for transforming an entire community, a burden no one can bear. In the second, they become partners in building a national space capable of attracting all Lebanese, including Shiites.

Perhaps this is where the most common mistake in approaching this new phase lies. Instead of investing in the environment that produces leaders, we invest in the leaders themselves. Instead of building institutions, organizations, local networks, universities, trade unions, and municipalities, we search for faces that might somehow embody all this long and arduous work.

But politics does not work that way.

Leaders are not the starting point of political projects. They are one of their outcomes. Unless there is an environment that gives them legitimacy and the capacity to endure, these figures will remain without a base commensurate with their stature, without the tools to match their ambitions, and without the ability to deliver the results expected of them.

The most pressing question, then, is no longer: how do we build an independent Shiite political dynamic?

The more important question is: how do we build a national project that the Shiite citizen, just like the Sunni, Christian, or Druze citizen, can see as their natural political home?

Once we succeed in doing that, we will no longer need to manufacture Shiite political figures. They will emerge on their own.