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20130715 the Lawyer of the Cedars Mallat Intv Shiawatch # 23 ShiaWatch Issue 023 I July 15, 2013 Alerts, News and Background from Lebanon [A Hayya Bina project] Edited by Inga Schei and Lokman Slim The Lawyer of the Cedars An Interview with Chibli Mallat In its reports, ShiaWatch strives to highlight stories and opinions typically missed or ignored by mainstream media outlets. Despite adopting a Shia centric perspective, we have rediscovered that the word "Shia" is much more complicated than it first appears. Likewise, the community’s stakeholders are remarkably diverse. One individual who exemplifies this unique multiplicity, Chibli Mallat, is among Lebanon's top legal experts and civil society activists. Mr. Mallat is the son of lawyer Wajdi Mallat, who served as the first president of the Lebanese constitutional council and was named for his grandfather, who was known as "the Poet of the Cedars." Mr. Mallat began to advocate human rights during Lebanon's war-torn 1980s, and he received his PhD from the law department of the renowned School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Dr. Chibli Mallat received his PhD from the law Since then, he has held positions at a number of international department of the School for Oriental Studies in London and has been a leading civil society activist universities, including the University of Virginia, Princeton, in Lebanon and the Middle East region for roughly 30 Harvard and the University of Lyon. Locally, he has been a faculty years. He currently holds the Presidential Chair for member at institutions such as Université Saint Joseph and the Middle Eastern Law and Politics at the University of Utah and the EU Jean Monnet Chair of European Islamic University of Lebanon. Rather than maintaining a focus Law at Saint Joseph University in Lebanon. on developments occurring within his own sectarian community, Mr. Mallat's earliest academic works identify him as having an interest in far-reaching Lebanese issues. For instance, he earned a reputation within the country’s Shia milieu for the attention he paid to the changes which affected that community, particularly when such developments were considered exclusively Shia in nature. His 1993 book, "The Renewal of Islamic Law: Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr, Najaf, and the Shi’I International," which received the prestigious Albert Hourani award for excellence in Middle Eastern Studies publications, is a brilliant illustration of Mr. Mallat's early emphasis on the Shia community. It also distinguished him as someone capable of exerting substantial influence on the development of political Islam in the pan-Shia community. Aside from his academic interest in Shia issues, Mr. Mallat has accumulated a sizeable registry of legal cases involving the Shia community at large. Of note, Mr. Mallat has brought to trial a number of high- profile cases since the early 2000s, including one against the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and another against the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi (which focused on the 1978 disappearance of Lebanese Shia cleric Imam Musa as-Sadr). In addition to his vast legal work, Mr. Mallat joined the race to unseat former President Emile Lahhoud due to [email protected] I www.shiawatch.com Mr. Lahhoud's "novel" three-year extension of his mandate. Mr. Mallat's campaign, which focused on redressing the clearly illegal nature of that extension, was cut short only by the July 2006 war. Yet, Mr. Mallat’s extensive list of qualifications does not identify him as being preoccupied with attaining political power and support. Rather, they showcase an individual who has always pushed Lebanon to respect and uphold its democratic foundations. Importantly, as Lebanon becomes increasingly interconnected, Mr. Mallat is the perfect example of an intellectual and legal professional who eschews limited insight. Instead, he has developed a keen sense of the events occurring around him—events not restricted to his own community. The following is the text of a brief interview about Mr. Mallat's achievements, the work with which he is currently involved and his vision for Lebanon. Your career is certainly international, considering more secure basis for my family and myself. you received your PhD from London University’s The outcome was a matter of luck, mostly, School of Oriental and African Studies and have held positions as a lecturer and professor in a number of and hard work, of course, but Lebanon US and European universities. How did your early gave me a cultural basis, which made experiences in Lebanon impact your work as a legal things so much easier. In France, where expert in these countries? Conversely, did your time abroad influence your attitude about the Lebanese I completed my last year of high school, political and judicial systems? I felt at home in the culture, as did many Lebanese. Much later, in the UK and the Although Lebanon is a small country, it is US, my ability to discuss Shakespeare with a wonderful laboratory for cultures and colleagues enabled me to overcome barriers languages. To my knowledge, it remains the that would otherwise have taken me a very only place on the planet where Arabic, French long time to surmount. So, I am grateful to and English interact at a cultural level, and Lebanon—and my parents, who encouraged where the critical mass of linguistic actors my cosmopolitanism—for providing such produces more than just convenience for an extraordinary platform for cultural business or an expat intellectual community. adaptability. There was certainly a heavy But the Lebanese are more than mere price associated with that instability, not to polyglots. Many function culturally in those mention the world's loss of my generation three languages, so despite its insecurity and Lebanon's inability to profit from it. and lack of political integration, Beirut’s cosmopolitan nature makes it an attractive The reverse influence is no less special: I often destination for visitors from the East and advise students to take every opportunity to West. I grew up in that cosmopolitan look at the world from different geographical Beirut before it experienced the civil war perspectives. In France, where I was inferno, and I cherish my internationalism; suddenly thrown into a world in which it is not something that is superficial in Foucault, Althusser and Deleuze are read the country. Naturally, that characteristic and discussed, I realized the antiquated helped me adapt to places where people nature of our Beirut-based study of French like me were forced by the conflict to take culture, with its obsession for conservative refuge, whether temporarily or for the long classics. Similarly, when I arrived in DC for term. Reviewing the five decades of my life, I the first time in the summer of 1982 to start recognize a pattern: I never left the country my LLM, it took me two days to comprehend permanently, but I needed to be away, how insignificant Lebanon was, despite its sometimes for a long while, to establish a being in the midst of the Israeli invasion. [email protected] 2I www.shiawatch.com The masthead from the "Chibli Mallat for President" website launched in 2005. As Mr. Mallat remarked in this interview, his campaign focused on redressing the clearly illegal nature of the three-year extension to former President Emile Lahhoud’s mandate. Lebanon's sclerotic political system, with the papers—in an an-Nahar op-ed I sent from its dysfunctional sectarianism, appears quite Australia, no less—on the eve of the three- odd in a country where the "ethnolysis" year extension. The disaster followed soon (a word coined by French writer Robert after when resistance to the aspiring dictator Fossaert) produced sufficient commonalty persisted, and Marwan Hamade and then between "ethnies" (sects in Lebanon) to foster Rafik Hariri were consumed in devastating a working government. But sectarianism bomb attacks—all Lahhoud’s fault. Despite is stubborn, and papering it over with the massive revolution, he refused to leave, so secularism is difficult. For me as Lebanese, I entered the race. It was an unprecedented it was a genuine cultural shock when I campaign in Lebanon's medieval politics, discovered the U.S. Supreme Court—its which focused on the country's need to ongoing debates, and the scholarship and evict a budding dictator because of his respect it commands throughout the country. disastrous practices. Even though we did Courts in the Middle East pale in comparison. not win the election, we made Lahhoud a My first scholarly law article focused on the pariah at home and abroad. He hung on for U.S. Supreme Court, and my dear former varying reasons, including the July War, professor and family friend, Ibrahim Najjar, which traded domestic pressure for a useless encouraged me by publishing it in 1986, in and ugly devastation of the country. Still, Arabic and French, in the journal of the USJ. something remarkable happened: the Arab world saw the importance of confronting dictators. The revolutions that began in 2011 In 2005, you challenged Emile Lahhoud for the were focused on telling the dictators to leave, presidency. Lahhoud was eventually appointed through a controversial constitutional extension of which is something I tried to steer the Cedar his mandate. Your campaign was cut short by the Revolution towards, but without success. July War. Can you talk more about the goals and experiences of your campaign and whether we might I don’t know what my political future will be. expect to see you again in the political arena? What Lebanon is small and hard to govern, so even future do you see for Lebanese politics? if becoming its president was possible, sitting I ran to dislodge Emile Lahhoud, who brought in Baabda without the power to achieve catastrophe to the country by forcing an change is unattractive.
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