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Lebanon has recently witnessed an exponential rise in Salafi militancy. While the spillover of the Syrian war and sectarian tensions in the Middle East are often mentioned as factors, the growth of Salafi violence is more a symptom of the grievances of Lebanese Sunnis. The current state of relative political stability offers a unique window of opportunity for policymakers of all stripes to unite and enact the reforms needed to address these local root causes.

Qabaday Salafism

• At its core, the rise of Salafi militancy in Lebanon stems from a sociopolitical revolt that originates in marginalized Sunni areas. There, a growing phenomenon, Qabaday Salafism, suggests that the strength of Salafi-jihadi groups has more to do with social dynamics than with any ideological appeal of extremism.
• These groups embrace Salafism often as a means to other ends, such as claiming implicit divine backing in struggles for urban power and resources; justifying, through radical rhetoric, acts of violence that seem like Salafi militancy but actually align more with local traditions of social unrest; or again joining the rebels in Syria.
• Rather than seeing these militants as symptoms of the degrading social and political environment from which they originate, the Lebanese government is viewing them solely through a security prism, sending hundreds to prison, where poor conditions and the indifference of Lebanese Sunni politicians might lead to their radicalization.
• The “securitization” of Syrian refugees, the continual dysfunction of Dar al-Fatwa, and the failings of the Sunni political class are also fueling this inherently sociopolitical revolt—although, so far, the ability of Salafi militants to tap into such revolutionary potential remains confined to small sections of the Sunni public.

Recommendations

• Urgently tackle the issue of urban segregation that underlies Qabaday Salafism. Steps include upgrading infrastructure, curbing unemployment, bolstering local civil society, improving security, and investing in crumbling public schools.
• Restructure Lebanon’s prison and justice systems. This entails accelerating procedures, guaranteeing civilian oversight, building more detention facilities, sorting prisoners according to their crime, monitoring the respect of human rights, and facilitating reintegration into society.  
• Reform and empower Dar al-Fatwa. Moderate Sunni clerics have a key role to play in countering extremism in prisons, mosques, and society at large, but they need more independence from politicians and better management training to allow them to be financially autonomous and invest more in shaping and monitoring the nature of religious speech.
• Refrain from portraying Syrian refugees as security threats. This fuels a toxic sociopolitical environment. Instead, the focus should be on improving their safety, education, and livelihoods.

Introduction

Lebanon has been a main target of Islamist militancy since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. Militants affiliated with Salafi-jihadi groups—such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly known as the al-Nusra Front and then Jabhat Fatah al-Sham)—have killed scores of civilians by carrying out suicide bombings and rocket attacks in and outside of Beirut and by engaging in bloody clashes with the army. By 2014, their numbers and strength had grown to such an extent that they came to hold significant sway in parts of the Beqaa Valley, Sidon, and Tripoli, where, according to security officials, they wanted to create an “Islamic Emirate.”¹ To address this challenge, the Lebanese government arrested hundreds of suspected militants and led a military crackdown on suspected terrorist cells. As a result, acts of violence have greatly receded, but this security-focused approach has done nothing to address the root causes that led to the rise of Salafi militancy. Until these issues are tackled, the specter of radicalization will keep looming over Lebanon.

Salafism is a puritan Sunni religious movement advocating a return to the practices of the al-salaf al-salih, the companions and successors of the Prophet Muhammad. For decades, this religious school of thought only had a marginal presence in Lebanon, where merely a quarter of the population is Sunni and secular parties and notables dominate religion and politics. Although Salafism was introduced in the 1940s by Tripolitan cleric Salem al-Shahhal, it was not until the 1990s that its influence began to expand, mainly as a result of increased financial assistance from wealthy, like-minded Salafi associations in the Gulf. Throughout this initial period, Lebanese Salafism remained a largely peaceful religious movement. Even among its most radical members, Lebanon was often considered a “land of support” to transit fighters and weapons to wage jihad elsewhere, like in Iraq. And when some Salafi-jihadi groups did advocate for jihad at home, such as in 2000 and 2007, most other Salafis disapproved of their efforts, which were quickly quashed.² Since 2008, however, the appeal of Salafi militancy has grown considerably, with varying views on the underlying drivers.³

Several explanations have been proffered on the rise of Salafi jihadism in Lebanon.⁴ Some analysts suggest that, given Salafism’s propensity to consider Shia Muslims as heretics, a more aggressive doctrine was bound to resonate in a society that has become profoundly polarized. Sunni-Shia relations deteriorated significantly following the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, the Sunni sect’s leading figure, and the growth of Hezbollah, the Shia political party and militant group that is often accused of having carried out the killing.⁵ In the aftermath of this event, Salafi clerics began to strike a militant tone—which became more popular among sections of the Sunni public—and some Salafi militias were formed.

Other analysts attribute the rise to the proxy war waged by Saudi Arabia, which has been the main funder of Salafi mosques, charities, and arguably militias in Lebanon, pitting them against Iran, which supports Hezbollah.⁶ Finally, more recently, Salafi militancy is being viewed as a by-product of the Syrian conflict, in which Salafi militias are leading actors.⁷ While all these explanations are valid, they overlook deeper local causes that must be understood to be able to effectively address them.

Based on six weeks of field research in 2016 and interviews with fifty-five actors, including civil society activists, clerics, former militants, and security officials, it is apparent that, at its core, the rise of Salafi militancy in Lebanon stems from a sociopolitical revolt—one that originates in disaffected urban areas where the growth of Salafi groups has more to do with social dynamics than with any supposedly ideological appeal of extremism. For these groups, embracing Salafism is often a means to other ends, such as benefiting from generous Gulf funding; claiming implicit divine backing in struggles between neighborhood gangs; justifying, through radical, religious rhetoric, acts of violence that seem like Salafi militancy but rather align more with long-standing local traditions of social unrest; or providing a vocabulary and platform to contest local sociopolitical marginalization. Thus, although these groups have adopted the language and profile of Salafism, their militancy remains largely connected to local urban grievances, identities, and networks. The implications of these findings are profound because they illustrate the danger of viewing these militants, operating inside and outside Lebanon, through the prism of security only—they must also be seen as symptoms of the degrading social environments from which they originate.

It is noteworthy, however, that Salafi militants have not yet fulfilled their potential to leverage the sociopolitical unrest. For example, comparatively few Syrian refugees in Lebanon have joined militant groups or carried out attacks even though they face massive challenges. Of course, the government’s securitization of these refugees, or attempt to portray them as a direct security threat, might result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but, for now, their resilience to extremism remains striking. Ultimately, this resistance stems from the fact that Syrian and Lebanese Sunni communities consider their religious practices to be at odds with Salafi puritanism. This, in addition to the Salafis’ own divisions and general rejection of militancy, indicates that the dynamics of radicalization are by no means unavoidable.

Actual radicalization, meaning the dynamic of clear ideological hardening, seems to primarily take place within the context of two experiences—having waged jihad in Syria and having spent time in Lebanese prisons. Both reflect the urgent need for the government to reform its current judicial and security approach and adhere in practice, not just in theory, to the policy of disassociation from the Syrian crisis. Institutional reform is also needed to empower the country’s moderate Sunni clerics. Many of them have attempted to take a lead role in combatting extremist ideologies in prisons and in certain mosques, but their efforts are hampered by a lack of means and the constant meddling of Sunni politicians—some of whom have become unpopular.

Qabaday Salafism

While the Sunni-Shia rift is often seen as the most important divide in Lebanese society, the fast-growing social gap between the privileged and the poor is as, if not more, significant. Deprivation touches the Sunni community in particular. In Lebanon’s second largest city, Tripoli, where Sunnis constitute the overwhelming majority of the population, 57 percent of residents are poor—a far cry from the 28 percent national average.⁸ Yet what is even more notable is the fast-growing urban segregation between the gated neighborhoods of the well-off, where basic services function, and the marginalized districts, where residents struggle with worsening insecurity, deteriorating infrastructure, poorly performing public schools, and high poverty rates. In upscale urban areas such as Basatin Trablous, only 19 percent of residents are considered deprived, compared to 69 percent in Qobbe and 87 percent in Bab al-Tabbaneh. And it is precisely in these types of neighborhoods that Salafism has found a fertile ground. There, puritan religious activists with ties to wealthy Gulf religious associations have earned the respect of many locals by opening schools, running charities, funding orphanages, and helping refugees—in other words, by stepping into the void and fulfilling state-like functions. There are at least five large Salafi associations active in Tripoli and three in Akkar. Moreover, in deprived neighborhoods where population density rates can sometimes be nine times higher than in wealthier districts, there is a growing scarcity of public space and the well-kept, neighborhood Salafi mosques can act as vectors of socialization for youths.¹⁰ “We meet the needs of the poor,” argued a Salafi leader. “We provide them with dignity.”¹¹

A key element of the growing appeal of Salafism in these deprived areas is the movement’s ability to attract community leaders who bring their followers into the fold. For centuries, neighborhoods characterized by relative state neglect have been dominated by local strongmen called qabadayat (qabaday in singular form), who provide services, regulate social relations, and defend their district’s identity in return for loyalty.¹² While wealthier neighborhoods, and the upper class more generally, view them as disorderly za‘aran (thugs) given their propensity to engage in violent feuds with rival bands, they have often been hailed as heroes in their own communities. One qabaday in a deprived quarter said he is proud to be the area’s informal leader and that he stands ready to use his weapon to enforce justice and security since, given the state’s absence, “it’s the law of the jungle here.” And if, in the past, many qabadayat justified their actions and episodic acts of violence by seizing the mantle of left-wing ideologies, a growing number of them now seem attracted by the Salafi discourse.

Salafism is infiltrating the grassroots by merging the figure of the neighborhood strongman with that of the religiously inspired activist. “The Prophet valued strength over weakness,” argued one of the many leaders who could be described as “Qabaday Salafis.” “As a qabaday and as a Salafi, I protect my neighborhood from physical and moral threats,” he said before specifying that he provides protection and religious education to the area’s impoverished population and strictly prohibits the sale and consumption of alcohol. The spread of the phenomenon of Qabaday Salafism in such neighborhoods also goes hand in hand with a local culture of exacerbated masculinity, where “being a real man” often means showing “courage” by wielding weapons and using violence for the alleged “good of the community.” Salafi discourse—which emphasizes the archetypal chivalrous fata (youth) and constantly references the sahaba (the companions of the Prophet) and the “brave” battles they waged—is well placed to channel the militant tendencies of these neighborhood strongmen. A Salafi leader acknowledged as much when he proudly stated that traditional values such as “chivalry, honor, and revenge” are being “Salafized.” “Salafism meets the need of our warm-blooded youth for dignity. Salafis refuse to forgive and they don’t just talk but rather act.”

Yet the brand of religious doctrine that these Qabaday Salafis are promoting is not always consistent with Salafism. For instance, while Salafism prohibits the targeting of fellow Muslims, the qabadayat and their partisans do not hesitate to use violence against those in wealthier Sunni districts. In Tripoli, they are widely suspected of standing behind a racketeering scheme involving chic shops and restaurants and the 2012 looting and torching of a U.S. fast-food branch catering to the local elite.¹³ They also routinely engage in skirmishes with gangs from rival neighborhoods and often target the security forces, who are widely unpopular because of their crackdown on illegal housing and illicit trade. Many qabadayat are, in fact, more akin to gangsters claiming divine backing than actual Salafi scholars. Most of them are not even clerics; they are self-made imams who are knowledgeable in aspects of Salafi doctrine—often quoting Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyyah, a twelfth-century religious scholar highly influential in Salafi thought—but are unaware of wider theological debates. Moreover, as qabadayat, they have to remain in tune with the social and religious practices of most residents in their neighborhood—and these have long been more informed by a legacy of Sufism, liberal in certain respects, than by the more conservative Gulf-type Wahhabism. Some of them, in attempting to remain close to residents, thus enact fatwas (rulings) that make their Salafism seem more aligned with local practices. One proudly pointed out that he allows his Salafis to listen to music, watch television shows, and even smoke—all taboos in doctrinal Salafism. Their ideology is thus Salafi in name only and largely driven by the local social context.

The journey of one of these Qabaday Salafis, Shadi Mawlawi, illustrates the danger of viewing these local militants through the lens of security only. Born and raised in Qobbe, one of Tripoli’s largest and most deprived districts, he became, by the late 2000s, one of the area’s Qabaday Salafi. As a qabaday, he quickly built a following by providing residents with limited services funded with money he had acquired via weapons smuggling and by resorting to violence against the police to defend locals involved in the informal economy. Today, he is still seen by some locals as the “hero of Qobbe” who “protected the district.”

His adherence to Salafism, by all accounts, was initially not rigorous. One of his followers explained that together they grew beards, prayed five times a day, met with the city’s famed Salafi clerics, and advocated the creation of an “Islamic Emirate” in Tripoli, but they also smoked hashish, took pills, flirted with girls, and traveled around on mopeds while shooting in the air in wealthy areas. Widely viewed in the rest of the city as “attention seekers” involved in petty criminality, Mawlawi and his partisans used the discourse and practice of Salafism to gain wider respect and status while giving religious sanction to their acts and intimidating rivals. Their militancy, which mainly targeted wealthier Sunnis and symbols of the state as expressions of their sociopolitical marginalization, may thus have taken the garb of Salafism, but it was inherently local and more akin to traditional forms of urban unrest.

Two experiences would turn Mawlawi from a Qabaday Salafi guided by local issues into a more ideologically driven militant with actual ties to the Islamic State and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. First, the security forces arrested him in 2012, and although he only stayed in prison briefly because the authorities had to release him in the face of angry protesters in Tripoli, the experience nonetheless seems to have been enough to radicalize him.¹⁴ According to a source close to him, he was greatly affected by the “oppression” suffered by prisoners in jail. Second, upon his release, he started caring about broader issues beyond his neighborhood. He became particularly moved by the deteriorating situation in Syria. One of his followers explained that, as a result, he joined Syria’s Islamist rebels in the border village al-Qusayr, where he fought for a few weeks against the Syrian army and Hezbollah.

Mawlawi returned to Tripoli as a battle-hardened militant with deeper ideological convictions than before, encouraging his local followers to join the ranks of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, prepare attacks in Lebanon, and wage a “revolution” to overthrow the country’s whole political order. His status as a neighborhood leader pushed many of his partisans to follow his path. Loyalty among his followers was so deep that one of them, who was a Christian, had been prepared to blow himself up at a Lebanese army outpost in the district.¹⁵ A security operation in 2014 eventually forced Mawlawi to escape and seek refuge in the Palestinian camp of Ain al-Hilwe and then in Syria, where he joined Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.¹⁶

From the Neighborhood to Syria

As many stories similar to Mawlawi’s suggest, the phenomenon of Qabaday Salafism, as an essentially local form of militancy centered on the hara (neighborhood), is threatening to turn more ideological and radical in the context of the lingering Syrian conflict. There is disagreement over the exact number of Sunnis who left Lebanon to fight the Syrian regime— from an initial estimate of 900 to a recent estimate of 6,000—but what is clear is that they waged jihad for a variety of reasons.¹⁷ According to those interviewed, while some Sunnis joined the Syrian opposition’s ranks out of a sense of “humanitarian duty” or “chivalry” aimed at “defending the honor” of Sunni demonstrators who faced a brutal crackdown by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, others were driven by “a thirst for revenge” for some of the “torments” caused by Syria’s 1976–2005 military occupation of Lebanon and, in particular, the Syrian army’s 1985 crackdown in Tripoli and its involvement in the 1986 massacre of local Sunnis in the neighborhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh. One militant who fought in Syria also observed that most of his Lebanese jihadi friends happened to hail from deprived Sunni areas and that the “humiliations” they faced there—stemming from a sense of rejection from society, rampant poverty, and difficulties in getting married and starting a family—had pushed them to join a battlefield on which they would be able to “release their frustration and rage.” Only a minority, he insisted, went to Syria with ideological goals such as establishing an Islamic state in Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria). And, in fact, when these Lebanese militants reached Syria, most actually joined moderate rebel groups. A security official explained that this initially happened in unorganized ways, with local groups of supporters of the revolution sending money, weapons, and fighters to brigades they sympathized with in Syria.

Given that Lebanese society remains largely connected to the Syrian hinterland—especially because of lingering family relations between Homs and Tripoli on the one hand and Beirut, Damascus, and Sidon on the other—it is hardly surprising that kinship ties trumped ideology. “At first, we joined the Free Syrian Army because many had family ties with its fighters,” explained a Lebanese Salafi. “Back then, our militants were not even considered as foreign fighters!” Over time, however, support among Lebanese jihadists for Free Syrian Army (FSA) brigades sharply declined. Some became frustrated by the large degree of “infighting” that took place in rebel ranks and the FSA’s apparent “inability to live up to its promises.” Others lambasted the FSA’s rampant “corruption.” One Tripolitan Salafi who sent some of his followers to fight alongside FSA brigades in Homs expressed his bitter disappointment at the way some rebels “surrendered” to the regime. Another one concluded that “the only hope for the future of Syria lies with the Islamists.”

Thus, by early 2013, most Lebanese militants had shifted their support to Salafi rebel groups. This trend increased as violent battles unfolded in al-Qusayr, in the countryside of Homs, during which Hezbollah officialized its armed intervention in Syria on the side of the regime. Two Lebanese Salafi clerics in particular, Ahmed al-Assir and Salem al-Rafei, reacted to the Shia militia’s growing involvement across the border by issuing fatwas of their own—making it a religious duty for Lebanese Sunnis to strike back and join the jihad in Syria.¹⁸ The sectarian component of their Salafi discourse, emphasizing the need to “defend the Sunni villages” from the Syrian regime’s and Hezbollah’s hands, quickly made their fatwas popular. One Salafi recruiter said he became “overwhelmed” by the number of candidates for jihad. From then on, Salafi networks gradually came to monopolize the flow of Lebanese militants into Syria. While some were sent to local Salafi brigades in Homs, such as Liwa Fajr al-Islam and Liwa al-Haqq, others joined larger factions, such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam. One Lebanese Salafi explained that these groups earned his followers’ admiration because of the degree of their “Islamic commitment” but also because of their “military achievements” on the ground and their “uncompromising opposition” to both the Syrian regime and Hezbollah.

While it is tempting to blindly assume that all Lebanese Sunnis who fought with Salafi brigades came back from Syria radicalized, the reality is more nuanced. For instance, many militants grew highly critical of al-Assir and al-Rafei, whose fatwas, they argued, were issued more out of emotional instincts than sound, strategic calculations—thus unleashing a flow of fighters who haphazardly joined various factions. In the short term, the lack of strategy accentuated the fragmentation of opposition factions in Homs, and in the long term, the lack of a political cover rendered the return of militants to Lebanon harder. In retrospect, al-Rafei himself acknowledges that his decision to issue a fatwa about jihad was taken hastily and “without really taking the time to think and discuss with others.”

Some Sunni fighters were also traumatized by the difficulties they encountered on the Syrian battlefield. Tripolitan fighters in the Salafi group Jund al-Sham rapidly came under siege by regime forces near Homs; some died of starvation, others were ambushed and killed, and those who made it back to Lebanon were arrested and sent to prison. “Wives were widowed, kids orphaned, and families destroyed,” bitterly concluded a figure close to them. Another Lebanese Salafi who has relatives currently fighting for opposite Islamist factions complained about the “absurdity” of war. “My own relatives are killing each other in Syria,” he said, before wondering in a rhetorical fashion: “Is this still really a revolution, a jihad?”

There are, of course, numerous other Lebanese militants who take pride in their jihadi experience in Syria and would do it over again “a hundred more times.” Many seem to have been particularly inspired by the intense social bonds they forged on the battlefield. “While in Syria, I understood what it meant to be brothers in Islam,” explained a Lebanese militant; for the first time in his life, he experienced in practice, and not just in theory, this deep sense of belonging. “We fought during the day and shared a fire at night!” Other militants were taken in by a more ideological vision of the world. One said that witnessing the scale of the crisis made him realize that Syria had become the “epicenter of the Islamic world” and that this land now felt even holier to him than Jerusalem, which, until then, had been considered the holy grail of jihad. Another Islamist militant who fought with the rebels in the Syrian town of Yabroud until the city fell to the regime in 2014 said that he would remain forever scarred by the deeds of Hezbollah’s men in Syria: “I saw with my own eyes the atrocities they committed against Sunnis there . . . they [Hezbollah] killed kids and wives . . . they are the absolute enemy.” These are the militants who may become attracted to the ideological, sectarian, and violent breed of Salafi militancy that is espoused by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or the Islamic State, each in their own way.

Prisons as Factories of Radicalism

The dynamic of ideological hardening is amplified by the experience of militants in prison. Roumieh prison, the country’s largest detention facility, has over the past decade been known as a “factory of radicalism,” where jihadi groups recruit new members and plot terror attacks.¹⁹ However, since 2014, the problem has taken on new dimensions and now extends to all prisons. The formation of a new government allowed the Lebanese army to carry out a “security plan” that involved arresting hundreds of suspected Sunni militants throughout Lebanon; the crackdowns on hideouts and cells continued until the summer of 2017. In the short term, this naturally restored a sense of security as militant attacks greatly receded. Yet it also resulted in the overcrowding of the country’s prison and justice systems—the effects of which could now make matters worse by raising the specter of long-term radicalization. The scale of the challenge is indeed unprecedented. While Lebanese prisons were originally designed to house a total of 2,700 detainees, official estimates in the late 2000s put the number at 4,700 inmates, and, by 2016, over 7,000.²⁰ Most of the new detainees are charged with having ties to Syrian rebel groups deemed “terrorists” by the state. “The crisis in Syria puts major strains on our prison system,” admitted a high-level prison official. “We don’t have the capacity to deal with it.”

To respond to this challenge, the Ministry of Interior, which in theory oversees all prisons, has encouraged the Ministry of Defense to hold a growing number of inmates in its own detention and interrogation facilities, such as those in Yarze and Rihaniye. Officially, military officers explain that “we don’t keep the prisoners in such prisons very long—only during the investigation.” But other officials acknowledge that, in reality, inmates are often kept there for much longer. Worse, the Lebanese Center for Human Rights reported that “arrests, torture and detention in these places continue with impunity” and accused the military intelligence branch of violating human rights, extracting forced confessions, and keeping inmates in prolonged isolation.²¹ A former prisoner in Rihaniye alleged that, while being detained there, he was forcibly “sleep-deprived” for days, “beaten up,” and the victim of “sexual perversions.”

And when the detainees are finally transferred to a civilian prison—sometimes after six or seven months in military custody—they face conditions that put their health at further risk. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have visited detention centers often stress that prison overcrowding has not been matched by efforts to renovate and upgrade the infrastructure and to address a shortage of medical staff, thus resulting in the rapid degradation of the health and hygiene situation. In 2015, the Ministry of Interior publicized the renovation of some of the buildings of the infamous Roumieh prison, but officials at Tripoli’s Qobbe prison, the second largest in the country, complain that “Roumieh monopolizes the whole budget” and, as a result, “other prisons are neglected.” The bad state of Lebanese prisons, as well as the violent treatment some inmates have experienced, also puts their psychological well-being in harm’s way. One NGO working with prisoners noted the increase in undiagnosed mental diseases. It assessed that as