Return to Tripoli - battle over minds and meaning amongst religious leaders within the islamist field in Tripoli (Lebanon)

This study analyses the Islamist movements in Tripoli, in light of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of a religious field. Its point of departure is the empirical observation that the Islamist movements in Tripoli, a city in North Lebanon with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, are among the most fragmented in the entire Ummah (the Islamic nation). Previous studies have not sufficiently explained this high degree of fragmentation, because they have been unable to bridge the disciplinary boundaries necessary, and take into account the ideosyncracies of Lebanese politics, while at the same time insisting on the transnationalised character of most Islamist movements. Seeking to account for the fragmentation within the religious field in Tripoli, the present study seeks to answer five main questions: Firstly, which are the most salient issues that divide the religious leaders within the field? Secondly, which are the endogenous and exogenous factors that account for the fragmentation within the field? Thirdly, do religious leaders in Tripoli relate to political decision makers when the political opportunity structures undergo changes? How is the religious field conquered by the political field, and through with means do its leaders manage to gain autonomy from the political decision makers? And lastly, what does the case of Tripoli tell us about the relationship between the religous and the political spheres in other Islamic centra in the Umma? The main findings of this study is that the Islamist leaders in Tripoli are drawn between unity and fragmentation. The Islamist field is in fact located in the intersection between the national political field, on the one side, and the transnational Islamist field, on the other. Their sensitive position in which the religious leaders find themselves create a number of constraints as to how they can express their ideology. The various Islamist rhetorics become more volatile and prone to change, depending on political circumstances.