Sample Solution

is obviously impossible to explore here all the ramifications of the Iranian revolution, but the impetus that it has given to Shi’ite communities and to the revival of Islam as a potent political force throughout and in Iraq and the Gulf States may serve as examples. The construction for the Lebanese state, drafted in the early 1940s, had been based on a delicate balance between the different communities – Maronite Christian, Orthodox Christian, Sunny Muslim, Shi’ite Muslim, Druse, and others. This balance, insofar that it ever existed in fact, had been completely disrupted by a number of factors: among them, differential birthrates, patterns of emigration, and the influx of Palestinian refugees. Outbreaks of communal strife had occurred previously, but in 1975 a full-scale civil-war erupted. Since the groupings of forces involved not only political but religious affiliations, the conflict was able to transform and renew itself throughout the 1980s, involving differing configurations and alliances both local and international. The emergence of the Shi’ite community in the south of Lebanon, the region that lies directly to the north of Israel, and the vigorous support that the community continues to receive from Iran, have been major factors in the course of recent Lebanese history. Hanan al-Shaykh’s novel, Hikayat Zahrah, 1980 (The Story of Zahra, 1986) is set among the community, both in Beirut and in the south, and it serves as just one of a whole series of works that recount the agony of a society in the process of treating itself apart. And yet, throughout all this, Beirut has managed to remain a major centre for book publication and intellectual life in general. It is such resilience that will be needed in large quantities as the various communities attempt to turn an uneasy peace into a new version of the open and prosperous nation that Lebanon previously presented to the outside world.