If the two sides of a dialogue are identical or nearly identical, it becomes nothing more than a conversation in which both repeat the same things back to each other, reproducing the same narrative. The absence of any back-and-forth can be deadly for those engaging in it: it drains vitality, hollows out narratives, and often pushes the interlocutors toward tension, rigidity, and even violence in defense of their political or ideological identity, whether it is criticized from within the group or national components.
Self-scrutiny does not imply being put through interrogation, nor does it imply condemnation. Rather, it is an opportunity to take the first step toward rescuing the most rigid actors, who are most at risk of breaking, precisely because they have lost their flexibility and cling to hardened positions. At a time when they need political, social, and doctrinal reassessments more than anyone, if they are to navigate the both visible and invisible crises weighing not only on them but on their communities and their countries as a whole.
Political, cultural, and ideological self-assessments allow for a necessary debate within the Shiite communities of Lebanon and Iraq that allows for reconciling the state, identity, belonging, and their role, looks into the relationship between religious doctrine and political action; and separates the present from historical grievances that used against both domestic rivals and external actors.
Through such dialogue, Shiite political and religious actors can chart a path from an armed, insular identity toward a national, unifying statehood; from permanent resistance toward lasting integration. This shift would provide the framework for developing autonomous national Shiite choices that are not dependent on regional axes, allowing Shiite communities to participate in a new social contract in Iraq and Lebanon, as components of the state rather than sectarian blocs. The sensitive question, then, is no longer how to defend them outside the state, but rather how to safeguard them within the state.
The call for dialogue is, at its core, a call to avert peril. It addresses the growing chasm between two opposing discourses - each similar and different at once - in Iraq and Lebanon. On one side stands a faction that derives strength from its own capabilities and its sectarian base; it has embraced a narrative of “consensus and survival.” On the other side is a more rational, composed current that is not bound to the scale of its representation or its tools; it rejects populism and fearmongering and instead embraces “statehood and integration.”
Despite the daylight between, these two poles could yet create common ground, if they first agree on shared priorities and approaches. After all, past experiences have shown that the tools of conflict, especially weapons and insular identities, have consistently failed to substitute for the state and the inclusive national identity it represents.
In Iraq, across the spectrum of Shiite political and intellectual elite, actors have increasingly consolidated a discourse grounded in the primacy of the state. They are keenly aware that more than two-thirds of Iraq’s Shiite community embraces a national identity that transcends sectarian lines. For them, allegiance to Iraq comes first - not in opposition to religion or doctrine, and certainly not severing the link between Iraq or its Shiites from their spiritual depth. On the contrary, given that Iraq remains the global center of Shiite religious authority, Iraq’s Shiites possess the national, cultural, and religious resources to lead their own project rather than follow someone else’s.
Intra-Shiite dialogue in Iraq that moves beyond the binary of “power and weapons,” and the artificial hierarchies produced engendered by domestic and foreign influence, could lead a shared commitment to the idea of the nation-state, allowing the dominant factions to maintain their privileges and averting the risk of intra-Shiite conflict, which would have catastrophic consequences for Iraq’s Shiites.
In Lebanon, meanwhile, the narrative of a “Shiite majority safeguarding the duality of arms to ensure survival” has evolved into a separatist posture, isolating the Shiite community from the broader national community. This stance threatens everything the community has achieved, clinging to an imagined hegemony and privileging collective self-destruction over domestic and external dialogue. Clinging to arms secures temporary privileges at the expense of the community’s long-term interests. The second path, dialogue, feels, for some, like a concession within the community and a retreat vis-à-vis others, because of pride and hubris, but it is unsustainable.
Rejecting dialogue, the dominant actors in both Iraq and Lebanon are going to face grave consequences. In Iraq, it risks transforming a cohesive national majority into fractious, warring subgroups; in Lebanon, it threatens to turn the Shiites into an isolated community vulnerable to internal fragmentation.
For this reason, Shiites’ intellectual and religious heritage, in all of its historical and contemporary diversity, and even the sub-identities, arms, and narratives of victimhood, must be invoked not as a means to build hegemony but as a resource for self-correction. The way forward begins inside the diverse Shiite house, not through control over its components, but by reintroducing the wisdom of Najaf, its senior scholars, and its pragmatic voices.
The greatest challenge now facing the Shiite communities in Lebanon and Iraq is how to resolve the dilemma of weapons and address existential anxieties by shifting from the logic of sect to the logic of citizenship, and from the logic of community to the logic of the state.
