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Lebanon is an eastern Mediterranean country that has the most religiously diverse society within the Middle East, recognizing 18 religious sects. [2] [3] The recognized religions are Islam (Sunni, Shia, Alawites, and Isma'ili), Druze, Christianity (the Maronite Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, evangelical Protestantism, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the ...
Lebanese people are very diverse in faith. The country has the most religiously diverse society in the Middle East, encompassing 17 recognized religious sects. [120] The main two religions among the Lebanese people are Christianity (the Maronite Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Melkite, the Protestant Church) and Islam (Shia and Sunni).
There has been no official census in Lebanon since 1932. According to the CIA World Factbook, [19] the Muslim population is estimated at around 59.5% [20] within the Lebanese territory and of the 8.6 [21] –14 [22] million Lebanese diaspora is believed by some to be about 20% [citation needed] of the total population.
In 1920, France legally extended the borders of Greater Lebanon to include all the territories of what is now Lebanon. This enhanced the position of the Maronites, whose population exceeded that of the Sunni Muslims in the new districts. [5] This changed Lebanon's demographics, as the territories added contained predominantly Muslim areas.
The Maronite Christians of Lebanon are the largest Christian denomination among the Lebanese people, representing 21% of the Lebanese population. [33] The Maronite Church's full communion with the Catholic Church was reaffirmed in 1182, after hundreds of years of isolation in Mount Lebanon.
Lebanon has the world's second-largest Druze population, after Syria. Under the Lebanese political division (Parliament of Lebanon Seat Allocation), the Druze community is designated as one of the five Lebanese Muslim communities in Lebanon (Sunni, Shia, Druze, Alawi, and Ismaili), although the Druze are no longer considered formally Muslim.
Phoenicianism is a form of Lebanese nationalism that apprizes and presents ancient Phoenicia as the chief ethno-cultural foundation of the Lebanese people. It is juxtaposed with Arab migrations to the Levant following the early Muslim conquests in the 7th century, which resulted in the region's Arabization .
The Lebanese system is parliamentary democracy, which implements a special system known as confessionalism. This system is intended to deter sectarian conflict and attempts to fairly represent the demographic distribution of the 18 recognized religious groups in government. High-ranking offices are reserved for members of specific religious groups.