THERE'S A REASON THE POWERFUL WON'T RISK A CENSUS:

At its heart, Lebanon's electoral system remains a consociational system, where the 128 seats in parliament are apportioned based on a formula negotiated in 1989 for a fixed number of 64 Christian seats and 64 Muslim seats, both of which are further subdivided along sectarian lines--34 for Maronite Christians, 27 each for Sunni and Shia Muslims, 14 for Orthodox Christians, the rest for other Christian and Muslim minorities. Imagine telling American voters that of our 435 members of Congress, it was preordained that 109 would be evangelical, 91 Catholic, 9 Jewish, 4 Muslim, and so on. Doesn't sit well, does it? To make matters worse, the apportionment doesn't match Lebanon's actual religious distribution--Christians as a whole get half the seats but may represent only 37 percent of voters, Muslims representing 73 percent get the other half. This imbalance fuels a sense by the underrepresented that the system fails them, which contributes to social tension.

In terms of the world Shia Muslim population, most people don't know that about half the population of the core Middle East are Shia. The nations where Shi'a Muslims form a dominant majority are Iran (95%), Azerbaijan (80%), Bahrain (75%) and Iraq (65%), a plurality in Lebanon (45%) and large minorities in Yemen (45%), Turkey (25%), Kuwait (35%), Afghanistan (20%), Pakistan (20-25%), Saudi Arabia (15%), India (20-25% of Muslims), UAE (20%), and Syria (15-20%).

Tweet   @brothersjudd