Culture & Identity of Lebanon
WARNING: Terrorist threats and violence exist in Lebanon, please read this travel warning before going!
Introduction
Life in Lebanon is very diverse as the people are diverse. There are great differences from person to person in regards to lifestyle and this begins with religion.
Most of the people in Lebanon are either Muslim or Christian, both of which affect the way of life to some degree. However, generally speaking the people are fairly liberal and there are few conservative Christians or Muslims. For those people that are more conservative in their religious beliefs the lifestyle tends to be modeled to varying degrees on religion.
Islam has numerous rules regarding dress, diet, and even on dating, but today only the most conservative Muslims in Lebanon follow all of these restrictions. More commonly only a fraction of these rules are followed. Likewise, Christianity has rules, but tends to be more liberal in general and this again matches the attitude of most Christians in Lebanon.
For these conservative Muslims and Christians life begins with religion and often times also with family. However, since few people are too conservative much of life in Lebanon today reflects that of the modern world. Weekends are Saturday-Sunday to match the weekend of Europe and many of the country's trading partners. This is perhaps the first and most obvious diversion from Islam, whose holy day is Friday (so many Muslim countries include Friday in their weekend).