This
paper reports the results of an online perception survey conducted by
Freethought Lebanon regarding the discrimination against atheists in Lebanon.
The AAOR code of ethics was followed before
and through-out the data collection, as well as in the data handling and
analysis. The entries of the randomly selected 644 participants were analyzed,
and the results suggested mostly moderate to severe levels of discrimination
against atheists. A correlation analysis was conducted suggesting a dependency
of the discrimination on multiple parameters like age and geographical
location.
Keywords:
Atheists, Lebanon, discrimination, religion, human
rights, survey.
There are few
studies about atheists in the Middle East region [1,2,3], and Lebanon is no
exception. Since the inception of the Lebanese Republic, atheists have been
assumed to be non-existent by the state [4]. In a country where much blood has
been shed because of interreligious conflicts, and where most political power
is divided according to sectarian quotas, atheists who do not conform to the
traditional sectarian groups have been ignored, marginalized, and actively
discriminated against.
To counter this
reality, we have designed and implemented a perception study of how atheists
experience discrimination in Lebanon. We believe this is the first study of its
kind both in Lebanon and in the region. This study considers the experiences of
around 650 different individuals who had
completed the survey. The data offers important insights into the
discrimination atheists face in Lebanon.
The data
collected shows that a large percentage of atheists face similar ordeals
because of their beliefs. We believe that these difficulties, and the risks
they pose, have caused some atheists to be weary of participating in our
survey. Fortunately, a sufficient number of individuals did complete the
survey, and we find this to be indicative of a deep desire to change the status
quo.
The survey aimed
to study the relationship of atheists with their surroundings, and so it covers
the relationship of atheists with their immediate family, their friends, and
their work environment. It also looked at variables like age, gender,
geographical location, and one’s religious background to better understand the
nuances of discrimination against atheists.
It is important
to note that we have worked hard to ensure the credibility of the data we
acquired and the reliability of the findings that were deduced. Freethought
Lebanon is an advocate for freedom of belief and humanist values; therefore, we
went to extra lengths to avoid any unintended bias while conducting this study.
As such, the survey follows a set of established ethics, and thorough work was
completed to filter the data from the influence of any duplicate or
non-verified survey taken.
The survey
analysis is divided into multiple sections each covering either specific data
or explaining the line of work established to acquire it. In section 2, we
present the code of ethics that we followed during this study. Section 3
presents the key findings of the study in a summarized fashion. The methodology
is described in section 4, covering all the details concerning the handling of
data, sample selection and survey tooling and analysis. In section 5, the
survey findings are discussed in detail, and possible correlations between
different categorical variables (e.g., age, gender, residence, background,
etc.) are mentioned.
It is our hope
that this report, and others like it, will contribute to shedding light on the
challenges atheists face in Lebanon and to transforming Lebanon into a more
inclusive and just country.
In this survey
we follow the AAPOR code of ethics [5]. In particular:
·Before they agreed to take part, participants were given all
information about the survey including content, purpose, and sponsorship.
Participants were also given certain assurances in regards of anonymity and
confidentiality.
·The limitations and shortcomings of the survey are included in this
report.
·The use of methods that might produce bias of the results was
avoided.
·A description of the population and the selection of the sample,
sample size and sample tolerance are included in this report.
·All the details of the data collection such as method, place, and
dates are provided in the survey report.
·The exact wording and sequencing of questions as well as the exact
results are included in this report.
In analyzing
the survey and building a discrimination index based on respondent answers to
discrimination-related questions (details below), the following results were
found:
·According to our discrimination index, 63% of atheists in Lebanon
have suffered moderate to severe discriminations because of their atheism, and
37% have suffered little to very little discriminations. Contrasted with the
fact that 59% of those atheists feel they have not been discriminated against
when asked directly about that.
·There is no significant difference in feelings of discrimination
between males and females.
·Perception of discrimination decreases as age increases.
·Feelings of discrimination (a) are highest in the South/Nabatieh
Governorates, (b) are highest among those with a Shia, Sunni, or mixed
religious backgrounds, and (c) were significantly less in those of Christian or
Druze backgrounds.
·Most survey participants were open about their atheism to their
immediate family (64.75%) and friends (79.35%), however more than half the
participants (51.83%) were not open to their boss and/or co-workers. A similar
percentage of participants (54.85%) fear that being open about their atheism
will negatively affect their career.
·Respondents of Shia or Sunni backgrounds were significantly less
likely to be open to their parents compared to other religious backgrounds and
were more likely to have their relationship with their families significantly
or radically affected by their openness about their irreligiosity.
·Feelings of isolation and the impact of discrimination on the
quality of life were positively correlated with (a) the impact of being open to
one’s family, (b) one’s friends, (c) one’s work, as well as (d) the number of
microaggressions and stereotypes the person faced.
·Those who described their families’ religiosity as religious or
very religious were more likely to face severe discrimination.
·The great majority of participants (89.13%) were subject to at
least one form of microaggression out of eight that were listed in the survey
while 56.37% of participants were subject to at least three.
·More than a quarter (27.48%) felt at some point that their life, health,
or well-being were at risk because of their atheism, 42.37% of which still feel
so.
·Almost all participants (97.36%) felt that the Lebanese political
system does not respect and is not inclusive to atheists, and (73.14%) felt
that they were treated unfairly by Lebanese personal status laws (marriage,
divorce, inheritance, custody over children, etc.).
·Most participants (80.73%) felt that Lebanese educational
institutions instigate/incite against atheists.
·34.63% of participants were forced at some point to conform to
religious practices or duties against their will (e.g., wearing the veil,
praying, going to church, fasting, etc.), while around 60% had pretended at
some point to pray, fast, or practice any religious duties to please their
family or community.
·Most participants (71.58%) felt that their atheism, or expression
thereof, might cause them legal problems in Lebanon, and 90.37% have practiced
self-censorship on their views regarding atheism to avoid social or legal
consequences.
Since we do not
have any information about the distribution of atheists in Lebanon (whether the
geographical distribution or that based on other aspects), we decided to follow
‘random sampling’ as a sample selection method.
Atheism is
widely seen as a taboo in Lebanon, so it was not easy to reach atheists in
Lebanon, especially the closeted among them. Since anonymity is an especially
important factor in this survey (knowing that a significant number of atheists
are closeted), conducting face-to-face surveys was not possible. Therefore, we
chose to conduct the survey online.
By utilizing an
online survey, we have inevitably excluded from our sample all those who do not
use or have access to the internet, and this is one of the shortcomings of our
sampling method. We claim that this does not have a significant effect on our
random selection for the following reason: it is known that 78% of the Lebanese
population use the internet [6]. It is also known that 20.75% of the population
are between 0 and 14 years old [7], and those are not expected to use the
internet at least as much as those from older age groups. With that, we can
safely say that most Lebanese adults do use the internet, and only 2.48% of
those who filled our survey were under 18, let alone under 14.
The survey was
published in three steps between 02.01.2021 and 30.01.2021. Firstly, it was
shared in private atheist groups on different social media platforms. According
to the statistics given by the platforms used, the samples in these private
groups were largely distributed among all regions in Lebanon, as well as age
groups. Secondly, we relied on word-of-mouth to spread the survey using some
focal points in most regions of Lebanon. Finally, the survey was publicly
shared on different social media platforms to reach out to more closeted
atheists.
One of the
shortcomings of this sample selection method was that it might have excluded
the atheists who
are seriously discriminated against to the point that they would not dare to
join groups or pages that would share such content or would not even dare to
fill out such surveys.
The
distribution[1] of our sample
(based on where the participants originally come from) is shown in Figure 1.
Figure
1.
Distribution of survey participants based on where they originally come from
[1]For those who live abroad, their
residence in Lebanon before leaving the country was added instead.
Among
those who voted ‘other’, 2.64% reported that they do not originally come from
Lebanon. Noting that around 30% [8] of the Lebanon’s inhabitants are
non-Lebanese, this suggests that our sample is not fairly distributed among the
non-Lebanese. This could be interpreted in many ways, some of which can be:
a)Atheist refugees are much more reluctant to speak out their minds
or attract unwanted attention to themselves since they do not feel safe or
stable.
b)The percentage of atheists among other nationalities (mostly Syrian
and Palestinian) is low compared to the Lebanese ones.
c)We were not able to reach non-Lebanese atheists living in Lebanon.
d)Non-Lebanese participants wrongly answered this question by stating
their location of residence (in Lebanon) instead of their origins.
The
initial sample size was 660, however some submissions were discarded because
they were a) duplicates, or b) randomly filled by a human or a robot. The
former was detected by having the browser generate a random number and removing
duplicates that had the same number. The latter was determined by the two
verification questions we added (Q3-4 and Q3-20, see Appendix:
Survey Questionnaire) in addition
to the thorough qualitative check that we did.
The
final number of participants that were retained in the studied sample is 644.
This survey was
analyzed using R (v 4.0.3) [9] and RStudio (v1.4.1103) [10]; the primary
packages used were the tidyverse-associated packages. RMarkdown was used to
generate the initial report for reproducibility purposes. Automated exploratory
data analysis packages (auto-EDA) were used to generate the initial set of
plots, combining the various features (both original and generated, such as the
number of microaggressions faced by a respondent and the discrimi-nation index)
in plots. Afterwards, plots showing promising correlations were mined for
further insight, and the results were plotted using `ggplot2`.
5.Detailed Findings and Analysis
5.1.Sex
In terms of
sex, male-identifying survey respondents were 436 (68.3%), whereas
female-identifying respondents numbered 194 (30.4%). Four respondents (0.6%)
identified as non-binary, while the remaining four respondents did not
adequately answer the question.
5.2.Age
The age distribution of the survey participants as displayed in Figure 2 below, shows that more than half of the participants were between
24 and 34 years old, with the second largest group being the 18-24 group.
This could be a result of the recent, but slow, spread of atheism
and secular values in Lebanon [11], as well as in the region, in the past few
years which is mostly affecting the newer generation. Religiosity and sectarian
divide could be more prevalent among older generations who lived during the
more conservative days as well as the 15 years long Lebanese civil war. More
importantly, and because of the limitations discussed earlier in the
methodology, these numbers are not necessarily representative of the real age
distribution of atheists in Lebanon. In particular, and since our survey was
strictly conducted online, there is a good chance that the reason why most
participants were among the younger age groups, is simply that this is the age
group that uses the internet the most.
The geographical distribution of survey participants is displayed
in Figure 3. The entries of six participants were excluded for giving
inadequate or unclear answers, and the percentages were calculated accordingly.
These numbers suggest that most participants (~75%) were residing between Mount
Lebanon and Beirut Governorates.
Figure
3. Distribution of
survey participants with respect to their current location of residence
Around 20% (130 participants) of the survey participants reported
living abroad. However, they were asked about their location prior to leaving
the country, and their answers were merged with the rest of the participants.
The reason this was done is because we are interested in the discrimination
that happened in Lebanon, and those who lived abroad, were asked to answer the
survey based on the period in which they lived in Lebanon. The questionnaires
of those who never lived in Lebanon were discarded in the filtering process we
discussed earlier in the methodology.
Most participants (73%) lived in urban residencies while the others
lived in rural residences. This can be seen in Table 1 from which excludes
the entries of nine respondents who did not give clear answers.
Table 1. Distribution of
survey participants with respect to their type of residence
The survey participants were asked about their religious
backgrounds, i.e., the religion of their parents, and the responses were
distributed as shown in Table 2 below.
Table
2. Distribution
of survey participants with respect to their religious background
Religious background
Count
Percentage
Christian - Armenian Catholic
6
0.93%
Christian - Armenian Orthodox
19
2.59%
Christian - Evangelical Protestant
6
0.93%
Christian - Greek Orthodox
54
8.39%
Christian - Maronite
123
19.1%
Christian - Melkite/ Catholic
35
5.43%
Christian - Mixed
10
1.55%
Alawite
2
0.31%
Druze
45
6.99%
Mixed *
33
5.12%
Muslim - Mixed
17
2.64%
Muslim - Shia
149
23.14%
Muslim - Sunni
136
21.12%
Other †
9
1.39%
* Parents were born into different religions
† Including participants coming from secular backgrounds and other
religious minorities
These numbers are not much different from the sectarian
distribution of the general Lebanese population. This suggests that the
religious background of a person did not have a considerable effect on whether
they turned atheist or not. In other words, people from all religious
backgrounds were as likely to turn atheist.
In the following graphs, where religious background is considered,
the communities for which we had less than 20 samples were not considered for
analysis for their statistical insignificance.
Table
3. Distribution
of survey participants with respect to the religiosity of their parents
Parents’ Religiosity
Count
Percentage
Not at all religious
65
10.09%
Somehow religious
234
36.34%
Religious
232
36.02%
Very religious
113
17.55%
The correlation
between the participants’ religious background and the religiosity of their
parents was studied and displayed in Figure 4. It was noted
that respondents of Sunni, Shia, and Maronite backgrounds were more likely to
describe their families as ‘very religious’ compared to those coming from other
backgrounds.
On the other
hand, no participant who is from a mixed religious background reported having a
very religious family.
Figure
4. Correlation
between the religiosity of the participants’ parents and the religion they
follow
Most survey
participants (65%) were open to their immediate families about their views.
Figure 5. Openness of
survey participants to their immediate families about their atheism
As for the sex,
men were more likely to be open to their families about their atheism than
women as can be seen in Figure 6.
Figure
6. Correlation
between sex and openness about participant’s atheism to their immediate family
Muslims (Sunni and
Shia) were much less likely to be open to their families compared to other
religious backgrounds.
Figure 7.
Correlation between religious background and openness about participant’s
atheism to their immediate family
Those who were open to their immediate families about their atheism
were asked about the effect that this had on their relationship with them. As
indicated in Figure 8, almost half
of those reported that this had no effect at all, and a very small minority
said that it had a radical effect.
Figure 8[SA1]. Effect of
participants’ openness about atheism on relationship with their immediate
family
As for friends,
even a bigger percentage of participants were open to their friends about their atheism as
can be seen in Figure 9. Males were
slightly more likely to be open to their friends than females.
When it comes
to the work environment, and after excluding all the non-relevant answers (i.e., those
who do not work), we found that only 40% were open about their atheism to their
coworkers and/or bosses as shown in Figure 10.
Figure 9. Openness of
survey participants to their friends about their atheism
Figure 10. Openness of
survey participants to their colleagues and/or coworkers about their atheism
Figure 11. Fear that being
open about one’s atheism will negatively affect their career
This result
goes hand by hand with the fact that around 54% of participants feared that
that being open about their atheism will negatively affect their career as
shown in Figure 11.
With that we see that atheists were quite likely to be open to
their families and friends about their atheism, with that having moderate
effect on their relation-ship with them.
However, most participants seemed reserved about their views to their colleagues and bosses, and expressed
some fear of this affecting their career.
Although being
an atheist is not illegal in the Lebanese law, the following section shows that
atheists were significantly discriminated against by the system. As a start,
almost all participants (97.36%) felt that the Lebanese political system does
not respect atheists, nor is inclusive to them. This is totally understandable
knowing that, and as implied by the Constitution, Lebanon follows a sectarian
law. Considering this law, all the governmental and public sector positions are
divided among the sects, and naturally excludes those who feel that they do not
belong to any sect.
Similarly, the
majority felt that they were not treated fairly by the Lebanese personal status
laws like marriage, divorce, inheritance, or custody over children. When asked
about the reason, most participants complained about the fact that civil
marriage is not yet legalized in Lebanon, as well as having to go to religious
courts – which they do not believe in – when it comes to personal status
matters.
Figure
12. Most
respondents felt that the Lebanese political law does not respect them and is
not inclusive to atheists.
Figure 13. Women were more
likely to feel discriminated against by personal status laws.
When it comes
to educational institutions, from schools to universities, most participants
(~81%) felt from their experience that these institutions instigate/incite
against atheists.
Figure 14. Most participants felt that Lebanese
educational institutions instigate/incite against atheists.
Finally, around 72% of participants felt that
their atheism or expression thereof might cause them legal
problems. As a result of that, around 90%
of atheists have (at least to some extent) practiced self-censorship on
their views regarding atheism to avoid social or legal consequences.
Figure
15. Most
participants felt that that their atheism or expression thereof might cause
them legal problems.
Figure
16. Most
participants practiced self-censorship on their views to avoid social or legal
consequences.
Around 35% of
participants were forced to conform to religious practices or duties against
their will (e.g., wear the veil, pray, go to church or fast). Around 60% of
participants have pretended to pray, fast, or practice any religious duties to
please their family or community.
Table
4. Percentage of
participants who were forced or pretended to practice religious duties
Throughout the survey, participants were asked whether they were
discriminated against because of their atheism. However, people are always
subject to biases and/or misinformation, and so taking this question to be the
sole indicator of whether somebody was actually discrimi-nated against or not
will without any doubt give us inaccurate results. This hypothesis was
supported by the data we collected, which shows a number of discrepancies, to
name a few:
Among people who answered ‘No’ to “Have you ever been discriminated
against because of your atheism?”:
·70.6% feel that they are treated unfairly by the Lebanese personal
status laws.
·29.4% were/are forced to conform to religious practices or duties
against their will.
·96.59% feel that the Lebanese political system does not respect
atheists and is not inclusive to them.
·31.51% currently feel that their life, health, or well-being are at
risk because of their atheism.
One possible explanation concerning the reason behind such
discrepancies could be the fact that acts of discrimination are at some points
normalized, to the extent that victims who are subject to such acts no longer
recognize that such acts are considered discrimination.
For this reason, we decided to build a more representative index of
discrimination based on the scoring system presented in Table 5.
If the respondent has been affected in their career by their
irreligiosity
2 points
If they have
felt at risk
4 points
If they
(also) currently feel at risk
2 points
If they feel
discriminated against by personal status laws
2 points
If they were
forced to perform religious practices
3 points
If they
pretended to perform religious practices
1 point
If they feel
like the legal system discriminates against them
3 points
If they
censor themselves when it comes to their irreligiosity
2 points
If they feel
like the political system does not respect them
2 points
If they feel
like the educational system does not respect them
2 points
* The maximum
for these questions was set to 3 points
The weights assigned for each question are based on our estimation
of how indicative of discrimination was the question. These numbers are not
meant to give an exact score, but rather to categorize the discrimination from
“very little” to “severe”. We tried many different algo-rithms that assign
different scores to different questions; however, the final results were not
significantly affected. Noting that this scale is based on many different
indicators, uncertainties in one of the inputs would not significantly affect
the final score.
The maximum possible number of points, 33, was divided into 5
equally sized brackets and used to classify the responses depending on how many
points they received. The results displayed in Table 6 below show
that around 63% of participants have faced moderate to severe discrimination,
and around 27% faced little to very little discrimination.
Table 6. Distribution of
survey participants with respect to the degree of discrimination they have been
subject to
Discrimination Level
Count
Percentage
Very little discrimination
39
6.05%
Little discrimination
198
30.74%
Moderate discrimination
234
36.33%
Significant discrimination
132
20.49%
Severe discrimination
41
6.36%
Family Religiosity
Family religiosity and discrimination are positively correlated for
religious families. It is noteworthy that people who indicated coming from non-religious
families still experienced discrimination because the index does not measure
discrimination from
family members only:
Figure 17. [SA2]Correlation
between family religiosity and discrimination level
Age
As for the age, we noticed that as age increases, the perception of
discrimination decreases as demonstrated in Figure 18. This could be
related to the fact that people from younger age groups tend to be more vocal
and confrontational. On another hand, it could be that the society discriminate
less against older generations especially those with a certain social status.
The ‘above 65’ age
group was excluded from this plot for its statistical insignificance, with only
one participant reporting being in this age group.
Figure 18. [SA3]Correlation
between age and discrimination level
Geographical Location
Figure 19[SA4]. Correlation
between location of residence and discrimination level
When it comes to the geographical
distribution, we noticed that respondents from the Nabatieh and South Governorates
faced higher discrimination levels than others. This could be due to the fact
that these regions are particularly more religious than others, and are mostly
ruled by religious parties.
Almost 90% of survey respondents faced at least one
of the examples of microaggressions that we had given, and around 51% faced at
least three.
Figure 20. Distribution
of survey participants with respect to the number of microaggressions they
faced
The most common of these microaggressions were ‘If
you don’t believe in god, what stops you from committing immoral acts?’ and
‘You will change your mind when you grow up’.
Figure 21. Distribution
of microaggressions faced by survey participants
When asked
about the way they felt they were seen as atheists, around 95% of survey
participants reported that they were subject to at least one negative
stereotype by their society, and 58.6% reported that they were subject to at
least three. The most common among those stereotypes were “immoral” and “not
trustworthy”.
Figure 22. Distribution
of survey participants with respect to the number of stereotypes they faced
The rest of the
stereotypes that were faced by participants are displayed in Figure 23 below:
Figure
23. Distribution
of stereotypes faced by survey participants
Questions to
which respondents answered on a scale (‘Strongly disagree’ - ‘Strongly agree’)
were quantified. Figure 24 below shows
the correlations at we found between the different questions that were asked.
Figure
24. Correlations
observed between answers for questions of discrimination
All values were
positively correlated with each other, and all were statistically significant
at alpha = 0.05[2], except the
correlation between impact on work and impact on family. Notably, feelings of
isolation are most affected by the impact on relationship with family, then by
the impact on relationship with friends, and then on relationship with
boss/colleagues in last place. The number of stereotypes and microaggressions
faced were highly correlated.
[2]Here
alpha, known as the statistical significance, is a parameter used in
statistical analysis. This value was given for those interested in the
technicalities of our analysis.
Atheists in
Lebanon suffer significant challenges on multiple fronts, yet they seem to be
under-reporting their own plights, as is evident in section (5.8). This might
be explained by either discrimination being normalized and atheists feeling
desensitized towards it, or by the refusal of some atheists to victimize
themselves, even when their rights are violated.
Interestingly,
perceptions of discrimination decrease with the increase of age. This is
possibly because society does not attack middle-aged (and older) adults, who
have well-established careers and social status, as often as it attacks young
adults, or because young adults tend to be more combative and confrontational
than their older counterparts who are more socially adapted.
This social
adaptation is a forced choice for many in the atheist community as more than
54% believe that their career will be negatively affected by their atheism and
as more than 90% reported that they practice self-censorship on their atheistic
views in order to avoid social or legal problems.
This is not
surprising, as around 95% of the survey participants have experienced at least
one negative stereotype against their atheism, with the most common stereotype
being that atheists are immoral and not trustworthy.
This hostility
towards atheists is not only limited to social attitudes, but it is rather well
established in law, public institutions, and educational institutions. More
than 80% of the atheist community in Lebanon believe that educational
institutions instigate and incite against atheists, whereas more than 73% feel
that they have been treated unfairly by Lebanese personal status laws, and an
overwhelming 97% of atheists view that the Lebanese political system neither
respects their identity nor is inclusive to them.
Unfortunately,
all these overlapping challenges, in addition to severe familial pressure in
some cases, have led more than a quarter (27.48%) of the atheist community in
Lebanon to perceive that their life, health or well-being were once at risk
because of their atheism, 42.37% of which still feel so.
The above
numbers may paint a bleak image of the situation of atheists in Lebanon, but
they also highlight the urgency of tackling discrimination against atheists in
the country, while also offering a groundwork for future strategic planning to
counter the various mentioned challenges. It is our hope that this report, and
other similar reports, will contribute to transforming Lebanon into a more just
and more inclusive country.
This report has been produced with the
financial support of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.
The contents of this report are the sole responsibility of the publishers
and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position
of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.
We would like to
thank Firaz Nassar, Mohammad Jaber, Mazen Abou Hamdan and Moustapha Itani
for discussing and helping set up with the survey questions, as well as Daniel
Ganama for the general discussions.
We would also like to thank Ayman El
Kaissi for working on the visual aspect of the report, and Ali Shreif for
proofreading the document and helping set up the survey questions.
Where did you
use to live when you were in Lebanon?
D
Q1-5
Where do you
originally come from?
M
Q1-6
Would you
consider your area of residence in Lebanon to be urban or rural?
M
Q2-0
What
religious background do you come from?
M
Q2-1
What is the
religion of your father?
D
Q2-2
What is the
religion of your mother?
D
Q2-3
How religious
do you consider your immediate family to be?
M
Q2-4
Are you open
to your immediate family about your atheism?
M
Q2-5
How much did
this affect your relationship with them?
D
Q2-6
What
consequences did that have?
D
Q2-7
Are you open
to your friends about your atheism?
M
Q2-8
How much did
this affect your relationship with them?
D
Q2-9
Are you open
to your boss and/or co-workers about your atheism?
M
Q2-10
How much did
this affect your relationship with them?
D
Q2-11
Do you agree
with this statement ‘At times I have felt isolated from my society, friends,
or family because of my atheism’?
M
Q3-0
Have you ever
been discriminated against because of your atheism?
M
Q3-1
By whom?
D
Q3-2
Do you fear
that being open about your atheism will negatively affect your career?
M
Q3-3
Were you ever
subject to any of the following microaggressions/stereotypes? Which?
M
Q3-4
Please pick
the third option only as an answer to this question.
M
Q3-5
Have you ever
felt that your life, health, or well-being are at risk because of your
atheism?
M
Q3-6
At risk by
whom?
D
Q3-7
Do you currently
feel that your life, health, or well-being are at risk because of your
atheism?
D
Q3-8
Can you
elaborate?
OD
Q3-9
Do you feel
that you are treated unfairly by Lebanese personal status laws (marriage,
divorce, inheritance, custody over children, etc.)?
M
Q3-10
Please
explain why.
OD
Q3-11
Were/are you
forced to conform to religious practices or duties against your will (e.g.
wear the veil, pray, go to church, fast, etc.)?
M
Q3-12
Have you ever
pretended to pray, fast, or practice any religious duties to please your
family or community?
M
Q3-13
Do you feel
that your atheism (or expression of atheism) might cause you legal problems
in Lebanon?
M
Q3-14
Have you ever
practiced self-censorship on your views regarding atheism in order to avoid
social or legal consequences?
M
Q3-15
Do you feel
that the Lebanese political system respects you and is inclusive to atheists?
M
Q3-16
From your
experience, do you feel that Lebanese educational institutions (e.g., schools
or universities) instigate/incite against atheists?
M
Q3-17
In your
opinion, how does society see you and other atheists?
M
Q3-18
How much does
the discrimination and microaggressions you face affect your quality of life?
M
Q3-19
Are you
currently under any risk or need any assistance? If so please reach out to us
at contact@freethoughtlebanon.net, or leave your email address with some
background information and our ‘Protection team’ would contact you.
O
Q3-20
Once again,
where do you originally come from?
M
Q3-21
Is there
anything else you would like to add?
O
M
Mandatory
independent questions
D
Dependent (conditional) questions that only appear if a certain answer
to a certain question was chosen
[1]Elsässer, S. (2021). Arab Non-believers and
Freethinkers on YouTube: Re-Negotiating Intellectual and Social
Boundaries. Religions, 12(2), 106.
[2]Al Hariri, Y., Magdy, W., & Wolters, M. (2019,
November). Arabs and Atheism: Religious Discussions in the Arab Twittersphere.
In International Conference on Social Informatics (pp. 18-34).
Springer, Cham.
[3]Noman, H. (2015). Arab Religious Skeptics Online:
Anonymity, autonomy, and discourse in a hostile environment. Berkman
Center Research Publication, (2015-2).
[9]R Core Team (2017). R: A language and environment for statistical
computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/
[10]RStudio Team (2020). RStudio: Integrated Development for R.
RStudio, PBC, Boston, MA URL http://www.rstudio.com/
[11]Badry, R. (2014). Secularism as a
national stance. Antisectarian campaign and the development of a civil society
movement in Lebanon. Hemispheres. Studies on Cultures and Societies, 29(3),
27-45.
