Daylight saving time splits Lebanon’s Muslims and Christians
If you are in Lebanon and are asked, “what time is it,” the correct answer may be “are you a Muslim or a Christian”?
For the next month, Lebanon’s Muslims and Christians will operate as though they were in two different time zones. Christians have begun implementing daylight saving time, but Muslims have not. This is in a country that is half the size of Wales and that has half the population of London.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister, who, by convention, must be a Sunni Muslim, and Lebanon’s Speaker of Parliament, who, by convention, must be a Shia Muslim, had a rare moment of unity that, for a change, did not involve stealing taxpayers’ money. The two great men met on Thursday, 23 March, and they had a lot to discuss. Lebanon has no president or fully legitimate cabinet. The banking sector has collapsed. Most savers have lost their deposits. Strikes are paralysing the public sector. The country’s telecoms and internet connections are at risk of collapse due to the electric grid failing. Food delivery to prisons – which host jihadi prisoners as well as run of the mill criminals – are about to stop, risking riots and prison breaks. The salaries of security officers are officially less than $20 dollars a month, though, thankfully, Qatar is donating $100 per month to top up each enlistted man’s pay. Salaries for security officials had ranged between $400 and $3,000 before the banking crisis. The currency has lost almost 99% of its value and remains in freefall. And thus, during that meeting between the leaders of the executive and legislative branch, after a discussion lasting no longer than one minute, the two eminent statesmen reached a momentous decree. They decided to delay the start of daylight saving time, which was scheduled for Saturday 25 March. They gave the country around 60 hours’ notice.
During COVID-19 lockdowns in March 2020, Israel had for a few days considered not implementing daylight saving time as scheduled. Health authorities had speculated that reducing the number of daylight hours in the evening would stop people from socialising and reduce the spread of the virus. But Israel found that the undertaking was far too complex for markets, airlines and telecoms, and decided not to go ahead with it. Lebanon’s august statesmen, having no regard for markets, technology or Lebanon’s vital travel and tourism sectors, were not held back by these petty concerns. They were motivated by bigger ideas.
The reasoning of these sage statesmen was simple. Ramadan started on 23 March. During Ramadan, Muslims are supposed to stop eating and drinking at dawn and may not eat nor drink again until sunset. Daylight saving time does not change the number of hours one is required to fast, as it does not change the number of hours between sunrise and sunset. But the issue is not just about the number of hours fasted, but where these hours fall within people’s working day and sleep schedule. If one goes to bed at three am (which is the norm during Ramadan, as people typically feast and spend all night with friends and family), and wakes up at eight am to get to work at nine, one would have to hold out without food or drink until 6pm before DST is implemented. Once it is, one would have to hold out until 7pm. Proceeding with daylight saving time would mean that the day feels an hour longer, because, by the clock, the sun would be setting an hour later. And that makes it harder for those fasting. So, Lebanon’s august statesmen decided, let us make it easier for those who fast Ramadan. Funnily enough, while this is a decision motivated largely by the two upstanding statesmen wanting to appease their Muslim base, I can find no evidence that there was any popular demand for it in the Muslim community. People grumbled that DST would be inconvenient, as one would expect, but there was no serious expectation or demand that it would be changed. People were prepared to just get on with it. But, in the midst of the country’s collapse, the astute duo who run Lebanon’s cabinet and parliament just wanted to do something popular for a change. And it spectacularly backfired.
You see, this clumsy decision was made without even asking Lebanon’s Christians what they thought. Although the decision was ratified in the council of ministers after the premier and speaker had reached their historic agreement, many Christian ministers were boycotting the council. And, since they were not asked, and since the decision was made purely for populist sectarian reasons by two particularly despised figures, the Christians had to object. First, it was the Christian political party most hostile to the prime minister and speaker of parliament that piped up. Then, one by one, the other Christian parties joined in, achieving a rare instance of Christian unity. By Saturday, the Maronite Patriarchate – the preeminent Christian religious institution in Lebanon – announced that it would go ahead with implementing daylight saving time regardless of what the government said. And so now, people ask if you are operating on the Patriarch’s time, or on the Speaker’s time.
Lebanon’s national carrier, Middle East Airlines, immediately announced that all its flights from Beirut would now be taking off an hour before the time shown on tickets, while arrivals to Beirut would land an hour earlier than announced. The company can neither disobey a cabinet decree nor change its schedule. Surprisingly, aviation schedules in the rest of the world do not bend to the whims of Lebanon’s rulers. So, the airlines and Beirut airport kept their schedule intact and told their customers to figure it out. People went into a panic over whether their phones and computers would realise that DST has not yet begun – mobile telephone networks and internet service providers’ equipment is all pre-programmed to shift to daylight saving time, so they did not. For the next month, any prescheduled alert, business meeting, or appointment is going to be negotiated between those who are adhering to Speaker Berri’s time and those following what is being also referred to as the “international time” by those who want to avoid calling it the “Patriarch’s time”. Two Christian-run TV stations, the most popular in Lebanon, said they would stick to “international time”, and were excoriated by Sunni religious authorities for their sectarianism. Then, as if to defuse the situation, the third most popular TV station, which happens to be Muslim run, joined them in saying it would implement DST. Catholic schools, which dominate Lebanon’s educational system and have large numbers of Muslim students - in some cases a majority - announced that they would implement DST. Muslim and state schools said that they would not. Most business leaders - from both religions - are tearing their hair out. Their employees could be dropping their children off to school on one timetable and going to work on another. Worse, if these employees have children in different schools, the different schools could be operating on different timetables. And if these businesses have Muslim employees but do not implement DST, their employees could become deeply resentful. Even if these businesses wanted to be accommodating, they cannot implement one timetable for Christians and another for Muslims. Not to mention that Ramadan is already a low productivity month due to the fasting and reduced working hours. With all that said, the best approach was taken by the central bank of Lebanon. It said it would adhere to both times, regular and DST. Its international systems – connected to global markets – would operate on DST, but its working hours would be on regular pre-DST time. The institution most responsible for Lebanon’s economic collapse had a rare moment of sanity.
Now, even if the cabinet wanted to defuse this situation and back away from a clearly unserious diktat, as is being rumoured, it may not be able to. You see, the Prime Minister had taken the opinion of the Mufti of Lebanon’s Sunni community – that is, the highest Sunni religious authority – who supported the decision. For the prime minister to back away from the decree because Christians objected would be to betray the Mufti. The Speaker of Parliament, a Shia, will naturally be backed by the Shia religious establishment, even if they view the decree as ridiculous (and they probably do). To make the situation even more “enriching”, some Muslims are objecting to the Christians’ objection. “Don’t you want to make Ramadan easier for us?” To add insult to injury, Lebanon’s prime minister has been doing media rounds attacking his rivals – the Christians, that is – for being sectarian, and concerning themselves with the time rather than focusing on the big questions facing the country. As if this decree came from Mars, not from him personally.
In Lebanon, the answer to: “what time is it” might as well be: “are you a Muslim or a Christian?”. And this is how diversity is the gift that keeps on giving. In times of trouble, a diverse people is even more likely to splinter into herds, to turn violent and to make mountains out of molehills. Now, an oafish decree from two insufferably corrupt oligarchs has become another source of sectarian conflict, in a country where that is the last thing it needs. As a result, we Lebanese cannot agree even on what time to set our watches to, while in the midst of a catastrophic decline that may soon have us relying on sundials.
NB: I had said at the beginning of this article that, for once, the two leaders agreed on something that did not involve stealing taxpayers’ money. Rumours in Beirut are that the two statesmen agreed on a car import deal where custom duties would be paid using an older, cheaper rate, potentially earning them millions. This is not being discussed as everyone is busy with the time question. If true, I stand corrected, and I bow down to the ingenuity of our leaders and to their dedication to their craft. Here we are debating what time it is while they make off with another few million dollars.