This book seeks to discern possible answers to a set of seemingly straightforward questions. First, why has secularism, both as an ideological cornerstone of a non-confessional state and as a practice of state governance and law, been stillborn in the Arab world in general and twentieth-century Lebanon in particular? Second, why is secularism so often prematurely discarded as inimical atheism or feared as a mortal danger rather than apprized as a pragmatic, political principle of statecraft particularly pertinent to pluralistic societies?