For a Ministry of Heritage

01/09/2026

By Dr. Amine Jules Iskandar

Identity, embodied in both tangible and intangible heritage, cements society and grants it a form of immunity against regional upheavals. In turn, this immunity reinforces the stability that ensures development, heralding prosperity. Claiming that the process should proceed in the opposite direction is merely an illusion.

At a time when heritage is regarded as an obstacle to globalization and the erasure of identities is perceived as the fulfillment of humanity’s progress, Western governments adopt diverse approaches, linked to visions that sometimes stand in opposition to one another.

The reconstruction of traditional neighborhoods, as Warsaw did after 1945, or that of Dresden’s Frauenkirche in 2005, the current construction of traditional-style neighborhoods in several regions of France, as well as the establishment of museums, all contribute to preserving the “spirit of place”, the Genius Loci, and local culture. This reflects both a need for authenticity, for human-scale cities freed from the harshness of the modern movement, and a search for belonging in the face of a globalization that has made modernism its ideology.

Certain left-wing tendencies see architectural and landscape uniformity as an extension of their project to erase identities, sexes, and genders, while other conservative currents seek to preserve diversity and heritage.

Nations are not built exclusively upon economic, political, or security frameworks. These dynamics are essential to their survival and development, but they do not constitute their germ. What initially binds people together, what brings them together as a society in a given place, in a specific geography or on a mountain, stems from realities that are first and foremost inexpressible. It is something carried by rites and conveyed in works of art. For art has this particular quality. It allows the ineffable to be expressed.

Heritage, as the bearer of inheritance, then reveals itself through these various manifestations. It is natural, architectural, urban, sartorial, artistic, but also intangible.

Respecting this heritage and enhancing its value does not consist solely in protecting it and displaying it in the abstract, as is often the case in Lebanon. At times, an excessive presentation of disparate pieces of information paradoxically seeks to blur national identity by drowning it in an indigestible mass of data.

To represent an inheritance as nothing more than a compilation of passing civilizations is to deny the essence of that inheritance. Deliberately confusing influences with substitution, or enumerating the many foreign contributions with the intention of suggesting an absence of identity, reveals a profound misunderstanding of the subject. For identity is, by its very nature, cumulative. Its changing and evolving character in no way negates its existence.

Far from being static, identity is dynamic in principle. It is continually rewritten, as Charles Taylor observes. It is both evolving and cumulative. For Michel Foucault, identities are constructed through successive enrichments and through the interplay of otherness, of which they are the product.

Responsible preservation of heritage must be lucid, optimistic, and visionary. Heritage is the material embodiment of a national narrative, dreamed and then written. It is constructed, Ernest Renan said, through the capacity to remember together and to forget together. It is dreamed in the same way as the community it embodies, which is itself “imagined,” to borrow Benedict Anderson’s term.

History is not a cold science. Like faith, it proceeds from an interiority that becomes collective. To seek to possess or even construct heritage is to seek to exist in the past, the present, and the future.

This identity, which cements society, provides a form of immunity against regional upheavals. In turn, this immunity reinforces the stability that ensures development, heralding prosperity. Claiming that the process should proceed in the opposite direction is merely an illusion. Material abundance and economic wealth have never guaranteed stability or national cohesion. The “Switzerland of the Middle East” provided the cruelest proof of this in 1975.

Strong nations are built upon spiritual projects. Heritage is understood as the materialization of this foundational project. It gives visible materiality to a shared history that bears witness to a collective continuity. It transforms an abstract history into places, monuments, and symbols.

Heritage embodies and illustrates what Johann Gottfried von Herder called the Volksgeist, or the spirit of the people. A nation that wishes to exist according to its specificity and in accordance with its own aspirations must cherish its inheritance. For the notions of culture, heritage, people, and nation are intrinsically intertwined.

This concept can also be found in what Johann Gottlieb Fichte called Volkstum, or national culture. It is, in a sense, the sum of the cultural and spiritual characteristics that enable a people to recognize itself as such.

Self-awareness and a worldview are then shaped both through linguistic heritage and through a territory forged over centuries. The worldview, Weltansicht (or, more precisely, Weltanschauung) according to Wilhelm von Humboldt, belongs to the vocabulary of linguistics. Yet the architectural, urban or rural vocabulary, whether built or natural, likewise expresses, in its own way, a specific culture bearing its own worldview.

The question remains: Does Lebanon truly wish to preserve or transmit the spirit of its people, its Volksgeist, its culture, its Volkstum, and its worldview, its Weltansicht?

Why does the National Museum of Beirut never mention the terms “Phoenicia” or “Phoenician”? Why do these history textbooks skip the long period extending from antiquity to the Ottoman era? How can it be explained that its Ministry of Culture has gone from being led by a Hezbollah associate, an advocate of censorship, to a former member of the board of directors of the Open Society Foundations, an organization whose doctrine denies the very principle of cultural identity?

At a time when the ideology of globalization is operating in the West, we are witnessing timid attempts to preserve heritage. While most European countries do incorporate heritage into their ministries of culture, only Poland appears to grant it a privileged status. Although it does not have an autonomous ministry, heritage is nevertheless mentioned in the name, i.e. Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

The boldest move, however, remains that of Benjamin Netanyahu, who in 2023 created a genuinely autonomous ministry responsible for heritage, the Ministry of Heritage or Misrad haMoreshet. And, it has its own budget. Some countries have understood that nations are founded on heritage, which forms the cornerstone upon which the various sovereign functions and sectors of the economy rest. Long before the existence of modern states, there were already historical communities. We are their heirs.

If Lebanon appears to be renouncing its heritage in all cultural, linguistic, historical, and artistic fields, if it mistreats its natural heritage with as much ferocity as its architectural heritage, it is probably seeking to forge a new identity constituted by the negation of the historical identities present, or at least those of groups that have become minorities.

A subsidiary solution would then rest upon the establishment of several federated ministries of heritage and culture capable of responding to social realities and transmitting them, rather than continuing to dissolve or deny them.

Dr. Amine Jules Iskandar is President of the Syriac Maronite Union – Tur Levnon 

This article was originally published in French by Ici Beyrouth on 29 August 2026. The original can be found here.

The views expressed in this op-ed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of SyriacPress.