Tripoli’s municipality is trying to cut down on political & religious slogans in the city by removing all barriers across its roundabouts. Technically speaking, there’s no official decision taken yet to ban these slogans but it’s really hard to place them now especially on The Nour or Allah square at Tripoli’s entrance. I think it’s good step forward but they should make it official once and for all.
The Nour or Allah square at Tripoli’s entrance was originally known as Abdel-Hamid Karami square, with a statue for Karami who was Tripoli’s mufti at one point and part of the movement that led to Lebanon’s independence in 1943. He was praised an independence hero and later on served as a prime minister in the mid 1940s. The civil war witnessed the rise of Salafist movements in Tripoli and in the mid 1980s, the Tawheed movement decided to take down Abdel-Hamid Karami’s statue and replace it with a huge Allah sign with a slogan underneath it that says “Tripoli the Muslims fortress”.