The Origins of Popular Support for Lebanon's Hezbollah

Key takeaways

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Reading notes

• Schaolrs have stated that Hizbahllahs adherents fit the usual profile of islamic militants operating elsewhere in the middle east- alienated and underprivellaged recruited on the bases of Islam (Wright 1985; Ranstorp, 1997; Saad-Ghorayeb 2002).

• Others however contend that affiliation with hezbohllah is not a function of social and eocnomic situations

• Hamzeh (1998, 251) many shia group activists are arts and sciencesgraduates rather than students of religion

• Norton (2000) cocnurs that hizbollah does not hold a monopoly of support of the poor but some of the party operatives are from the middle class or even affluent

• Harik (1996) the party was not in fact represetnative of the lower class, rather the bulk of support came from the middle class

• Increased levels of religiousity and alienation were shown to be negligably associated with expressed allegiance to the parrt

• Krueger and Maleckova (2002) explored data on education and income levels of Hizbollah fighters that dies in action and concluded that depreivation had no impact on membership and that participants were on average more educated and less impoverished than the lebanese population Shias have been traditionally described as relatively destitues and underclass when comarped to other groups within Lebanon

• In the 1960's the increased urbanisation of shias led to increased awareness of their limited shares of wealth and poltiical power (hudson 1968)

• Due to their high birth rate, shias were the fastest growing group of the communities

• Began to aim for revision of the status quo in the 1970s

• The foundation of amal in 1974 saw the expansion of a militarist wing that included the new middle class of shia business people and professionals

• The shias faced heavy losses in the 1975-6 civil war at the hands of maronite forces

• The south of lebanon and shais in aprticular were heavily destablished by PLO-Israeli hostiilities and with the exodus and the growth of the ''misery belt'' saw growing militancy in the 1980s

• The alck of lebanese presence in shia concentrated areas, hizbahllah established social programs and ifnrastrcuture int eh regions it controlled- populairty thus grow amongst the downtrodden

• Historiography

• The majority of writings about Islamic Fundamentalism cite socioeconomic factors and political reasons as responsible for the rise of these movements: social crises and societal challenges, corrupt statesmen, demographic explosion, pronounced inequality of wealth, economic slowdowns, stagnation and insecurity, lack of education opportunities, mass unemployment, chaotic urbanization, a sense of external domination, and spurious democratic systems (Keddie, 1998; Hallyday and Alevi, 1988; Deeb, 1992; Esposito, 1997; Ayoob, 2004). The conventional wisdom that militant Islam, on the individual level, attracts the alienated and the marginal, has many well-placed adherents. This evidence, according to a number of studies, indicates that the familiar social base of militant Islamists is students and professionals in their twenties and thirties. These students tend to be educated in the technical fields and exhibit high motivation and aspirations. Militant Islamists also attract members of the lower classes (Ibrahim, 1980; Ansari, 1984; Hoffman, 1993). Accordingly, following the relative deprivation thesis of rebellion, these individuals become aggrieved due to economic deprivation and social alienation, then they engage in political protest and violence (Gurr, 1970). Islamism becomes therefore the result of an explosion of pent-up grievances

• Many arabs see in islamic fundamentalism an alternative to the defeated arab nationalism, mobilised mythology, and stifled leftist ideologies

• The eoconomic vulnerabilities that shias held meant that shia society was more vulnerable to external facotrs that encouraged the emrgenace of islamic movements (deeb, 1986, 3-4)

• The death of the state or the decline of it meant tha thizbohllah offered an alternative that gave economic assistance to the down trodden which in turn gave it increased legitmacy