Between Islam and the system: Sources and implications of popular support for Lebanon's Hizballah

Key takeaways

content: "@harikIslamSystemSources1996" -file:@harikIslamSystemSources1996

Reading notes

• Tendency to view fundamentalist movements as monolithic

• Those partisians that inhabited hizbahllah were said to be bitterly opposed to secular governemnt and were very likely to be members of their countries economic underclass (Dekmejian 1985, 25-32; Wright 1991, 25-6; Hamzeh 1993, 321)

• Their opponents ont he other hand were described as politically moderate, non-religious, and mainly form the middle and upper classes (Pipes 1989, 199)

• Also fit the partisians of Hizbahllahs main rivial- Amal

• Events in Iran and the establishment of Peace in Lebnaon apparently led the party of god to eschew intra-shiite conflict in favour of electoral politicas as a means of promoting islam

• Implication was that hizbahllah was a forieng imposed paper tiger

• The confessional democratic system established after the leaving of the French in 1943 was one that failed to adress shitte inequality and when disontent was demonstrated most shias tended to follow secular leftisti organisations like the communist party and the Syrian Social National Party

• The 'backwardness' many shias suffered encouraged movement to beirut in search of emplyment (Khuri 1975)

• These trends were accelerated in the 1970s due to retalitation against the PLO in the south of Lebanon from Israel (Faour 1992)

• Shiite mobilisation as a communal group occured onliy in the 1960s when the iranian born cleric Musa Al-Sadr founded the movement of the dispossesed drawing large support (Cobban 1986; Picard 1986; Shapia 1987)

• Resented the rise in demographics of shias didn't result in an equal increase in political power

• Syria became Amals main sponsor

• The splintering of Amal and the sending of Iranian revolutionary guards to train the growing islamic movement in the Biqa'a valley, the organisation was directed by a few young clerics (Mashayakh) all products of leaning (hawzat al-'llmiyyah) led by al-Sadr of Najaf, Iraq

• It was only in 1985 that Hizbahllah formally introduced itself to the workld in an open letter claiming to be a muslim community (umma)

• Proclaimed a holy war against israleies, the christian forces connected with them, and their western supporters

• Hoped for an islamic governemtn

• Whilst dislodign Amal from the urban centres of Beirut in 1989 the population faced harsh bombing from Chrisitan forces backed by part of the leabnese army, the well funded and organised hizbahllah demonstreated a progromatic appraoch to shiite politics not seen form amal (harik 1994)