Hizbullah: politics and religion.

Key takeaways

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Reading notes

• Socio-economic and Political factors

• Shiite politicistation is that of the same that has spurred most third world social movements

• Urbanisation in the 1950s laid the foundation for politicisation

• Engendered a sense of relative depreivation and as 'the proletariat of lebanon'

• Maronite dominated political system excarerbates the shiites frustration

• All enshrined in the Mithaq al-Watani (national pact) 1943distributing all political power and infrastructure based on the 1932 census

• The root of the foundation of hizballah lies in community radicalisation by arab socialist, nationalist, and communist orgnaisations

• Shiites associtade themselves with nasserists, the Ba'ath party, the syrian social nationalist party and others

• Shiite sympathy for Palestinian resistence groups lasted until the 1970s when the ideological credibility of arab nationality was questioned in the 1967 war

• Left an idenification with the left

• Nationalist and leftisit parties won over shiite support only because of a lack of islamic alternative at the time

• Once war broke out it was maronite mobilisation that prompted shiite militant counter-mobilisation

• Eviction of 100,000 shiites from nab'a in August 1976 and their resettlement into the southern suburbs radicalisated the community

• Communal politicisation preceded their religious politiciasation

• Political awakening had more in common with the politicisation of other lebanese sects with the univeral islamic revival

• Communal re-identification thus only played an indirect role in the formation of hizballah

• The Israeli invasion

• The scope of radicalism and its distinct islamic character came with the second israeli invasion of 1982

• It was israels success in destorying armed palestinian hegemony in the south that allowed other groups to enter the fore

• The merging of multiple pre-existing islamic groups was not yet a certainty- only their resistance of israel brought this about

• Hizbollah politician Muhammad Fnaysh 'the israeli invasion helped these groups think more about coalesing'

• Nasru'llah 'had the enemy not taken the step (the invasion), I do not know wheather something called hizbollah would have been born. I doubt it.'

• The israeli invasion is thus hizbollahs raison d’etre

• The pure destruction of the israeli invasion in the south of lebanon fueled shia wrath

• The mass exouds, israels economic blockade of the region, and the flooding of israeli goods into the market saw even more southerners flee to the 'belt of misery'

• Some palestinian camps came to house more shiites than palestinians

• Thus the massacres in 1982 of Sabra and Chatila not only victimised palestinians but also shiites

• Shiites were a quarter of those who were slain

• It was the israeli desecration of an 'ashura ceremonail procession in Nabatiyyeh a year later which expanded shiite readicalisation

• The processcion is an annual ceremony to commemorate the 'martydom' of the third shiite imam, Husayn who with his companions were invited to a town and intercepted and slaugheterd on route by the tyrannical Ummayed ruler Yazid

• The israeli desecration was an act of profanity and was too easy to analgise this with the act of Yazid

• Another event is the 1984 assasination of Shaykh Raghib Harb, imam of jibshit village who was exhaulted under the status of 'shaykh al-Shuhada' (jihad of all martyrs)

• By 1983 over 10,000 palestinians and shiites were held in israeli prisons

• Ansar prison camp is said to have held over half the souths population between 1982-5

• Treated like hostages with no prisoner of war rights

• Some were detained in israel at Atlit - in violation of the geneva convention

• Torture in Khiyam prison

• The Iranian-Syrian Role

• The intellectual roots of Hizbollah are found in Iraq, after the Ba'ath party took over in 1968 mass deprotations of lebanese followed

• These deproted clerics sought to re-resatblish the da'wa party in lebanon while others established the leabeanse mulsim students union in the 1970s

• Originally iran sought to export Khumanyis pan-islamic ideology to all shiite groups, when this fell short however they sought to organise all groups in lebanon under one banner

• Was only with syrian consent that iran was allowed to enter lebanon wi

• With the help of the remaining iranian guards islamic amal with other ismalic groups formed into the committee of nine- the first decision making council

• Hezbollah can be considered then as an umbrella organisation