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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Fouad Ajami: What is Hezbollah? |
| 2013-05-29 |
| The controversy begins with the name Hezb Allah, Arabic for the Party of God. And the controversy is further deepened by what is implied by the name: the others, the ones who don’t belong to the movement of fire and brimstone, are Hezb al-Shaytan, the Party of Satan. In the theology and practice of Hezbollah, there can be no mercy shown for other Muslims, let alone infidels beyond the boundaries of Islam. In a country like Lebanon, with eighteen religious communities, the theology of Hezbollah must be terribly problematic. The theology must twist and bend. The tribunes of Hezbollah equivocate—they are good at that. They are brigades of wilayat al-faqih (the realm of the jurist), the Iranian notion that in the “absence” of the Twelfth Imam, the leader of the Islamic Republic claims sovereignty over the believers, and Lebanese citizens at the same time. No room for ambiguity is left here; wilayat al-faqih takes precedence. The pre-eminent leader of Hezbollah, the cleric Hassan Nasrallah, is bound by religious obligation (and old-fashioned ties of money and power) to render his loyalty to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Wilayat al-faqih skipped borders and the Mediterranean to find its way into a worldly country that had not been known for its religious zeal. Lebanon laid down the foundations of a “sister republic.” Lebanon shared a border with Israel, and an American educational enclave, the American University of Beirut, the jewel of this crown, that dated back to the mid-1800s. This gave the revolutionary theocracy in Tehran the material for a campaign against the “oppressors.” There was economic distress aplenty among the Shia of Lebanon. It was not hard for Iran, a large realm with substantial oil wealth, to find foot-soldiers in Lebanon. It had “salvation” to offer them, and economic sustenance. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in the mid-1980s, literally erected the Hezbollah movement. The newly urbanized among the Shia took to this movement. It helped them conquer age-old inadequacies. It didn’t take long for “little Tehran” to rise in Beirut. The transformation was stunning. The chador was suddenly everywhere, as were the young bearded men and the clerics with black turbans who possessed of immense power. The cult of “martyrdom” was sold to the gullible. |
| Posted by:Pappy |