Nationalism, Transnationalism, and Political Islam

Hizbullah's Institutional Identity

Mohanad Hage Ali

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783319604268
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique du Moyen-Orient

This booksheds light on how Hizbullah has transformed religious rituals andsupernatural narratives in order to mobilize the Shi'a community. The authorexamines how Hizbullah has altered its institutional structure andreconstructed Lebanese Shi'a history in a manner similar to that ofnationalist movements. Through fieldwork and research, the project findsthat Hizbullah has centralized around the concept of Wilayat al-Fagih (Gaurdianship of the Islamic Jurists): in essence, the absolute authority ofIran's Supreme Leader over the Shi'a "nation."

© The Author(s) 2018

Mohanad Hage AliNationalism, Transnationalism, and Political Islamhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60426-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: The Construction of Hizbullah’s Identity

Mohanad Hage Ali¹

(1)

London, UK

End Abstract

1.1 Overview

In the course of Islamic organisations’ history, elements of surprise are consistent. These take the form of either a military victory against a formidable foe, such as in the case of Hizbullah against Israel in its 2000 withdrawal and 2006 war, or a sweeping electoral score, as with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood in 2011–2012 Parliamentary elections. These Islamic groups have gone mainstream, and have demonstrated an ability to effectively mobilise masses in ways that are only reminiscent of the nationalist and Marxist-Leninist era.

For Islamists themselves, this is less surprising. Their work has been generational, focusing on constructing a new identity through social services, religious rituals, education, and scout associations.

Taking Hizbullah, an Islamic Shiʿi movement, as an empirical case study, this book draws on debates in the field of nationalism studies to address the question of how this political organisation’s identity is produced and embedded among Lebanese Shiʿa. This entails engaging with three related questions: how modern is Hizbullah; who produces its form of Shiʿi identity; and what are this identity’s main pillars? On the basis of a review of the literature, as well as the results of discourse analysis, interpreting the findings from a series of interviews, official and unofficial party publications, and internal notes and memos, the book argues that Hizbullah seeks to embody a reconstructed Lebanese Shiʿi identity. The research has found that Hizbullah continues to deploy the many different institutions it has built over the past two decades in an attempt to replace the traditional form of Lebanese Shiʿi Islam, with its multi-polar authority structure, with another, centralised one, which revolves around the relatively novel concept of Wilayat al-Faqih (the ‘Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists’)—namely, the absolute authority of Iran’s Supreme Leader over the Shiʿi ‘nation’. Looking at the party’s emergence through this lens will enable us to understand its success in mobilising the Shiʿi community. ¹

In examining the subject of collective identity, this book focuses specifically on the elite’s role in its production, and adopts Albert Hourani’s approach, which distinguishes between race and ethnicity, when defining the Shiʿi ethnic community (Harik 1972, p. 303). Ethnic community members, such as the Lebanese Shiʿa, usually share similar characteristics, such as a distinct language, religion, culture, or historical experience, and are also “conscious of [their community’s] difference from other communities” (Harik 1972, p. 303). Hizbullah, an Islamic movement, does not constitute a classic case of nationali sm, which is often regarded as primarily secular and ethnic, but is rather what Hourani calls a ‘minority nationali sm’ in the Arab world (Hourani 1947, p. 36). The application of nationali sm studies to an analysis of an Islamic movement such as Hizbullah is based on Ernest Gellner ’s contention that (political) Islam performs nationali st functions. In the contemporary Sunni–Shiʿi schism, this contention applies in the minority context. Phares Walid’s work, Lebanese Christian Nationalism: The Rise and Fall of an Ethnic Resistance (1995), addresses Lebanon’s multi-sectarian identities in a similar fashion: it equates ethnicity, religious ideology, and nationali sm. Maya Shatzmiller also conflates these three concepts in her study of Egyptian Copts, Nationalism and Minority Identities in Islamic Societies (2005), which applies Anthony Smith’s theory of “the potential for an ethnic minority revival”. ² Thus, in the following chapters, any reference to national identity refers to the Lebanese Shiʿi identity rather than to an inclusive Lebanese one.

Mona Harb and Reinoud Leenders point to this subtle differentiating element in Hizbullah’s institutional activity ; they refer to the “meanings disseminated on a daily basis through the party’s policy networks [which] serve to mobilise the Shiʿa constituency into a ‘Society of Resistance’ in order to consolidate the foundation of an Islamic sphere, al-hala al-islamiyya” (Harb and Leenders 2005, p. 174). This ‘Islamic sphere’ symbolises the desired result of the consolidation of Hizbullah’s reconstruction of Shiʿi identity in the Lebanese Shiʿi community. Applying Smith’s and Gellner ’s observations on political Islam, this book contends that Hizbullah’s functions and goals, particularly in relation to its construction of a national identity and its aspiration to create a Lebanese Shiʿi ‘nation’, are synonymous with those of nationali sm. Hizbullah is producing a new Shiʿi identity within the context of Lebanon’s consociational system (in which the state encompasses different sectarian identities), setting the scene for a leading Shiʿi role, possibly similar to the Christian Maronite’s dominant status prior to the country’s civil war. ³ By using Hizbullah as a case study, this book aims to contribute to the debates on religion and nationali sm by demonstrating that religious movements, particularly Islamist ones, can perform functions similar to nationali st groups. It rejects the contention that Hizbullah’s engagement in the Lebanese political system marks a shift in its ideology; it argues rather that the party’s ideological discourse remains committed to the concept of Wilayat al-Faqih , which is significant on a practical level in mobilising the Lebanese Shiʿa under Hizbullah leadership, using religious pretexts for the organisation’s role. ⁴ The book maintains, moreover, that Hizbullah’s increased participation in the political process is focused on protecting its military arsenal and its autonomous institutions, or what is known in contemporary Lebanese political discourse as Hizbullah’s position in Lebanon as a ‘state within a state’. ⁵ Unlike Hamas, however, Hizbullah’s pan-Islamic ideology is strictly hierarchical and institutionalised .

The fieldwork for this book entailed observing the works of Hizbullah’s institutions in the southern suburbs of Beirut, and interviewing directors. Given the scope of the work, the methodology linking the theoretical to the empirical is based on selective sampling. Since such research in the highly secure institutions remains largely restricted, a senior official, whom I have known for years, provided access to these institutions. However, the series of suicide bombings, which targeted the area since 19 November 2013, slowed my access. At these institutions, I interviewed directors, employees, and beneficiaries. In the southern suburbs of Beirut, I spent time at affiliated publishing houses and bookstores, searching for books and enquiring about the demand on certain publications, such as those with a special emphasis on the supernatural. The organisation’s security presence in these areas was very apparent, with visible guards and plainclothes militants on watch. During the last year of the research, I travelled to Tehran, where I tried to collect data on Hizbullah’s lobbying efforts among the ruling elites. While Hizbullah’s office in Northern Tehran was not accessible, I interviewed several individuals who had affirmed my observations of the organisation’s lobbying efforts.

This introductory chapter reviews the major studies on Hizbullah and analyses the main approaches and debates in the field of nationali sm that are pertinent to the topic in order to clarify the research question. This is based on the contention that although Hizbullah does not constitute a classic case of nationali sm, the field’s debates remain relevant to the party’s primary function in society: that of creating a new Lebanese Shiʿi identity. This chapter highlights the limitations of the traditional ways of studying this Shiʿi organisation and argues the need to distinguish between two types of Hizbullah discourse: the political, which is targeted at a non-Shiʿi audience, and the internal, ideological discourse, whose audience comprises the party’s followers and the Lebanese Shiʿa.

The second chapter looks at the institutionalisation of Hizbullah—that is, its creation of a network of institutions, which include media, education, and research, in order to organise its identity dissemination and the production of its rhetoric. The chapter demonstrates how the organisation has reproduced its identity in forms that are tailored to different audiences—for example, children in early education, scouts, university students, or the injured and the families of ‘martyrs’. Although Hizbullah claims that its organisational structure is based on the ‘Islamic principle’ of al-taʿbiʾa literally translated into reserves, but implying mobilization,Marxist–Leninist influences are evident, whether in its internal general conferences or its local branches and politburo-like leading Shura committee. A review of both the Leninist party model and Hizbullah’s structure renders these similarities apparent. For instance, the significant role publishing has in the organisation suggests Leninist influences, an assumption that is corroborated by a founding member of Hizbullah.

The third chapter provides an overview of a pre-Hizbullah construction of Lebanese Shiʿi history. The chapter argues that Muhammad Jaber Al Safa, a Lebanese Shiʿi intellectual, created historical narratives of Jabal ʿAmil, coining terms such as the ‘ʿAmili people’, and ‘ʿAmili resistance’, and, in so doing, established the foundations for Hizbullah’s reconstructed historical narrative. By exploring Jaber’s main historical constructions, and their relevance to Hizbullah’s later narratives, myths, and symbols, the chapter complements Chap. 4’s analysis of the organisation’s historical narratives. Meanwhile, the fourth chapter sheds light on the constructed historical symbols in Hizbullah’s narratives and/or rhetoric, and draws an analogy between the competing narratives of traditional Shiʿi historians, such as Jaber, and those of Hizbullah’s intellectuals and polemicists. Both the third and fourth chapters illuminate the extent of Hizbullah’s reconstruction of history, specifically the scale of invention in the organisation’s historical narratives. The fourth chapter argues that these narratives are uncorroborated, and are based, for the most part, on Jaber’s equally unsubstantiated ‘oral sources’ and narratives. In terms of the general argument of this book, these two chapters highlight the relevance of the debates in nationali sm studies to an analysis of Hizbullah. The organisation, in its rhetoric and through its affiliated ‘intellectual brokers’, has engaged in a process that Smith, referring to nationali sm, dubs ‘reappropriation’ or “reaching back into the ethnic past to the national present”. Hizbullah’s intellectuals, like nationali st intelligentsias, could be seen as “political archaeologists who aim, not to return to the past, but to recover its pristine ethos and reconstruct a modern nation in the image of the past ethnie” (Smith 1999, p. 25).

The fifth chapter examines the role of supernatural religious narratives in Hizbullah’s Shiʿi identity, arguing that the organisation takes a modern approach in terms of their use and in the extent of their dissemination. These narratives provide a link between Hizbullah’s hierarchy and its military activity and the divine, and are intended to contribute towards building a more amenable (and credulous) base of members and followers. The chapter explores the earlier deployment of supernatural narratives—religious stories or simply ‘superstitious’ tales—for the purposes of political legitimacy; however, it argues that Hizbullah’s use of such narratives is modern in both approach and scale.

The sixth chapter reviews the development of the Wilayat al-Faqih doctrine, central to Hizbullah’s identity, and traces the experiences of different Shiʿi groups with the same ideology. This comparative approach raises questions about the supposedly transnational nature of the organisation’s identity project, as the varied experiences suggest that tensions frequently emerge between the ideology, Wilayat al-Faqih , and Iranian state interests, specifically when these clash with its sponsored Shiʿi groups’ internal politics. The case of Afghanistan’s Hazara Khomeinists best illustrates the importance of these tensions in overshadowing ideology. The chapter puts Hizbullah’s experience in perspective, arguing that the organisation’s lobb...