Helou
Helou (Charles Helou) (September 25, 1913-7 January 2001). President of Lebanon (1964-1970). Helou was born in Beirut into a middle-class Maronite Christian family. In the 1930s, Helou studied with the French faculty of law in Beirut. In 1932, he founded the newspaper L’Eclair du Nord in Aleppo and, in 1935, Helou founded the newspaper Le Jour in Beirut.
Helou became the Lebanese ambassador to the Vatican in 1947, and became minister of justice and health in 1954. In 1955, Helou stepped down as a minister.
In 1964, Helou became minister of education. On August 18, 1964, Helou was elected president after Fuad Chehab. One reason why he was elected was that he was one of few actual candidates that had not been active in the Civil War of 1958. He also got the support of Chehab. Helou declared that he would continue the political line of Chehab. As he became president, he declared that he would not allow any bases of the newly established Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon. On September 25, 1964, the prime minister, Hussein Oweini formed a government.
On July 20, 1965, Hussein Oweini resigned as prime minister. On July 26, 1965, Rashid Karami formed a new government. In December of 1965, Karami and Helou cooperated in a campaign of an administrative and judicial reform program intended on ridding Lebanon of the many officials that were involved in corruption.
In March 1966, much in opposition to Helou’s and Karami’s program, protests came from within the government itself. It ended with Karami offering his resignation.
In 1968, the Christians, with Helou, tried to stop the stationing of Palestinian guerrillas, while Muslim leaders favored this.
In 1969, Helou had to accept that the PLO had taken over control over the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
In 1970, Helou endorsed Elias Sarkis as his chosen successor, but he lost the election in the National Assembly by one vote to Suleiman Frangieh. Unlike other former Presidents, who remained politically active after retirement, Helou faded from the scene. He was involved in a philanthropic venture, founding a number of restaurants to provide free hot meals to elderly people.
Helou died of a heart attack on January 7, 2001. He was 87.
Helou was not a strong politician, and had little direct support on his own. He was chosen president as a compromise candidate between factions still upset from the Civil War of 1958. The reform work that former president Fuad Chehab had started, slowed down under Helou. In some fields, the weakness of Helou was his strongest side: He was able to cooperate both with Christian as well as Muslim groups. He also kept Lebanon out of the destructive Six-Day War. However, he was not able to curb the influx of Palestinian guerrillas, and, in his time, Lebanon saw the first serious attacks by Israel. In many ways, Helou’s time was the forerunner of the Lebanese Civil War that started five years after the end of his presidency.
Charles Helou see Helou
Helou (Charles Helou) (September 25, 1913-7 January 2001). President of Lebanon (1964-1970). Helou was born in Beirut into a middle-class Maronite Christian family. In the 1930s, Helou studied with the French faculty of law in Beirut. In 1932, he founded the newspaper L’Eclair du Nord in Aleppo and, in 1935, Helou founded the newspaper Le Jour in Beirut.
Helou became the Lebanese ambassador to the Vatican in 1947, and became minister of justice and health in 1954. In 1955, Helou stepped down as a minister.
In 1964, Helou became minister of education. On August 18, 1964, Helou was elected president after Fuad Chehab. One reason why he was elected was that he was one of few actual candidates that had not been active in the Civil War of 1958. He also got the support of Chehab. Helou declared that he would continue the political line of Chehab. As he became president, he declared that he would not allow any bases of the newly established Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon. On September 25, 1964, the prime minister, Hussein Oweini formed a government.
On July 20, 1965, Hussein Oweini resigned as prime minister. On July 26, 1965, Rashid Karami formed a new government. In December of 1965, Karami and Helou cooperated in a campaign of an administrative and judicial reform program intended on ridding Lebanon of the many officials that were involved in corruption.
In March 1966, much in opposition to Helou’s and Karami’s program, protests came from within the government itself. It ended with Karami offering his resignation.
In 1968, the Christians, with Helou, tried to stop the stationing of Palestinian guerrillas, while Muslim leaders favored this.
In 1969, Helou had to accept that the PLO had taken over control over the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.
In 1970, Helou endorsed Elias Sarkis as his chosen successor, but he lost the election in the National Assembly by one vote to Suleiman Frangieh. Unlike other former Presidents, who remained politically active after retirement, Helou faded from the scene. He was involved in a philanthropic venture, founding a number of restaurants to provide free hot meals to elderly people.
Helou died of a heart attack on January 7, 2001. He was 87.
Helou was not a strong politician, and had little direct support on his own. He was chosen president as a compromise candidate between factions still upset from the Civil War of 1958. The reform work that former president Fuad Chehab had started, slowed down under Helou. In some fields, the weakness of Helou was his strongest side: He was able to cooperate both with Christian as well as Muslim groups. He also kept Lebanon out of the destructive Six-Day War. However, he was not able to curb the influx of Palestinian guerrillas, and, in his time, Lebanon saw the first serious attacks by Israel. In many ways, Helou’s time was the forerunner of the Lebanese Civil War that started five years after the end of his presidency.
Charles Helou see Helou
Henrique
Henrique. Black Yoruba slave who, in 1835, led a great slave revolt in Pernambuco, Brazil. In the fight he was badly wounded. Although almost speechless from agony, he refused to betray his brethren.
Henrique. Black Yoruba slave who, in 1835, led a great slave revolt in Pernambuco, Brazil. In the fight he was badly wounded. Although almost speechless from agony, he refused to betray his brethren.
Hermes Trismegistus
Hermes Trismegistus (in Arabic, Hirmis). For Islamic authors, the author of philosophical, scientific and magical works appears divided into three individuals. The first Hermes was identified with Enoch and Idris, who lived in Egypt before the Flood and built the Pyramids. The second lived in Babylon after the Flood and revived the study of the sciences. The third wrote in Egypt after the Flood about various sciences and crafts.
Trismegistus, Hermes see Hermes Trismegistus
Hirmis see Hermes Trismegistus
Hermes Trismegistus (in Arabic, Hirmis). For Islamic authors, the author of philosophical, scientific and magical works appears divided into three individuals. The first Hermes was identified with Enoch and Idris, who lived in Egypt before the Flood and built the Pyramids. The second lived in Babylon after the Flood and revived the study of the sciences. The third wrote in Egypt after the Flood about various sciences and crafts.
Trismegistus, Hermes see Hermes Trismegistus
Hirmis see Hermes Trismegistus
Hezbollah
Hezbollah. See Hizballah.
Hizballah see Hezbollah.
Hezbollah. See Hizballah.
Hizballah see Hezbollah.
Hidayat
Hidayat (Sadiq Hidayat) (February 17, 1903 - April 9, 1951). Revolutionary writer of modern Iran. His daring experiments in technique and in thought have exercised a powerful influence on the development of modern Persian fiction.
Sadiq Hidayat is considered the father of modern Persian fiction. Although his works show a variety of literary forms, he was essentially a short-story writer.
Only since the beginning of the 20th century, because of the development of journalism and the influence of the West, has Persian prose been given the same status as poetry. Sadiq Hidayat contributed greatly to this literary revolution.
Hidayat was born in Tehran, Persia, to an aristocratic family of great landowners from the northern province of Mazandaran. His ancestors gave Persia (especially in the 19th century) many prominent statesmen and men of letters, and his family played an important role during the constitutional revolution of 1906, in this period of confrontation of the past with the new.
Very little is known about Hidayat as an individual, as he preferred to live modestly and in solitude. However, it is known that he cared for the underprivileged and the humble people of his country and that he was a patriot, but at the same time he was obsessed with an idea of self-destruction, of suicide.
In his 20s Hidayat went to France to study dentistry but soon changed to engineering. His engineering studies did not last long as he got interested in the study of pre-Islamic Persia. He turned to writing and in 1927 published The Advantages of Vegetarianism, a second attempt (the first was a short book, Man and Animals, an unsuccessful literary debut) to show man's cruelty to animals. The first sign of his new, simple style is seen in his short play, The Legend of Creation.
Hidayat returned to Persia in 1930, and his first collection of short stories, Buried Alive, was published that year. The Blind Owl (1937), his masterpiece, is his self-analysis. Through Kafka-like dream technique, Hidayat brings about unreality. The hero of the book seeks an escape from his misery and poverty in alcohol and opium, which cause his dream life. The atmosphere of The Blind Owl reminds one of the grimmest passages of E. A. Poe, F. Kafka, F. Dostoevsky, C. Dickens, and E. Zola. The recurring motif in Hidayat's stories is the vanity of human existence and its uselessness and absurdity.
During the 1930s Hidayat not only published eight other important works but was engaged with other progressive artists and writers in the movement against the old-fashioned bombastic style. His interest in Persian studies can be seen in the writing of this period as he tried to show the continuity of long Persian civilization and its glorious past. At the same time Hidayat was one of the pioneers in bringing folklore into his literary works. He was still under the influence of the famous Persian writer Omar Khayyam. Hidayat devoted three books to Khayyam and his philosophy, which touches on the everlasting puzzles of humanity.
The characters in Hidayat's short stories are mostly small people with their problems, sorrows, hates, and weak-nesses - sympathetic yet repulsive. But as Henry D. G. Law writes: "Hidayat does not write objectively; with his reckless soaring genius he infuses into each of his tales his own personality, his own mood of pity, indignation, or tenderness, so that you may enter fully into the mind and thoughts of his characters, whoever they may be - seeing them as he sees them. They live and they haunt you long after you have closed the book."
In his stories Hidayat paints the abnormalities of human characters, who in most cases suffer from suicidal temptations. The satirical tone in some of his short stories in indirect criticism of the society which obstructs the education and advancement of the masses. Hidayat is particularly sympathetic toward the position of women, and the women in his stories are symbols of revolt against backwardness.
Hidayat's search for the glorious past of Persia led him to India, where he studied with Parsee scholars. But India did not cure him of his melancholy and gloomy pessimism. After returning to Persia, he published new collections of his grimmest short stories, The Stray Dog and The Dead End, which show his belief that man cannot liberate himself from his fate. Hidayat committed suicide in Paris on April 9, 1951.
Sadiq Hidayat see Hidayat
Hidayat (Sadiq Hidayat) (February 17, 1903 - April 9, 1951). Revolutionary writer of modern Iran. His daring experiments in technique and in thought have exercised a powerful influence on the development of modern Persian fiction.
Sadiq Hidayat is considered the father of modern Persian fiction. Although his works show a variety of literary forms, he was essentially a short-story writer.
Only since the beginning of the 20th century, because of the development of journalism and the influence of the West, has Persian prose been given the same status as poetry. Sadiq Hidayat contributed greatly to this literary revolution.
Hidayat was born in Tehran, Persia, to an aristocratic family of great landowners from the northern province of Mazandaran. His ancestors gave Persia (especially in the 19th century) many prominent statesmen and men of letters, and his family played an important role during the constitutional revolution of 1906, in this period of confrontation of the past with the new.
Very little is known about Hidayat as an individual, as he preferred to live modestly and in solitude. However, it is known that he cared for the underprivileged and the humble people of his country and that he was a patriot, but at the same time he was obsessed with an idea of self-destruction, of suicide.
In his 20s Hidayat went to France to study dentistry but soon changed to engineering. His engineering studies did not last long as he got interested in the study of pre-Islamic Persia. He turned to writing and in 1927 published The Advantages of Vegetarianism, a second attempt (the first was a short book, Man and Animals, an unsuccessful literary debut) to show man's cruelty to animals. The first sign of his new, simple style is seen in his short play, The Legend of Creation.
Hidayat returned to Persia in 1930, and his first collection of short stories, Buried Alive, was published that year. The Blind Owl (1937), his masterpiece, is his self-analysis. Through Kafka-like dream technique, Hidayat brings about unreality. The hero of the book seeks an escape from his misery and poverty in alcohol and opium, which cause his dream life. The atmosphere of The Blind Owl reminds one of the grimmest passages of E. A. Poe, F. Kafka, F. Dostoevsky, C. Dickens, and E. Zola. The recurring motif in Hidayat's stories is the vanity of human existence and its uselessness and absurdity.
During the 1930s Hidayat not only published eight other important works but was engaged with other progressive artists and writers in the movement against the old-fashioned bombastic style. His interest in Persian studies can be seen in the writing of this period as he tried to show the continuity of long Persian civilization and its glorious past. At the same time Hidayat was one of the pioneers in bringing folklore into his literary works. He was still under the influence of the famous Persian writer Omar Khayyam. Hidayat devoted three books to Khayyam and his philosophy, which touches on the everlasting puzzles of humanity.
The characters in Hidayat's short stories are mostly small people with their problems, sorrows, hates, and weak-nesses - sympathetic yet repulsive. But as Henry D. G. Law writes: "Hidayat does not write objectively; with his reckless soaring genius he infuses into each of his tales his own personality, his own mood of pity, indignation, or tenderness, so that you may enter fully into the mind and thoughts of his characters, whoever they may be - seeing them as he sees them. They live and they haunt you long after you have closed the book."
In his stories Hidayat paints the abnormalities of human characters, who in most cases suffer from suicidal temptations. The satirical tone in some of his short stories in indirect criticism of the society which obstructs the education and advancement of the masses. Hidayat is particularly sympathetic toward the position of women, and the women in his stories are symbols of revolt against backwardness.
Hidayat's search for the glorious past of Persia led him to India, where he studied with Parsee scholars. But India did not cure him of his melancholy and gloomy pessimism. After returning to Persia, he published new collections of his grimmest short stories, The Stray Dog and The Dead End, which show his belief that man cannot liberate himself from his fate. Hidayat committed suicide in Paris on April 9, 1951.
Sadiq Hidayat see Hidayat
Hikmet
Hikmet (Nazim Hikmet) (Nâzım Hikmet Ran) (January 15, 1902 – June 2, 1963). Turkish radical poet and dramatist. Nazim Hikmet was born in Salonika to a family of Ottoman officials. Nazim Hikmet became a cadet in the Turkish navy and began to write poems, the first being published when Nazim was 15.
In 1921, Nazim Hikmet went to Moscow. He would remain in the Soviet Union until 1928. While in the Soviet Union, Hikmet adopted Marxist ideas and became greatly influenced by the futurist poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky. In 1928, Hikmet returned to Turkey, having joined the Turkish Communist Party in 1924.
Nazim Hikmet published books of verse seeking to free Turkish poetry from the hitherto dominant stylized classical metres. With lively eloquence, vigor and vivid, satiric humor, Hikmet tackled many social problems of the Kemalist Turkey of his day, though he also wrote love and nature poems.
Among Hikmet’s early books of verse are 835 Satir (“835 Lines”), which was published in 1929; 1+1=1, which was published in 1930; Gece Gelen Telgraf (“Night Wire”), which was published in 1932; Benerci kendini nicin oldurdu? (“Why did Benerci Kill Himself?”), which was also published in 1932; and The Lay of Simavneli Kadtoglu Bedrettin, which was published in 1936.
In 1938, Hikmet was arrested on charges of sedition and sentenced to 28 years imprisonment. Hikmet was released in 1950 as a result of an international campaign of protest against this treatment. Hikmet soon escaped to the Soviet Union, where many of his poems and plays have been published in Russian and Azerbaijani translations. Some of his verse has also been translated into Greek and French.
Hikmet’s last important work was a powerful semi-autobiographical novel, first published in Russian at Moscow in 1962, and then in a French version, by Munevver Andac under the title Les romantiques.
Nazim Hikmet see Hikmet
Hikmet (Nazim Hikmet) (Nâzım Hikmet Ran) (January 15, 1902 – June 2, 1963). Turkish radical poet and dramatist. Nazim Hikmet was born in Salonika to a family of Ottoman officials. Nazim Hikmet became a cadet in the Turkish navy and began to write poems, the first being published when Nazim was 15.
In 1921, Nazim Hikmet went to Moscow. He would remain in the Soviet Union until 1928. While in the Soviet Union, Hikmet adopted Marxist ideas and became greatly influenced by the futurist poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky. In 1928, Hikmet returned to Turkey, having joined the Turkish Communist Party in 1924.
Nazim Hikmet published books of verse seeking to free Turkish poetry from the hitherto dominant stylized classical metres. With lively eloquence, vigor and vivid, satiric humor, Hikmet tackled many social problems of the Kemalist Turkey of his day, though he also wrote love and nature poems.
Among Hikmet’s early books of verse are 835 Satir (“835 Lines”), which was published in 1929; 1+1=1, which was published in 1930; Gece Gelen Telgraf (“Night Wire”), which was published in 1932; Benerci kendini nicin oldurdu? (“Why did Benerci Kill Himself?”), which was also published in 1932; and The Lay of Simavneli Kadtoglu Bedrettin, which was published in 1936.
In 1938, Hikmet was arrested on charges of sedition and sentenced to 28 years imprisonment. Hikmet was released in 1950 as a result of an international campaign of protest against this treatment. Hikmet soon escaped to the Soviet Union, where many of his poems and plays have been published in Russian and Azerbaijani translations. Some of his verse has also been translated into Greek and French.
Hikmet’s last important work was a powerful semi-autobiographical novel, first published in Russian at Moscow in 1962, and then in a French version, by Munevver Andac under the title Les romantiques.
Nazim Hikmet see Hikmet
Hilal
Hilal (Banu Hilal). Tribe of Arabia who, in the eighth century, emigrated to Egypt, joined the Carmathians in the tenth century and were given Ifriqiya by the Fatimids in the eleventh century to invade. Their movement into North Africa and the battles they fought there form the historical basis for the saga known as Sirat Bani Hilal.
The Banu Hilal were a confederation of Bedouin tribes that migrated from Upper Egypt into North Africa in the 11th century, having been sent by the Fatimids to punish the Zirids for abandoning Shiism. Other authors suggest that the tribes left the grasslands on the upper Nile because of environmental degradation accompanying the Medieval Warm Period. The Banu Hilal quickly defeated the Zirids and deeply weakened the neighboring Hammadids. Their influx was a major factor in the linguistic and cultural Arabization of the Maghreb, and in the spread of nomadism in areas where agriculture had previously been dominant. Ibn Khaldun noted that the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become completely arid desert.
Banu Hilal see Hilal
Hilal (Banu Hilal). Tribe of Arabia who, in the eighth century, emigrated to Egypt, joined the Carmathians in the tenth century and were given Ifriqiya by the Fatimids in the eleventh century to invade. Their movement into North Africa and the battles they fought there form the historical basis for the saga known as Sirat Bani Hilal.
The Banu Hilal were a confederation of Bedouin tribes that migrated from Upper Egypt into North Africa in the 11th century, having been sent by the Fatimids to punish the Zirids for abandoning Shiism. Other authors suggest that the tribes left the grasslands on the upper Nile because of environmental degradation accompanying the Medieval Warm Period. The Banu Hilal quickly defeated the Zirids and deeply weakened the neighboring Hammadids. Their influx was a major factor in the linguistic and cultural Arabization of the Maghreb, and in the spread of nomadism in areas where agriculture had previously been dominant. Ibn Khaldun noted that the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become completely arid desert.
Banu Hilal see Hilal
Hilli
Hilli (‘Allamah ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli) (Jamal ad-Din Hasan ibn Yusuf ibn 'Ali ibn Muthahhar al-Hilli) (al-Allamah al-Hilli) (December 15, 1250 - December 18, 1325). Scholar and jurist of the Imami (or Ithna ‘Ashari) Shi‘a. Hasan ibn Yusuf ibn Mutahhar al-Hilli, known as ‘Allamah (“most learned”), was born in Hilla in Iraq. His lifetime saw the Mongol capture of Baghdad (in 1258) and the foundation of the Il-khanid dynasty. The Mongols, contrary to their reputation, permitted, even encouraged, intellectual activity. Hulegu, for example, founded the observatory and informal academy at Maragha in 1259. ‘Allamah benefited from this freedom. He probably studied at Maragha with Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274), but primarily found his teachers and colleagues in Baghdad, where also he became involved with the Il-khanid court during the reign of Oljeitu (r. 1304-1316). His education covered the usual curriculum, in its Shi‘a version, but included significant input from Sunni thinkers.
‘Allamah’s writings included works on grammar, logic, hadith, tafsir (Qur’anic commentary), and biography, but his constructive achievement was in the areas of jurisprudence, theology, and polemics. His polemical works (defending the existence, necessity, and historical evolution of the imamate and exemplified in the Minhaj al-karamah) are probably associated with his time at the court of Oljeitu, whose religious vacillation encouraged sectarian debate. In the field of theology (kalam), ‘Allamah was one of the most distinguished thinkers in the later Mu‘tazili tradition, which had been accepted into Imami Shi‘ism in the Buyid period (945-1055). The Kashf al-Murad, ‘Allamah’s commentary on al-Tusi’s creedal statement, the Tajrid al-i‘tiqad, is a representative work. Its technical scholasticism remained a part of the tradition, but was not a key to its significant development. The great achievement of later Shi ‘a theology is associated with Mulla Sadra al-Shirazi (d. 1641), who drew rather on the philosophical tradition of Ibn Sina (d. 1037) and on the illuminationist theories of Suhrawardi (d. 1190).
In the field of jurisprudence, ‘Allamah produced works of positive law (furu‘) and of hermeneutical theory (usul). In the former area, he continued the work of his teacher Ja ‘far ibn al-Hasan al-Muhaqqiq al-Hilli (d. 1277). This work was a reformulation of the tradition established by Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Tusi, Shaykh al-Ta’ifah (d. 1068), and reconciled some of the damaging disputes that had emerged in the intervening centuries. ‘Allamah refined and expanded the Shi ‘a corpus of furu‘ al-figh, notably exploring the range of dispute within the tradition in his Mukhtalaf al-Shi‘ah. He perceived that justification and reconciliation within the tradition required a theoretical foundation achievable only within the discipline of usul. His great achievement there, and of his scholarship as a whole, was to integrate the theory of ijtihad into the structures of Imami Shi‘a jurisprudence. ‘Allamah perceived that ijtihad and its implications (previously rejected by the Shi‘is) were not irreconcilable with the reality of interpretative development within Shiism. The theory of ijtihad explained dispute, permitted creative interpretation with the tradition, and justified the authority of the jurists. All subsequent Shi‘a thinking in this area can be seen as either a development of or a reaction to ‘Allamah’s ideas.
Reaction to this thinking is associated with Muhammad Amin al-Astarabadi (d. 1627), who fought against ‘Allamah’s innovations and inspired the Akhbari movement, which was opposed by the Usuli movement. The Akhbari-Usuli controversy may reflect literalist and rationalist tensions of earlier periods, but it was articulated solely in relation to aspects of the theory of ijtihad. It dominated juristic thinking throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was finally resolved in favor of the Usulis, whose thinking prevailed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
‘Allamah ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli see Hilli
Hasan ibn Yusuf ibn Mutahhar al-Hilli see Hilli
“most learned" see Hilli
‘Allamah see Hilli
Jamal ad-Din Hasan ibn Yusuf ibn 'Ali ibn Muthahhar al-Hilli see Hilli
al-Allamah al-Hilli see Hilli
Hilli (‘Allamah ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli) (Jamal ad-Din Hasan ibn Yusuf ibn 'Ali ibn Muthahhar al-Hilli) (al-Allamah al-Hilli) (December 15, 1250 - December 18, 1325). Scholar and jurist of the Imami (or Ithna ‘Ashari) Shi‘a. Hasan ibn Yusuf ibn Mutahhar al-Hilli, known as ‘Allamah (“most learned”), was born in Hilla in Iraq. His lifetime saw the Mongol capture of Baghdad (in 1258) and the foundation of the Il-khanid dynasty. The Mongols, contrary to their reputation, permitted, even encouraged, intellectual activity. Hulegu, for example, founded the observatory and informal academy at Maragha in 1259. ‘Allamah benefited from this freedom. He probably studied at Maragha with Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274), but primarily found his teachers and colleagues in Baghdad, where also he became involved with the Il-khanid court during the reign of Oljeitu (r. 1304-1316). His education covered the usual curriculum, in its Shi‘a version, but included significant input from Sunni thinkers.
‘Allamah’s writings included works on grammar, logic, hadith, tafsir (Qur’anic commentary), and biography, but his constructive achievement was in the areas of jurisprudence, theology, and polemics. His polemical works (defending the existence, necessity, and historical evolution of the imamate and exemplified in the Minhaj al-karamah) are probably associated with his time at the court of Oljeitu, whose religious vacillation encouraged sectarian debate. In the field of theology (kalam), ‘Allamah was one of the most distinguished thinkers in the later Mu‘tazili tradition, which had been accepted into Imami Shi‘ism in the Buyid period (945-1055). The Kashf al-Murad, ‘Allamah’s commentary on al-Tusi’s creedal statement, the Tajrid al-i‘tiqad, is a representative work. Its technical scholasticism remained a part of the tradition, but was not a key to its significant development. The great achievement of later Shi ‘a theology is associated with Mulla Sadra al-Shirazi (d. 1641), who drew rather on the philosophical tradition of Ibn Sina (d. 1037) and on the illuminationist theories of Suhrawardi (d. 1190).
In the field of jurisprudence, ‘Allamah produced works of positive law (furu‘) and of hermeneutical theory (usul). In the former area, he continued the work of his teacher Ja ‘far ibn al-Hasan al-Muhaqqiq al-Hilli (d. 1277). This work was a reformulation of the tradition established by Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Tusi, Shaykh al-Ta’ifah (d. 1068), and reconciled some of the damaging disputes that had emerged in the intervening centuries. ‘Allamah refined and expanded the Shi ‘a corpus of furu‘ al-figh, notably exploring the range of dispute within the tradition in his Mukhtalaf al-Shi‘ah. He perceived that justification and reconciliation within the tradition required a theoretical foundation achievable only within the discipline of usul. His great achievement there, and of his scholarship as a whole, was to integrate the theory of ijtihad into the structures of Imami Shi‘a jurisprudence. ‘Allamah perceived that ijtihad and its implications (previously rejected by the Shi‘is) were not irreconcilable with the reality of interpretative development within Shiism. The theory of ijtihad explained dispute, permitted creative interpretation with the tradition, and justified the authority of the jurists. All subsequent Shi‘a thinking in this area can be seen as either a development of or a reaction to ‘Allamah’s ideas.
Reaction to this thinking is associated with Muhammad Amin al-Astarabadi (d. 1627), who fought against ‘Allamah’s innovations and inspired the Akhbari movement, which was opposed by the Usuli movement. The Akhbari-Usuli controversy may reflect literalist and rationalist tensions of earlier periods, but it was articulated solely in relation to aspects of the theory of ijtihad. It dominated juristic thinking throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was finally resolved in favor of the Usulis, whose thinking prevailed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
‘Allamah ibn al-Mutahhar al-Hilli see Hilli
Hasan ibn Yusuf ibn Mutahhar al-Hilli see Hilli
“most learned" see Hilli
‘Allamah see Hilli
Jamal ad-Din Hasan ibn Yusuf ibn 'Ali ibn Muthahhar al-Hilli see Hilli
al-Allamah al-Hilli see Hilli
Hintata
Hintata. Berber confederation in the central Moroccan High Atlas. They were the first to support the Mahdi Ibn Tumart, the founder of the Almohads.
Hintata. Berber confederation in the central Moroccan High Atlas. They were the first to support the Mahdi Ibn Tumart, the founder of the Almohads.
Hisham I
Hisham I (Hisham I Abu’l-Walid al-Rida) (b. 757). Umayyad ruler of Muslim Spain (r.788-796). During his reign, expeditions were sent regularly against the Christians and Narbonne was attacked in 793.
Hisham I Abu’l-Walid al-Rida see Hisham I
Hisham I (Hisham I Abu’l-Walid al-Rida) (b. 757). Umayyad ruler of Muslim Spain (r.788-796). During his reign, expeditions were sent regularly against the Christians and Narbonne was attacked in 793.
Hisham I Abu’l-Walid al-Rida see Hisham I
Hisham II
Hisham II (al-Mu’ayyad bi-‘llah Hisham II) (b. 966). Umayyad caliph of Cordoba (r.976-1009 and 1010- 1013). He was held under permanent tutelage of the vizier Almanzor. {See also Almanzor; Caliphs; Umayyads; and Vizier.}
Hisham II was the third Caliph of Cordoba, of the Umayyad dynasty. He ruled 976-1009, and 1010-1013 in the Al-Andalus (Moorish Iberia).
Hisham II succeeded his father Al-Hakam II as Caliph of Cordoba in 976 at the age of 10, with his mother Subh and the first minister Jafar al-Mushafi acting as regents. General Ghalib and Al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir (Almansor) managed to prevent the eunuchs from placing a brother of al-Hakam II on the throne. Subh advanced Al-Mansur and appointed him to the treasury of the Caliphate. Hisham II himself was kept from government and exercised no political influence, and in 997 he was even forced to officially hand over sole control of the government to Al-Mansur, under whom the Caliphate reached its greatest extent and attained its greatest success over the Christian states.
After Al-Mansur's death in 1002 his son Abd al-Malik (1002-1008) came to power and secured his position in the Caliphate with successful campaigns against Navarre and Barcelona before being murdered by Abd ur-Rahman Sangul (1008-1009). In 1009 a popular uprising led by Muhammad II al-Mahdi deposed both Sangul and Hisham II, the latter being kept imprisoned in Cordoba under the new regime.
The next few years saw rapid changes of leadership as a result of wars between Berber and Arab armies, as well as of Slavic mercenaries, with al-Mahdi losing out to Sulaiman al-Mustain in 1009 before regaining power in 1010. Finally the Slavic troops of the Caliphate under al-Wahdid restored Hisham II as Caliph (1010-1013).
Hisham II came under the influence of al-Wahdid, who was nevertheless unable to gain control of the Berber troops which still supported Sulaiman, and the civil war continued. In 1013 the Berbers took Cordoba with much plundering and destruction. What happened to Hisham after that is uncertain. Supposedly he was killed on April 19, 1013 by the Berbers. In any case, Sulaiman al-Mustain (1013-1016) became Caliph.
al-Mu’ayyad bi-‘llah Hisham II see Hisham II
Hisham III
Hisham III (al-Mu‘tadd bi-‘llah Hisham III) (974-1036). Last of the Umayyads caliphs of Cordoba. He ruled from 1027 to 1031. He was deposed in 1031, after which followed the period of the Muluk al-Tawa’if.
Hisham III was the last Umayyad ruler in the Al-Andalus (Moorish Iberia) (1026-1031), and the last person to hold the title Caliph of Cordoba.
Hisham III, the brother of Abd ar-Rahman IV, was chosen as Caliph after long negotiations between the governors of the border regions and the people of Cordoba. He could not enter Cordoba until 1029 as the city was occupied by the Berber armies of the Hammudids.
Although he tried to consolidate the Caliphate, the raising of taxes (to pay for mosques amongst other things) led to heavy opposition from the Muslim clerics. After the murder of his Visir al-Hakam by a conspiracy of Cordoban Patricians, Hisham was imprisoned. He managed to escape, but died in exile in 1036 in Lerida.
After the Caliphate fell with the overthrow of Hisham III in 1031 , the Caliphate's land holdings — already much diminished from its height in power just 100 years before — devolved into a number of militarily weak but culturally advanced taifas.
al-Mu‘tadd bi-‘llah Hisham III see Hisham III
Hisham III (al-Mu‘tadd bi-‘llah Hisham III) (974-1036). Last of the Umayyads caliphs of Cordoba. He ruled from 1027 to 1031. He was deposed in 1031, after which followed the period of the Muluk al-Tawa’if.
Hisham III was the last Umayyad ruler in the Al-Andalus (Moorish Iberia) (1026-1031), and the last person to hold the title Caliph of Cordoba.
Hisham III, the brother of Abd ar-Rahman IV, was chosen as Caliph after long negotiations between the governors of the border regions and the people of Cordoba. He could not enter Cordoba until 1029 as the city was occupied by the Berber armies of the Hammudids.
Although he tried to consolidate the Caliphate, the raising of taxes (to pay for mosques amongst other things) led to heavy opposition from the Muslim clerics. After the murder of his Visir al-Hakam by a conspiracy of Cordoban Patricians, Hisham was imprisoned. He managed to escape, but died in exile in 1036 in Lerida.
After the Caliphate fell with the overthrow of Hisham III in 1031 , the Caliphate's land holdings — already much diminished from its height in power just 100 years before — devolved into a number of militarily weak but culturally advanced taifas.
al-Mu‘tadd bi-‘llah Hisham III see Hisham III
Hisham ibn ‘Abd al-Malik
Hisham ibn ‘Abd al-Malik (b. 691). Caliph of the Umayyad dynasty (r.724-743). His reign marks the final period of prosperity and splendor of the Umayyad caliphate.
Hisham ibn ‘Abd al-Malik (b. 691). Caliph of the Umayyad dynasty (r.724-743). His reign marks the final period of prosperity and splendor of the Umayyad caliphate.
Hisham ibn al-Hakam
Hisham ibn al-Hakam (d.795). Most prominent Imami theologian in the times of the Imams Ja‘far al-Sadiq and Musa al-Kazim. The theory of the imamate which he elaborated has remained at the basis of Imami doctrine.
Hisham ibn al-Hakam (d.795). Most prominent Imami theologian in the times of the Imams Ja‘far al-Sadiq and Musa al-Kazim. The theory of the imamate which he elaborated has remained at the basis of Imami doctrine.
Hissou
Hissou ( Salah Hissou) (b. January 16, 1972 in Ait Taghia). Moroccan runner who was the 1999 world champion at 5,000 meters.
Salah Hissou was a long-distance runner from Morocco, who won the gold medal over 5000 meters at the 1999 World Championships in Seville. With a time of 26:38.08, he also set a world record over 10,000 meters in Brussels in 1996 and won a bronze medal over 10,000 meters at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
Salah Hissou see Hissou
Hissou ( Salah Hissou) (b. January 16, 1972 in Ait Taghia). Moroccan runner who was the 1999 world champion at 5,000 meters.
Salah Hissou was a long-distance runner from Morocco, who won the gold medal over 5000 meters at the 1999 World Championships in Seville. With a time of 26:38.08, he also set a world record over 10,000 meters in Brussels in 1996 and won a bronze medal over 10,000 meters at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
Salah Hissou see Hissou
Hizb
Hizb. Term which denotes factions or factionalism in the Qur’an, referring to a state of affairs that should be avoided. The term occurs twice in the Qur’an with positive connotations in the compound term hizaballah (party of God). In modern usage, hizb refers to a political party in a clearly defined manner. This usage is the result of an attempt to find an Arabic word for a European phenomenon.
In 1906, Farah Antun (1874-1922), the Lebanese intellectual who spent most of his life in Egypt and the United States, defined the term in his journal, Al-jami‘ah, as an organized group that is at loggerheads with other organized groups becaue of differences in views and interests. Soon after, in 1907, two parties were formed in Egypt: the Ummah party (Hizb al-Ummah) and the National party (Hizb al-Watani). These were primarily secular nationalist parties, although the latter had a tinge of Pan-Islamism.
There has been a reluctance to accept the concept of political parties in Islamic countries because of the divisiveness which it implies. The first organized group with a clear Islamic ideology – and regarded as the mother of almost all major Islamic organizations – established in Isma‘iliyah in 1928, was called by its founder, Hasan al-Banna’ (1906-1949), the Society of Muslim Brothers (Jam‘iyat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) rather than hizb or political party. Most offshoots of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers in other Islamic countries also avoided the use of the term hizb. In Sudan and Syria, the groups have called themselves the Muslim Brothers. In Lebanon, a similar organization was named al-Jama‘ah al-Islamiyah (The Islamic Group). In Tunisia, the equivalent of the Muslim Brothers called themselves Harakat al-Ittijah al-Islami (Islamic Tendency Movement), and later the name was changed to Nahdah (Renaissance). In Algeria, the major organization is called Jabhat al-Inqadh al-Islami (Islamic Salvation Front). The recent offshoots of the Jami‘ah al-Islamiyah in the Gaza Strip are Hamas, the Arabic acronym of Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyah (Islamic Resistance Movement) and the Jihad al-Islami (Islamic Holy War), and they keep the same tradition by not using the term hizb. Similarly, in Pakistan the leading Islamic organization is called Jama‘at-i Islami (Islamic Assembly).
There has been an increase in the use of the term hizb in Islamic organizations. For instance, Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) in Jordan, the Islamic organization Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) in Turkey, the Sunni Pashtun-based Hizb-i Islami (the Islamic Party) in Afghanistan, and Hizbullah (Party of God), the Shi‘a militant organization in Lebanon, formed under the influence of the ruling Iranian clergymen. Furthermore, Islamic organizations have been pushed willy-nilly to partake in parliamentary elections. Some elections were free, as in Pakistan in 1993, in which the Jama‘at-i Islami participated and accepted the results, and as in the free elections of 1993 in Jordan, where the Jabhat al-Amal al-Islami (Islamic Action Front) participated. Other elections were basically not free, as in Egypt in 1984 and 1987, where the Muslim Brothers participated, and in Lebanon in 1992, where both the Sunni Islamic Group and the Shi‘a Hizbullah participated.
Although the Islamic political organizations have come a long way from Hasan al-Banna’s condemnation of al-hizbiyah (party politics), a strong ambivalence toward elections and competitive party politics still exists. Nevertheless, perhaps there is a greater acceptance of competition if parties or groups have a particular Islamic ideology, as has been the case in Iran since the revolution of 1979. The most prominent ideologue of Hizbullah in Lebanon, Shaykh Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, demonstrated this intolerance toward non-Muslim and secular political parties, which by their nature did not subscribe to his Islamic ideology, by depicting them as the “parties of unbelief and atheism” (“ahzab al-kuf wa-la-ilhad”).
Another reason why political parties in the Islamic countries were not particularly interested in competitive party politics is that most of them had come into being during the struggle for independence from colonial rule. It is not surprising that they tended to concentrate on the unity of the nation rather than on competition among various political organizations. For instance, the mass-based Wafd, which came to being in 1919, was not regarded by its leader Zaghlul (1857-1927) as a hizb. The name used by Zaghlul, and later by his successor Mustafa Al-Nahhas (1879-1965), was the Egyptian Wafd (al-Wafd al-Misri). This emphasis on the anti-colonial struggle made the leaders of these movements shy away from the use of the term hizb, because it might have implied that the national movement was not all-inclusive in its support. Politial organizations formed under the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) were called, for instance, al-Ittihad al-Qawmi (National Union), and al-Ittihad al-Ishtiraki al-‘Arabi (Arab Socialist Union), rather than political parties.
The role of predominantly non-Islamic and secular parties in Islamic countries was a manifestation of socio-economic forces, and ethnic and sectarian interests have been very extensive indeed. There was a proliferation of political parties in an open and mostly free political system in Egypt from 1923 to 1952 and in Lebanon from 1943 to 1975. In Turkey, Sudan, and Pakistan, whenever the military is not in power, political parties have played a major role. The future role of political parties in the Islamic countries will undoubtedly be one of paramount importance, as attested by greater political awareness throughout the Islamic world. These developments show clearly that political parties have become an integral part of the political life of Muslims, whether the parties are in power, in opposition in democratic or quasi-democratic polities, in opposition in exile, or as underground parties trying to topple dictators.
Hizb. Term which denotes factions or factionalism in the Qur’an, referring to a state of affairs that should be avoided. The term occurs twice in the Qur’an with positive connotations in the compound term hizaballah (party of God). In modern usage, hizb refers to a political party in a clearly defined manner. This usage is the result of an attempt to find an Arabic word for a European phenomenon.
In 1906, Farah Antun (1874-1922), the Lebanese intellectual who spent most of his life in Egypt and the United States, defined the term in his journal, Al-jami‘ah, as an organized group that is at loggerheads with other organized groups becaue of differences in views and interests. Soon after, in 1907, two parties were formed in Egypt: the Ummah party (Hizb al-Ummah) and the National party (Hizb al-Watani). These were primarily secular nationalist parties, although the latter had a tinge of Pan-Islamism.
There has been a reluctance to accept the concept of political parties in Islamic countries because of the divisiveness which it implies. The first organized group with a clear Islamic ideology – and regarded as the mother of almost all major Islamic organizations – established in Isma‘iliyah in 1928, was called by its founder, Hasan al-Banna’ (1906-1949), the Society of Muslim Brothers (Jam‘iyat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) rather than hizb or political party. Most offshoots of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers in other Islamic countries also avoided the use of the term hizb. In Sudan and Syria, the groups have called themselves the Muslim Brothers. In Lebanon, a similar organization was named al-Jama‘ah al-Islamiyah (The Islamic Group). In Tunisia, the equivalent of the Muslim Brothers called themselves Harakat al-Ittijah al-Islami (Islamic Tendency Movement), and later the name was changed to Nahdah (Renaissance). In Algeria, the major organization is called Jabhat al-Inqadh al-Islami (Islamic Salvation Front). The recent offshoots of the Jami‘ah al-Islamiyah in the Gaza Strip are Hamas, the Arabic acronym of Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyah (Islamic Resistance Movement) and the Jihad al-Islami (Islamic Holy War), and they keep the same tradition by not using the term hizb. Similarly, in Pakistan the leading Islamic organization is called Jama‘at-i Islami (Islamic Assembly).
There has been an increase in the use of the term hizb in Islamic organizations. For instance, Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) in Jordan, the Islamic organization Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) in Turkey, the Sunni Pashtun-based Hizb-i Islami (the Islamic Party) in Afghanistan, and Hizbullah (Party of God), the Shi‘a militant organization in Lebanon, formed under the influence of the ruling Iranian clergymen. Furthermore, Islamic organizations have been pushed willy-nilly to partake in parliamentary elections. Some elections were free, as in Pakistan in 1993, in which the Jama‘at-i Islami participated and accepted the results, and as in the free elections of 1993 in Jordan, where the Jabhat al-Amal al-Islami (Islamic Action Front) participated. Other elections were basically not free, as in Egypt in 1984 and 1987, where the Muslim Brothers participated, and in Lebanon in 1992, where both the Sunni Islamic Group and the Shi‘a Hizbullah participated.
Although the Islamic political organizations have come a long way from Hasan al-Banna’s condemnation of al-hizbiyah (party politics), a strong ambivalence toward elections and competitive party politics still exists. Nevertheless, perhaps there is a greater acceptance of competition if parties or groups have a particular Islamic ideology, as has been the case in Iran since the revolution of 1979. The most prominent ideologue of Hizbullah in Lebanon, Shaykh Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, demonstrated this intolerance toward non-Muslim and secular political parties, which by their nature did not subscribe to his Islamic ideology, by depicting them as the “parties of unbelief and atheism” (“ahzab al-kuf wa-la-ilhad”).
Another reason why political parties in the Islamic countries were not particularly interested in competitive party politics is that most of them had come into being during the struggle for independence from colonial rule. It is not surprising that they tended to concentrate on the unity of the nation rather than on competition among various political organizations. For instance, the mass-based Wafd, which came to being in 1919, was not regarded by its leader Zaghlul (1857-1927) as a hizb. The name used by Zaghlul, and later by his successor Mustafa Al-Nahhas (1879-1965), was the Egyptian Wafd (al-Wafd al-Misri). This emphasis on the anti-colonial struggle made the leaders of these movements shy away from the use of the term hizb, because it might have implied that the national movement was not all-inclusive in its support. Politial organizations formed under the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) were called, for instance, al-Ittihad al-Qawmi (National Union), and al-Ittihad al-Ishtiraki al-‘Arabi (Arab Socialist Union), rather than political parties.
The role of predominantly non-Islamic and secular parties in Islamic countries was a manifestation of socio-economic forces, and ethnic and sectarian interests have been very extensive indeed. There was a proliferation of political parties in an open and mostly free political system in Egypt from 1923 to 1952 and in Lebanon from 1943 to 1975. In Turkey, Sudan, and Pakistan, whenever the military is not in power, political parties have played a major role. The future role of political parties in the Islamic countries will undoubtedly be one of paramount importance, as attested by greater political awareness throughout the Islamic world. These developments show clearly that political parties have become an integral part of the political life of Muslims, whether the parties are in power, in opposition in democratic or quasi-democratic polities, in opposition in exile, or as underground parties trying to topple dictators.
Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah
Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah (Islamic Call Party) (Islamic Dawa Party). One of the three most important activist Shi‘a organizations in opposition to Saddam Hussein’s Ba‘th regime in Iraq, and the oldest among them. The others were the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, founded in Iran in November 1982, and the Organization of Islamic Action, founded in Karbala in the 1960s.
The party (known in short form simply as the Da‘wah) was established in October 1957 in Najaf by the young and ingenious Shi‘a religious authority, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (born in 1933 in Kazimayn, Baghdad, and executed by the Ba‘th in April 1980). Cofounders were a group of junior Shi‘a clergy, some of whom achieved great prominence in later years (chiefly Muhammad Baqir and Mahdi, the two sons of Iraq’s then chief mujtahid Muhsin al-Hakim, as well as two lay intellectuals).
The decision to found a political party (which al-Sadr, using a Qur’anic expression dubbed Hizb Allah, “Party of God”), whose sole purpose would be to call the people of Iraq back to Islam, was the result of the young clergy’s realization that Islam, and in particular, Shi‘a Islam in Iraq was on the decline. Owing to a number of political, social, and economic developments under the monarchy, the number of students of religion in the two holy cities of Najaf and Karbala had declined steeply and many young Shi‘a were estranged from religion and markedly so, from the religious establishment.
Under the republican regime of ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim, (July 14, 1958-February 8, 1963), followed by the short-lived Ba‘th regime of 1963 and that of the ‘Arif brothers, ‘Abd al-Salam and ‘Abd al-Rahman (November 18, 1963-July 17, 1968), relations between the Shi‘a establishment of the holy cities and the government were tense, but both sides refrained from drastic action. The regimes tolerated de facto Shi‘a autonomy in the religious educational institutions (al-hawzat al-‘ilmiyah) of Najaf and Karbala, and the latter, for their part, kept their protest against the secularizing Sunni ruling elites within strict limits.
These circumstances permitted the Da‘wah to operate almost without restriction, not only in Najaf but also in Baghdad. (Indeed, the main opposition to its activity came, in those days, from the more conservative circles within the religious university of Najaf, who regarded activity along modern party lines as deviation from tradition. As a result, so as not to compromise his position as a mujtahid, Sadr was eventually forced to sever his organizational ties with the party.) The Da‘wah’s main activity in Baghdad was aimed at winning over young lay Shi‘a intellectuals (a few Sunnis joined the party as well, but they were a small minority), and thus it concentrated its main effort among the students of Baghdad University and young professionals, as well as among high school students. Almost all the recruiting activity within these circles was conducted by lay university students and graduates.
At the same time, the party tried to expand its influence among the Shi ‘a poor in the al-Thawrah slum (later Saddam City) on the outskirts of Baghdad, but this was done, mainly, through party members who were junior clergy. Until the Ba ‘th came to power (and, indeed, even two or three years afterward) this activity was carried out almost openly, with little or no official interference. It involved public prayers, gatherings to celebrate Islamic festivals, Islamic placards, and, for the hard core of activists, classes led by al-Sadr and others in Qur’an interpretation and some advanced Islamic studies. Beginning in the late 1960s, the Da ‘wah expanded its activities to other parts of the Shi‘a world, notably to Lebanon. According to an interview with a senior member in the 1960s, to disguise its activity somewhat, the Da‘wah also called itself the Fatimid Party (al-Hizb al-Fatimi) after Fatimah al-Zahra’, ‘Ali’s wife and the Prophet’s daughter.
In the second half of 1969, the Ba‘th regime, when trying to eliminate the Shi‘a educational autonomy, cracked down in an unprecedented way on the hawzat of Najaf and Karbala. This marked the beginning of a rapid deterioration of relations between the two establishments. The Da‘wah’s activities, too, were severely restricted, and, eventually, it was forced to go underground. This, as well as its own theory of action that dictated a leap into political activity after a few years of purely educational work, drove the party to become progressively more militant. In 1970, the party’s first member was martyred, and in 1974 the regime executed five more senior members. As reported by its own sources, in February 1977 the party was deeply involved in organizing the vast anti-government demonstrations that occurred during a mass pilgrimage to Karbala to commemorate the anniversary of the fortieth day after the martyrdom of Imam Husayn.
But the Da‘wah’s main political and guerrilla thrust occurred soon thereafter under the influence of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s February 1979 takeover in Iran. The party then engaged in organizing mass Shi‘a anti-Ba‘th demonstrations and armed attacks against Ba‘th party and internal security centers, all in an attempt to topple the regime and replace it with an Iranian style Islamic republic. As a result of the regime’s crackdown, hundreds of party members (including al-Sadr who, by then, no longer belonged officially to the party, but who remained its intellectual mentor) were executed, a few thousand members and supporters were arrested, and most other members fled the country.
Throughout the Iraq-Iran War (1980-1988) the Da‘wah’s activity was fourfold: (1) it acted inside Iraq, sporadically hitting at Ba‘th targets; (2) it had a small, regular unit that fought on Iran’s side against Iraq; (3) it carried out terrorist activities against pro-Iraqi regimes in the Middle East, chiefly in Kuwait, and against Western targets; and (4) it endeavored to incorporate new members and supporters from among the Iraqi Shi‘a expatriates in the West and in Iran. At the end of the war, in order to improve its image in the West, the party stopped all armed activities outside of Iraq.
During the Kuwait crisis (August 1990-March 1991) and following it, the party initiated a number of overtures toward Western governments, notably the United States and Britain, as well as toward anti-Ba‘thist, pro-Western Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia, with which they were at loggerheads during the Iraq-Iran War. Another aspect of their growing pragmatism was a claim, voiced by some of the party’s spokesmen (but clearly not by all), to be in favor of Western-style liberal parliamentary democracy. As those spokesmen put it, if the majority in post-Saddam Iraq were to reject their notion of an Islamic republic, the party would accept the majority verdict. It then would continue its educational work designed to persuade the people of the need for such an Islamic rule.
In the era after the Iraq-Iran war some differences within the party between those whose main activity was in Iran and those who lived and worked in the West have been exposed. One major difference concerned the degree to which the party ought to be independent of Iranian dictates, now that the interest of the Iraqi opposition in continuing the struggle and that of the Iranian state in increasing stability were incompatible. Another difference, albeit a less important one, was over the degree of clarity with which the party should express its commitment to democracy. Those members operating in Iran (led by the party’s spokesman Shaykh Muhammad Mahdi al-Asafi) have been rather vague about democracy and have been receptive to Iranian policy dictates, whereas some party members who live in the West have inclined toward more independence and democracy.
During the Kuwait crisis, the party suffered from at least one split. The new group, calling itself the Cadres of the Iraqi Islamic Da‘wah Party (Kawadir Hizb al-Da ‘wah al-Islamiyah al-‘Iraqi), emphasized its Iraqi identity and “the independence of the Islamic Iraqi decision-making” of Iranian policy. In addition, it claims that, for more than a decade, the Da‘wah failed to provide a plan of action, and that an urgent need for such a plan existed. It was typical, however, of this closely knit and highly ideological movement that the two factions restrained their argument and refrained from the acrimonious accusations so widespread in political disputes in the Middle East.
The contribution of Da‘wah activists to the anti-Ba‘thist Shi‘a intifadah or uprising of March 1991 is unclear. According to party members’ reports, they were active in encouraging the masses to revolt, but it is clear that most of the uprising was spontaneous. Moreover, there is little doubt that a rival Shi‘a opposition organization, the Tehran based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was more prominent, sending into Iraq many hundreds of its Iran based membership. Whatever the case, the regime’s crackdown that followed weakened the party organization inside Iraq: members who exposed themselves during the revolt were later jailed or executed.
Owing to the requirements of its underground activity, the precise organizational structure of the party was a well-guarded secret. However, its general outlines may still be delineated. At the top of what is described as “a pyramidal structure” stood a collective body of around ten. Its first name was Majlis al-Fuqaha’ (Council of Jurists). In later years, it also included a few laymen, though they were still a small minority. In its contemporary incarnation it is reported as being called al-Qiyadah al-‘Ammah (General Leadership). One level lower is the Council of Leadership (Majlis al-Qiyadah) that consists of a few score of activists. Its more contemporary name was either the General Congress (al-Mu’tamar al-‘Amm), or the Political Bureau (al-Maktab al-Siyasi). This body, which consisted mostly of lay intellectuals who represented their respective territorial branches, directed the day-to-day activity of the party branches. Under it one would find an unknown number of lower levels, ending with the basic unit, the Family (al-Usrah) or the Ring (al-Halaqah).
Inside Iraq, to minimize the danger of exposure, an ordinary member knew only other members of his own basic unit, and only vertical contacts between units were maintained. This structure was strongly influenced by the organizational structures of the Communist and Ba‘th parties. Al-Sadr was the first to acknowledge that any organizational form was legitimate if it could spread “the call” more efficiently, and as long as it was not forbidden by the shari‘a. “The Prophet,” he explained, “had he lived in our age, would have used … the modern and suitable means of communications and spreading of the message.” In Europe, where there was no danger of suppression, the lowest echelon was the local branch, apparently combining all party members in a town.
On the face of it, the position of the Da‘wah publications was ecumenical. The party called for the establishment of a full-fledged Islamic regime in Iraq that would apply the rules of the shari‘a to every walk of life, regardless of differences between Sunni and Shi‘a Islam (and, indeed, the differences between them in terms of substantive law are very small). A more careful reading, however, revealed Shi‘a undertones. For example, there are occasional inferences that once Saddam Hussein and his Ba‘th regime were toppled, Shiism would become the dominant power in Iraq’s political life. Shi‘a youth were called upon to be ready to sacrifice themselves, as did Imam Husayn and most other Shi‘a imams. Although such appeals made it difficult for Sunnis to join the movement, this did not prevent the Da ‘wah from establishing cordial relations with the main (Sunni) Kurdish opposition organizations. Unsurprisingly, however, the party had somewhat uneasy relations with the other main Shi‘a opposition groups, for they were all competing for the allegiance of the Iraqi Shi‘a expatriates in Iran and Europe.
The party’s ideas were first expressed by al-Sadr in a magazine, Al-adwa’ (The Lights), issued by an activist group of ‘ulama’ in Najaf in the early 1960s. The party’s own first magazine was called Sawt al-da‘wah (Voice of the Da‘wah), and it, too, came out in Najaf in the mid and late 1960s. During most of the 1980s and the early 1990s, its main publications were a weekly issued in Tehran, Al-jihad, and another issued in London, Sawt al-‘Iraq (Voice of Iraq). The cadres issued a weekly magazine called Fajr al-‘Iraq (Iraq’s Dawn).
After the Persian Gulf War, the interests of al-Dawa and the United States became more closely aligned. The efforts of al-Dawa representatives and other opponents of Saddam Hussein led to the founding of the Iraqi National Congress, which relied heavily on United States funding. INC's political platform promised human rights and rule of law within a constitutional, democratic, and pluralistic Iraq. The Dawa Party itself participated in the congress between 1992 and 1995, withdrawing because of disagreements with Kurdish parties over how Iraq should be governed after Hussein's eventual ouster.
Most leaders of al-Dawa remained in exile in Iran and elsewhere until the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. During this period, some of its factions moved to SCIRI (Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq). Al-Dawa party, in contrast to the other Shi'a Islamic Iraqi opposition parties, took a stance against the war. Ibrahim Al-Jaffari was personally involved in ensuring that Al-Dawa participated in anti war protests across the United Kingdom in the run up to the 2003 Iraq war. After the invasion, both al-Dawa and SCIRI returned to Iraq. Al-Dawa chose Nasariyah as its base of operations in Iraq.
The political ideology of al-Da'wa was heavily influenced by work done by Baqr al-Sadr who laid out four mandatory principles of governance in his 1975 work, Islamic Political System. These were:
1. Absolute sovereignty belongs to God.
2. Islamic injunctions are the basis of legislation. The legislative authority may enact any law not repugnant to Islam.
3. The people, as vice-regents of Allah, are entrusted with legislative and executive powers.
4. The jurist holding religious authority represents Islam. By confirming legislative and executive actions, he gives them legality.
Upon joining the party, allegiance must be sworn to the party.
A brief chronology Al-Dawa reads as follows:
* 1968-1969 - Al-Dawa founded by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in response to repression of Shi'i religious academies in Najaf by the Iraqi Ba'ath regime.
* 1974 - Ba'thist revolutionary court arrests and sentences 75 al-Dawa members to death.
* 1975 - Annual pilgrimage from Najaf to Karbala - called the Marad al-Ras - is cancelled by the Ba'ath government.
* 1977 February - The Safar Intifada. Al-Dawa organizes Marad al-Ras, in spite of government ban. Event is attacked by police.
* 1979 Iranian Revolution. Al-Dawa creates a military wing, later called Shahid al-Sadr.
* 1980 30 March - Ba'athist Revolutionary Command Council retroactively bans al-Dawa; membership was made punishable by death. 96 al-Dawa members are allegedly executed this month.
* 1980 1 April - al-Dawa unsuccessfully attempts to assassinate Tariq Aziz, Foreign Minister at the time.
* 1980 9 April - Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister Amina Sadr bint al-Huda are arrested and executed.
* 1981 Mid-December - Iraqi embassy in Beirut is leveled by a suicide bomber. Iraqi al-Da'wa party claims credit for the attack, citing Iraq's invasion of Iran. Perhaps the first Shi'a suicide bombing, the attack was an "oft-noticed precedent" for the 1983 bombing of the American Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut.
* 1982 - Al-Dawa assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein in Dujail fails. Heavy crack-downs on al-Dawa by Hussein's regime. Many flee to Iran, where it suffers from competition with SCIRI.
* 1983 12 December - In Kuwait, the American and French embassies, Kuwait airport, the main oil refinery in Kuwait, and a residential area for Raytheon employees are bombed. 17 suspects were soon arrested, mostly al-Dawa members, including Jamal Jafaar Mohammed (currently member of Iraq's parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ruling coalition). Jamal Jafaar Mohammed escapes from Kuwait before the trial starts and is sentenced to death in absentia in 1984.
* 1987 - Al-Dawa attacks Saddam's motorcade but again fails to kill him.
* 1996 - Attempt made on the life of Saddam's son, Uday. Al-Dawa blamed.
* 2003 - After the Invasion of Iraq al-Dawa returns to Iraq, basing itself in the city of Nasiriya which the party now runs and controls.
* 2005 January - The United Iraqi Alliance, triumphs in the January 2005 Elections; Dawa leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari becomes Prime Minister.
* 2005 December - The United Iraqi Alliance, triumphs in the December 2005 Elections.
* 2006 - Dawa deputy leader Jawad al-Maliki replaces Ibrahim al-Jaafari as Prime Minister.
Islamic Call Party see Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah
Da‘wah see Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah
Fatimid Party see Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah
al-Hizb al-Fatimi see Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah
Islamic Dawa Party see Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah
Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah (Islamic Call Party) (Islamic Dawa Party). One of the three most important activist Shi‘a organizations in opposition to Saddam Hussein’s Ba‘th regime in Iraq, and the oldest among them. The others were the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, founded in Iran in November 1982, and the Organization of Islamic Action, founded in Karbala in the 1960s.
The party (known in short form simply as the Da‘wah) was established in October 1957 in Najaf by the young and ingenious Shi‘a religious authority, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (born in 1933 in Kazimayn, Baghdad, and executed by the Ba‘th in April 1980). Cofounders were a group of junior Shi‘a clergy, some of whom achieved great prominence in later years (chiefly Muhammad Baqir and Mahdi, the two sons of Iraq’s then chief mujtahid Muhsin al-Hakim, as well as two lay intellectuals).
The decision to found a political party (which al-Sadr, using a Qur’anic expression dubbed Hizb Allah, “Party of God”), whose sole purpose would be to call the people of Iraq back to Islam, was the result of the young clergy’s realization that Islam, and in particular, Shi‘a Islam in Iraq was on the decline. Owing to a number of political, social, and economic developments under the monarchy, the number of students of religion in the two holy cities of Najaf and Karbala had declined steeply and many young Shi‘a were estranged from religion and markedly so, from the religious establishment.
Under the republican regime of ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim, (July 14, 1958-February 8, 1963), followed by the short-lived Ba‘th regime of 1963 and that of the ‘Arif brothers, ‘Abd al-Salam and ‘Abd al-Rahman (November 18, 1963-July 17, 1968), relations between the Shi‘a establishment of the holy cities and the government were tense, but both sides refrained from drastic action. The regimes tolerated de facto Shi‘a autonomy in the religious educational institutions (al-hawzat al-‘ilmiyah) of Najaf and Karbala, and the latter, for their part, kept their protest against the secularizing Sunni ruling elites within strict limits.
These circumstances permitted the Da‘wah to operate almost without restriction, not only in Najaf but also in Baghdad. (Indeed, the main opposition to its activity came, in those days, from the more conservative circles within the religious university of Najaf, who regarded activity along modern party lines as deviation from tradition. As a result, so as not to compromise his position as a mujtahid, Sadr was eventually forced to sever his organizational ties with the party.) The Da‘wah’s main activity in Baghdad was aimed at winning over young lay Shi‘a intellectuals (a few Sunnis joined the party as well, but they were a small minority), and thus it concentrated its main effort among the students of Baghdad University and young professionals, as well as among high school students. Almost all the recruiting activity within these circles was conducted by lay university students and graduates.
At the same time, the party tried to expand its influence among the Shi ‘a poor in the al-Thawrah slum (later Saddam City) on the outskirts of Baghdad, but this was done, mainly, through party members who were junior clergy. Until the Ba ‘th came to power (and, indeed, even two or three years afterward) this activity was carried out almost openly, with little or no official interference. It involved public prayers, gatherings to celebrate Islamic festivals, Islamic placards, and, for the hard core of activists, classes led by al-Sadr and others in Qur’an interpretation and some advanced Islamic studies. Beginning in the late 1960s, the Da ‘wah expanded its activities to other parts of the Shi‘a world, notably to Lebanon. According to an interview with a senior member in the 1960s, to disguise its activity somewhat, the Da‘wah also called itself the Fatimid Party (al-Hizb al-Fatimi) after Fatimah al-Zahra’, ‘Ali’s wife and the Prophet’s daughter.
In the second half of 1969, the Ba‘th regime, when trying to eliminate the Shi‘a educational autonomy, cracked down in an unprecedented way on the hawzat of Najaf and Karbala. This marked the beginning of a rapid deterioration of relations between the two establishments. The Da‘wah’s activities, too, were severely restricted, and, eventually, it was forced to go underground. This, as well as its own theory of action that dictated a leap into political activity after a few years of purely educational work, drove the party to become progressively more militant. In 1970, the party’s first member was martyred, and in 1974 the regime executed five more senior members. As reported by its own sources, in February 1977 the party was deeply involved in organizing the vast anti-government demonstrations that occurred during a mass pilgrimage to Karbala to commemorate the anniversary of the fortieth day after the martyrdom of Imam Husayn.
But the Da‘wah’s main political and guerrilla thrust occurred soon thereafter under the influence of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s February 1979 takeover in Iran. The party then engaged in organizing mass Shi‘a anti-Ba‘th demonstrations and armed attacks against Ba‘th party and internal security centers, all in an attempt to topple the regime and replace it with an Iranian style Islamic republic. As a result of the regime’s crackdown, hundreds of party members (including al-Sadr who, by then, no longer belonged officially to the party, but who remained its intellectual mentor) were executed, a few thousand members and supporters were arrested, and most other members fled the country.
Throughout the Iraq-Iran War (1980-1988) the Da‘wah’s activity was fourfold: (1) it acted inside Iraq, sporadically hitting at Ba‘th targets; (2) it had a small, regular unit that fought on Iran’s side against Iraq; (3) it carried out terrorist activities against pro-Iraqi regimes in the Middle East, chiefly in Kuwait, and against Western targets; and (4) it endeavored to incorporate new members and supporters from among the Iraqi Shi‘a expatriates in the West and in Iran. At the end of the war, in order to improve its image in the West, the party stopped all armed activities outside of Iraq.
During the Kuwait crisis (August 1990-March 1991) and following it, the party initiated a number of overtures toward Western governments, notably the United States and Britain, as well as toward anti-Ba‘thist, pro-Western Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia, with which they were at loggerheads during the Iraq-Iran War. Another aspect of their growing pragmatism was a claim, voiced by some of the party’s spokesmen (but clearly not by all), to be in favor of Western-style liberal parliamentary democracy. As those spokesmen put it, if the majority in post-Saddam Iraq were to reject their notion of an Islamic republic, the party would accept the majority verdict. It then would continue its educational work designed to persuade the people of the need for such an Islamic rule.
In the era after the Iraq-Iran war some differences within the party between those whose main activity was in Iran and those who lived and worked in the West have been exposed. One major difference concerned the degree to which the party ought to be independent of Iranian dictates, now that the interest of the Iraqi opposition in continuing the struggle and that of the Iranian state in increasing stability were incompatible. Another difference, albeit a less important one, was over the degree of clarity with which the party should express its commitment to democracy. Those members operating in Iran (led by the party’s spokesman Shaykh Muhammad Mahdi al-Asafi) have been rather vague about democracy and have been receptive to Iranian policy dictates, whereas some party members who live in the West have inclined toward more independence and democracy.
During the Kuwait crisis, the party suffered from at least one split. The new group, calling itself the Cadres of the Iraqi Islamic Da‘wah Party (Kawadir Hizb al-Da ‘wah al-Islamiyah al-‘Iraqi), emphasized its Iraqi identity and “the independence of the Islamic Iraqi decision-making” of Iranian policy. In addition, it claims that, for more than a decade, the Da‘wah failed to provide a plan of action, and that an urgent need for such a plan existed. It was typical, however, of this closely knit and highly ideological movement that the two factions restrained their argument and refrained from the acrimonious accusations so widespread in political disputes in the Middle East.
The contribution of Da‘wah activists to the anti-Ba‘thist Shi‘a intifadah or uprising of March 1991 is unclear. According to party members’ reports, they were active in encouraging the masses to revolt, but it is clear that most of the uprising was spontaneous. Moreover, there is little doubt that a rival Shi‘a opposition organization, the Tehran based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was more prominent, sending into Iraq many hundreds of its Iran based membership. Whatever the case, the regime’s crackdown that followed weakened the party organization inside Iraq: members who exposed themselves during the revolt were later jailed or executed.
Owing to the requirements of its underground activity, the precise organizational structure of the party was a well-guarded secret. However, its general outlines may still be delineated. At the top of what is described as “a pyramidal structure” stood a collective body of around ten. Its first name was Majlis al-Fuqaha’ (Council of Jurists). In later years, it also included a few laymen, though they were still a small minority. In its contemporary incarnation it is reported as being called al-Qiyadah al-‘Ammah (General Leadership). One level lower is the Council of Leadership (Majlis al-Qiyadah) that consists of a few score of activists. Its more contemporary name was either the General Congress (al-Mu’tamar al-‘Amm), or the Political Bureau (al-Maktab al-Siyasi). This body, which consisted mostly of lay intellectuals who represented their respective territorial branches, directed the day-to-day activity of the party branches. Under it one would find an unknown number of lower levels, ending with the basic unit, the Family (al-Usrah) or the Ring (al-Halaqah).
Inside Iraq, to minimize the danger of exposure, an ordinary member knew only other members of his own basic unit, and only vertical contacts between units were maintained. This structure was strongly influenced by the organizational structures of the Communist and Ba‘th parties. Al-Sadr was the first to acknowledge that any organizational form was legitimate if it could spread “the call” more efficiently, and as long as it was not forbidden by the shari‘a. “The Prophet,” he explained, “had he lived in our age, would have used … the modern and suitable means of communications and spreading of the message.” In Europe, where there was no danger of suppression, the lowest echelon was the local branch, apparently combining all party members in a town.
On the face of it, the position of the Da‘wah publications was ecumenical. The party called for the establishment of a full-fledged Islamic regime in Iraq that would apply the rules of the shari‘a to every walk of life, regardless of differences between Sunni and Shi‘a Islam (and, indeed, the differences between them in terms of substantive law are very small). A more careful reading, however, revealed Shi‘a undertones. For example, there are occasional inferences that once Saddam Hussein and his Ba‘th regime were toppled, Shiism would become the dominant power in Iraq’s political life. Shi‘a youth were called upon to be ready to sacrifice themselves, as did Imam Husayn and most other Shi‘a imams. Although such appeals made it difficult for Sunnis to join the movement, this did not prevent the Da ‘wah from establishing cordial relations with the main (Sunni) Kurdish opposition organizations. Unsurprisingly, however, the party had somewhat uneasy relations with the other main Shi‘a opposition groups, for they were all competing for the allegiance of the Iraqi Shi‘a expatriates in Iran and Europe.
The party’s ideas were first expressed by al-Sadr in a magazine, Al-adwa’ (The Lights), issued by an activist group of ‘ulama’ in Najaf in the early 1960s. The party’s own first magazine was called Sawt al-da‘wah (Voice of the Da‘wah), and it, too, came out in Najaf in the mid and late 1960s. During most of the 1980s and the early 1990s, its main publications were a weekly issued in Tehran, Al-jihad, and another issued in London, Sawt al-‘Iraq (Voice of Iraq). The cadres issued a weekly magazine called Fajr al-‘Iraq (Iraq’s Dawn).
After the Persian Gulf War, the interests of al-Dawa and the United States became more closely aligned. The efforts of al-Dawa representatives and other opponents of Saddam Hussein led to the founding of the Iraqi National Congress, which relied heavily on United States funding. INC's political platform promised human rights and rule of law within a constitutional, democratic, and pluralistic Iraq. The Dawa Party itself participated in the congress between 1992 and 1995, withdrawing because of disagreements with Kurdish parties over how Iraq should be governed after Hussein's eventual ouster.
Most leaders of al-Dawa remained in exile in Iran and elsewhere until the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. During this period, some of its factions moved to SCIRI (Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq). Al-Dawa party, in contrast to the other Shi'a Islamic Iraqi opposition parties, took a stance against the war. Ibrahim Al-Jaffari was personally involved in ensuring that Al-Dawa participated in anti war protests across the United Kingdom in the run up to the 2003 Iraq war. After the invasion, both al-Dawa and SCIRI returned to Iraq. Al-Dawa chose Nasariyah as its base of operations in Iraq.
The political ideology of al-Da'wa was heavily influenced by work done by Baqr al-Sadr who laid out four mandatory principles of governance in his 1975 work, Islamic Political System. These were:
1. Absolute sovereignty belongs to God.
2. Islamic injunctions are the basis of legislation. The legislative authority may enact any law not repugnant to Islam.
3. The people, as vice-regents of Allah, are entrusted with legislative and executive powers.
4. The jurist holding religious authority represents Islam. By confirming legislative and executive actions, he gives them legality.
Upon joining the party, allegiance must be sworn to the party.
A brief chronology Al-Dawa reads as follows:
* 1968-1969 - Al-Dawa founded by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in response to repression of Shi'i religious academies in Najaf by the Iraqi Ba'ath regime.
* 1974 - Ba'thist revolutionary court arrests and sentences 75 al-Dawa members to death.
* 1975 - Annual pilgrimage from Najaf to Karbala - called the Marad al-Ras - is cancelled by the Ba'ath government.
* 1977 February - The Safar Intifada. Al-Dawa organizes Marad al-Ras, in spite of government ban. Event is attacked by police.
* 1979 Iranian Revolution. Al-Dawa creates a military wing, later called Shahid al-Sadr.
* 1980 30 March - Ba'athist Revolutionary Command Council retroactively bans al-Dawa; membership was made punishable by death. 96 al-Dawa members are allegedly executed this month.
* 1980 1 April - al-Dawa unsuccessfully attempts to assassinate Tariq Aziz, Foreign Minister at the time.
* 1980 9 April - Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and his sister Amina Sadr bint al-Huda are arrested and executed.
* 1981 Mid-December - Iraqi embassy in Beirut is leveled by a suicide bomber. Iraqi al-Da'wa party claims credit for the attack, citing Iraq's invasion of Iran. Perhaps the first Shi'a suicide bombing, the attack was an "oft-noticed precedent" for the 1983 bombing of the American Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut.
* 1982 - Al-Dawa assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein in Dujail fails. Heavy crack-downs on al-Dawa by Hussein's regime. Many flee to Iran, where it suffers from competition with SCIRI.
* 1983 12 December - In Kuwait, the American and French embassies, Kuwait airport, the main oil refinery in Kuwait, and a residential area for Raytheon employees are bombed. 17 suspects were soon arrested, mostly al-Dawa members, including Jamal Jafaar Mohammed (currently member of Iraq's parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ruling coalition). Jamal Jafaar Mohammed escapes from Kuwait before the trial starts and is sentenced to death in absentia in 1984.
* 1987 - Al-Dawa attacks Saddam's motorcade but again fails to kill him.
* 1996 - Attempt made on the life of Saddam's son, Uday. Al-Dawa blamed.
* 2003 - After the Invasion of Iraq al-Dawa returns to Iraq, basing itself in the city of Nasiriya which the party now runs and controls.
* 2005 January - The United Iraqi Alliance, triumphs in the January 2005 Elections; Dawa leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari becomes Prime Minister.
* 2005 December - The United Iraqi Alliance, triumphs in the December 2005 Elections.
* 2006 - Dawa deputy leader Jawad al-Maliki replaces Ibrahim al-Jaafari as Prime Minister.
Islamic Call Party see Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah
Da‘wah see Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah
Fatimid Party see Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah
al-Hizb al-Fatimi see Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah
Islamic Dawa Party see Hizb al-Da‘wah al-Islamiyah
Hizballah
Hizballah (Hizb Allah) (Hizbullah) (Hezbollah). Arabic name which literally means “the party of God.” The Hizballah is better known by its Farsi name of Hezbollah.
Hizballah is a radical Shi‘a group formed in 1982 in Lebanon with Hussayn Musawi as its leader. Strongly anti-Western and anti-Israeli, closely allied with, and often directed by, Iran, Hizballah may have conducted operations that were not approved by Tehran. Known or suspected to have been involved in numerous anti-United States terrorist attacks, including the suicide truck bombing of the United States Embassy and the United States Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the United States Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984. Elements of the group were responsible for the kidnapping and detention of American and other Western hostages in Lebanon. The group also attacked the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992 and is a suspect in the 1994 bombing of the Israeli cultural center in Buenos Aires. Hizballah operated in the Bekaa Valley (Biqaa’ Valley), the southern suburbs of Beirut, and southern Lebanon. It also established cells in Europe, Africa, South America, North America, and Asia. It received substantial amounts of financial aid, explosives, and diplomatic aid from Iran and Syria.
Hizballah is an umbrella organization where groups like Islamic Jihad, Revolutionary Justice organization, Islamic Jihad for a Free Palestine and Revolutionary Arab Groups are subdivisions. Hizballah had about 5,000 members and received much of its support and training from Iran and Syria. Hizballah demanded that Westerners leave Lebanon and it charged the Christian Lebanese population with crimes against their Muslim compatriots.
Hizballah was formed by members of a faction inside the Lebanese Amal party. However, following the Iranian revolution in 1979 there was a split inside the party. The final split came after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon earlier in 1982. In many cases, the main enemy of Hizballah had been Israel. The struggle of Hizballah is defined as a jihad, -- a holy fight --, and members dying in action became shaded, martyrs, who were guaranteed a place in Paradise.
While Hizballah claimed responsibility for bombing the United States embassy and marine headquarters in Beirut in 1983, hijackings, and the taking of Western and Israeli hostages, Hizballah also performed peaceful actions, and was in charge of important social welfare programs for the Lebanese population.
In 1984, Sheikh Muhammad Hussayn Fadlallah took control over Hizballah, and the organization became more of an instrument to oppose Israel on political and religious grounds. Hizballah attacked Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and Israelis in northern Israel, and was, in turn, attacked by Israel. Neither party came close to neutralizing the other.
On occasion, Iran was able to persuade Hizballah to release hostages in an effort to improve international relations.
Hizb Allah see Hizballah
Hizbullah see Hizballah
Hezbollah see Hizballah
“the party of God” see Hizballah
Hizballah (Hizb Allah) (Hizbullah) (Hezbollah). Arabic name which literally means “the party of God.” The Hizballah is better known by its Farsi name of Hezbollah.
Hizballah is a radical Shi‘a group formed in 1982 in Lebanon with Hussayn Musawi as its leader. Strongly anti-Western and anti-Israeli, closely allied with, and often directed by, Iran, Hizballah may have conducted operations that were not approved by Tehran. Known or suspected to have been involved in numerous anti-United States terrorist attacks, including the suicide truck bombing of the United States Embassy and the United States Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the United States Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984. Elements of the group were responsible for the kidnapping and detention of American and other Western hostages in Lebanon. The group also attacked the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992 and is a suspect in the 1994 bombing of the Israeli cultural center in Buenos Aires. Hizballah operated in the Bekaa Valley (Biqaa’ Valley), the southern suburbs of Beirut, and southern Lebanon. It also established cells in Europe, Africa, South America, North America, and Asia. It received substantial amounts of financial aid, explosives, and diplomatic aid from Iran and Syria.
Hizballah is an umbrella organization where groups like Islamic Jihad, Revolutionary Justice organization, Islamic Jihad for a Free Palestine and Revolutionary Arab Groups are subdivisions. Hizballah had about 5,000 members and received much of its support and training from Iran and Syria. Hizballah demanded that Westerners leave Lebanon and it charged the Christian Lebanese population with crimes against their Muslim compatriots.
Hizballah was formed by members of a faction inside the Lebanese Amal party. However, following the Iranian revolution in 1979 there was a split inside the party. The final split came after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon earlier in 1982. In many cases, the main enemy of Hizballah had been Israel. The struggle of Hizballah is defined as a jihad, -- a holy fight --, and members dying in action became shaded, martyrs, who were guaranteed a place in Paradise.
While Hizballah claimed responsibility for bombing the United States embassy and marine headquarters in Beirut in 1983, hijackings, and the taking of Western and Israeli hostages, Hizballah also performed peaceful actions, and was in charge of important social welfare programs for the Lebanese population.
In 1984, Sheikh Muhammad Hussayn Fadlallah took control over Hizballah, and the organization became more of an instrument to oppose Israel on political and religious grounds. Hizballah attacked Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and Israelis in northern Israel, and was, in turn, attacked by Israel. Neither party came close to neutralizing the other.
On occasion, Iran was able to persuade Hizballah to release hostages in an effort to improve international relations.
Hizb Allah see Hizballah
Hizbullah see Hizballah
Hezbollah see Hizballah
“the party of God” see Hizballah
Hizballah in Iran
Hizballah in Iran. The Qur’anic term hizb Allah (mentioned in surahs 5 and 58) refers to the body of Muslim believers who are promised triumph over hizb al-Shaytan (the Devil’s party). Thirteen centuries later, the term was re-employed by Iranian Shi‘a faithful who described their amorphous political organization as “the Party of God” and claimed to emulate the teachings of Ayatollah Ruhollah al-Musavi Khomeini. The Hizballah philosophy was summed up nicely in its slogan: “Only one party, the Party of Allah; only one leader, Ruhollah.”
The lineage of Hizballah in Iran can be traced back to a few extreme right wing organizations, such as the Fida’iyan-i Islam, which were active in the 1940s and 1950s. Like their predecessors, Hizballah faithful have adhered to a politicized interpretation of Islam and have not shied away from using violent means to achieve their goals. They entered the Iranian political scene during the 1978-1979 revolutionary upheaval of Iran. Recruited mainly from the ranks of the urban poor, the bazaris, and the lumpenproletariat, the Hizballahis played an important role in organizaing demonstrations and strikes that led to the downfall of the Pahlavi regime. Following the victory of the revolution, they served as the unofficial watchdogs and storm troopers of the clerically dominated Islamic Republican Party (established in 1979 and dissolved in 1987). Considering its amorphous nature and non-official status, there is no way one can correctly estimate Hizballah’s numerical strength. However, the fact remains that along with such other (para)military-intelligence apparatuses as the Sipah-i Pasdaran-i Inqilab-i Islami (Revolutionary Guards), komitehs (revolutionary committees), and SAVAMA (the intelligence service), Hizballah played a crucial role in the consolidation of the new regime.
Often led by the firebrand Hujjat al-Islam Hadi Ghaffari, the Hizballahis were known to employ clubs, chains, knives, and guns to disrupt the rallies of opposition parties, beat their members, and ransack their offices. The Hizballahi ruffians, nicknamed by the opposition as chumaqdars (club wielders), were instrumental in the undoing of President Abol-Hasan Bani Sadr, the closing of the universities, the enforcement of veiling, the suppression of the press, and cowing people into silence. In addition, the Hizballah provided an inexhaustible pool of faithful warriors who enlisted for the war with Iraq. The recruitment of many of these veterans by such organizations as the Basij (youth volunteers), Jihad-i Sazandigi (Reconstruction Crusade), and Pasdaran has so far prevented the actual establishment of a formal party called Hizballah. Quite to the contrary, some Hizballahi squads have now been transformed into the private militias of powerful clerics and have even set on each other’s benefactors.
The Iranian Hizballah was reported to have certain transnational links with like-minded groups in the region, in particular with its namesake in Lebanon. The Lebanese Hizballah was organized, trained, and financed by the Iranian Pasdarans who were dispatched to Lebanon in 1982. The two groups share certain characteristics, such as a militant interpretation of Shi‘a doctrines, adoration for Ayatollah Khomeini, anti-Zionism, suspicion of Western governments, and propensity to use violence. Furthermore, some of the leading personalities of these two groups are linked through family ties or can boast of having studied with the same mentors at Najaf and Qom theological seminaries. However, while the Hizballah of Lebanon operates as a formal political party, the Iranian Hizballahis for the most part continue to operate as vigilante bands. Nonetheless, in both countries, they have proven themselves forces to be reckoned with.
Hizballah in Iran. The Qur’anic term hizb Allah (mentioned in surahs 5 and 58) refers to the body of Muslim believers who are promised triumph over hizb al-Shaytan (the Devil’s party). Thirteen centuries later, the term was re-employed by Iranian Shi‘a faithful who described their amorphous political organization as “the Party of God” and claimed to emulate the teachings of Ayatollah Ruhollah al-Musavi Khomeini. The Hizballah philosophy was summed up nicely in its slogan: “Only one party, the Party of Allah; only one leader, Ruhollah.”
The lineage of Hizballah in Iran can be traced back to a few extreme right wing organizations, such as the Fida’iyan-i Islam, which were active in the 1940s and 1950s. Like their predecessors, Hizballah faithful have adhered to a politicized interpretation of Islam and have not shied away from using violent means to achieve their goals. They entered the Iranian political scene during the 1978-1979 revolutionary upheaval of Iran. Recruited mainly from the ranks of the urban poor, the bazaris, and the lumpenproletariat, the Hizballahis played an important role in organizaing demonstrations and strikes that led to the downfall of the Pahlavi regime. Following the victory of the revolution, they served as the unofficial watchdogs and storm troopers of the clerically dominated Islamic Republican Party (established in 1979 and dissolved in 1987). Considering its amorphous nature and non-official status, there is no way one can correctly estimate Hizballah’s numerical strength. However, the fact remains that along with such other (para)military-intelligence apparatuses as the Sipah-i Pasdaran-i Inqilab-i Islami (Revolutionary Guards), komitehs (revolutionary committees), and SAVAMA (the intelligence service), Hizballah played a crucial role in the consolidation of the new regime.
Often led by the firebrand Hujjat al-Islam Hadi Ghaffari, the Hizballahis were known to employ clubs, chains, knives, and guns to disrupt the rallies of opposition parties, beat their members, and ransack their offices. The Hizballahi ruffians, nicknamed by the opposition as chumaqdars (club wielders), were instrumental in the undoing of President Abol-Hasan Bani Sadr, the closing of the universities, the enforcement of veiling, the suppression of the press, and cowing people into silence. In addition, the Hizballah provided an inexhaustible pool of faithful warriors who enlisted for the war with Iraq. The recruitment of many of these veterans by such organizations as the Basij (youth volunteers), Jihad-i Sazandigi (Reconstruction Crusade), and Pasdaran has so far prevented the actual establishment of a formal party called Hizballah. Quite to the contrary, some Hizballahi squads have now been transformed into the private militias of powerful clerics and have even set on each other’s benefactors.
The Iranian Hizballah was reported to have certain transnational links with like-minded groups in the region, in particular with its namesake in Lebanon. The Lebanese Hizballah was organized, trained, and financed by the Iranian Pasdarans who were dispatched to Lebanon in 1982. The two groups share certain characteristics, such as a militant interpretation of Shi‘a doctrines, adoration for Ayatollah Khomeini, anti-Zionism, suspicion of Western governments, and propensity to use violence. Furthermore, some of the leading personalities of these two groups are linked through family ties or can boast of having studied with the same mentors at Najaf and Qom theological seminaries. However, while the Hizballah of Lebanon operates as a formal political party, the Iranian Hizballahis for the most part continue to operate as vigilante bands. Nonetheless, in both countries, they have proven themselves forces to be reckoned with.
Hizballah in Lebanon
Hizballah in Lebanon. Political and social movement that arose among Lebanon’s Shi‘as in response to the Islamic revolution in Iran, Hizballah means the “Party of God,” after the Qur’an (Sura 5:56): “Lo! the Party of God, they are the victorious.” During the 1980s, Hizballah drew on Iranian support to become a major political force in Lebanon and the Middle East. It gained international renown, first for its attacks against the American, French, and Israeli forces deployed in parts of Lebanon, and later for its holding of Western hostages. Hizballah also emerged as the major rival of the established Amal movement for the loyalty of Lebanon’s Shi‘as. Hizballah’s declared objective has been the transformation of Lebanon (and the region) into an Islamic state, a goal it has pursued by diversified means, ranging from acts of violence to participation in parliamentary elections.
The foundations of Hizballah were laid years before the Iranian Revolution of 1979 in the ties that bound the Shi‘a ‘ulama’ (religious scholars) of Iran and Lebanon. Many of these ‘ulama’ were schooled together in the Shi‘a theological academies in Iraq, especially in the shrine city of Najaf. During the late 1950s and 1960s, these academies became active in formulating an Islamic response to nationalism and secularism. Prominent ‘ulama’ lectured and wrote on Islamic government, Islamic economics, and the ideal Islamic state. In Najaf, the Iraqi ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and the exiled Iranian ayatollah Ruhollah al-Musavi Khomeini both subjected the existing political order to an Islamic critique. Lebanese ‘ulama’ and theological students overheard and joined in these debates.
Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, the future mentor of Hizballah, was an exemplary product of Najaf’s mix of scholasticism and radicalism. Fadlallah was born and schooled in Najaf, where his father, a scholar from south Lebanon, had come to study. Fadlallah imbibed the ideas then current in Najaf and went to Lebanon in 1966, where he made his Beirut husayniyah (a Shi‘a congregation house) into a center of Islamic activism. Sayyid Musal al-Sadr dominated the Shi‘a scene at the time, and Fadlallah had a modest following. But in the 1970s, Fadlallah received an important reinforcement: Iraqi authorities expelled about a hundred Lebanese theology students as part of a crackdown on Shi‘a activism in the shrine cities. The expelled students became disciples of Fadlallah on their return to Lebanon and later formed the core of Hizballah.
In Iran, the early foundations of Hizballah were laid by members of the Islamic opposition who found refuge in war-torn Lebanon during the 1970s. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) took this opposition under its wing and provided the Iranian dissidents with training and forged documents. Graduates of the Palestinian camps included Muhammad Muntaziri, the son of a leading opposition cleric and future founder of the Liberation Movements Department of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and ‘Ali Akbar Muhtashimii, future Iranian ambassador to Syria, who was to play a critical role in the creation of Hizballah. Both men arrived in Lebanon from Najar, where they had studied under Khomeini, and both joined Khomeini in Paris in 1978.
After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Shi‘a traffic between Lebanon and Iran intensified. Fadlallah and his disciples became frequent visitors to Iran, while former Iranian dissidents who had spent time in Lebanon returned as emissaries of the Islamic revolution. Muhammad Muntaziri made the first attempt, in 1979, to send six hundred Iranian volunteers to Lebanon, where they proposed to launch a jihad against Israel. However, the Lebanese government successfully appealed to Syria to block the entry of the volunteers, and most got no further than Damascus. Muntaziri, who accused “liberals” in Iran’s government of failing to support his mission, died in a Tehran bombing in 1981.
The obstacles to an effective partnership between Lebanon’s Shi‘as and Iran lifted only in 1982, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the deployment of American and French peacekeeping forces in Beirut. Syria, although defeated in battle, was determined to drive all other foreign forces out of Lebanon by encouraging popular resistance, especially among the Shi‘as. Many Shi‘as were receptive, believing that Israel and the West planned to restore Maronite privilege by force. When Iran offered to assist in mobilizing the Shi‘as, Syria approved, permitting Iran to send about a thousand Revolutionary Guards to the Bekaa (Biqa‘) Valley in eastern Lebanon. There they seized a Lebanese army barracks and turned it into their operational base.
Emboldened by the arrival of the Iranians, Fadlallah and a number of young ‘ulama’ declared jihad against the Western and Israeli presence in Lebanon while pledging their allegiance to Khomeini. Similarly, a faction of the Amal militia led by a former schoolteacher, Husayn al-Musawi, went over to the Revolutionary Guards, accusing the Amal movement of failing to resist Israel’s invasion. Iran’s ambassador to Damascus, ‘Ali Akbar Muhtashimi, established a council to govern the new movement. The council included the Iranian ambassador, Lebanese ‘ulama’, and security strongmen responsible for secret operations and the movement’s militia. Later, the council created the post of secretary general, held successively by Shaykh Subhi al-Tufayli, Sayyid ‘Abbas al-Musawi, and Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah. Fadlallah declined all formal office, but his rhetorical genius and seniority assured his moral prestige in the movement.
The movement drew its support from two components of Shi‘a society. It especially appealed to some of the larger Shi‘a clans of the Bekaa Valley, for whom the war in Lebanon had brought prosperity fueled by the expansion of smuggling and hashish and opium cultivation. The leadership of the Amal movement, based on the Shi‘a professional and commercial classes, made insufficient room for this emerging counterelite of the Bekaa Valley. With the encouragement of the Iranian emissaries based in the valley, the clans flocked to Hizballah. Ba‘labakk, capital of the Bekaa Province, practically became an autonomous zone for Hizballah. Its buildings were plastered with posters of Khomeini and draped with Iranian flags.
The message of Hizballah also appealed to the Shi‘a refugees who had been forced by war into the dismal slums of southern Beirut. They included the Shi‘as driven from their homes in the Phalangist assault on Palestinians in eastern Beirut (Nab‘a and Buri Hammud) in 1976 and many more who fled the south following the Israeli invasions of 1978 and 1982. Fadlallah personified their grievance. His ancestral villages in the south (Bint Jubayl and ‘Aynata) had come under Israeli assault, then occupation. He lost his first pulpit in Nab‘a during the Phalangist siege of 1976. These Shi‘a refugees felt a strong sense of identification with the Palestinians and a deep resentment against Israel, the Phalangists, and the West. Many young Shi‘a refugees even joined Palestinian organizations during the 1970s, from which they acquired fighting experience. When Israel forced these organizations from Beirut in 1982, Shi‘a fighters who were left behind joined Hizballah, which promised to continue their struggle.
Hizballah systematically formulated its doctrine in its “open letter” of 1985. “We are proceeding toward a battle with vice at its very roots,” declared the letter, “and the first root of vice is America.” The letter set four objectives for the movement: the termination of all American and French influence in Lebanon; Israel’s complete departure from Lebanon “as a prelude to its final obliteration”; submission of the Lebanese Phalangists to “just rule” and trial for their “crimes”; and granting the people the right to choose their own system of government, “keeping in mind that we do not hide our commitment to the rule of Islam.”
From the outset, Hizballah conducted its struggle on three discrete levels – open, semi-clandestine, and clandestine. Fadlallah and the ‘ulama’ openly preached the message of resistance to Islam’s enemies and fealty to Khomeini in mosques and husaniyah, which became the focal points for public rallies. The Revolutionary Guards trained the semi-clandestine Islamic Resistance, a militia-like formation which attacked Israeli forces in south Lebanon. The Organization of the Islamic Jihad, the clandestine branch of the movement, operated against Western targets. It was reputedly led by ‘Imad Mughniyah, a shadowy Shi‘a figure from south Lebanon and a veteran of Palestinian service, who became the subject of much lore during the 1980s.
The violence of Islamic Jihad catapulted Hizballah to prominence. Assassinations of individual foreigners escalated into massive bombings, some of them done by “self-martyrs,” which destroyed the United States embassy and its annex in two separate attacks in 1983 and 1984; the Beirut barracks of American and French peacekeeping troops in two attacks on the same morning in 1983; and command facilities of Israeli forces in the south in 1982 and 1983. Hundreds of foreigners died in these bombings, the most successful of which killed 241 United States marines in their barracks. As a result, the United States and France withdrew their forces from Lebanon; Israel, whose forces also came under attack by the Islamic Resistance, retreated to a narrow “security zone” in the south. In solidarity with Iran, Islamic Jihad also bombed the United States and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983, in an effort to compel Kuwait to abandon its support of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. Hizballah activists were also responsible for a spate of fatal bombings in Paris in 1986, meant to force France to abandon its policy of supplying Iraq with arms.
Hizballah also conducted operations to free members who had been imprisoned by governments in the Middle East and Europe. These operations included the hijacking of an American airliner in 1985, to secure the freedom of Lebanese Shi‘as held by Israel, and two hijackings of Kuwaiti airliners in 1984 and 1988, to win freedom for Lebanese Shi‘as held by Kuwait for the bombings there. The hijackers killed passengers in each instance to demonstrate their resolve. In addition, Islamic Jihad and other groups affiliated with Hizballah abducted dozens of foreigners in Lebanon, mostly American, French, British, and German citizens, for the same purpose. Some of these foreigners were traded for American arms needed by Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, but the motive for the wave of abductions remained the release of Hizballah’s imprisoned fighters elsewhere. Only when the hostage holding became a political burden for Iran did it prevail on Hizballah to free the hostages. The last French hostages were freed in 1988; the last American and British hostages in 1991; and the last Germans in 1992.
Although the movement’s ‘ulama’ disavowed all direct knowledge of operations, and occasionally expressed reservations, they harvested the credit (and blame) for Hizballah’s jihad. Their mosques filled to overflowing, and their statements and interviews resonated in the media. However, they themselves became the targets of assassination and abduction. Fadlallah narrowly missed death in a massive car bombing in 1985, which killed eighty persons. Israel abducted a local Hizballah cleric, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Karim ‘Ubayd, in 1988; and Israeli helicopter gunships killed Hizballah’s secretary general, Sayyid ‘Abbas al-Musawi, and his family, in an attack on his motorcade in 1992.
Hizballah also found that its growing appeal among Lebanon’s Shi‘as made enemies within the existing Amal movement. As Hizballah gained momentum, it sought unimpeded access to the south, so it could promote the struggle against Israel. Amal regarded this as an encroachment on its last strongholds. Beginning in 1988, occasional skirmishes with Amal escalated into civil war. More than one thousand Shi‘a combatants and civilians died in this fighting, which was characterized by atrocities and assassinations. Hizballah usually enjoyed the upper hand in fighting, but Syrian intervention denied it the fruits of victory. The strife ended in late 1990 in an accord mediated by Syria and Iran.
Although Hizballah battled its adversaries, it also cooperated with Iranian aid agencies to fund a wide range of social and economic projects. These included a hospital and pharmacies in Beirut; small textile factories and sheltered workshops to employ families of members and “martyrs”; book allowances and scholarships for students; street paving in Beirut; and the digging of wells and reservoirs in rural areas. Hizballah sponsored a scout movement, summer camps, and a soccer league. The movement published a weekly newspaper and operated an independent radio station. These activities broadened the base of the movement and enhanced its ability to field fighters.
By the end of its first decade, Hizballah had fought and bought its way into the hearts of perhaps as many as half of Lebanon’s Shi‘as, but the objective of an Islamic Lebanon remained remote. On the basis of the 1989 Ta’if Accord, Syria enforced an end to the civil war, based on a fairer confessional balance. Syria also disarmed the militias and launched a determined drive to build up the authority of a Syrian-backed government in Beirut. In 1991, the governments of Syria and Lebanon sat down with Israel in direct talks to discuss territory, security, and a possible peace.
Hizballah’s place in the new Syrian order remained uncertain. In Beirut and parts of the south, Hizballah surrendered its weapons and turned over positions to the reconstituted Lebanese army. In 1992, Hizballah and the Revolutionary Guards evacuated the Lebanese army barracks near Ba‘labakk, which had served as operational headquarters for ten years. Nevertheless, Hizballah’s Islamic Resistance enjoyed an exemption from the general disarming of militias to permit it to continue a guerrilla war of attrition against Israel’s “security zone” in the south. The Islamic Resistance increase its operations, even in the midst of peace talks, and Syria pledged to disarm it only after a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
Hizballah also opposed implementation of the Syrian-guaranteed Ta’if Accord, which it denounced as an American plan. Hizballah denounced the first stage of implementation, establishing Muslim-Christian parity in government, for perpetuating confessionalism. Hizballah advocated a straightforward referendum on an Islamic state. In such a state, the Christians would be entitled to protection, not parity. However, Iran prevailed on Hizballah to participate in the 1992 parliamentary elections, the first held in twenty years, despite the fact that the elections still apportioned seats by confession. In the Bekaa Valley, Hizballah swept the Shi’a vote, and the movement made a credible showing in the south, collecting a total of eight parliamentary seats – the largest single block in the fragmented parliament.
In parliament, Hizballah organized as an opposition to the Syrian backed government. It denounced the government’s negotiations with Israel and denied all interest in cabinet positions. In most respects, Hizballah still remained an extra-parliamentary movement – a point emphasized by the deliberate obscurity of the movement’s parliamentary candidates. Hizballah signaled that its actual leaders would remain in the mosques and in the fighting ranks of the Islamic Resistance. But the “Party of God” had moved one reluctant step toward becoming a true hizb (political party) of its followers. It remained to be seen whether Hizballah’s votes would succeed, where its violence had failed, in creating an Islamic Lebanon. {See also Amal; Ayatollah; Maronite Catholics; Nasrallah, Hassan; Sadr, Muhammad Baqir al-; Palestine Liberation Organization; Phalangists; Shi'a; and 'Ulama'.}
Hizballah in Lebanon. Political and social movement that arose among Lebanon’s Shi‘as in response to the Islamic revolution in Iran, Hizballah means the “Party of God,” after the Qur’an (Sura 5:56): “Lo! the Party of God, they are the victorious.” During the 1980s, Hizballah drew on Iranian support to become a major political force in Lebanon and the Middle East. It gained international renown, first for its attacks against the American, French, and Israeli forces deployed in parts of Lebanon, and later for its holding of Western hostages. Hizballah also emerged as the major rival of the established Amal movement for the loyalty of Lebanon’s Shi‘as. Hizballah’s declared objective has been the transformation of Lebanon (and the region) into an Islamic state, a goal it has pursued by diversified means, ranging from acts of violence to participation in parliamentary elections.
The foundations of Hizballah were laid years before the Iranian Revolution of 1979 in the ties that bound the Shi‘a ‘ulama’ (religious scholars) of Iran and Lebanon. Many of these ‘ulama’ were schooled together in the Shi‘a theological academies in Iraq, especially in the shrine city of Najaf. During the late 1950s and 1960s, these academies became active in formulating an Islamic response to nationalism and secularism. Prominent ‘ulama’ lectured and wrote on Islamic government, Islamic economics, and the ideal Islamic state. In Najaf, the Iraqi ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and the exiled Iranian ayatollah Ruhollah al-Musavi Khomeini both subjected the existing political order to an Islamic critique. Lebanese ‘ulama’ and theological students overheard and joined in these debates.
Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, the future mentor of Hizballah, was an exemplary product of Najaf’s mix of scholasticism and radicalism. Fadlallah was born and schooled in Najaf, where his father, a scholar from south Lebanon, had come to study. Fadlallah imbibed the ideas then current in Najaf and went to Lebanon in 1966, where he made his Beirut husayniyah (a Shi‘a congregation house) into a center of Islamic activism. Sayyid Musal al-Sadr dominated the Shi‘a scene at the time, and Fadlallah had a modest following. But in the 1970s, Fadlallah received an important reinforcement: Iraqi authorities expelled about a hundred Lebanese theology students as part of a crackdown on Shi‘a activism in the shrine cities. The expelled students became disciples of Fadlallah on their return to Lebanon and later formed the core of Hizballah.
In Iran, the early foundations of Hizballah were laid by members of the Islamic opposition who found refuge in war-torn Lebanon during the 1970s. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) took this opposition under its wing and provided the Iranian dissidents with training and forged documents. Graduates of the Palestinian camps included Muhammad Muntaziri, the son of a leading opposition cleric and future founder of the Liberation Movements Department of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and ‘Ali Akbar Muhtashimii, future Iranian ambassador to Syria, who was to play a critical role in the creation of Hizballah. Both men arrived in Lebanon from Najar, where they had studied under Khomeini, and both joined Khomeini in Paris in 1978.
After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Shi‘a traffic between Lebanon and Iran intensified. Fadlallah and his disciples became frequent visitors to Iran, while former Iranian dissidents who had spent time in Lebanon returned as emissaries of the Islamic revolution. Muhammad Muntaziri made the first attempt, in 1979, to send six hundred Iranian volunteers to Lebanon, where they proposed to launch a jihad against Israel. However, the Lebanese government successfully appealed to Syria to block the entry of the volunteers, and most got no further than Damascus. Muntaziri, who accused “liberals” in Iran’s government of failing to support his mission, died in a Tehran bombing in 1981.
The obstacles to an effective partnership between Lebanon’s Shi‘as and Iran lifted only in 1982, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the deployment of American and French peacekeeping forces in Beirut. Syria, although defeated in battle, was determined to drive all other foreign forces out of Lebanon by encouraging popular resistance, especially among the Shi‘as. Many Shi‘as were receptive, believing that Israel and the West planned to restore Maronite privilege by force. When Iran offered to assist in mobilizing the Shi‘as, Syria approved, permitting Iran to send about a thousand Revolutionary Guards to the Bekaa (Biqa‘) Valley in eastern Lebanon. There they seized a Lebanese army barracks and turned it into their operational base.
Emboldened by the arrival of the Iranians, Fadlallah and a number of young ‘ulama’ declared jihad against the Western and Israeli presence in Lebanon while pledging their allegiance to Khomeini. Similarly, a faction of the Amal militia led by a former schoolteacher, Husayn al-Musawi, went over to the Revolutionary Guards, accusing the Amal movement of failing to resist Israel’s invasion. Iran’s ambassador to Damascus, ‘Ali Akbar Muhtashimi, established a council to govern the new movement. The council included the Iranian ambassador, Lebanese ‘ulama’, and security strongmen responsible for secret operations and the movement’s militia. Later, the council created the post of secretary general, held successively by Shaykh Subhi al-Tufayli, Sayyid ‘Abbas al-Musawi, and Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah. Fadlallah declined all formal office, but his rhetorical genius and seniority assured his moral prestige in the movement.
The movement drew its support from two components of Shi‘a society. It especially appealed to some of the larger Shi‘a clans of the Bekaa Valley, for whom the war in Lebanon had brought prosperity fueled by the expansion of smuggling and hashish and opium cultivation. The leadership of the Amal movement, based on the Shi‘a professional and commercial classes, made insufficient room for this emerging counterelite of the Bekaa Valley. With the encouragement of the Iranian emissaries based in the valley, the clans flocked to Hizballah. Ba‘labakk, capital of the Bekaa Province, practically became an autonomous zone for Hizballah. Its buildings were plastered with posters of Khomeini and draped with Iranian flags.
The message of Hizballah also appealed to the Shi‘a refugees who had been forced by war into the dismal slums of southern Beirut. They included the Shi‘as driven from their homes in the Phalangist assault on Palestinians in eastern Beirut (Nab‘a and Buri Hammud) in 1976 and many more who fled the south following the Israeli invasions of 1978 and 1982. Fadlallah personified their grievance. His ancestral villages in the south (Bint Jubayl and ‘Aynata) had come under Israeli assault, then occupation. He lost his first pulpit in Nab‘a during the Phalangist siege of 1976. These Shi‘a refugees felt a strong sense of identification with the Palestinians and a deep resentment against Israel, the Phalangists, and the West. Many young Shi‘a refugees even joined Palestinian organizations during the 1970s, from which they acquired fighting experience. When Israel forced these organizations from Beirut in 1982, Shi‘a fighters who were left behind joined Hizballah, which promised to continue their struggle.
Hizballah systematically formulated its doctrine in its “open letter” of 1985. “We are proceeding toward a battle with vice at its very roots,” declared the letter, “and the first root of vice is America.” The letter set four objectives for the movement: the termination of all American and French influence in Lebanon; Israel’s complete departure from Lebanon “as a prelude to its final obliteration”; submission of the Lebanese Phalangists to “just rule” and trial for their “crimes”; and granting the people the right to choose their own system of government, “keeping in mind that we do not hide our commitment to the rule of Islam.”
From the outset, Hizballah conducted its struggle on three discrete levels – open, semi-clandestine, and clandestine. Fadlallah and the ‘ulama’ openly preached the message of resistance to Islam’s enemies and fealty to Khomeini in mosques and husaniyah, which became the focal points for public rallies. The Revolutionary Guards trained the semi-clandestine Islamic Resistance, a militia-like formation which attacked Israeli forces in south Lebanon. The Organization of the Islamic Jihad, the clandestine branch of the movement, operated against Western targets. It was reputedly led by ‘Imad Mughniyah, a shadowy Shi‘a figure from south Lebanon and a veteran of Palestinian service, who became the subject of much lore during the 1980s.
The violence of Islamic Jihad catapulted Hizballah to prominence. Assassinations of individual foreigners escalated into massive bombings, some of them done by “self-martyrs,” which destroyed the United States embassy and its annex in two separate attacks in 1983 and 1984; the Beirut barracks of American and French peacekeeping troops in two attacks on the same morning in 1983; and command facilities of Israeli forces in the south in 1982 and 1983. Hundreds of foreigners died in these bombings, the most successful of which killed 241 United States marines in their barracks. As a result, the United States and France withdrew their forces from Lebanon; Israel, whose forces also came under attack by the Islamic Resistance, retreated to a narrow “security zone” in the south. In solidarity with Iran, Islamic Jihad also bombed the United States and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983, in an effort to compel Kuwait to abandon its support of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. Hizballah activists were also responsible for a spate of fatal bombings in Paris in 1986, meant to force France to abandon its policy of supplying Iraq with arms.
Hizballah also conducted operations to free members who had been imprisoned by governments in the Middle East and Europe. These operations included the hijacking of an American airliner in 1985, to secure the freedom of Lebanese Shi‘as held by Israel, and two hijackings of Kuwaiti airliners in 1984 and 1988, to win freedom for Lebanese Shi‘as held by Kuwait for the bombings there. The hijackers killed passengers in each instance to demonstrate their resolve. In addition, Islamic Jihad and other groups affiliated with Hizballah abducted dozens of foreigners in Lebanon, mostly American, French, British, and German citizens, for the same purpose. Some of these foreigners were traded for American arms needed by Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, but the motive for the wave of abductions remained the release of Hizballah’s imprisoned fighters elsewhere. Only when the hostage holding became a political burden for Iran did it prevail on Hizballah to free the hostages. The last French hostages were freed in 1988; the last American and British hostages in 1991; and the last Germans in 1992.
Although the movement’s ‘ulama’ disavowed all direct knowledge of operations, and occasionally expressed reservations, they harvested the credit (and blame) for Hizballah’s jihad. Their mosques filled to overflowing, and their statements and interviews resonated in the media. However, they themselves became the targets of assassination and abduction. Fadlallah narrowly missed death in a massive car bombing in 1985, which killed eighty persons. Israel abducted a local Hizballah cleric, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Karim ‘Ubayd, in 1988; and Israeli helicopter gunships killed Hizballah’s secretary general, Sayyid ‘Abbas al-Musawi, and his family, in an attack on his motorcade in 1992.
Hizballah also found that its growing appeal among Lebanon’s Shi‘as made enemies within the existing Amal movement. As Hizballah gained momentum, it sought unimpeded access to the south, so it could promote the struggle against Israel. Amal regarded this as an encroachment on its last strongholds. Beginning in 1988, occasional skirmishes with Amal escalated into civil war. More than one thousand Shi‘a combatants and civilians died in this fighting, which was characterized by atrocities and assassinations. Hizballah usually enjoyed the upper hand in fighting, but Syrian intervention denied it the fruits of victory. The strife ended in late 1990 in an accord mediated by Syria and Iran.
Although Hizballah battled its adversaries, it also cooperated with Iranian aid agencies to fund a wide range of social and economic projects. These included a hospital and pharmacies in Beirut; small textile factories and sheltered workshops to employ families of members and “martyrs”; book allowances and scholarships for students; street paving in Beirut; and the digging of wells and reservoirs in rural areas. Hizballah sponsored a scout movement, summer camps, and a soccer league. The movement published a weekly newspaper and operated an independent radio station. These activities broadened the base of the movement and enhanced its ability to field fighters.
By the end of its first decade, Hizballah had fought and bought its way into the hearts of perhaps as many as half of Lebanon’s Shi‘as, but the objective of an Islamic Lebanon remained remote. On the basis of the 1989 Ta’if Accord, Syria enforced an end to the civil war, based on a fairer confessional balance. Syria also disarmed the militias and launched a determined drive to build up the authority of a Syrian-backed government in Beirut. In 1991, the governments of Syria and Lebanon sat down with Israel in direct talks to discuss territory, security, and a possible peace.
Hizballah’s place in the new Syrian order remained uncertain. In Beirut and parts of the south, Hizballah surrendered its weapons and turned over positions to the reconstituted Lebanese army. In 1992, Hizballah and the Revolutionary Guards evacuated the Lebanese army barracks near Ba‘labakk, which had served as operational headquarters for ten years. Nevertheless, Hizballah’s Islamic Resistance enjoyed an exemption from the general disarming of militias to permit it to continue a guerrilla war of attrition against Israel’s “security zone” in the south. The Islamic Resistance increase its operations, even in the midst of peace talks, and Syria pledged to disarm it only after a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
Hizballah also opposed implementation of the Syrian-guaranteed Ta’if Accord, which it denounced as an American plan. Hizballah denounced the first stage of implementation, establishing Muslim-Christian parity in government, for perpetuating confessionalism. Hizballah advocated a straightforward referendum on an Islamic state. In such a state, the Christians would be entitled to protection, not parity. However, Iran prevailed on Hizballah to participate in the 1992 parliamentary elections, the first held in twenty years, despite the fact that the elections still apportioned seats by confession. In the Bekaa Valley, Hizballah swept the Shi’a vote, and the movement made a credible showing in the south, collecting a total of eight parliamentary seats – the largest single block in the fragmented parliament.
In parliament, Hizballah organized as an opposition to the Syrian backed government. It denounced the government’s negotiations with Israel and denied all interest in cabinet positions. In most respects, Hizballah still remained an extra-parliamentary movement – a point emphasized by the deliberate obscurity of the movement’s parliamentary candidates. Hizballah signaled that its actual leaders would remain in the mosques and in the fighting ranks of the Islamic Resistance. But the “Party of God” had moved one reluctant step toward becoming a true hizb (political party) of its followers. It remained to be seen whether Hizballah’s votes would succeed, where its violence had failed, in creating an Islamic Lebanon. {See also Amal; Ayatollah; Maronite Catholics; Nasrallah, Hassan; Sadr, Muhammad Baqir al-; Palestine Liberation Organization; Phalangists; Shi'a; and 'Ulama'.}
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