The Empowerment of Shiite Arabs

---

This paper discusses the organic link between the Iranian Revolution and Shiite Arabs, especially in Lebanon. It advances the necessity of understanding developments in one part of the world of Shiism in order to comprehend changes elsewhere. The paper considers the evolution of Shiism from a persecuted religious minority in the world of Sunni-dominated Islam into a dynamic force in regional politics. It argues that Lebanese Shiites have both been impacted by the fate of their sectarian brethren in the region and have, themselves, been pacesetters of events that are currently reshaping the social and political standing of other Shiites.

I.  Introduction

The question of disenfranchised Shiite Arabs has come forward in earnest ever since the Saudi authorities clamped down on an unprecedented public Ashura procession[1] in the Eastern Province on November 28, 1979. Naturally, Saudi Shiites were emboldened by the spectacular success of the Islamic Revolution in neighboring Iran and the triumphant return of Ayatullah Ruhullah Khomeini to Teheran, on February 1, 1979, after 15 years of exile in Iraq and France. The rise of Sunni militancy in the Arab East played a crucial role, nevertheless, in awakening Saudi Shiite disenchantment with their country’s austere Wahhabi politico-religious order that treated them as infidels. Shiites in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, including Iran itself, were heavily influenced by the works of Sayyid Qutb, the renowned theologian of the Islamic Brotherhood movement in Egypt, as well as those of Taqiyy al-Din al-Nabahani, the founder of the ultra-militant Islamic Liberation Party. Whereas the root causes for the futile Shiite insurgency in 1979-80 in Ahsa and Qatif lay in religious persecution and economic neglect, the Wahhabi militant takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca on November 20, 1979 served as the spark that ignited pent-up Shiite frustration with the Saudi royals.[2]

Religion has unfailingly been at the heart of Shiite Arab rise to arms against their perceived aggressors. On October 16, 1983 the Israelis, who then occupied southern Lebanon, unwittingly desecrated the Ashura procession in Nabatiyeh. This singular event prodded Lebanese Shiites to rally behind Hizbullah in its fight to liberate southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation. Until that fateful day, many Shiites saw the Israelis as their liberators from unwelcome PLO presence in their midst, especially after Musa al-Sadr had mobilized a broad cluster of Lebanese Shiites under his charismatic leadership. For 17 years, Hizbullah’s fighters, relying heavily on Iranian largesse and their Syrian lifeline, fought the Israeli Defense Force and its Southern Lebanese Army surrogate and forced them, on May 25, 2000 to unilaterally exit southern Lebanon. This was the first time in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict in which Arab military resistance succeeded in forcing out Israel from Arab land it occupied. Arabs everywhere celebrated Hizbullah’s monumental achievement, but Lebanese Shiites and their coreligionists in the Levant and the Gulf saw in it an initial reversal of the agonizing Karbala memories and a first step in correcting the path of their history. The deep-seated sense of powerless had been broken. Arab Shiites were gingerly awakening from their historical slumber.

This paper probes into the dynamics of Shiite political transformation in the Gulf—both its Iranian and Arab sides--and Iraq in the Levant, and their impact on their brethren in Lebanon. It specifically deals with developments since the watershed events of 1979. The author argues that political change affecting Middle Eastern Shiites went hand in hand with economic development and the societal imbalances that it created or exacerbated. He contends that even though Shiites in Iraq, who account for at least two-thirds of the country’s population, have made earth shaking gains since the United States brought down the regime of Saddam Hussein in the 2003 invasion, their counterparts in Lebanon, who represent not more than one-third of the population of a country gripped by deep-seated religious divisions, are the flag bearers of Shiite Arab sociopolitical and economic progress. Even though Lebanese Shiites have made innumerable gains as a consequence of their interaction with fellow Shiites in the region, their own achievements have become a source of inspiration, pride and emulation for Shiites everywhere, but especially in the Arab East.

II.  Historical Marginalization and the Emergence of the Safavids

The Karbala debacle and the relentless crushing of subsequent Shiite insurgencies both by Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs eventually convinced the Shiite religious establishment to forgo the unattainable installation of an Imam from the Household of Prophet Muhammad as the head of the Islamic community. Shiite activism gave way to quietism, and the vigorous articulation of the tenets of Twelver Imamism regressed to taqiyya (dissimulation.) As they withdrew from vibrant immersion in society’s spiritual and temporal matters, they proceeded to develop the concept of the return of the Imam from his ghayba (occultation) to lead the faithful into redemption, and the entire humanity into salvation. Until such time arrives, they opted to encapsulate themselves in political and religious marginalization, and endure social and economic discrimination.

The early seeds of Shiite doctrinal and political revival have their origins in the rise, in northwestern Iran of Turkic Ismail who, in 1501 pronounced himself king of Tabriz and instituted Shiism as the religion of his newly founded Safavid dynastic state. By 1512 he extended his realm of control throughout Persia, ascribed to himself the inheritance of Persia’s ancient monarchy, and presumptuously declared himself descendant of Musa al-Khazim, the seventh Shiite Imam. Now Shah, Ismail arrogated to himself, in flagrant violation of the tenets of Twelver Imami Shiism, the religious title of al-Na‘ib al-Khas (personal deputy) of the Imam. He immediately waged war against his rival Sunni Ottoman Sultan Salim I. The Safavids received a resounding defeat in the Battle of Chaldrian in 1514.

The importance of Chaldrian lay in that it drew a lasting wedge between Sunni and Shiite versions of Islam. Persia (Iran since 1927) became the only Shiite State; its brand of Islam that combined nationalism with Shiism, in defiance of Ottoman Sunni supremacy, acquired a distinguished outlook that markedly set it apart from Arab Shiism.

III.  The Islamic Republic in Iran and the Mobilization of Lebanese Shiites

Khomeini’s victorious Islamic revolution, and the adoption of his wilayat al-faqih (rule of the jurisconsult) model of governance underscored the success of political Shi‘ism, and its inauguration as a potent competitor of militant Sunni Islam, which has not been able to establish itself anywhere as a state ideology. It also threatened the defensive official Sunnism that has been having difficulty perpetuating its legitimacy in increasingly ill-functioning political systems. Lebanon immediately presented itself as the only readily available environment for spreading the teachings of Ayatullah Khomeini. The mobilization of Lebanese Shiites on a self-conscious and communal basis was already under way.

Iranian-born cleric and political activist Musa al-Sadr who, in 1959, landed in Lebanon at the behest of Shah Mohammad Reza Shah, had a specific mission. It was not surprising that his arrival in the predominantly Shiite city of Tyre in southern Lebanon coincided with the surge of Communism among Shiites in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. The Shah’s secret police kept the communists at bay in Iran, whereas in Iraq Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr galvanized the Shiite community around his charismatic clerical leadership and gave back to Najaf its religious hold on many erstwhile defectors to communism. Musa al-Sadr’s task focused primarily on breaking the backbone of the Lebanese Communist Party, who drew most of its rank and file from among Lebanon’s impoverished Shiite community.[3]

The Shah’s reign of terror against the communists inadvertently gave impetus to Khomeini’s revolutionary drive.  Taking advantage of the death on March 30, 1961 of Grand Ayatullah Sayyid Hussein Borujerdi, who pursued a policy of restraint and aversion to involvement in mundane politics, Khomeini unleashed a campaign to unseat the Shah. He ended up in exile in Najaf less than two years later. Nevertheless, Khomeini had succeeded in placing Iran on the road of revolution. His endeavor bore fruit 16 years later. In Iraq, the authorities showed leniency towards Baqir al-Sadr’s mobilization of the Shiites, including organizing massive Karbala processions. Tolerance came to an end after Saddam Hussein staged, with Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, a successful coup d’état in July 1968. The regime started to clamp down on Baqir al-Sad until he was eventually executed on April 8, 1980.

Lebanese Shiites, however, have been able to achieve linear success. The towering character and great personal appeal of Musa al-Sadr, no doubt played a decisive role in securing the solid support of most Lebanese Shiites behind his leadership.[4] The nature of the Lebanese political system--which is based on confessionalism, power sharing, and the major sects’ veto power—ensured that no domestic Lebanese groups can arrest the ascendancy of Shiites, especially in the presence of a determined leadership. Musa al-Sadr took advantage of the disastrous consequences for Sunni Arabs of the 1967 Six Day War. During that war Israel easily routed the combined Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan and occupied sizeable chunks of Arab territory. One of the effects of the Six Day War was the rise of ethnic and religious minorities in the Arab East. Musa al-Sadr took maximum advantage of this development and, in 1969, established the Shiite Higher Islamic Council, which effectively rid them of Sunni clerical tutelage. In 1974, he created the Movement of the Dispossessed, which catered to the political and economic developmental needs of Lebanese Shiites; in the following year, he founded Amal Movement, an all-Shiite militia that would put the sect on the map of Lebanese politics as the 1975-89 civil war raged.[5]

IV. From Musa al-Sadr to Hasan Nasrallah

Musa al-Sadr disappeared mysteriously at the end of August 1978 during a visit to Libya. His meteoric rise to power and his grip on most of Lebanese Shiites put him on a head-on collision with the PLO, Sunnis and the left. Although al-Sadr claimed a neutral role in the country’s civil war, it was evident that his sympathies were with the Christians, whom he did not regard as his strategic enemies. He saw the Christians, especially the Maronites, as another historical minority with whom he could easily establish a rapport against the common Sunni adversary, be it Lebanese or Palestinian. For Libya’s local allies in Lebanon, al-Sadr had to exit the political scene. He did!

Al-Sadr meticulously navigated his rough political course between different local and regional actors, namely Syria. Nabih Berri, his successor in Shiite leadership, merely transformed Amal Movement from a complex organization into a Syrian pawn. He unnecessarily and inconclusively plunged Amal into war against Fateh Movement in Palestinian refugee camps, in what became known as the 1985-87 War of the Camps, in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Thousands of Amal militia men and Palestinian refugees perished in the ferocious but intermittent fighting that went on for two years. Many Shiites, even in Amal, questioned the purpose and morality of the war against Palestinian refugees. Hizbullah refused to side with Berri’s forces and chose to remain neutral even though, on numerous occasions, Hizbullah’s personnel smuggled provisions and munitions into the besieged camps.

Whereas Amal Movement busied itself with maximizing the share of Shiites from the meager material and political spoils of the Lebanese political system, Hizbullah distanced itself from the traps of petty politics and concentrated, instead, on ideological matters of high principle pertaining to faith and conflict with Israel. By 1989, when the major domestic groups to the civil conflict in Lebanon agreed to the terms of the Ta‘if Agreement that ostensibly brought an end to country’s protracted strife, Amal Movement was already a spent political force. In Ta‘if, the conferees agreed to dismantle their militias, but Hizbullah won an exemption from disarmament on the grounds of its fight against Israeli occupation forces in southern Lebanon. It then scaled up its attacks significantly against IDF in southern Lebanon and endured Israeli punishment, such as the assassination of Hizbullah Secretary General Abbas Musawi in February 1992, and the withering reprisals of Operation Accountability in July 1993, and the Grapes of Wrath in April 1996. The aftermath of the wrath of 1996 saw the creation of a six-nation committee, consisting of the United States, France, and Syria, in addition to Lebanon and Israel, to keep the peace in southern Lebanon. The committee recognized Hizbullah’s right to fight Israeli occupation provided they did not attack civilians or plant roadside bombs.

Hizbullah’s popularity soared among Lebanese Shiites, and it won the respect of its Sunni and Maronite sectarian competitors. The austere discipline of its rank and file, Spartan demeanor of its military commanders, and puritan outlook of its political leadership sat well with the Lebanese public. The death of Hadi, the eldest son of Hizbullah’s chief Hasan Nasrallah, in an engagement with the Israelis in southern Lebanon on September 12, 1997, won his leadership widespread acclaim, not only in Lebanon but throughout the Arab-Islamic world. Nasrallah and Hizbullah became not only role models for resistance and sacrifice, but also the custodians of a sublime cause worthy of emulation. The occupation of southern Lebanon had little support among the Israeli public. Domestic pressure demanded an unconditional withdrawal from southern Lebanon, even without signing a peace treaty with the government in Beirut. On May 25, 2000 then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered a hasty and unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Hizbullah celebrated its victory and pledged to go on with its fight against Israel until dismantling the Jewish state. It grew in size and prestige to become the primary Shiite group in Lebanon and took Amal Movement under its wing. Hasan Nasrallah developed into the supreme Shiite leader, even for secular minded community members. Under his leadership Hizbullah managed to transform Lebanese Shiites from mediocrity into the most capable of the country’s sectarian groups.

V. The Fall of Saddam Hussein’s Regime

U.S. troops entered Baghdad on April 8, 2003 and brought down the regime of president Saddam Hussein that lasted 24 years. Along with the demise of Hussein came the eclipse of the centuries old Sunni Arab political predominance in Iraq. Grand Ayatullah Ali al-Sistani played a key role in creating the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), an umbrella organization that brought together all major Shiite political groupings in preparation for the January 30, 2005 Iraqi National Assembly elections.[6] The UIA included major groups such as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq (SCIRI), the Da‘wa Party, and the Iraq National Accord. Together, UIA groups captured 140 seats in Iraq’s 275-seat National Assembly. This ensured that Iraq’s chief executive, the Prime Minister, would become Shiite. Iraq has literally become the first Shiite Arab state. U.S. occupation of Iraq has altered the rules of the political game in Mesopotamia and empowered its Shiite majority almost overnight. The cataclysmic transformation of Iraq altered its political scene and reverberated throughout the Arab East.

From Cairo to Amman, Sunni Arab heads of state warned about the looming Iranian-led Shiite Crescent in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. But among the Shiites in Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia there pervaded a sense of jubilation and expectation that the winds of change would soon reach their countries and mitigate Sunni Arab grip on politics.

VI. The July 2006 War: ‘Hizbullah’s Divine Victory’

Hizbullah’s public pronouncements did not condone the U.S. military move against Saddam Hussein’s regime, neither before nor after the invasion. Nevertheless, the demise of Hussein’s Sunni Arab regime served as a boost to Hizbullah, especially in connection with their burgeoning feud with the late Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri’s project for Lebanon, which if successful, would have spelled doom for their future. Hariri wanted to empower the soft Lebanese state and eventually disarm Hizbullah. He vehemently opposed Syria’s efforts to seek a second, three year term for president Emile Lahoud, who was on excellent terms with Damascus and Hizbullah. Lahoud was reelected in September 2004 amid local and international opposition. Hariri submitted his resignation as prime minister, and was subsequently assassinated on February 14, 2005. Hariri’s assassination amounted to a coup. It both eliminated his project for creating a modern Lebanese state and ensured the political retreat of Sunnis who, after Hariri’s disappearance from the scene, became essentially leaderless. For Lebanese Sunnis, Hariri’s assassination had for them almost the same adverse impact of U.S. invasion of Iraq on Sunni Arabs there. A formidable hurdle in the face of Hizbullah’s scheme for administering Lebanon without contestation has now been removed from the political scene.

Hariri’s assassination did not completely eliminate all of Hizbullah’s political travails. Its numerous adversaries, especially among Sunnis and Maronites, rallied behind the late prime minister’s son Saad Hariri and created, under his leadership, the March 14 coalition that, in the 2005 parliamentary elections commanded a clear majority of 72 members in the Lebanese 128-seats parliament. Emboldened by the panicky and unexpected withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon less than three months after Rafiq Hariri’s assassination, the March 14 coalition stepped up its demands for Hizbullah’s disarmament and transformation into a political party. Fully aware that disarmament would transform them into yet another indistinguishable force in Lebanon’s myriad groups, Hizbullah adamantly refused to disarm until Israel pulls out from the Shib‘a Farms.[7] After all, Hizbullah is an Iranian creation that is an integral part of the Islamic Republic’s strategic posture, and it is usually described as a forward division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.[8] The decision to disarm Hizbullah and admit it into the political system as a group committed to Lebanon as an indissoluble sovereign entity belongs in Iran. Hizbullah is a millennial group that sees reality in the form of a clash between good and evil and is convinced of the eventual triumph of the religio-political values it promotes on behalf of Iran’s Supreme Ayatullah.

Burgeoning domestic pressure on Hizbullah to disarm compelled it to agree to participate in a series of national dialogue meetings that included members of the March 14 majority coalition and the Hizbullah-led March 8 opposition, in addition to the leader of al-Tayyar al-Watani (national trend) Michel Aoun who, in February 2005, signed a memorandum of understanding with Hasan Nasrallah. Dubbed as a “national dialogue of the deaf,”[9] the talks came to a grinding halt as a result of Hizbullah’s daring raid on July 12, 2006 that resulted in the death of eight IDF soldiers and the kidnapping of two others.

Hizbullah desperately needed to convince its critics, and further impress its supporters, about the merits of occasional cross border raids into northern Israel. Hizbullah argued that these raids, some of which aimed specifically at capturing IDF soldiers were indispensable for securing the release of Lebanese POWs in Israel.[10] Humiliated by Hizbullah’s unprecedented raid, Israel responded by waging a 34-day long war to uproot Hizbullah. Israel had grossly underestimated the capabilities of Hizbullah. Dan Halutz, IDF chief of staff and a former IAF pilot, operated in the battlefield under the assumption that heavy bombardment would be sufficient to flush out Hizbulla fighters from their positions. The course of the events demonstrated that Israel’s war could not be won by almost exclusively relying on air power. Motivated and cause driven Hizbullah fighters held their grounds and continued to hurl rockets at northern Israel until the very last day of the war. Just before the closure of the war, Hizbullah fighters ambushed a large IDF armor unit in Wadi al-Hujayr and destroyed/ damaged about 40 Israeli tanks. For the first time in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the summer 2006 war ended without a knock out Israeli victory. Hizbullah had many reasons to celebrate its unexpected achievements in the battlefield; Israel got busy trying to learn the themes of a war in which it was caught unprepared.

VII. The Winds of Shiite Political Change and the Pull of Economic Development

A Lebanese Shiite intellectual told this author on the eve of the 2006 summer war that Hizbullah had made the Palestine issue central to its mission fully cognizant that it was essentially a Sunni pan-Arab cause.[11] He said Arab Shiites wanted recognition from Sunnis as bona fide Muslims.[12] The history of Arab Shiism is, in fact, one of defiance not only to Sunnis who, in their opinion usurped the God-mandated earthly rule of the descendants of the Prophet, but also to Christian, and more recently Zionist, encroachment on Dar al-Islam.[13] Arab Shiites have never missed an opportunity, whenever they were in a position of power and authority, to defend Islam and further its cause. In the tenth century, for example, the Shiite Hamadani dynasty in northern Syria routinely clashed with the Byzantines and chased them in today’s southern Turkey. In 1911, clerics in Najaf and Karbala issued fatwas that declared jihad against Italy’s occupation of Tripoli and Cyrenaica (in today’s Libya), amidst widespread Shiite protests against the loss of another chunk of Dar al-Islam to “European infidels.”[14] In 1918, Shiite clerics in Najaf refused to collaborate with the occupation forces, and in 1920 Shiite tribes in southern Iraq rebelled against them in a disproportionate encounter that caused the death of 10,000 rebels before the British crushed it.

During the 1920s and 1930s, southern Lebanese Shiites wholeheartedly aided Palestine’s Arab insurgency against the Zionist settlement scheme and statehood claims. Shiite villagers provided shelter to Palestinian rebels and gave them access to medical facilities. In 1965, they collaborated with Fateh movement’s guerrillas and took their side against the Lebanese army’s effort to contain them. Many of Hizbullah’s cadres had served with Fateh before the PLO was uprooted from Lebanon as a result of Israel’s 1982 invasion.[15]

The held belief that the pro-American Lebanese government connived with Israel during the 2006 summer war particularly infuriated Shiites in general, and Hizbullah in particular. It is widely held among Lebanese Shiites that the March 14 dominated government of Fuad Seniora had anticipated Hizbullah to collapse within a few days. Developments in the battlefield proved them wrong. Equally injurious to Shiite public opinion were denunciations of Hizbullah by moderate Arab governments. On the third day of the war, a Saudi official statement, for example, accused Hizbullah, without naming them, of precipitating the war because of their “uncalculable adventures.”[16] Shiite bitterness appears to have no bounds. They fail to get credit from Sunni Arab political systems, even when they redeem them in battle. This has not deterred Shiite write Ja’far Atris from claiming that the outcome of the war represented “an incredible strategic victory… that has transformed Hizbullah into a regional asset equipped with a new revolutionary equation.”[17]

The outcome of the 2006 summer war has had an enormous impact on Shiite Arabs’ political mobilization that is probably outclassed only by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In one venue, it has produced a sense that the historically downtrodden Shiites have become a resistance sect. In another, somewhat disturbing, venue, it advanced the notion that Hizbullah has given Lebanese Shiites a sense of “a self-steering sect that does not need the state, and whose collective memories are unrelated to non-Shiite Lebanese.”[18] This sense of confidence has found its way to Shiites on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf. In Bahrain, Shiites now demand that the prime minister comes from among their ranks. They also press to have access to senior positions in the civil service and government. Everywhere in the Gulf, Shiites seek to gain the freedom to practice their faith, including the organization of public Ashura processions, and the opening of Shiite religious institutes. The empowerment of Shiites in Iraq and Hizbullah’s achievements in Lebanon are inviting Shiites to push for proportional political representation, especially in their countries’ national assemblies.

Interestingly, the political component of Lebanese Shiites’ development far exceeds its economic component, which sharply contrasts with the pace of Shiite Arab development elsewhere, notably in Kuwait and the UAE.  Jean Kelly observes that:

Gulf Shiites play an important, although little discussed, role in their societies’ economic and technological sectors, with emphasis on petrochemicals and mining…. Shiite young people avidly pursue college education, as well as vocational training…. Kuwait’s Shiites almost completely control the country’s foodstuff market, as well as the vital water and power utilities sectors.[19]

The modernizing role, both economic and political, of the Shiite religious establishment has been quite significant within their communities. Shiite Ayatullahs, in their capacities as sources of imitation, have at their disposal huge sums of funds, which they dispense on community welfare activities.[20] Key Shiite welfare institutions affiliated with prominent sources of imitation, which are transnational in the scope of their social commitment, include Imam al-Khu’ee Philanthropic Associaion, the International Association of Imam Shirazi, and Ali Sistani’s Ahl al-Bayt Association for Culture and Heritage.

The privileged position of the religious establishment has placed its top members above the state, especially since they compete with it in the dispensation of scarce material resources, and also because they are unencumbered in their transactions with the community by the state’s lethargic bureaucratic machinery. It is difficult to separate the Grand Mujtahids’ religious and political roles, in particular because they are in possession of much coveted material resources. In 1891 Grand Ayatullah Muhammad Hasan Shirazi issued a fatwa that banned the consumption of tobacco products throughout Persia. Even the wife of the Qajar Shah Nasir al-Din refused to serve him tobacco and threatened him with divorce if he did not oblige. The Shah had no alternative but to repeal the Tobacco Concession he had awarded to a British company. In 1906, Ayatullah Mulla Khadhim al-Khurasani issued a fatwa that ignited Iran’s Constitutional Movement, that in 1911 produced a document putting Iran on the course of an accountable political order.[21] Iraqi president Hasan al-Bakr asked, in 1969, Ayatullah Muhsin al-Hakim “publicly to condemn the Iranian government in its dispute with Iraq of the Shatt al-‘Arab. Al-Hakim refused.”[22] Al-Bakr then unleashed a series of measures that aimed at decimating the power of Iraq’s Shiite religious establishment.  

VIII. A New Reality

The political rise of Arab Shiites in recent years can best be epitomized by an event in May 2003, when Iranian president Mohammad Khatami visited Lebanon and delivered a speech at Beirut’s main stadium. Amal Movement and Hizbullah partisans converged on Beirut from all corners of Lebanon to hear Khatami speak. This occasion had vividly demonstrated the shifting allegiance of Lebanese Shiites, who seem to have finally found a foreign sponsor. Given the saliency of religion for Shiites and the Islamic revolutionary nature of Iran’s political system, the Iranian sponsor has been quite formidable in reshaping the political identity of Lebanese Shiites. What goes for Lebanese Shiites, goes also for Shiite Arabs elsewhere. Meir Litvak has aptly reported that Ismail Shah’s “…endorsement of Shiism marked a turning point in Iranian history by making it a central element of Iranian identity and culture…”[23] As a result of the Safavid religious upheaval, “Twelver Shiism was transformed from mainly an Arab minority sect to a state religion dominated by Iranians.[24] Graham Fuller observed that Shiism has developed over the centuries some particularistic cultural characteristics that make it quite challenging for a Shiite to become secular, even if he/she wanted.[25] Shiism has a built-in mechanism that frowns at community members espousing an identity in which the sect is not central to it.[26] During the 1980s, for example, Hizbullah liquidated scores of Shiite Lebanese secular intellectuals who took issue with religious identity.

The present mood in the Middle East is one that favors religious identity. The past thirty years have witnessed a process of steady re-Islamization. In the main, Sunni revivalists see their Shiite counterparts doctrinally threatening. By the same token, given Islam’s universalism, many Shiites believe their faith deserves to be consolidated and its tenets propagated throughout the world of Islam, but especially in the Middle East’s Sunni Arab core. Shiite ascendancy in the Middle East makes it imperative that Iran continues to play an increasingly more prominent role, especially in countries with significant Shiite communities. Cardinal to Iran’s Shiite foreign policy is the well-being of Lebanese coreligionists. The confessional nature of Lebanese politics assures Iran’s ruling elite that Lebanese Shiites will never turn their back on Tehran.      

---

   JIME Center.All rights reserved.