The Oracle of Hizbullah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah

8/13/2019 The Oracle of Hizbullah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah

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Martin Kramer on the Middle

East

The Oracle of Hizbullah: SayyidMuhammad Husayn Fadlallah

This is the full text (excluding notes) of the studyby Martin Kramer, The Oracle of Hizbullah:Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, in

R. Scott Appleby, ed., Spokesmen for the Despised:Fundamentalist Leaders in the Middle East(Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 83-181. Referto the paper version for the 324 footnotes. Much ofthe study, with notes, can be previewed at AmazonandGoogle Books(also embedded at the foot of thispage). A slightly expanded version was publishedin 1998 in Hebrew as a monographby the Dayan

Center at Tel Aviv University.

The prerecordedaudiocassettemarket of Beirutis one of themore sensitivemeasures of thecitys fever. Inthe 1970s it wasdominated byimmensely po-pular tapes ofPalestinian na-tionalist hymns.But in the mid-1980s, accor-ding to a Le-banese weekly,these lost theirmarket share tothe record-

breaking sales of cassettes bearing the voice of a

Shiite cleric. In the marketplace of inspiration-on-demand, nothing could match the tapes of Friday

sermons delivered by Ayatollah Sayyid MuhammadHusayn Fadlallah. One vendor, operating from acassette store in the neighborhood of Fadlallahsmosque in a poor Shiite quarter of Beirut, taped the

sermon each week from the pulpit. The entrepre-neur claimed to have sold more than a hundredthousand copies throughout Lebanon. Orders alsoarrived from West Africa and the United States,centers of the Lebanese Shiite diaspora. Heavy de-mand doubled the price of many tapes.

Fadlallah spoke for Hizbullah, the party of God,a movement of Lebanese Shiites that captured theworlds attention beginning in 1982. Obscure mencarried out the acts of violence that made Hizbullah

renownedsuicide bombings, airliner hijackings,hostage takings. But it was the ubiquitous Fadlallahwho processed the rage of Hizbullah into speech, insermons and lectures, on tape and in print. Bornealoft on a wind of words, he made himself the voiceof Hizbullahs conscience and its spokesman to theworld. His very ubiquity suggested that he led themovement, a supposition that drew diplomats, me-diators, and assassins to his door. Turban, beard,and spectacles combined in a countenance that,alone among the faces of Gods partisans, becameinternationally famous and infamous. Fadlallahsplace in the movement eluded denition; the pre-cise boundaries of his role ran through Hizbullahssecret space. But in no other single instance did in-dividual and collective needs so obviously combinefor mutual gratication. Hizbullahs deeds ampliedFadlallahs words, carrying his voice far beyond hisown pulpit to the wider world. Fadlallahs wordsinterpreted and justied Hizbullahs deeds, trans-forming resentment into resistance.

Fadlallah personied the role of leaders in the emer-gence and transformation of contemporary Islamicmovements. Islamic fundamentalism is deeply roo-

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Martin Kramer on the Middle East

The Oracle of Hizbullah: Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah

ted in the social and economic crisis that has ove-rwhelmed so many peoples of the Middle East andNorth Africa, and its power cannot be understoodas the achievement of a few individual leaders. Yetthe appearance of dynamic leaders has constituteda necessary condition for the forging of discontentinto discipline, and the creation of organized mo-vements. When Bernard Lewis wrote his prescientessay on The Return of Islam in 1975, he attribu-

ted the failure of earlier Islamic movements to anabsence of such leadership:

One reason for their lack of success isthat those who have made the attempt havebeen so unconvincing. This still leaves the pos-sibility of a more convincing leadership, andthere is ample evidence in virtually all Muslimcountries of the deep yearning for such a lea-dership and a readiness to respond to it. Thelack of an educated and modern leadership has

so far restricted the scope of Islam and inhibi-ted religious movements from being seriouscontenders for power. But it is already effec-tive as a limiting factor and may yet becomea powerful domestic political force if the rightkind of leadership emerges.

Such leadership appeared several years later inthe person of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, wholaunched a movement that swept aside Irans mo-narchy and established a regime of divine justice.As the 1980s unfolded, more leaders emerged asadditional Islamic movements gained momentumleaders who had mastered the power to persuade,and who knew enough of the discourse of modernityto puncture it. They convinced masses of peoplethat a return to Islam meant not a step backward,but a leap forward into a postmodern world wherethe preeminent values of the West would be chal-lenged by their own adherents. The certainties ofIslam would prevail, and believers who held tightlyto them would be empowered. The logic of thesenew leaders was a combination of the Cartesian and

the Quranic, and they appealed directly to thosescarred deeply by religious doubt, especially the

ever more numerous young. In the span of a fewyears, these leaders came to stand at the head ofmass movements, well positioned to bid for ultimatepolitical power.

Hizbullah arose in Lebanon from a fusion of manydiscontents. It drew upon Shiite frustration withendemic poverty and the collapse of civil society intocivil war. It received inspiration and direct support

from Islamic Iran and won a following among thosewho suffered as a result Israels 1982 invasion of Le-banon. It beneted from the indulgence of Syria andthe fragmentation of Lebanons Shiites themselves.

Yet it is dicult to imagine how Hizbullah wouldhave evolved without the omnipresence of Fadlallah.Others may have made Hizbullahs choices, but themovement bore his mark. For he was Hizbullahsoraclea fount of infallible (if ambiguous) guidance,fed by an unfathomably deep well of wisdom. Herallied the masses to the movement, and then kept

them from following paths to self-destruction. Themovement and the man guaranteed one anotherssurvivaland together they wrote history.

Precocious Poet

Fadlallah was born in the Iraqi Shiite shrine cityof Najaf on 16 November 1935. His father, SayyidAbd al-Rauf Fadlallah, had migrated there fromthe village of Aynata in South Lebanon in 1928 topursue religious learning. Najaf sits astride the slug-gish Euphrates, on a baked plain 150 kilometerssouth of Baghdad. At the heart of this city of domesis the revered tomb of the Imam Ali, the ProphetMuhammads cousin and son-in-law. In past timesof prosperity and peace, this gateway to the pre-dominantly Shiite south of Iraq teemed with pil-grims from throughout the Shiite world, who soughtcommunion with God and fed the citys hoards ofbeggars. But Najaf also encouraged another kindof purposeful travel, for alongside the shrines weresome of the most renowned Shiite seminaries oflearning. Great ayatollahs, scholars, and students

assembled from throughout the Shiite worldthemajority from Iran, others from Iraq, Lebanon, the

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Arab Gulf, Afghanistan, and the Indian subconti-nent. In Najaf they studied sacred law, theology, andphilosophy, according to the medieval pedagogicalmethods of the Islamic seminary. The schools werefree of government control and submitted to no ex-ternal academic authority. No presidents, deans, ormasters presided. The ayatollahs maintained theirseminaries through donations and alms, which arri-ved from throughout the Shiite world. Students paid

no tuition, teachers received no salaries; all drewsmall stipends which allowed them to pursue piouslearning in conditions of the utmost austerity. Someeventually returned to their own lands to preach;others spent lifetimes in the seminaries. Stories ofdeprivation and hunger suffered by students andteachers lled many memoirs of life in Najaf, butall attested to the citys tenacious hold upon thosewho dwelled within it.

Upon entering the city, pilgrims and scholars stepped

out of time. Shiism had survived as a negation oftemporal Islamic history. In the Shiite view, the shipof Islam had been run aground immediately afterthe death of the Prophet by those who ignored hisspecic instruction that his son-in-law Ali be placedat its helm. Later the usurpers would compound thecrime of disobedience with that of murder, whenthey slew Alis son, Husayn rather than recognize hisdivine right to rule. There followed a succession ofviolations against the just claims of Alis descendantsand their supporters. They and their truths wereforced underground by a false Islam. So thoroughlydid the usurpers suppress truth that the Shiite tra-dition did not expect wrongs to be righted beforethe end of eschatological time. The partisans of Alinursed their grievances, mourned their martyrs,and scoffed at the wars waged by false Muslimsfor the expansion and defense of Islam. For them,history itself had gone into hiding. Nowhere didtemporal time seem so completely suspended asin Najaf and Karbala, the burial places of Ali andHusayn. There Shiites came as pilgrims to lamentthe injustices of this world, and there they were

brought for burial to speed them to the next. Najafdid not always know tranquility, but a succession

of Sunni Islamic empires recognized its sacred cha-racter and granted immunities that formed a wallaround the city.

The sacred space on the Euphrates traditionally grip-ped the imagination of young Shiites in Jabal Amil,the mountainous south of Lebanon. Through somestudy in Najaf, one might become a shaykh and gainsome of the prestige traditionally accorded to the

learned. But Najaf exercised a particular pull uponthose who already claimed authority by descent andfor whom acquired learning compounded distin-guished lineage. They were sayyids,descendants ofthe Prophet Muhammad through the Imam Husayn,who were believed to possess baraka,an inheritedgrace that infused their blessings with potency. Theywere much in demand in all forms of religious ritual;in return, they laid a recognized claim to the almsdue to the Imam. While shaykhs of undistinguishedlineage wore white turbans, sayyids were entitled

to wear black or green.

Beyond the hereditary title of sayyid, armed forthe world by the color of ones turban, there weremore prestigious titles associated with learning.Through a short period of study in Najaf, one mightaspire to the title of imamand khatib,prayer leaderand sermonizer in a mosque. More protracted studyin the law of Islam might earn one the formal titleof mujtahid,one empowered to interpret the law ofIslam in binding ways for believers. When respectfor ones learning became great enough that onecould accredit others as mujtahids, the title of aya-tollah might be accorded by informal acclamation.Such titles could only be acquired through study inNajaf. Thus learning was pursued both for its ownsake and as a credential of spiritual authority andsocial preeminence.

When Sayyid Abdal-Rauf depar-ted for Najaf, hedid what was

expected of him.His family were

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the most notable sayyids of the village of Aynata,which sat astride the then-open frontier betweenLebanon and Palestine; his father, one of the fore-most clerics in the district, supervised a local semi-nary. Najaf captured Sayyid Abd al-Rauf as a youngman, and held him close for thirty years. He nishedhis own studies under the leading teachers of thecity, and taught a generation of aspiring young scho-lars from Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. He returned to

south Lebanon in the summer of 1956, but the scho-larly ways of the shrine city did not leave him. Whenhe died in 1984, his body was own back to Iraq forburial in Najaf, far from his place of birth but at thesacred center of rebirth, so that he might be amongthe rst to be resurrected on the appointed day.

His son, Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah,passed his formative years in Najafs raried cli-mate of scholastic piety. Like his fellow students,the young Fadlallah had to master a curriculum

unaltered by the passage of time, which stressedgrammar, logic, and rhetoric in the early years ofstudy. This emphasis reected a deep-rooted ap-preciation for the relationship between formalizedlanguage and power. A mastery of formal conven-tions of speech set a Najaf-educated man apart fromall others; the mark of learning was an instrumentof social power. The elements of this formalizedlanguage were control of classical Arabic combi-ned with appropriate and precise quotation of theQuran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammadand the Imams. These conventions, rigorously culti-

vated in seminary and mosque, armed the powerof speaker over listener.

Fadlallah was gifted and precocious. At the ageof ten, he and some friends even put out a hand-written literary journal. His mastery of the worddistinguished him from his contemporaries, andhe progressively advanced to the highest stages oflearning in theology and law under Najafs mostesteemed teachers. The most venerated of thesewere ayatollahs Muhsin al-Hakim and Abu al-Qa-

sim Khoithe former an Arab (and related to Fa-dlallah through his mother), the latter an Azeri. Yet

from the outset, Fadlallah demonstrated a will anda talent for stretching convention, for putting hismastery of language to original use. He rst did soin poetry, which constituted the most intimate andoriginal form of expression among the ostensiblystaid scholars of Najaf. After prayer or a visit tothe public baths, students and teachers alike wouldmeet in sances where they exchanged gossip andrecited verse.

In 1953, at the age of sixteen, Fadlallah visited Le-banon to attend a commemoration ceremony fora leading Shiite cleric. The teenager appeared onthe occasion wearing the turban of a learned manand recited a poem which astonished people atthe time. As a result, the young prodigy from Na-

jaf stirred some comment in the Lebanese press.In later life he would continue to write poetry, inhis spare time and on plane ights, and publishedseveral books of collected verse, almost all on Isla-

mic themes.

Fadlallahs composition of free verse hinted at adaring willingness to defy convention, even whilemastering its complex forms. But he was not alone intesting the limits of convention. While he acquiredthe practical tools of a scholar and jurist, winds ofchange blew through Najaf, scattering timewornassumptions about the role of Shiism in the tem-poral world. The collapse of the Ottoman Empirehad breached the walls that separated Najaf fromthe tumult of this world. When Fadlallahs fatherarrived there in 1928, the city was already underthe rule of British unbelievers. Many of the leadingShiite clerics had ed to the city of Qom in Iran, aftersupporting a failed rebellion against the Englishoccupation in 1920. Qom had thus come to rivalNajaf as a center of Shiite learning, and would latersurpass it. When Iraq became nominally indepen-dent in 1932, and again after the revolution of 1958,the centralizing nationalist state sought to establishits control over the autonomous Shiite shrine cities.While the state tightened its grip, contenders for

power bombarded the new generation of youngShiites with the ideological messages of Arab natio-

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nalism, Arab socialism, and communism. Redemp-tion from oppression, alienation, and poverty neednot wait, proclaimed the new ideologies. Leave theclerics to their redemptive suffering and dogmaticmessianism, and join the struggle for liberation.

Younger Shiite clerics understood the threat to theirstanding, their autonomy, and their survival. Fadlal-lah recollected that after the fall of the Iraqi monar-

chy in 1958, confronting communism became thegreat preoccupation of Najafs clerics. Islam wouldremain relevant to the needs of a doubting genera-tion only if it became a theology of liberation. Theyoung would go elsewhere unless given a Shiite Isla-mic response to their yearnings for political, social,and economic justice. Clerics could not continueto preach patience and damn politics as hubris. Sobegan the revolution that would turn Shiism insideout, from a creed of pious resignation to a slogan ofliberation. The best young talents of Najaf began to

think, lecture, and write on such subjects as Islamicgovernment, Islamic economics, and the ideal Isla-mic state. Justice could no longer be deferred, theyproclaimed; Muslims had a duty to pursue it hereand now. They should not wait passively for divineredemption, but must plan for it now, as though thefate of Gods creation depended solely upon theirown acts.

My studies, which were supposed to be traditional,rebelled against tradition and all familiar things,Fadlallah later said. He felt an irresistible attractionto this new reading of Islam, and particularly itspresentation by his Najaf contemporary, SayyidMuhammad Baqir al-Sadr, a brilliant scion of oneof contemporary Shiisms leading families. Togetherthe two young scholars collaborated on a journal.Fadlallahs own editorials dealt with the need tomake the teachings of Islam relevant to changingcircumstances and called for a more open approachto Islamic studies among the scholars themselves.These essays conveyed the vitality and originalityof his intellect, and above all his ability to stretchconvention without breaking it. But Baqir al-Sadrwished to take his message beyond the seminaries,to the displaced Shiite masses who had left thecountryside for Iraqs cities. These could not bereached through learned articles in journals. And

so the clerical theorists of an Islamic state wove aclandestine network that became known as Hizb

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al-Dawathe Party of the Calling. The Iraqi regimeregarded this passage from arid intellectualism tocommitted activism as an impertinent challenge toits own legitimacy and began to intimidate the cle-rics and laymen who had joined together in thenetwork of Al-Dawa.

The electrifying atmosphere of Najaf, the controver-sies which raged there, the inspiration of great tea-

chers, the growing repression by the Iraqi regimeall of these left their mark on Fadlallahs character,his beliefs, his understanding of the world. He cameto personify the great tradition of the seminaries ofNajaf. In any other generation, he might have mo-ved inexorably toward recognition as a rst-rankacademic scholar. Such standing had its rewards,and Fadlallah could have laid claim to a place onthe higher faculty of an esteemed seminary. But hehad matured on the brink of a waran undeclaredwar against Islam, waged by the forces of aliena-

tion and secularization. In Najaf Fadlallah made acommitment that would bind hima commitmentto the survival of an Islam besieged by dauntingenemies. Even for those who preferred to avoidthe brewing battle, the seminaries could not offersanctuary. With the emergence of Al-Dawa, the Iraqiregime began to show a heavier hand in the intimi-dation of leading Shiite clerics and their disciples.The regime well understood the dangers implicitin the networks new preaching and threatened itsmembers with imprisonment or exile. The ever-encroaching state seemed poised to throw out thatmost fundamental of all immunities, the physicalinviolability of the clerics themselves.

At the same time, Lebanon beckoned. Fadlallah hadmaintained his ties to the country and had visited itoccasionally over the years. He knew that there nogovernment cajoled or threatened Shiite clerics. Le-banon had become a sanctuary for ideas and peopleunwelcome everywhere else in the Middle East. Whynot for Shiisms theologians of liberation? In Leba-non, an enterprising young cleric could also make

a mark; before Fadlallah lay the example of SayyidMusa al-Sadr, a Shiite cleric about seven years his

senior, whose family had deep roots in Najaf butwho had been born in Qom in Iran. Sayyid Musahad spent four years studying in Najaf, and had beenpersuaded to go to Lebanon by Ayatollah Muhsinal-Hakim, one of Fadlallahs own mentors. SayyidMusa did so in 1959, and by the mid-1960s he hadwon a considerable following. Soon he would beacclaimed the Imam Sadr by his supporters.

Fadlallahs decision might have been inuenced bySayyid Musas success. In 1962 Fadlallah visited Tyre,in Lebanon, and helped Sayyid Musa draft a pro-test against the policies of the Shah of Iran. He sawhow Sayyid Musa had become a maker of Lebanesepolitics, despite his foreign birth. But Fadlallahsmove to Lebanon may also have been encouragedby those who wished to bring down Sayyid Musasrising star. Sayyid Musa had antagonized many ofthe landed families in south Lebanon, whom heaccused of exploiting and misrepresenting the Shiite

community. As it happened, Fadlallahs maternalgrandfather had been the baron of the powerful andlanded Bazzi clan of Bint Jubayl. They had boughtand elbowed their way to respectability, eventuallyinstalling Fadlallahs maternal uncle as a parlia-mentary deputy from Bint Jubayl and then as a go-vernment minister. They would have been eager togroom one of their own as a counter to Sayyid Musa,whose call for internal social reform threatened toerode what remained of their privilege.

First Pulpit

It would be dicult to nd two more apparentlyirreconcilable cities than Najaf and Beirut in the1960s. Najafs domes professed the sublime natureof God and submission to his will; Beiruts concretecitadels declared the supremacy of secular man, incommerce, journalism, literature, art, and revolu-tion. Yet they were both cities under siege. In theheart of Beirut, the Arab world came the closest tocreating an island of secular tolerance and intellec-tual freedom; the American University of Beirut, inparticular, had become a byword for provocativethought and free expression. There was room for

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everyone, remembered one observer of Beirutsfree-wheeling ambience: the devout and heathen,pious puritans and graceless hedonists, left-wingradicals and ardent conservatives, foot-loose andself-centered Bohemians and steadfast chauvinistsand conventional patriots. The city was governedby respect for differences. Yet like Najaf, Beiruthad come under relentless pressure, not from a cen-tralizing state, but from masses of refugees from the

despair and deprivation that surrounded the island.Like Najaf, Beirut saw its defenses crumbling.

And like Najaf, Beirut rewarded the talented ma-nipulation of words. When Fadlallah decided tocome to his ancestral Lebanon, the eloquent andslightly unconventional cleric from Najaf knewwhere his art would be most appreciated. He ar-rived in Beirut in 1966 and selected as his arenathe mixed Shiite-Palestinian shantytown of Nabaain East Beirut. Nabaa was the poor relation of the

neighboring Burj Hammud, one of the oldest of thecitys Shiite communities, dating back to the 1940s,when Shiites rst began to leave the countryside inpursuit of economic opportunity. The Shiites, madeto feel unwelcome in Sunni West Beirut, had pre-ferred Burj Hammud, settled between the worldwars by Armenian refugees. Poorer and more recentShiite arrivals squatted in neighboring Nabaa, andwere joined by Palestinian refugees of war. In BurjHammud and Nabaa, Shiite entrepreneurs had ope-ned workshops and small factories. Those Shiiteswho came from the southern town of Bint Jubayland its vicinity brought with them their traditionalcraft of shoemaking and established a number ofshoe factories which supplied the Lebanese mar-ket. There were as many people from Bint Jubayl inNabaa, as in Bint Jubayl itself, and the transplantedcommunity readily accepted this brilliant nativeson, who had all the right credentials of descent andlearning. Community leaders welcomed Fadlallahfor their childrens sake as well. In the crush of thecity, young people were moving away from theirrural ways and even their faith. Their confusion

could not be addressed by the corrupt and obscu-

rantist shaykh who presided over the neighborhoodbefore Fadlallah arrived.

Fadlallah immediately identied the malaise of theconfused young men and women who had distancedthemselves from religious belief, and set out to re-deem them through a socially aware reading of Is-lam. He opened a husayniyya,a place of communalgathering where Shiites mourn the martyrdom of

the Imam Husayn. There he established a socialand cultural association known as the Family ofFraternity (Usrat al-Taakhi),which supervised cli-nics, youth clubs, and a middle school for Islamicstudies called the Islamic Law Institute (al-Mahadal-Shari al-Islami).The best of the students at theInstitute went on to Najaf for further studies.

Fadlallah now made excellent use of the sermonizingconventions he had acquired in Najaf. He would be-gin his sermons with formal invocations and quota-

tions from the Quran, intoned sonorously as thoughto cast a spell. This would draw the audience into astate of attentiveness, and conrm his authority as amaster of the sacred text. Then he would introducehis general theme, discussed on a high level of abs-traction in the formal cadences of classical Arabic.In many of Fadlallahs written pieces, he went nofurther, leaving the reader with an impression ofa rather formal brilliance. But in sermons, a clearbreak would occur, signied by his passage to a morecolloquial Arabic. Here came the transition fromthe sacred to the temporal, as Fadlallah descendedfrom his broad theme to the trying questions posedby the present. At this point, his speech became fe-verish; in an arresting mannerism, he would wipehis high forehead with a handkerchief, as if to coola mind racing past safe limits. Fadlallah performedlike an artist on the pulpit, deftly weaving wordsinto a dense and intricate carpet of quotations andallusions of immense suggestive power.

Fadlallah simultaneously developed a freer styleof lecturing for youth clubs and groups. A lecture

differed in many subtle ways from a sermon, butthe most obvious departure came at the end, in the

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question-and-answer period. Not every sermonizercould think quickly enough on his feet to answerimpromptu questions and summon the necessaryquotations from Islamic sources. Fadlallah had thattalent, and it endeared him to the inquisitive young,who were eager for dialogue and wrestled with dif-cult dilemmas that other clerics preferred to avoid.

Fadlallahs words derived their power from their

combination of traditional Islamic themes and thefashionable rhetoric of anti-imperialist nationalism.The young generation that Fadlallah sought to touchhad been nurtured on the ideas of Arab revolutionchampioned by Egypts Gamal Abdel Nasser, the pa-ladin of pan-Arabism. These ideas revolved aroundthe belief that, despite the coming of formal politicalindependence, a disguised imperialism thwartedthe Arab advance toward true independence. Fa-dlallah, too, believed that imperialism remainedthe paramount obstacle to self-fulllment, and he

borrowed heavily from the vocabulary of Arab re-volution. Fadlallah held that imperialism cannotbear having Muslims proceed from a premise ofintellectual self-reliance and it cannot bear havingthe Muslims act through economic and political self-suciency. It wants us to continue sitting at its table,feeding ourselves with the thought and consumerproducts it offers us.

There was nothing original in this idea of economicand cultural imperialism sucking the lifeblood of itsvictims. But Fadlallahs formulations diverged fromthe prevailing discourse in this important respect:for the Arabs, Fadlallah substituted the Muslims,and for Arabism he substituted Islam. Imperialismhad to be fought in order to weaken it, limit its in-terests and break its spine, exactly as imperialismendeavors to weaken poor peoples economically,politically, militarily, by all available means. ButArabism was a false god; only Islam could serve asthe basis for a viable struggle against imperialism.Unlike some Islamic theorists, Fadlallah did notdeny the values of Arab nationalism, particularly

its emphasis upon unity in the struggle for Arabliberation. But the ethos of Arabism had failed to

unify the Arabs. Nationalisms incapacity to stir thedeepest commitment was demonstrated by the fai-lure to liberate Palestine. Most of the positive valuesof Arab nationalism had been derived from Islamin the rst place, and the liberation of Palestine andthe Arabs could be hastened only by returning to anIslamic conceptualization of struggle and sacrice.

The searing issue of the early 1970s for Lebanons

Shiites was the emergence of a Palestinian resistanceon Shiite ground. Expelled from Jordan in 1970, Pa-lestinian armed organizations relocated to Lebanonand began to attack Israel across Lebanons border.Israel retaliated with uneven accuracy, often at theexpense of Shiite bystanders. Should the Shiites turntheir backs on the Palestinians or demonstrate so-lidarity by facilitating the attacks and sharing theconsequences? This dilemma confronted Shiites notonly in the south, in places like Bint Jubayl, but alsoin Beirut, where their Palestinian neighborsinclu-

ding those in Fadlallahs own Nabaa quarterhadalso armed themselves.

Sayyid Musa al-Sadr could never give Shiites astraightforward answer to their own Palestinianquestion. While he felt the pull of solidarity, hedreaded the inclusion of the Shiites in the ring ofsuffering that surrounded the Palestinians. Afterall, peace had prevailed for a generation along thefrontier between Lebanon and Israel. The south hadbeen transformed into a battleground only afterthe emergence of an armed Palestinian resistance,which used the region as a platform for attacksagainst Israel. Not a few Shiites shared the view,widespread in Lebanon, that the Palestinians werepursuing their war of liberation at Lebanons ex-pense and bore responsibility for the hellish Israelireprisals upon the villages of the south. Sayyid Musasympathized with Palestinian aspirations becausethe Palestinians had been dispossessed, but didnot believe that the Shiites, alone among all Arabs,should bear the burden of their struggle. As he saidin private conversation in 1973, Our sympathy no

longer extends to actions which expose our peopleto additional misery and deprivation.

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Fadlallah understood the dilemma differently. For-med in the Arab world of the 1950s, he knew thelanguage of Arab unity, Arab liberation, and Arabsocialism. The whole enterprise of the younger ge-neration of Najaf clerics had been the appropriationof that language and its translation into the catego-ries of Islam. Najafs poets also had vied with oneanother in spinning words on Palestine. Fadlallahshared the Arab nationalist conviction that Israel

was the instrument of a wider Western plot to domi-nate the Arab and Muslim worlds. The conict to thesouth was not a problem between Jews and Arabs inPalestine, but between two blocs contending for theworld. The Shiites, Fadlallah warned, could not optout of this conict, for they too were slated for vic-timization. The problem of the South is part of thePalestinian problem, he said in a lecture deliveredin Bint Jubayl in 1972. The claim of politicians andsome others, that the departure of the Palestinianfedayeen from the region will solve the problem,

is talk for the sake of talk, anachronistic words, atemporary anesthetic. Israel did not strike the southonly in reaction to Palestinian attacks. Israel covetedthe south and wished to possess it. Israel had takenterritory in each of the previous three wars, declaredFadlallah, and would provoke yet another war togain more. Fadlallah understood the Shiite fear oftaking a stand against Israel. Israel frightened theentire Islamic world and appeared as the invincibleelement in 1967, he later said. The Islamic world,and especially the Arab world, experienced such apsychological defeat that if any of us heard the wordIsrael he trembled in fear, as many of us did withregard to the agents of Israel. So to embolden hislisteners, Fadlallah conjured up another fearofeventual displacement, by an Israel which wouldgrow like a cancer unless it was excised.

This argument set Fadlallah apart from Sayyid Musaal-Sadr. Its premises lay deep in the discourse of pan-Arabism, which Sayyid Musa never fully mastered.For Sayyid Musa, the salvation of the Shiites lay inLebanons recognition of their place in the mosaic.

He appealed to those who clung to their Shiism andpreserved their faith in Lebanon. But Fadlallah

spoke to the young Shiites who were beyond thereach of Sayyid Musa, those who scoffed not onlyat Shiism but at Lebanon, and who believed that byespousing causes larger than both they might losethemselves in the revolutionary mass. Seeing noreason to cling to a sectarian Shiism, they insteadoffered their services to the leftist militias and thePalestinian organizations. To the young Shiites year-ning to identify with anything but Shiism, Fadlallah

offered the alternative of an ecumenical Islam. Em-brace the cause of Palestine, he urged, but do so inthe spirit and name of Islam.

This did not mean that Fadlallah endorsed the wildfury of the Palestinian attacks on Israel. The Shiites,the Palestinians, and the Arabs as a whole, had toface the limitations imposed by their situation. Thepeople had to overcome of effects of the feudal or-der and the quarreling Arab regimes, in order tochallenge an Israel supported by the greatest power

in the West, the United States.

The problem is what we are able to do,on the basis of the forces we can muster onthe local level at a given moment in time. Em-otion might push you towards thinking aboutrevolting against your situation, but this alonewill not bring you any result on the road toa solution. Perhaps an individual, in certainemotional states and in certain situations, mayfeel the urge to destroy himself and all that isaround him. This might be a way to releaserage and suppression through an explosion,but this has never solved a problem.

This emotionalism was the bane of the Arab world.The Arabs primed themselves to expect a quick x,and avoided long-term planning, while the aggres-sors unfolded their multistage plan to gain controlof our country and our resources, and then removeus from our homelands under the slogan a landwithout a people for a people without a land. TheArabs had to set aside their daydreams and begin

by taking a profound look at the enemys futureplans, on the basis of present and past experience.

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We should then plan our political, economic, andmilitary life accordingly. Fadlallah was too cautiousto spell out a precise plan of action. He spoke insteadof the necessity of individual transformation fromwithin. It is the individual who will grasp the gun,who will y the plane. Tell me, by God, how will theindividual advance this fateful cause, unless he pos-sesses profound faith and moral fortitude, so that hewill not yield to temptation? Fadlallah proclaimed

Islam a theology of liberation at a moment whenArab revolutionaries and intellectuals denouncedit as the paramount obstacle to an effective Arabchallenge to Israel.

But Fadlallahs message did not resonate beyond afew Beirut neighborhoods. Sayyid Musa al-Sadrsvoice carried much further, because he spoke di-rectly to the strong sense of Shiite particularitywhich still gripped the community. Both men worethe same turban, but the differences were profound.The physically towering Sadr possessed an informaldignity that reected the self-condence of someoneof the most noble descent. He relied heavily uponthat pedigree, for when he spoke, his PersianizedArabic betrayed his foreign roots. Fadlallah wasshort and stocky, and could be readily mistaken foran acolyte. But his effortless and owing Arabic

proclaimed him the most Arab of Arabs.

The Shiites showed their preference. Sayyid Musasdeportment, lineage, winning manner, and mes-sage of hope captured the imagination and wonthe loyalty of many of Lebanons Shiites. That Sadrspoke accented Arabic hardly mattered. Bereft ofself-condence, the Shiites of Lebanon were eagerto defer to outside authority. Still strongly Shiitein identity, they were not embarrassed to look forleadership beyond the Arab world, to the seat of

contemporary Shiite culture in Iran. Fadlallah hada much narrower appeal, which did not extend farpast his own neighborhood. He won favor particu-larly with Shiites who shared his reading of the Pa-lestinian problem as fateful for the Shiite communityitself. Among these followers, young Shiites who hadjoined Palestinian organizations, and even risen topositions of some prominence, looked to Fadlallahas the cleric whose words most perfectly justiedtheir presence in Palestinian ranks.

But they were too few. Fadlallah remained in theshadows, while Sayyid Musa became the ImamSadr, hailed by many of Lebanons Shiites as lea-der and savior. Fadlallah used his time to cultivatehis support at the most local level, and to bolsterhis scholarly credentials. Later, when asked whathe did durin

Documents

The Oracle of Hizbullah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah