Fadlallah not only knew how to speak the modern rhetoric of resistance, but
possessed a complete mastery of the peculiarly Shi'ite symbols of martyrdom, which he invoked whenever the calendar of religious observance made it advantageous to do so.
Not only did Fadlallah call for struggle, but he also sought to fashion the strategies and even the tactics of the
Islamic Resistance, whenever these had implications for his reading of Islamic law. Fadlallah therefore sanctioned the tactics of "self-martyrdom," which were employed in the South against Israel after they were used successfully against the U.S. and France in Beirut. "What is the difference between setting out for battle knowing you will die
after killing ten [of the enemy], and setting out to the field to kill ten and knowing you will die
while killing them?" The artist of fine distinction saw no real distinction at all.
Yet after an initial spate of successes, it soon became clear that this minimum ratio of ten to one could not be guaranteed, as Israeli forces took prudent counter-measures. After a time, such operations were more likely to produce few Israeli casualties or none at all. Still, there were those in the Islamic Resistance who felt that such operations had value even when they failed, for they demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice young men on the alter of the struggle. Fadlallah strongly opposed this transformation of a failing military tactic into a sacrificial rite. Already in the spring of 1985, he openly expressed doubts. "The self-martyring operation is not permitted unless it can convulse the enemy," Fadlallah declared. "The believer cannot blow himself up unless the results will equal or exceed the [loss] of the believer's soul. Self-martyring operations are not fatal accidents but legal obligations governed by rules, and the believers cannot transgress the rules of God."
By late 1985, he did not hesitate to opine that the day of the "self-martyrs" had passed. Fadlallah deemed past operations against Israeli forces "successful in that they significantly harmed the Israelis. But the present circumstances do not favor such operations anymore, and attacks that only inflict limited casualties (on the enemy) and destroy one building should not be encouraged, if the price is the death of the person who carries them out."
It was a view which largely carried the day, and demonstrated Fadlallah's determination not only to fuel the Islamic Resistance, but to guide it.
Fadlallah's own daunting persistence and his seemingly limitless energy did a great deal to fire the Islamic Resistance. He remained in constant touch with the clerics and commanders who led the fight, and inspired them with the words they used to gather recruits. Gradually the Islamic Resistance began to claim success, wearing down Israeli forces through ambushes, road-side bombs, and the threat of suicide bombs. Fadlallah described the process by which the weak demoralized the strong:
The Israeli soldier who could not be defeated was now killed, with an explosive charge here, and a bullet there. People were suddenly filled with power, and that power could be employed in new ways. It could not be expressed in the classical means of warfare, because the implements were lacking. But it employed small force and a war of nerves, which the enemy could not confront with its tanks and airplanes. It appeared in every place, and in more than one way. Thus our people in the South discovered their power, and could defeat Israel and all the forces of tyranny.
Fadlallah's contribution to the growing resistance to Israel could not be isolated and measured with any precision. Yet no one in Hizbullah could match his sheer ability to conceptualize conflict. For many of those in the Islamic Resistance, he had become an infallible moral and political compass.
Yet Fadlallah never deceived himself or others about the meaning of the successes of the Islamic Resistance in the South.
Even as he argued that Israel coveted the South, he understood that Israel's consensus ended at the border, and that from the moment of Israel's entry into Lebanon, Israelis began to look for a way out-a timetable, a security plan, guarantees. This made mighty Israel vulnerable to the comparatively small resources the Islamic Resistance could muster. But Fadlallah understood that Israel would stiffen over the defense of its heartland. The obstacles on the remaining road to Jerusalem were far greater than anything the Islamic Resistance had overcome.
Fadlallah expressed this sobering thought just as Iran's emissaries recklessly promised the imminent redemption of Jerusalem. He did not object to their conjuring up images of Jerusalem, but this had to be done responsibly and realistically. Certainly it was important in mobilizing resistance in the South. "Demand to go past the border," he said, "in order to reach the border; if you demand only to reach the border, you won't reach the Zahrani," the Lebanese river that demarcated the South.
But the Islamic Resistance, despite its victories, had not thrown open the door to Jerusalem. The struggle of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon was meant to "make confrontation with Israel possible in the future on the grounds that Israel is not an irresistible power even if it is supported by the United States " But Fadlallah saw "a difference between the liberation of Palestine and the liberation of South Lebanon as far as the method of operation is concerned."
The liberation of Palestine, where a tenacious Israel had struck root, required the emergence of an Islamic resistance in Palestine itself, as well as a broad "Arab-Islamic plan for confrontation." Without such a plan, operations against Israel from Lebanon would become "mere acts of self-martyrdom. That is why we think differently about the post-Israeli withdrawal phase, differently from the way of the resistance in South Lebanon."
The ultimate liberation would take much more time. Just how much more became a point of disagreement between Fadlallah and Iran's emissaries. Iran's emissaries feared that promising too remote a redemption might create despair, and they believed what they preached: that Iran's revolution had put Muslim history on fast-forward. But Fadlallah was more concerned with encouraging persistence, since hopes of quick victory had always been the bane of the Arabs. At times, his ambiguity accommodated those short of patience: "
When we say that Israel will cease to exist, this does not mean tomorrow or the day after."
But usually he spoke of years, decades, generations, even centuries. Israel's elimination could not be achieved in "one, two, or ten years," but might require "one hundred years if necessary." Or perhaps fifty years, "just as the Jews sought to reach Jerusalem, even if it took fifty years." Fadlallah did not wish to "take from the public its dream and aspiration of destroying Israel"-a dream he shared-but the liberation of Jerusalem would be done "only in future generations." "In this connection," he admitted, "we think of great periods of time." There was now "no strategy in the operational sense for the liberation of Jerusalem."
Fadlallah did not expect to enter the promised land. Instead he sought to purify the young generation and steer them from the worship of false gods, so that they or their children might regain lost Jerusalem. And because Fadlallah did not become intoxicated by the early gains of the Islamic Resistance, he did not become discouraged once Israel dug in its heels in 1985, establishing a security zone in the South. He continue to preach against Israel with an even resolve. But as the Islamic struggle against Israel entered a stalemate, Fadlallah's audiences began to pay closer attention to his vision of Lebanon itself.
Balm of Lebanon
How did Fadlallah envision the Lebanon left behind by Israel's retreat, and how precisely did he expect Islam to resolve the country's deadlock? It was difficult to say. No clouds obstructed his discourse against Israel, for the conflict in the South represented a battle of absolutes. But the rest of Lebanon was a different matter, for there were no foreign intruders to expel, only interested parties whose claims had to be reconciled. These included Shi'ite Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Maronite Christians, Greek Orthodox Christians, Armenians, and Druzes, living and often warring in a hopelessly small country. In addressing the question of Lebanon, Fadlallah brought his talent for advocacy into brilliant play.
It was obvious, he declared, that neither the existing confessional system nor any other confessional formula could ever reconcile the claims of these different religious groups. But they could all be accommodated with equity through the implementation of Islam as a comprehensive political, social, and legal order. Islam, declared Fadlallah, constituted a framework in which all Lebanese could live in harmony, regardless of their religious affiliation.
Yet when pressed to explain how Islam would achieve this, Fadlallah let ambiguity reign. At times, it seemed as though he predicated Islamic redemption on the dissolution of Lebanon itself. Fadlallah believed that "Lebanon was created by great powers in artificial borders, as the result of a political deal."
Lebanon's borders were tailored in an arbitrary fashion to create a bastion from which the West could continue to dominate the surrounding Muslim world. Lebanon "came into being to perform a specific mission for the West . . . to be a stage on which all the plans propounded for the region would be tested."
And so there was nothing "eternal" about Lebanon, an entity that only existed thanks to those "international political interests" which had a stake in its preservation. Fadlallah held out the ultimate promise of Lebanon's disappearance: "
If the political situation in the region changes, not only is Lebanon unlikely to survive; neither will many other entities in the region."
In this respect, Lebanon as an idea did not differ significantly from Israel as an idea. Both were foisted on the Muslims from the outside; both were destined to disappear.
This was certainly the tack adopted by Iran's emissaries, who promised Lebanon's disappearance into a "great Islamic state."
But Fadlallah did not believe in the immediacy of Lebanon's demise. Too many obstacles, within the country and beyond its frontiers, stood in the path of its absorption into a great Islamic polity. The likelihood that such a polity might ever emerge was slim; in Fadlallah's view, "modern developments with which the Muslims now live . . . have made the single world state irrelevant from the point of view of objective possibilities."
Iran's emissaries had sought to create the illusion that parts of Lebanon had been incorporated into Iran, but illusion was one thing, reality another.
The best that Lebanon might hope for was the separate implementation of an Islamic state.
Yet even this limited goal could not be achieved immediately, for confessionalism constituted the hard soil of Lebanon, and the idea of an Islamic state was a vulnerable transplant. While Iran's emissaries dwelt upon the similarities between Iran and Lebanon, Fadlallah saw profound differences,
which arose primarily from Lebanon's confessional diversity.
In Iran, there was "a population composed of Muslims only, which accepts the line of Islam, and a regime that had become an obstacle in the way of Islamic rule. The only solution was to fight this regime." But such homogeneity did not obtain in Lebanon, and no revolution could alter that fact. "Sometimes there are obstacles that a revolution cannot eliminate."
The first obstacle lay in the fact that the Muslims of Lebanon were not of one school, but were divided between Sunnis and Shi'ites. And among the Sunnis, there were many with a vested interest in the existing confessional formula. Their fortunes had declined since the outbreak of the civil war, but plummeted following the expulsion of their Palestinian allies in 1982. Now the rising demographic and political tide of Shi'ism threatened to sweep away their privileges. And privileged they were, in comparison with the Shi'ites. They had profited from their mediation between the surrounding Sunni Arab world and the West, in commerce, education, and the professions. Shi'ites could see this themselves: most of the prospering industries and warehouses in the Dahiya were owned by Sunnis. The confessional system also guaranteed Sunnis a share of the state that their numbers could no longer justify. Now assertive Shi'ites began to argue that the primacy of the Sunni community on the Muslim side of the confessional equation had no legitimacy.
But the idea of an Islamic state could never win a majority if the Muslims split , and unity could only be achieved by alleviating Sunni anxieties. As Fadlallah noted, "
the majority of the armed elements within West Beirut are Shi'ites, and there is no real Sunni armed presence. When people who are unarmed are faced with armed people, especially when infractions and violations of the law occur, they are bound to feel insecure." And so Fadlallah set out to dispel the growing mistrust which separated Shi'ites and Sunnis. The first step was to admit that the problem existed, to avoid the denial that prevented dialogue.
The inner sectarianism of Islam, he announced, had left "a profound effect on the emotional content of the view held by Muslims of one another." It had now reached the point of gross exaggeration, where Muslim openly accused Muslim of unbelief and polytheism. Instead of seeing sectarian differences as matters of marginal disagreement over law or the interpretation of certain theological "details," Muslims regarded them as fundamental differences in belief. "The sectarian reality has divided Muslim societies into two, Sunni and Shi'ite, in which each takes stands independent from the other and finds that its interests differ from the interests of the other." Fadlallah offered no precise solution to these differences. But while others magnified them, he sought to minimize them. They were not theological but philosophical, he declared; they could be transformed into "an intellectual problem, to be examined by researchers in a scholarly way so as to reach a solution."
Fadlallah offered no ecumenical magical formula, but his ecumenical style did build a measure of Sunni trust. His own discourse was remarkably free of Shi'ite symbolism. He did employ a Shi'ite rhetoric on the anniversaries and commemorations set by the Shi'ite religious calendar, and before exclusively Shi'ite audiences. Such rhetoric, he explained, was intended only to motivate people. But given a choice between an allusion to the Qur'an or to the Imam Husayn, he usually chose the former. It was often difficult to tell from the texts of his regular sermons that they were spoken by a Shi'ite cleric. He also appeared in person before Sunni audiences, in order to give his assurances the weight of his personality. In a typical instance, Fadlallah lectured before alumni of a prestigious Sunni Muslim school; the audience was comprised of lawyers, doctors, and engineers. In attendance were a former prime minister, parliamentary deputies, and the head of Beirut's Chamber of Commerce. A photograph shows an audience of respectable older men of means, mustached, white-haired or bald, arms folded across their jackets and ties.
These were the pillars of the Sunni professional and commercial establishment, who felt most threatened by the encroachment of the masses of Shi'ite poor on West Beirut. Fadlallah read his prepared remarks from a seat on the dais. In measured tones and without passion, he worked to assuage their fears, speaking about the need for the unity of Shi'ites and Sunnis and the common ground on which they stood.
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Such performances were augmented by personal efforts to defuse sectarian powder kegs. Members of the Lebanese Sunni elite, who had built personal fortunes from their Saudi connections, shuddered when Lebanese Shi'ites sacked and burned the Saudi consulate in Beirut in 1984, in protest against a Saudi refusal to issue them pilgrimage visas. Fadlallah was quick to condemn the violence: "We regard this as an act of mischief, and believe it might have been the result of misplaced zeal."
That same year, he sought to prevent the extension into West Beirut of the Shi'ite Ashura processions, marking the martyrdom of the Imam Husayn. The observance commemorated the opening of the chasm within Islam, and while it played an essential role in the ritual universe of Hizbullah, it also bore within it the potential for sectarian strife. Fadlallah worked to confine the processions to the Dahiya, out of Sunni sight: "During Ashura I worked for two consecutive nights to prevent the holding of a procession in West Beirut, and I am still having contacts to remove the slogans and pictures from the area, since this is undesirable."
The understanding which Fadlallah promoted was fragile, and the mistrust between Sunnis and Shi'ites simmered. But if the two communities were to form a coalition in favor of an Islamic state, Fadlallah had the best chance of any Shi'ite cleric to emerge as linchpin of that coalition, as guide to Shi'ites and Sunnis alike. "My views have had an impact in Lebanon, among Sunnis as well as Shi'ites," declared Fadlallah in an unusually boastful moment. "I do not work on a Lebanese level alone but also at the level of the Islamic world. We have excellent relations with the Hizbullah group and with most of the Amal members, as well as with Islamic non-Shi'ite groups and the Sunnis in Tripoli and Beirut."
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But Fadlallah could never be certain that any Sunnis-even those impressed by his ecumenism-would follow him down the road to an Islamic state. They saw how Iran's revolutionary constitution had declared Twelver Shi'ism to be the religion of state, despite the presence of a large Sunni minority. Were not the Sunnis better off remaining one confession among many, rather than a minority in a predominantly Shi'ite Islamic state? Again, Fadlallah sought to banish one fear by evoking a greater one.
Certainly Muslims had their differences, but their shared belief, law, culture, resources, and security, were threatened by unbelief. That threat
demanded that the Muslims "strive for the establishment of a state, any state, which will counter these threats from the position of Islamic thought." The great Shi'ite clerics and the leaders of Sunni movements
had to find a formula which would guarantee the freedom of believers in such a state, by drawing upon the Qur'an as its constitution. The state would have to locate the common ground shared by the schools of Islam, and tolerate the long-standing differences among them. For the alternative to an Islamic state was "subjugation to unbelieving tyranny, which will extend its injustice to Islam as a whole, and to all Muslims."
Unbelief would establish its rule, its law, its complete control. "And that would not be agreeable to any Islamic logic, opinion, or school."
To accommodate Lebanon's Sunnis, the implementation of an Islamic state in Lebanon would have to differ fundamentally from its implementation in Iran. Concessions would have to be made to Lebanon's diversity.
But that diversity hardly ended with Lebanon's Sunnis.
Fadlallah knew that Lebanon's Christians would resist any attempt to substitute the rule of Islam for the tattered confessional order which guaranteed their privileges, which were even more extensive than those of the Sunnis. Fadlallah also understood that they had an identity and an ethos of their own, largely formed in opposition to Islam, and he had seen them at their most tenacious and ruthless in Nabaa.
Unlike many of Iran's emissaries, Fadlallah never underestimated the Christians of Lebanon. Like the invading Jews, they were unbelievers; but unlike the Jews, they were rooted in the soil of Lebanon, and would not flee in the face of car bombs and ambushes. They would simply return the same with a vengeance. As he once put it, "Lebanon is a country in which both Muslims and Christians live. Neither can remove the other; that is why we must stop losing ourselves in conjecture."
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Fadlallah's straightforward advice to his adherents was not to tangle with the Christians, if such entanglement could be avoided. As Israel retreated, he urged that Shi'ite rage against the Christians be displaced upon the Israelis,
with the argument that Israel represented the "head," and Lebanon's Christians constituted the "tail."
Once he was asked whether liberation of all Beirut from the Christians should not take precedence over the liberation of the South. "I would prefer that you set such slogans aside. Palestine is with you when you walk through Junya, Palestine is with you when you walk through the alleyways of the Dahiya, in every village in the South and in every Beirut street.
Confront Israel and leave the 'tail' aside. For if you defeat Israel, if you chop off the 'head,' where will the 'tail' be?" This was an astute shift of grievance, since the Islamic Resistance could not break the resolve of Lebanon's Christians. But it could break the overextended Israelis, who were already looking for every possible exit from the Lebanese labyrinth.
Yet Fadlallah believed that the Christians, and especially the Maronites, were growing weaker. The Maronites had been a European project, at a time when Europe pursued a policy of cultivating minorities. But America, the heir of Europe, had penetrated the entire Islamic world, and had no need of a small minority at odds with America's more numerous Muslim friends in the region.
Fadlallah believed that in the long term, this made Lebanon's Christians insecure-and susceptible to persuasion. The Christians could not yet be forced into submission, but perhaps they could be cajoled, coaxed, seduced.
Fadlallah understood that they were afraid, and that fear stiffened their will. But if that fear could be alleviated, might not their will be eroded?
Thus began Fadlallah's remote dialogue with Lebanon's Christians-remote, because at first Fadlallah conducted it through the Lebanese media.
Fadlallah went out of his way to grant interviews to the newspapers and magazines which were published and widely read by Christians. The journalists for these publications inevitably pressed Fadlallah on the status of Christians in any future Islamic state.
Right through the Ottoman period, they had lived under Islam as protected inferiors, bound by the provisions of a pact, or dhimma. Christians remembered the dhimma as a discriminatory system of subjugation, and portrayed it as a kind of religious apartheid.
Fadlallah still upheld the dhimma as an ideal arrangement between Muslim majority and Christian minority, and argued that on close examination, it was not "the oppressive or inhumane system that some people imagine it to be."
But he suggested an alternative: a treaty, or mu'ahada, between majority and minority. The Prophet Muhammad, on coming to Medina, had concluded precisely this kind of treaty with the Jews. Unlike the
dhimma, which was a concession by the Islamic state, the
mu'ahada constituted a bilateral contract.
The Islamic state could conclude such a treaty with any kind of minority-with Christians and Jews, but also, for example, with Kurds or Turks. Such a treaty would guarantee cultural rights, customs, and traditions,
while leaving politics to the Islamic state. Pressed still further, Fadlallah could also envision an additional pact, or
mithaq, between the state and its religious minorities, which could be negotiated within the broad lines of Islam.
All offices in the state would then be open to members of the religious minority, with the exception of the highest decision-making authority. "
Because of the Muslim majority in Lebanon," he announced, "the president should be a Muslim."
But at the same time, "if the president is a Muslim, but a supporter of infidel regimes and arrogant powers, in our view he is not acceptable."
The president would have to be both a Muslim and an Islamist.
In late 1987 a handbill circulated in West Beirut naming Fadlallah as a candidate for the presidency of Lebanon. Fadlallah saw no reason why a man of religion could not hold such an office, but he denied any connection with the handbill, and denounced the floating of his name as an attempt to harm him. With the presidency still reserved for a Maronite, he could hardly do otherwise.
Fadlallah thus offered a comprehensive Islamic solution, but he assured Christians that he did not seek its imposition by force. He distanced himself from the demand of Iran's emissaries that the "regime" be "toppled." The people of Lebanon, he averred, had the right to decide their own future. Any solution would have to be acceptable to a majority.
It was Fadlallah who prevailed upon the drafters of Hizbullah's programmatic "open letter" of February 1985 to include a passage which called for "allowing all of our people to decide their fate and choose the form of government they want with complete freedom." Muslims were duty-bound to present the alternative of Islam, not to impose it.
Fadlallah did not imagine he could persuade all of Lebanon's Christians, for that would have been a labor of Sisyphus.
But he did seek to build a reservoir of Christian trust, which might be tapped later to build a multi-confessional majority in favor of an Islamic state.
His growing reputation certainly piqued Christian interest. He eventually had "many long discussions" with a long list of Christian figures whom he met in Damascus. His interlocutors included the patriarchs of the Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, and Syrian Orthodox churches, as well as papal nuncio and the cardinal who presided over the Vatican's Secretariat for Non-Christians. "I never felt there was any problem during our talks," claimed Fadlallah. "It was as though I was conversing with Muslim scholars." In Lebanon itself, however, no religious dialogue took place, and Fadlallah admitted that politics posed "serious obstacles to any attempt at a frank discussion."
Still, this did not prevent him from conducting a monologue. One Christmas he gave a lengthy interview devoted to Muslim-Christian relations, arguing that "fundamentalist Islam" was far closer to Christianity than Lebanon's "confessional Islam." One Easter he gave a mosque sermon commemorating "the sufferings of Jesus," one of Islam's prophets, even though "we may not concur with Christians on certain details of theology." As with Sunnis, so with Christians, Fadlallah sought to talk the differences away.
And if, despite Fadlallah's efforts, the majority of Lebanese still rejected the creation of an Islamic state? In these circumstances, Fadlallah did not rule out a compromise solution. Above all, Fadlallah sought social and economic justice for the oppressed. Perhaps Lebanon's diversity made it impossible to create a state led by a Muslim and based on Islamic law. That was no reason to despair. "If we as Muslims fail to achieve an Islamic state for everyone, we should not stop in our tracks. Instead, we must call for a humane state for everyone." Such a state could never be just in an Islamic sense, but it could be humane, provided it alleviated the distress of the despised and downtrodden. To those who insisted on a Muslim head of state, Fadlallah noted that were other states headed by Muslim kings, princes, and presidents, "who steal the funds of the Muslims, and the treasury of the nation and its future." To those who demanded the implementation of Islamic law, Fadlallah pointed out that this did not automatically guarantee justice. In a veiled allusion to Saudi Arabia, Fadlallah decried Arab regimes that practiced theft and then cut off the hand of the thief, practiced fornication and then stoned the adulterer. Fadlallah held that rule by Muslims and the implementation of Islamic law did not by themselves create a state of justice.
And if these two attributes of an Islamic state were beyond reach, then perhaps another solution could be found.
This opened Fadlallah to some criticism in Hizbullah. "
Some brothers imagine I have substituted the slogan of a humane state for that of an Islamic state," he revealed. "I do not present it as an alternative, but as an interim step, to break down the wall that surrounds people."
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Fadlallah did continue to talk about the necessity of an Islamic state, but he actively pursued more attainable objectives. And if Fadlallah sometimes asked for more than was reasonable, it was usually in order to get something reasonable.
Demand Jerusalem, but settle (for now) for the South; demand an Islamic state, then settle (for now) for a "humane" state. In his plea for the despised, Fadlallah remained both pragmatic and principled.
Of course there were Christians and Sunnis who viewed his vision as a piece of deceit, meant to lure them to a feast where they would constitute the main course.
But Fadlallah concealed nothing. He expected them to sacrifice privilege-political, social, economic-in return for the protection afforded by his Islam.
They could accept his offer now, or gamble losing everything in a future upheaval by a less forgiving Islam. Thanks largely to Fadlallah's subtle advocacy-and implicit threat-the idea of an Islamic state provoked a lively intellectual debate, among adherents of all confessions.