Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah Martin Kramer on the Middle East “ Kind of Leadership Emerges

Martin Kramer on the Middle 14/12/2010 00:04 East The Oracle of Hizbullah: Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah sermons delivered by Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. One vendor, operating from a cassette store in the neighborhood of Fadlallah’s mosque in a poor Shiite quarter of Beirut, taped the his is the full text (excluding notes) of the study sermon each week from the pulpit. The entrepre- by Martin Kramer, “The Oracle of Hizbullah: neur claimed to have sold more than a hundred TSayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah,” in thousand copies throughout Lebanon. Orders also R. Scott Appleby, ed., Spokesmen for the Despised: arrived from West Africa and the United States, Fundamentalist Leaders in the Middle East (Chicago: centers of the Lebanese Shiite diaspora. Heavy de- University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 83-181. Refer mand doubled the price of many tapes. to the paper version for the 324 footnotes. Much of the study, with notes, can be previewed at Amazon Fadlallah spoke for Hizbullah, “the party of God,” and Google Books (also embedded at the foot of this a movement of Lebanese Shiites that captured the page). A slightly expanded version was published world’s attention beginning in 1982. Obscure men in 1998 in Hebrew as a monograph by the Dayan carried out the acts of violence that made Hizbullah Center at Tel Aviv University. renowned—suicide bombings, airliner hijackings, hostage takings. But it was the ubiquitous Fadlallah The prerecorded who processed the rage of Hizbullah into speech, in audiocassette sermons and lectures, on tape and in print. Borne market of Beirut aloft on a wind of words, he made himself the voice is one of the of Hizbullah’s conscience and its spokesman to the more sensitive world. His very ubiquity suggested that he led the measures of the movement, a supposition that drew diplomats, me- city’s fever. In diators, and assassins to his door. Turban, beard, feedback the 1970s it was and spectacles combined in a countenance that, dominated by alone among the faces of God’s partisans, became immensely po- internationally famous and infamous. Fadlallah’s pular tapes of place in the movement eluded definition; the pre- Palestinian na- cise boundaries of his role ran through Hizbullah’s tionalist hymns. secret space. But in no other single instance did in- But in the mid- dividual and collective needs so obviously combine Click here to send your send your Click here to 1980s, accor- for mutual gratification. Hizbullah’s deeds amplified ding to a Le- Fadlallah’s words, carrying his voice far beyond his banese weekly, own pulpit to the wider world. Fadlallah’s words print these lost their interpreted and justified Hizbullah’s deeds, trans- joli market share to forming resentment into resistance. the record- breaking sales of cassettes bearing the voice of a Fadlallah personified the role of leaders in the emer- Shiite cleric. In the marketplace of inspiration-on- gence and transformation of contemporary Islamic demand, nothing could match the tapes of Friday movements. Islamic fundamentalism is deeply roo- Printed with Printed http://www.martinkramer.org/sandbox/reader/archives/oracle-of-hizbullah-sayyid-muhammad-husayn-fadlallah/ Page 1 Martin Kramer on the Middle East 14/12/2010 00:04 The Oracle of Hizbullah: Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah ted in the social and economic crisis that has ove- ever more numerous young. In the span of a few rwhelmed so many peoples of the Middle East and years, these leaders came to stand at the head of North Africa, and its power cannot be understood mass movements, well positioned to bid for ultimate as the achievement of a few individual leaders. Yet political power. the appearance of dynamic leaders has constituted a necessary condition for the forging of discontent Hizbullah arose in Lebanon from a fusion of many into discipline, and the creation of organized mo- discontents. It drew upon Shiite frustration with vements. When Bernard Lewis wrote his prescient endemic poverty and the collapse of civil society into essay on “The Return of Islam” in 1975, he attribu- civil war. It received inspiration and direct support ted the failure of earlier Islamic movements to an from Islamic Iran and won a following among those absence of such leadership: who suffered as a result Israel’s 1982 invasion of Le- banon. It benefited from the indulgence of Syria and One reason for their lack of success is the fragmentation of Lebanon’s Shiites themselves. that those who have made the attempt have Yet it is difficult to imagine how Hizbullah would been so unconvincing. This still leaves the pos- have evolved without the omnipresence of Fadlallah. “sibility of a more convincing leadership, and Others may have made Hizbullah’s choices, but the there is ample evidence in virtually all Muslim movement bore his mark. For he was Hizbullah’s countries of the deep yearning for such a lea- oracle—a fount of infallible (if ambiguous) guidance, dership and a readiness to respond to it. The fed by an unfathomably deep well of wisdom. He lack of an educated and modern leadership has rallied the masses to the movement, and then kept so far restricted the scope of Islam and inhibi- them from following paths to self-destruction. The ted religious movements from being serious movement and the man guaranteed one another’s contenders for power. But it is already effec- survival—and together they wrote history. tive as a limiting factor and may yet become a powerful domestic political force if the right Precocious Poet kind of leadership emerges. Fadlallah was born in the Iraqi Shiite shrine city Such leadership appeared several years later in of Najaf on 16 November 1935. His father, Sayyid the person of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who Abd al-Ra’uf Fadlallah, had migrated there from feedback launched a movement that swept aside Iran’s mo- the village of Aynata in South Lebanon in 1928 to narchy and established a regime of divine justice. pursue religious learning. Najaf sits astride the slug- As the 1980s unfolded, more leaders emerged as gish Euphrates, on a baked plain 150 kilometers additional Islamic movements gained momentum— south of Baghdad. At the heart of this city of domes leaders who had mastered the power to persuade, is the revered tomb of the Imam Ali, the Prophet and who knew enough of the discourse of modernity Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law. In past times to puncture it. They convinced masses of people of prosperity and peace, this gateway to the pre- Click here to send your send your Click here to that a return to Islam meant not a step backward, dominantly Shiite south of Iraq teemed with pil- but a leap forward into a postmodern world where grims from throughout the Shiite world, who sought the preeminent values of the West would be chal- communion with God and fed the city’s hoards of print lenged by their own adherents. The certainties of beggars. But Najaf also encouraged another kind joli Islam would prevail, and believers who held tightly of purposeful travel, for alongside the shrines were to them would be empowered. The logic of these some of the most renowned Shiite seminaries of new leaders was a combination of the Cartesian and learning. Great ayatollahs, scholars, and students the Qur’anic, and they appealed directly to those assembled from throughout the Shiite world—the scarred deeply by religious doubt, especially the majority from Iran, others from Iraq, Lebanon, the Printed with Printed http://www.martinkramer.org/sandbox/reader/archives/oracle-of-hizbullah-sayyid-muhammad-husayn-fadlallah/ Page 2 Martin Kramer on the Middle East 14/12/2010 00:04 The Oracle of Hizbullah: Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah Arab Gulf, Afghanistan, and the Indian subconti- of Sunni Islamic empires recognized its sacred cha- nent. In Najaf they studied sacred law, theology, and racter and granted immunities that formed a wall philosophy, according to the medieval pedagogical around the city. methods of the Islamic seminary. The schools were free of government control and submitted to no ex- The sacred space on the Euphrates traditionally grip- ternal academic authority. No presidents, deans, or ped the imagination of young Shiites in Jabal Amil, masters presided. The ayatollahs maintained their the mountainous south of Lebanon. Through some seminaries through donations and alms, which arri- study in Najaf, one might become a shaykh and gain ved from throughout the Shiite world. Students paid some of the prestige traditionally accorded to the no tuition, teachers received no salaries; all drew learned. But Najaf exercised a particular pull upon small stipends which allowed them to pursue pious those who already claimed authority by descent and learning in conditions of the utmost austerity. Some for whom acquired learning compounded distin- eventually returned to their own lands to preach; guished lineage. They were sayyids, descendants of others spent lifetimes in the seminaries. Stories of the Prophet Muhammad through the Imam Husayn, deprivation and hunger suffered by students and who were believed to possess baraka, an inherited teachers filled many memoirs of life in Najaf, but grace that infused their blessings with potency. They all attested to the city’s tenacious hold upon those were much in demand in all forms of religious ritual; who dwelled within it. in return, they laid a recognized claim to the alms due to the Imam. While shaykhs of undistinguished Upon entering the city, pilgrims and scholars stepped lineage wore white turbans, sayyids were entitled out of time. Shiism had survived as a negation of to wear black or green. temporal Islamic history. In the Shiite view, the ship of Islam had been run aground immediately after Beyond the hereditary title of sayyid, affirmed for the death of the Prophet by those who ignored his the world by the color of one’s turban, there were specific instruction that his son-in-law Ali be placed more prestigious titles associated with learning.

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