Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah

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Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah

Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah , scientific transcription by Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah ( Arabic محمد حسين فضل الله Muḥammad Ḥusain Faḍl Allāh , DMG Muḥammad Ḥusain Faḍlallāh ; * November 16, 1935 in Najaf , Iraq ; † July 4, 2010 in Beirut , Lebanon ), was a leading Shiite clergyman in Lebanon and spiritual leader of Hezbollah, known for its terrorist activities. However, his influence as a Grand Ayatollah extended far beyond Lebanon.

Life

Fadlallah was born the son of a Lebanese legal scholar ( mujtahid ) in Najaf, Iraq, where his parents emigrated. He received a classical Muslim education, the focus of which is the Koran . After the establishment of the “Ulama Community in Najaf” in 1958 by clergymen under the leadership of Sheikh Murtada al-Yasin, this group became a forum for young clergymen in the Koran schools of Najaf. The later Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr played a leading role. Baqir al-Sadr also supported the establishment of an Islamic government in Iraq. One of his closest associates was Fadlallah.

In 1966, Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah and his family returned to Lebanon and have lived in Beirut ever since. There he witnessed Christian-Islamic violence during the civil war in 1976. The expulsion of Shiites from the Beirut district of Nabaa could have been his fundamental experience in viewing radical violence as a legal means. Even during the civil war, he therefore put forward the thesis that Shiites must enforce their rights by all means, including violence.

Fadlallah also supported the “Islamic Revolution” in Iran and maintained close contacts with the revolutionary Tehran leadership under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini . He advocated an expansion of the radical religious sentiments there to other states in the Middle East. As an avowed admirer of Khomeini, he wanted to see his role model as the spiritual “leader of all Muslims in the world” who could turn his homeland, Lebanon, into an Islamic state within less than ten years .

In the course of the upheavals in Iran , Khomeini began to soften the previously established Shiite traditions of Islamic martyrdom at the beginning of the eighties of the twentieth century. One of these traditions was that not only religious leaders and the denomination must give consent to suicidal martyrdom for adolescents, but parents too. Khomeini, however, no longer considered the parents' opinion necessary. Fadlallah agreed and went a step further. He saw it as the duty of girls and boys to go to their deaths even without the consent of their parents. The idea that women can be martyred was also new; according to Shiite tradition this was forbidden until then.

From the beginning, Fadlallah sided with the Shiite-Islamist Hezbollah (translated: Party of God), which was financed directly by Iran from 1983 onwards, with their “warriors of God” and became their spiritual mentor.

On March 8, 1985, a car bomb attack targeting Fadlallah in Beirut missed its target. 72 people were killed and 256 others injured in the attack. A cinema and two seven-story apartment buildings were destroyed by the explosion. Fadlallah initially blamed Israel for the attack. The country occupied a large part of Lebanon during this period. The American reporter Bob Woodward claimed that the CIA carried out the attack together with Saudi Arabian services, which the United States denied. Ultimately, however, the people responsible for the attack were never properly identified.

politics

Hussein Fadlallah, whose political instrument was mainly Hezbollah, aimed at a national religiously led state and the introduction of the Sharia , the Islamic legal system, while avoiding speaking directly of a God state. In the spirit of its chief spiritual minister, Hussein Fadlallah, Hezbollah saw itself as a community of all devout Muslims who worked for the realization of the Islamic state under the rule of religious legal scholars. In Khomeini they saw the deputy of the " Hidden Imam ", who is part of the Imamite Shiite belief and who would one day come as a savior to save the world. Hezbollah pursued a pan-Islamic idea across all state borders. Fadlallah was the first in Lebanon to speak about Hezbollah about the establishment of an Islamic state in his home country and openly admit to eliminating the political influence of the Christian population living there. As a social component, Hezbollah also called for "social justice", the "liberation of Lebanon" and the "fight against foreign oppression". The basic principles of Khomeini still apply to Hezbollah. Officially, for Fadlallah and his movement, since the party program of 1996, an Islamic theocracy is no longer the party goal. Instead, Hezbollah is calling for a reform of the denominational system. Likewise, the freedom of religion of Lebanese Christians is recognized ( freedom of practicing religious rituals and schooling ). Their participation in the first parliamentary elections after the end of the civil war and their participation in the government with parity of denominations were seen as a sign of moving away from a theocracy.

Leadership

In addition to Fadlallah, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ali Khamene'i , was an essential pillar of Hezbollah. The maneuvering between extreme radicals and more moderate forces, earlier rebukes by Khomeini himself, and other events that made it difficult for the supporters of the extremists to identify Chamene'i politically, had led to serious disputes between him and Fadlallah. In addition to Fadlallah's undisputed role as a spiritual mentor, Khamene'i was often considered the real leader of Hezbollah even then.

Policy towards Israel and the USA

Fadlallah considered attacks against Israel to be legitimate "because the neighboring state was occupying Arab land". In this context, he considered the suicide attacks against Israel to be legitimate. However, these should only be directed against military targets. For him, a key element in achieving his goals was to push back American and Israeli influence. In May 2002 he issued an Islamic legal opinion ( fatwa ) calling for a boycott of American products. Another fatwa he issued on August 12, 2002 forbade Muslims from participating in a possible US military strike against Iraq.

In an interview with the Al-Manar television station, which is close to Hezbolla, on March 21, 2008, Fadlallah said that Israel had plundered Palestine for 60 years and " Merkel visited the plundering state that blackmailed [Germany] and continues to blackmail, and as a pretext the Hitlerist - Nazi history of Germany used ". Zionism also inflated the number of Holocaust victims “beyond imagination”.

Fadlallah was a supporter of the Palestinian suicide attacks on Israel and had also supported the occupation of the American embassy in Tehran and the hostage-taking that followed. One of the last deeds of his life was the publication of a fatwa justifying suicide attacks; However, this only applied in "occupied territories" such as Palestine or Israel, not everywhere in the world.

International terrorism

Fadlallah officially refused to continue the Islamic struggle in the United States, as happened in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City . He condemned the attacks by Al-Qaida as "not compatible with Sharia [...] and true Islamic jihad" . For the Shiite Fadlallah, the fighters of the Sunni-influenced Al-Qaeda were not martyrs, but “mere suicides”.

Religious politics

Fadlallah was not a public spokesman for the Islamization of Europe: “In all our messages and fatwas to the Muslims in the West, we emphasize that they must not harm the security and general order of the country in which they are staying. They should be open to the society in which they live. "

Women's rights

Fadlallah opposed the right to abortion unless there was a significant risk to the pregnant woman's health. He also issued a fatwa against genital mutilation. He also advocated the right of women to pursue a profession outside of their household and even to work as a judge, which is traditionally forbidden under Islamic law.

Honor killings

According to Amnesty International , the long-standing campaigns by international human rights organizations on predominantly Muslim countries have led Fadlallah to vehemently reject traditional local traditions such as honor killings from 2008 onwards . In August 2008, Fadlallah issued a fatwa stating that murder in the name of family honor is repulsive and illegal under Islamic law.

Seizure by Iranian politicians / clergy

Fadlallah recently resisted the capture of his home country by foreign Islamic politicians and clergy. He doubted the legitimacy of the Iranian religious leader Ali Chamene'i , who, in the spirit of a global imamate, is described on advertising posters in Lebanon as the “custodian of the mandate to rule the Muslims of the world”. For Fadlallah, the dignity of Shiite religious scholars could only have been preserved if they had been chosen by the Muslims themselves as role models in faith ( Marjah-e Taghlid ), which was not the case with Khamenei.

Obama's takeover of government

Fadlallah initially welcomed Obama's election victory, but criticized it a year later because he “obviously has no plan to bring peace to the Middle East”.

death

Fadlallah died at the age of 74 from internal bleeding in a Lebanese hospital. A few days later, CNN journalist and Middle East editor Octavia Nasr was fired after praising the Grand Ayatollah on Twitter . Numerous heads of government in the Islamic world - both Shiite and Sunni - paid tribute to him after his death. An Israeli government spokesman said Fadlallah was unworthy of praise, while also criticizing the British government for giving him a positive obituary. The US government, which put him on the list of terrorist supporters, did not comment on his death.

Fonts

literature

  • Michaelle Browers: "Fadlallah and the Passing of Lebanon's Last Najafi Generation" in Journal of Shi'a Islamic Studies 5 (2012) 25-46.
  • Jamal Sankari: Fadlallah: the making of a radical Shiʿite leader. Saqi, London, 2005.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Martin Stäheli: The Syrian Foreign Policy under President Hafez Assad , Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07867-3 , p. 341
  2. ^ Deutsches Orient-Institut: Middle East Information Service No. 9/1996 , Deutsches Orient-Institut, Hamburg 1996, p. 31
  3. ↑ a b Ute Meinel: The Intifada in the Bahrain Oil Sheikh , LIT Verlag, Berlin-Hamburg-Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6401-4 , p. 150
  4. ^ Yonah Alexander, Milton M. Hoenig: The New Iranian Leadership , Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008, ISBN 0-275-99639-5 , p. 70
  5. ↑ The Federal Minister of the Interior: Terrorism, an acute threat to human rights Wegener-Verlag, 1985, p. 118
  6. ↑ EU Parliament : EU Parliament confirms Hezbollah's terrorist activities , March 8, 2005
  7. ↑ EU Council : Common Position 2008/586 / CFSP of the Council of July 15, 2008 (PDF)
  8. ↑ Heinz Halm: The Shiites. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-50858-8 , p. 114
  9. ↑ Ute Meinel: The Intifada in the Bahrain Oil Sheikh , LIT Verlag, Berlin-Hamburg-Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6401-4 , p. 149
  10. ^ Gerhard Konzelmann: Der unheilige Krieg , Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-455-08242-4 , p. 19
  11. ^ Gerhard Konzelmann: Der unheilige Krieg , Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-455-08242-4 , p. 20
  12. ↑ Hans G. Kippenberg: Violence as Divine Service , CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 3-406-49466-8 , p. 94
  13. ↑ Alexander Flores: The Arab World. A small non-fiction dictionary. Reclam, Ditzingen 2003. ISBN 3-15-018270-0 . P. 112.
  14. ^ Joseph Croitoru: The martyr as a weapon , Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-446-20371-0 , p. 132
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Wagner (Ed.): Die internationale Politik , German Society for Foreign Policy, Verlag R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1985, p. 47
  16. ↑ Beirut car bomb kills dozens ( English ) In: BBC on this day . British Broadcasting Corporation . May 8, 1985. Retrieved August 26, 2008.
  17. ^ Ute Meinel: The Intifada in the Bahrain Oil Sheichtum , LIT Verlag, Berlin-Hamburg-Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6401-4 , p. 206
  18. ↑ Talal Atrissi (2007): Political Islam in Lebanon. In: Michael Emerson, Richard Youngs (eds.): Political Islam and European Foreign Policy . CEPS, Brussels 2007, ISBN 978-92-9079-711-1 , p. 90
  19. ↑ Almashriq: the electoral program of Hizbullah, 1996
  20. ↑ Michael Becker, Hans-Joachim Lauth, Gert Pickel: Rechtsstaat und Demokratie , VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-531-13645-3 , p. 195
  21. ↑ German Orient Institute: Middle East Yearbook 1988 , Leske + Budrich Verlag, Opladen 1988, ISBN 3-8100-0769-2 , p. 77
  22. ↑ Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh: In the Path of Hizbullah , Syracuse University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8156-3053-0 , p. 35
  23. ↑ Daniel Bymanl: Deadly Connections , Cambridge University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-521-83973-4 , p. 102 (English)
  24. ^ Deutsche Welle: Interview with Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah Fadlallah , September 14, 2006
  25. ↑ a b Deutsche Welle: Interview with Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah , September 16, 2007
  26. ^ Deutsche Welle: Interview with Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah Fadlallah , September 16, 2006
  27. ^ Hanspeter Mattes: Middle East - Yearbook 2002 . VS-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-8100-3880-6 , p. 118
  28. ↑ Lebanese Shiite Leader Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadhlallah: Jews Extort Germany, Inflating Number of Holocaust Victims , MEMRI, Clip No. 1748, March 21, 2008
  29. ↑ http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=379&PID=1862&IID=2193
  30. ↑ http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/concoughlin/100046096/sheikh-falallah-was-the-terrorist-mastermind-behind-the-lebanon-hostage-crisis/
  31. ↑ Michael Mann: The powerless superpower . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 2003, ISBN 3-593-37313-0 , p. 226
  32. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from April 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  33. ↑ https://www.fr.de/politik/radikal-aber-auch-aufnahm-11471712.html
  34. ^ The contradicting Gabriela Keller in: Berliner Zeitung March 16, 2009
  35. ↑ Amnesty International: Amnesty Annual Report 2008 - Middle East and North Africa ( Memento of December 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  36. ↑ Amnesty International: Amnesty Annual Report 2008 - Lebanon ( Memento of March 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  37. ↑ Le Monde: - Ahmad Salamatian: The Shiites and their struggle for God ( Memento of April 7, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  38. ↑ Online according to the BBC
  39. ↑ a b Tweet costs CNN employee her job . July 8, 2010. 
  40. ↑ CNN fires ME editor over tweet . In: The Jerusalem Post , July 8, 2010. 
  41. ↑ Matea Gold: CNN Mideast Affairs editor loses post after tweeting her respect for militant cleric . In: The Los Angeles Times , July 7, 2010. 
  42. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/04/ayatollah-mohammed-hussein-fadlallah-dies
  43. ↑ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10572025
  44. ↑ Lebanon: Former spiritual leader of Hezbollah is dead. In: Spiegel Online . July 4, 2010, accessed June 9, 2018 .
  45. ↑ This edition also as a special edition. the state center for political education North Rhine-Westphalia with the same ISBN. All editions are abridged versions of The Political Mission of Islam. Programs and Criticism between Fundamentalism and Reforms. Original voices from the Islamic world. Peter Hammer, Wuppertal 1994
personal data
SURNAME Fadlallah, Muhammad Hussein
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fadlallah, Mohammed Hussein; Fadlallah, Muhammad Husain
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Shiite cleric in Lebanon and spiritual leader of Hezbollah
DATE OF BIRTH November 16, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Najaf , Iraq
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 2010
Place of death Beirut , Lebanon