Shiites in Lebanon
The term Shiites in Lebanon includes the Twelve Shiites , Alawites and Ismailis who live on the territory of Lebanon . Together with the Islamic Sunnis and the Christian Maronites , they are numerically the most important religious communities in this Middle Eastern state. The number of Shiites is estimated at 1.5 million across the country. 800,000 of them live in the south of the capital Beirut . The rest are mainly spread across southern Lebanon and the Bekaa plain .Politically , the Shiites are represented in the Lebanese parliament by Hezbollah and AMAL .
history
Middle Ages until around 1800
Shiite clergy have long attributed the presence of their fellow believers in what is now Lebanon to Abū Dharr al-Ghifārī , a companion of the Prophet Mohammed and a follower of Ali . The Twelve Shiites are colloquially referred to as Metawali , which suggests a relationship with Ali, who is also called Walī Allaah , “friend of God”.
Historically it is certain that between the 8th and 10th centuries AD, Shiites came to Lebanon in various waves from what is now Iraq and Iran . As a result of religious persecution by Sunni rulers, who contemptuously referred to them as Rāfida ("rejecters"), and because of the struggle for control over certain areas, the number of Shiites and the areas they inhabited decreased from the 12th century. Between 1291 and 1305, following their successful conquest of the Crusader states , the Egyptian Mamluks drove the Shiites out in three campaigns, the last of which was sanctioned with a fatwa by the Hanbali jurist Ibn Taimīya . Since the 17th century, the Shiites in Keserwan were increasingly driven out by Maronite Christians, either by force or by buying their lands.
In the Jabal Amil area , a tradition of Shiite religious scholarship has developed since the 11th century, which peaked around 1750. A well-known representative was Muhammad Jamaluddin al-Makki al-Amili (1334–1385) from Jezzine , who is venerated by the Shiites as ash-Shahid al-Awwal ("First Martyr "). During the persecution of Sunni governor Abdullah Pasha al-Azm in the early 19th century, heaps of religious books were burned in Akko , and this scholarship suffered a severe setback.
19th to 21st century
The Ottoman constitution , drawn up by Midhat Pasha and promulgated in 1876 by Sultan Abdülhamid II , went hand in hand with the dissolution of the Millet system and weakened the influence of the clergy in the Ottoman Empire . The Metawali now received certain rights, but the peasants, most of whom were destitute, remained socially backward. In 1910 the Shiite reform magazine al-Irfan was founded in Beirut.
In Greater Lebanon , created in 1920 , a French mandate area , the Shiites were officially recognized as a separate religious community in 1926. On the occasion of the Lebanese declaration of independence in 1943, in the national pact announced at the time - based on the 1932 census - the seats in the Lebanese parliament were distributed in a ratio of six Christians to five Muslims, regardless of the actual population development. The Shiites were guaranteed the office of speaker of parliament, but were able to exercise far less power than their Sunni fellow believers, although both groups were almost equally numerically. The ratio of parliamentary seats was changed to 50:50 with the 1989 Taif Agreement .
Until the 1960s, the Shiites in Lebanon lived on the margins of society. Socially, economically and politically they belonged to the lower class, were ruled by powerful landowners and neglected by the government. In the early 1970s, Palestinian fighters began using southern Lebanon as a staging area to attack Israel . Israel responded with military strikes, almost exclusively affecting the helpless Shiite civilian population. Thousands were forced to leave their villages. They sought refuge in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where to this day they mostly live in poor mass quarters.
The ruthless occupation policy of Israel during the civil war was the reason for the establishment of Hezbollah , which came into being in 1982 through the merger of various Shiite groups in the resistance against the then Israeli invasion . It was initially an underground paramilitary organization and was officially founded in 1985 with significant support from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard . In the following years it developed into a military, social and political power factor that is recognized within Lebanese society and beyond. Hezbollah, especially its general secretary Hassan Nasrallah , knew how to sell Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000 as a military victory they had won themselves.
At the same time as the establishment of Hezbollah, the Iranian Shiite leader Musa al-Sadr founded the Amal movement during the civil war as the “Brigades of the Lebanese Resistance” and a militarily oriented wing of the “Movement of the Disenfranchised”, which together with the “Lebanese National Movement” and the "Palestinian Resistance" fought against the project to relocate the Palestinians to Lebanon. Their armed arm, the Amal militia , surrendered their weapons to the Syrians after the end of the civil war in 1991 and became reconciled with Hezbollah. Since then, both have formed joint electoral lists, which al-Sadr's successor Nabih Berri has secured the post of President of Parliament several times since 1992 . Although the Shiites occupy an important role in Lebanese politics as a whole today, the rivalry between Hezbollah and Amal is still crucial.
Demographics
| year | Shiites | Total population in Lebanon | percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1932 | 154.208 | 785,543 | 19.6% |
| 1956 | 250.605 | 1,407,868 | 17.8% |
| 1975 | 668,500 | 2,550,000 | 26.2% |
| 1984 | 1,100,000 | 3,757,000 | 30.8% |
| 1988 | 1,325,000 | 4,044,784 | 32.8% |
| 2005 | 1,600,000 | 4,082,000 | 40% |
Individual evidence
- ↑ Katajun Amirpur: The Shiite Islam , p. 223.
- ↑ Ute Meinel: The Intifada in the Oil Sheikdom Bahrain. LIT Verlag, Berlin / Hamburg / Münster 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6401-4 , p. 203.
- ↑ Katajun Amirpur: The Shiite Islam , pp. 224–225.
- ↑ Yusri Hazran: The Shiite community in Lebanon: From Marginalization to Ascendancy (PDF), Brandeis University, June 2009 (Accessed October 12, 2018).
- ^ Ethnic Groups Worldwide: A Ready Reference Group - David Levinson . Google Books, 1998, ISBN 978-1-57356-019-1 , p. 249 (accessed October 12, 2018).
literature
- Katajun Amirpur : Shiite Islam . Reclams Universal Library, 19315. Stuttgart 2015. ISBN 978-3-15-019315-0 .
- Wolf-Hagen von Angern: Historical Construct and Denomination in Lebanon. Logos-Verlag, Berlin 2010. ISBN 978-3-8325-2667-2 .
- Heinz Halm : The Shiites . Beck'sche Reihe, 2358. CH Beck, Munich 2015. ISBN 978-3-406-67716-8 .
- Stephan Rosiny: Islamism among the Shiites in Lebanon: Religion in the transition from tradition to modernity. Studies on the modern Islamic Orient, Volume 8. The Arabic Book, Berlin 1996. ISBN 3-86093-113-X .
