Islam and humour

According to Geert Jan van Gelder, ‘One of the main functions of humour [is] the gentle undermining of certainties’ (Rosenthal, 2011: xvi). Adding the dimensions of purpose and structure, Schweizer argues that humour ‘is not a stable, inert form of expression, but – more often than not – it flickers through multiple modes, even in one and the same joke, cartoon, or comedy performance’ (Schweizer, 2020: 35). He adds, ‘Islamic rules that deem mockery, sarcasm, and even teasing to be an indication of moral failings (the 49th Qur’anic surah [Al-Hujurat], verse 11, as well as several Hadiths such as Abu Dawud, Book 43, 4972) have the force of moral idealism behind them’ (Schweizer, 2020: 36). In addition, verse (5:57) admonishes the believers not to engage in idle mockery, and verse (6:108) calls on them to abstain from insulting one another, and, by extension, God. Notwithstanding these Qur’anic verses and hadith, Islamic traditions confirm that Prophet Muḥammad had a good sense of humour (see Chapters 2 and 4 in this book). Al-‘Abidi deconstructed canonical hadith texts in order to demonstrate that humour in Islam has the same high status as serious discourse; they are both on a par. She argues that in addition to appearing sombre and strict – both in ritual observances (‘ibadat) and social transactions (mu‘amalat) – Islam, as a religion, left ample room for humour, laughter, smiling, joy, fun, happiness, and joking. Al-‘Abidi stresses that humour was not against the sacred; rather, humour's profane dimension functions within religion's narrow confines and is concomitant and harmonious with it, by highlighting the tolerance and openness (infitah) of religion (Al-‘Abidi, 2010).

Background: Resistance Art and humour

The Lebanese resistance movement Hizbullah – which is ideologically influenced by the Islamic Republic of Iran's wilayat al-faqih (Guardianship of the Jurisprudent/ Jurisconsult) – is infamous for its ‘terrorist’ global reach and militant face. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Hizbullah abducted Westerners in Lebanon and fought the Israeli army, until Israel withdrew its forces from Lebanon in 2000, after 22 years of occupation.

PROLOGUE: BRIEF HISTORY OVER THE PAST THREE DECADES

The Lebanese Shi‘ite resistance movement Hizbullah (Party of God) is going through a remarkable transformation, where its identity is constantly undergoing reconstruction. Hizbullah was founded in 1978 as an Islamic struggle (jihadi) movement of social and political protest by various sectors of Lebanese Shi‘ite clergy and cadres, with Iranian ideological backing. Over the period 1985 to 1991 Hizbullah became a full-fledged social movement in the sense of having a broad overall organization, structure, and ideology aiming at social change and social justice. In the early 1990s, it became a parliamentary political party.

Hizbullah defines its identity as an Islamic jihadi (struggle) movement, “whose emergence is based on an ideological, social, political and economical mixture in a special Lebanese, Arab and Islamic context”. Its roots can be traced back to 1978, which coincided with the disappearance of Imam Musa al-Sadr and the first Israeli invasion of Lebanon. By the efforts and under the auspices of leading Iranian hard-line clergy and military figures such as ‘Ali Akbar Muhtashami and Mustafa Shamran, combined with the endeavors of the first and second Hizbullah secretary-generals, Shaykh Subhi al-Tufayli and Sayyid ‘Abbas al-Musawi, Hizbullah's nucleus was established. With the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, many Lebanese Shi‘ites saw in Imam Khumayni their new leader. During the same period, Sayyid ‘Abbas al-Musawi officially founded “The Hizbullah of Lebanon”, supported by his students and other leading ‘ulama (religious scholars).

The second Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was the spark that reignited Hizbullah and led to its formation as an Islamic jihadi movement. The Islamic Resistance, Hizbullah's military wing, made some breakthroughs in the face of the Israeli army that advanced towards Beirut and led a campaign of resistance against the Israeli forces after they occupied the Lebanese capital. Leading Hizbullah cadres such as Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah, the current secretary-general, Sayyid Ibrahim Amin al-Sayyid, the current head of Hizbullah's political council (Politburo), and Husayn al-Musawi – currently a member of Hizbullah's parliamentary bloc after the 7 June 2009 legislature elections – were all Amal members. These, among others, were later totally against Amal joining the Lebanese cabinet.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter highlights the shift in Hizbullah's relationship with Lebanese Christians from regarding them as potential dhimmis within its conception of an Islamic state to citizens in a pluralistic polity. The author discusses in some detail, relying on primary sources and discourses, the place of Christians in Hizbullah's Islamic state, stressing points of agreement with and departure from the Prophetic tradition, and surveying how these influenced Hizbullah's policies in the 1980s. I will explain the seminal role of the 1990 Ta’if Agreement in helping to furnish these changes, in which the mixed confessional space led to the creation of pluralist politics and the emergence of a more or less ‘open’ public sphere. Hizbullah's second secretary-general laid the cornerstone of the party's transformation in his 1991 political program. Although Hizbullah's leaders and cadres paid lip service to an Islamic state, eventually Hizbullah dropped that notion from all its political programs by regarding it as a ‘legal abstraction’. Even its November 2009 Manifesto has no mention of the Islamic state. And so, Hizbullah engaged in dialogue with the Lebanese Christians on the basis of the Vatican's Papal Guidance, and included Christians and Sunnis in its legislative and municipal election slates. Through a series of interviews with the party's intellectuals and policymakers, I demonstrate that, starting in the 1990s, Hizbullah dropped the dhimmi categorization and replaced it with the concept of muwatana (citizenship).

HIZBULLAH'S RELATIONS WITH THE LEBANESE MYRIAD: THE CHRISTIANS AS A PROMINENT EXAMPLE

Although there has been dialogue between Hizbullah and the Sunnis, most notably through the prominent role of the Union of Muslim ‘Ulama, this was not the case with the Christians. From the early 1980s till 1990 hardly any political dialogue or high level contact was established between Hizbullah and Christians. Although on face value it appears that Hizbullah's call (da‘wa) in its Open Letter was addressed to all Christians, in reality Hizbullah shunned any contact with political Maronism, Maronites, and any collaborator with Israel. Though some Hizbullah cadres had some low-level contacts with Christians living in the party's constituencies – especially in the Biqa’ region, in the northeast of Lebanon and the Dahiya, Hizbullah's den in Beirut's southern suburb, which houses more than one million Shi‘ites – nonetheless no tangible high-level dialogue materialized between Hizbullah and the Christians.

ABSTRACT

After three decades of the ‘victory’ of the Islamic Revolution in Iran it is worthwhile to study how Imam Khumayni's initial theory of wilayat al-faqih has developed in the political thought of Hizbullah as regards to the framework of molding and interpreting the original theory to make it adaptable to the Lebanese social and political conditions. Hizbullah employed wilayat alfaqih as a cornerstone in its religious-political ideology from 1978 to the present. The party managed to mold the doctrine through the successive changes in the political system by shifting its ideology in order to become a key player capable of affecting the dynamic changes taking place in the Lebanese public sphere. Although it is assumed in many circles that Hizbullah is the proxy of Syria and Iran, concentrating on the assumed Iranian influence, this chapter argues that Hizbullah pursued an independent course of action in its attempt to influence the Lebanese political system.

INTRODUCTION

Most secondary sources brand Iran and its contended “brainchild”, the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbullah, with militant revolutionary tendencies, which do not conform to the tenets of the international community's standards of democratic values that govern civil society. Is Hizbullah an Iranian party operating in Lebanon, or a Lebanese militant party supported by Iran, which has to obey Iran and be its tool of policy in the Middle East?

Hizbullah was able to modify its identity from its founding as an Islamic movement of social and political protest (1978-1985), to a full-fledged social movement (1985-1991), to a parliamentary political party (1992 to the present). Hizbullah tried to preserve its Islamic identity, and at the same time, work within the confines of the Lebanese political system. On these grounds, the party recognized the Lebanese state. In spite of being perceived as having a political-strategic partnership with Syria and a strategic-ideological alliance with Iran, Hizbullah is not a mere tool of policy in Syrian and Iranian hands. On the contrary, the party has pursued an independent course of decision making in conformity with the specificities (khususiyyat) of the Lebanese political equation, until it succeeded in May 2008 in obtaining veto power in the cabinet, the council of ministers, the main executive body of the country, thus controlling the political system to a greater extent.

INTRODUCTION

Hizbullah's specific religious ideology has been based upon mobilization, Jihad, and martyrdom, as determined by al-waliyy al-faqih, first Imam Khumayni and after his death Imam Khamina’i. Based on the aforementioned and keeping in mind that religious ideology ultimately wields religious capital, one can argue that Hizbullah's religious ideology is both 1): an exclusionary ideological identity based on belief in wilayat al-faqih, which is a “novel and almost unprecedented reinterpretation of religious canon”; and 2): a return to the fundamentals of Shi‘ite faith as a primary historical identity. “To most Islamists, Islam is the first and key identity [primary historical identity] but not the sole identity… In other words to grant a certain priority to the Muslim identity is to make a statement about the character of the challenge [problems] that individuals and societies face and about the nature of the solution”, the solution that is provided by Hizbullah's adoption and application of Wilayat al-Faqih. In fact, belief and application of Wilayat al-Faqih is what distinguishes Hizbullah from other Shi‘ite political parties and Islamist movements, in general, thus endowing Hizbullah with a distinct religious identity stemming from its adherence to this specific Islamic cultural sphere that in the first place produced this collective unifying identity. On these grounds, wilayat al-faqih seems to be an elitist exclusionary doctrine that unifies the adherents of this distinct Shi‘ite religious identity that upholds martyrdom and victory as the expected fruits or rewards of jihad. Thus, building on its religious ideology, Hizbullah was able to accumulate religious capital based on the production of religious knowledge (Wilayat al-Faqih) through construction, appropriation, dissemination, and adherence to the Islamic cultural sphere which comprises the party's constituencies and followers.

PARADIGM SHIFT: A CRY FOR FREEDOM

Did the Arabs finally heed the call of the late Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung (who urged them to just march in order to realize their potential and actualize their power)? Or, maybe, they listened to one of their indigenous nationalist leaders Antun S‘adé who repeatedly stated, “In you is a power, which if actualized will change the course of history”?

In less than a month, two Arab leaders were deposed by the people's power. Are the 1989 winds of change blowing across the Arab world? As the Middle East is engulfed with protests portraying the affirmation of the will of the people after decades of authoritarian rule, Lebanon does not remain the anomaly; rather change has been instigated by an unexpected actor. The catalyst was Tunisia's Jasmine uprising that ended the 23-year old rule of president bin ‘Ali after the army supported the uprising and ousted him into exile in Saudi Arabia on 14 January 2011. This paved the way for the return, on 30 January 2011, of the moderate Islamist intellectual Rashid al-Ghannushi, the leader of the ‘Renaissance Movement’ (al-Nahda), who was forced to flee in the late 1980s. While in Tunisia street politics led to a regime change, its domino effect swept throughout the region with varying degrees of success. In Morocco, Algeria, Sudan, Jordan, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia demonstrations were more restrained and did not gain the support of the army, thus failing to initiate regime change. From 25 January to 11 February 2011, after eighteen days of massive demonstrations that claimed the lives of more than 350 people throughout Egypt, the most populous Arab country with the largest army in the Middle East, the social-network revolution succeeded in ousting president Mubarak after 30 years of autocratic rule. In Libya, the ‘17th of February Revolution’ deteriorated into protracted civil war that claimed the lives of thousands. Belatedly, on 17 March 2011, UNSC Resolution 1973 imposed a no-fly zone and took ‘all necessary measures’ to protect civilians.

ABSTRACT

After the nearly complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000, Hizbullah had not committed a single martyrdom operation although it engaged, on many occasions, the Israeli soldiers in Shib‘a and kidnapped three soldiers on 7 October 2000 and two on 12 July 2006. Contrary to what has been rumored, the party did not conduct martyrdom operations in the ‘Second Lebanon War’ or the July 2006 War since Hizbullah had the required arsenal to face the invading IDF and was able to inflict heavy casualties, killing more than 100 soldiers. In fact, Hizbullah's last martyrdom operation was conducted in 1999.

The basic question of this chapter is to study how religious, political, and national discourse is used to justify martyrdom for Islamic movements, in particular the Lebanese Hizbullah. (In other words, this chapter is about how nationalist and political discourses intermingle with a religious discourse on martyrdom, and how Hizbullah, an organization perceived as religious/fundamentalist, is relying, in addition to religious discourse, on nationalist and political discourses in its representation of martyrdom). My main concern is to analyze how the religious authorities of Hizbullah deal with this question, and how this discourse changes overtime. Thus, I endeavor to expose Hizbullah's religious-political discourse and analyze fatwas (religious edits) and speeches dealing with the issue of martyrdom. I contest the commonly held view that regards martyrdom as a specifically Shi‘ite phenomenon, arguing that, in addition to Sunni Palestinians, Lebanese nationalists, from all religious denominations, have also carried out such operations. I would like to debunk a few myths too, for instance the one regarding the social background of suicide bombers. I endeavor to rupture stereotypes and challenge the master narrative on the Islamic movements’ constituency being “made up of poor desperate people who commit suicide so that they can enjoy the virgins in Paradise.” The problematic is that although martyrdom has become the trademark of radical Islamic groups, it was not solely carried out by them. I purport that the icon that both parties, secularists and Islamists, embraced is that martyrdom operations were conducted in order to uphold the honor, pride, and dignity of the ‘nation’ (‘izzat wa karamat al-umma).

ABSTRACT

Highlighting the long lineage between Islamic and national resistance, this chapter examines the interrelation between the process of Hizbullah's domestic integration and its regional militancy. It focuses on Hizbullah's discourse on terrorism, particularly after 9/11. The next chapter attempts to analyze Hizbullah's political and religious dimensions of ‘jihad’ and suicide bombing (‘martyrdom’) for the different levels of action (domestic and regional) and also discusses the party's view of martyrdom and jihad in relation to the terrorism charge.

INTRODUCTION

The first meeting, after 9/11, of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), a 57 consortium of Islamic countries currently comprising around 1.6 billion Muslims, was held on 11-18 October 2003 in Putrajaya, Malaysia. In addition to addressing issues such as the Palestinian Intifada, and the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, what topped the agenda was the endeavor to “absolve Islam from terrorism”. In its final declaration, the OIC condemned as “criminal terrorist bombings” the attacks that targeted the UN headquarters and the Jordanian and Turkish embassies in Baghdad. Also, the OIC “called for the signing of a convention to ‘distinguish between terrorism and the legitimate struggle for the right to self-determination of people living under occupation or foreign domination’ [resistance]”. In a similar vein, Shafiq Masri, a Lebanese international law authority, earlier maintained that the international community failed to reach a consensus on a unified definition of terrorism. He added that international law distinguishes between terrorism and legitimate resistance. The latter is considered a legitimate exception to the exercise of violence for political aims. From this perspective, national resistance is legitimized in international law in the following two cases: 1) self-determination, and 2) resistance to occupation. In a similar vein, on 25 August 2003, the Arab League endorsed a proposal that distinguishes between resistance and terrorism, and adopted it as a resolution. As such, the “Arab Agreement of Combating Terrorism” was amended “in order to distinguish between resisting occupation (which is considered a legitimate right and a national-patriotic duty) and terrorist activities”.

I suggest the Arabs and Muslims, till now, did not critically think about or analytically reflect upon the issue of terrorism.