Islamists and the State: Legitimacy and Institutions in Yemen and Lebanon 9780755608218, 9781780765211

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The debts that I incurred when doing fieldwork for this project are too many and too overwhelming to ever repay. These are debts to the people who opened the doors to archives, offices, homes and families, tolerated my careless or thoughtless blunders, put up with my moments of culture shock or homesickness, healed me when I was physically ill, counseled me when I was lost (intellectually and otherwise), and laughed with me – or at me – when I needed it most. Most of the people to whom such debts are owed will not read this book, but I hope that they understand that writing this book would have been impossible without them. I should also acknowledge the generous support of a number of institutions that funded field research for this project, from 2003 to 2009. The Political Science Department, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Middle East Center, and the Browne Center at the University of Pennsylvania collectively provided for language study and a generous three years of field research. Research fellowships from the American Institute of Yemeni Studies funded research in Yemen, and an H.F. Guggenheim fellowship allowed time for writing. In 2008, I was fortunate to be a visiting fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. Finally, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, my current institution, has shown tremendous commitment to this project, funding research in Lebanon and Yemen in 2008 and 2009, and allowing me sufficient leave and research asssitance to complete the book.

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Penn, of course, is where this project started, and I thank Joe Mink, David Faris, Jason Kirk, Cheng Chen, Graham Dodds, and Rudy Sil for remaining such great friends, even when I largely disappeared for several years. My dissertation committee, composed of three remarkable people, did not steer me wrong. Lisa Wedeen’s guidance as I planned and began my field research, Ian Lustick’s advocacy and advice in navigating grant proposals, and Anne Norton’s encouragement of the project and my creativity from beginning to end helped to create the (good parts of the) dissertation on which the book is based. The weaknesses, quite obviously, are my own. In Lebanon, special thanks are owed to my colleagues at the American University in Beirut, both at the Center for Behavioral Research and at the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies. My office mate, Susanne Abou Ghaida, is owed special mention for her good humor and wit, matched only by her wisdom. Sherine Abdallah was particularly helpful in guiding my navigation of the material from the An-Nahar commemorative exhibit discussed in Chapter 6. I gratefully acknowledge her generosity, and that of the late Gibran Tueni, for providing me with the images to include here. In Yemen, I have been and remain humbled by the committed work of a number of activists whom I interviewed, and whom I now happily call friends. While I acknowledge Nabil al-Sofee’s intellectual contribution to this book in Chapters 2 and 5, I should also acknowledge his friendship here, since it has been remarkably meaningful to me. Nabil, Sami Ghaleb, ‘Ali Saif Hassan, and Sayeed Thabit Sayeed have also made a special effort to maintain our friendships outside of Yemen, visiting me in Cairo and in New York when I could not see them in Sana’a. Jamal Amer, Mustapha No’man, and Muhammed Qahtan have also gone beyond the pale in helping with this project, for which I extend my sincerest thanks. Dr. Muhammed ‘Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil and his family, especially Antelaq and Gabool, have offered me a home away from home in Sana’a. While in Yemen and pregnant with my daughter in 2009, I came to more poignantly appreciate their work as intellectuals, activists, and women. They also fed me – often and well.

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ACK NOWLEDGEMENTS

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A special cohort of “Cairo Friends” has lived with this project and with me for longer than any of us probably expected, and in places that we probably didn’t anticipate when we met in Cairo as “new faculty” couples in 2003: Corrie Blankenbeckler and Matt Baker, Ziad Fahmy and Kaila Bussert. We all live in New York now, but they form an irreducible part of what I think of when I think of Cairo. So do Brad Clough, Angela McCallum, Lisa Blaydes, and Larry Rubin. Kelly Zaug was my first friend and neighbor in Cairo, and copyedited the manuscript for this book with the deft touch that only an old friend could offer. Many colleagues shared collegial and intellectually vibrant conversations that helped to shape my dissertation into this book. In particular, I would like to thank Jon Western, Kavita Khoury and Amina Steinfels at Mount Holyoke, and Jodi Dean, Kevin Dunn, Joe Mink, and Feisal Khan at Hobart and William Smith, who have all commented on parts of this manuscript. During my time at Harvard, I also benefited tremendously from regular conversations with and workshops organized by Steve Caton and Roger Owen, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Government. The Project on Middle East Political Science at George Washington University and the Northeast Middle East Politics Workshop have both provided venues for refining my work and learning from others, and I have enjoyed the annual meetings of both groups more than any other professional forum. Special thanks to Marc Lynch, Nathan Brown, Melani Cammett, Amaney Jamal, and the many other participants who have offered helpful suggestions through these meetings. I am grateful for the intellectual and personal generosity of Jillian Schwedler and Janine Clark, particularly as I navigated the inevitable pitfalls of field research. Both read several iterations of this work, and I have benefited tremendously from their discerning comments. In true liberal arts tradition, several of my HWS students have been a great source of support for this project, and I have enjoyed and grown through our conversations about the work as it has evolved. I thank Amira Abdulkadir and Mohammed Kadalah for their research assistance as I prepared the final manuscript. Andrew Mahoney, Madeline Caryl, and Buzz Klinger, along with students in my 2011 and 2013

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“Yemen seminar,” read parts of the book in draft form and gave this project the final push toward completion. My parents, John and Amy Philbrick, have been inestimably patient and supportive throughout the process of writing this book. Without my deep knowledge of their support for my work and belief in me, as a person, I would not have been able to do this, or much else. My sister, Natasha, has been a wonderful cheerleader for as long as we have known each other. Other members of my family, especially Katie and Michael Vorenberg, and Jean and Cushing Strout, have helped me figure out how to “do this.” My husband’s parents, Renu and Nirmal Singh, good cheer and plenty of babysitting at critical moments when I was writing, and have never wavered in their support for the work that I do. And then there is Vikash. I am so fortunate to have found in him an equally itinerant soul, and to have shared the happiness of making a home with him wherever we happen to be. It would be disingenuous for me to suggest that I’ve written this book for him, or even for our beautiful daughter, Kieran. I wrote this book for a lot of reasons, and for a lot of people. But I hope he knows that I simply would not have done so without him, and that this book will make him proud. Whether Kieran someday writes a book of her own or walks an altogether different path, I only hope that she will be as fortunate as I have been in the company that she keeps and the love that she enjoys.

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INTRODUCTION

Islamists, Opposition, and Inclusion It is difficult to introduce this book in the context of ongoing uprisings and political transitions in the Middle East and North Africa, as some of its principal protagonists remain in the streets and in negotiations. That said, it is clear that we should expect that Islamists will play a greater role in public life in the Middle East than in the recent past.1 Their popularity has been translated into votes, their ideological and practical diversity has been made clear by the proliferation of new parties, and their governing capacities are now being tested. In this “new Middle East,” uncertainty about the effects of Islamist political inclusion is rife. Policy-makers express anxieties about the perceived gap between Islamist words and possible future deeds. Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations invoked this perceived gap when describing a delegation of Egyptian Muslim Brothers visiting Washington: “They said many of the right things, or enough of the right things to make a good impression,” but Cook concluded that the veracity of their claims could only be evaluated in comparison with what they go on to do now that they enjoy institutional power in a post-Mubarak Egypt.2 Others, like Michelle Dunne of the Atlantic Council, described the same visit as an opportunity to bring Islamists to heel: “I hope that in these conversations in Washington this week, these members of the Muslim Brotherhood will hear from American officials about thinking about how they should conduct themselves in power.”3

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These policy anxieties reflect at least two important misconceptions about Islamists that this book challenges. The first is that a meaningful distinction can be made between word and deed. As I will endeavor to show, words are deeds, and discourses inform the sense of the politically possible and desirable. The second assumption seems to be that the popularity of Islamists makes them a unique set of actors less constrained by existing structures than other actors might be, able to resist (Washington’s) norms and expectations regarding “how they should conduct themselves.” Electoral support – and even more populist expressions of support – give Islamists some license, but they are first and foremost local actors operating within institutional constraints and discursive fields, even as they may endeavor to shift the contours of each. By focusing on the experiences of two Islamist organizations that have participated meaningfully and legally in competitive electoral politics in the region for two decades, my hope is that this book will contribute to a shift away from speculative discussions of Islamist inclusion as a pan-regional question and toward a more grounded analysis of Islamist politics in the context of the specific state institutions and national publics to which they contribute. Neither of the organizations described in the chapters that follow – nor the alliances that they have helped to build and sustain – are the product of the region’s upheavals in 2011–12. Instead, the two parties whose experiences are discussed in this book – Hizballah in Lebanon and Islah in Yemen – have been central figures in the struggle for political power in both countries for more than twenty years. Taking fuller account of what Islamists have done, in opposition and in government, should play a greater role in informing our expectations about what Islamists may do in the coming years of political transition. Islamists: An Incidental Story The story presented in the chapters that follow is about Islamists, but in the end, only incidentally and not at all in the ways that were expected when research for this project began. As we look across the region today, Islamists, long assumed to be the primary drivers of

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opposition politics, have been central to political uprisings of 2011, but not always in the ways that scholars might have anticipated, nor with the kind of uncontested dominance aimed at or capable of upending entrenched regimes. Even where they have experienced to win striking electoral victories, the process of competition has produced both intra-Islamist factions and cross-ideological alliances, as evidenced by recent events in Egypt and Tunisia. In part, this is because we too often take for granted the relationship between the analytic categories of regime, state, and government. The central argument that I advance in this book is that Islamist participation in opposition politics and in government – participation aimed at transforming the terms of public debate, whether institutionally or discursively4 – can substantively strengthen state institutions (coercive and bureaucratic institutions that order political life), even as such activism critiques existing regimes (rules and norms distributing power across state institutions) or its exercise by governments (specific individuals empowered by the rules and norms of the regime). In particular, the book focuses on the way in which institutions – whether formal political institutions like parliaments and cabinets or vital non-governmental institutions like parties, partisan alliances, NGOs, and media outlets – both reflect and shape ideas about governance. These ideas are expressed in discourses that then shape the possibility and desirability of institutional practices. In this respect, it is a story about the ways in which existing structures and institutions determine and constrain who talks about what, how they talk about it, and how they are understood by others. But it is simultaneously a story about how all this talk can in turn (re) shape those structures and call new ones into being. In this sense, the book is less about Islamists, per se, than about the interaction between discourses and practices that unfold in, through, and in regard to institutions. Many of the ideas and arguments here trace back to a conversation I had with an Islamist politician in a hotel lobby in Sana’a in 2004, when he drew a picture on my napkin to illustrate for me what he thought his party was doing to change the terms of debate in Yemen and, more importantly, why he thought they were doing so. Methodologically,

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this is not a project that began with a rigidly deductive hypothesis about Islamist activism that I then proceeded to test with data collected in the field, though of course I had some underlying expectations (some of which were borne out, and others of which certainly were not). Instead, the project as a whole is indebted – as am I – to the dynamic and generative relationship between induction, deduction, and interpretation that are so central to the process of ethnographic field research. In effect, sustained conversations with Islamists and their non-Islamist interlocutors, the texts they have authored and observations of the practices that contributed to (and at time strained) alliance-building, produced the accounts put forth in this book. The substantive themes of Islahi and Hizballahi discourse also suggest that this is also a book about how the national can be born from and borne by the transnational and the subnational, with implications for the relationship between state and society. My focus on Islamist parties should not obscure the many ways in which Islamists are similar to other actors in specific local contexts, but should instead help to undo the category itself. This approach is an artifact of field research that repeatedly directed my attention to similarities between Islamists and their non-Islamist interlocutors in specific national settings, and to the insights that can be generated by comparison. In other words, it would be harder to appreciate the ways in which Yemeni Islamists resemble Yemeni Socialists without mapping their difference from Lebanese Islamists (who, in turn, sharply resemble some of their own non-Islamist interlocutors). This is not to suggest that transnational commonalities among Islamist organizations in different contexts are wholly insignificant, but simply that they are less significant than other factors in understanding the specific institutional and discursive practices described here, and certainly less significant than I thought they would be when I initially began the research for this project. What does seem to matter tremendously in understanding the causes and consequences of Islamist practice are the nature of regime rules and norms, and the contours of the discursive field in which Islamists engage ideological others.

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The Question of Comparability When I was conducting fieldwork and would explain my research project to colleagues or interview subjects, many expressed shock at the seeming incomparability of these two cases (whether these were taken to be the parties, Islah and Hizballah, or the countries of Yemen and Lebanon). Lebanese and Yemeni interlocutors seemed equally concerned that my conclusions would be distorted by the takhaluf (backwardness) of the other – whether because for Lebanese subjects, Yemenis were viewed as struggling with incommensurable levels of poverty, poor human development, and pervasive physical insecurity, or because Yemeni subjects often characterized Lebanese as hamstrung by the pervasive logic of confessionalism, widespread lack of piety, and loose morals. Revealing as these understandings of each other may be, they did not deter me from undertaking this project on the basis of the many important ways in which the experiences of Lebanese and Yemeni Islamists are indeed meaningfully comparable. In comparing Islamist politics and cross-ideological political alliances in these two countries, it is certainly true that one country is poor(er) and the other rich(er), but beyond this, there are many striking similarities. Both countries have experienced short and dramatic moments of war, followed by ongoing low-level violence; neither is a fully consolidated democracy by conventional standards of measurement, but substantial electoral competition and political freedom have been hallmarks of both political systems in a region that has not experienced high levels of either of these characteristics. Both are divided on the basis of sectarian “confessions,” or religious groupings that are identified by their putatively ascriptive character as much as by choice, and function much like ethnicity under some conditions. Both have many more divisions than these, which complicate straightforward binaries, like North/South, tribal/civil, and Sunni/Shi’i, and require sensitivity to the intersection of and sometimes countervailing pressures exerted by multiple identities on individuals. Both societies have systems of local leadership and authority that have not been displaced by existing state institutions (and indeed have incorporated these systems of authority by creating new offices to be occupied and resources to be

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distributed). In Yemen, such leaders might be called shaykh, or sayyid; in Lebanon, za’im; in both countries, leadership is also exercised on the basis of compelling arguments fashioned by scholars, jurists, preachers, poets, and public intellectuals. Both Yemen and Lebanon fall within the grey zone identified by scholars of political transitions who have struggled to make sense of the proliferation of elections-but-not-democracy in the aftermath of the Third Wave of democratization. Reflecting teleological preferences for democratic, consolidated nation-states built on rational-legal legitimacy, such scholars have developed a new vocabulary for political systems that seem to fall between the dichotomous designations of democratic and non-democratic. Lebanon has many of the characteristics of what Thomas Carothers terms “feckless pluralism,” in which a small elite is frequently recirculated through essentially free elections but is deeply alienated from the majority of the electorate. Over the past two decades, Yemen has increasingly come to share the hallmarks of Carothers’ understanding of a “dominant power system,” in which the boundary between state and ruling party was systematically blurred and state resources were used to bolster regime power. As the Salih regime tightened its hold on power amid considerable criticism and mounting violence, the regime came to resemble what others have called “competitive authoritarianism.”5 Yet in both countries, while the structures that have inhibited democratic governance differ, Islamists have charted out strategies in response to these rules through which they seek to influence the nature of public politics within existing constraints. Lebanon has a confessional republican regime, apportioning political positions on the basis of sectarian (confessional) group membership. There is a divided executive, with the presidency reserved for a Maronite Catholic, and the premiership for a Sunni Muslim. The speaker of parliament has traditionally been a Shi’i Muslim, but until the Ta’if Accord that recalibrated the confessional distribution of power after the civil war, the office of the speaker was substantially weaker than the other two. Since Ta’if, greater powers have been distributed to the prime minister and the speaker of parliament, producing what is sometimes called a “troika” or a system of “three presidents.”6 Major

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civil service appointments have followed a similar confessional logic. This system tends to overrepresent Maronite and Sunni Lebanese, and underrepresent Shi’i and Druze Lebanese, as well as members of smaller minorities among Lebanon’s eighteen recognized sectarian communities. The electoral system is also organized along confessional lines. Prior to the civil war, the parliament was divided between Christian and Muslim deputies according to a 6:5 ratio, with the two large blocs further divided among the various communities. The Ta’if Accord adjusted this ratio to 5:5, and equalized representation between Sunni and Shi’i Muslims within the broader Muslim bloc. This was an effort to address demographic change and a history of profound Shi’i underrepresentation, but it also affirmed the basic idea of confessional representation. Fixed territorial constituencies have thus been organized as multi-member electoral districts, in which the number of deputies of different confessional identities varies according to the demography of the district. The debate over districting that has arisen before each election relates to the fact that, in any district, candidates from that district’s minority communities are selected by a voting majority or plurality of a different background: in a Muslim-majority district, there will still be seats for which only Christian candidates may be nominated, but the election of one Christian candidate over another will be made by an electorate that is overwhelmingly Muslim. In a Christianmajority district, this situation reverses itself. Nor is this effect limited to the Christian-Muslim divide. In a Shi’i majority district, Sunni or Druze candidates would similarly be courting a Shi’i electorate. This calculus was further complicated (until 2005) by the role Syria played in micromanaging electoral districting decisions and electoral lists to promote its own interests.7 It was only in 2009, when a new electoral law producing smaller, more homogenous electoral districts was introduced, that the capacity for greater intra-communal competition and the development of a more ideological, less ascriptive politics became genuinely possible. Across the overwhelming majority of the period covered in this book (1990–2010), Lebanon’s regime has also structured the sense of the possible in ways that matter for all actors, Islamist or not.

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As in Lebanon, Yemen’s republican regime has institutional rules that shape the kind of politics that can be imagined or enacted by political actors of all backgrounds. The Republic of Yemen is a comparatively new state, produced through the unification of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY, or South Yemen) and the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR, or North Yemen). The unification process included the construction of a regime that rested on the de jure distribution of power between the former ruling parties of North and South, by merging their parliaments into one and establishing a five-member Presidential Council. As the Salih regime consolidated power in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Presidential Council was eliminated, the powers of the presidency strengthened, and the term of office extended. Alongside this consolidation of presidential power, however, Yemen continued to enjoy a vibrant partisan landscape characterized by debate and deliberation over important questions. Even as the president’s General People’s Congress increased its share of seats in parliament and the decision-making capacity of the opposition parties declined, they maintained meaningful pressure on the ruling party and the president on a number of issues of significance. Direct presidential, parliamentary, and municipal elections were held through 2006, on the basis of single-member districts. Abuse of state resources, access to state media, and civil service regulations that encouraged voting at the place of employment distorted these elections in ways that helped the ruling party consolidate control over parliament, and thereby helped to strengthen the power of President ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Salih. The 2009 elections were scuttled by ruling party and opposition alike pending revisions of the electoral law, and this contributed to underlying conditions that inspired the 2011 uprising and its aftermath, discussed in the Conclusion. While neither country is therefore an example of a consolidated democracy, they are both places where partisan competition has mattered for the nature and contours of public politics. But this book is not meant as a comprehensive comparison of Lebanese politics with Yemeni politics so much as a comparison of two specific organizations, the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (Islah) and the Party of

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God (Hizballah). Both parties are understood by their members and their domestic critics as Islamist organizations, though the substantive meaning of this term differs somewhat for the two. This book offers an account of the ways in which these two parties have engaged their interlocutors and participated in institutions in ways that have helped to reframe what it means to be members of a more-or-less democratically constituted nation. The parties’ practices express a complex and often dialectical relationship between discourse and institutions, and appeals to sites of authority outside of the categories of state or nation, with substantial implications for the local meanings of each. Throughout this account, then, I suggest a version of democracy currently being enacted that is at once committed to the state, and simultaneously grounded in sites of authority other than state or nation, whether these sites are subnational, transnational, or, in some instances, both. I argue that it is through such appeals to non-state sites of authority that the commitments of these two parties are helping to remake the meaning of belonging and generate state (if not regime) legitimacy, in ways that should push scholars to reexamine the assumed relationship(s) between inclusion, competition, and ideological change. But similarity is not the only foundation for meaningful comparison. There are also important differences. Indeed, analysis of similarities and differences helps us to address different questions. When similarities (for example, appeals to transnational and subnational sources of authority) hold across Islamist organizations in societies with widely divergent political economies, for example, it is possible to suggest that economic considerations alone do not determine the scope or objectives of Islamist activism. And when differences in the nature of that activism are manifested in investment in different kinds of institutions and alliances, we can look for explanations for these differences in some of the social, political, and economic variations between the two countries, if only tentatively. Most fundamentally, however, the identification of a “case” is itself a theory-driven exercise, leaving comparability dependent on the question(s) being asked, not on putatively objective characteristics of extant or somehow pre-theoretical cases.8 The decision about what

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constitutes a case as a coherent object of analysis is an important part of theory development that forecloses as much (and sometimes more) than it reveals, and is not at a remove from substantive politics. One of the most obvious ways in which this is evident is the specification of questions or “problems” central to problem-driven social science. By specifying a problem to be solved, Anne Norton has argued: the discourse of problem-solving places a thin veneer of abstraction over a series of material relations. . .Problem-solving presents the political effects of material structures as technical problems, concealing the work of power. The discourse of problem-solving entails and enhances particular relations of power.9 With regard to the discussion of the “problem” Islamist participation in formal politics, Jillian Schwedler reminds us that, “on a practical level, the stakes of getting political inclusion right – of deciding whom to include and whom to exclude – are extraordinarily high, especially when pluralist institutions and practices are not yet well established.”10 With Islamist victories in several recent electoral races in the region, analysts are likely to view this problem as ever more pressing. Inclusion, the Rules of the Game, and the “Idea of the State” The “inclusion-moderation hypothesis” is academic shorthand for a range of loosely interrelated questions about the conditions under which the inclusion of non-liberal, especially religious parties, in competitive electoral politics is likely to produce ideological change and commitment to the “rules of the game.” It represents the most recent attempt in a reasonably longstanding tradition by political scientists who have endeavored to make sense of the wide appeal of Islamist political parties in the contemporary Middle East since the “Islamic Resurgence” that followed the 1979 revolution in Iran. As Schwedler has observed about the development of this research tradition, “debates about the effects of inclusion and exclusion in the Middle East that were made explicitly and implicitly in the 1980s and 1990s have now moved to the center of debates about Islamist groups,”

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though little consensus has yet emerged regarding whether or through what mechanisms inclusion or exclusion are likely to produce moderation, what constitutes moderation, or why it should be a telos against which Islamist practice is measured.11 This shift in academic focus has come largely as expectations regarding the role of civil society and its relationship to liberalism and secularity were challenged by the proliferation of Islamist activist organizations in response to limited political openings in the region.12 Some scholars observed that the primary beneficiaries of liberalizing reforms in the 1990s and 2000s were mainly Islamist organizations, groups that had experience in grassroots mobilization and service provision, but had previously enjoyed few opportunities to contest power through electoral institutions, with scholars conceptualizing the effects of limited inclusion as contributing to an Islamist “encircling” or “socializing” of the state.13 Many scholars working in the moderation-inclusion tradition have also asserted that inclusion in formal institutions will (through a variety of mechanisms) cause Islamists to moderate their views and commit to existing institutions. Schwedler has offered an incisive critique of the assumptions embedded in this approach, of which her call to understand moderation in ideological, not behavioral terms, is immediately relevant to this book, as is her rejection of a model of moderation involving unilinear change, generated by political openings initiated from above.14 In her empirical discussion of Islah and Jordan’s Islamic Action Front, Schwedler examines differences in moderation that occur with fundamentally similar levels of inclusion, and suggests that the ideological moderation for which she finds evidence in Jordan but not Yemen largely results from differences in the internal coherence of the two parties, and their relationships to non-Islamist (and other Islamist) interlocutors, not simply their response to shifts in political opportunity structures. She thus concludes that, “systematic scholarly attention should be directed . . . at the practices and narratives of various Islamic and non-Islamic publics and the wide range of actors who inhabit, animate, and indeed produce those spaces.” In making this call, she also affirms the need for greater attention to practices that occur outside of formal institutions.15 These are research objectives that I work to advance in this book, taking seriously the ideas invoked by those who explain their practices

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and understand their choices through an Islamist framework, but also working to situate those actors as engaged in discursive struggles whose effects may exceed their intent in ways with the potential to reshape relationships to institutions and to others. The experiences explored in this book suggest that transnational themes that extend beyond the state, as well as appeals to subnational sources of authority, can counterintuitively strengthen the idea of the state where its presence has been weakest, by articulating a normative claim for what ought to be. It is through these appeals that I argue Islamist participation has strengthened states, even when it has challenged regimes. I find evidence of this in both the Yemeni and Lebanese experiences, though the trajectories vary. In the case of Islah, the deliberately blurred boundary between the state as a set of institutions and the regime of ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Salih led the Islamist party to increase its demands for a clearer separation between the two, and more firmly anchored Islah in the opposition over time. The upheavals of the 2011 protests and Islah’s participation in a power-sharing transitional government have offered the party the opportunity to help enact the kind of policies that it helped to articulate from its position of opposition. In the case of Hizballah, where the confessional nature of Lebanon’s political regime allocates power over state institutions based on sectarian affiliations, the struggle to alternately control and evade state institutions (particularly in the security realm) has been enacted on a deeply contested terrain in which rival understandings of national belonging have posed a very real challenge to social peace. Hizballah’s militia has complicated its relationship to both state and regime, and this has been manifested in its performance as a political party. But in neither case has the activism of Islamists qua Islamists led to a weakening of state capacity. While neither Lebanon nor Yemen can point to strong or highly capable state institutions, both are stronger today than they were in 1990, in part because of the specific ways in which Islamists have contested the legitimacy of existing political regimes. Plan of the Book In order to illustrate the discursive and practical means by which Islamists can strengthen states while working both within and against

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regimes, the book combines diachronic maps of the development of each party with synchronic comparisons of the deployment of particular discursive idioms. Roughly two-thirds of the book (Chapters 1–4) is given to a detailed account of the two parties’ political practice over time, with a particular emphasis on the decision to participate in governing coalitions, build cross-ideological alliances, and engage in political opposition. In each of these chapters, members of the organization jockey for power and influence in ways that have the substantive effect of bolstering what I call the idea of the state, locating the state as the ideal site of distributive justice and defense of the nation. It is in these chapters that I detail internal decision-making processes that led each party to take momentous decisions about the nature of the party and its relationship to ideological others and to the state. For Islah, this first entailed the decision to engage in the contested practice of hizbiyya, or partisanship, and second, the decision to found the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) opposition alliance with members of Leftist parties that Islahis had previously found, and to some extent still find, to be anathema. For Hizballah, it was the decision to move from a relatively comfortable position outside of government to become a member become a of a governing coalition, with all of the compromise that this entailed. For many years, the trajectories of the two parties were essentially mirror images of the other: as Islah moved away from the governing coalition toward opposition, Hizballah moved from opposition to government. But there has been enough fluidity over the past twenty years to suggest that neither party takes “governing” as its primary aim. Instead, both parties seem to have pursued influence as a form of power, though the aims of influence differ somewhat. A central puzzle that I thus explore in the rest of the book (Chapters 5–6) is how the discursive pursuit of symbolic capital within specific institutional contexts has shaped the institutional strategies that the two parties have adopted, with greater and lesser success.16 Ultimately, discourses help to construct the parameters of belonging. As Daniel Corstange has argued, Discourse about [religion] is agenda setting, framing social problems as well as their solutions . . . Further, religion provides

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the idiom with which to provide solutions to diversity, whether exclusive and sectarian or inclusive and ecumenical. That these solutions are countervailing emphasizes that religion is multidimensional and multivocal in the public sphere and that it is a force operating for and against pluralism, depending on interpretation.17 Takfir and takhwin contribute to discourses that define membership in plural societies and call forth particular practices and state institutions in order to “guard” or “protect” the community (from itself or from others). In neither case are these discourses totalizing or unchallenged. My aim in examining the effect of these discourses on party dynamics is not to address the “problem” of understanding when and how Islamists moderate their ideologies, though it certainly affirms Schwedler’s critique of unilinear models by suggesting that it is possible (and preferable) to identify ideological moderation by some actors on some issues, without defining “moderate Islamists” as a class of actor. Indeed, by examining in detail the discursive strategies of takfir (allegations of apostasy) and takhwin (allegations of treason), it becomes clear that neither party’s position has been accompanied by comprehensive moderation in the way that Schwedler defines it, as a durable change in worldview.18 Nor are the commitments of the two parties expressive of the total range of commitments held by their members. This is evidenced by the blurred conceptual boundary between, for Hizballah, the party and the Resistance, and for Islah, the party and extrapartisan associations like the deeply conservative salafi-inspired Fadilah Group, on the one hand, or the progressive Joint Meeting Parties alliance on the other.19 Instead, a central aim of these chapters is to illustrate the ways in which discourses like takfir and takhwin both reflect existing institutions and material relations and also call forth new institutions and categories of belonging. The conclusion extends the arguments already advanced in earlier through the momentous shifts of 2011. While Islah did not lead the Yemeni uprising, it was essential to it, and Islah’s participation in the Joint Meeting Parties played a critical role in crafting a kind of

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post-partisan opposition nationalism without which the uprising could not have been sustained over so many months and against such prodigious odds. At the same time, the internal divisions within Islah and among the members of the JMP that pre-date the revolutionary movement were amplified by months of protest and struggles for power as a new regime was being envisioned and enacted. When the JMP signed the contested Gulf Cooperation Council agreement, it alienated many of its younger members and became part of a transitional government that is ill-equipped to establish the kind of political order envisioned by JMP members, including Islahis. While Lebanon has been spared (or denied, depending on one’s perspective) the upheavals of a revolutionary movement like Yemen’s, the crisis in neighboring Syria has been deeply felt, and has further strained an already brittle political field. In the conclusion, I thus review briefly the road from the 2008 Doha Accord to the collapse of the Hariri government in December 2010, and discuss the ways in which escalating sectarian rhetoric in Syria and elsewhere in the region in 2011 have had an effect on Hizballah’s ability to deploy and develop its symbolic capital using the established mechanisms outlined in previous chapters. The book closes with a reflection on the future of the crossideological alliances to which the two parties belong, amid some more recent shifts in Lebanese and Yemeni politics. It considers the durability of Lebanon’s March 8th alliance in light of escalating sectarian polarization, Hizballah’s memorandum of understanding with Lebanon’s small salafi movement, as well as the rise of a postpartisan youth movement in Yemen with which Islah has had an increasingly strained relationship. Like any speculation on the future effects of current events, the suggestions offered in the closing chapter are contingent and uncertain, but stem from my sense that some of what we are seeing today is more legible in light of a careful analysis of the two decades of Islamist political practice that precede them.

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CHAPTER 1 THE ROAD TO OPPOSITION: FROM NIZAM AL-FATWA TO THE JOINT MEETING PARTIES

[The typical Islahi] is not static, and does not come in any one color, but is always open to change.1 —Sayeed Thabit Sayeed The unification of North and South Yemen into one state in May 1990 posed a challenge for Yemeni Islamists, particularly Northerners. This was made most manifest in the debate over the creation of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (Islah) as a political party, and the party’s subsequent participation in competitive elections. This tension was reflected by compromises on critical issues of ideology, up to and including cooperation with the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP). Given the deep animosity that characterized the relationship between the two parties in the 1990s, their ultimate alliance in the Joint Meeting Parties opposition coalition that emerged in the 2000s is that much more shocking. This chapter aims to explain the institutional and discursive conditions that enabled this cross-ideological alliance. In the first phase of the party’s electoral participation, its policy line was conservative, characterized by a kind of strategic cooperation with the ruling General People’s Congress (GPC) designed to undermine the YSP, with Islah viewed by many as “the opposition within the ruling

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coalition.”2 This reflected the reality that many members of Islah had been active in the ruling GPC prior to unification, and several leading Islahis had close personal ties to President ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Salih or other senior members of the regime. As the GPC consolidated its rule, however, Islah risked becoming increasingly irrelevant, and pragmatic interests outweighed some features of the party’s founding ideology, enabling the rise of a reformist faction and amplifying its internal fissures.3 With the growing strength of these reformists, Islah became a critical force in the creation and persistence of an opposition alliance, which joined the transitional government in November 2011, following the signing of the GCC agreement that negotiated the end of President Salih’s rule. Islah’s leadership of the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) opposition was negotiated (and continues to be renegotiated) on careful terms, entailing certain shifts in ideology and strategy. Most notably, growing cooperation has opened up space for a younger generation of Islahi leaders to step forward and vie for internal influence within the party. At the same time, certain discursive techniques, outlined briefly in this chapter and elaborated in Chapters 2 and 5, have enabled Islah to maintain its distinctiveness and autonomy within the JMP framework. Needless to say, this has often left coalition partners and the ruling party uncertain of the party’s future trajectory, and of its reliability as friend or foe. Across two decades of political practice, various forces within the Islah party have made recourse to the legitimacy of alternative sites of authority as means of legitimizing political participation and partisanship. These sites have included (at least) references to the authority of a transnational reformist Islam associated with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, the traditional authority of the tribal system (which has been invoked in addressing some very non-traditional problems and questions), and, more recently, international discourses of human rights and democratization. Each of these modes of legitimation can be deployed to weaken the claims of the others, and Islah (and constitutive elements within Islah) have made use of all simultaneously as the party has moved from cabinet to opposition. These internal fissures and countervailing internal pressures make any singular account of “Islah’s position” on a given issue elusive, as I illustrate below.

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In order to map the interplay of these discourses with contests for power within and outside of the party, this chapter is divided into three main sections. The first gives a very brief history of organized Islamism in the Yemen Arab Republic (henceforth, North Yemen) and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (or South Yemen), situating the imbrications of nationalism, Islamism, and constitutionalism in a historical perspective. The second section explores the debates among mainly Northern Islamists over whether to form a party and participate in the democratic political institutions established through the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990. The chapter concludes by discussing the role that Islah played in the buildup to and aftermath of the 1994 civil war, with special attention paid to the role of discourses of takfir, or allegations of apostasy, in constructing an environment permissive of extrajudicial violence. All of this collectively lays the foundation for understanding party leaders’ ultimate decision to move into opposition toward the end of the 1990s, as detailed in Chapter 2.

Islamism, North and South The Republic of Yemen, as we know it today, is barely two decades old, itself the fusion of two twentieth-century republics. North Yemen was established by a military coup in 1962, overthrowing a centuriesold Zaydi Imamate (which had itself been organized in fluid ways, with greater and lesser degrees of sovereignty over time). The People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, or South Yemen, fought an anti-colonial struggle against the British Empire, which ended only in 1967 with the establishment of a Marxist republic. Both republics, despite their oft-cited differences, engaged in state-led development initiatives throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.4 Both countries relied on foreign patrons to support fledgling economies, with the South receiving support from the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, and the North enjoying considerable support from Saudi Arabia. The collapse of the Soviet Union certainly facilitated the decision to unify the two countries, as did the discovery of limited oil resources in the border region, but material pressures alone cannot explain the durable (if fluid) role of Yemeni nationalism, or the sense of peoplehood shared by those on both sides of the border.5

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Prior to unification, the organized Islamist movement enjoyed greater popularity and institutional influence in the socially conservative North than in the British and later Marxist South, where it was disallowed and where Islam, more generally, was subordinated to state institutions.6 The story of Islah is therefore largely a Northern story, even if it has transformed social and political relations in North and South alike.7 An Islamist or Islamo-nationalist movement was involved in organized national and to some extent nationalist politics in the North from no later than 1939, with the foundation of Muhammed al-Zubayri’s “First Batallion,” and expanded its presence through the “Free Yemeni” movement established in 1944.8 It was further strengthened when the initial reticence of some Zaydi Shi’i leaders was assuaged by a meeting between Egyptian Brotherhood founder, Hassan al-Banna, and representatives of the Free Yemeni movement in Mecca in 1946.9 The confluence of reformist Islamism, nationalism, and constitutionalism thus found expression in a cross-sectarian movement critical of the increasingly unaccountable institutions of the Zaydi Imamate under the Hamid al-Din dynasty.10 This was a powerful template on which Islahis could later build their own syncretic Islamo-nationalist approach to state-building through reform. While Zubayri was inspired by his many experiences in Cairo among the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, his organization had no formal institutional links to the (then nascent) Brotherhood as a parent organization. Indeed, while the Brotherhood in Egypt, as well as the reformers of the Islamic Modernist movement who preceded them, focused on using Islam to alternately repel or reconcile European encroachment, al-Zubayri saw Islam instead as, “a means of lifting Yemen out of its state of chronic backwardness,” reflecting in part the different material circumstances faced by Egypt and North Yemen, in particular.11 By the 1950s, even though Cairo continued to offer inspiration for al-Zubayri’s movement, particularly in terms of its organizational structure and focus on bottom-up change effected through daw’a (proselytizing), the Egyptian Brothers faced such constraints of their own that they could not or would not offer any substantial material assistance to al-Zubayri and Ahmed No’man’s new Yemeni Union, despite their complementary messages.12 Since Egypt (in both its

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pre- and post-revolutionary forms) intermittently supported the overthrow of the imam, however, al-Zubayri’s Free Yemenis and later the Yemeni Union were controversial organizagtions in Sana’a, and upon his return from one visit to Cairo, the new nationalist hero was promptly imprisoned by the imam.13 Despite these limitations, an official Brotherhood movement was established in North Yemen in the 1960s, though it was at a remove from formal political life, and functioned more through social organizations in ways parallel but not identical to its Egyptian variant.14 Exceptions to this were mainly in the educational sector, where Muslim Brothers (still nominally disallowed) served in senior positions in the Ministry of Education and Information and the Bureau of Education and Guidance, beginning in the late 1960s.15 Islamists were also influential in negotiations over the 1970 republican constitution, whereby Islamic law was instituted as the source of legislation and Yemen’s revolutionary regime articulated its commitment to rule “in concert with Shari’a.”16 By the mid-1980s, the regime began to express concern over the influence of extremists in Yemen, particularly in light of the number of Yemenis who were going to work in (and, more importantly, returning from) Saudi Arabia, and “Afghan Arabs” who were returning from participation in an anti-Soviet jihad, but this did not prevent the regime from tolerating a distinct “Islamic Front” within the General People’s Congress, as a check against Leftists.17 By the middle of the 1980s, then, Islamists already wielded considerable de facto influence, even without a clear party to represent their interests: The hand of these was strengthened by the extent to which the regime had counted on them as allies and tolerated most of their activities during its struggle with the NDF [National Democratic Front]. Throughout the struggle, moreover, they had had the moral and material backing of Saudi Arabia, backing that did not cease at the end of the NDF rebellion.18 This relationship was further bolstered by anti-Zaydi aspects of the Republican regime’s rhetoric and practice, especially in the far north.19

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As Islahi MP ‘Abd al-Karim Shaiban recalls, there was a move afoot in Ta’iz by 1985 to establish a distinct Islamist political bloc outside of the GPC, designed to counter what some viewed as the growing influence of extremists within the ruling party. Shaiban was encouraged to run as a write-in candidate on a ballot that listed those “parties” recognized within the General People’s Congress umbrella. This Ta’izi movement, with its commitment to civic culture of a madani sort, was neither strictly tied to the Muslim Brotherhood nor reflective of the salafi politics of the far north.20 It would ultimately be folded into the new Yemeni Congregation for Reform (Islah) after unification, with Shaiban as one of its representatives.21 In the South, by contrast, the history of organized Islamism was far more circumscribed. In the 1940s, the exiled leaders of the Free Yemeni movement, Muhammed al-Zubayri and Ahmed No’man, formed a local branch of their movement under the name of the Greater Yemeni Association (GYA). While on the one hand they were granted more official freedom in the British-administered protectorate of Aden than in the Northern Imamate, with license to publish a paper, Sawt alYaman (The Voice of Yemen) and to undertake more explicit organizational activity, they were in other ways more constrained in their ability to articulate a reform message that explicitly called into question the legitimacy of British rule. Required, “to stay within the letter of Adeni law, [the group] registered as a social and cultural society.”22 As a result, the GYA’s Sacred Charter cast the message in language that emphasized “the spirit of brotherhood and cooperation among [the sons of Yemen] and [doing] what is necessary religiously, socially, morally, and culturally,” guided by “the Book of God and His greatest Prophet.”23 The GYA was thus part of a wider constitutional reform movement, at times both nationalist and Islamist one, which appealed to Islam as a means of calling forth a particular kind of state. Following the 1948 publication of the Sacred Charter, and the coup d’état that led to the death of Imam Yahya in the North, the GYA was dissolved and its leaders imprisoned amid British fears of increased mobilization.24 While traditional forms of popular piety continued unabated in some sectors of the South’s population, after the 1967 establishment of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, the Marxist government

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often took explicit steps to limit the use of Islamic idioms and references in public life. In some instances, Islamic idiom was consciously employed in state discourse, but in ways that rendered it subservient to the aims of the revolution.25 While Dresch notes that officials did sometimes pray publicly on important holidays, he nevertheless concludes that, “religion was treated by the [ruling Yemeni Socialist] Party as something that would one day disappear and Islam viewed as at best a primitive form of socialism.”26 At the elite level, and in ways that, “passed above people’s heads,” Southern state discourse resurrected controversial (but self-referentially progressive) histories from Yemen’s Islamic past: the Kharijites and Mu’tazilites were invoked as examples of rational progress, not as the forebearers of schism that they more often represent today.27 After unification, these same groups were invoked by Northerners as influencing the kufr (unbelief) of the Marxists in the South, highlighting the way in which disparate political visions influence understandings of Yemen’s history.28 Institutionally, the Yemeni Socialist Party limited the role of Islam in public life through several means, including the promulgation of a civil legal code designed to replace Islamic personal status codes previously respected by the British in the Aden Protectorate and surrounding territories. Islamists, as such, were not permitted to participate in the limited associational life of the Southern state. As Adeni Socialist and human rights activist Muhammed Qassem No’man noted, associational life in the South included Ba’athists, Marxists, and a number of other Leftist groups, “but no Islamist or religious organizations . . . There were individual shaykhs, but no organizational frameworks. To even think of it was impossible.”29 It was against this backdrop that the growth of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (Islah), established as the political manifestation of a number of Northern interest groups within months of unification, came to be seen by so many in the South as a kind of Northern invasion and an instrument of “retribalization” in urban – and urbane – Aden.30

The Formation of Islah, 1990–92 When Yemeni unification was declared and “political pluralism was announced” by fiat on May 22, 2000, the Islamist movement, with its

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many internal variations and general organizational incoherence, was faced with a decision.31 Between the declaration of unification and the announcement of the founding of the Islah party some four months later, on September 23, leaders of the movement sought to resolve (in part) several thorny issues, the most important of which was the fundamental place of hizbiyya, or partisanship, in Islam and its appropriate role in Yemeni political life. The concept of hizbiyya (an adjectival form derived from the noun hizb, or party) in the context of this debate in the early 1990s, and subsequent characterizations in the interviews and texts discussed in this book, refers to the appropriateness of organizing and participating in competitive political parties, as opposed to more explicitly social or religious institutions. There was an internal conflict between the existing Brotherhood trend, already active in those political institutions existing in the North prior to unification, and a broad salafi movement (with a presence inside and outside of the GPC) that eschewed partisanship, under any circumstance or constitutional arrangement, let alone participation alongside communist unbelievers as coequals under the proposed unity constitution. On doctrinal grounds, as well as out of practical consideration, the emergent leaders of Islah hoped to avoid further division among their ranks by seeking compromise. As future Secretary-General of Islah, ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-‘Anisi put it, “we had a long internal discussion, especially over the name of the party. We wanted to avoid any negative or divisive terms.”32 He explained that the primary association that many Muslims have with the term “hizb” is the Qur’anic references that juxtapose Hizb Allah and Hizb al-Shaytan, or the Manichean distinction between the Party of God and the Party of Satan. As a result, the leadership of the new party left any reference to the concept of hizbiyya out, favoring instead to emphasize their role as a meeting ground for disparate but somewhat like-minded interest groups. For this reason, al-‘Anisi continued, they chose not to use the word hizb in the name of the party, and instead settled on the “Yemeni Congregation for Reform,” with congregation (tajammu’) emphasizing the way in which the organization would seek to bring people together around a shared agenda of nationalism, Islamism, and reform. The official title is still used by those members who are most

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ambivalent about the issue of hizbiyya, as well as in official statements and publications, but the party is popularly known by its interlocutors (and some members) as Hizb al-Islah, or the Reform Party. Most commonly, whether seeking to avoid controversy or simply to economize language, it is referred to as “Islah.” Even among those who were comfortable with the idea of party politics, however, there was little practical experience of partisanship in North or South prior to unification on which to draw. While the Brotherhood contingent could be said to have been active in politics prior to unification, it had done so under the umbrella of the General People’s Congress, the Northern ruling party. The Brotherhood thus had little history as an opposition party per se. But even prior to the establishment of Islah, Islamists within the GPC expanded their oppositional capacity by assuming leadership in the “opposition trend against the constitution of the unified state” promoted by the ruling parties of the YAR and the PDRY. In this sense, they were not opposing constitutionalism per se, but the specific configuration of the unification regime, which they saw as privileging atheistic principles.33 Since that the two states merged their parliaments and committed to negotiating unification through institutional mechanisms, the Islamist bloc realized quickly that they would need to build institutions of their own if they were to successfully negotiate the terms of the new polity. In North and South, interview respondents from a wide variety of political backgrounds characterized democratic institutions as an instrumental mechanism to ensure unification, not an end in themselves. For Islah, then, institution-building began less as an issue of ideology than as one of pragmatism, though ideology was still at issue for some, who chose not to join the new party. As one Yemeni scholar recalls, “of the political parties, Islah was the most suspicious of the new developments following unification.”34 This skepticism drove some to follow Muqbil al-Wada’i and other salafis in the wholesale rejection of party politics, but motivated others to develop the capacity to challenge the former ruling parties of North and South through the institutional opportunities that unification provided. Discussions with party members who participated in these foundational debates suggest

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that a minority in the party embraced constitutionalism on normative grounds at the point when the party was established, though many reported a change in their views over the course of the 1990s. Overcoming internal barriers to political formalization required addressing two main groups of opponents: those who opposed wholesale unification, and those who opposed hizbiyya, or formal political party activity of any kind. In this context, there is perhaps no better symbol of the party’s overall transformation than Shaykh ‘Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, at first a critic of both unification and hizbiyya, but later the chairman of the party’s internal governing body, its Majlis al-Shura. Substantively, al-Zindani’s objections to unification in 1989–90 foreshadowed the first substantial political debate in unified Yemen: the structure of the constitution. Al-Zindani’s opposition to unification reveals two discursive strategies central to Islamist practice in of the cases discussed in this book: takfir and takhwin, or allegations of apostasy and treason, respectively. As I will argue in later chapters, Islamists in Yemen have enjoyed a decisive advantage in their use of allegations of apostasy (takfir), but compete on more even terrain when they employ allegations of treason (takhwin) to negotiate the terms of national belonging. In both cases, however, they are delineating the boundaries of belonging in ways that substantively reinforce the authority of the state, in an idealized form, even as they question the acceptability of the regime in its current configuration. From his home in Saudi Arabia, al-Zindani thus employed both strategies to undermine unification, calling on his followers to resist, “the tiny group of pagans within the communist party of South Yemen, who have been influenced by an imported culture and stand disgraced before the Yemeni people.”35 Allegations of takhwin in the form of foreign influence and inauthenticity were common to Leftist discourse as well, and al-Zindani was labeled an “obscurantist” with ties to Saudi Arabia and its unique brand of religious extremism. ‘Omar al-Jaoui alleged that the cleric al-Zindani “owe[d] allegiance to foreign parties,” adding: These Islamists, who operate from abroad, have just brandished the banner of jihad because, as a matter of fact, they are opposed

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to unification . . . If peaceful and democratic methods fail, unification will be brought about by force . . . If unification is not officially announced in two months’ time, there will be trouble.36 Ultimately, the two presidents, ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Salih and ‘Ali Salim al-Bayd, may have been persuaded by this logic and the weight of al-Zindani’s allegations of takfir, in particular. They agreed to change the scheduled referendum on unification from November 1990 to May of the same year, at least in part to prevent al-Zindani and his supporters from gaining any further momentum in generating Islamist opposition.37 While the formation of Islah as a political party eventually came to be explained and justified by party leaders in Islamic terms,38 its initial formation seems as likely to be a response to a nation-wide scramble for voice and influence in the immediate aftermath of unification. Between unification and the passing of the Party Law in 1992, more than twenty political parties were formed by citizens of a new Yemen looking to take advantage of a level of pluralism (or at least a lack of clearly articulated limits on pluralism) that was greater than they had previously enjoyed in either North or South.39 This occurred in the context of the widespread celebration of political opening and press freedom whereby, “certain smaller parties were hardly more than a few friends with an office and a telephone, but each had a newspaper and many had more than one.”40 Opponents of hizbiyya, largely salafi followers of Shaykh Muqbil al-Wada’i and other Northern shaykhs, were not involved explicitly in the formation of the party, though Islah did then and continues to attempt to court salafis as potential voters. Instead, the initial cohort of party leaders were considered by many scholars to reflect three principal main groups, reflecting an alliance of compatible (if not identical) interests: a tribal contingent, from the Northern tribal regions; a Muslim Brotherhood contingent, largely from the area around Ta’iz (considered by many Yemenis to be a kind of “intellectual capital” in the North, with a distinctive civic culture); and a group of businessmen whose interests were threatened by the priorities of the Socialists.41 By contrast, Paul Dresch identifies these three instead as tribal, moderate

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Brotherhood, and “radical Brotherhood,” identifying al-Zindani as the leader of the last.42 My own discussions and interviews suggest that, by the middle of the 2000s at least, Dresch’s distinctions made more sense. Without undermining the role of businessmen (who may themselves also be ideologically committed to Islamism and/or influenced by tribal dynamics), people now speak more often of the tribes, the Brothers, and “al-Zindani” as the constituent poles of the party’s leadership, suggesting that al-Zindani can deliver votes among salafi contingents who may not formally belong to the party, but that he otherwise enjoys little support among party members. Politicians and journalists (including prominent Islahis) wasted no time in calling Shaykh al-Zindani a “salafi,” a “wahhabi,” and an “extremist,” suggesting some conceptual repositioning since the unification period. He is now viewed by many senior Islahis as a costly but necessary leader; Islahis suggest that he has been uniquely able to mobilize support among constituencies they glossed as “the street,” but that he gradually became an embarrassment to the party, particularly internationally.43 This characterization reflects the rise of new cadres within the party’s leadership, and is owed at least in part to the shifting boundaries of acceptable speech and the restructuring of public discourse, detailed in later chapters. The institutional leadership of the party – and, indeed, its major voice in the first and subsequent parliaments – was largely in the hands of the tribal contingent, whether through Shaykh ‘Abdallah bin Hussein al-Ahmar, the leading shaykh of the Hashid tribal confederation (to which President Salih also belongs), ‘Abd al-Wahab al-‘Anisi, or Muhammed al-Yadoumi. In the initial years, al-Yadoumi, who is credited as having close ties to the state security apparatus, was also the editor of the party’s weekly, al-Sahwa.44 Because of the prominence of Shaykh ‘Abdallah and Shaykh al-Zindani, each of whose ties to Salih preceded unification, it was often difficult in the early years following unification to tell Islah from the GPC. As a senior member of the Salih regime put it, people would say in the 1990s that “Ahmar and the GPC are two faces of a coin,” and sometimes they would have a point.45 This ambiguity raises the question of why Islahis chose to engage in party politics as an independent organization, when other Islamists

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did not.46 Schwedler has observed that, “for groups with close ties to the ruling elite, the risks [of party formation] are somewhat reduced,” and this may help to explain the insistence of the Muslim Brothers contingent to persist, despite their sometimes tense relationship with tribal traditionalists and salafis who could otherwise have been integrated into the GPC.47 Instead, through this internal alliance, the Brotherhood was able to better protect itself from a sometimes atavistic regime by cultivating a relationship with those who have tribal and personal ties to the ruling regime, while these figures have capitalized on the popularity of the Brotherhood message in less tribal areas (particularly in urban and semi-urban areas). While it may have helped that the socially conservative agenda of the Brotherhood and the traditional values of the tribes have been seen to be compatible on a superficial level, the groups see and speak of themselves as distinct. An awareness of these fissures is essential to understanding some of the internal realignment that occurred by the turn of the century, as reformist Islahis pushed for greater opposition to the regime. Even in the immediate aftermath of unification, Dresch notes that “the tribes were not the strongest of the Islamists’ supporters, nor were Islamists impressed with tribal custom.”48 Indeed, disregard (even distaste) for tribal custom was strongly evident in my interviews with reformist Islahi leaders, who decried the taqalid (imitative reverence for traditional practice) of the tribes, and the centrality of ‘urf al-nas (local knowledge, often used to describe tribal or customary law) at the expense of what they viewed as their own civil-rights agenda.49 This repudiation of taqalid is in keeping with what has long been considered a core value of a broader transnational Islamic resurgence of which the Islahi Brothers were a part, advancing instead tajdid (renewal) and islah (reform).50 In Islahi publications, it has not been uncommon to see references to arguments advanced by Islamo-nationalists of a different time and place, like Muhammed Abduh or Rashid Rida, or Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna. At the policy level, the Brotherhood contingent, not the tribes, has consistently held the greatest sway in the formulation of formal party positions, such as those expressed in platforms, official media, and so forth. This cohort’s views have been most forcefully expressed through

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figures like Muhammed Qahtan, and a younger crowd of literati, including prominent journalists and editors like Nabil al-Sofee and Sayeed Thabit Sayeed, most of whom hail from the midland regions around Ta’iz and self-identify as madani (not qabili, or tribal). The geographic distinction between the symbolic and substantive heart of the party is notable, and it was the “Southerners” within the party (meaning those from Ta’iz, not Aden) who were the most immediately open to playing politics with the YSP and other Leftists/secularists, forming the core of the Joint Meeting Parties opposition alliance, discussed in Chapter 2. Even as the tribal contingent presented the party’s public face in parliament, younger Brothers expressed little doubt that the Brotherhood ideology was responsible for the party’s success, contending that, “the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood is equal to the strength of the party.”51 Shaykh al-Zindani was often caught in the middle, appealing to tribal authority and ideological conservatism, but to some extent, a friend to neither the Brothers nor the salafis. If this seems a contradiction, it need not be so: Through the literature on modern Yemen run such categories as merchant, shaykh, officer, modernist, all of which derive from local rhetoric but were never quite mutually exclusive . . . and reading back through Yemen’s history these categories provide a shadow theater of how the country works . . . In the 1990s, in elite circles, they finally collapsed.52 Al-Zindani’s former personal assistant noted that the shaykh “has no relation to religion whatsoever,” and that he began as a rather secular Nationalist.53 Like other accounts of al-Zindani, he notes that all of this changed when al-Zindani went to Saudi Arabia in 1979 and was influenced by “wahhabi and salafi” ideas.54 Upon his return from Saudi Arabia in 1993, al-Zindani began to develop religious institutes, known locally as “scientific institutes” for the study of the Islamic Sciences, meaning fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), usul al-din (the fundamentals of the religion), and tafsir (exegetical commentary on the sacred texts). Prior to departing for Saudi Arabia, he had served

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briefly as Education Minister in North Yemen, but resigned his portfolio amid public pressure against his extreme interpretation of Islam, rejected even in conservative circles in the North. After returning to Yemen, however, and despite his objections to the terms of the unity constitution, al-Zindani was elected president of the Islah’s internal Majlis al-Shura, served as a member of the five-member post-unity executive Presidential Council, and continues to preside as Rector of al-Iman University. The university has given al-Zindani access to the minds of a young generation of Islamists in Yemen, and has been a cause of great concern (and sometimes a source of instrumental value) for the ruling regime, foreign governments, and members of Islah alike. As independent journalist and editor of al-Wasat, Jamal ‘Amer, noted of alIman University, “students study from fajr to maghreb, but they have no television, no radio, no computers, just the sermons of al-Zindani.”55 Mustapha No’man, whose very public feud with al-Zindani is detailed in Chapter 5, maintains that al-Zindani “is ‘eeb [a source of shame] for the government,”56 and discussions with staff of several Western embassies in Sana’a confirm that his relationship to Islah has slowed or halted the willingness of these governments to press for political reforms that would empower Islah. How al-Zindani has been able simultaneously to occupy a leadership position in the party, even as he is repudiated by party members and government officials alike, is a part of the story of Islah’s transition, and of the ways in which it has explicitly sought sources of legitimacy outside of the authorized discourses and institutions of state authority and political pluralism. A Word about “Pan-Sunnism” in Contemporary Yemeni Politics Though many of the tribes are predominantly Zaydi Shi’a by sectarian affiliation, and the Brotherhood is explicitly Sunni, it is important to avoid blithely characterizing the Islah coalition as a party that crosses sectarian divisions. While certainly the major tribal figureheads of the party, most notably Shaykh ‘Abdallah, have indeed been Zaydi by denomination, this does not translate into a Zaydi policy or platform. There are other political parties that advance explicitly Zaydi or Zaydi-nationalist

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agendas (al-Haqq, the Union of Popular Forces) but these enjoyed their greatest influence in the early 1990s, and have waned considerably since then. Individual personalities associated with the Zaydi community, including sada, have continue to play a role in organized politics and in the Huthi movement originating in Sa’ada, but have been quite distinct from the politics of Islah. Within Islah, the intricacies and tensions that have historically characterized the Zaydi-Shafa’i distinction were instead superseded by a kind of “generic Sunnism which claimed to be non-sectarian.”57 This was undoubtedly due in no small part to the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on the shaping of Islah’s ideological posture, but is also the result of the growing influence of salafi thought and the party’s role as the only party of resort for salafi voters who reject Shaykh Muqbil al-Wada’i’s repudiation of hizbiyya. Much of the voting base of Islah is attributed by party leaders, correctly or not, to a kind of populist “street politics” that draws its inspiration and leadership from just this population.58 While it is undoubtedly true that some prominent members of Islah are Zaydi Shi’a, and that the tribal contingent tends to be Zaydi, it is the social conservatism of Islah that is credited with attracting these tribal figures. The intellectual core of the party is clearly Sunni, and the more radical figures, such as al-Zindani, are widely considered to be salafi, sometimes called wahhabi (though the latter carries a derogatory connotation, as it alleges foreignness, specifically Saudiness, as in the example above). Party discourse is critical of Shi’ism, generally, and of the Zaydi notion of the imamate more specifically, something that has been exacerbated by the Huthi uprising that began in 2004, as well as by allegations that the Huthis have received material support from Iran. Some members of the party have promoted a strongly anti-Zaydi agenda, under the party’s name. One clear example of this explicitly anti-Zaydi countenance is reflected in Nasr Ahmed Yehya’s Extremism and Excommunication in Yemen, an apologia in which he discusses the moral imperative of excommunicating not only the Socialists, but also the rafidun, or “refusers,” suggestive of the Shi’a as a whole.59 Yet this sectarian animus is not attractive to many of the Brotherhood members, who have come to criticize the salafi position

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as a form of extremism that is detrimental to the party’s ability to forge and sustain alliances. The issue of internal pluralism is just one of the issues that divided Islah from the outset, through its institutionalization, its role as a junior partner in Salih’s governing coalition, and more recently, as opposition leader.

From Elections to War, 1993–94 Amid all of these potential internal tensions, one long-time Islahi suggested that, “some might call Islah the ‘leftovers’ of the other parties.” He described a recruitment strategy whereby Islah would absorb members of other parties and integrate them into the mid-level leadership structure in order to “buy them in.”60 Others have questioned whether Islah in the 1990s even constituted a party at all. As one U.S. State Department official put it, “It’s just like a group of friends who want to get together and call themselves a party.”61 Nevertheless, Islah moved quickly in the early years after unification to build a solid institutional foundation. The party adopted at its founding a three-level system of internal governance, with the Majlis al-Shura as the highest body, followed by the High Committee (composed of a select number of Majlis members), and then the General Secretariat, responsible for immediate policy decision-making, setting the posture of the parliamentary bloc, and coordinating activities with other parties.62 Perhaps the most interesting feature of the party’s internal structure has been its focus on decentralization, whereby all three of these institutions are reproduced at the governorate level. According to Deputy Secretary General al-‘Anisi, “the fact that we have meetings and listen” is the core of the party’s success at the grassroots level, giving a voice to local constituents in ways that the other parties provide only sporadically.63 Islah’s organizational efforts and recruitment strategies paid off in the first elections in unified Yemen. Held in 1993, the elections returned a truly multi-party constituent assembly. Unfortunately for Islah, the agreement reached between Presidents Salih and al-Bayd prior to unification guaranteed that the two former ruling parties (the GPC and YSP) would take the principal positions in the new five-member Presidential Council, irrespective of electoral outcome.64

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The disconnect between electoral outcomes and the composition of the council was a source of resentment, prompting one Islahi to reflect that this first parliament was one which, “could be entered, but not used” to the extent that most effective power continued to reside in the two ruling parties, via the Presidential Council.65 Yet Islahi MPs have also reflected that this first parliament was the strongest of the post-unification period, even while acknowledging that they were substantively able to accomplish very little.66 Several institutional issues influenced the outcome of the election and the first year of parliamentary practice, in ways that both helped and hurt the influence of the fledgling Islah. The first of these was the demographic importance of North Yemen, Islah’s principal electoral base. The population of the South was about one-fifth of the North’s at the time of unification.67 Despite the YSP’s desire to share power with the Northern GPC on equal terms, nearly 80 percent of seats in the 301-member legislature were held by residents of districts within the boundaries of the former North.68 Islah, with its Northern base, succeeded in capturing sixty-two seats in parliament, compared with only fifty-seven for the South’s former ruling party, the majority of which served Southern constituencies. Islah and the Northern General People’s Congress thus jointly controlled 185 of the seats in the assembly, and many Southern leaders feared that they were really one party. Strategic pull-outs by candidates in the weeks ahead of the election (reducing the total number of candidates from 4,602 to 3,530) helped to confirm this suspicion. To these withdrawals were added a large number of independent candidates (2,263 on polling day), many of whom would eventually declare affiliation with or loyalty to the GPC.69 ‘Ali Salim al-Bayd’s suspicions of a GPC-Islah alliance were in part confirmed when Shaykh ‘Abd Allah bin Hussein al-Ahmar, an Islahi leader but close associate of President Salih, was elected speaker of the new parliament, and Shaykh al-Zindani was appointed to the five-member Presidential Council. Despite al-Bayd’s talk of conspiracy, and certainly such claims were not entirely unreasonable, some consider that the YSP’s “loss of influence was due instead to their electoral defeat and, more generally, to the poor skills they displayed at the game of coalition-building with which northern elites were so

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comfortable.”70 Either way, the first parliamentary elections were surprisingly successful for Islah, in ways that would manifestly hurt the interests of the YSP more than any other political party. The newly elected parliament and the government it appointed took office for less than one year before the outbreak of the short but deeply destructive civil war of 1994. In those interim months, Islahis do not credit themselves with the accomplishment of any major policy objectives, and there was a general sentiment in many of my interviews a decade later that, despite the fact that the first parliament was the “strong” one, it was not particularly productive. This may well have been in large part because this “unified” government reflected a series of careful institutional compromises, rather than a more general democratic will. Speaking with the benefit of hindsight, this idealization of a parliament that all acknowledged was limited and ineffective also reinforced the idea that the crippled parliament was not purely the result of its specific partisan composition, or whether Islah was a coalition partner or a member of the opposition. Extra-institutional dynamics – in this case, the 1994 civil war and its discursive underpinnings – were also very much at work in shaping the nature, scope, and significance of partisan competition.

The 1994 War and Its Aftermath In many significant ways, the Yemeni War of 1994 was more a power struggle between elites and their armies than a civil war, as the term is more often understood. Paul Dresch noted shortly after the conclusion of the conflict that “to call this a civil war was to stretch a point – to call it an extended coup d’état would be as accurate.”71 At the very least, it represented the dissolution of the power-sharing deal between the leaders of former North and South, and, as a result, diminished the utility of the democratic institutions that were designed to hold this deal in place.72 The two most important features of the war for this discussion are: first, the role of Islah in the war itself, from the factors precipitating conflict to the aftermath and development of a new power-sharing agreement; and second, the discursive strategies enabled and made more profitable by the war, and legitimated through it.

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Islah at War The level of trust between the YSP and Islah between 1990 and the civil war was never high, for substantive reasons of philosophy as well as a lack of an experiential history of interaction. From an Islahi perspective, members of the YSP were atheists who sought to undermine public order. To the YSP, Islah was simply a wing of the Northern regime, at best, and a reactionary group of extremists, at worst.73 Both had understandable institutional complaints about the other, with YSP members resenting Islah’s attack on carefully agreed constitutional compromises regarding the role of shari’a, and Islahis resenting the YSP’s institutional overrepresentation, resulting from the carefully brokered unification deal between the Yemen Arab Republic and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen.74 While it cannot be denied that Islah was offered other, perhaps less grand, but nonetheless significant, concessions in exchange (the Education Ministry, al-Ahmar’s speakership, and al-Zindani’s seat on the Presidential Council), this institutional underrepresentation nevertheless rankled, to the extent that Islahi leaders still mentioned this a decade later as a period in which they “sacrificed” their rightful share of political power in the interest of national unity.75 In the months following the April 1993 election but before the outbreak of overt hostilities on April 27, 1994, internal struggles within Islah prevented the articulation of a clear policy by the party’s leadership. On the one hand, al-Zindani’s position on the Presidential Council provided, “a natural ally for the government in its war against the former communist leaders of the South,”76 and he and ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Daylami, a member of Islah and professor at al-Zindani’s al-Iman University, laid the groundwork in their sermons for the wartime takfir that was to follow.77 They were aided in this by salafis outside of the partisan framework, those who had rejected hizbiyya, like Muqbil al-Wada’i. At the same time, some Islahis were also active in trying to prevent the escalation of the conflict. One civil society organization comprising both, “associates of the Muslim Brotherhood and neo-Fundamentalist Wahhabi or Salafi zealots,” invited ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih and ‘Ali Salim al-Bayd to meet at the geographic midpoint between Sana’a and Aden

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to resolve the conflicts. In the end, however, this group could not itself decide on the agenda for the meeting, and dissolved, with seventeen of its members heading to Aden to entreat al-Bayd individually.78 The fundamental tensions that dogged attempts to agree on whether and how to engage in power-sharing with Southern secularists remained a divisive issue within the party, preventing the articulation of a singular and clear position. “Nizam al-Fatwa” During the war itself, while the party continued to play no formal role in the fighting (which was conducted mainly between battalions of the previous YAR and PDRY armed forces), party supporters and unaffiliated Islamists fought as irregulars on behalf of the North. Perhaps as significantly, Islahi leaders played an important role in establishing the ethical framework (and, for some, the ethical imperative) of the war. The use of takfir to structure the political field is a topic addressed in greater detail in Chapter 5, but it cannot be entirely ignored in a discussion of Islah’s discursive practices during the 1994 hostilities. Much of the contemporary animus between some members of Islah and members of the Yemeni Socialist Party – and indeed many of the difficulties that have attended to the two parties’ eventual cooperation in the Joint Meeting Parties coalition – dates back to the practices of Islah, in particular, during the war. It was during this time that Islahi clerics, especially Shaykhs alZindani and al-Daylami, engaged in what has been called the “nizam al-fatwa,” or the fatwa regime, whereby both specific individuals and general categories of people were labeled kufar, (sing. kafir), or heretics.79 By using what some Yemeni scholars call, “the weapon of takfir” (calling someone a kafir, a kind of excommunicative speech act), the Party was able to mobilize support against the YSP in the South, and to incite considerable violence and destruction of property, both commercial and sacred. Later party apologists have pointed out that it may not have been party members conducting this violence, and that no one has been able to identify the location of the “so-called” fatwa against the South.80 That said, in characterizing the conflict as the “War of the Believers,” the Islahi paper, al-Sahwa, reproduced and circulated

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the same binaries invoked in the sermons of the mid-1990s, distinguishing between belief and unbelief, and explicitly justifying the murder of kufar as an act of justice. Following the sacking of Aden, including but not limited to the memorable burning of Yemen’s sole distillery, it can come as little surprise that many Adeni residents were dubious about the claims of young Adeni Islamists associated with Islah to “uphold order” in the former Southern capital, and instead felt themselves to be under siege.81 As the head of the YSP’s Women’s Directorate recalled, I stayed at home for a full year after [the war]. We feared discrimination. People were scared, they barricaded themselves in their homes. People were informing on their neighbors, saying “That’s a socialist’s house.” People think it’s hizb kafir, and if you marry one of your daughters to a socialist, then the whole family becomes a family of kufar.82 This risk was particularly acute for Southern women. As Adeni member of the YSP Johara Hamoud argued, Remember, we [women] were the state. We were working in every field, in the universities, the hospitals, the embassies abroad, the national airline. After the war, there was such a level of fear. We saw a decline in our influence. Under these circumstances, most women left the YSP. The majority went to the GPC.83 This pervasive fear of physical and potential violence was tied to the discursive violence perpetuated by nizam al-fatwa, one from which the GPC and Islah would continue to jointly benefit, even the overt exercise of violence declined or was reconfigured in the 2000s. Reaping the Postwar Rewards In the immediate aftermath of the civil war, in part because of the obsolenscence of the YSP and in part because it had demonstrated its own loyalty (however irregular) to Northern interests during the war, Islah looked poised to make considerable strategic gains. An Islahi, ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-‘Anisi, was appointed Deputy Prime Minister,

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and the party’s ministerial portfolios increased from six to nine. The YSP’s marginalization and the departure into exile of the leaders of the thwarted secession left Islah the sole junior partner to the GPC’s power. But it did not take long for Islah leaders to learn that they had little to offer the ruling party by way of balance against a nowabsent YSP. From 1994–97, Islah participated as a partner in a ruling coalition with the General People’s Congress, and in doing so, it had a front-row seat from which to observe its own diminution of influence over and, ultimately, relevance to an increasingly powerful regime.84 While the overall picture was dim, there were two significant gains for Islah during the period from 1994–97. The first was the final resolution of the constitutional debate. Following the war, the parliament quickly passed an amendment to the constitution which made shari’a the sole source of legislation, bringing it back in line with the Northern constitution of 1970, in which the Brotherhood had played such an influential role. This victory came at a cost, though at the time it appeared to be a cost that Islah was willing to pay. The 1994 amendment to the constitution also abolished the Presidential Council and reduced the executive to the person of the president, also significantly extending his powers relative to the parliament and making provision for direct presidential elections.85 Thus the parliament was doubly weakened by the amendment (in both its substantive scope and its procedural ability to consider new laws), but it may have increased somewhat in legitimacy among conservatives in both North and South, who favored its orientation toward shari’a. This weakening of parliamentary capacity, however, does not mean that parliament became irrelevant altogether. On the contrary, it provided a means of visibility for core Islah objectives and, perhaps ironically, a site from which Islah could most effectively make recourse to alternative sites of authority, through which it articulated demands for stronger and more accountable state institutions. For example, parliament, “provided a platform from which members of the Islah attacked the president on what they saw as his lack of commitment to an Islamization of Yemeni society.”86 Islah was also able to block the president’s effort to make Aden a free zone after the war as a means of attracting foreign investment, and succeeded in passing legislation that

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would require nation-wide Islamic banking practices, though the latter was eventually vetoed.87 During this same period, parliament also served as the site of budgetary oversight for members of all parties, and Islah was active in these debates. While later critics would complain that MPs failed to advance an affirmative agenda – one in which they would see that “oversight is much more than finding fault” – this work was nonetheless a major first step in articulating the demands for accountability that would become central to Islahi discourse once the party eventually joined the opposition.88 The second Islahi victory during this period was seen in its strengthened control over the Education Ministry. While Islah was awarded this ministry (and the Ministry of Awqaf, or religious endowments) before the war, the power-sharing agreement with the YSP had posed a kind of structural check on the party’s ability to enact some of its more conservative prerogatives. As Franck Mermier notes, “During the first phase of Unity (1990–94), the Socialist party, which at that point was [still] capable of participating, had made [Islah’s] scientific institutes one of their principal themes in mobilization against the Islamists.”89 For Islah, then, the marginalization of the YSP role in political life enabled the party to more fully pursue its agenda, both in defense of Islamist institutions and, more significantly, through a general Islamizing of the curriculum in government schools. For Socialists, secularists, and Southerners more generally, Islah’s control of the Education Ministry meant the end of coeducation, the introduction of mandated veiling, and an increased role for traditional religious subjects in the curriculum, prompting some critics to claim that Islah’s education plans “declared war on women’s rights,” and human rights more broadly.90 By immediately moving in 1994 to ban coeducation at all primary and secondary schools, Islah was seen by some as creating a system whereby boys and girls were “unnaturally segregated” at a very early age.91 At the level of higher education, the ministry first suspended and then permanently closed the philosophy and social science departments in 1996.92 A major controversy regarding the Empirical Research and Women’s Studies Center at Sana’a University soon followed.93 Islah’s interest in comprehensive education was called into question, and these and other examples contributed to

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the climate of distrust and antagonism between Islah and the YSP, in particular. One YSP member and prominent Adeni human rights activist bitterly interpreted Islah’s management of the education portfolio as an affront. “They’ll build mosques, but no schools. Each neighborhood already has four or five mosques. A person can pray anywhere, but where are the little children supposed to learn?”94 Islah may not have been entirely committed to comprehensive education, but the party was heavily invested in the “scientific institutes,” or schools focusing on the teaching of the religious sciences, comprising fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and usul al-din. Because of the declared importance of these institutes to Islah and their centrality to the evangelizing aspirations of Yemeni salafis associated with the party,95 the regime was able to manipulate the issue through its deputies in parliament, appearing to concede to Islahi demands, but nevertheless also strengthening its own position. At the internal party congress for the GPC, members debated whether or not to support the further development of the scientific institutes. This has been interpreted as a means of pressuring Islah to abandon other objectives in exchange for GPC support, to divert attention away from government misdeeds. In this context, “the GPC threat was issued in order to pressure Islah and bring to a close the problem of the fraudulent acts that took place during the voter registration period.”96 Schwedler recalls that, “a consensus emerged among former ministers and leaders of Islah that their biggest mistake had been trying to implement reforms too quickly, particularly in challenging corruption.”97 In looking the other way on the registration issue in order to maintain support for the institutes, Islah was seen by its critics (including some within the party) as abandoning its concern for accountable governance in favor of a substantive gain in curricular autonomy. This contributed to a deepening of the cleavage within the party between the salafi wing and the Muslim Brothers. This conflict and others were clear indications to Islah’s leadership that their bargaining position within the coalition had decreased considerably with the departure of the YSP, and that they should begin looking for other means to ensure their survival and achieve their objectives, working with others to reform those aspects of the regime that were preventing state institutions from living up to idealized norms.

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Conclusion The 1990s were a time in which Islah’s relationship to state institutions, the Salih regime, and the Yemeni nation as a whole shifted, as the unity agreement that created opportunities for meaningfully competitive partisan politics was consolidated, challenged, and gradually undone. From its demand for constitutional reform to its call for budgetary transparency, Islah’s appeals for accountable governance were often couched in terms of pious loyalties and the responsibilities of those in power, but they were clearly demands for institutions that would function according to a transparent logic accountable to the Yemeni electorate. In this regard, Islahi discourse affirmed the rights of the “nation” even as it challenged, through nizam al-fatwa, the parameters of nationhood, articulating an explicitly pious national subject. But, as Lisa Wedeen notes, “Yemeni nationalism continues to be compatible with Islamic allegiences, despite the different understandings of subjectivity and sovereignty that nationalism and Islam presume.”98 In effect, as Islah shifted toward opposition, it called forth a state to defend the nation, against the encroachments and distortions of the Salih regime. As junior partners in government, members of Islah attempted to make use of state institutions to advance ideational prerogatives, but found themselves increasingly stymied by the expanding aspirations of the Salih regime. This was particularly difficult for a mid-level cadre of Muslim Brothers in the party, who were Islah’s most committed democrats. This group, driven by anxieties over the encroachments of the Salih regime, began to build bridges across partisan lines, initiating the process that led to the formation of the Joint Meeting Parties and Islah’s shift to political opposition, but also deepening the fissures within an already-divided party organization.

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CHAPTER 2 THE PROCEDURAL REFORM AGENDA: STRUCTURAL LIMITS OF THE JMP

[The Brothers in Islah] speak as though democracy is a right, as if we are created by God to be free.1 —Murad Zafir Having gradually come to terms with its increasing obsolescence, Islah withdrew from the cabinet in stages. The first resignation was as early as 1995, but they followed in a steady stream through 1997. Former ministers complained that, “they were being prevented from taking steps to reduce corruption within their ministries,” and this was partially confirmed when each resigning minister was replaced by a GPC loyalist.2 It was this stream of resignations and Islah’s growing disillusionment that began the long (and imperfect) process of fencemending with Socialists and other Leftist and secular nationalist groups, even while the party maintained links to the regime and gave in to some pressures from Salih’s government. Prior to the 1997 parliamentary elections, and especially after negotiations between the GPC and Islah broke down, the party held meetings with the Supreme Coordination Council for the Opposition (SCCO), issuing a joint statement expressing concerns over the fairness of the coming election.3 The GPC saw considerable gains in the April polls, reflecting both the boycott of the YSP, and Islah’s irrelevance as a balance against the Socialist platform. Voter turnout was down from

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an estimated 80 percent in 1993 to only 57 percent in 1997. This indicated “the widespread perception that, despite the competition that characterized the electoral campaign, Salih and the GPC controlled most of the cards and were rather heavy-handed in taking advantage of this situation.”4 Thus, returning to parliament with only fifty-three seats (down from sixty-two in 1993), Islah could not help but view the GPC as virtually unchecked, further motivating its shift toward organized opposition politics. Yemen’s first direct presidential election, In 1999, was an early test of Islah’s commitment to opposition politics, and one in which it received a failing grade from other opposition groups, especially the YSP. Despite an increasingly cordial series of contacts between mid-toupper-level Islahi and YSP leaders in the years between the 1997 parliamentary and 1999 presidential elections, Islah chose not to field its own (or a joint opposition) candidate for the election, and instead supported the candidacy of incumbent ‘Ali ‘Abdallah Salih. In doing so, the party made evident its “continued reluctance to break away from the GPC and join the opposition.”5 This was viewed by many outside of the party as a betrayal of the potential opposition bloc, but has been justified by senior Islahi leaders as an act designed to secure the party’s survival and continuing influence, even as it began to explore other options. Islah also helped to secure the necessary parliamentary support for a constitutional amendment further strengthening the powers of the presidency by eliminating the need for a referendum on constitutional changes, and extending the presidential term from five to seven years.6 Amid such pro-regime moves, and with its history of anti-YSP/leftist rhetoric, then, it is not difficult to understand why the relationship between Islah and the organized opposition was characterized by such deep mistrust. This mistrust, and the difficulty party leaders have had in overcoming it, has had an inestimable impact on the limited effectiveness of the JMP alliance over the past decade. Islah’s role in the JMP has put stress on internal tensions within the party, in turn contributing to compromises on important issues that have further contributed to the alliance’s inefficacy. This has been particularly the case, as I will discuss in the following

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sections, on issues related to opposition positions on freedom of expression and on women’s political leadership.7

The Joint Meeting Parties In the aftermath of the 1997 and 1999 elections, there was widespread concern at home and abroad over the robustness of Yemen’s electoral process, and worries over democratic “backsliding.” These concerns were voiced with alacrity in a variety of local and indigenous civil society fora. At numerous workshops, seminars, and qat chews (maqa’il) that I attended in Sana’a, Aden, and Ta’iz, beginning in 2004, political elites and public intellectuals used terms like “backsliding” and “regressing,” alongside the more familiar “closing of the door,” to refer to the general diminution of democratic institutions.8 The progressive teleology implicit in the concept of backsliding is thus reflective of the opinions and attitudes that were expressed by Yemenis themselves, though they most certainly reproduce the conceptual framework of the international democracy promotion community, which has been quite active in Yemen.9 As Dresch quipped, in conversations like these, “the counters to be swapped . . . are ‘democracy,’ ‘pluralism’ and ‘civil society.’ The last of these, with its concrete form of ‘non-governmental organizations.’”10 As the 2011 revolutionary movement may suggest, this kind of cynicism belies the sincerity with which some of these concepts are invoked by Yemeni activists and the extent to which these civil society fora do matter – both to their participants and to national-level appeals to the state against the regime.11 While the formalist equation of democracy with elections and partisan politics is unquestionably narrow, the formation and growth of a pan-ideological opposition coalition composed of such parties – and, critically, allied with a variety of civic organizations and activists – has played an essential role in articulating demand for the kinds of institutional reforms that would strengthen the Yemeni state and render it more accountable to its citizens. Organized in 2002 under the joint leadership of the Deputy Secretary-General of the YSP, Jarallah ‘Omar, and Islah’s Muhammed Qahtan, the Joint Meeting Parties

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(JMP) has become an increasingly powerful and politically savvy political organization.12 The coalition includes not only the uncertain alliance of the YSP and Islah, but also other Leftists, including local Ba’athists and Nasserists. On the motives behind the founding of the JMP, Islahi leader ‘Abd al-Wahab al-‘Anisi noted that, We couldn’t bear the weight of unification on our own. Even the GPC hasn’t been able to do so, with all the capabilities of the state . . . It was in this context that the JMP was born, to benefit everyone.13 The commitment to be constrained by an opposition alliance with a largely Leftist group of parties – amid the history of deep ideological conflict in the 1990s and earlier – was not easy, and is a testament to the frustration of the vast majority of Yemenis unaffiliated with or not benefiting from the GPC’s reign. This has sometimes meant adopting policies that are difficult for Islah. As al-‘Anisi put it, “Of course, there is a price. There is a tyranny in joint decisions. But the end result is better than any other option.”14 That said, as I illustrate in the discussion of takfir in Chapter 5, Islah has maintained some autonomy within the JMP and has demonstrated its ability to shape the alliance’s agenda more clearly than any other member party. Despite its formative role in articulating the JMP agenda for procedural reform, there have been a number of discrete occasions on which Islah has simply felt its interests were better served by allying with the Salih regime at the expense of its JMP comrades. Over time, however, the dynamics of these moves have changed, and as the JMP has become more institutionally robust, its members have been better able to pull Islah back into the fold, with the assistance of a group of reformers on the inside. At the same time, the persistence of fissures within Islah has led those opposed to the politics of the JMP to invest in alternative institutions as a means of cementing their own political power. These dynamics of push and pull have meant that, while Islah is central to the JMP, the JMP has focused on the kind of anodyne procedural reforms that are most palatable to constutive members facing internal divisions.15 This procedural reform agenda, which focused on wresting institutional

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concessions from the Salih regime but was silent on a wide range of meaningful political questions, was unsatisfying to many, and critiques of the JMP contributed to the mass mobilization of the 2011 revolutionary movement, as I discuss in the conclusion.16

The Impact of Jarallah ‘Omar’s Assassination on the Emerging Alliance The expanding influence of more progressive Muslim Brothers within Islah was tragically and counterintuitively strengthened by a shocking act of violence. On December 28, 2002, Deputy Secretary-General of the Yemeni Socialist Party Jarallah ‘Omar was invited to address an Islah party convention as an honored speaker, reflecting the new spirit embodied by the nascent JMP, which he and Qahtan jointly represented. Having assured the government that the party would provide adequate security to protect their guest, Islah was unable to prevent a member of the audience from approaching ‘Omar as he left the stage and shooting him at point-blank range. He died en route to the hospital.17 The extremist nature of the action provided an opportunity for a younger generation of Islahis to say publicly that the climate of threat and fear initiated by nizam al-fatwa in the previous decade had gone too far, and to appropriate a set of Islamic idioms to combat violent extremism. As one party member described this ascendant group, “They speak as though democracy is a right, as if we are created by God to be free.”18 Even Shaykh ‘Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, who once supported al-Daylami’s fatwa condemning Socialists to death, publicly condemned the killing. Nevertheless, because the assassin was a former (disaffected) Islahi, and a graduate of al-Zindani’s al-Iman University, the regime was quick to frame the crime as an Islahi crime.19 Put on the defensive following ‘Omar’s killing, the influence of the salafi trend among Islahi elites declined in the years following the assassination. As one party MP put it, “85 percent of the party is open to everyone, and 15 percent are close-minded on issues of coexistence, women’s participation, etc.”20 When asked about the relative weight of these groups in the party’s leadership structure, he confirmed

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that after ‘Omar’s killing the leadership became largely reflective of Muslim Brothers, especially professionals who trained in Egypt or under the local tutelage of those who had. In response to questions about the assassination and other acts of political violence, members of this reformist cadre cite the injunction to correct the unjust with convincing words. This sentiment is credited by party members and those outside of the party as mandating a path of cross-ideological dialogue (hiwar). In this sense, the Brotherhood has been seen by many Yemenis as a force working against extremism. By contrast, speaking of the influence of Saudi religious philosophy on the party, the same Islahi MP noted that, “Wahhabi fiqh [jurisprudence] is fine if it is with regard to how to pray, but not when it becomes political.”21 If there is a distinction to be drawn between that which is wahhabi and that which is salafi, it would be that wahhabi thought and practice are viewed by Yemenis as a Saudi phenomenon, an unacceptably foreign accretion, whereas salafi thought is its exportable product, a universal set of theological claims. Thus one can be a Yemeni salafi, but it would not make sense to speak of a Yemeni wahhabi. The term carries an implicit allegation that the object of the term is not indigenous and thus somehow inauthentic. The allegation that something or someone is salafi is still often derogatory, depending on the speaker, but nevertheless admits the possibility of practices or beliefs that emanate from outside but have been given an acceptably Yemeni interpretation. Individual figures complicate this analysis: al-Zindani is a salafi by theological orientation, but developed many of his positions while living in Saudi Arabia. As a result, the two terms are often used in the same sentence (e.g. someone or something is described as “wahhabi w’salafi”), in part sidestepping this conceptual conflict. Notably, the terms wahhabi and salafi are used nearly indistinguishably by party members with Brotherhood lineage, and almost invariably in strongly condemnatory language.22 This rejection of what is viewed as imported extremism, as well as openness to cooperation and dialogue with ideological others, is not only reflected by MPs, but is also seen in the language of the senior leadership and the party’s General Secretariat. For them, membership in the JMP has been a largely pragmatic move, but one that has nonetheless been critically important to Islah’s political survival amid

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regime encroachments. Muhammed Qahtan thus holds that, “we have similarities in our secular discourse – in our discussion of corruption, for example – and in our desire for a social contract.”23 Reflecting on this, independent Islamist and JMP activist Muhammed ‘Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil added that, “There is something that they [Islah and the YSP] can share. They both suffer under the regime, and they’re both confronting the regime. What they need to work for jointly is how to develop a level playing field. Then they can compete [with each other].”24 This shift toward the alliance had clear implications for the changing role and perception of al-Zindani, and the professed attitudes of party members toward the controversial shaykh. As one member of parliament put it, “If [Islah’s Secretary-General] al-Yadoumi calls me and asks me to take a position in parliament, I listen. But if al-Zindani calls me, I say ‘With all due respect, Shaykh, thanks but no thanks.’”25 Institutionally, this is certainly reflective of the fact that al-Yadoumi was a member of both the Higher Council and the Political Bureau, both responsible for determining the policy of the bloc, whereas al-Zindani’s position as chair of the Majlis al-Shura was far more symbolic. But it also reflects the growing sentiment that as the JMP alliance was sedimented al-Zindani became a liability, an embarrassment, a source of ‘eeb. This shift was made evident by his replacement in the 2007 internal elections in favor of a slate of JMP-supportive figures, including the head of the women’s directorate, Dr. Amat al-Salaam Raja’, and future Nobel Laureate Tawakkol Karman.26 Outside of the party, some have suggested that Islah has maintained him (despite the international reputational costs, which are not insignificant) because of its concern that if the party were to expel him, the GPC would court him in a bid to capitalize on al-Zindani’s popularity among important segments of Yemeni youth, whom the ruling party has shown little ability to mobilize effectively. This argument reflects the frequently voiced concern among Islahi leaders that al-Zindani’s populist appeal gives him influence over “the street” in a way that they cannot afford to marginalize, but that he and his comparatively rigid positions have become a liability. Al-Zindani’s nominal involvement in the 2011 revolutionary movement, as well as his response to the ascendence of the JMP cadre within Islah, discussed below, also suggests that it was not entirely unreasonable to question his

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partisan loyalties, and that the emergence of the JMP has complicated relationships between the factions within Islah. The al-Houthi Uprising and Inciting “Fitna” in the Opposition While some of the most important effects of the JMP have been internal to the Islah party itself, the strategic cooperation between Islah and other members of the JMP has also revealed points of tension and required careful mediation. The formally equal power-sharing between the member parties of the JMP suggests an even terrain that in fact masks the substantial differences in power between the parties, foreclosing analysis of how these differences came to be and the ways in which the alliance itself has cemented or undermined them. Each party has tried to establish the terms of engagement, and members of the YSP and Islah have each deployed different discursive tools in these struggles. One of the most revealing examples of this is demonstrated by YSP strategies of engagement during and immediately after the outbreak of hostilities in the northern governorate of Sa’ada in 2004. The terms of debate demonstrate the ways in which non-Islamist interlocutors have come to manipulate Islamist idiom in order to bind Islah more effectively to the JMP, but also suggest some of the costs that Islah has extracted, explicitly or not, in exchange for its apparent concessions. The scope of the conflict, even in its earliest stages, was devastating to the Sa’ada region, but the government went to great lengths to conceal the extent of the destruction from domestic (to say nothing of international) view: Although accurate figures are impossible to obtain, the government claimed in May [2005] that the number of soldiers and civilians killed in two rounds of fighting had been 525, with 2,708 wounded. The real figure is likely to be much higher than this, and does not include the number of rebels killed. Amnesty International reports that civilian targets have been attacked by “security forces reportedly [using] heavy weaponry, including helicopter gunships.” A large number of houses have been

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destroyed during the conflict, some intentionally and others as a result of indiscriminate shelling.27 International aid agencies and news media were largely denied access to the governorate during the first phases of the conflict. The director of UNICEF in Yemen noted that his organization was denied access to the devastated region, but was able to channel relief services to the city through the Islahi charity.28 UNICEF provided the material contributions, while Islahis distributed the goods. State institutions, “were completely paralyzed” and unable to distribute efficiently aid in the region that Salih’s regime was simultaneously destroying.29 Yet even as its charitable affiliate was distributing food and blankets to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sa’ada, Islah’s leadership in Sana’a did not initially join with its fellow JMP members in condemning the government’s overwhelming use of force in civilian areas. The YSP and other JMP leaders were incensed, and YSP leaders publicly recalled the sacking of Aden, when Islahis not only stayed silent, but participated in the destruction of civilian property and lives. Inferring, correctly or not, that Islah’s reticence was the result of antiZaydi impulses within the party’s salafi leadership, many within the other parties of the JMP saw this as a dangerous resurgence of Islah’s attempt to delineate the boundaries of acceptable pious nationalism, albeit in ways different than they had in the South. In the face of Islah’s distance from the articulated position of the opposition alliance – a position that was firmly the government’s policy – JMP members set about chastising Islah through the careful use of Islamic idiom. Several prominent members of the YSP and the Nasserists began to criticize Islah’s stance as tantamount to encouraging fitna.30 The concept of fitna may have both religious and nonreligious meanings. In the former case, it is seen as a divisiveness that threatens the inviolability of the umma, the community of believers, in opposition to the will of God. In its less explicitly religious sense, the word is sometimes rendered as “discord” or “dissension.”31 But its theological connotation and the tradition that enjoins Muslims to avoid such division in their ranks would be well known to most,

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if not all, members of the Yemeni political class, and the two meanings are not credibly separable. The argument advanced here is that the meaning of fitna in a given utterance is indeterminate, and that this plurality of meanings allows the term to be interpreted by Islahis as both a gauntlet that cannot be ignored and as a sign that the YSP members are making a substantial concession when they employ it. In a discussion with a group of YSP politburo members, ‘Ali al-Sarari argued that YSP application of the principle of fitna was essentially secular, implying only “infighting” (inshiqaq) or “schism,” in ways not strictly related to Islam, or the community of believers, but to any community, broadly construed. One of his fellow party leaders looked at him skeptically, and countered that, “It doesn’t matter what we mean when we say it. What matters is how they hear it, and they hear it as discursive capitulation.”32 There were most certainly other strategies available to JMP leaders eager to chastise Islah or compel Islahi leaders to join in their criticism of government excesses in Sa’ada. They could have spoken in terms of civil rights, human rights, or any number of civic-oriented principals. But when faced with the structural weight of Islah within the alliance and a discursive market that explicitly rewards the use of Islamic idiom and punishes kufar, the YSP chose wisely. Islah could not both advance a pious notion of the nation and risk appearing to be fomenting chaos within the community of believers. Both YSP and Islah leaders told me in interviews that this discursive choice on the part of the YSP was effective in bringing Islah back to the opposition fold and compelling unanimity on an otherwise divisive issue.33 Describing the position that the party ultimately adopted, which condemned both the Huthis and the regime for extralegal violence that endangered civilians, it was Qahtan who stressed core JMP values related to accountable governance: “When an individual pursues an armed campaign against citizens, it’s outside of the constitution and the law. If we are held to the standard of the constitution and the law, then the regime needs to be bound by it, too.”34 It was through appeals such as this that Qahtan helped to call forth an idealized notion of the state, in opposition to the regime. After Islah joined its fellow JMP members in condemning the regime’s extrajudicial approach to the Huthi challenge, few Islahis

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were willing to speak about the subject as “representatives of Islah.” But the comments made by those who were willing to speak to me about this delicate subject do suggest that there was indeed some credence given to the anti-Zaydi charge, and as the conflict continued over the coming years, I was more likely to hear anti-Zaydi commentary worked unremarkably into casual conversation. Islahis complained obliquely of “discriminatory Zaydi fiqh” that privileged the sada, and the attempts of al-Houthi and his followers to “elevate the role of the ahl al-bayt (descendents of the Prophet) . . . over the rest of the people,” rehearsing tropes of the Republican regime, but also echoing the egalitarian ethos that anthropologist Shelagh Weir argues contributed to salafi recruitment among lower-status Zaydis and Sunni Muslims alike in the far north.35 Despite their critiques of the Salih regime, some saw the Huthis as undermining the foundation of the republic, saying, “When you promote (Zaydi) sectarian fiqh, you are saying that Salih has no right to rule,” and this constitutes a threat to political order. For this reason, Islahis “neither welcomed nor condemned the war.”36 Thus, on balance, the formal concession made by Islah – that Salih’s regime should be as bound by the constitution and legal norms as the Huthis – was less significant, perhaps, than the Socialists’ concession in the use of Islamic idiom to accomplish this minimal objective. This speaks to the broader distribution of power within the JMP, whereby the directorship, the speakership, and other offices have rotated between member parties, but the weight of Islah – after the nizam al-fatwa in the 1990s and the assassination of Jarallah ‘Omar – helped to produce demands which were predominantly procedural, legalistic, and restrained, but which often sidestepped the real (and divisive) “meat” of what were rapidly becoming political crises.

Building the State Outside of the Regime As the party drew consistently closer to the organized opposition in the form of the Joint Meeting Parties coalition, Muhammed Qahtan became one of the JMP’s core spokesmen. This practical alliance, and the elevation of a Muslim Brother and reformist to such a visible position, has entailed compromises, but also tangible benefits, particularly insofar as it has opened a door to dialogue not only between the

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opposition parties themselves, but also between the opposition and foreign donor agencies seeking to strengthen its capacity. Interviews with representatives of international aid agencies, particularly those working in the democracy and governance sector, as well as members of the diplomatic missions of the US and EU member states, suggest that the JMP has functioned reasonably coherently as a bloc since at least 2004, though Islah is still viewed as contributing much of the organizational capacity for the group. As one former director of the National Democratic Institute office in Sana’a put it, “Islah is by far the most sophisticated member of the JMP.” She also noted that, in the context of the NDI’s capacity-building programming, “shari’a is not offered [by Islah] as a counter example for NDI proposals.”37 Al-Zindani, of course, has remained a polarizing figure, though the aid community works mainly with the Brotherhood leadership cohort loyal to the JMP. When asked why he believed that Islah does not simply abandon al-Zindani and thus enable even greater cooperation between the JMP and donor agencies and governments, one U.S. diplomat cited the widely-held fear that, “if Islah kicks him out, Salih will pick him up,” and Islah could not afford to alienate such a large segment of its voting base, even for the promise of better intra-opposition relations and dialogue with external donors.38 While there are clearly ideologues within both the YSP and Islah who have made cooperation and a general push toward opposition consolidation difficult, it is also important to note that the younger leaders within the party have become increasingly pragmatic about the role and importance of Islamist rhetoric and objectives. Whereas, in 1993, one party campaign slogan read, “The Qur’an and the Sunna Supersede the Constitution and the Law,”39 by 2005, Islahis could be heard saying that, “the idea of ‘Islam is the Answer’ is out. Now it’s about living with respect, and having a system that helps to make that happen.”40 This apparent shift, however, comes alongside a kind of discursive struggle to define the content of “the good life.” The early years of Islahi practice, relying heavily on takfir and efforts to use popular excommunication as a means of structuring the interaction between Islah and its rivals, have left a mark on Yemeni public discourse.41 In this sense,

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one activist in Yemen remarked that Yemenis, “have been living under a cloud of rhetoric” since unification. In a similar vein, a journalist from Ta’iz suggested in an interview that the legacy of takfir, even as its practice has diminished, has meant an unconscious shift toward Islahi objectives and sensibilities among the population at large. For him, it is less a question of freedom of expression, per se, than of something much deeper. “Before there are [formal, legal] limits on the freedom to write,” he noted, “there are [informal, internalized] limits on the freedom to think!”42 In this sense, the institutional mechanisms pursued by the party to limit certain modes of expression have been subordinate to the modes of self-censorship inspired by the proliferation of an excommunicative discourse, as I discuss in detail in Chapter 5.

The 2006 Presidential Election and the Decline of Opposition Efficacy In 2005, a staffer at the National Democratic Institute complained of the JMP that, “there has been almost no formal, long term planning . . . No formal plan, articulated in platform or policy pieces.”43 By January 2006, the JMP opposition had responded with a defined agenda for the first time, reflecting the procedural reforms on which its ideologically diverse members could agree. The JMP “Document of Reform” included six subsections, each tackling an area of political reform, diagnosing problems and proposing concrete solutions. It was the product of months of wrangling and compromise between the parties, and contributed to cementing the alliance, but also reflected the anodyne emptiness that would later make the JMP itself one of the 2011 revolutionary movement’s targets. In the months before the statement was released, there was considerable concern on the part of other members of the JMP that Islah would again back out and support President Salih in his bid for reelection, as the party had done in 1999. At an official level, the party did not do so, and the issuing of the joint statement represented a milestone in Islah’s commitment to institutionalized opposition politics. While individual leaders did support the president – most notably those with tribal ties to

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the president and/or commitments to the tribal system more generally – the core Brotherhood leadership did not, and remained firmly behind the JMP’s independent candidate, Faisal bin Shamlan. The 2006 election tied the political fortunes of the Brotherhood cohort more closely to the alliance, and made the cleavages within Islah more transparent to those outside of the party, including members of the ruling regime and other opposition members, leaving Islah vulnerable to pressures from a range of actors seeking to exploit these internal cleavages. With regard to procedural reforms, the JMP’s electoral platform bore the imprint of the agendas of several of the JMP’s constituent members, though the procedural reforms themselves did not indicate the weight of any single party in the alliance. The most important reforms included a call for a bicameral parliamentary system based on proportional representation, with fixed term limits and a clear separation of powers.44 The call for proportional representation, in particular, serves many different interest groups. On the one hand, despite calls not to exploit the existence of a growing Sunni demographic majority, sectarian impulses may have played some role in Islahi support for a more propostional system.45 But at the same time, the switch away from a single-member-district electoral law would also challenge the regime’s gerrymandering policies in the South and benefit those smaller leftist parties, like the YSP and the Nasserists, who can rarely command enough votes to win a plurality in a given district, especially outside of the South. Despite this, the platform included several issues on which building consensus with the “extremists in the YSP” was particularly challenging for the Islahi leadership in the run-up to the publication of the opposition platform.46 These include the role of women in national and internal party politics, and issues of sectarianism. Amid a nationwide debate over the appropriateness and/or necessity of developing a quota system to promote women’s participation, each party engaged in an internal discussion, and the main parties also participated in an NDI-sponsored process that led to the production of a tripartite statement of accord by Islahi, YSP, and GPC women.47 The tripartite declaration was strongly influenced by Islahi positions on the role of women. This advanced what I have elsewhere described as,

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the further segmentation of public politics through the creation of a Women’s Sector within the Supreme Council on Elections and Referenda, the body that is responsible for overseeing elections and campaigning . . . a call for an increase in the segmentation of party politics at the local level, with increased funding for Women’s Sector activities in each municipality, with an attendant call for greater parity in organizational resources.48 The JMP electoral platform in 2006 showed even more tepid commitments to women’s integration, calling only for “promoting Yemeni women; reinforcing their position and role in society, empowering them to enjoy their constitutional and legal rights.”49 On the one hand, this reflected a growing linkage by Islahi women activists between women’s rights and civil rights, but at the same time, it did nothing to challenge the substantive distinction between men’s rights and women’s rights as articulated in the constitution and subsequent legislation. Calling for reinforcement of existing (and limited) rights, not fundamental reform, the JMP document of accord is in line with the broader policy of Islah, designed to promote women’s knowledge of their rights under shari’a, and a constitution that derives its authority from Islamic law. But while Article 3 of the Yemeni constitution guarantees the supremacy of shari’a as the sole source of law (and thereby enables legislation which draws distinctions between men and women), Articles 24 and 25 guarantee equal protection to all citizens, irrespective of gender (or any number of other categorical distinctions). On the apparent contradiction between equal protection and distinctions based in prevailing interpretations of shari’a, the head of Islah’s women’s directorate, Amat al-Salaam Raja’, explained: “There may be differences [in these rights] but they are equal in their level of obligation.”50 Consistent with this, the JMP platform affirmed the notion of individual rights in a constitutional republic, but omitted gender as a category when calling on state institutions to prevent “discrimination based on partisan, racial, ethnic, and regional and ideological reasons.”51

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If conservatives within Islah were able to advance some of their objectives regarding gender via the JMP platform, the party made more evident concessions to its alliance partners on issues regarding sectarianism and regionalism. In Section 2 of the document, both the third and fourth clauses obliquely address the conflict over the confessional character of the origins and responses to the Huthi uprising by calling for: 3) banning activities which incite and promote animosity and hatred; and fight[ing] discrimination of or between citizens on an ethnic, racial, provincial, or partisan basis. 4) prohibiting any advocacy or instigation of violence and spreading the culture of dialogue, reconciliation, and tolerance.52 The second of these two points also implicitly addresses Islah’s controversial use of takfir and the assassination of Jarallah ‘Omar, among other issues of lower-order discursive violence. Whereas Islahi objectives may have held sway in debates over language dealing with women’s rights, discussion of political rights and freedoms is far more reflective of Leftist interests. Further challenging Islahi use of takfir is the JMP members’ commitment to “ensuring the right of the expression of opinion . . . freedom of the press and publication . . . and removing all restrictions that hamper any practice of rights ensured by the constitution.”53 Again, however, Islah’s conservatism is protected by the Yemeni penal code stipulation (in keeping with dominant interpretations of shari’a and Article 3 of the constitution) that apostasy is a capital crime.54 By calling only for those rights protected by the constitution, rather than for constitutional reform that would broaden the scope of civic freedoms, the JMP can again be understood as having crafted a platform in response to Islah’s priorities. The section dealing with foreign policy reflected a series of compromises by both the YSP and Islah. Of the eleven proposals, only four did not explicitly mention the need to defend or articulate the country’s Arab and/or Islamic identity. Thus the JMP called upon the regime to adequately “reflect the state’s national and Islamic identity” in the articulation of its foreign policy, and to work to support

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“the Palestinian nation in its fair struggle and Jihad against the Zionist occupation until . . . establishing their independent state with al-Quds [Jerusalem] as their capital,” adding that Yemen must acknowledge that “the Palestinian cause is the cause of all Arabs and Muslims.”55 Socialist influences are also evident in this section, in the call to “reconsider the international division of labor,”56 echoing earlier references to “achieving equality in income distribution” at the domestic level.57 As with the sections on domestic politics, however, international human rights and freedoms are applauded only as protections against discrimination on the basis of “color, race, religion, and nationality,” again sidestepping gender. When compared with YSP party platforms, which include gender as a protected category, this language is clearly a concession to Islah.58 With the issuing of this joint statement, and many subsequent clarifications of its positions in the news media, Islah’s transformation from equivocal participant into opposition agenda-setter unfolded in the context of the country’s most contested presidential election. Muhammed Qahtan frequently and publicly reiterated the party’s commitment ahead of the elections, arguing that, “the JMP will have one stance and one candidate for the coming presidential elections.”59 That said, it is important to recognize the ways in which Islah negotiated the terms of this alliance, and, as the largest and strongest member of the JMP, was positioned to protect many of its earlier political gains within the context of a strengthened and unified opposition. Thus the call for constitutional fealty was one which strengthened both the idea of transparent state institutions, and strengthened Islahi interpretations of how those institutions ought to function. It issued as opposition to the regime, and grounded its call for a particular kind of state in alternative sites of authority. Reflecting the party’s patience and commitment to a new opposition politics built on this foundation, Qahtan added that Islah “will not be hurrying off.”60 But in the end, while Islah did not hurry off (as it had in 1999), neither did it unequivocally back the opposition candidate, Faisal bin Shamlan. In a move that reflects once again the internal tension between the various poles within the party and the continuing pull of alternative sites of authority, Shaykh al-Zindani hosted the incumbent, President

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Salih, at al-Iman University, and informally endorsed his candidacy, without ever firmly declaring a position against bin Shamlan. At the same time, Shaykh ‘Abdallah bin Hussein al-Ahmar, the Islahi speaker of parliament and long-time Salih associate, explicitly backed the president, taking with him many supporters from among the Hashid tribal confederation, of which he was paramount shaykh. As Qahtan and other Brotherhood members diligently campaigned for the JMP candidate, bin Shamlan, they watched the chances of his electoral success gradually diminish, owing in part to the efforts of members of their own party. Did Salih’s reelection constitute a blow to the opposition, and were Islah’s internal fissure responsible for bin Shamlan’s loss? Members of Islah, as well as unaffiliated observers, reflected in the years that followed that the 2006 election was a pivotal victory for the JMP (over the diverse interests of its member parties, and over the complacency of the Salih regime, if not in electoral terms). They cite as its greatest outcome the strengthened internal leadership position of the Brotherhood, signaling a cementing of Islah’s relationship to the JMP alliance.61 They tend to interpret the election in terms of the margin of loss, which was much smaller than in 1999, and in terms of the pressure that it placed on Salih to respond to the agenda set by the JMP. Despite their official complaints of widespread voter fraud, JMP activists also report some satisfaction with the fact that Salih was perceived as having had to fight for reelection, to talk about electoral issues, to engage in real campaigning. Faced by a credible challenger for the first time, he had to work harder to gain less. A similar kind of analysis could be applied to Islah. On the one hand, certain factions within the party most certainly defected from and helped to undermine the JMP position, but these defections mapped onto existing cleavages within the party, and are therefore legible in terms of later developments building toward the upheavals of 2011 and 2012. The more important point about the effect of the 2006 election on Islahi politics was reflected in Islah’s internal elections. At the fourth party congress, in March 2007, the Brotherhood cadre was ascendant, suggesting the resonance of the JMP alliance among registered members of the party, its ideological core. Al-Zindani was not returned to his post as the chairman of the Majlis al-Shura, perhaps

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underscoring the extent to which he had come to be seen as a political liability. Amat al-Salaam Raja’, head of the women’s directorate and a key member of the Brotherhood cohort within the party, received the tenth largest voter share of the 130 members elected to the Majlis. But Shaykh al-Ahmar was reelected to a fourth term as party head, though he died shortly thereafter. His reelection was interpreted by Brotherhood members and some outside the party as a positive development for the JMP, as he was seen as an effective mediator between the Brotherhood and salafi wings of the party, and between Islah and the governing regime. The vacuum created by his death and a general, if temporary, decline in tribal leadership within the party, was deeply (bi)polarizing, making the struggle between al-Zindani and Qahtan particularly acute, as I explore in Chapter 5. But in many ways, the fact that Islahis and other members of the JMP still spoke several years later of 2006 as the apex of JMP efficacy speaks to the weak capacity of the alliance. On the eve of the 2009 postponement of Yemen’s parliamentary elections, Yemenis complained bitterly that the JMP leadership was so preoccupied by the court politics of Sana’a – by their efforts to remain relevant as the Salih regime clamped down ever harder on opposition activity, enabled by increased funding for counterterrorism surveillance – and that the member parties, especially Islah, were neglecting their grassroots supporters. This, as argued in the last chapter, contributed to the revolutionary movement of 2011.

Conclusion Since its founding in 1990, the leadership core of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform has taken a consistent series of steps away from the governing regime and consolidated its position as agendasetter for the JMP opposition alliance. Throughout this transformation, its appeals for more transparent and accountable institutions and its demonstrative practice of internal democracy have strengthened the idea of the state and the constitutional republic as composed of a set of transparent and accountable institutions. Stalwarts have remained close to the ruling regime, but more out of deference to tribal ties and individual interests than from any demonstrable ideological commitment.

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Those Islahis who have chosen to remain solidly with the opposition have done so with reference to transnational tropes and justifications, whether a global discourse of democracy and human rights, or a transnational discourse of liberal Islamism. As I argue in later chapters, participation in the JMP has had a transformative effect on the political identities and commitments of mid-level Islahis, in particular. In the 2000s, the joint opposition made a collective contribution to disseminating and consolidating the demand for an accountable state, and Islah was central to this process. The defection of al-Zindani and al-Ahmar from the JMP electoral program in 2006 suggests that formal institutions are still very much indebted to the role of dynamic personalities, tribal lineage, and systems of patronage; but setting the agenda of the JMP has allowed figures like Muhammed Qahtan, Amat al-Salaam Raja’, and others to articulate their own leadership on the basis of institutional victories within the JMP, evident in their elevated positions of influence since 2007. Further, the central role of Islahi Tawakkol Karman and other Islahi youth activists in the 2011 protest movement may help to solidify further the leadership role of the Brotherhood cohort within Islah and the JMP. The future of the JMP itself is very much contingent on the outcome of the transitional process brokered by the GCC, and there are centrifugal pressures that will continue to pull member parties in different directions. Given the vacuous content of the alliance’s politics, this might be good for substantive political competition in a post-Salih Yemen. But what should be clear from the experience of the 2000s is that the commitment of Islah’s ascendant leaders to building the Yemeni state even from a position of opposition is not in question.

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CHAPTER 3 THE ROAD TO THE CABINET: REDEFINING FRIENDSHIP AND ENMITY

[Hizballah’s success] illustrates the power of the dynamics impelled by the operational synthesis between nationalism and Islamism.1 The first part of the book explored the structural conditions that helped to drive Islah’s decision to forge a cross-ideological alliance, as well as some of the less anticipated effects of the alliance on the relationship between parties and within Islah itself. As Islah consolidated its position in the opposition, it called forth from this position of opposition an idealized state, accountable to its citizens and justified with regard to transnational principles, both reformist Islam and international human rights and democracy. This chapter and the next explore the structural and discursive circumstances that led Hizballah to form a quite different alliance, the cross-sectarian March 8th bloc, a political grouping of parallel durability but far less demonstrable depth. If Islah has strengthened the idea of the state in Yemen through its oppositional discourse and practice, Hizballah’s participation in opposition politics and alliance-building has been much more difficult to untangle. Since 1982, the organization has worn many hats, including wartime militia, political party, paramilitary in occupied Southern Lebanon, and, by some accounts, international terrorist organization. In 2005, the group accepted full integration into Lebanon’s government for the first time, a sign locally

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interpreted by supporters as an expression of the group’s desire for legitimacy, and by optimistic critics as a prelude to its disarmament and full political integration. The 2006 Israeli invasion made disarmament a more contentious issue than ever before, laying the ground for the eruption of armed civil conflict in May 2008, followed by political paralysis ever since. Across these events, Hizballah’s discourse has – like Islah’s – served to strengthen the demand for transparent and accountable state institutions, even as its practice has undermined some (but not all) functions of the state. As a vocal and consistent critic of the confessional nature of the Lebanese regime, Hizballah has nonetheless inspired polarizing sectarian political mobilization, particularly since the Israeli and Syrian withdrawals from Lebanon. As mentioned in the Introduction, one of the most compelling reasons for the comparison between these two political parties is the difference in the trajectory of political practice that each has followed. Islah has moved from cabinet to opposition, and Hizballah from opposition to cabinet. As Islah has pulled away from an increasingly atavistic regime and renegotiated aspects of its ideology and platform in order to build durable ties to a largely-Leftist opposition, Hizballah has moved in the opposite direction, beginning in 1990 as a reluctant (if highly successful) player in Lebanese politics, and making increasingly insistent demands for access to state power as the grip of its Syrian patron loosened. Like Islah, it has done so in coalition with others; but unlike Islah, participating in coalition seems to have done little to alter Hizballah’s relationship to Lebanese state and society. All of this is suggestive of the need to unpack conventionally uniform expectations regarding “Islamist party behavior” and give precedence to the role of local structure and context. Neither Hizballah nor Islah appears to be ideologically committed to serving only as opposition or only in government. It is thus in the specific and local context of each group’s rhetorical demands and political decisions that we can best examine the implications of Islamist political activism for state institutions. Two important themes emerge from an analysis of Hizballah’s first two decades of post–civil war political participation. First is the interactive relationship between structure and discourse. The nature of Lebanon’s confessional regime – and indeed its very embeddedness and

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consolidation in state institutions – has posed a challenge for Hizballah as it has moved first toward participation in and eventually toward integration into the institutions of governance in Lebanon. The ways in which party members have come to talk about these institutions is an important marker of the party’s transformation, and instructive with regard to the ways in which (a) institutional structure informs what is said and what is sayable, and (b) what is said creates new and locally intelligible interpretations for institutional practice. The second issue highlighted by Hizballah’s transformation is the thorny relationship between the national and both sub- and transnational sources of political authority in the party’s ideological framework. As Hizballah has taken on a larger and more direct governing role, the challenge that this ideology poses to the alleged integrity of the territorial state – beyond the narrow issues of Syrian or Iranian influence and patronage – has become increasingly salient. Each of these themes is explored through the institutional history of the party in this chapter and the next. One means of illustrating this transnational/subnational tension is through an analysis of how Hizballah’s conception of friends and enemies has shifted over time in ways that have accommodated its movement into government and alliance with Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement. As with Islah in Yemen, this transformation has been negotiated in dialogue with others, and Hizballah has found the means to exert substantial symbolic power within the domestic Lebanese political sphere. Unlike Islah, however, Hizballah’s commitments are much more contingent and more aggressively contested. And non-Lebanese forces have played a much larger role in this story than non-Yemeni forces have in Yemen, a condition that has always been a feature of Lebanon’s fragile republic.2

Hizballah’s Origins Many accounts of Hizballah’s origins focus on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 as the principal point of departure. This is only partially consistent with self-representations of Hizballah officials, who depart from this kind of sui generis account in some important ways.3

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The accounts that favor a 1982 starting point tend to focus on external shocks – notably, the arrival of eight hundred Pasdaran,4 or Iranian Revolutionary Guards, dispatched from Tehran with the goal of training an Islamic Revolutionary militia for the export of Khomeini’s Revolution.5 More recently, scholars and observers, and Hizballahis themselves, have pointed to the gradual process by which failures and fissures within the rival Amal Movement, most notably the defection of Shaykh Subhi al-Tufayli and other prominent members of Amal and the formation of Islamic Amal, a more explicitly religious (as opposed to sectarian) organization, produced a structural opening for this support from Iran.6 This fissure was a consequence of an earlier process of mobilization among Lebanon’s Shi’i population, whereby the initial appeal of Amal was rooted in a “communal” awakening that was at once political and religious, and could map its material demands onto existing institutional frameworks. This was followed by a period of disillusionment among the more devout in Amal’s ranks, leading to the formation of both Islamic Amal and eventually, from its membership, Hizballah.7 This kind of linear, evolutionary account is consistent with those given in my interviews with party members themselves, who recognize the pivotal impact of the 1982 Israeli invasion, but nonetheless construct it as a part of a wider process of change among members of Lebanon’s Shi’i community. While there may be disagreements between scholars about when and how to date the emergence of the party, there can be little doubt that the specific character and objectives of the organization were inextricably linked to the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini, the success of the Iranian Revolution, and the establishment of an Islamic Republic in Iran. Khomeini’s ideology has helped generated support for the movement among some members of its core constituency, and has been an easy target for its detractors. It has had a substantial impact on the party’s internal development and efforts to address the particularities of Lebanon, as both polity and society. Khomeini, Shi’ism and Wilayat al-Faqih The principle of wilayat al-faqih, or the “guardianship of the jurist,” asserts the overriding authority of the most knowledgable faqih, one

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schooled in Islamic law, and qualified to give religious opinions on issues of daily practice based on the texts of the Qur’an, the Sunna (the sayings and practices attributed to the Prophet Muhammed), and the consensus of the (learned) community, via the application of human reason.8 A recent theological intervention attributed to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the conceptual antecedent to the principle of wilayat al-faqih, is the Shi’i belief that the clerical class (the ulema) collectively constitute the na’ib al-‘amm (deputy general, as a collective body) of the Hidden Imam, and thereby collectively serve as the best source of religious and political authority.9 That this kind of delegated authority could be delegated to a collective, with all of its internal contradictions and disagreements, enabled a measure of pluralism in practice within and across Shi’i communities. Yet it also laid the conceptual groundwork for the ultimate articulation of Khomeini’s revolutionary principle, making wilayat al-faqih an “obvious next step,” through which the delegated authority of the ulema as a whole could be centralized in a single individual: the most qualified among them.10 On the basis of the claim that justice can only be achieved under Islamic governance, Khomeini argued for the establishment of an Islamic state with the Qur’an and Sunna as its constitution and the shari’a as its law, a system of rule which might be termed one of “judicial sovereignty” in which the law, and by extension its interpreters, exercise more authority than any other branch of government.11 As such, Khomeini took “the na’ib al-‘amm concept to its logical conclusion by asserting the right of the faqih . . . to superintend all religious, social, and political affairs.”12 In Iran, this led to a post-revolutionary marriage of temporal and religious governance, a republic built on the notion of judicial but not popular sovereignty. But Hizballah’s adoption of the principle of wilayat al-faqih in Lebanon, however, a republic based on a hybrid of individual and communal rights, raised interesting questions about the ability to successfully transport the ideology, and the reconfigurations that might be required by the exigencies of both the local political environment and existing institutions. Politically speaking, there exists a measure of doctrinal pluralism in the Shi’i tradition that makes wilayat al-faqih a comprehensible extension of al-na’ib al-‘amm, but not a compulsory article of faith

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incumbent on all followers. Moreover, Shi’i views of the ideal relationship between political and religious authority have varied over time, ranging from outright cooperation with temporal authorities, whereby the clerics grant legitimacy to the regime, to complete revolt against them, to a middle-ground approach of “political aloofness” or quiescence, considered by far the most dominant trend across time. That activism and quitetism have, in a sense, coexisted in a state of tension within Shi’ism is not, in itself, an egregious contradiction. Religious movements commonly embrace mutually exclusive contradictory attitudes, and attempts to classify them along the lines of simple dichotomies (such as “activist” or “quietist”) are seldom very successful.13 As a result, “it cannot be said that any coherent Shi’i theory of political legitimacy or any unified stance by the ulema towards the state has existed.”14 This clerical pluralism is in part what has allowed for the principle of wilayat al-faqih to coexist with other, less expansive notions of clerical authority, and for the faqih himself (whether Khomeini or his successor, Khameini) to generate a following among some Shi’a without obliging others in the global Shi’i community to follow him in absolute terms. Khomeini and Hizballah Hizballah’s allegiance to the Khomeinist principle of wilayat al-faqih followed on the heels of widespread Shi’i political mobilization in Lebanon in the 1960s and 1970s. The Shi’a, as a community, had been politically and economically disenfranchised relative to other groups in Lebanon, and under the leadership of Musa al-Sadr and his Harakat alMahrumin (Movement of the Dispossessed), they underwent a period of consciousness-raising prior to the outbreak of civil war in 1975.15 In this context, Khomeini’s eventual argument that revolutionary political activism was an incumbent religious obligation resonated with many of Lebanon’s Shi’a, particularly when juxtaposed with what was seen as a local history characterized by social and political quietism

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among Shi’i ulema. Thus Hizballah MP Muhammed Raad, head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc, noted that, “the victory of the Islamic revolution had a psychological and sectarian influence here and it was welcomed.”16 At the same time, Raad recognized that, in the early stages, “there was a strong rejection [of the principle] among the Islamist thinkers, who had not yet thought of forming a party, a strong rejection of the principle of wilayat al-faqih, calling for the necessity of defending Lebanon before the Muslims [as a whole].”17 This suggests that, at least initially, the national was seen as taking precedence over a new articulation of transnational religious loyalty. By the time that the party published its manifesto in 1985, however, these internal conflicts had been largely resolved, or were otherwise masked. The attempt simultaneously to invoke both national and international tropes of resistance was apparent from the party’s first public step, the publication of the Risala al-Maftuha, or the “Open Letter Addressed by Hizballah to the Downtrodden in Lebanon and the World.”18 To establish its Lebanese face, the letter’s publication on February 16, 1985 was timed to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese cleric Ragheb Harb by Israeli forces. He was thus claimed as the first martyr of the movement. Harb’s image was on the front of the Open Letter, while the back page featured an image of the Ayatollah Khomeini, thus symbolically conjoining the subnational and the transnational.19 The duality of presentation, with the image of Harb, a prominent – and entirely local – Shi’i figure in the resistance to the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon, though not formally a member of Hizballah, and Khomini as “leader jurisprudent”20 and revolutionary, fit well with Hizballah’s early message as articulated in the Open Letter and other public documents. The interweaving of Ragheb Harb’s legacy with Khomeini’s call can be interpreted as a means of integrating a particular religio-political message (wilayat al-faqih) with a national armed struggle, of simultaneously nationalizing and transnationalizing, particularizing and universalizing. Harb was, in fact, open to Hizballah’s message, but he was not a party member – in 1984, at the point of his assassination by the Israelis, Harb was the shaykh of the village of Jibsheit. By issuing its Open Letter

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on the first anniversary of Harb’s death, and bestowing on him the honorific of Shaykh al-Shuhada (Leader of the Martyrs), Hizballah was able to appropriate the death of a sympathizer as a powerful image of martyrdom for the movement.21 This appropriation gradually became more total, with party leaders eventually calling him, “one of our ulema.”22 The content of the Open Letter, however, is of more lasting significance to later party development than its packaging. In its public debut, Hizballah set out to accomplish two broad goals. First and foremost, the party professed a desire to introduce its ideas and goals to potential constituents and adversaries alike. Second, it sought to allay the fears of some Christians (and undoubtedly some Muslims as well, though this was not necessarily openly acknowledged in the text of the letter) about its view of Lebanon’s future and their role in it. Whereas Khomeini himself characterized the world outside of his community of believers as polluting,23 Hizballah’s leaders recognized that such an approach would be incompatible with the sectarian diversity of Lebanon. Thus a good portion of the text is devoted to issues of coexistence. Hizballah articulated a set of four principal objectives: 1) Israel’s final departure from Lebanon as a prelude to its final obliteration and the liberation of venerable Jerusalem from the talons of occupation. 2) The final departure of America, France, and their allies in Lebanon, and the termination of the influence of any imperialist power in the country. 3) Submission by the Phalange to just rule and their trial for the crimes they have commited against both Muslims and Christians with the encouragement of America and Israel. 4) Giving all our people the opportunity to determine their fate and to choose with full freedom the system of government they want, keeping in mind that we do not hide our commitment to the rule of Islam and that we urge [all] to choose the Islamic system that alone guarantees justice and dignity for all and prevents any new imperialist attempts to infiltrate our country.24

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In articulating its “minimum aspirations,” however, Hizballah scaled back on both its international and national objectives, maintaining instead that it would be satisfied with no less than, “rescuing Lebanon from subservience to either the West or the East, expelling the Zionist occupation from its territories finally, and adopting a system that the people establish of their own free will and choice.”25 These minimum aspirations would be a more realistic barometer of Hizballah’s future decision-making following the civil war. Perhaps the most important feature of the Open Letter for understanding the party’s subsequent decision to participate in party politics following the Ta’if Accord is the focus on delineating friends and enemies. This distinction is rooted in a discussion of how these friends or enemies showed their character in the face of civil violence in Lebanon, from 1975 onward. It is critical to understanding later party practice as an expression of ideological continuity, not fundamental rupture. If it is the behavior and choices made by certain people or groups of people that lead to their categorization as friends or enemies, it is possible to move between categories by way of alternative choices and behavior. If one works from the Jerusalem Quarterly translation and its derivatives, as much of the secondary literature on the party seems to do, the historical narrative of the text is disrupted and reordered, and the decisions of friends and enemies alike read less as decisions than as ascriptive characteristics from which there is no opportunity for exit, making it easier to see Hizballah as a party unable to cope with Lebanon’s multisectarian realities. Working from the original text, however, it becomes clear that Hizballah’s repudiation of Lebanese Christians and secular Muslims is linked to some very specific and historically embedded decisions and – most importantly – that different decisions could yield intercommunal cooperation, not conflict. Taken in this light, then, some of the contradictions that scholars see in Hizballah’s later parliamentary accommodation are, in fact, the realization of possibilities implicit in the letter itself. Raad himself tacitly acknowledged this when he noted that, “Perhaps if we read the Open Letter today, we would reevaluate some

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of its issues and categories.”26 When asked to elaborate, he added the following: There was a resolute ideological rejection in the Open Letter because . . . dogmatism was demanded during that period. If it were today, then everyone would know that Hizballah . . . has been an Islamic party, but an open party, a party that welcomes participation, a party that welcomes dialogue with the other, a party that gets to know the other. During the creation of the Open Letter, there was a segment of the Lebanese people that was cooperating with the Israeli occupation. Speaking in all frankness, we couldn’t accommodate their existence at the beginning.27 The idea that the Manichean distinction between friend and enemy is less ascriptive than behavioral means that the capacity for transforming relationships and forming alliances with ideological others was embedded within this foundational text. This has allowed Hizballah to be faithful to its foundational principles but nonetheless work within existing institutions and the constraints of the confessional regime in pursuit of its goals, and has allowed some goals themselves to be transformed in response to shifting circumstance (tharuf), a common theme in Hizballahi discourse. Wilayat al-Faqih in Lebanon? While the Open Letter most certainly did establish a profoundly local set of concerns and root Hizballah in Lebanese politics, it nevertheless also contained a broader understanding of Hizballah’s role in a transnational Shi’i political community, demonstrated by the role of wilayat al-faqih in the document. Scholars have been of a divided mind on the continuing importance of the concept of wilayat al-faqih in the post-war period. There are staunch rejectionists who see Hizballah’s participation in party politics as a ruse designed to obscure their “real” aims to those who maintain that “the abandonment of all reference to an Iranian-inspired Islamic Republic . . . or the implementation of the

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Sharia is clear evidence of their willingness to abide by the sectarian rules of the game.”28 Since party leaders do in fact continue to make reference to wilayat al-faqih, and indeed continue to treat allegiance to the principle as a membership criterion, the latter of these two extremes is not empirically tenable.29 Similarly, the other extreme – the belief that Hizballah is simply an imported arm of the Iranian government – obscures the fact that allegiance to the principle of wilayat al-faqih among supporters of Hizballah is rarely expressed as direct allegiance to the state of Iran so much as local practice is grounded in the transnational authority of the faqih and his legal interpretation. As Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem recently wrote, “there is no connection between the internal administration of the Iranian state and Hizballah’s administration. These are two separate bodies, each having its particularities . . . despite the commitment of both to the commands and directions of the Jurist-Theologian, who is custodian of the entire nation of Islam.”30 Thus, while the principle of wilayat al-faqih and its continuing importance in Hizballahi discourse is most certainly at odds with the concept of allegiance to a multisectarian and territorial Lebanese nation state, this should not be conflated with allegiance to Iran per se. Instead, Qassem claims that, “given that working within a particular country is connected to a given set of circumstances and individuality . . . Hizballah’s work concords that Islamic order with[in] the Lebanese national background.”31 Such a position, however, is not likely to assuage the concerns of the party’s critics, nor those who see Hizballah as using this to undermine the authority of the Lebanese state. To address this concern, however imperfectly, Hizballah turned to parliament and endeavored to legibly “nationalize” its politics.

Nationalization, Transnationalization, and Parliamentary Practice Post-Ta’if By 1989, the principal point of debate within the party was existential, related to fundamental questions of whether and how the group could continue as a participatory force in a set of sectarian institutions seen as fundamentally corrupt. This divided the leadership into two

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distinct camps, and was not entirely unlike Islah’s struggle regarding the notion of hizbiyya.32 Furthermore, institutionalized confesssionalism, a core target of Hizballah’s Open Letter and founding ideology, was reinscribed by the Ta’if Accord settlement, which adjusted the balance between confessional groups more equitably, but did nothing to challenge the basic logic of sectarian representation on which the confessional regime was built. Since much of the party’s war-era discourse focused on the irredeemable corruption of the confessional political system, the decision to enter in full force a political field characterized by confessional institutions called Hizballah’s core commitments into question. The terms of the accord agreed at Ta’if were themselves a residual effect of that same confessional system, insofar as they were ratified by the remaining sixty-two parliamentary deputies held over from the last pre-war parliamentary election in 1972. Making a case for the salience and significance of parliamentary institutions in Lebanon, Baaklini, et al. have argued that, Their presence in Ta’if suggests that the Chamber was widely seen as the one institution that, because it had been legally elected by the Lebanese people, was entitled to work out the details of a new political system for the country . . . the legitimacy of these individuals was not in doubt; it was based on their having been chosen according to due process and their belonging to a state institution recognized by the world community.33 From a Hizballah perspective, their legitimacy was indeed very much at issue, as a fruit of the “rotten sectarian system”34 with which they had pledged no accommodation, and which was reviled at least in part for systematically ignoring Shi’i needs. While it might initially appear a contradiction to oppose sectarianism by claiming that the sectarian system worked against Shi’i (i.e. sectarian) interests, party members endeavored to ease this tension by continuing during the immediate post-Ta’if period to speak for a broad class of disenfranchised citizens who had been damaged by a sectarian system of patronage, of whom the Shi’a were only the most prominent symbol. In doing so, the party

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invoked again the popular legacy of Musa al-Sadr and his pre-war Movement of the Dispossesed. Ultimately, the party’s position on the Ta’if Accord was equivocal. As MP Muhammed Raad explained, “We neither accepted nor rejected the Ta’if Agreement: we dealt with it as a reasonable fact.” He continued, We felt that the Lebanese people needed internal stability and the civil war must end. Even the Resistance needed internal stability, as well, because if it was not protected from the inside, it couldn’t fight the Israelis. Therefore, there was a strategic interest in achieving internal stability and civil peace. Though there was not full agreement on the details of the Ta’if Agreement, the general principles were acceptable and [others] can be developed through discussions.35 The interval between the signing of the Ta’if Accord and the party’s decision to stand for election in 1992 represents one of the most fraught periods in its relatively short history, rivaled only by the post2006 era. The leadership structure was firmly divided between proponents of parliamentary engagement and those who favored “a state of perpetual jihad against those who opposed their vision of an Islamic Lebanon.”36 Structural realities in Lebanon in the early 1990s helped to turn the tide of debate within the party, but it is important to note that there was debate within the party’s leadership structure. At a seminal meeting of Hizballah leaders in Tehran in October 1989, Hassan Nasrallah, Ibrahim al-Amin, and other prominent leaders of the Resistance sought to limit this debate in the name of greater party discipline and insularity.37 This struggle – over the party’s identity, but also over the extent to which internal disagreements ought to be aired publicly – was not easily resolved and prompted, as it had in Yemen for Islah, a series of defections. Muhammed Raad recalled that opinions were solicited from ulema and Resistance fighters, and that by the time it was put to a vote of the Consultative Council, consensus supporting participation had been achieved. Of the nine members of the Council, only Shaykh Subhi al-Tufayli dissented, contributing to his ultimate decision to leave Hizballah.

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In mapping the road to political accommodation, it is important to note that Hizballahi objections to Lebanon’s political regime do not appear to originate in the secular nature of state institutions, though secularism is not something that the party embraces.38 Even if, as Martin Kramer has phrased it, Lebanese Shi’a began to believe that Khomeini’s “medicine could cure Lebanon as well,”39 this does not necessarily imply that the cause of the illness was secularism. Instead, it was the ways in which sectarian privilege and confessional institutions assaulted the sensibilities (and realities) of the “downtrodden,” first among whom in Lebanon have always been and remain the Shi’a, that engendered Hizballah’s rejection of the system. As Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah explained, We believe that [the regime’s] main problem is its sectarian nature; this compels us all to find ways of eliminating this flaw, by which I mean political sectarianism itself and the resulting apportioning of positions in the state administration, in development, and in various services.40 So how did the party go from seeing the regime as one which “could not lend itself to the possibility of political reform, but required revolutionary overhaul to extirpate its very roots,”41 to one that the party was willing to engage, even to the extent, ultimately, of running joint tickets with members of the Maronite Phalange in 2005, or forging a durable alliance with Aoun’s FPM, or nominating a majority government in 2011? The literature on Hizballah offers very different accounts of the reasoning behind the decision to participate in the post-Ta’if order, and Hizballah sources themselves tend to represent the voice of the “winners” in internal debate, masking distinctions between party members.42 According to Judith Harik, the decision to participate in parliamentary politics was rooted in the centrality of the concept(s) of jihad in Hizballah’s cosmology, whereby there was an ideological consistency in waging armed jihad against the Israelis in the South and launching a political jihad in the parliament in order to “use that forum as a means of drawing attention to the substandard conditions in Shiite areas or to the administrative oversight or corruption that prevented

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improvement.”43 While this is an excellent description of Hizballah’s actions once in parliament (and outside, through its campaigns, rallies, and demonstrations), it offers little support to the claim that a comprehensive jihadist mentality framed the decision to compete in the first place. While Harik’s argument that Hizballah’s shift was engendered by a commitment to totalizing jihad is plausible, it differs from party members’ own accounts, in which the development of the social welfare apparatus is a concern secondary to the sanctity of the Resistance and emerged from it.44 Alternatively, Amal Saad-Ghorayeb sees Hizballah’s decision to participate in partisan politics as part of a natural extension of the admonition against fitna, as discussed earlier in the case of Islah, expressing the “moral bases for political violence and political accommodation in oppressive secular systems.”45 Because the amended constitution emerging from the Ta’if negotiations stipulated a means for the gradual phasing out of institutional sectarianism, Saad-Ghorayeb argues, Hizballah was able to see its participation in the existing structure as a means to aid in the achievement of that goal, minimizing fissures within the broader Muslim umma. Since sectarian privilege (e.g. institutionalized Maronite supremacy and Shi’i underrepresentation) is a core feature of the rotten system according to Hizballahi rhetoric, working from within to undo it could therefore be seen as a noble goal.46 Undoing institutional sectarianism – a goal articulated clearly in every Hizballah electoral platform since 1992 – would also serve to enable greater unity among Muslims, which is a principle articulated in the Open Letter and much Hizballahi discourse, and one that was impossible under the conditions of the civil war.47 In the party’s own words, To Hizballah, the Ta’if Accord was not convincing and below the minimum required. The Party made do with a political expression of discontent . . . The approach chosen by Hizballah in its objection to the nature and structure of the confessional regime in Lebanon was the correct political approach.48 The party was still, “looking forward to more change and development in the Lebanese political system in order to abolish the abhorred

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sectarian discrimination and achieve justice among the citizens.”49 Thus, according to Saad-Ghorayeb, the opportunity to undo the damage of political sectarianism was the principal motive for integration into the post-Ta’if political system. I see more evidence of Saad-Ghorayeb’s account echoed in my own interviews with party leaders, who stressed the importance of participation for the pursuit of a capacious notion of justice. In this way, participation was viewed variously as a means of pursuing distributive justice for particular regions and communities, of challenging the justice of sectarian institutions, or of safeguarding what party members regarded as the pursuit of international justice through support for the Resistance. As Beirut MP Muhammed al-Berjawi noted of Hizballah’s first electoral bid, “The most important points and clauses of this program [the 1992 platform] were the protection of the Resistance and its legitimacy.”50 He added that one of the principal objectives of parliamentary participation was the increased “visibility of the Resistance standpoint.”51 Al-Berjawi was present at the internal party debates over participation, and his sentiments were echoed in interviews with other Hizballah leaders, as well as in Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem’s written account of the party’s origins.52 Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, elected as Secretary-General only shortly before the 1992 elections, explained in an interview at the time that, “There is a dialectical link, here, between the resistance and the internal situation in Lebanon, because for the resistance to survive there should be a community that adopts it and adopts the resistance fighter. This means that, in order to remain steadfast, that fighter needs to secure all the support he needs politically, security-wise, culturally, and economically.”53 While Muhammed Raad’s account affirms al-Berjawi’s and Nasrallah’s emphasis on the centrality of the Resistance, he focuses less on the instrumental value of participation as a means of blocking disarmament than he does on the role of deliberative engagement in building and maintaining genuine support for an armed Resistance among other Lebanese factions. For Raad, participation gave Hizballahis an opportunity to improve their knowledge, and thus their understanding of the priorities of their interlocutors, and vice versa. He recalls the

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first day he walked into parliament, when he noted the responses of some Christian deputies, looking on from across the chapter “as if saying, ‘Those are Hizballah members? They are humans just like us!’” Sustained engagement, he argued, changed all concerned: In theory, we were recognizing other factions, but in practice we were trying to act like they didn’t exist. But when we participated in parliament, we were obliged to recognize that others really exist in the political arena. They might be hurt by or might respond positively to our movement . . . and [therefore] our message became more flexible in recognizing coexistence and dealing with others. I see no reason to hide this truth; we admit it. This is what participation means.54 Through its participation in post-Ta’if political institutions, Hizballah’s involvement in elections and parliamentary politics would help it to achieve many of the goals articulated in its earliest manifesto: advancing the interests of the mahrumin, working for deconfessionalization of the regime, and cultivating support for the continuation of the Resistance. Hizballah’s move toward greater integration into Lebanon’s state institutions can be read as both strengthening the idea that state institutions ought to be the space through which power is distributed and distribution debated, through transparent mechanisms. This reality may coexist with the practical challenge posed by what I refer to below as Hizballah’s “subcontracting” in security and service provision, a challenge that has inhibited the development of state capacity.

Social Provision, the Resistance, and “Subcontracting the State” in the 1990s Even from the articulation of the Open Letter, Hizballah’s discursive focus has been broader than simply the Shi’i (or even the Muslim) community in Lebanon. But, faced with the challenge of expanding its support outside of zones of party loyalty in the South and the Biq’a Valley, Hizballah concretized its appeal to the disenfranchised even more during the 1990s, through a series of social programs. Indeed,

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some have claimed that the electoral success of the 1992 election had “less to do with the Resistance or Hizballah’s Islamist ideology than with its prowess in establishing a network of social services for the Shi’i poor,”55 making, maintaining and deepening the scope of these programs a key priority for the party, building its popularity among Shi’a of all class backgrounds.56 In a context in which one can say “that support is lent and that political loyalty is fungible,”57 Hizballah’s investment in long-term infrastructure building, as opposed to more transparent vote-buying, was interpreted by some, particularly the growing Western-educated professional class, as at attempt to build a party based on principle, a form of rational legitimacy that might transcend the shifting sands of confessional loyalty and the patronage of the zu’ama, Lebanon’s traditional sectarian elite.58 While the service orientation is old hat for many western parties, it must be heavily underlined that in Lebanon, unremitting efforts by parties or politicians to serve the public in these ways are almost unheard of. The most citizens can expect is a road paved or some streetlights installed a day or two before the parliamentary elections – and this by exploiting the resources of state agencies.59 This lack of familiarity with service-oriented parties, particularly among the war generation, provided Hizballah with a unique opportunity to reach out to alienated segments of the post-war population and to secure for itself a role in the rebuilding of Lebanon. The Lebanese civil war and conflict with Israel led to the near-total collapse of state infrastructure, and uneven investment in the postwar period has often mapped onto existing cleavages deepened by the war. In the aftermath of the war, economic reconstruction was foremost in the minds of officials and citizens alike,60 but Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri’s Horizon 2000 reconstruction projects involved unsustainable spending and continued to overlook many areas, focusing on Beirut and its environs in an effort to promote foreign investment.61 Such gaps in state planning presented Hizballah with a unique opportunity to

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“subcontract” some of the responsibilities of the state. This role is part of what has made the party of the 1990s, according to some accounts, “the most effective and efficient political party in the country.”62 Judith Harik noted that what has distinguished Hizballah’s social welfare apparatus from others in Lebanon and the region is that, “these services are constantly evolving and that they are offered in a professional atmosphere that would not have been possible without careful planning and special attention to social and public service delivery systems.”63 As Hizballah MP Muhammed Raad explained, this was essential to building the party’s support in the immediate post-war period. “Some people may not understand what Hizballah discusses in parliament, but they do understand that it built them a school and a hospital, at a time when getting treatment in Beirut was expensive.”64 This focus on public-service provision rested on appeals to transnational and subnational sources of authority. As Nasrallah argued: In Islam, the act of serving the people and God’s families, rescuing the oppressed, saving the distressed, and stretching out one’s hand to the weak and the dispossessed, are a huge part of the faith. These [actions] are mentioned in the Qur’an, and we want to encourage them anew.65 The idea that state institutions would be the appropriate locus of distributional justice is thus one that brings a transnational notion of Muslim obligation, expressed through specific idioms of dispossession familiar to the subnational Shi’i community, to bear on the national political field. Importantly, Hizballah’s constituency-building in the 1990s was conducted through social welfare and advocacy channels that were already in place prior to the decision to engage in electoral politics. Several of the key service organizations in the fields of healthcare, education, construction, and poverty relief were legally registered with the state’s Ministry of the Interior in 1988, and had been offering services in the years prior to the end of the civil war. The government extended increasingly broad mandates to these organizations, and earmarked funds to be distributed to their programs.66 These programs also

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received considerable operational assistance from Iran, as well, though commentators stress that the 1990s saw Hizballah develop increasing financial independence from Iran, even if it is unclear which side has had more to gain from this weakening of financial ties.67 One of the principal contributions of Hizballah’s social welfare efforts, and one often obscured by media accounts that stress the Shi’i particularism of the party and its financial tie to Iran, is that the infrastructure projects undertaken by Hizballah have been open to residents of all confessional backgrounds and party affiliations. While the projects have tended to be built in Shi’i neighborhoods, this is more than a theoretical openness, as “doctors working in the [Hizballah] hospitals report that both Muslims and Christians may and do use the medical facilities,”68 and many non-Hizballah (and non-Shi’i) families send their children to party-run schools.69 Expanding these services and increasing the scope of their activities under the aegis of the state has been one of the articulated goals of municipal and national-level electoral platforms, as Hizballah rightly highlights that it has outperformed the state in some regards. One clear example of this was demonstrated in the realm of healthcare in the 1990s, as the party expanded its base of support. Lebanese law prohibits the provision of free healthcare by non-state actors, but the rates set by Hizballah hospitals were affordable to their impoverished constituency. The party’s hospitals and clinics provided better medical care than government hospitals at a quarter of the cost, according to the accounts of doctors unaffiliated with the party.70 Subsidies from Iran helped to finance these healthcare programs, but funds were also provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crecent, UNICEF, and other international NGOs.71 During the early 1990s, Hizballah’s Iranian funding focused principally on providing care to those wounded in the Resistance, and to the families of martyrs. By the second post-war parliamentary election, however, Hizballah has allocating funds for the operation of more than forty health centers (ranging from fully-equipped hospitals, to clinics, to first-aid posts) in the Shi’i-predominant suburbs of Beirut, the Biq’a Valley, and the South, serving tens of thousands of patients annually.72 Schooling has been another salient component of Hizballah’s infrastructural approach to constituency building, though its approach

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has differed starkly from Islah’s effort to protect tertiary “scientific institutes” from oversight. Hizballah schools adopted a curriculum approved and supervised by the state and attractive to parents. The curriculum itself is overseen by the Ministry of Education, thus sidestepping some of the criticisms launched at other Islamist organizations in the region. These schools are competitive with other local schools in offering foreign-language curricula that will enable students to matriculate in any of the universities in Lebanon, or to succeed in an increasingly service-oriented post-war economy. As one father, an open member of Hizballah’s rival Amal, put it: Many of us are not Hezbollah, nor are we in the least affiliated with their ideologies or political views, but we cannot deny them their achievements and we realize that their schools are currently better than anything else in the area . . . I could not believe it, but they place as much emphasis on the teaching of foreign languages as they do Arabic, despite all their rhetoric about the West.73 Graduates of these schools, which are located largely in the impoverished dahiya or rural communities of the Biq’a or the South, have then been able to compete to win Hizballah scholarships to cover university expenses, including programs at the American University in Beirut.74 This is a notable example of the party’s willingness to engage broader Lebanese society, but there are more mundane examples, such as the party’s regular sale of highly discounted textbooks for students attending non-Hizballah schools.75 While the curriculum contained in these books is not sanctioned by the party, easing the financial burden of its constituents and their children takes precedence over issues of ideological influence. Or, in other words, this act of generosity might help to do the ideological work of attracting voters who would ordinarily not encounter or who would be indifferent to Hizballah’s message. As Hizballah built its electoral base, however, there were pressing and immediate needs for many residents of the dahiya and other underserviced areas that superseded education, or even healthcare. The devastating effect of the civil war, the mass migration from the South

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to the largely unplanned suburbs of Beirut, and the history of institutional neglect left the largely (but not exclusively) Shi’a neighborhoods of the dahiya in a state of underdevelopment that is striking when set against the backdrop of an increasingly prosperous and elegant capital city. Jihad al-Binaa’ and the Relief Committee, as well as a number of other, more targeted organizations, were critical to rebuilding (and, in some underserviced areas, simply building for the first time) infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, and community centers. The most profound effect of these projects, demonstrating the extent to which the party had come to supplant the state in the provision of life-sustaining services, is demonstrated in projects as basic as the provision of clean drinking water, electricity, and the removal of hazardous waste. Since the end of the civil war, Hizballah has engaged in a concerted and often rhetorically-charged campaign to secure appropriate sanitation for the residents of the neighborhoods and districts of the dahiya, the belt of largely-Shi’i and underserved suburbs south of Beirut. This campaign involved two main components – pressure on the government to improve basic services, and the temporary provision of those services in the absence of the state. Out of unfortunate necessity, both components of this campaign continue to be in force, as the 2006 war with Israel destroyed what limited progress had been made by state agencies and partisan donors alike. The active component of the campaign involved daily replenishment of neighborhood reservoirs and the use of mobile generators to pump water into rooftop cisterns in apartment blocks throughout the neighborhoods.76 It has been estimated that Hizballah’s mobile tankers distributed daily drinking water to almost 500,000 residents of the dahiya in the mid-1990s.77 The party has also undertaken partial responsibility for garbage removal in the dahiya. From 1988 until 1993, the party bore the burden alone, and while it formally transferred responsibility to the Department of Sanitation in 1993, the government was unable to meet the needs of the neighborhood adequately, and the party continued to remove more than 300 tons of garbage out of the area per day well into the 2000s.78 At a rhetorical level, the conditions of the dahiya and its underprovision by state institutions have been an important part of Hizballah’s critique of the sectarian regime and its call for deconfessionalization.

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As I will discuss in later chapters, the 2006 war with Israel and the nature of reconstruction efforts have complicated and contested this narrative. Survey results show that popular support for Hizballah in the 1990s was considerably affected by these social welfare programs. Well over half of respondents in a survey of Shi’i-predominant neighborhoods named Hizballah as “the political party that contributed most to the Shiites’ educational, health, and social needs.”79 Perhaps more significantly, the survey illustrated the class composition of Hizballah’s electoral base. The results showed that only 44 percent of Hizballah loyalists were from the lower classes, and that party support was drawn from across the socioeconomic spectrum. In this regard, “Shiite fundamentalism appears to attract a following with a class composition not strikingly dissimilar to liberal parties.”80 This suggests that there must be something in the party’s activities or rhetoric that is more significant than simply vote-buying among poor Shi’i citizens through the provision of services. Other findings in the study suggest that religiosity is not the cause of Hizballah’s popularity among wealthier voters, either. But if sectarian loyalty were the answer, what would explain Amal’s increasingly limited popularity relative to Hizballah? It is possible that support for Hizballah among wealthier, less religious Shi’a in the 1990s was based on the party’s advocacy role. Nabih Berri, the leader of Amal and the Speaker of Parliament, has often been characterized as only too happy to take on the role of a neo-za’im and engage in the tired game of patronage. As Anne Norton noted in 1999, “The irony of Berri’s transformation from populist nemesis of the confessional system to powerful denizen of confessional politics is lost on few.”81 Editorials and cartoons confirm this image of Berri, and have characterized Amal as a patronage network more than a political party. Hizballah, by contrast, has often been characterized as holding its leaders to a strict standard of austerity in their personal conduct and wealth, and encourages the wealthy to fulfill their religious obligations to the poor. This is what Raad and others have referred to as Hizballah’s “clean model.” The way in which the party’s leadership, most notably Sayyid Nasrallah, conformed to this expectation,

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has given the impression of a party willing to stand on principle. The death of Nasrallah’s son, Hadi, offers an example of the power of this image of austerity: The general public was unaware that Nasrallah’s oldest son, Hadi, was a common guerilla fighter operating against the Israelis in the “Security Zone.” His death in September 1999 in one of the actions there thus galvanized Lebanese from all walks of life . . . The Secretary-General’s refusal to make any special deal with the Israelis to recover Hadi’s body and his words – ‘let them bury him with his companions in Palestine’ – elevated Nasrallah’s reputation to that of a man of unquestionable principle . . . Thousands of Lebanese of all faiths, including busloads of youths from Christian areas, paid their condolences to him and his wife in Haret Hareik.82 While the party later came to mark the martyrdom of Hadi with a specific commemoration, this initial show of solidarity with more pedestrian members of the Resistance and their families was an example of the kind of moral leadership shown by Hizballah’s vanguard. Were this an isolated instance, it could be more easily dismissed, but the personal austerity of the Hizballah leadership is something that was cultivated in the 1990s as a means of attracting followers away from the politics of the zu’ama. As Amal Saad-Ghorayeb notes, So ubiquitous is this theme in Hizbu’llah political thought that it has become institutionalized as a norm to which Hizbu’llah officials must adhere. Thus, asceticism is a predominant feature of the lifestyles of Hizb’ullah’s leadership, in accordance with the party’s self-designation as “the first party to oppose deprivation.”83 This fit coherently with the party’s claim to advocate not only for the disenfranchised, but also for the dismantling of a corrupt sectarian system in which elected leaders from poor districts drive Land Rovers and keep homes in tony sections of Beirut.

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This advocacy component of the party’s activities has been sophisticated and at least partially effective. Hizballah has made use of its own research team at the party-affiliated Center for Developmental Studies to conduct field research on areas in need of infrastructural support. These reports have been used by MPs in legislative sessions, and have worked their way up the chain within various ministries to reach the cabinet.84 As Raad noted, “We have a planning center that develops plans to serve the citizens’ needs. Sometimes, we provide what they need [directly], and other times, we ask the government, through the ministries, to do so.”85 He elaborated with an example: During the war, people were using electricity without meters, so we discussed the problem with the Minister of Electricity and said that this problem will only be solved if the citizens trust the government . . . First, we suggested making the meters affordable, and [then] dealing strictly with anyone who used electricity without a meter. The minister liked the idea, so he asked one of his consultants to prepare a regulation on this issue [as we suggested].86 This is one of the ways in which Hizballah has worked to affirm the idea of the state as the appropriate locus of distribution. Toward this end, reports of this form of advocacy have also been used as a part of Hizballah’s media strategy, to frame particular state failings as part of a legacy of neglect and abandonment, rooted in the confessional nature of the regime. The dahiya remains the penultimate example of this neglect. In 1993, Prime Minister Hariri gave an interview in which he had the following to say: Listen, the issue of the southern suburbs is a big one. This is one of the major thorny issues that has not been dealt with . . . There are Lebanese citizens in the southern suburbs who live in unsatisfactory circumstances which we, as a government, do not accept.87 And yet, despite this rhetorical note, the dahiyya maintained its mantle as the Belt of Misery. Some of this has been the product of state

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neglect, and some has been the consequence of the misrecognition of subcontracting. When Hizballah – from a position outside of the governing cabinet – distributed both private and state funds, it maintained some measure of local legitimacy at the expense of the state, in both senses of the expression. Local citizens continued to credit Hizballah with service provision, even when it was the state (via the Ministry of Public Works, for example) that granted the party the autonomy and the government (through budgetary provision) that has underwritten some of the resources that enabled this service-provision. As its share of seats increased and, eventually, it moved into the cabinet, Hizballah was able to leverage the popularity of its service provision to secure greater resources from the state for distribution in its neighborhoods, perpetuating the cycle.88 This did not mean, however, that the rhetoric of neglect became less useful. One particularly salient example of the way in which Hizballah rhetorically framed government failures (or state subcontracting) is found in what has come to be referred to in Hizballah as the “events in the dahiya” of May 2004, perfectly highlighting the evocation of political themes of neglect. The Lebanese Armed Forces were brought into the dahiya to help put down demonstrations there that were part of a nation-wide strike in protest against what were seen as increasingly unsustainable economic policies and their effect on living conditions among the poor. Protesters gathered outside of the Ministry of Labor, which is located in the dahiya. In the course of dispersing the protesters, who had been in violation of no law up to that point, some protesters threw rocks at the soldiers, and the soldiers responded with live ammunition, killing six civilians and injuring scores more.89 This led to an understandable public outcry and pressure by Hizballah on the government to convene an emergency session of the cabinet and, later, the parliament. It is Nasrallah’s response in the press conference held on May 29 2004 that so elegantly highlights the interweaving of the broader trope of neglect in Hizballah discourse. Using language that first framed the strike as both a national, non-sectarian issue, and a “natural” impulse toward constitutionally protected freedoms of expression and assembly, he went on to say,

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Some demonstrations occur in some regions, where the protestors receive beatings by hand, bat and water hose . . . Why should water hoses be used in other places whereas bullets are being used in our place, in the dahiya? . . . should the dahiya be deprived not only of drinking water but also of waters used to scatter the demonstrations? Why should the people in the dahiya get shot by bullets?90 Thus the deployment of armed troops to the dahiya – now conceived as a site in which the state was at war with a society represented by Hizballah – was considered another instance of discrimination, and was discursively tied to the ongoing neglect of the Shi’a/poor by the state, according to the confessional logic of the regime.91 This is but one example of the ways in which Shi’a disenfranchisement and tropes of state neglect are woven together as Hizballah attempts to carry the mantle of Musa al-Sadr’s Harakat al-Mahrumin in its approach to issues of domestic politics. Discursive Techniques and Transformation “They resist with their blood. Resist with your vote.” This 1996 campaign slogan came in the wake of the Israeli Grapes of Wrath operation, in which 109 Lebanese civilians were killed in an artillery attack on a UN compound that was serving as a temporary shelter for civilians fleeing more substantial shelling further south.92 During the period from 1989 until the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, Hizballah’s discursive transformation was marked by just such blunt attempts to capitalize on the successes of the Resistance and the continuing injustices of the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon and, to a lesser extent, Palestine. In many ways, the themes of this period are a variation on those expressed by the foundational manifesto. At the same time, however, there are subtle differences in the articulation and framing of those themes that seem to presage some of the party’s later choices. These changes are manifested largely in two discussions – that of the Resistance, and that of the fundamental nature of the Lebanese regime.

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In the first case, the Resistance was gradually refashioned as an explicitly national cause, of concern to and touching the lives of all Lebanese citizens, regardless of sect, level of peity, and so forth. Whereas the language of the 1985 Open Letter focused simultaneously on the Shi’i downtrodden (through tropes of disenfranchisement derived from the ‘Alid narrative of unjustly usurped authority) and the global masses disenfranchised by a broad imperialist agenda, the prevalence of appeals directed toward specifically Lebanese interests became considerably more prominent during the 1990s. Some unique features of the Lebanese electoral system, whereby candidates run on joint lists and are elected at least by voters from outside of their sect, would have made this type of concession necessary. Certainly, also, the ongoing Israeli occupation of parts of the South after the end of the civil war, as well as attacks within non-occupiued regions, most particularly Operation Accountability (1993) and Operation Grapes of Wrath (1996), gave Hizballah’s claim to be “the only option toward a dignified liberation with no conditions or prices that would damage the sovereignty” of Lebanon a certain credibility, as it was, indeed, the only force that remained armed and actively engaged Israeli forces, including the gradually rebuilding Lebanese Army.93 Thus the party was able to “nationalize” the message of (the) Resistance in part because of the material realities of ongoing hostilities with Israel. While the Resistance figured in the 1992 electoral platform, it was framed in much the same language as that of the pre-Ta’if period. But by 1996, after two large-scale conflicts with the IDF, the language of Hizballah’s campaigning was reframed as a nationalist struggle to liberate sovereign Lebanese territory that reflected a decidedly post-war emphasis on national unity. The electoral platform was divided into seven sections, but the first, dealing with the Resistance, was by far the longest, and certainly the most theatrical. Thus the party defined its objectives vis-à-vis the continuation of the Resistance, noting that it had, affirmed its being an element of unity and dignity for the Lebanese and a major guarantor for their security . . . we will work on the strong and efficient continuation of the Resistance until

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our occupied land is completely liberated and restored to national sovereignty, until our people in the occupied strip [the Southern “Security Zone”] are released and able to secure a free, honorable, decent living . . . Protecting Lebanese civilians will remain essential to the conduct of the Resistance . . . We will seek with all carefulness to ensure that the Lebanese people, with all its sects, categories, and individuals, continue to be embracers of Resistance and the base from which it derives strength and presence.94 But it was also incumbent upon the party to undertake activities and take positions in parliament that would solidify its role beyond the Resistance, as defenders of social justice. This role as a symbolic voice for the dispossessed, many of whom had not seen considerable improvements in their standard of living since the conclusion of the war, is critical to Dalal el-Bizri’s conclusion that during this period, Hizballah “constitute[d] the most important party in the Lebanese parliament.”95 She points out, for example, the critical role that Hizballah played by denying Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri its support in the confidence measure that eventually led to his resignation. She notes that, “the opposition of the Hizballah deputies to the person of Hariri is articulated in terms of two major themes: money, and authoritarianism.”96 The first largely took the form of allegations of corruption against the Solidere investment firm, in which Hariri held a controlling share and which received a disproportionate share of the reconstruction contracts meted out by the government. Allegations of corruption (fasaad) are common in Islamist media generally, so, to some extent, this is not a major point of distinction. But el-Bizri characterizes Hizballah rhetoric as “more alarmist” than that of Lebanon’s Sunni Islamist Jama’a al-Islamiyya.97 The party’s critique of Hariri’s authoritarian tendencies, however, makes most manifest the party’s role in affirming expectations of accountable governance and building the idea of the state. Describing Hariri’s first term, Hizballah deputy Ibrahim Amin warned that: Lebanon is menaced by the mentality of kings, princes, and sultans. But Lebanon is neither a kingdom, nor a sultanate, nor a principality of petroleum or dollars.98

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Thus what he later characterized as the “personalization of opportunity” corresponds closely to the wasta, or connections, that many Lebanese continued to decry as the ordering principle of society, polity, and economy in post-war Lebanon. In speaking against this personalization and using state institutions as a platform from which to call for greater rule of law and accountability, Hizballah increasingly sought during this time period to position itself as a voice for rational-legal order. In articulating the party’s critique of the ruling “troika” (Prime Minister Hariri, President Hrawi, and Speaker Nabih Berri of rival Amal), Amin concluded that, “this government is incapable of founding a modern state, a state of citizens . . . The government is not interested in defending the interests of the state.”99 Thus, during this period, the party began to appropriate a discourse of republican constitutionalism in its critique of the regime, calling for a state that would be responsible to its citizens and accountable in its decision-making. While this was certainly something that would resonate among the Shi’i poor of the dahiya, it was something that the party could also use to limit its sectarian image, and present a countervailing image in the face of media representations of Hizballah extremism. Even Imam ‘Ali and other explicitly Shi’i religious motifs were nationalized, and perhaps even “secularized,” during this period, signifying tropes that were designed to transcend Shi’i particularism to one audience, while cementing it as a motive for action with another.100 ‘Ali was reconfigured less as an oppositional voice and more as a model for state leaders (and certainly party leaders) to emulate, particularly with regard to his egalitarianism and reputation for personal frugality. This was particularly important in debates over corruption, a major theme in the mid-1990s, and represents another meaningful instance of the national being affirmed through reference to the trans/subnational. Well-known sayings of Imam ‘Ali were also deployed in parliamentary debate, such as those that view deprivation as a cause of deviance, as discussed in Chapter 5. Thus pious references persisted in Hizballah discourse, but in ways configured to fit the particularities of Lebanon’s cross-confessional polity. With regard to the withering of the role of the Islamic state

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and wilayat al-faqih in Hizballah discourse, silence speaks louder than words. Many have made mention of the fact that Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah, in his role as an unofficial spiritual guide of Hizballah, never took the establishment of an Islamic State in Lebanon to be a plausible reality, and this has been used to explain his comparatively moderate positions on a number of issues related to sectarian coexistence.101 But despite his essential role in the eyes of many, if not most, Lebanese Shi’a, Fadlallah was not Hizballah,102 and the party’s founders and initial manifesto were clear about the centrality of establishing an Islamic Republic. So did the muting of the party’s calls for an Islamic state represent a sincere reassessment of party priorities, or were they temporarily shelved in the interest of securing the continuing autonomy of the Resistance through electoral competition? The answer to this seems to lie at the margins, and requires a careful reading of what the party did – and did not – say on the topic in the Open Letter. Hizballah’s pre-Ta’if discourse did not call for the forcible establishment of an Islamic state. Instead, this was set as the party’s ultimate goal, and the road to that goal was seen as the (noncoercive) conversion of Lebanese society to the principles of Shi’i Islam. Given that, the party’s practices during this period – as both the military defender of Lebanese sovereignty and the self-proclaimed political voice of the oppressed – might be read as an attempt to win the “hearts and minds” of the non-Shi’i portion of the population. Party discourse emphasized the shared values common to “all divine religions,” which include freedom, truth, justice, and peace, taken as an inextricable whole. Thus, freedom cannot be enjoyed by one group and denied to another, right should not prevail here and be paralyzed there; if abated, justice turns into injustice; peace can not be achieved unless it is comprehensive.103 The party has never disguised the fact that it believes that Islam is the surest route to all four of these values, nor that the party was “established on the basis of its commitment to the above-mentioned values, seeking, with its noble religious and national struggle to achieve these

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values in Lebanon and the region and to eliminate all the artificial barriers that would obstruct that purpose.”104 Thus, somewhat paradoxically, Hizballah has fashioned itself as both national and transnational, alluding perhaps to its relationship to a broader transnational umma, but going on to recount the victories of the (national) Resistance and the successes of the party’s (national) reconstruction efforts. In interviews, members of the party repeatedly stressed that it would only be under conditions of massive social support – defined for the party as something sufficiently larger than a simple majority – that movement might ethically and practically be made toward establishing such an Islamic state. Thus it is possible to see Hizballah’s relative silence on the issue of the Islamic state as a “ruse,” but also alternatively as a programmatic attempt to create the social conditions required for a popularly supported (and democratically achieved) Islamic system.105 As Raad explained, We are Islamists who believe that the only political system that achieves justice is the Islamic system, but we are not in a country in which only Muslims live. Our country has a plurality of Christians and includes seventeen religious sects, so there is no real majority . . . In order to do its duty in fighting the Israelis, the Resistance must be supported by all the Lebanese people, with their different sects. Therefore, as Islamists, we have to be open to Christians in order to achieve mutual trust.106 Yet some remained unconvinced, invoking the specter of forced Islamization. As vocal critic Gibran Tueni put it, “Hizballah is still a party that believes, one day or another, [it] will be able to implement the Islamic Republic in Lebanon.”107 He continued, Now, when you ask them this question, because they are very smart, they will tell you “yes, but we will never implement it by force.” The problem is not implementing it by force or not, the problem is that as long as you believe that you can change the profile of Lebanon, this is a danger for my Lebanon, for the Lebanon that we know. The raison d’étre of Lebanon is that it is a pluralistic society.108

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Tueni’s concern inevitably stemmed from the fact that Hizballah was the only wartime militia to retain its weapons in the 1990s and into the next decade. Even when these weapons were only used in conflict with Israel, the costs of engagement were borne by all Lebanese. Tueni thus directed his final comment to the party itself, arguing, “Okay, you want to be a political party, at least begin to use all the same tools that all political parties are using, meaning no weapons, no finance from Iran, and meaning that you do not represent all the Shiites of Lebanon.”109 Speaking as the last Syrian forces were withdrawn from Lebanon, his candor reflected the extent to which Hizballah’s effort to “nationalize” the Resistance, a question taken up in the next chapter, had not fully succeeded. It would face tremendous challenge in the year that followed, in the 2006 war with Israel.

Conclusion The Resistance itself was the most critical instrument of nationalization for Hizballah, particularly in the years between the 1992 election and the 2000 Israeli withdrawal, and it is also a site in which some of the party’s greatest transformations have been expressed. In many ways, the Resistance itself is the meeting ground on which the two (trans/ subnational) elements of Hizballah’s identity most completely and successfully fuse. On the one hand, the party was reliant on external (particularly Iranian) support for the supply of the weapons and cash needed to maintain its operations in Southern Lebanon, and depended on both diplomatic and logistical assistance from Syria in transporting those materials. On the other hand, increased Israeli operations in the post-war period, particularly the 1996 Operation Grapes of Wrath, had a bolstering effect on the party’s popularity, even among segments of the population that would ordinarily fall outside of its political or sectarian reach. As one Christian civil society activist reflected, I’m not saying I agree – their ideology is very different from anything I wish to aspire to. I’m just saying [that] to me, these guys are a resistance. They’re not terrorists. They don’t shoot us . . . they’re there to defend a territory, and when they can bomb the

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Israelis, they do. Why not? The Israelis bug everyone else, [and] no one else says anything about it.110 As long as the territory that the Resistance was defending was seen as squarely occupied Lebanese land, the fighting itself enjoyed broad legitimacy. But as ‘Ali Hamdan, a senior member of the rival Amal movement, noted, “If we don’t want [the Israelis] to return, we don’t want to cause problems on the border that will make them return.”111 The events of 2006, and a consequent polarization of support for the Resistance, appear to support this point.

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CHAPTER 4 HIZBALLAH IN GOVERNMENT (AND BACK . . . AND FORTH)

We don’t differentiate between the army and the resistance; our weapons are their weapons, and their weapons are our weapons.1 Perphaps more than any other country in the Middle East, Lebanon has been perpetually marked by the interests and actions of outsiders. Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians, Israelis, Americans, French, and Italians have all flown their own flags over parts of Lebanon in the past quarter-century, often to the regret of all concerned. In many ways, Lebanese politics may thus seem to be a fundamentally reactive politics, as debates in the post-war period have shifted in response to external shocks, much as battle lines shifted during the war to reflect the passing interest of these outsiders. But even as external actors have remained central to Lebanese politics in the 2000s, debates about these actors and their perceived interests tell us a great deal about how Hizballah and other organizations see themselves in relation to Lebanese state and society, and about how ideal relationships are imagined and political projects enacted. This section will consider four recent upheavals – the Israeli and Syrian withdrawals, the 2006 war with Israel, and the crisis of May 2008 – and their effects on party practice, in order to illustrate the ways in which the Islamo-nationalist synthesis that the party endeavored to construct in the 1990s has come under increasing strain.

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The Israeli Withdrawal in 2000 The initiation of the Ta’if process and the post-war reconstruction, as discussed in the previous section, required a recalibration of Hizballah’s relationship to Lebanon and its citizens of all confessions. Having resolved to participate in a plural political process, Hizballah was able in the 1990s to draw upon the broad popularity of the Resistance (among Shi’i and many non-Shi’i Lebanese alike) to deflect attention from some its more controversial and potentially problematic practices and principles, including its relationship to wilayat al-faqih. The Israeli withdrawal changed this. In some ways, the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Southern “Security Zone” on May 25, 2000 precipitated a process of reevaluation that mirrored the period in which Hizballah deliberated about participation in electoral competition. The leadership was forced to assess just how much it was willing to “give away” in the process of parliamentary compromise and what it could afford to retain. More substantially, the party had to determine how to continue to justify itself and its (exceptional) armed status in nationalist terms in the absence of an enemy within Lebanese borders. Because the 1990s had entailed such clear and unapologetic intertwining of the party and the Resistance, this was a nearly existential task. The challenge in the immediate post-Israeli moment, then, was to sustain the relevance of the Resistance as a national Resistance. This entailed at least three specific and interrelated discursive strategies. First, Hizballah questioned the degree to which the Israeli occupation had, in fact, ended. This involved a focus on contested territories, such as the Shebaa Farms, and smaller territorial disputes with Israel, such as the village of Ghajar, or the “Seven Villages” controversy, a border dispute that dates to the period of the British and French mandates.2 In other words, party leaders endeavored to extend Lebanon’s occupied status. Second, Hizballah leaders invoked the role of the Resistance in successfully bringing about Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon to advance its relationship to the Palestinian cause and to promote itself regionally as the archetype for successful anti-Israeli action.3 Lastly, in the context of the U.S. “War on Terror” and invasion of Iraq, Hizballah worked to cultivate anti-American sentiment so as to

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deflect U.S.-sponsored initiatives to disarm the Resistance. This effort escalated tremendously following UN Security Council Resolution 1559, and again following the assassination of Hariri in 2005; but even before this point, the party attempted to position itself as an “authentic” and “local” party in ways distinct from its rivals, whom it endeavored to frame in the familiar role of foreign puppet, serving American and French interests. The target audiences of each of these messages differed somewhat, and they have at times been in substantial tension, signaling the profound difficulty that Hizballah has encountered in articulating its Islamo-nationalist dualism in the 2000s. Mapping a Perpetual Occupation On the day after the Israelis withdrew from Southern Lebanon, Hizballah’s Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, gave a speech decrying the continuing occupation of the Shebaa Farms.4 For the better part of the first year following the Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon, Hizballah continued to engage with the IDF in the border region, on the basis of the claim that Israel had not fully withdrawn from all Lebanese territory because it remained in the Shebaa Farms. This is a region of approximately fifteen square miles along the Lebanese border with the Golan Heights, and is composed of fourteen abandoned farms. The border separates the village of Shebaa from the farms belonging to the villagers. It is recognized as part of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights by the United Nations and Israel, but Hizballah and both the Lebanese and Syrian governments have contended that it is part of Lebanon. Hizballah’s effort to extend the definition occupation was complicated by Ariel Sharon’s election as Israel’s new Prime Minister and a consequent shift in Israeli policy regarding the Shebaa Farms. This entailed an Israeli effort to alter what many Lebanese regarded as established “rules of the game” between Hizballah and the IDF, norms upheld since the Israeli attack on Qana in Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996, designed to avoid widespread civilian casualties. Lara Deeb describes the status quo that obtained for approximately a decade: According to these “rules,” a Hizballah attack on an Israeli army post in the occupied Shebaa Farms, for example, would be

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answered by limited Israeli shelling of Hizballah outposts and sonic booms over Beirut.5 In April 2001, Israel retaliated against an attack by the Resistance in the Shebaa Farms by launching an air strike against Syrian military installations inside Lebanon, the first direct military confrontation with Syria since 1982.6 Israeli officials made clear that they would consider any attack in the Farms to have occurred with Syrian encouragement.7 While this did little to threaten Lebanon materially, it underscored for Lebanese and Syrians alike the implications of the Assad regime’s patronage for Hizballah. This shift in strategy, perhaps unintentionally, prompted Hizballah to seek from the Lebanese government explicit assurances of operational autonomy. The government complied, announcing that the Resistance now had the Lebanese government’s blessing to respond to attacks against Lebanese and Syrian targets.8 In the words of Nabih Berri, who announced the change in his capacity as the Speaker of Parliament (also demonstrating unity along the Hizballah-Amal divide), “The time when Israel can impose its own rules on us is over.”9 Rather than driving a wedge between Syrians and Lebanese or isolating Hizballah, this effectively rendered irrelevant (for a time) the question of whether the Shebaa Farms were Syrian or Lebanese, and enabled the continuation of attacks against the Shebaa Farms and Northern Israel within the subcontracting framework of the government-backed Resistance, as described in the previous chapter with regard to the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon. While Israel backed off from this policy after a July 2001 attack on a Syrian installation threatened more substantial escalation, low-grade conflict continued through the 2006 war, when Israel shifted instead to direct retaliation and full-scale war against Lebanon. In the following years, considerable foreign pressure was brought to bear on the Lebanese government to formally relinquish its claim to the Farms, which it has yet to do. The role of the Shebaa Farms as part of the “perpetual occupation” used by Hizballah to justify the Resistance is sufficiently clear that the U.S. has also pressured Israel to return this portion of the Golan Heights, in order to facilitate the disarming of the Resistance.

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A Beacon of Steadfastness A second way in which Hizballah asserted the relevance of the Resistance after the Israeli withdrawal involved building symbolic and material ties with Palestinian organizations. This has included heavy emphasis on Hizballah’s victory in compelling Israel’s withdrawal through a decade-long war of attrition in the occupied zone, not only offering solidarity with Palestinians but asserting a kind of symbolic leadership over the Palestinian struggle. As Laleh Khalili has argued, In declaring its solidarity with Palestinian refugees, Hizbullah represents them as members of the Islamic umma (community) and the Arab nation with whom a common enemy is shared. However, Hizbullah also insists on the distinctiveness – even foreignness – of Palestinian refugees, in order to bolster its own identity . . .10 In this way, the Resistance (and, more broadly, the Lebanese “model”) was positioned as a regional leader in sumud, or streadfastness, a term of valor in Palestinian political discourse meant to signify resistance to Israeli oppression, though Hizballah’s appropriation of the term complicated its more standard usage, as I explore below. During the year and a half between the Israeli withdrawal and the U.S. military advance into the region, in particular, the party made overtures of Palestinian solidarity designed to draw out the waning significance of the Resistance, overtures that reflected a quantitative increase in explicit discussion of the Palestinian cause, and a qualitative shift in emphasis that addressed Hizballah’s domestic political dilemmas. According to party records, in 2000, 5 percent of the public speeches by Secretary-General Nasrallah were given in venues and on subjects explicitly related to the Palestinian cause. There were only two specifically pro-Palestinian speeches (though the cause was frequently mentioned in other venues), one occurring shortly after the outbreak of what would come to be called the al-Aqsa Intifada in September, and the second, at the end of December, in honor of the annual International al-Quds Day, an event inaugurated by Khomeini in 1980 and dedicated to eradicating the Israeli presence in Jerusalem.

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In 2001, by contrast, the proportion of speeches on the Palestinian issue reached a full 20 percent, exceeded by no other single topic.11 As the al-Aqsa Intifada gained momentum, so did Hizballah’s open affiliation with the Palestinian cause. This process was first evident in the Hizballahi media, from widespread coverage in Al-Ahd al-Intiqad to documentary and telenovela programming featuring Palestinian stories and imaginings of return on Hizballah’s Al-Manar station.12 Outside of the media sphere, however, this affiliation reached its apex with the 2005 announcement that the party was prepared to offer material support to Islamic Jihad and Hamas, a pledge which came amid the chaos of the “Beirut Spring,” the Syrian withdrawal, and the articulation of demands to disarm the Resistance.13 Rola el-Husseini has argued that, “the Palestinian cause is a leitmotif of contemporary Shi’a discourse,”14 yet this does not mean that its role in Hizballahi discourse has been uniform. A qualitative shift in how Hizballah officials spoke of the issue after the Israeli withdrawal reflected a kind of regional triumphalism, as well as domestic political anxieties. Hizballah officials treated the “liberation” of Lebanon as an opportunity to expand regional leadership, a move that would complicate later efforts to disarm Hizballah. This claim to leadership was evident from the outbreak of the second intifada, when Nasrallah suggested that he, “always thought that an intifada would break out right after the victory in South Lebanon, as both a reaction to it and as a consequence of it, and that this victory would change the rules of the conflict.”15 Nasrallah’s responses to the second intifada also highlight once again the ways in which sub- and transnational sites of authority are used in Hizballahi discourse to contruct a particular relationship to the Lebanese nation and state. In this case, Khomeini’s revolutionary project in Iran was recast as an intifada, one that pre-dated the Palestinian intifada and the Lebanese Resistance, but was ineluctably tied to it through a common rhetoric of resistance to oppression: Beginning in the early 1960s, the Imam [Khomeini] faced the first widespread doubts over the aims of his popular intifada . . . This was exactly what the resistance in Lebanon has gone through since 1982, when we announced our aim to expel the Occupation

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from our land unconditionally and without restraints, guarantees, rewards or gifts. Many used this to say that this was an unrealistic aim . . . when in fact it was the enemy who constantly retreated and the resistance that advanced and advanced; our aim at the end was achieved. The same is being said today about the intifada in Palestine. They repeat the same words.16 In this way, the Resistance was positioned as part of a transnational tradition of sumud that can be articulated in specific national territorial spaces, against different forms of oppression. The victory of the Resistance figured simultaneously as a consequence of emulation (of Khomeini’s intifada) and as a source of emulation (to Palestinians). This transnational appeal was also paired with subnational appeals. Muhammed Raad, for example, affirmed that “the majority of the fighters are Shi’a, and the Shi’a are very proud that their resistance freed Lebanon from the forces of Israeli occupation.”17 Thus moving fluidly across historical, territorial, and sectarian terrain, Hizballah articulated its victory over Israel as bringing honor to Lebanon itself and expressing a kind of Lebanese leadership in the broader region, of which the Shi’a were a vanguard. It also linked leadership of and support for Palestinians to the defense of Lebanon. As Shaykh Naim Qassem asserted, “Helping the Palestinians to stand up to the Israeli offenses will disable Israel’s ability to expand its aggression into neighboring countries, of which the first would be Lebanon.”18 The sumud of an Iranian Shi’i cleric is taken to have inspired a group of Shi’i Muslims to the point of victory, which in turn serves as a model of sumud for Palestinians, in order to sustain the territorial sovereignty of Lebanon and the freedom of all Lebanese from Israeli aggression. Confronting the Leviathan The third shift that Hizballah undertook in the post-Israeli moment involved American policies in the region. As the Open Letter made clear, the United States has always played a significant role in Hizballah’s political cosmology. Israel itself has fluctuated in party discourse from being the ultimate evil, propped up by the United States, to being the regional manifestation of the greater evil of American

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imperialism itself. In either case, Hizballahi discourse has consistently stressed motifs of disinheritance, inequality, and resistance to imperial hegemony. In the post-Israeli period, Hizballah criticized America’s expanding regional role and repositioned it as a greater evil than even Israel, with Nasrallah asserting that he and members of Hizballah, “feel proud we have been taken as an enemy that should be blacklisted as terrorist by the Great Satan who heads the greatest pyramid of tyranny, repression and arrogance of modern times.”19 Hizballah’s reliance on these motifs in the post-Israeli moment largely rearticulated earlier versions of the party’s identity, but they provided a platform through which to nationalize the organization, to frame it as a defender of the territorial (and cultural) integrity of Lebanon at a critical moment. This was facilitated by U.S. policy itself, especially the Bush administration’s threat to impose sanctions on Lebanon if it did not freeze Hizballah assets after the U.S. listed Hizballah as a terrorist organization in 2001. This elicited swift affirmations from Lebanon’s leaders of the Resistance’s legitimacy as a national resistance. Foreign Minister Mahmoud Hammoud responded to the threat of sanctions as follows: The Lebanese resistance has expelled Israel’s occupation from South Lebanon last year. We are proud of it . . . We view the resistance as a legimitate means to liberate our land from Israeli occupation and we hold fast to it.20 Government officials themselves thus came to weave together themes of Palestinian solidarity and Lebanese sovereignty, noting that, “the resistance and the intifada became the only means to force Israel to implement [UN] resolutions.”21 But all of this was unfolding at the same time that there was growing pressure to reevaluate Lebanese-Syrian relations. The question of a Syrian withdrawal, which was difficult to raise publicly under conditions of Syrian “tutelage,” was advanced in an Open Letter to Bashar al-Assad by an-Nahar editor Gibran Tueni in March 2000, two months before the Israeli withdrawal and on the eve of a U.S.-Syrian diplomatic summit. Tueni’s charges were countered by rival newspapers,

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including Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri’s al-Mustaqbal, which associated him with Lebanese Christian militias aligned with Israel.22 Given the reality of ongoing collaboration between the Southern Lebanese Army (SLA), a Christian militia, and Israeli forces in the South, these allegations had an inhibiting effect on Tueni’s call for withdrawal. By contrast, when Maronite Patriarch Boutrous Nasrallah Sfeir called for Syrian redeployment in August 2000, he did so after the end of the occupation in the South, and as Bashar al-Assad assumed the presidency in Syria. It was thus a moment of broad uncertainty (and one of promise) in which Sfeir pressed for change, contending that Lebanese economic and political problems could be “summed up in that the Lebanese are not in charge of their own affairs.”23 Though Hizballah and Amal saw an electoral bump on the tail of victory in the South, the election of a number of independents with weaker ties to Syria suggests that more Lebanese were willing to align with this position than they had been when Tueni had made similar demands a few months earlier.24 As the calls for Syrian withdrawal escalated following the election and into the spring of 2001, Sunni and Shi’i leaders again raised the specter of collaboration between Christian militias and Israeli forces during the civil war, suggesting that Syrian forces were the main barrier against the sectarian fragmentation and a return to the violence of the civil war.25 This was unsuccessful in preventing the formation in late April of the Qornet Shehwan grouping, which would become the backbone of the anti-Syrian opposition. Their principal demand was for the redeployment of Syrian troops and the full implementation of the Ta’if Accord demands that would later be reflected in UN Security Council Resolution 1559. This group, which included nine MPs, members of several of the Christian wartime militias, and journalists and public intellectuals, was antecedent to a broader Christian Opposition that would develop momentum and eventually attract enough crossconfessional support to achieve the objective of Syrian withdrawal four years later. In the intervening years, with the aid of Lebanese allies, Syria tightened its grip on Lebanon’s security and intelligence services, diminished the independence of the Lebanese judiciary, and finally, against growing opposition, forced through a parliamentary

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extension of President Emile Lahoud’s mandate. As Lebanese sovereignty was being restored in the South, in other words, it was also being undermined through a matrix of institutions that were thoroughly penetrated by Syrian power.26

The Syrian Withdrawal and its Aftermath The passage of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 on September 3, 2004 initiated a period of rapid change for all Lebanese, regardless of party or politics. Based on lobbying by groups like Qornet Shehwan inside Lebanon and advocacy by Lebanese outside the country, and with the full support of the United States and France, the resolution called for two principal objectives: (a) the complete withdrawal of Syrian troops and intelligence forces, with the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty; and (b) the complete disarming of any remaining Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias.27 Protests began in early fall, but were poorly coordinated, and largely featured members of the Christian Right, the Druze Progressive Socialist Party, and a small number of Leftists. The organizing slogan for these events was a simple and overarching chant for “hurrieh, siyadeh, w’istiqlal” (freedom, sovereignty, and independence).28 A series of assassination attempts, threats of violence, and – ultimately – the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri on February 14, 2005 provided an essential fulcrum in the shift from elite movement to popular mobilization for Syrian withdrawal.29 Growing protests in Martyrs’ Square following Hariri’s death were countered by a Hizballah-Amal protest in nearby Riad al-Solh Square on March 8, 2005, from which the “March 8th” bloc would derive its name. The organization of the March 8 protest was not oriented toward stopping the withdrawal so much as challenging the explicitly anti-Syrian tone of the Martyrs’ Square protests, which Hizballah leaders took as an indictment of their own relationship with Syria, and working to separate the two main objectives of UNSCR 1559 in order to protect more effectively the “weapons of the Resistance,” a phrase which became one of the hallmarks of the spring and summer of 2005. This bifurcation gave members of the broad anti-Syrian coalition more

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room for maneuver in the months that followed, allowing figures like Saad Hariri or Walid Jumblatt to simultaneously oppose Syria and support the Resistance, as they would both do in the run-up to the May/June election. The anti-Syrian opposition organized the largest of the spring’s protests, on March 14, as a counter to March 8, and Hizballah’s loyalty to the Syrian regime remained an explicit issue of public debate throughout the spring and summer of 2005. These public debates highlighted the existing tension between national, subnational, and transnational components of Hizballah’s identity, and left the party at a critical crossroads between political accommodation and armed struggle. In examining this tension in light of Hizballah’s shift into government, the next section will focus on a pair of critical issues that shed light on the relationship between party discourse and practice. These include the debate over reforms to the electoral law in the wake of the Syrian withdrawal, the debate over the potential disarmament of the Resistance before and after the 2006 July War. Each of these casts into relief features of the tension between nationalization and transnationalization, and Hizballah’s commitment to the highly particular institutions of the Lebanese state, as the party has attempted to retain influence in the post-Syrian moment. The Electoral Law and the 2005 Elections The Spring 2005 public debate over the restructuring of the electoral law produced a national compromise with which neither Hizballah nor its adversaries on the Christian Right were entirely pleased. Faced with the diminution of Christian (particularly Maronite) influence that would likely accompany a more proportional system, a bulk of the Maronite leadership, including Patriarch Boutrous Sfeir, backed some sort of slight alteration of the institutional status quo based on fixed territorial districts, favoring smaller districts (known as cazas, or qadas) in which there would be greater confessional homogeneity. Because Christians constituted roughly 42 percent of eligible voters in the 2005 elections but held a majority in only two of the fourteen multi-member electoral districts, Sfeir complained that the law would

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allow “only fifteen Christian MPs to be elected by Christian voters, while forty-nine others were to be elected by Muslims.”30 By contrast, smaller electoral districts might reasonably be expected to be more homogenous. At the far end of the spectrum, Christian leaders like Gibran Tueni backed a form of confederation that would grant nearautonomy to the major sectarian groupings.31 Agreeing on a new electoral law was seen by many as an essential means of reestablishing Lebanese sovereignty after the Syrian withdrawal, since the three elections held under post-war Syrian “tutelage” were each based on Syrian-backed electoral compromises designed to produce specific balances in parliament and to reduce the representation of anti-Syrian voices. Though the 1992, 1996, and 2000 elections all featured the same number of total seats and the same sectarian allocation of those seats,32 a different electoral law based on different district boundaries was used for each of the three elections, producing specific balances in parliament amenable to Syrian interests, even though the number of independents in the 2000 election illustrates the limits of such gerrymandering. In 2005, the failure to reach an agreement on their desired reforms to the law was deflating to the March 14 opposition, and was one of the earliest signs of fissure within the supposedly united grouping. Because an agreement could not be reached by the constitutional deadline, or indeed amid speculation that Nabih Berri had deliberately delayed the discussion of a new law in parliament in order to guarantee that it could not be passed by the deadline, the 2000 electoral law remained in effect for the 2005 polls.33 Throughout these debates, Hizballah, Amal, and unaffiliated Shi’i leaders like Fadlallah collectively maintained that they would favor a system of proportional representation with a single, nation-wide constituency, as a realization of deconfessionalization based on the principle of juridical equality. As Sayyid Fadlallah explained, The [new] system must be based on citizenship. There should be no classification of the Lebanese other than as citizens, [equal] in the exercise of rights and the fulfillment of obligations . . . As long as there is the confessional system and as long as there is the mentality of confessionalism, it is impossible for any electoral law to support the Lebanese in the creation of a New Lebanon.34

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In this, he perfectly encapsulated the rhetorical position of Hizballah, as the party used the electoral law debate to further emphasize its commitment to the rule of law and deconfessionalization through the instrument of law. Because the 2000 law remained in effect, Hizballah had nothing to lose by asserting this ideal vision, and indeed much to gain by positioning itself as an advocate of a unified, post-sectarian state accountable to its citizens. General Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement – with its wide, populist electoral base, unique among Christian parties – also favored deconfessionalizing the electoral system and the political regime more broadly.35 Agreement on this, among other principles, formed the foundation of the cross-sectarian March 8 bloc that emerged shortly after the 2005 elections and continued to challenge the rival March 14 bloc in the years that followed.36 The Disarmament Debate Hizballah’s post-Syrian amplification of its commitment to rule-of-law and accountable institutions, however, ran contrary to the party’s continuing violation of the terms of the Ta’if Accord and UNSCR 1559, which stipulated the disarmament of all militias, Lebanese and nonLebanese. In the spring and summer of 2005, editorials, talk shows on television and radio, and university and public symposia were organized around the question of the “arms of the Resistance.”37 The issue also received considerable coverage in the international Arabic media and some Western news sources. A pivotal moment in this debate came with Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah’s speech on May 25, the fifth anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from the South, in which he was unequivocal in declaring that, “the Resistance will not surrender its weapons. The hand that reaches for them is an Israeli hand, and we will cut it off.”38 As Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, in Lebanon for the celebration, noted, “no one would cut off his own hand,”39 thus making explicit the rhetorical attempt to position advocates of disarmament as disloyal, even traitorous (a topic taken up at some length in Chapter 6). The logic of such statements, as Hizballah officials explained at the time, was three-fold: (a) the weapons are used to defend Lebanon;

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(b) anyone who tries to restrict the weapons of the Resistance would be working against the Lebanese public interest, and therefore (c) those in Lebanon who would work against the public interest must be Israelis or their agents. The implicit work done by Nasrallah’s statement asserted Hizballah’s formal openness to dialogue on the arms issue, while foreclosing the possibility that it would accept any products of dialogue that would lead to the demilitarization of the Resistance. In other words, anyone could talk, but Hizballah made no promise to listen. In interviews conducted in the midst of this public debate, party officials were quick to reconcile what seemed to be two contradictory messages regarding the Resistance’s weapons. On the one hand, Nasrallah repeatedly declared the party’s openness to dialogue regarding disarmament, and, on the other, he had threatened anyone who tried to “steal” the group’s arms. As Muhammed Raad, head of the party’s parliamentary bloc and former Resistance fighter, explained, “There is no contradiction between the two opinions.” When asked to explain the party’s logic, he added, In all honesty, these weapons are a problem for Israel, not for Lebanon. So the discussion about the hand that would take the weapons being cut, I mean, all of the Lebanese agree that these weapons – the weapons of the Resistance – are for Lebanon. But among some Lebanese, there is a fear that these weapons will be used domestically . . . These weapons have become in the view of the Lebanese people the weapons of the resistance to Israel. Accordingly, whoever wants to take the weapons of the Resistance, he’s an Israeli. It’s on this foundation that these two messages speak to one another.40 But to many this remained an unacceptable threat, and the Syrian withdrawal emboldened Hizballah’s critics to speak out. As March 14 leaders Saad Hariri and Walid Jumblatt offered their support for the continued operations of the “National Resistance” and sat in the front row as Nasrallah gave his speech, fault lines inside the March 14 grouping were exposed. Conflict over this issue – temporarily

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muted when Hariri and Jumblatt convinced Hizballah and others to participate in a wide-ranging “national unity” ticket – resumed shortly after the list’s victory in the May/June 2005 elections, breaking down along March 8/March 14 lines. In fact, as Bassel Salloukh has noted, “cross-confessional alliances serve to consecrate ethnic conflict rather than ameliorate . . . these alliances negate the institutionalized uncertainty characteristic of democratic elections.”41 In the run-up to the 2005 elections, I was struck by the importance of electoral list composition, largely because of its opaque and often theatrical features – I waited anxiously with my officemates at the American University in Beirut for the announcement of what they called Hariri’s “superlist,” to see just how comprehensive an alliance he could cobble together. One predicted the downfall of the superlist when she noted that the Phalangist and Hizballah candidates resisted being photographed together for campaign posters. It came as little surprise that “national unity” barely outlived the election cycle, nor that turnout in Beirut was only 28 percent, the lowest in post-war history.42 Though the March 14 group returned 78 out of 128 deputies, new Prime Minister Fouad Siniora offered five seats to the March 8 bloc as a conciliatory gesture, one of which went to Hizballlah MP Muhammed Fneish. Siniora justified his choice by noting that Hizballah “has a strong popular base and must be represented.”43 In response to U.S. criticism, Siniora added that, “the Americans are free to deal with that matter as they wish, but this government surely represents the Lebanese people.”44 It was under these conditions that Hizballah participated in a highly fragmented “national unity” cabinet, joining a governing coalition for the first time. When U.S. officials maintained that they would not have any contact with Fneish because of the requirements of U.S. law, the new minister hit familiar notes, observing that, “Washington does not want to forgive the resistance for having liberated our land and having hunted their allies, the Israelis in the south.”45 Despite Fneish’s evident confidence in the place of the Resistance in Lebanon, March 8 participation in the cabinet was short-lived. On December 12, 2005, after failing to block a cabinet vote in favor of a UN inquiry into the Hariri assassination, the March 8 ministers,

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including Fneish, initiated a walkout that paralyzed the government for seven weeks and made the reality of its disunity painfully plain. The crisis was resolved only when PM Fouad Siniora acceded to the March 8 condition that he affirm his commitment to the Resistance as a “national resistance” on the floor of the parliament.46 Four days later, Hizballah signed a formal document of accord with Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement (FPM). This accord formally added the twenty-one MPs from the Free Patriotic Movement to the March 8 bloc. Constituting the single largest grouping of Christian deputies, the FPM had also developed a kind of populist appeal and mobilizational capacity that was familiar to Hizballah and contributed to the power of the alliance. Amid this shifting terrain, Speaker Nabih Berri called for a National Dialogue conference in spring 2006 to address the three thorny issues that divided the governing parties: the investigation into Hariri’s assassination, Lebanese-Syrian relations, and disarmament.47 The conference produced no consensus on these issues, and further crystalized calls for disarmament by former supporters of the Resistance, like Walid Jumblatt. By the time war broke out with Israel that summer, there was no clear consensus regarding the future of Hizballah’s militarization. Nor, quite frankly, did this change with the end of the war, which was interpreted differently by what had become two entrenched political camps. The 2006 July War The effects of the thirty-four-day war between Israel and Lebanon catalyzed the process of bipolarization already underway, and galvanized disarmament advocates and critics alike. As the International Crisis Group observed, In short, the 2006 war split the nation and political system in two: most Shiites, who bore the brunt of Israel’s military onslaught, saw it as justification for Hizbollah’s weapons as deterrence against a real threat; most others, who lamented the scope of destruction, saw it as proof that the main danger came from Hizbollah’s recklessness. Not since the end of the civil war

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in 1990 had the country experienced such a deep and defining divide.48 In large part, this was because the war unfolded in a Lebanon that was more deeply and explicitly bipolarized than it had been in the 1990s, and because the question of disarmament had already been positioned as a referendum question in the 2005 elections. Party leaders had interpreted the electoral outcome as affirming “a public referendum against Hizballah’s disarmament and Resolution 1559,”49 partly because supporters of the Resistance were elected among both March 8 and March 14 blocs. Yet the intervening political deterioration – a deterioration driven in no small part by Hizballah’s resistance to an inquiry into the Hariri assassination – led several of these supporters, most visibly Walid Jumblatt – to reverse their earlier positions.50 On the centrist end of the March 14 spectrum, certain (mainly Muslim) members of the bloc called for the integration of the Resistance into the Lebanese Armed Forces, while others called for its straightforward disbanding.51 During the war itself, interpretation of the conflict shifted along with military developments themselves between July 12 and August 14, 2006. At the outset of the war, March 14 centrists joined the chorus of regional actors who criticized Hizballah’s “adventurism” and saw it as provoking the war. On the first day of the war, the Lebanese media reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had made clear to Siniora that, “The Lebanese government is responsible. Lebanon will pay the price.”52 Both Siniora and Nasrallah rejected this conflation between Hizballah, the government, and the nation. Nasrallah noted that the Resistance, “didn’t inform the cabinet of the plans to capture these soldiers,” and Siniora contended that, “the government was not aware of and does not take responsibility for nor endorses what happened on the international border.”53 The shared recognition that the event was not coordinated with the government – a government to which Hizballah now belonged – allowed much of the Lebanese media to characterize the war’s first few weeks as “Israel’s war on Hizballah,” which in turn opened up discussion of Hizballah’s relationship to Iran and Syria. The first two weeks of the war featured editorials and commentary that were openly

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critical of Hizballah and its relationship with Iran, a red line that was rarely crossed before the Syrian withdrawal, but was trammeled during the 2006 war. Some positioned Lebanon as a chip to be traded in wider regional negotiations, characterizing Iranians as “sitting cozily back and enjoying the luxury of sacrificing Lebanon and Hizballah in their quest to sweeten a deal with the West over their nuclear program.”54 Others, echoing the concern about Iran, also explicitly criticized the temporal link between the kidnapping in the South and the Israeli siege on Gaza, as when Jumblatt interpreted the war as “an IranianSyrian fight against Israel . . . I reinstate my conflict with Nasrallah and I tell him that Lebanon is not Gaza.”55 By contrast, Berri defended the Resistance by criticizing those who linked the conflict to Iran and Syria, “as if the Lebanese need someone to teach them how to resist aggression and occupation.”56 Midway through the war, however, as internally displaced Lebanese flooded into Beirut and areas to the north, this media frame and the rhetoric of some of Hizballah’s critics began to shift. This corresponded closely to battles in Bint Jbeil beginning on July 24, as well as the IDF attack on Qana on July 30. By the end of the month, the “public face” was unified, as demonstrated by the large number of joint statements, press conferences, and public appearances with Berri (representing March 8 and the Resistance) and Siniora (representing the March 14 government majority). The two called a national day of mourning after the attack on Qana, which killed a large number of children. Attacks on symbolic targets like Qana reinforced a temporary unity by recalling the occupation and reaffirming the raison d’étre of the Resistance. As Mayssam Zaaqoura wrote at the time: Qana is the wounded child of all Lebanese, regardless of religion . . . May God protect anyone from the wrath of a parent . . . Qana represents all that the Lebanese believe in: resistance, loyalty, endurance, and rising from the ashes to become whole again.57 When the dust of war settled following the August 14 ceasefire, however, the cleavage over disarmament reemerged with even greater force. The killing of Lebanese civilians and destruction of civilian infrastructure,

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together accounting for the primary casualties of the war, raised serious questions about Hizballah’s mandate to protect Lebanon and the Lebanese. The overwhelming task of reconstruction – a task which required a level of governing capacity that was difficult, if not impossible, to generate amid the country’s deep divisions – itself fed the same divisions. With a ceasefire that promised the deployment of more than 15,000 Lebanese Army forces to the southern border with Israel, Hizballah’s unique hold on border (in)security was also challenged for the first time. In the years following the civil war, the state lacked the capacity and the government lacked the political will to deploy forces to the South, engaging instead in what I have described as “subcontracting,” or the explicit sanction of Resistance activity in the South. Following the 2000 Israeli withdrawal, the political will began to build among some segments of the population, but these voices were challenged, particularly in a parliament that overrepresented pro-Syrian voices. In light of the combined effect of the final withdrawal of Syrian forces and the devastating impact of the 2006 conflict with Israel, the new government pledged to assert the state’s responsibility to secure its border in exchange for a cessastion of hostilities. The deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in the South has certainly not produced Hizballah’s disarmament, or even stopped cross-border engagement between the IDF and the Resistance. In part, this is owed to the LAF’s formal recognition of rights of the Resistance to oppose occupation and to undertake a wide range of clandestine intelligence gathering and monitoring to support its operational activities.58 In fact, “the LAF’s neutrality and tacit support of Hizbullah’s mantle of resistance during the war smoothed the expansion of LAF areas of operation in the South.”59 In the months immediately after the war and the deployment of the LAF in the South, rather than stressing the Resistance as such, Hizballah dedicated itself instead to ameliorating the costs of the war through its reconstruction efforts. The reconstruction costs were daunting, and they disproportionately affected predominantly-Shi’i communities in the dahiyeh and South Lebanon. In their estimate of the regional distribution of the reconstruction burden, Bassam Fattouh and Joachim Kolb suggest that 33.64 percent of the destruction

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wrought by the war was located in the dahiyeh, with a further 50.4 percent shared by largely Shi’i municipalities of Bint Jbeil, Marjayoun, Tyre, and Nabatiyeh.60 Given its pre-war organizational capacity and relationship to its constituents, and the location of the bulk of the destruction, it is unsurprising that Hizballah responded with the development of what would become the Waad program, a reconstruction effort coordinated by existing social provider Jihad al-Binaa’. As Cammet and Issar persuasively demonstrate, Hizballah’s service provision practices – of which reconstruction has played a central but not exclusive role – have been motivated by the party’s interest in the non-electoral mobilization of its core constituency.61 In the post-war period, particular attention was paid to the role of Iran in financing Hizballah’s reconstruction efforts, and by extension, mobilization: As soon as the war ended, Jihad al-Binaa’ members were on the streets distributing aid, food, fresh water and wads of crisp U.S. dollars to displaced civilians. Affected residents received between $5,000 and $12,000, funds analysts suspect originate in Tehran – Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s regime is thought to pay about $200 million a year into Hezbollah’s coffers. Jihad al-Binaa’ denies any connection with Iran, and in a tent nearby the group’s destroyed offices in Dahiyeh, Dr. Bilal Naim claimed the group is funded through the Shia system of hummous [sic], through which faithful donate 20 percent of their incomes to charitable causes.62 Yet, just as the Israeli withdrawal shifted red lines with regard to criticizing Syria, the Syrian withdrawal played a similar role in opening up more overt discussion of Hizballah’s Iranian patronage. When I expressed surprise about this in an interview in 2008, I was told that, “this is because the game is becoming bigger. It’s macro now, and it’s black and white.”63 That reconstruction was politicized from the outset means, among other things, that it cannot be easily separated from the ongoing disruptions at the cabinet level. As one critic put it, “the state was not

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simply absent . . . its functionaries and agents were complicit in the commodification of relief,” and turned the distribution of donor funds into political capital.64 Analysis of what he and others describe as “the state” in the context of reconstruction reveal it to be more accurately the government, rendering the relationship between government and state (in the context of the sectarian regime) a key part of this politicization process. Aid to “the government of Lebanon” meant, at some stages, that Hizballah and its March 8 allies would have a voice in the distribution or allocation of funds, which was itself (minimally) coordinated by several different institutions, largely through a systems of bids and permits that left the work of reconstruction to local communities and organizations. At other stages – and for months at a time – such aid was seen as the partisan purview of March 14 ministers and their allies. As Roger MacGinty and Christine Hamieh note in their comparison of Hizballah’s Waad reconstruction program and the Future Movement’s efforts:

Image 1 Destruction from the 2006 war, still visible in May 2008. The building in the background was reconstructed with aid from Qatar. Author’s photograph.

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The reconstruction environment was also significantly shaped by external actors . . . This was perhaps most visible in the actions of Iran and Saudi Arabia, who were Lebanon’s most significant reconstruction donors . . . To some extent a competitive dynamic developed between certain overseas donors. This was most visible at major road junctions that were bedecked with banners advertising Saudi, Kuwaiti, Qatari, or Iranian reconstruction largess.65 The patronage of reconstruction – inseparable from the alienation in the cabinet and, later, in the spaces of protest – helped to make visible the topography of sectarian polarization. This was evident when

Image 2 Sign indicating that funding for the reconstruction of this school in Bint Jbeil was provided by Shaykh Hamad bin Khalifa II, amir of Qatar. May 2008. Author’s photograph.

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I made my own visit to Bint Jbeil – a city nearly flattened during the war and barely beginning its recovery two years later. The government of Qatar, a major donor in the post-2006 period and later broker of the 2008 Doha Accord, contributed directly to reconstruction in Bint Jbeil (and projects funded by the emirate were clearly marked as such, as indicated in Image 2). Interviews with local residents suggested that they viewed such aid as an effort to undermine the popularity of Hizballah and the Resistance, and to “deliver” Bint Jbeil to the government. When I asked if this wasn’t just about the development of state services and infrastructure, something which Hizballah officials themselves say that they would like to see more of in the South, I was corrected and told that these donations were made to strengthen the position of March 14, the government, not the state.

Protest and Paralysis: To the “Events of May” and Beyond What this highlights is that rebuilding and reconstruction unfolded alongside political deterioration in the aftermath of the war. Responsibility for this deterioration is shared – Hizballah’s post-war triumphalism paired with the Siniora government’s intransigence meant that the “national unity” government was wracked by internal struggle and could not govern effectively. By the end of October, Nasrallah called for an increase in March 8 seats in the cabinet, and threatened street demonstrations if the demand was not met. At stake in his demand was a constitutional provision that automatically dissolves the government in the event that one-third of its ministers resign. As demonstrated in the cabinet walkout the previous year, March 8 was capable of functioning as a disciplined bloc, even when only one of its members was from Hizballah. Anxious to avoid giving Hizballah what he called a “cabinet veto,” Siniora’s majority government refused; six ministers resigned in protest and planned the promised mobilization. In addition to the ever-present specter of disarmament, also at stake in Hizballah’s demand for a larger share of seats were what the party and its allies viewed as violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty by the

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UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), the commission tasked with investigating the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri and twenty-three others in 2005. The terms of the STL were outlined by UN Security Council Resolution 1757, which required Lebanese financial and legal support for the tribunal but also granted the tribunal broad and largely autonomous powers. It was not accountable to the Lebanese government in any way, and there was adequate reason to believe that the functioning of the STL was not fully politically independent.66 March 8 thus opposed Lebanese cooperation with the STL, which Hizballah viewed largely as an extension of U.S. and Israeli power. As Jim Quilty later reflected, the walkout stemmed from, [the ministers’] indignation at the decision of Siniora and his March 14 cohort to overrule their dissent . . . To do so ignored Lebanon’s tradition of cabinet consensus, which demands that major acts of legislation be tabled if a sizable number of ministers object . . . The Siniora government is dishonest when it terms the opposition’s demand for more equitable representation a “cabinet veto” because, excepting the odd “technocratic” cabinet, all post-civil-war cabinets have been assembled, and acted, on this consensus basis.67 Yet it was through this period of extended political paralysis – one that ended in violent confrontation between militias loyal to the two blocs, in which dozens were killed – that the state and its institutions were most clearly, if counterintuitively, strengthened by Hizballah’s political practice. With what were unquestionably self-preserving motives, Hizballah affirmed through the nature of its demands, through the protests that it staged, and even through the specific forms of violence that erupted in May, the central importance of the state and its institutions. As government ground to a halt because of its obstructionism, Hizballah’s practice articulated as a desire for an effective institutional voice. By no means am I arguing that this was the intent of Hizballah decisions in this period, but it was clearly one of their principal effects.

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Among the most compelling features of the 2006–08 protest cycle was its staging. Taking a cue from the “Cedar Revolution” of 2005, the March 8 protesters – primarily supporters of Hizballah, Amal, and the FPM – staged their protests in the physical spaces that had produced the Syrian withdrawal, using the idioms of civil protest that had characterized the earlier movement and harnessing the full power of their respective populist movements to keep people in Beirut’s downtown commercial center for months on end. The protests had a temporal and spatial logic: Hizbollah by and large tried to moderate sectarian tensions. It called for a step-by-step political escalation: demonstrations in December 2006, a general strike in January 2007, and civil

Image 3 A banner marking one entrance to the 2006–08 protest space, indicating that it was the space of “the Lebanese National Opposition,” thus appropriating and transforming the terminology of the 2005 protests. Author’s photograph.

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disobedience in March, hoping that sooner or later the government would be compelled to give in.68 This spatial and performative logic, however, was not read by others as a mirror of 2005, but through the lens of increasing sectarian polarization. This was fueled partly by the evident coordination between Hizballah and Amal; organizations that had competed, often bitterly, for the alilegeiances of Shi’i Lebanese in the past were now functioning as a coherent bloc, and settling their differences largely in private. As Berri advisor ‘Ali Hamdan explained, “the marginalization of the Shi’a leaves Amal and Hizballah no choice but to unite.” This does not mean, of course, that there were no differences between them. He continued with a metaphor: What if you have a child who does something bad outside the house, in the garden. A neighbor sees it and he comes after the child to beat him. The child runs into the house. Would you turn the child over? Would you let him beat your child, or would you take care of it yourself?69 Notably, this construction not only asserts a bond of symbolic kinship between Hizballah and Amal, but also positions other Lebanese as non-kin, as neighhors. The spatial logic of the protests also provoked sectarian anxieties. Because the protests themselves were staged in a zone associated with Rafiq Hariri’s massive reconstruction, it was “seen by Sunni members of March 14 as targeting quintessentially Sunni symbols. The opposition’s intrusion into Sunni political space rekindled demographic and geographic fears of a Shiite ‘invasion.’”70 This was met by a barrier of concertina wire, protecting the Martyrs’ Square statue, symbol of the 2005 protests, as well as the prime minister’s office and parliament, from the reach of the March 8 protesters. As one observer noted, “the effect of the barrier, intended or otherwise, is to symbolize the division of Lebanon’s public sphere.”71 Anxieties about the protesters’ encroachment on the city center were also undoubtedly amplified by the visible distinction between the sha’abi tastes of Hizballah and FPM protesters from the periphery and those of the bourgeois participants in the 2005 Cedar Revolution, more at home in the spaces of cosmopolitan consumption.

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The 2006–08 protests built on recognizable repetoires of contention informed by both populist mobilization and elite politicking. On the one hand, they brought crowds of hundreds of thousands to central spaces to articulate their demands, much as the March 14 bloc had done in an effort to achieve its primary objective of a Syrian withdrawal. This brought business in the city center to a halt. At the same time, they also drew a lesson from the December 2006–February 2007 March 8 cabinet boycott, which was successful in generating new commitments on the part of the Siniora government, by obstructing the function of government. This time, perhaps because of the participation of the Free Patriotic Movement, which enjoyed the support of more Christians than any other organized political grouping in the country, it was interpreted differently. Whatever the reason, the Siniora government “tried to ignore the standoff and pursue its program as if it were business as usual,”72 yet to do so was impossible. The “Events” of May 2008 As one commentator put it at the time, the outbreak of civil violence in May 2008 was in many ways the culmination of a much longer process that had originated even before the Syrian withdrawal. Lebanon’s 18-month political crisis – presaged by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri in February 2005, framed by the subsequent departure of Syrian soldiers and expedited by the summer 2006 war – does seem to have reached its endgame.73 This endgame – one in which civilian casualties were few, but the destruction of public trust potentially irreparable – was, like nearly everything else in Lebanon, interpreted through the lens of sectarianism. For critics of the party, the events of May were an ultimate confirmation of Hizballah’s intention to “suppress Lebanon’s long-cherished pluralism in favor of a repressively monochrome Shi‘i Islamist state.”74 For members of Hizballah and others in the March 8 bloc, the events capped eighteen months of political “exclusion” – i.e. the refusal of the March 14-led government of Fouad Siniora to honor the genuinely

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divided nature of Lebanese opinion by affording Hizballah and its allies enough seats in the cabinet to protect their key prerogatives regarding the autonomy of the Resistance and the rejection of an international tribunal to address the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri. At a minimum, the clashes, which pitted fighters from multiple militias against each other but were dominated by the contest between seasoned fighters from the Resistance and those from Saad Hariri’s Future Movement, demonstrated that the Resistance was no longer the only armed group in Lebanon, though it remained the most effective. This recognition escalated the stakes for all concerned. The proximate cause of the escalation was the decision of the remainder of the Siniora cabinet to order the firing of General Wafiq Shuqayr, chief of security at Lebanon’s Rafiq Hariri International Airport, and call for an investigation into allegations that he allowed Hizballah to establish a network of cameras at the airport as part of a clandestine telecommunications network. Information Minister Ghazi al-Aridi told al-Jazeera that the network “constitutes infringement of the sovereignty of the state and public property.” For its part, the party claimed the network was central to the operational capacity of the Resistance, and warned that, “those who direct their arrows against communications are directing them against weapons.”75 Michel Aoun also confirmed this interpretation at a gathering of FPM members: It is part of what was mentioned in the policy statement [signed between the FPM and Hizballah in 2006]. If the resistance has the right to liberate or work for liberation, then it has the right to maintain secret communications with its military departments. I think that Hezbollah has acquired a good conduct certificate in using its weapons for the past 27 years, since 1982.76 With these lines clearly drawn, and against the backdrop of eighteen months of political paralysis, Nasrallah called for largescale protest. The first day of protests, May 7, 2008, corresponded with a strike called by the General Labor Confederation, adding large numbers to the crowd. On al-Manar, Nasrallah situated the conflict over the

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communications network in the context of (a) the operational viability of the Resistance and (b) the political deadlock between the March 8 and March 14 blocs: In the July war, our most important point of strength was the command and control, thanks to the fact that communication between the leadership and the various commanders and field fighters was secured. The enemy has admitted to this . . . When we entered the government together and a policy statement was issued about the resistance and its weapons – and this is part of its weapons – this wire telecommunications network was not considered an infringement on sovereignty, law, and public funds.77 He continued, alleging that the not-so-secret network became an object of horsetrading in discussions with (unnamed) representatives of the government: The Lebanese will be amazed when they hear this. They said: If you want us to agree with you and forget about the issue of the wire telecommunications network, then can you remove the sit-in in central Beirut? They sought a bargain. Remove the sit-in in central Beirut and we will forget about the wire network of the Resistance.78 The conflict escalated, with armed clashes between supporters of both blocs giving way to a coordinated effort by the Resistance and allied militias to take control of much of West Beirut. The resolution of the conflict occurred in two stages, and in each the power of the state – in ideational and material terms – was reinforced. The first phase occurred on the ground, in Lebanon, as actors took specific actions to deescalate a situation that threatened to grow beyond what would benefit any of the parties. The speed and effectiveness with which Resistance fighters overtook the poorly trained fighters associated with Saad Hariri’s Future Movement was an embarrassment to the March 14 leader and his allies. Any further escalation of conflict

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would only draw attention to their weakness. Instead, Siniora asked the Army to secure the capital, and handed over to it the case of the telecommunications network; in effect, this emphasized the role of the Armed Forces as the quintessential state institution, a neutral body removed from the deteriorated and now-violent relationship between the rival political blocs. Indeed, as Aram Nerguizian observed, The LAF is the only truly cross-sectarian institution – military or otherwise – in Lebanon. While Hizballah has not weakened politically or militarily, the LAF has strengthened its position as a cross-sectarian fighting force that represents the broadest possible swath of Lebanese groups. Hizballah’s use of force against Lebanese citizens – even armed citizens in rival militias – threatened the coherence of its narrative of national liberation, a narrative that was supported by its past history of cooperation and coordination with the LAF. This can help to explain, then, why the conflict proceeded as it did: Amal and Hizballah fighters began to disappear from the streets two days later . . . The army asked the gunmen to withdraw and (except for the recalcitrant SSNP) they obliged.79 While ongoing fighting between pro–March 14 militias and some of the March 8 bloc’s smaller militias continued to unfold outside of the capital, all fighting had ended by May 12. Across the country, thirtyseven were dead; the Army manned checkpoints and erected barriers to keep the fragile peace, while the second stage of resolution unfolded in Doha, Qatar.80 The Doha Accord, which formally brought the hostilities to a close, was at its base an agreement regarding institutional power, an affirmation of the value of state institutions and the desirability of representation through those institutions. It first reallocated seats in a national unity government in such a way as to meet the March 8 bloc’s demands, while also implementing reforms to the electoral law that Christian members of the March 14 bloc had failed to secure in

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2005 (e.g. a law based on smaller, more homogenous electoral disticts). These compromises – especially the increase in the number of ministries awarded to the March 8 bloc – heightened internal power struggles between Hizballah, Amal, and the FPM, but allowed for a semblance of government function through the 2009 parliamentary elections.81 The question of Lebanon’s cooperation with the international tribunal continued to simmer, and influenced the narrowing margin between the two camps in the 2009 election. As Melani Cammet put it, even the “campaign period was notable for its lack of attention to issues of real substance.”83 In the absence of meaningful choices, turnout was low, and the results confirmed a reversal of political fortunes that was only partially reflected in the distribution of seats. Because of the distortions of majoritarian voting, the March 8 bloc actually secured almost 10 percent more of the popular vote than the March 14, though it earned fourteen fewer seats. Moreover, Hizballah increased its own share of seats. This made the politics of cabinet-formation a daunting task, rendering undeniable the lack of political consensus and deep bipolarization that had characterized the previous four years. It also meant that neither bloc would be able to advance any policy requiring a supermajority.84 Under such conditions, it is thus unsurprising that it took nearly five months for the new prime minister, Saad Hariri, to successfully build a governing cabinet, or that it fell within little more than a year. The issue that brought this cabinet down was once again the STL, an issue which put Hizballah’s transnational loyalties in the spotlight, yet also provided an opportunity for the party to make its domestic (procedural, legal) commitments visible. It was Walid Jumblatt’s resignation from the cabinet, along with the six members of his Democratic Gathering, which dissolved the parliament by constitutional provision. While Jumblatt is somewhat notorious for his mercurial about-faces, his resignation signaled the success of Hizballah’s strategy, which had been: to undermine the local legitimacy of the Tribunal to a point where the Lebanese authoritities will no longer be capable – in practical, but also perhaps in legal terms – of providing the

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assistance they are nominally obliged to, whether in serving indictments or arresting suspects.85 With the addition of Jumblatt’s bloc, the March 8 bloc was able to advance a candidate of its own, choosing the technocrat, Najib Miqati, in January 2011. All signs suggest that this “Hizballah government” is no more able to take controversial decisions or adopt broad reforms than Hariri’s government had been, given the absence of a supermajority. This suggests that Lebanon is poised to continue its protracted paralysis unless or until should erupt another round of civil conflict. The tumultuous crisis in Syria has only further increased the risk of violent escalation in Lebanon. In March 2012, the first cross-border conflicts were reported between Syrian armed forces and Syrian rebels inside Lebanese territory. This came only days after Hariri’s Future Movement released a political manifesto in support of the Syrian youth movement, explicitly criticizing Hizballah’s support for Assad’s regime.86 Nasrallah has continued to dismiss the scale of the crisis, and to call critics of Assad enemies of the Resistance. For his part, Interior Minister Marwan Sharbil assured reporters that “Lebanon will remain immune to the dangers because everyone needs Lebanon to be stable,” but in the context of this extended paralysis, the possibility that this need will be sufficient seems quite remote.

Conclusions The trajectory outlined in this chapter, by which Hizballah was transformed from a minority party, to a governing coalition member, to one of two firmly-entrenched poles in a deeply polarized and paralyzed partisan system, highlights the principle axes identified in the Introduction: the relationship between discourse and structure, manifested in the party’s desire to call forth the institutional foundations of state power, yet rely on transnational and subnational appeals to challenge the legitimacy of a sectarian regime. Amid what appear to be deep contradictions – especially the use of force in May 2008 – this trajectory nonetheless obliges scholars and policy-makers to take

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seriously Hizballah’s commitment to the territorial state as the organizing principle in political life. This trajectory also highlights the relationship between the national and the transnational, through Hizballah’s efforts to refashion the Resistance after the Israeli and Syrian withdrawals. Demonstrated by the minimum aspirations articulated by the Open Letter, aspirations which continue to shape party practice today, Hizballah’s definition of nationalist priorities is articulated in nearly exclusively subnational and transnational terms. Even those aspects that are most explicitly “domestic” in nature still see the ultimate goal of domestic reform as a protection against international aggression and imperialist penetration. The 2006 July war and its impact on the domestic political field and debates over disarmament illustrate this. Hizballah has continued what was a decade-long process of institutional investment that has continually affirmed state institutions as the legitimate site of struggle over the distribution of power, representation, and voice. This has occurred even as Hizballah’s legitimacy as a national actor has been challenged more forcefully by its domestic political adversaries’ critique of an internationalized Resistance, and efforts to protect its proto-military autonomy and the alliances with Syria and Iran that have sustained it.

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CHAPTER 5 HARNESSING TAKFIR IN YEMEN: ALLEGATIONS OF APOSTASY AND SYMBOLIC POWER

[Islahis] are not under the same tent. To the salafis, even the Muslim Brothers are heretics.1 —Abd al-Karim Shaiban The institutional practices described in the first two sections of this book trace the shifting relationships of Hizballah and Islah to the regimes that order political life in Lebanon and Yemen, and the crossideological alliances that each party has built as these relationships have changed. The transformation and reconfiguration of Islamist practice outlined in the previous chapters has occurred in a political field in which ideas must compete. Both Islah and Hizballah, despite their substantial differences, have each brought about a reframing of the terms of national debate in ways that have naturalized their own priorities and interests, though imperfectly and not without challenge. This has entailed the use of a lexicon rooted in appeals to different kinds of authority, claims which have in turn been contested (to differing effect) by the parties’ principal interlocutors. For Islah, the most profitable of these has been the idiom of takfir, or allegations of apostasy, though the proliferation of excommunicative discourse has come to exceed the party’s control and

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has in turn exerted a centrifugal pull on the party through challenges to some of its leading members. For Hizballah, takfir in its traditional guise has little effect in a system built on confessional pluralism, but in rare instances it has been creatively appropriated and marshaled in defense of a reasonably progressive set of social-welfare aims. This variation suggests the limitations of generalizable hypotheses regarding the origins or effects of Islamist discourse. In effect, it shows that the political demands of Islam cannot be understood as operating outside of the interpretive frameworks of Muslims. Rather than trying to assess whether or how participation in formal political institutions or cross-ideological alliances has moderated Islamist practice, this chapter and the next illustrate how the linguistic markets in which allegations circulate have come to be constructed and transformed through Islamist practice, and have worked to mediate power within and between member of alliances. This entails a discussion of agency and responsibility. When is a party responsible for the statements of its members? Can party members speak as individuals, and under what circumstances? Under what circumstances do the effects of takfir or takhwin outstrip intent? These two chapters will argue that setting the terms of national debate – through both conscious strategies and unanticipated effects, authorized and unauthorized speech – enables and constrains many of the specific institutional practices identified in the first two sections of the book. This analysis is divided into two chapters largely because the allegations articulated by the two parties vary considerably. This chapter also suggests that the differences in the profitability of takfir in the two linguistic markets, as well as the role of apostasy allegations in mediating internal intra-Islamist dynamics, help to build a case against the study of Islamist parties qua Islamists on the basis of their presumed similarity with one another across space and time. Instead, these two chapters argue for studying Islamists in dialogue with their principal interlocutors (and with each other) in specific local contexts. Such an approach encourages an analysis of the operations of power made manifest in the questions of who speaks, on what authority, and to what effect. The key to understanding these dynamics lies in the markets of meaning in which ideas circulate and compete. As with

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other kinds of markets, these are not immune to shocks, which can leave a notable impact on the price and value of particular ideas. It is tracing this kind of dynamic process that can help us better understand the variable effects of takfir and better unpack and challenge more linear interpretations of the effects of Islamist party participation in electoral politics.

A Brief Genealogy of Takfir and the Role of Allegation In order to understand what takfir does, it is important to understand how it differs from other sorts of denunciation or allegation. Takfir is an allegation of another’s disbelief in God and/or the basic tenets of Islam, or a claim that an individual or organization has taken a position that is outside of the boundaries of what is broadly accepted as orthodox. In the medieval period, for example, When Muslims disagreed among themselves, they often denounced each others as infidels . . . To declare people to be infidels was not just to insult them (though it certainly was that), but also to declare them outlaws expelled from the community of believers . . . The accusers were usually scholars from one group hurling charges at another.2 As Fazlur Rahman suggested, such accusations played an important role in struggles to define the orthodoxies of the day throughout Islamic history, as change developed out of dialectical tensions between competing claims of right belief.3 Indeed, as sociologist Lester Kurtz notes, one cannot conceive of orthodoxy – however loosely understood – without heresy, as “the boundaries of what is true and acceptable are marked out through a systematic identification of what is false and unacceptable.”4 The substantive credibility of the allegation of unbelief is both methodologically inaccessible to scholars and of little consequence to the practice of allegation or its effects. The allegation of heresy is a dynamic component of meaning-making, whereby Muslims struggle with one another over the content of their faith, engaging in a shared

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agonism that helps to constitute a public and, in the context of pluralist political institutions like those in Yemen, to construct a demos.5 This agonistic relation between heresy and orthodoxy is in concert with the lessons of sociolinguistics, where it has been widely recognized that “meaning is made in difference.”6 Anne Norton reminds us that “critics too often respond to the mapping of these relations of difference and opposition with the accusation of ‘binarism,’” as though this alone were grounds for critique.7 But by paying attention to the ways in which charges of heresy are articulated to reinforce orthodoxy, and by focusing in particular on the discursive practices which produce this effect, this binarism may also reveal “strategic junctures at which the polarities that provide the orientation for that system may be undermined and relocated.”8 Indeed, in the story that follows below, the dynamic and productive effects of takfir – the perhaps unanticipated opportunities made possible through its proliferation – may be as significant as the more obvious and notorious discursive closures that the policing of heresy have produced.9 Throughout Islamic history, particularly as a body of orthodox thought crystallized in the thirteenth century, heresiographers identified typologies of heresy against which a concept of orthodoxy could be effectively constructed and delimited.10 At the most basic level, however, for the jurists who engaged in this practice, “Orthodoxy meant the acceptance of the existing order, heresy or apostasy, its criticism or rejection.”11 This can be read as an artifact of social change, whereby alleging heresy has been, crucial to the maintenance and transformation of social institutions . . . The identification of heretics shores up the ranks, enables institutional elites to make demands of their subordinates, and reinforces systems of dominance.12 At the same time, one of the distinctive features of takfir is its effort to “obscure the history of doctrine” and the contests which have produced a given orthodox position. Instead, those Islamists who engage in takfir, like heresiographers of the past, “attach an ancient pedigree to the orthodoxy of the day” and work to frame their adversaries as participating in an illegitimate fracturing of the umma.13 As Keith Lewinstein has noted,

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Most heresiographical works take as a principle of organization the ongoing fragmentation (iftiraq) of the Community: a number of sects branch off from an original orthodoxy, and themselves give rise to further division. Where once there was unity and truth, there is now multiplicity and falsehood . . . Their unbelief is apparent not only in the nature of their doctrines, but in their identity as discrete groups generated by (and contributing to further) schism.14 This anxiety over the possibility of further fracture and fragmentation – expressed in Islamist critiques of fitna (schism) and hizbiyya (partisanship) – is very much present in contemporary allegations of apostasy. Indeed, participation in institutions like national and local elections, practices that rest on the notion of competition between distinct groups, amplifies this concern. In the case of takfir, relationships between institutions, practices, and identities are interwoven in ways that both reinforce and challenge systems of power, through the identification of deviance. Because “prohibitions interpellate identities,” the categorization of deviance through takfir has helped to call forth new communities of belonging.15 Historically, these emergent identities have often taken the form of new sectarian movements or schools of thought.16 In contemporary Yemen, the effects of takfir have been subtler, but have nonetheless galvanized a movement within the Islamist Islah party which might best be called centrist, formed in part around the rejection of the proliferation of takfir by fellow Islamists and expressing a willingness to work with members of other parties to challenge the practice and expand the scope of political and creedal freedom.17 In Lebanon, the practice of takfir has been much more muted, but, as I describe in the next chapter, it has also been responsive to internal challenges within the Shi’i community and its history of material and political marginalization, producing an ironically “progressive takfir” as a call for greater service provision. In the sections below, rather than focusing on whether or under what circumstances a given position actually constitutes heresy against an orthodox norm, I focus on the allegation of heresy or apostasy, since it is the process of allegation that best captures the transformative

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social and institutional effects of the practice of takfir. This dynamic stems from a distinctive feature of heresy charges – their articulation toward the “deviant insider.”18 The targets of takfir are Muslims, whose apostasy is a greater affront than the simple existence of nonMuslim unbelievers. It is as a policing strategy that allegations of heresy and apostasy aim to redirect or reform members of a belief community. Yet it would be a mistake to equate the circulation of excommunicative discourse with purely instrumental calculation. The episodes discussed below are not those in which a series of actors calculate their profits devoid of any belief in the positions they adopt. Surely, some cases of takfir do reflect little more than a desire on the part of actors and the institutions from which they derive authority to punish adversaries, but these discourses also assume a circulatory logic of their own. Because takfir is articulated in a context of interlocution in which it must compete and in which those who issue allegations are not the sole authors of their meaning, the effects of takfir can outstrip the intentions of even the most calculating accusers. For this reason, what follows is an analysis of the effects of the proliferation of takfir, rather than its intent, which is neither unitary nor fully methodologically accessible.19 As a general rule, the term kufr (“unbeliever,” from which is derived the noun kafir and the verbal noun takfir) is inclusive of the broadest range of behaviors and attitudes that may be seen as challenging orthodoxy.20 Conventional interpretations by heresiographers working in the Islamic legal tradition stipulate conditions under which one would be considered a kafir, mulhid, zindiq, or murtad, and specifically mandate the death penalty in certain cases.21 Countries that accept shari’a as one of many, or the sole source of, legislation may include apostasy as a capital offense. Yemen is one such case. While I refer to allegations of many categories of heresy or apostasy throughout this chapter, I class them collectively as excommunicative, except when the subtle distinctions between them are revelatory. But because the adoption of the term “excommunication” may suggest a speaker capable of institutionally excommunicating another person, and authority in Islam is too

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horizontally diffuse to support such a notion, I retain takfir to refer to the process of alleging another’s disbelief and/or apostasy. Takfir differs in some distinctive ways from other forms of political denunciation, largely in relation to the role of the state. While some studies of the status of heresy in early Christianity equate heresy with treason, the role of the state and the relationship between state authority and religious authority differs so significantly across space and time as to make this equation problematic.22 I take up the distinction between the reason and apostasy more fully in Chapter 6. Similarly, scholarship on the role of denunciation in maintaining totalitarian systems also stresses the role of the state and its regulatory and punitive apparatus. For example, Fitzpatrick and Gellatey define a denouncer as, “a citizen who is calling on the state . . . to take disciplinary action against another citizen.”23 This is seen as a bottom-up reinforcement of state power through practices of “popular informing.”24 In Yemen, takfir entails neither this kind of “popular informing” to the state, nor the allegation that an individual or group has betrayed the state qua state. At most, the alleged betrayal is of the state as guardian of the shari’a or principles of the faith,25 given that the constitution of Yemen has at different times listed shari’a as either one source or the sole source of law, and the current penal code reflects an orthodox criminalization of apostasy.26 But allegations of apostasy are typically not vertical gestures, like denunciations directed to the state by citizens accusing one another of transgression. The practice is better understood as horizontal: as an illocutionary act designed to assert power among competitors in a contested political field. What takfir does share with other practices of denunciation and accusation is the self-policing that it can elicit, and the culture of surveillance that it can inspire. As I discuss in greater detail below, numerous interview respondents spoke to me of the ways that they have come to modify their speech in response to the circulation of excommunicative fatawa from particular clerics and in the popular press, showing the way in which the linguistic market has been influenced by the practice of takfir.27

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Linguistic Markets and Authorized Language To explain the effects of the circulation of takfir, the concept of a linguistic market – one in which different modes of discourse are valued, priced, and exchanged at a profit or loss – can be a useful metaphor.28 Two components of Pierre Bourdieu’s linguistic market metaphor should concern a discussion of takfir as means of shaping and constraining discourse: the use of legitimate language and the presence of an authorized speaker. A third concept, the product of competition between institutionally authorized actors that I call a strategy of individualization, can be derived from the interaction between these two. In “Price Formation and the Anticipation of Profits,” Bourdieu defines legitimate language as “authorized, authoritative language, speech that is accredited, worthy of being believed, or, in a word, performative, claiming (with the greatest chances of success) to be effective.”29 In Yemen today, the ability to employ this language, or to possess what Bourdieu calls “linguistic competence,” means at least some familiarity with the oratorical register of classical Arabic (fusha), as well as the ability to deploy Qur’anic and Islamic jurisprudential idiom and reference. This is not meant as an essentialist argument about the a priori legitimacy of this specific mode of language; legitimacy is doubtless the product of negotiation across space and time. For example, the legitimacy of excommunicative discourse of the variety currently expressed by Islamists in unified Yemen would have generated considerably less profit for speakers – and even incurred some costs – in comparison to the legitimate language of officialdom in Marxist South Yemen prior to unification.30 Former politicians from the Southern PDRY recall an era in which alternative ways of demarcating sacred and profane via the political language of Marxism rivaled the contemporary use of takfir, as Marxist idioms assumed status as legitimate (and legitimated) language.31 In the postunification context, however, accompanied by the return of more than a million Yemeni citizens from countries in the Arabian peninsula and the emergence of organs of institutionalized Islamism, legitimate language has increasingly come to reflect the concerns and tastes of a kind of pan-Sunni consensus, as described in Chapter 1.32 The second relevant feature of the linguistic market is the authorized speaker, a subject whose authority derives from a process of

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intersubjective recognition rooted in the authorizing power of institutions. Thus, “the weight of different agents depends on their symbolic capital, i.e. on the recognition, institutionalized or not, that they receive from a group.”33 Bourdieu illustrates the importance of such authority with the example of the judge, who “need say no more than ‘I find you guilty’ because there is a set of agents and institutions which guarantee that the sentence will be executed.”34 The shared understanding of that authority transforms the linguistic act of an individual into an extra-linguistic act with observable consequences. Such authority and its extra-linguistic potential is key to understanding how takfir has operated within Yemen’s recent linguistic market, particularly so in attempts to obscure this authority. A shaykh’s utterances, his issuance of a fatwa in which he declares another a kafir, rests on the shaykh’s social capital. This lends weight to the leveling of apostasy allegations, as well as a range of subsidiary charges that may be used to shape the terms of public debate.35 Without a shared knowledge of the authority vested in those who bring the charge to draw the distinction between the orthodox and the transgressive, whether through the courts or the press, the allegation of apostasy would lose much of its currency. Bourdieu notes that, while this authority rests on a series of relations of domination within the society at large, “one of the most important constituents of this profit lies in the fact that it appears to be based on the qualities of the person alone.”36 It is the promise of this profit that drives what I call a “strategy of individualization,” whereby institutional authority is obscured, but is nevertheless the principal source of symbolic power. Those who benefit from this process amplify the extra-linguistic effects of the linguistic act by defraying the costs of a given speech act while reaping its rewards. But delegated authority and the relationship of a speaker to an institution (or institutions) do not allow such individuals to speak solely – or even primarily – as individuals. Party leaders and employees, even when speaking as individuals, communicate meanings that are then associated (not entirely unreasonably) with their organizations. In this regard, how much discipline a party exercises over its leaders may be an important indicator of the costs of a linguistic practice like takfir. When it is less costly, Islamists may openly embrace it, and it may

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figure in official party statements, as it did with Islah in the early and mid-1990s. When those costs change, as I explore below, party members may claim to speak “as individuals,” or the party may issue statements claiming that the position in question is not the policy of the party. Whether or not these institutional rejections of takfir are credible, the party still reaps tangible benefits from the proliferation of an excommunicative discourse that aligns others to its priorities. This is not to suggest, however, that such struggles to frame national debates are an exclusively Islamist phenomenon, as opposed to a general condition of the linguistic market. Nor does it mean that all or even most supporters of the party are engaging in everyday calculations of profit. Rather, the argument here is that (a) Islamist elites are endowed with a claim on certain persuasive idioms that have become effective in structuring debates in contemporary Yemen, and (b) attempts to question the use of idioms like takfir have been costly for non-Islamists elites and those Islamists rising within the ranks of the party who seek to challenge the practice. Even if these attempts have not been wholly successful in limiting the practice, they have revealed what Farha Ghammam calls a “politics of selection,” which components of global discourses concerning democracy, Islam, and human rights have been creatively “appropriated and reworked to empower and/or to control certain groups as well as to construct and transform specific identities.”37 The next sections will trace the operations of power that underlie several specific contests that have characterized the politics of a shifting Yemeni linguistic market to illustrate these claims.

Excommunicative Discourse in Yemen In order to illustrate the way in which he viewed the proliferation of takfir modifying the linguistic market in Yemen, Nabil al-Sofee, then member of Islah’s Consultative Council, drew the sketch below to capture the dynamics of conflict resolution in Yemen when takfir proliferates (or when accusations of kufr are feared) and when it does not. Al-Sofee’s argument was that traditional modes of conflict resolution in Yemen, between Actor A and Actor B, would typically determine some sort of compromise solution, labeled here as Outcome O.

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Illustration 1 Reproduction of al-Sofee’s sketch depicting the effect of the proliferation of takfir on efforts to mediate conflict and negotiate solutions.

By the end of the 1990s, he argued, an overarching structure of takfir had shifted the opportunities for political parties to advance particular positions, such that Actor S (representing the Yemeni Socialist Party, or YSP) and Actor I (representing the Islah party) would reach compromise much closer to the Islahi objective, indicating a significant concession by the Leftist interlocutor. This simple illustration, which I discussed in subsequent interviews with politicians and activists throughout the country, captures the uneven terrain in this particular linguistic market, whereby non-Islamists (and many centrist Islamists) are pressed into a position of what one Socialist leader called a form of “discursive capitulation.” Such capitulations then further reinforce the contours of a linguistic market that determines who can say what, when they can say it, and how (profitably) it will be understood. The following examples illustrate this dynamic. The Excommunication of Samir al-Yusufi In 2000, the literary journal al-Thaqafiyya serialized the well-known book by Yemeni novelist Muhammed ‘Abd al-Wali, Sana’a: An Open City, a book which was originally published without incident decades previously.38 Prominent members of Islah, including then-secretaryGeneral Muhammed al-Yadoumi and his successor, ‘Abd al-Wahhab

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al-‘Anisi, immediately launched a campaign against this republication. In the course of this public campaign, waged jointly through newspapers, Friday khutb, and the country’s legal system, Samir al-Yusufi, the publisher of the magazine, was deemed a kafir for participating in the dissemination of material that was taken to violate basic tenets of Islamic doctrine. Islah party officials claimed that the book made defamatory statements against God, and thus was itself an act of apostasy. They demanded that charges be brought against the publisher, since the author had already been dead for several decades. While al-Yusufi did stand trial on charges of apostasy, he was eventually released from jail through the intercession of high-ranking officials within the Justice Ministry, on the president’s orders. According to press reports, this came after the interior minister himself, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Akwa’a, threatened to resign his post if al-Yusufi was not released.39 Yet one of the terms of the release negotiated by al-Akwa’a was that al-Yusufi publish a formal apology in the pages of al-Thaqafiyya. He did so for two consecutive weeks. While the authority of the court was nominally invoked, al-Yusufi was ultimately tried in a court of public opinion, and state actors seemed largely interested in containing the situation and preventing a further escalation by Islah that might exacerbate the further unraveling relationship between Islah and the ruling GPC. According to a published interview with al-Yusufi, he took solace in the support of the Yemeni Journalists’ Syndicate, which labeled his case a “terrorist campaign against thought,” and blamed Shaykh al-Zindani personally for circulating a fatwa in which he was labeled a kafir.40 At the grassroots level, Islah supporters had responded to the fatwa by collecting signatures on petitions protesting al-Thaqafiyya and calling for its closure, following calls for mobilization in a number of Friday sermons. The lawyer who defended al-Yusufi in court was harassed by a crowd of hundreds outside of the courthouse, including some who reportedly pursued him as he left the courthouse and threatened him with daggers.41 The presiding judge sealed the court and issued charges against any newspaper reporting on the details of the trial,42 but some of

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the most significant features of the controversy were nonetheless reflected in editorials in the pages of al-Sahwa (the official organ of Islah) and the government papers al-Mithaq and al-Thawra. The latter two featured a series of articles attacking Shaykh ‘Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, condemning his leadership of the popular campaign against al-Yusufi and labeling him an extremist. The substance of this government-sponsored critique of al-Zindani’s position was that it was made as an individual. The paper repeatedly claimed that alZindani was making his claims as an irresponsible individual, not as a ranking leader of an otherwise-respected political party. The government papers argued that the chairman of the party’s Majlis al-Shura could deliver an address to thousands of students at al-Iman University (of which al-Zindani is also founder and rector, as discussed in Chapter 2) in which he condemned a man for his alleged apostasy and it would be understood as the act of a private individual, not a partisan activist. The argument was articulated at a moment when Islah was moving closer to opposition politics, and was couched in terms that might narrow, not widen, the distance between Islah and the Salih regime. In courting Islah’s loyalty by individualizing its critique of alZindani, the ruling party obscured the fact that al-Zindani was not the only Islah leader involved in the campaign. Both al-Yadoumi, secretary-general of the party, and al-‘Anisi, his deputy, were heavily engaged in the case as well, with al-Yadoumi purportedly threatening the accused over the phone two days before his arrest.43 Claims that the campaign against al-Yusufi were the work of an individual rhetoritician must be taken in the context of the faltering relationship between the GPC and Islah and as one in a broader series of compromises designed to keep Islah in the regime’s orbit, as illustrated in Chapters 1 and 2.44 I contend, following Bourdieu, that al-Zindani was in fact incapable of speaking as an individual under these circumstances. Were he to have done so, he would have had no particular authority to speak on the issue, and his statements would have lacked currency in the linguistic market. What distinguishes his allegation of apostasy and demand for al-Yusufi’s punishment from the same call from someone

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unconnected to the party is that one is vested with institutional authority and the other is not. Delegation of institutional authority means that individuals cannot take public positions solely – or even primarily – as individuals. Party leaders and employees, even when claiming to speak as individuals, communicate meanings that are associated (not incorrectly, if not always intentionally) with their organizations. It is also important to note that the Islah party itself rejected characterizations of al-Zindani’s position as individual. Al-Sahwa was not willing to acquiesce to the government’s interpretation, and launched a vigorous counter-attack, asking whether: the attack [on al-Zindani in government-sponsored media] was merely an insult on a prominent and respected individual with huge popularity such as al-Zindani, or was it aimed at the Islah party?45 In 2000, then, the party chose to stand by al-Zindani as an authorized speaker on its behalf, undermining the government’s attempt to contain the growing schism with Islah through a strategy of individualization that would isolate the shaykh from the sources of his institutional power. Over the following decade, however, the landscape changed considerably, and party leaders would go to great lengths to marginalize the impact of al-Zindani specifically and his salafi wing of the party more generally, engaging in the very practice of individualization that they once rejected. Indeed, this process was already underway by 2004, when Nabil al-Sofee’s discomfort with his party’s role in proliferating takfir prompted our initial conversation about takfir. Al-Sofee, who publicly and acrimoniously split from the party in 2009, was at the center of a small cadre party reformists who were openly critical of takfir, their party’s role in its proliferation, and its stifling effects on intellectual and political pluralism in Yemen. This leads to the question of what changed, and why the party would come to engage in the very process of individualization that it rejected in the al-Yusufi case at the beginning of the decade. An analysis of intra-Islamist intellectual engagement with the question of takfir can help to map this shift.

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A Brief Intellectual Sketch of Takfir in Contemporary Yemen The mid-2000s featured a burgeoning intra-Islamist literature on the topic of takfir, in which actors self-consciously described their own (and society’s) shifting relationships to the practice. In this section, four texts that enjoyed wide discussion among Islahis and some of their primary interlocutors are considered: Muhammed ‘Abd al-Malik al-Mutawwakil’s Human Rights in Islam and Islam and International Human Rights Declarations; ‘Ali bin ‘Abdallah al-Wasa’i’s The Position of the Apostate in Islam; and Nasr Ahmed Yehya’s Extremism and Excommunication in Yemen.46 Each of these texts was written by a self-defined Islamist, though al-Mutawwakil is not a member of Islah. While formally a member of the Union of Popular Forces (a very small party with a loosely Zaydi lineage and ties to the Wazir family), he is a close confidante and former professor of many centrist and progressive Islahis, and an important member of the Joint Meeting Parties coalition. All four texts were published in the first half of the 2000s, responding to contemporary Yemeni politics, and dealing directly or obliquely with the proliferation of takfir in post-unification Yemen.47 The first of al-Mutawakkil’s texts was written before the assassination of Jarallah ‘Omar, and generated al-Wasa’i’s The Position of the Apostate in Islam in response. Al-Mutawakkil’s then engaged al-Wasa’i, as well as to the events surrounding ‘Omar’s murder, in Islam and International Human Rights Declarations. Finally, Yehya’s Extremism and Excommunication in Yemen was a further response to and critique of al-Mutawakkil, as well as a clear apologetic endorsement for the practice of takfir and the state execution of apostates, skirting the edge of an explicit rationalization for ‘Omar’s killing. These four texts can be read together as a part of an unfolding conversation among Islamists about takfir, immediately before and after the assassination. Each of the four texts is deeply embedded in a Qur’anic framework, and each engages in a traditional form of argument and textual reference. But, al-Mutawakkil is the only one among the three authors who applies the same method to non-canonical texts, including a close reading of international human rights declarations. Al-Mutawakkil’s

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position can be considered a strong case for freedom of religion and freedom of expression, including the necessity of allowing expressions of disbelief and apostasy. He begins as many have done by citing the Qur’anic injunction that, “there can be no compulsion in religion,” declaring that this is, “the rule of all rules in Islam, expressing that freedom of religion is the first human right.”48 According to his own account, al-Mutawwakil’s aim in publishing Human Rights in Islam was in part to argue that takfir, “is not Islam . . . It’s fiqh, it comes from the fuqaha’. These laws hold that the punishment for apostasy is death, but they need to change.”49 In this sense, he suggests that laws governing apostasy and heresy, as the intellectual work of fallible humans interpreting sacred texts, are not themselves sacred in status. This is a position consistent with those of many scholars working in a Liberal Islamist tradition. ‘Ali ‘Abd Allah al-Wasa’i, one of al-Mutawakkil’s most vociferous public detractors, is a weekly contributor to the Islahi al-Sahwa, with an opinion column on the back page. His rejoinder to Human Rights in Islam is the vitriolic The Position of the Apostate in Islam, in which he claims that the “good doctor’s” book ought to have been titled The Rights of the Apostate in Islam, as he was principally concerned with defending apostasy.50 Indeed, this is an uncharitable but not entirely unfounded assessment of al-Mutawakkil’s work, much of which is concerned with issues of creedal freedom, advancing the controversial claim that Islamic law ought to defend the right not to believe.51 Basing his case on an ethic of reciprocity and a historicized reading of canonical sources, al-Mutawakkil argues that it is “illogical” to restrict freedom of conscience under Islamic law, “since Muhammed was fighting to let people have the choice, since the Quraysh didn’t allow conversion.”52 For al-Wasa’i, by contrast, defending the right to apostatize is tantamount to apostasy itself. Al-Wasa’i’s attack on his position prompted al-Mutawakkil to extend the arguments in Human Rights in Islam, and write a more comprehensive account of the ways in which Islam has been used (unjustly, to his mind) as a justification for Arabo-Muslim reticence in the face of a growing normative consensus regarding international definitions of human rights and personal freedom, including full creedal freedom. In Islam and International Human Rights Declarations, al-Mutawakkil

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thus traces compliance and resistance to various aspects of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, along with several multilateral documents from the Arab region and Africa. He argues that the ideas enshrined in the Declaration are entirely compatible with an Islamic doctrine of human rights, and that reluctance to extend full creedal and gender equality is the result of a poor reading of the classical sources. This is a clear instance of what Charles Kurzman has called the “liberal shari’a” mode of Qur’anic exegesis, whose practitioners claim that “the shari’a is itself liberal, if interpreted properly,” without wading into murkier epistemological debates.53 Al-Mutawakkil thus proceeds to reread (e.g. in his view, to “properly read”) these sources and issue an account of a kind of egalitarian Islam in which the crime of apostasy is not an issue of creedal significance, but ought to be criminal only in cases in which the murtad actively engages in efforts to overthrow a righteous Islamic government or kill his fellow citizens.54 These activities, he argues, are more properly understood as acts of treason against the state, not apostasy. In response to the publication of this text and its subsequent adoption as the core textbook in al-Mutawakkil’s curriculum at Sana’a University, another Islahi took up the banner of takfir. In Extremism and Excommunication in Yemen, Nasr Ahmed Yehya, former editor of al-Sahwa, uses a similar exegetical method (and, interestingly, many of the same sources) as al-Mutawakkil to issue a defense of takfir and suggest – through an argument redolent of “calling it like it is” – that it is incumbent upon believers to identify and speak out against unbelief and apostasy, and that it is incumbent upon the government to punish such acts as capital crimes. In many ways, Yehya in addressing two audiences with Extremism and Excommunication in Yemen. On the one hand, the reader has the sense that he is speaking to a specifically Sunni Islamist audience, indicated by his use of specific terms signifying derogatory characterizations of some adversaries. This is particularly evident in his account of the succession struggles in early Islam and the emergence of heterodox schools, whether the Shi’a (described here as the rafidun – literally, “the rejectors,” or those who reject the legitimate Sunni succession), or philosophical rationalists like the Mu’tazilites or Kharijites. Similarly,

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by lumping the Shi’a with the Kharijites and Mu’tazilites as “deviants” and “partisans of schism and extremism”55 he is articulating a Sunni position reminiscent of salafi rejections of hizbiyya, or partisanship. While Yehya does concede that the majority of disagreements between Sunni and Shi’i Muslims are non-creedal but fall into a legal category translatable as “that about which it is acceptable to disagree,” he posits that the Shi’a, along with the Kharijites and the Mu’tazilites, bear the responsibility for elevating these conflicts and, indeed, for introducing the practice of takfir to the new Muslim community in what he calls the “first act of extremism,” akin to original sin.56 In the context of Yemeni history, this may also suggest a generalized critique of the centurieslong Zaydi imamate. Given the controversial position of Mu’tazilites as rationalist interpreters of the early legal tradition (seen by some as the intellectual forebears of a Liberal Islamic movement) and Mutawakkil’s own defense of the role of reason in interpretation, it may also be read as a multivalent statement designed to malign both Zaydi sectarianism and rationalism at once. Along a more explicitly temporal plane, there are ways in which the text directly engages arguments in Yemeni society regarding political extremism and, in particular, the practice of excommunication following Jarallah ‘Omar’s killing. Yehya addresses Mutawakkil’s and others’ rejection of takfir by suggesting that they “speak of takfir as though they are ignorant of the meaning of the word, or of its Islamic legal position,” and make fools of themselves in trying to deny that Islam has a specific and unique practice of excommunication incomparable to the form of excommunication practiced by Jews or Christians throughout history.57 Takfir – as the mere practice of identifying and naming – is inescapable so long as kufr (unbelief) exists. I mention these four texts to illustrate the struggle for allegiance occurring within Yemeni Islamist circles at a pivotal moment, as they endeavored to engage others in a plural political field. These were intra-Islamist debates, but with profound effects for Islamist and nonIslamist interlocutors alike. The latter two texts, al-Mutawakkil’s and Yehya’s, came in the immediate wake of the assassination of Jarallah ‘Omar, a crime itself intimately interwoven with the broader proliferation of takfir in Yemeni political discourse.

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The Excommunication and Execution of Jara’allah ‘Omar Central to the intra-Islamist debate played out in this series of texts, the assassination of Jara’allah ‘Omar both reflected and helped to fundamentally reshape the linguistic market in which allegations of apostasy circulate. In the context of formalizing links between members of the JMP opposition alliance, Jara’allah ‘Omar, deputy secretary-general of the Yemeni Socialist Party, was invited to address the Islah party congress in December 2002 as a special and honored guest. When ‘Omar concluded his address and returned to his seat, a member of the four-thousand-strong audience shot him at point-blank range, and he died en route to the hospital.58 Several years later, this shahid al-dimoqratiyya – or martyr of democracy – was a legacy and a lesson to the Yemeni Socialist Party and other members of the political Left.59 Even though the assailant, ‘Ali Jarallah, was not believed to have been working directly for the Islah Party, he was a graduate of Shaykh al-Zindani’s al-Iman University and a former party member, having left the party to become a disciple of a violent salafi fringe movement. In recalling his intent to kill not only ‘Omar but other Leftists at the meeting, as well as to “punish” Islah for its conciliatory posture, ‘Ali Jarallah was viewed by many as motivated by a fatwa issued during the brief 1994 civil war that called for the killing of socialists and leftists as kufar.60 The chilling effects of this public act of violence were felt well beyond the Yemeni Socialist Party or leftist circles. Aided by the growth of an independent media, public intellectuals with a variety of political affiliations – and even some centrist and progressive members of the Islah party itself – came out against the impact of takfir, whether propagated by al-Zindani or others, on political discourse in Yemen. Al-Sofee, for example, maintained that he, “as an Islahi, believe[d] that everyone has the right to write what they like, whether against each other or even against Islam.” He added emphatically that, “there can be no takfir in democracy.”61 In the boldness and timing of this position, al-Sofee most certainly stood out, at least within the leadership cadre of the Islah party. When I asked other high-ranking party members about the party’s official position on kufr and whether it was acceptable to kill those who leave

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Islam, they maintained that the party can have no official position on the issue, since there are differences of opinion among the fuqaha’.62 When I specifically indicated that published defenses of the practice bore the emblem of Islah, party leaders denied this and maintained that my interest in takfir was, “a philosophical digression” and that “as a party, we’re unconcerned with this issue.”63 When I showed one such party leader the party’s seal on the cover of al-Wasa’i’s book, he professed surprise and maintained that it had been published without party permission, attempting to dismiss it as a fake. Irrespective of whether the party indeed sanctioned the publication of this defense of takfir, or whether it simply failed to effectively control the use of its name, the power of the book was derived from the common-sense belief of those readers with whom I discussed it that it was published by Islah. At one qat chew in Sana’a with 35–40 politicians and political activists, the book was passed around and discussed, and one activist asked the group: Who is the apostate? One who changes his own thoughts? Or only his external activities? This is a question of fiqh, but it becomes political when a party throws this door wide open. Parties need to exercise some oversight over their publications. If this is popular culture, they have to help change this culture of revenge. Don’t we have to demand more from ourselves than this? How can we use our freedom better than this?64 Because the party refused to take a strong position against takfir, and some of its highest-ranking members engaged in the practice, it helped to create an environment in which it flourished, at the expense of others and to Islah’s profit. By denying the party’s relationship to the practice, as in the above example, the party can distance itself from the most immediate effects of takfir while simultaneously benefiting from the climate of fear generated by its proliferation. In this sense, the party reflects Bourdieu’s contention that the profit derives from the misrecognition of the speech act as individual – i.e. unauthorized – practice.

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Returning to al-Sofee’s sketch, it is clear that by allowing takfir to proliferate, sometimes in its own name and sometimes not, the Islah party engaged in (re)defining the rules of the linguistic market in Yemen, determining what would be taken as legitimate and illegitimate language. Authorized speakers – authorized by their training and by their elected positions – could be believed and heard. Others were silenced or, as was more often the case, came to engage in a form of self-censorship that left them in a position of concession. Further, by making such concessions – acts which may have been reasonable choices for individual speakers – these speakers then themselves helped to reinforce the rules of the market for others. Thus the proliferation of takfir by a handful of Yemeni political and religious leaders produced an uneven terrain in which expressions of ideological pluralism have not matched formal political pluralism, and in which political choice has been constrained. Shifting Sites and Fluctuating Prices After ‘Omar’s Death The effects of takfir were not produced by Islahi discourse alone. The impact of takfir and the ongoing process of self-constraint were matched by the government’s increasing ability to manipulate its effects in the years following ‘Omar’s assassination, shifting the sites of excommunicative discourse to government-controlled media. By the late 2000s, allegations of apostasy more often appeared in the pages of the semi-official papers, not Islah party organs themselves. As discussed above, by the middle of the decade, the political core of the Islah party leadership had already begun to distance itself from the practice. At the same time, as the rupture between the GPC and Islah was confirmed and the Joint Meeting Parties alliance achieved greater coherence, explicitly anti-takfiri voices found a home in the independent and opposition-affiliated media. Thus the people who had once embraced al-Zindani and criticized the government’s strategy of individualization became advocates of his isolation, claiming that he spoke only for himself. As a younger generation of reformers within the party achieved greater influence and sought a deeper alliance with Leftist parties through the JMP, the

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party’s rejection of takfir and marginalization of al-Zindani and his followers became more pronounced. As discussed in Chapter 2, the party has maintained some ties to the cleric because of the widely-held belief by those inside and outside of Islah that he “delivers the street” in elections, but his leadership role has declined precipitously, especially since the 2007 internal party elections. According to Islahi centrists and independents alike, the government publication of takfiri statements by al-Zindani and others was thus designed to deepen a rift within Islah’s leadership, and between the members of the JMP alliance.65 Thus, by the middle of the decade, it was the semi-official Akhbar al-Youm and al-Shamou’ that have developed a local reputation for publishing accounts of apostasy, not Islah’s al-Sahwa. This has enabled a doubly effective government posture whereby the government simultaneously maligned its opponents (say, by publishing an account in which a civil society activist is labeled a kafir) and Islah (by attributing the statement to Islahi shaykhs, and emphasizing their positions within the party’s ranks). At the same time as it altered the perceived cost of being associated with the practice of takfir, ‘Omar’s assassination – considered by so many to have “gone too far” – also provided a moral outlet to defend against accusations of apostasy and unbelief and widened the scope of intra-Islahi debate, an example of a discursive effect exceeding the intent of particular speech acts. One of the most salient examples of this has been the growth of new independent papers, such as al-Nida’ and al-Wasat, characterized by their editors’ commitments to the targets of apostasy allegations and the papers’ role as sites for staging a cross-ideological commitment to free expression. The editors of these two papers, specifically – Sami Ghaleb and Jamal ‘Amer – are themselves former affiliates of Leftist parties, but they have provided an important venue for a number of disaffected and prominent members of Islah and other Islamist intellectuals, including former members of the Islah majlis, Nabil al-Sofee, Vice-President of the Yemeni Journalists’ Syndicate Sayeed Thabit Sayeed, and public intellectuals central to the JMP, like Muhammed ‘Abd al-Malik al-Mutawwakil or ‘Ali Sayf Hassan. While the papers have quite regularly supported the agenda of the Joint Meeting Parties coalition (and both editors have faced proscecution by the “Journalists’ Court” designed to undermine

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the momentum of the opposition), neither paper has any particular partisan bent. They have, however, offered a forum for defense against accusations of apostasy, also widening the space for a partisan press, particularly on the Left. In one example of a media at once constrained and emboldened by the debate over takfir, al-Thawri (the official organ of the YSP) published an explicit critique of takfir (carefully attributing takfiri discourse to the salafi trend, not the Islah party writ large), purportedly written by a closeted Christian convert from Islam. As a murtad (one who is born and raised Muslim but willingly leaves the faith and works against it), he would be slated for execution under the Yemeni penal code.66 The article was run anonymously, with the following editorial note: “We have omitted his name . . . he will see that in this omission we are respecting his right to follow in the steps of his revered Messiah.”67 Wondering if this was a veiled attempt by the YSP to discuss creedal freedom without advancing an explicitly atheistic position, I brought the article with me to a number of interviews and less formal qat chews, and discussed it with a number of JMP members. Al-Mutawakkil, for example, believed it to be disingenuous, though necessarily so, considering the YSP “very brave for writing about [creedal freedom] now.”68 Islah’s Muhammed Qahtan was sure that it was inauthentic, though he dismissed it angrily as “a fake” designed to discredit others (i.e. Islahis) in its discussion of the link between takfir and salafism.69 No member of the YSP was willing to speak on the record about the issue. The assassination of Jarallah ‘Omar and the chilling effects of takfir may have prompted the emergence of a group of centrists within Islah, but there was still considerable ambiguity over the extent to which the party, as an institution, was willing to give up on the practice or, more precisely, the discursive benefits within the JMP that accrued through its proliferation. Mustapha No’man vs. Shaykh al-Zindani: Individualization at Work? Half a year before the assassination of Jara’allah ‘Omar, then Deputy Foreign Minister Mustapha Ahmed No’man, writing in the London-based al-Sharq al-Awsat under the pseudonym Abu Ahmed

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Mustapha, wrote critically of the proliferation of takfir among members of rival political camps, noting that: It is enough for one of them to accuse you of apostasy for you to retreat to a distant corner, looking around fearfully lest some madman lay his hands on you.70 It is with a bitter sense of irony, then, that No’man himself came to face exactly such a challenge in 2005. By that time, however, the climate of fear generated by ‘Omar’s murder, and a subsequent increase in self-censorship,71 made it difficult for him, as a public figure, to diffuse the allegation. While he was constrained in his ability to defend against the charge himself, however, he was able to rely on an increasingly independent media corps (including Islahi journalists) to come to his aid. The controvery emerged from the demands of No’man’s position as the Deputy Foreign Minister for Europe, the Americas, and International Organizations. On February 24, 2004, the United Nations Security Council Committee on Counter-Terrorism listed Shaykh al-Zindani as an “individual belonging to or associated with the alQaeda organization.”72 Under UN Security Council Resolutions 1267 (1999) and 1373 (2001), al-Zindani’s case fell firmly under No’man’s jurisdiction.73 Resolution 1373 enjoins member states to impose a wide variety of legal restrictions on listed individuals, the most relevant of which include clause 1(c), which calls on states to, freeze without delay funds and other financial assets or economic resources of persons who commit, or attempt to commit, terrorist acts or participate in or facilitate the commission of terrorist acts; of entities owned directly or controlled directly or indirectly by such persons; and of persons or entities acting on behalf of, or at the direction of such persons and entities, including funds derived or generated from properties owned or controlled directly or indirectly by such persons.74 Relevant clauses also include 2(c), calling for states to “deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts”75 and 2(f),

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which asks states to “afford one another the greatest measure of assistance in connection with criminal investigations or criminal proceedings relating to the financing or support of terrorist attacks.”76 The United States Treasury Department also listed al-Zindani as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, making it illegal for U.S. nationals to donate money to him personally or institutionally (via donation to al-Iman University).77 As early as 2003, anticipating later developments, al-Zindani’s office had made clear through public statements that “authorities can expect greater opposition if they try to extradite, arrest, or even question someone of al-Zindani’s stature.”78 The intervening period between this statement and his assault on No’man was characterized largely by the government’s explicit support for al-Zindani, or silence. But as pressure mounted from the United Nations and the United States, in particular, and as another high-ranking Islahi was tried and convicted on similar charges, the Yemeni government issued a statement in May 2005 – through Deputy Minister No’man – that appeared to reverse this relationship and suggested that Yemen would accede to U.S. and UN demands. In the statement, No’man maintained that Yemen would “uphold the international legitimacy of UN Security Council Resolution 1267” with regard to al-Zindani. Initially, the statement caused little controversy – it was, after all, calling for Yemen to honor its international obligations as a UN member state. But the following August, al-Zindani’s office issued a statement alleging that, [Mustapha No’man’s] statement violates the Islamic shari’a, which has declared the blood, money, and land of the Muslim to be inviolable and protected and which prohibits any attack on them.79 By issuing the statement originally to Akhbar al-Youm, a paper known to be connected to the government, al-Zindani and the Salih regime jointly closed in on No’man, allowing the conflict to be recast not as one of al-Zindani against the state so much as one of al-Zindani against No’man. This defrayed the cost to the regime, but was also a chilling message to those centrist Islahis who disavowed him and his

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engagement with takfir that al-Zindani was willing to ally instrumentally with elements of the regime at the time when his party was leading the opposition.80 Of course, it was not a matter of al-Zindani against No’man, in two important ways. First, the government itself was directly implicated in the circulation of the statement, since it was initially issued in Akhbar al-Youm. No’man himself suggested at the time that this collusion between the extraordinarily popular al-Zindani and the Salih regime was designed to secure al-Zindani’s support ahead of the 2006 presidential elections, at No’man’s expense.81 But the government’s effort to dissociate itself from No’man’s statements were not the only effort to manipulate the effects of takfir. In an interview a few weeks after the initial statement from al-Zindani’s office, the Deputy Secretary-General of Islah, ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-‘Anisi, was adamant that the party had nothing to do with this affair, and that they had no prior knowledge that the statement would be issued. This was simply between al-Zindani – not Islah – and No’man. For his part, No’man has rejected this claim. As I fortuitously witnessed, he received a phone call from a high-ranking member of Islah only hours after the publication of the statement, in which No’man maintains that the party leader acknowledged that he had read a draft of the statement the day before its release, and that No’man should be “grateful that [the caller] and al-Yadoumi asked al-Zindani to tone it down.”82 The fallout from this affair, which was on the cover of every weekly, was that No’man was forced to recant what he could not. Because he could not explicitly say, “We will not honor our international obligations,” he instead expressed his contrition by appealing to an alternative site of authority in Yemeni society. Invoking themes of tribal obligation and kinship, No’man paid a symbolic visit to the shaykh at his home, a visit which al-Zindani later characterized publicly as one between a father and a son.83 One can only imagine that, in this case, No’man was a prodigal son, returned home after making an error, assuring his “father” that he would not err again. No’man revealed that he addressed al-Zindani as “father” in their meeting after having been explicitly instructed by the president and by GPC chairman ‘Abd alKarim al-Iryani to do so, in order to “make amends” and perform his

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subjection.84 Thus humbled, he was shortly thereafter appointed as Yemen’s ambassador to India, a move which not only constititued a demotion but was also interpreted by No’man’s friends and critics alike as a form of informal exile. If this had been the end of the affair, then it would have been a fairly straightforward triumph for “discursive capitulation” in the face of takfir, but it also exposed and amplified some of the fissures between centrist and progressive Islahis, on the one hand, and salafis in al-Zindani’s camp, on the other. The independent papers ran editorials by JMP leaders and progressive Islahis who rallied to No’man, al-Sofee’s among the boldest. In particular, al-Sofee argued that it was time that Shaykh al-Zindani face whatever allegations existed against him, and that the Islah party ought to encourage this as a kind of internal housekeeping and evaluate whether he was, in fact, fueling (and funding) extremism and violence. As a result, al-Zindani’s office turned against al-Sofee, though this campaign was perhaps more vicious than the attacks on No’man, inasmuch as it targeted a “deviant insider.” Because of his Islamist credentials, however, it was more difficult to allege apostasy persuasively aganist him, and the press community, particularly the Journalists’ Syndicate, came out publicly in his support.85 In the months that followed the media exchange between al-Zindani and alSofee, the latter reported that he continued to feel himself to be “under great personal threat” as a result of the allegations of apostasy leveled against him.86 The situation eventually quieted, but it unquestionably played a role in the deepening distrust between Islah’s salafi wing and those centrists committed to the JMP. This mutual antipathy deepened following the death in 2007 of the conciliatory Shaykh ‘Abdallah bin Hussein al-Ahmar, who for years had mediated between the two camps. The ascendance of reformers in the 2007 Islah party elections signalled a tip in this balance, with reformers playing an larger role in party policy-formation since then. The assassination of Jarallah ‘Omar unquestionably constituted a turning point in the shifting value of takfir in Yemeni public discourse, making it more costly for the Islah party to openly sanction takfir, but the latent benefits of its proliferation have remained considerable, and even a normative backlash against its use by some Islahi centrists

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cannot erase its effects on inter- and intraparty dynamics. Before this shift, Islahi leaders would publicly claim takfir as an acceptable mode of party discourse. Because it has become more costly to do so, they have attempted to reverse the strategy of individualization and to publicly marginalize shaykhs like al-Zindani, claiming that he is out of step with the party’s majority and leadership. This opened up new space for the ruling regime’s careful manipulation of the idiom, and its growing embrace of al-Zindani. When Islahis engaging in takfir were explicitly speaking as Islahis, as in the 1990s, the party could be held accountable for their statements. By the mid-2000s, efforts to “individualize” takfir sidestep questions of accountability, but the strength of popular associations has meant that the party as an institution still benefits today from the coercive effects of this practice through the capitulations of Leftist compatriots in the JMP, as well as “errant” members of Islah. Regardless of who profits from this proliferation, however, the circulation of excommunicative discourse contributes to defining the limits of acceptable speech, even as some individuals and organizations are willing to bear the costs associated with stretching those boundaries. Whether al-Thawri, the independent media corps, or the cross-ideological alliance of the JMP will be able to effectively undermine the use of takfir remains to be seen. The fact that the most fruitful debates over its application have been intra-Islamist suggest that Leftists or ideological others may not be viewed, in Bourdieu’s terms, as competent in the legitimate language of Islam, or able to articulate it with recognizable authority. The limitation of the practice – if it is ever to be brought about – will begin with Islahis themselves, but the experiences of men like al-Sofee suggest that this internal struggle will be fierce.

Conclusion Through the lens of these examples, in which actors seek profits in discrete markets, and both build and manipulate capital in pursuit of profits, we can understand the way in which takfir has undermined intellectual and political pluralism but also created new political

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opportunities and strengthened emerging alliances. Takfir has helped to form a coercive framework in which actors tailor their speech and engage in self-censorship in pursuit of the maximum profit from any particular linguistic exchange. This is a discursive terrain in which some actors have been endowed with greater resources – whether facility with legitimate language or delegated authority – producing an intrinsically uneven field of competition. But it is also fundamentally dynamic and fluctuating, responsive to alliances, institutions, and other non-discursive expressions of power. This is another reminder of the reciprocal relationship between discourse and institutions, structure and agency. Two important conclusions may be drawn from this discussion regarding more general assumptions about the role of Islamist political parties in formal political institutions. The first is that we cannot assume that juridical or institutional equality between political parties and their members necessarily produces an even playing field in which ideas freely compete. Assumptions about the “moderating” effect of regular parliamentary participation on Islamist agendas and priorities have tended to overlook the discursive techniques brought to bear on the constitution of the political field. Perhaps as much as formal rules governing the exercise of political freedoms, the transformation of the discursive market helps to determine what can be profitably said in a given space and time. At the same time, however, the assumption that the meaning(s) and political demand(s) of “Islam” are shared across time and space runs the dangerous risk of reifying Islamist discourse. Islamists, like Socialists, secularists, and others, are situated in (and constitutive of) locally variable linguistic markets. The language of Islam is rarely – if ever – the sole legitimate language in a given market; nor is there a single language of Islam. When Islamists “speak as though democracy is a right, as if we are created by God to be free,” they are also appropriating a language of Islam. The profits of a given appropriation can never be assumed to be fixed or given, as I will explore more fully in the next chapter’s discussion of takhwin.

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CHAPTER 6 POLICING THE NATION: HIZBALLAH AND THE DISCOURSE OF TAKHWIN

In a society [in which different communities] live side-by-side, accusations of treason should be removed from the dictionary.1 —‘Ali al-Amin There is no reason to assume that the rules of the linguistic market are uniform across countries, or even between communities. If, following Bourdieu, market rules are generated by social structures and institutional practices, then takfir should enjoy an identifiably different currency in a plural society like Lebanon, and indeed should be expected to compete with alternative discursive idioms that may acquire more or less value at any given time. This chapter briefly outlines the way in which takfir has been creatively reconfigured by Hizballah, and identifies the rival discourse – that of takhwin, or allegations of treason – that has played a more directly analogous role to Islahi takfir in mediating Hizballah’s relationship to its principal interlocutors. Arguably, the primary difference between takfir and takhwin lies in Hizballah’s inability to assert a monopoly over the authorized language of the nation, in ways that Islah has been able to do more successfully in adopting the language of Islam. Hizballah’s use of takhwin has been much more openly contestable and less profitable, contributing to the narrowing of institutional choices and the party’s increasing recourse to a politics of institutional paralysis, as explored in Chapter 4.

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A “Progressive” Takfir for a Plural Lebanon? At first glance, one might not expect to find meaningful instances of takfir in Lebanon, since the diversity of its sectarian composition varies much more significantly than Yemen’s and since this pluralism is protected by state institutions and the structure of the post-Ta’if regime. While not secular, per se, the confessional character of Lebanon’s state institutions mandates a measure of intercommunal coexistence that, however fragile, limits the potential utility of takfir. Further, because the Shi’a were not a legally recognized sect for much of their history in the pre-Ottoman Levant,2 it would seem that much less likely that Shi’i politicians would engage in the practice of restrictively delimiting membership in the community of believers. Sayyid Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah, perhaps the most significant spiritual leader of the Shi’i community in Lebanon, suggested that, “there is no substantially negative impact from the takfir issue [in Lebanon],” a point on which he contended that “Sunni and Shi’i ulema agree wholeheartedly.”3 Fadlallah added that takfir was a “philosophical and jurisprudential issue,” and while excommunicative discourse has been used periodically by both Sunni and Shi’i communities, it has not posed a violent threat except for those few who have been “influenced by Wahhabism or some such, like al-Qaeda, but this does not pose a danger to intra-Muslim relations [in Lebanon].”4 ‘Ali Hamdan, of Hizballah’s rival, the Amal Movement, added to this that takfir “is not a problem unless you’re in an Islamic state,” in which an apostate can be executed by the state in accordance with prevailing interpretations of shari’a.5 Lebanon is not such a place and, contends Hamdan, is unlikely ever to become one. For the most part, the existing Sunni Muslim elite, represented by tycoons like Rafiq and later Saad Hariri, or technocrats like Najib Miqati, resembles other elites from across much of the confessional spectrum in Lebanon and is largely secular in its political discourse. As demonstrated in Chapters 3 and 4, it has also been heavily reliant on a form of coalition politics that requires accommodation with a broad range of confessional groups, making allegations of unbelief not only of little utility, but also less expedient than other political idioms. Even

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explicitly religious Sunni parties, like the Jama’a al-Islamiyya, exhibit little of the divisive strategy of takfir in their parliamentary discourse, and show considerable tolerance for intra-Muslim diversity.6 But if traditional modes of takfir like those that have shaped interand intraparty relationships in Yemen are not much in evidence in Lebanon, the idiom has nonetheless found some limited meaning in a reconfigured form. Articulated, in effect, as the excommunication of undesirable social conditions, this kind of takfir, though rare, has been marshaled in pursuit of social justice and equity issues and used as a rejection of degenerative social conditions, not individuals or groups. The example of kufr al-jo’a (the heresy of hunger) illustrates this point. At the height of the Lebanese civil war, Ziad Rahbani, son of Lebanese musical icon Fayrouz and established Communist, penned the lyrics to the iconic song Ana Mish Kafir: I’m no kafir, but hunger is/I’m no kafir, but illness is/I’m no kafir, but poverty is, and humiliation . . . /I’m no kafir, but my country is. The song goes on to issue an impassioned indictment of religious hypocrisy, both Muslim and Christian, and became in many ways a ballad of a generation of youth that came of political age in the postTa’if period of the 1990s. It was in this context that a Hizballah MP stood on the floor of parliament in 1993 and quoted Rahbani – an avowed atheist – declaring “al-jo’a kafir.”7 This reconfiguration of religious idiom is a product of a linguistic market that cannot privilege Islam in the same way as in Yemen, and instead rewards recourse to ideas and concepts that reflect – or appear to reflect – non-sectarian and thus presumably “national” goals, as discussed in greater detail in later sections of this chapter. I have classed this kind of takfir “progressive” insofar as it attempts to bring into being a utopian future condition, as opposed to correcting deviation from a utopian past. In this usage, popularized by Rahbani’s song but tracing its roots in the eyes of many Shi’a to sayings of Imam ‘Ali, it is social injustice in its myriad forms – hunger,

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illiteracy, corruption – that is subject to excommunication and, consequently, must be “killed” or rendered obsolete. This link to ‘Ali was indicated in interviews with a number of Shi’i political and religious leaders, including the son of the late Imam Musa al-Sadr, leader of the Harakat al-Mahrumin, or Movement of the Dispossessed, of the 1960s and early 1970s, the movement that inspired both major Shi’i political parties, Hizballah and Amal. Sayyid Sadr al-Din al-Sadr explained this use of “progressive takfir” with reference to a hadith of Imam ‘Ali stipulating that, “if hunger were a person, I would kill him.”8 Dr. Ahmed Issa, the research director at the Imam Musa al-Sadr Institute for Research and Studies, emphasized that that “hunger is the source of all negative social behavior.”9 In the ensuing conversation, as well as in several other interviews, “hunger” stood in idiomatically for the more general concept of need or deprivation.10 The meaning of this transfigured idiom of takfir must be articulated in the plural and heterogeneous field of Lebanese politics. Hizballah MP Muhammed al-Berjawi elaborated on its function in such an environment, noting that, The expression of takfir in Lebanon is metaphorical. When it is used by some politicians in the course of parliamentary debates, [it is] in order to accentuate a position, intended to warn the government – in an analogical way – concerning its allocations and concerning the increasing poverty and unemployment in Lebanon, and the absence of even development; it’s in this context that the expression of takfir appears.11 This process was clearly reflected in party practice by MP Muhammed Yaghi’s 1993 parliamentary address quoting Rahbani, which was followed immediately by al-Berjawi’s own proposal for budget allocations designed to promote “comprehensive equality” and the elimination of income inequality and illiteracy in Hizballah constituencies.12 The measure passed. Yet classifying this reconfigured mode of takfir as “progressive,” as many of my interview subjects did, may also be misleading. On the

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one hand, takfir in this example was employed as a rhetorical strategy to build cross-confessional support for core social-justice prerogatives of the party. At the same time, it also masked sectarian interests, as well as intrasectarian conflicts.13 The particular parliamentary session in which Yaghi and al-Berjawi invoked social justice themes was a debate in which they were lobbying for a 10 billion LBP budget allocation earmarked for the predominantly Shi’a South, but not the Biqa’ Valley, where Shaykh Subhi al-Tufayli was engaged in leading a “revolution of the famished” that was critical of the way in which Hizballah privileged the South. The appropriation nonetheless passed unanimously, its framing making it difficult to oppose. Even “progressive” takfir, a relative rarity, functions as a blunt instrument of discursive coercion. It remains relatively marginal, however, when compared with the effects of takhwin (allegations of treason), as the remainder of this chapter will show.

Policing the Nation: Takhwin as Cross-Confessional Allegation While both Islahi takfir and Hizballahi takhwin are used to differentiate between notions of sacred and profane, one of the most notable points of distinction between the two lies in the parties’ respective claims to discursive authority to engage in such demarcation. In Yemen, because takfir is an explicitly religious idiom, those with religious credentials compete over its authoritative exercise, generating vibrant intra-Islamist debate, and those without religious authority (and especially those who explicitly disavow a religious politics, like Yemeni socialists) lack the ability to effectively disrupt the discourse, as illustrated by failed attempts to secularize the idiom of fitna detailed in Chapter 2. By contrast, takhwin in Lebanon is not the explicit purview of any one sectarian or religious group, and neither Hizballahis nor Muslim clerics enjoy any particular advantage (and may, in fact, be at a disadvantage) in its exercise. Because of this, Hizballah has relied on the credibility afforded to it by the Resistance to strengthen its authority in contests of takhwin. As the significance of the Resistance has changed over time, however, the party’s ability to successfully impose its own distinction between

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friends and enemies on a national level has similarly become more contested. This section will lay out a theoretical framework for understanding these struggles to assert discursive authority, and the next will examine discursive practices that have enabled and inhibited Hizballah’s success in making and (re)making the meaning of takhwin following the death of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, the 2006 war with Israel, and armed conflict between members of the Resistance and rival militias associated with the March 14 bloc in 2008. I draw again from Pierre Bourdieu, seeing markets of meaning as having an essential role in organizing the circulation, proliferation, and consumption of symbolic goods (like takhwin). Taking the production of meaning first, takhwin can (and has) expressed an allegation of treason against a polity, sect, party, or transnational community. The value accorded to these meanings – their symbolic value – has changed in accordance with shifts in structure, meaning both the rules governing the market (which are reproduced through linguistic exchange) and historical and material conditions. In this sense, structure shapes discourse (what can be profitably said, how it can be said, and who can say it) and discourse encourages and enables changes in structure. Thus Bourdieu’s market metaphor can be understood to provide an account of the process of meaning-making, the fusion of structure and discourse. Subjects create goods within these markets and then exchange their goods in pursuit of profits, though the circulatory logic of the market evades individual calculations. Participation in this process of exchange reproduces the market and its rules. These fields (or markets) are defined as: sites of collective symbolic struggles to produce valuable cultural goods (or to be associated with their production, in the case of institutions and marketers). The value of a symbolic good depends on the value assigned to it by the relevant consumer community.14 The notion of the “relevant consumer community” reminds us that the markets are also an exercise in community-making and demarcation,

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that they interpellate and they exclude. Symbolic power can thus be understood as the ability to define, to categorize, and to have one’s categories accepted as natural. The fruit of such victory is the right to impose one’s symbolic goods on the social field: that is, to exercise symbolic violence on the “consumers” in the social field, and this entails the complicity of those subject to such violence.15 For Bourdieu, this hinges on two principal concepts familiar from the discussion of takfir in Chapter 5: (a) legitimate language; and (b) authorized speech. Bourdieu distinguishes between legitimate ordinary language, in the Wittgensteinian sense, and that level of legitimate language worthy of publication or official circulation. While the latter may become integrated into institutional forms of knowledge production, neither form has an immediate means of reproducing itself over time, necessitating instead a constant battle for discursive monopoly: Only the process of continuous creation, which occurs through the unceasing struggles between the different authorities who compete within the field of specialized production for the monopolistic power to impose the legitimate mode of expression, can ensure the permanence of legitimate language and of its value, that is, of the recognition accorded to it.16 Bourdieu’s model is thus particularly useful for understanding change, but change that unfolds gradually as a consequence of engagement between the purposive agency of speakers and the structural rules that order their speech acts. Speakers invoke preexisting modes of discourse, even as they seek to change or manipulate them toward new ends, thus capturing both continuities and innovations in usage, both of which, I argue, are expressed in the examination of takhwin in Lebanon offered below, and each of which is in turn related to hierarchies of value (price) and power (profit):

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To speak is to appropriate one or other of the expressive styles already constituted in and through usage and objectively marked by their position in a hierarchy of styles which expresses the hierarchy of corresponding social groups.17 The authority to speak is reinforced and extended through institutions, and in fluency in the legitimate language and its modes of expression. “Speakers lacking the legitimate competence are de facto excluded from the social domains in which this competence is required [e.g. institutions, with their authorizing power], or are condemned to silence.”18 The Resistance – and the official recognition accorded to it by the state for so long – has been crucial to the development of Hizballah’s ability to speak for the nation, a necessary precursor to the pronouncement of takhwin. This discursive practice, in turn, expresses the power to categorize and to naturalize one’s categories, and can be understood as part of the symbolic imposition of the delineation between “friends” and “enemies” so central to the party’s cosmology. But the bipolarization of the political field that has occurred since 2005 through the consolidation of rival March 8 and March 14 blocs and their associated politics has also challenged Hizballah’s discursive power, and increasingly left the two blocs speaking to different “relevant consumer communities,” via rival idioms of authority. Corporeal Embodiment, Arab Nationalism, and Takhwin In comparison to Sunni Islamist parties elsewhere, Hizballah “has no . . . ‘takfir’ (declaring the infidelity of adversaries) discourse. Above all, it is the oppressors who are anathematized, regardless of their religious identities, political leanings, or religiosity.”19 This is consistent with the reconfigured articulation of takfir discussed in the previous chapter, but also with the mode of takhwin employed more consistently in party discourse. Takhwin may be defined most precisely as regarding or calling someone or something “false, disloyal, treacherous, dishonest, unreliable,” seeking to position one’s adversary outside of the political community while reinforcing one’s own claim to make such a distinction.20 While it might be possible to imbue this term with

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a distinctively religious meaning, its widespread adoption by Arab nationalists in the 1960s and 1970s instead positions the term in a kind of secular contradistinction to its discursive cousin, takfir. Arab nationalist discourse from the 1960s and 1970s suggests that the identification of an ideological Other or political opponent as outside of the body politic is a discursive technique with a substantial lineage in Lebanon, and its use by Hizballah should therefore be read more as part of a discursive continuity than as a form of innovation. Treason, in an Arab nationalist context, was rarely alleged for violation of the sanctity of the nation-state as a political unit, but rather as a betrayal of the Arab nation as a transnational community. More often, however, Arab nationalist allegations of treason have been levied against those who are seen to have acted against an articulated version of the “national interest,” or to have adopted policies or postures seen as benefiting external (and thereby inauthentic) forces. Thus the ubiquitous question of cui bono raised by editorialists can be understood as an insinuation of takhwin, often coupled with an explicit allegation that the policy or attitude under question “really” benefits Israel, the United States, etc., by undermining Arab unity and the interest of the Arab nation. In describing the 1985 agreement between Yasser Arafat and King Hussein, for example, the Syrian newspaper Tishrin classed the bilateral agreement as an act of treason because it constituted “a violation of PNC resolutions, treachery against the Palestinian struggle, and a blow to the entire Arab struggle.”21 Such invocations of treason moved fluidly between conceptions of political identity, interpellating an extraterritorial nation, the Arab nation, even while evaluating actions taken by specific states or in the service of discrete groups or territories that might be subordinated to (or in tension with) the national interest.22 This helps to highlight one of the thorniest characteristics of takhwin: its role in the discursive demarcation of territoriality and the boundaries of political community. In some ways, Hizballah’s struggle against Israel and support for Palestinian resistance through the invocation of transnational tropes of unity is akin to earlier Arab nationalist discourse, in which it was possible to conceive of a unity between “the Arab strugglers and Palestinian fighters who embody the Palestinian people’s will inside

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and outside the occupied homeland.”23 This inside-outside tension, and reference to both the particular (Palestinian) and broader-but-notuniversal (Arab) identities, is a characteristic of mid- to late-century Arab nationalism, but is also strongly evident in later articulations by Hizballah.24 What does it mean in this fluid context to be a traitor? Surely, allegations of treason of the variety mentioned here are not the allegations made by and through state institutions, in the juridical sense, but serve instead to articulate an extraterritorial vision of the nation to which the territorial state is said to carry obligations. This is somewhat directly analogous to the way in which allegations of takfir in Yemen are made weightier by the shared knowledge of the criminal status of apostasy, even when the law is not the primary mechanism through which the power of the idiom is brought to bear on the discursive field. Interwoven notions of belonging that move between Arab, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Shi’i Muslim make sense in light of Hizballah’s political history. The battlefield-forged relationships that developed between many of Hizballah’s first generation and Palestinian and Lebanese Leftist organizations in Lebanon in the 1960s were robust.25 As Sayyid Musa al-Sadr and his Harakat al-Mahrumin helped to develop political consciousness and mobilize the Shi’a in South Lebanon, they did so alongside and (much, though not all, of the time) in concert with the major Leftist organizations within the Palestinian diaspora.26 Many members of Hizballah’s founding generation were initially politically mobilized under these conditions, breaking off only when the movement came to be seen as too secular.27 Hizballah’s use of the language of takhwin thus undoubtedly bears the clear imprint of an earlier generation of Arab nationalist discourse, which produced robust affinities and common points of reference.28 The Lebanese civil war, however, posed a substantial challenge to Arab nationalism, and the contours of Hizballah’s takhwin reflect some of the disillusionment that accompanied the betrayals of internecine war. The bitterness of intra-Arab betrayal was evoked in essays, editorials, and all manner of cultural production. Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s poetic response to traumatic killings perpetrated

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against Palestinian civilians contends that the most troubling aspect of the killing was that those responsible, “adopt[ed] an enthusiastic Arabic tongue.” The suggestion that this tongue was adopted and thus in some way foreign or inauthentic is an example of the insinuation of takhwin described above. Darwish adds, [Palestinians] are the one[s] who know the faces of their new murderers. They know the faces well, and they weep with the painful irony, for they were the ones who taught their murderers the value of fighting for liberty . . . they were the ones who sowed the traditions of steadfastness and heroism in South Lebanon. They were the same ones who established the new climate for resisting the occupation, who have given their lives resisting the invasion side by side with those who are killing them now.29 The chasm opened by the civil war helped to reinforce the bond between Hizballah and Palestinian groups in the post-war period; the party’s commitment to the Palestinian cause may be understood as not simply religious in origin, but also set in a kind of Arab nationalist contradistinction to the micro-particularism that was made manifest by sectarian killing during the war. One of the most potent ways in which this takhwin has been expressed in Hizballahi discourse is through language that embodies the nation, naturalizes the relationship between its distinct parts, and works to excoriate that which has an unhealthy relationship to this body. This is evident in the party’s recurrent use of corporeal metaphors. The body as a metaphor for political relationships and processes is woven throughout the text of the Open Letter, and serves to naturalize relationships and render visceral certain forms of response to Hizballah’s friends and enemies. Regular reference is made to “the body of our Islamic nation,”30 establishing a framework whereby the separation of the parts from the whole is impossible or, at least, inorganic and thus inauthentic. With less success, the party has also attempted to extend this concept in recent years to justify its “special” relationships with Syria, Iran, and the Palestinians, particularly

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following the Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon in 2000, as the relationship between Hizballah and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was examined more closely by the growing cadre of Hizballah’s critics.31 In the 1985 letter, the party established a pattern that would characterize its discourse over the next two decades, despite substantial shifts in its political environment and operations. The author(s) of the letter argued, “as to our military power, nobody can imagine its dimensions because we do not have a military agency separate from the other parts of our body.”32 This line of argument used images of the body to establish its presumably inviolate nature, sanctifying blood as the life force of that body, and introducing the “blood of the martyrs” trope of liberation. It is in this context that Hizballah has claimed that “aggression can be repelled only with sacrifices and dignity gained only with the sacrifice of blood,” and that “freedom is not given but regained with the sacrifice of both heart and soul.”33 Hizballah’s characterization of its enemies (and their effects) as various forms of disease or contagion is a further consequence of this discursive frame. Israel is thus described as “the ulcerous growth of world Zionism,”34 and the global Muslim community is called upon to help to “uproot this cancerous germ.”35 This has been viewed by some scholars as part of a tradition of anti-Semitism borrowed largely from European models and developed and advanced in Hizballah by the adoption of rhetoric employed by the Ayatollah Khomeini, among others.36 Be that as it may, this language of bodily corruption and infection is not limited to Hizballahi responses to Israel. Rather, it is applied with nearly equal force to foreign ideas and concepts, and to corrupt leaders within Lebanon itself, and can be read as an attempt to naturalize certain modes of conflict. In signifying both the sacred and the profane through bodily metaphor, the language serves to naturalize the bond within the sanctified community, as well as the visceral rejection of its enemies. The body also represents a site on which a particular vision of Islamic justice can be inscribed. This is demonstrated by the example of repeated vows by Nasrallah to cut off the hand of those who seek to disarm the Islamic Resistance. This is a clear invocation

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of the classical hudud punishment for theft, suggesting the innate illegitimacy of attempts to disarm the Resistance. The discursive isolation of the corrupted or infected body, on the one hand, and the sanctified inviolability of that same body, on the other, are two tropes that have continued to mark Hizballah discourse, particularly as expressed in language on the party’s satellite station, alManar, and in the pages of its weekly paper, al-‘Ahd al-Intiqad.37 Between the resumption of democratic politics following the civil war and the Israeli withdrawal in May 2000, support for the Resistance and the struggle against Israel were the principal framing tropes against which treason was juxtaposed. Thus, for example, Hizballah named its parliamentary bloc the “Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc,” implicitly challenging the loyalties of those who opposed its policies and raising the specter of collaboration against the protectors of the (trans/sub) national community. But the meaning of the Resistance has itself changed over time, enabling alternative voices to compete in the demarcation of the nation. As I argued above, the struggle to impose meaning occurs through the interaction of the purposive agency of speakers and the structural rules that order their speech acts. As structuring institutions shift, so do discourses. Thus, at the fifth commemoration of the Israeli withdrawal in Bint Jbeil, the profit of Secretary-General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah’s threat to cut off any (putatively Israeli) hand that reached for Hizballah’s weapons was reduced, owing to the structural shift brought about by the Beirut Spring and the Syrian withdrawal, and the elimination of “red lines” regarding criticism of the Resistance. This rhetoric was not a radical departure from previous party statements, but what the responses to it revealed was the extent to which Lebanon’s political field had shifted, given the emergence of a strong movement for Hizballah’s disarmament. Party members professed to recognize no contradiction between Hizballah’s commitment to dialogue, on the one hand, and the reiteration of old discursive “red lines” such as this one, on the other, even when those red lines were demarcated through the symbolic (or real) threat of violence. Because the party’s “raison d’étre, its resistance to the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon and the West Biqa’ constitutes the very backbone of its intellectual structure,”38

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the disarmament debate that emerged immediately following the Syrian withdrawal in 2005 constituted a critical moment of anxiety within the party and among its interlocutors. The discourse of takhwin played an important role in shaping the contours of this debate, up to and following the eruption of the 2006 war.

Shifting Markets of Meaning: Three Episodic Moments Hizballah’s struggle to assert symbolic power through the exercise of takhwin in Lebanon can be periodized as follows: (a) the period between the conclusion of the civil war in 1990 and the May 2000 withdrawal of Israeli troops from Southern Lebanon, in which the relevance of the Resistance outside of the Shi’i community afforded Hizballah a source of nearly unchallenged authority to define (and defend) the nation; (b) the period from 2000–05, in which alternative voices began to contest the Resistance as a source of Hizballah’s authority; and (c) the post-Syrian period, in which Hizballah has again attempted to assert its authority through its engagement with Israel and a “nationalized” Resistance, but has been unable to assert a dominant claim without substantial challenge. Each of these will be addressed here in turn, read against the trajectory of institutional practice outlined in Chapters 3 and 4. Establishing Discursive Authority, 1990–2000 As detailed in Chapter 3, the period following the conclusion of the Ta’if Accord led to a transition for Hizballah, from the civil war context characterized by many militias to the post-war phase in which the party stood as the institutional voice of the Resistance, the only remaining armed opposition to Israeli occupation in the South. Over the course of this decade, the party increasingly endeavored to articulate the Resistance as a national Resistance, speaking for and of a singular Lebanese nation. Hizballah was aided in this by the continuing presence of Israeli troops in Southern Lebanon, as well as by its own battlefield posture as the principle adversary of both the Israel Defense Forces and its proxy militia in the Security Zone, the Southern Lebanese Army.

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The immediate post-Ta’if period was marked by an alliance between Hizballah and state institutions in the administration of those parts of South Lebanon not under immediate Israeli or SLA control. As Hizballah’s Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem described: The army’s arrival in the South during February 1991 came as a result of . . . the Amal-Hizballah agreement, a recognition that security could be in the hands of the army and none other.39 At the same time, Qassem further recalls, Hizballah was granted license by the state to engage in armed confrontations, “limited to those areas where Israeli soldiers and their collaborators, headed by Antoine Lahd, existed. Moreover, a political decision was undertaken by the Lebanese government not to interfere with resistance activity within the defined scope [of this area].”40 This cooperative relationship is cited even now as the reason why Hizballah was exempted from the Ta’if provision requiring the disarmament of the militias. The argument is essentially that Hizballah was seen as challenging an enemy of Lebanon, not simply an enemy of the Shi’a, and that the SLA was a collaborationist wing of this national enemy. This was reinforced by statements by the Lebanese government during this period which specifically refered to the SLA as “Israel’s SLA.”41 Between 1991 and 1996, then, Hizballah maintained a guerilla war against both Israeli troops and members of the SLA, under the rubric of national liberation and with the support of the Lebanese government. While there can be little question that Syrian interests in Beirut helped to ensure this operational freedom, the discourse of takhwin was also a meaningful way for Hizballah to assert a singular right to legitimately maintain arms after the end of the civil war. By constructing itself in opposition to the collaborationists of the SLA, few could claim that Hizballah was not in some sense defending Lebanese territory from occupiers and their local agents. The 1996 Israeli “Operation Grapes of Wrath” further escalated the conflict, serving to legitimize Hizballah’s self-appointed (but state-sanctioned) role as defender of the South. The sixteen-day

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conflict, motivated by Israel’s desire to secure what had by then come to be known as “the insecurity zone,”42 reached its apogee with the massacre at the village of Qana, in which more than a hundred civilians were killed while they sheltered at a UNIFIL base. In an argument that would come to be repeated a decade later during and after Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, the Grapes of Wrath operation was seen by observers on both sides of the border as “aimed at hampering the progress which the country had made since the end of the civil war in rebuilding its economy and infrastructure.”43 From a discursive standpoint, Operation Grapes of Wrath was instrumental in helping Hizballah to reposition its wartime militia, previously (and still in some circles) known as the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, as a “National Resistance” or a “Lebanese Resistance.” Even in Christian enclaves within the capital, support was generated in response to the combined effect of Israeli aggression and foreign acquiescence. Hala Jaber, a journalist covering the conflict in Beirut, recalls the following from the midst of the conflict: On one occasion, two of the group’s top press officials were visiting a Lebanese media center in the heart of Ashrafiyeh, a Christian neighborhood. As they got out of their Range Rover, an old Christian man spotted them from across the street. He raised his arms in greeting and shouted to the embarrassed officials, “Hezbollah, Hezbollah, we are all Hezbollah. We are behind you, God be with you, you have made us proud.”44 Jaber recounts the Hizballah official’s response to this outpouring of unexpected support: I just stood there, feeling overwhelmed by his words, especially because of the area we were in. Part of me initially panicked at his public shouts of the word Hezbollah in the midst of this Christian enclave and another part was filled with emotion when I saw the other pedestrians and shoppers look at us with smiles

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of acknowledgement and acceptance. I knew then that we had come a long way as a group and, more importantly, as a people, so I waved back to the old man and carried on with my journey.45 Ten years later, sitting in a café in that same neighborhood, I interviewed a Christian activist who characterized the Grapes of Wrath invasion as central to a series of anti-Israeli confrontations that cemented her own support for the Resistance: I think for most Lebanese, the Hizballah issue is separate [from the issue of Syrian involvement in Lebanon] . . . I mean, I’m someone who has supported Hizballah financially forever. I’m Christian, I live in Achrafiyeh, I have nothing to do with Islam, but, I mean, I think Israel has never withdrawn from any other country.46 The popularity of the Resistance, even among non-Shi’i sectors of the Lebanese population, stemmed very much from the sense that Hizballah was stepping into a void when no one else would or could. Framing the SLA as traitors and collaborators helped to establish the party’s singular voice in the determination of the friends and enemies not only of Hizballah, but of the Lebanese nation. As Jaber recalls, Joint demonstrations were held by Christians and Muslims. Joined by politicians, they met along Beirut’s infamous Green Line . . . [Israel was] waging a war against Lebanon’s right to resist an unlawful occupation. The unprecedented outrage against Israel’s offensive, shared by Lebanon’s Christians and Muslims alike, was at last giving the country a long-awaited sense of national unity.47 In the period following Operation Grapes of Wrath, Hizballah took steps to extend further this nationalization of the Resistance by adopting, for the first time in sizeable numbers, volunteers from

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non-Shi’i communities in Lebanon, as well as Shi’i Muslims belonging to other political groups.48 Charara and Domont document a dramatic increase in the Resistance’s operational activity during this period following Operation Grapes of Wrath, further reinforcing the idea that, “a complementarity was established gradually between the Lebanese state and Hizballah,” as the state effectively sub contracted its mandate over the use of force.49 This affinity would not have been possible had the Resistance not begun to claim sufficient authority to represent (or construct) the national interest. The 1996 elections helped to bolster Hizballah’s claims, as it returned to parliament stronger than before, though its gains were not astronomical. Nizar Hamzeh notes that the principal effect of Operation Grapes of Wrath in electoral terms was that it established Hizballah as increasingly autonomous, “making Syria reluctant to pressure Hizballah . . . On the contrary, Israel’s Grapes of Wrath operation made Hizballah’s resistance movement more popular,” and thereby less reliant on overt political support from Syria.50 This establishment of some measure of internal autonomy, in turn, helped to ensure the party the freedom to escalate its operational activities, precipitating the Israeli withdrawal in May 2000 by driving large numbers of SLA supporters to desert their posts under increasing military pressure.51 As Nizar Hamzeh notes, The “liberation of South Lebanon” boosted Hizballah’s image as a heroic organization whose resistance paid blood and sacrifices in fighting the Israeli occupation. The Israeli withdrawal that became Hizballah’s victory made it extremely difficult for its rivals, regardless of sect, to ignore Hizballah.52 Hizballah’s handling of SLA collaborators in the South provided the party with the opportunity to make a perfomrative commitment to the rule of law, articulated as a means of safeguarding the national interest and civil peace. This is evident in the shift from the escalated targeting of SLA members in 1999 to their detention and trial following the withdrawal.

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Hizballah, like the SLA itself, did not anticipate that the Israeli withdrawal would entail the IDF’s desertion of a large number of SLA militia members. Qassem notes that, “what actually took place was entirely outside the scope of expectiations: Israel withdrew from Lebanon in one night, completely surprising its collaborators.”53 This also required a quick policy reassessment by Hizballah, which had not yet determined how it should handle Lebanese collaborators in a post-withdrawal context. The suddenness was so remarkable that “mujahideen fighters discovered fully prepared dinners, left untouched by the fleeing conspirators,” when they entered their homes. Far more significant than these dinners were the computer files left behind by both SLA and IDF personnel, with lists of collaborators’ names.54 Qassem’s own account contains no information regarding internal party deliberations on the issue, but he notes that a policy affirming state policy was adopted: Liberation was not marked by any deliberate assassinations of Lahdist collaborators . . . Not even one incident of vengeance by citizens against collaborators was witnessed, contrary to what is customary in all revolutions and struggles around the world. Not one clash with the families of collaborators . . . was recorded. This was stunning to observers.55 What is evident in this statement is an awareness of audience, that the symbolic importance of Hizballah’s treatment of the SLA would be (as it was) noted by those outside the party. Many scholarly accounts of the Israeli withdrawal do draw attention to this point, but others have offered a different interpretation: As the SLA began abandoning check-points and posts around Jezzine, an ad hoc system for dealing with the chaotic situation emerged . . . SLA members who wanted to turn themselves in generally accompanied the local priest to a church. There they awaited the arrival of the government security forces that would take charge of them.56

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Yet even in this more critical version, in which Hizballah is present only at the margins, some credence is given to Qassem’s account of the existence of a concerted policy to assert moral authority through the handling of the collaborators. The widest wave of surrenders came only after the Resistance and the Army gave explicit guarantees of safe passage. Harik concludes: It was generally felt that the established process was protecting most of the prisoners from immediate harm and was probably as good as they could expect, given their collusion with the enemy.57 Other accounts find the middle ground between these. Within a week of the “liberation,” 6,000 South Lebanese, mostly members of Israel’s proxy militia, the South Lebanese Army (SLA), and their families, left Lebanon . . . Within six months of the liberation, tribunals began to hold marathon sessions up to three times a week, and charged 2,200 Lebanese – including some of those who had already left the country, handing down 800 verdicts.58 Of the four categories of criminal “contact with the enemy” applied in these treason trials, only two carried penalties greater than a small fine or time served. Soldiers typically earned no more than eighteen months in prison, but stiff sentences were handed down for those who worked in intelligence. While fifty-four SLA collaborators were sentenced to death (in absentia), the death penalty had actually been suspended more than three years before the (suspended) sentences were issued.59 The sentences stood, nonetheless, as an affirmation of the allegation of treason, a legitimation of takhwin, and a move that highlighted to some Hizballah’s show of “restraint,” As one Christian activist recalled, “When Hizbullah freed the South, there wasn’t one incident with the Christians who had been working with the Israeli Army in the South for years. That shows you how Hizbullah functions.”60

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Indeed, Hizballah’s discursive response to collaborators after the withdrawal was to insist on their tawbah, or repentance, and to resist any blanket amnesty. As anthropologist John Borneman notes, this term has a Shi’i religious genealogy, describing the process individuals undergo as they move from earthly time to a new cycle of time after death. The identification and trial of SLA members as collaborators, and their punishment or exile, would serve this function. “By insisting on the applicability of this condition (purification through the door of repentance) in the military-political-jural domain, Hezbollah ended up accommodating its religious doctrine to, instead of trying to replace, the secular legal institutions of the Napoleonic tradition [e.g. Lebanon’s legal code].”61 The “jural domain” to which Borneman refers, however, was not the only or even principal way in which Hizballah aligned takhwin with defense of the nation. Borneman adds that “in reckoning with Israeli occupation, equally if not more signifant than legal punishment

Image 4 Signs at Khiam prison commemorating SLA abuses of detainees. November 2004, Author’s photograph,

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are rites of commemoration: the symbolic retribution or performative redress in cultural work, such as turning sites of Israeli torture and murder into museums, which are to be visited ritually with no forseeable end.”62 From 2000 to 2006, Hizballah thus maintained a museum memorializing Israeli abuses (and, more importantly, SLA collusion) in the former prison in Khiam, overlooking the new border. Images 4 and 5 show a sign memorializing the forms of torture used against those imprisoned at Khiam, as well as triumphalist iconography reaffirming Hizballah’s role in liberating Lebanon from Israel and the United States. During my own visit to the site in 2004, teenage boys jockeyed for photos in front of the large rockets that marked the entrance, flashing unironic peace signs and broad smiles, while their families wandered more reflectively through the space, interrupted only rarely by the tour guides who administered the site, but always within sight of two

Image 5 Triumphalist iconography from Khiam prison, celebrating the demise of Israel. November 2004, Author’s photograph.

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inescable images: an Israeli tank about five feet beyond the barbed wire fence marking the border, and Hizballah’s flags on every lamp post along the way. The immediacy of this tension made it impossible to consign the events memorialized at Khiam to “history” in any meaningful sense. It was not surprising to learn of the destruction of the museum by the IDF during the 2006 war. While commemorative sites like Khiam or Qana and commemorative practices like those marking the withdrawal did help Hizballah to sustain its gains for some time, they were insufficient to prevent the eventual debate over disarmament. While these practices may have contributed to the bipolarization of the political field by further cementing existing support in some circles, new voices, emboldened by government policy and not fully contained by Syrian hegemony, came to challenge Hizballah’s ability to singularly represent and defend the nation. Plural Voice(s) of the Nation, 2000–05 As the withdrawal of Israeli forces from South Lebanon opened space for a critique of the Resistance, Hizballah’s use of takhwin against its adversaries found its mirror in allegations of fifth columnism lodged against the group itself, and the Shi’i community more broadly. Among Lebanon’s Christian Right, especially, such allegations began to resurface after the liberation of the South, as anti-Syrian sentiment was voiced with increasing strength. By 2004, it was not uncommon to hear Hizballah equated explicitly and publicly with Iranian and Syrian interests, with popular jokes about the group often rendered in an explicitly “Persianized” lilt meant to insinuate foreign loyalties. These allegations were not simply rendered through wordplay. In one of his many frontal assaults on the loyalty of the group, editor and parliamentary candidate Gibran Tueni noted in May 2005 that, “[Hizballah’s] goal – and we know it – is to be able to implement the Iranian example in Lebanon . . . When you have a party financed by a foreign country – twenty-five million dollars a month – I think that is also a major question mark, because nobody will finance you

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for free.”63 Accusations of disloyalty were a form of political currency, rooted in the experience of a civil war, at times only thinly papered over, in which sectarian militias sought (and found) foreign proxies to support, and in some cases inflame their grievances against one another. But Hizballah’s financial and symbolic ties to Iran and logistical reliance on Syria contributed in the post-Israeli period to its characterization as most explicitly and problematically tied to foreign governments, even as the March 14 Forces and leaders of the new government sought comfort in the international support and finance of the United States and France, and would later turn to Qatar and others in the Gulf for support.64 Even before the cataclysmic changes brought about in the aftermath of the Hariri assassination, Lebanon’s post-Israeli moment was an unstable period in which mutual accusations of treason and disloyalty were exchanged in increasingly explicit terms, ultimately culminating in a series of fractures and fissures that made anyone’s claims to speak for the unified concept of the nation increasingly untenable. Flooding the Market: Takhwin Since 2005 If the February 14, 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri was a critical turning point in the anti-Syrian movement and its accompanying critique of Hizballah, it was only the culmination of a process that had been gaining momentum, particularly in the months before his murder. The cruicial moment in the development of the anti-Syrian movement and the beginning of aggressive mobilization among the Chrisitan Right appears to be the extension of President Emila Lahoud’s mandate under Syrian pressure on September 3, 2004, several months before Hariri’s assassination. As the culmination of pressure by Lebanese activists at home and abroad, with the support of the U.S. and the French, UN Security Council Resolution 1559 was passed on September 2, 2004, calling (among other things) for Syria’s complete military and intelligence withdrawal from Lebanon and the reassertion of Lebanese sovereignty. As a direct response to this, the pro-Syrian legislature voted the next day to extend Syrian loyalist Lahoud’s mandate. Table

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Table 1 Timeline from UNSCR 1559 to Parliamentary Elections September 2, 2004

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 adopted

September 3, 2004

Parliament extends President Lahoud’s mandate by three years

September 7, 2004

Marwan Hamade and three other cabinet ministers affiliated with the anti-Syrian opposition resign in protest

October 1, 2004

Assassination attempt critically injures Hamade

October 11, 2004

Bashar al-Assad publicly rejects UNSCR 1559

October 20, 2004

Rafiq Hariri and the remainder of his cabinet resign

October 21, 2004

‘Omar Karami premiership is approved by parliament

November 19, 2004 Christian and Druze political figures stage separate anti-Syrian protest marches to commemorate Independence Day December 2004

Frequency and coordination of protests in support of UNSCR 1559 increase; proposals for electoral reforms begin to circulate, in anticipation of spring elections

December 10, 2004 Jumblatt publicly criticizes Syrian meddling in coming elections; security protection is inexplicably removed from his home December 13, 2004 Jumblatt’s PSP officially announces joint program with the Christian Opposition January 28, 2005

Cabinet endorses “Franjieh law” for elections, seen as favoring Syrian interests and the status quo

February 14, 2005

Hariri is assassinated (Continued)

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Table 1 (Continued) February–March 2005

Opposition and Civil Society ’05 organization coordinate protests of hundreds of thousands in central Beirut

March 8, 2005

Hizballah and Amal stage a counter-rally in Riad al-Solh Square

March 14, 2005

Largest opposition protest, attracting more than 1 million people

April 26, 2005

Withdrawal of Syrian forces verified by UN mission

May 29, 2005

First round of 2005 parliamentary elections

1 offers a chronology of events mapping these tit-for-tat gestures, pro gressing throughout the “Beirut Spring” to the 2005 parliamentary elections. Over the course of the months that followed (often refered to as the “Cedar Revolution”), powerful tropes of national unity, made manifest by a series of anti-Syrian protests that amassed potentially as much as half of the total population of Lebanon in Martyrs’ Square, by Hariri’s graveside, were inescapable.65 A powerful book published by Civil Society ’05, an organization of activists central to the mobilization of a continual protest presence throughout the Beirut Spring, provides accounts of the emotion of the times, often in stream-of-consciousness form, demonstrating the interwovenness of national and subnational that was affirmed by many of the protesters of the “mobile generation” (lit., jil al-mobayil), youth protesters central to the movement in ways that presaged the developments of 2011 elsewhere in the region: You gave a high five to being on the square, side by side, without being “faithless.” You were so dead right about it: this is perhaps the most important and striking element of those few days, seeing both sides pray side by side has been comforting.

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We’ve even seen, as witnessed by the pictures, women in traditional Muslim headscarves praying side by side with young men using Christian Militia flags as pashminas. Some time ago, speaking of such possibilities, you would have been considered a madman!66 In a tent next to Hariri’s graveside, Lebanon’s most widely circulated daily, an-Nahar, organized an elaborate and permanent photographic tribute to the Beirut Spring.67 Explicit attention was paid to framing the popular demand for sovereignty as national, and post-sectarian, as illustrated by images of nuns praying alongside muhajibat and men making the Orthodox sign of the cross alongside displays of Muslim mourning. One image, consistent with the passage above, depicted a group of protesters wearing Opposition scarves, holding aloft a Qur’an, a crucifix, a Palestinian kifayyeh, and the white cap traditionally worn by Druze men. The postures of the protesters communicated what might be seen as an almost militant inclusivity.

Image 6 Representation of cross-confessional consensus at anti-Syrian protest. Credit: An-Nahar.

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But the putative inclusivity of such post-sectarian framing nonetheless reaffirmed Hizballah’s contested status in the national body politic. The repositioning of Hizballah as outside of this unified and celebrated nation was cemented by both the fact of the March 8, 2005 counter-protest staged by the party in Riad al-Solh Square and its later representation in commemorations of the Cedar Revolution. Party leaders maintain that it was not designed as a “pro-Syrian” rally, but was a show of solidarity in response to the strongly negative antiSyrian rhetoric that surrounded the Opposition protests. Hizballah alleged that Lebanon was forgetting its friends, and risking (through a policy so clearly supported by the U.S. and France) an embrace of its enemies. Thus Nasrallah, speaking for the first time publicly on the issue of a Syrian withdrawal, chose to address his remarks to President George Bush, telling him, You are wrong on Lebanon. Lebanon is above humiliation, above being divided . . . We want to keep our special relationship with Syria, we want the Resistance, we want the return of the [Palestinian] refugees, and we reject 1559.68

Image 7 Representation of March 8 protest. Credit: An-Nahar.

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Image 8 Representation of participants in March 8 protest. Credit: An-Nahar.

But this attempt to appropriate the voice of the nation, to define friends and enemies once again, was far less successful in the reconfigured political field of Lebanon following the Hariri assassination and the widespread anti-Syrian mobilization that followed. Rather than accept Hizballah’s claim that its ambition was only to ensure that Syria’s withdrawal – by now a forgone conclusion – would be conducted “with honor,” members of the opposition interpreted the Hizballah rally as a violation of the new truths of a united Lebanon. The Hizballah rally thus received only a small place in the pictographic representation of the Beirut Spring at the graveside, a representation planned for publication and positioned as “authoritative” in its account of the events of 2005. In the exhibit, Hizballah’s March 8 protest was characterized as aberrant, disappointing, and restrained, both physically and emotionally. There were six images featuring the March 8 protests, out of 180 images. The protest crudely objectified protesters, characterizing women, girls, and protesters’ garbage as signifying disengagement, “manufactured” loyalty, and ignorance. Thus, in one image, three teenage girls are shown behind a chain-link fence,

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looking despondent behind a mass-produced placard opposing foreign intervention, in what curator Sherine Abdallah described as “bad French.” In another, six similarly veiled young women stand in a line, producing what she described as a “martial” image.69 The one departure from this characterization of disengagement, it seems, is a smiling woman holding up a poster of President Emile Lahoud – but this stands in stark contrast to a wealth of other images from the Opposition protests in which protesters demand his resignation, thereby framing her position as marginal. Finally, the last image in the series from the Hizballah protest shows Riad al-Solh square, littered with the detritus of the hundreds of thousands of people who filled the square, their trilingual posters abandoned and trampled. Sherine Abdallah explained to me the choice of each of the 180 photographs in the exhibit, and it is clear that much thought went into

Image 9 Lahoud supporter at March 8th protest, later defaced. Credit: An-Nahar.

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Image 10 Representation of March 8 protest space. Credit: An-Nahar.

the composition of the exhibit and the narrative frame that it would support. In regard to six images that represented the March 8 protest – an event which involved hundreds of thousands of people but was not consistent with the broader message of the Beirut Spring – she explained that she was not motivated by any particular sectarian animus so much as her discomfort with the “imported” taste and inauthenticity that she associated with Hizballah’s rally. The following is an excerpt from the transcript of our interview: Abdallah: These, these pictures show people that are . . . the difference is, you have no handwritten slogans. Like here [indicating Image 10] . . . hundreds of 1559, No to 1559 . . . [indicating Image 7] this is not even good French: non a l’intervenence etrengere . . . the word doesn’t exist in French. You know, it’s . . . English and French mixed all together. It’s . . . And I can tell you that she doesn’t even give a shit about him [pointing to Image 9]. Me: Emile Lahoud? Abdallah: Yeah, and this . . . [indicating Images 7 and 8] I like this . . . because they show, you know, it’s like they were looking

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at him. . . And they are so militarized, so . . . you know? But no spontaneity . . . And then, you would see . . . after the demonstration, you would see people in Achrafiye putting their slogans on their balconies, or hanging them out on their cars. And this is what you have here [in Riad al-Solh, indicating Image 10]. I got an email from someone – from a Shi’i, probably – it said . . . “But we cleaned, we cleaned the square after we left!” It was not about cleaning the square. This is about not giving a shit about the slogans, you know? . . . no, it’s about “Hey, you’re holding these. Why don’t you take them home if they mean so much to you? If the message means so much to you, take them home! Put it on your wall!”70 On one of several visits to the site, I noted that Image 9 had been badly defaced. As I neared this image, a guard (who was usually quite jovial and willing to discuss any of the images with visitors to the site) adopted a suddenly stern posture, and instructed me not to document the defacement, adding that it was “forbidden to even write about this.” The animosity expressed by the graffiti, captured in Image 11, was directed clearly at Lahoud, but was also directed, in a detail too fine to detect in this image but recorded in my fieldnotes, against the Hizballah supporter herself. Against the visible plaque on her teeth, someone had written, “Go brush your teeth,” playing on issues of taste, cleanliness, and class that often map onto the hierarchies of Lebanon’s confessional-political system. Notably, when I returned a few days later, all of these defacements – and therefore the actual faces of both Lahoud and the subject – had been covered with Istiqlal ’05 bumper stickers, marking her with the slogan of one of the main groups organizing the March 14 protest and other anti-Syrian protests. This showed an odd mixture of shame at the graffiti, and political triumphalism. Other (deliberate and laudatory) inscriptions on the bodies of protesters were captured by photos of anti-Syrian Opposition protesters with face-paint that were projected across the world. The entire nation, according to Abdallah, could coalece around a slogan that one young girl inscribed upon her forehead, reading simply, “We want the truth,” a reference to the initially non-sectarian Truth Campaign and

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Image 11 Defaced version of previous image, taken at the commemorative exhibit next to al-Hariri’s grave. May 2005, Author’s photograph.

its demand for an international inquiry into the assassination of former prime minister Hariri, a tribunal opposed by Hizballah. Yet the “national consensus” of the Truth Campaign was belied by growing polarization, a very real and palpable feature of the Beirut Spring, and different communities interpreted the call for an international inquiry – and indeed, even the significance of Hariri’s death – quite differently. This was evident in the wide disparity in commemoration I saw as I traveled to different urban centers around the country in advance of the elections. In Beirut, the Hariri assassination was very clearly and unambiguously appropriated by a broader political movement, particularly as Hariri’s son Saad became involved with the Mustaqbal (Freedom) Movement, his father’s political party. Saad’s undisputed ability to

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Image 12 Representation of participations in the “Truth” campaign calling for an investigation into the Hariri assassination. The message “We want the truth” is rendered in colloquial Lebanese. Credit: An-Nahar.

speak on behalf of his murdered father meant that Hizballah had to contend with an alternative voice, one that also claimed to speak on behalf of the “blood of the martyrs,” disrupting the monopoly that Hizballah had so often asserted over this idiom when speaking of the sacrifices of the Resistance. While Saad’s (over)use of this expression eventually came to seem banal to many, in the months immediately following his father’s death, it was a powerful and emotional rhetorical technique, and one which wrested from Hizballah the singular right to speak on behalf of “martyrdom.” In Tripoli, a Sunni-dominant city close to the Syrian border, Hariri commemoration was more difficult to interpret. In this home district of the new caretaker prime minister, Najib Miqati, the trope of martyrdom was minimized, but Hariri’s images were nonetheless present. In most cases that I observed, commemorative materials contained either (a) a simple image of Hariri with no text at all, or (b) official opposition

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slogans, such as those that claimed that Hariri was “a martyr in the service of Lebanon.” There were far more of the former than the latter, however, and the commemoration was quite muted in comparison to any other area that I visited in Spring 2005, with the exception of Tyre. Sidon was, perhaps predictably, eager to claim its native son. Murals and enlarged photographs of Hariri hung throughout the center of the city and its commercial districts. By the central bus station, visitors were welcomed with a slogan invoking the entire Hariri family: “Their mourning is the nation’s, and their tears are the nation’s.” Once I pushed further into the town, however, it was clear that the significance of Hariri’s assassination was expressed less in terms of his utility or meaning for the nation or the anti-Syrian opposition than as Sidon’s local face in national politics. Residents of Sidon displayed most ubiquitously signs pledging to “be faithful to Sidon and her son.”71 My visit to Tyre, the only overwhelmingly Shi’i city among this list, was somewhat surprising. While I had certainly anticipated that there would be less overt commemoration of Hariri’s assassination in the southernmost city, I was taken aback by its near-total absence. I documented only a single image of Hariri – a grossly enlarged photo hanging from a government office, located ironically on President Hafiz al-Assad Boulevard, the main thoroughfare that runs through the downtown district. Otherwise, covering substantial ground in this Shi’i majority city, I found no evidence of Lebanon’s newest martyr, but substantial tributes to martyrs of the increasingly contested Resistance. This map of Hariri’s legacy and its local inflections reveals something of the truly fractured reality in Lebanon at the purported height of its unity. Hizballah had clearly lost ground in these months, but would scramble to recover it in time for the May 2005 elections. As detailed in Chapter 4, the new institutional compromises – drawing Hizballah into the cabinet – occurred in the context described here, in which a floundering party sought to reestablish its right to speak on behalf of the nation. Having ultimately lost the rhetorical niche provided for so long by the popularity of the Resistance, the party articulated its right to speak on the basis of its growing institutional incorporation rather than its Resistance activity. Even this, however, would be put to the test by a new war and its aftermath.

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War and Dialogue in 2006–08 In early 2006, following the upset generated first by calls for Hizballah’s disarmament and then by the party’s boycott of the cabinet, Lebanese political leaders agreed to a sit-down unprecedented in the period since the conclusion of the civil war. Termed the “National Dialogue,” the event comprised several weeks of high-level meetings between the principal stakeholders in each sectarian community and sought to resolve the major conflicts that had emerged since the assassination of Rafiq Hariri: first, the investigation into his murder; and second, the possibility of the total disarmament of both Hizballah and the Palestinian militias. Hizballah’s leaders had long proclaimed their willingness to discuss disarmament only under conditions of national (i.e. not international) dialogue, but also suggested that the outcome of such dialogue was, from the party’s perspective, a foregone conclusion. The National Dialogue meetings did little to broaden this perspective, and collapsed in deadlock. Sayyid Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah argued that any further discussion of the disarmament of the Resistance should be considered, “treason of the highest order.”72 By the summer of 2006, the tensions already evident within both government and polity were inflamed by the brief but brutal conflict with Israel. For perhaps the first time in Hizballah’s history, armed conflict with Israel did not unilaterally strengthen its claim to defend the nation. Emboldened by almost two years of ongoing discussions about disarmament, critics were explicit in their assault of Hizballah’s role in the conflict, even as they condemned the scope of Israeli aggression. This was the ultimate test of Hizballah’s loss of discursive monopoly – a process in the making over the course of years since the Israeli withdrawal – and was manifested in a number of clear ways; 1) An escalation of Hizballah’s allegations of takhwin against agents of the government around the contested interpretation of the 2006 war. At proHizballah rallies in the aftermath of the war, critics of the Resistance were defamed, especially those who had once served as

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an important bridge to the March 14 bloc. Jumblatt specifically was called a “worm” and “a Jew.”73 In December, Nasrallah explicitly accused the March 14 Forces (the remnant of the 2005 Opposition, of whom Jumblatt and Saad Hariri were then the principal figureheads) of having “urged U.S. President George W. Bush to push Israel to wage war against Hizballah” after the collapse of the National Dialogue talks on disarmament.74 While it is true that U.S. aid to Lebanon ballooned from approximately $50 million USD per year to over $1 billion following the end of the war, U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman responded to the charges simply by noting “there is an overlap [between] where we hope Lebanon will go and where Seniora and the March 14 coalition want it to go.”75 This defense, in the eyes of Hizballah, was merely a confirmation of the March 14th government’s treason. 2) The party’s inability to successfully forestall the early stages of disarmament or an international tribunal to investigate Hariri’s assassination. In agreement with Hizballah, the Lebanese Army began to collect “found” weapons in the Southern zone administered jointly by the Army and UNIFIL, according to the terms of the ceasefire agreement. As Defense Minister Elias Murr noted, “The army has two roles: to defend the borders and deprive the enemy [of] any justification to return.”76 The latter point was a public expression of the sentiment that Hizballah bore some responsibility for the massive destruction of the summer conflict. This step came in the context of a discussion between Hizballah and the Defense Ministry over the possible integration of Resistance fighters into units of the Lebanese Army. But as talks fell apart amid with the cabinet resignations and growing protests, the government countered with the unprecedented public seizure of an arms shipment, clearly discrediting Hizballah’s “cooperation.” On February 9, 2007, a shipment of weapons moving from the Biqa’ Valley to South Lebanon was intercepted by Lebanese Army officials. Hizballah’s rearmament was explicitly forbidden by the terms of the 2006 ceasefire with Israel. Minister of Defense Elias Murr asserted the state’s authority, suggesting that Hizballah should willingly surrender the weapons to the Army, since it would be responsible for

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defending the Southern border from now on. Minister Murr insinuated takhwin with his suggestion that to do anything else would violate Lebanon’s national interest by inviting a resumption of hostilities with Israel. This followed on the heels of a February 7 border clash involving – for the first time recorded since the end of the civil war – the Lebanese Army and the IDF, thus underscoring the government’s commitment to displace, if not disarm, the Resistance. Nasrallah made one final attempt to recoup the loss when he “voluntarily” surrendered the weapons, saying, “We don’t differentiate between the army and the Resistance; our weapons are their weapons, and their weapons are our weapons.”77 Clearly, the government was no longer wholly of that opinion. 3) Hizballah’s use of force against Lebanese citizens in May 2008. The question of disarmament and of Hizballah’s relationship to the Lebanese Army was further complicated by the “Events of May” in 2008, in which the stalemate between March 8 and March 14 blocs that unfolded during eighteen months of protests, boycotts, and government paralysis escalated into street fighting between rival militias in West Beirut. In violating its own long-standing and explicit promise not to use the weapons of the Resistance against fellow Lebanese, Hizballah sacrificed much of its remaining credibility in terms of its protective role in defending the nation, inviting the takhwin of rival political camps. The agreement brokered in Doha simply redistributed power in such a way as to reflect – but by no means ameliorate – the deep divisions between political blocs, sectarian communities, and militias. The 2009 elections and the 2011 dissolution of the Hariri government further reveal the tenuousness of “national unity” amid such contestation of national identity. No single group can appropriate the right to represent or protect the nation in Lebanon, and mutual allegations of treason have helped to produce this current reality. Taken together, these events suggest that the political paralysis that has characterized Lebanon’s institutional life since 2005 is matched by a kind of discursive stalemate, as well. State institutions have functioned as a middle ground, working to prevent rearmament, without

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pushing for comprehensive disarmament, and given the genuinely divided nature of public opinion and powerful external allies on all sides, this may be the safest option. Nevertheless, the role of the army as a neutral arbiter in 2008, followed by General Sleiman’s popular election to the presidency, may suggests that the army itself is interested in asserting its own voice in the struggle to represent the nation in this new, post-Israeli moment.

Conclusion The shifting meaning of takhwin in Lebanon and the symbolic struggles both to embody and to represent the nation illustrate another, more tenuous, change in Hizballah’s position within the Lebanese polity. Institutional moves closer to government have been viewed by party members largely as a means to protect the autonomy of the Resistance, by seeking to ensure a particular vision of the state that can accommodate the party’s appeals to subnational and transnational sources of authority. Yet the meaning and significance of the Resistance has changed for many sectors of the Lebanese population, making it harder for any party to maintain a monopoly on national representation. Rival slogans deployed during the 2005 Beirut Spring illustrate this well. While the Opposition claimed, “we are all the nation,” Hizballah countered with “we are all the Resistance.” In an earlier phase, the tension between these two might have been less apparent, but this shifted with the end of Israeli occupation and the withdrawal of Syrian troops. The realignment of value within Lebanon’s linguistic market meant that even the 2006 resumption of conflict with Israel could not help Hizballah to unilaterally reassert the discursive power of the Resistance. That the March 8 bloc now retains a majority in the cabinet and has the institutional means to prevent more substantial efforts at disarmament and other challenges means only the perpetuation of a dangerous status quo.

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CONCLUSION WHITHER MODERATION?

Friendly transactions between kinsmen and affines are to market transactions as ritual war is to total war.1 —Pierre Bourdieu The account of change offered in this book is one in which change in structure is enabled and expressed through changes in discourse, and in turn enables (or requires) new discourses, with attendant struggles to define meaning(s). Much of the purpose of the “structural chapters” in Parts 1 and 2, in which I offer an account of how and why Islah and Hizballah have negotiated their respective relationships to practices of governance and opposition, was to explore the meanings that members of these parties have attached to their relationship to existing regimes and the state institutions through which power is distributed and exercised. This could not be done without looking at how the very meaning of belonging and efforts to define membership – to the community of believers or to the community of the nation – have been renegotiated discursively as these structural changes have unfolded. While Lebanon has been characterized by a brittle form of political paralysis since 2008 (or, arguably, 2005), Yemen is one of several countries that experienced a popular uprising as a part of the “Arab Spring” of 2011. Yemen’s transition – if there is to be one – is still very much in the making, but the arguments advanced in the earlier chapters can help to make sense of some features of the revolutionary movement, especially the alienation that developed early on between the JMP opposition and the millions of Yemenis who engaged in protests across the country.

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Islah, the JMP, and the 2011 Yemeni Uprising One paradox of the Yemeni revolutionary movement is that it relied on antecedent work done by members of the JMP, but developed as a critique of both the regime and the organized opposition itself. With the slogan La qabila, la ahzab – thawratna thawat shabab (“No tribe, no parties – our revolution is a youth revolution”), Yemeni youth organized popular, peaceful protests in all of Yemen’s major cities, beginning in February 2011. With tens of thousands remaining in Sana’a’s Change Square for months on end, and crowd surges doubling that number each Friday, evidence suggests that protest participation was ritualized and routinized by the middle of 2012.2 As I have argued elsewhere, the antecedents of Yemen’s revolutionary movement lay in the dense network of personal and professional ties built and sustained by JMP partisans in their 30s and 40s throughout the 2000s.3 This group included many Islahis, mainly of the Brotherhood tradition, who share educational similarities and professional ties to each other, but also to non-JMP activists in the associational sector. Most essential have been reciprocal connections to activists in the independent media and the human rights sector, since they have often supported members of the JMP who face pressure from the regime, while the parties of the JMP have also lent support to imperiled activists. This is part of what allowed both the JMP and essential civil society actors to survive a series of extraconstitutional encroachments by the Salih regime in the years immediately prior to the 2011 uprising. Among these was the creation of the “special courts,” explicitly disallowed by the Yemeni constitution. The Specialized Criminal Court, established in 1999 to try those accused of terrorism, has been used as an instrument of political intimidation against those who report on al-Qaeda activities in Yemen and critique the regime’s handling of the emerging AQAP crisis. To this was added the Special Press Court in 2009, a venue in which journalists (who may or may not also be partisans of the JMP) have faced charges of divisiveness, insulting Islam, and more.4 Yemen’s independent media, which has faced tremendous pressure in recent years,5 is important to this story in two ways. First, efforts to suppress the media have been a powerful symbol of what has gone

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wrong with the regime, and provide an opportunity for Yemenis in the opposition to articulate the distinction between the regime, as it exists, and the state as they imagine it ought to function. Second, the independent media have been the site in which cross-ideological consensus on the basic parameters of good governance has been made manifest. Editorials and opinion pieces by ideologically divergent members of the JMP alliance frequently shared space in independent papers like al-Nida’ and al-Wasat in the mid-2000s, as the dynamics of cooperation were being worked out. It came as little surprise that the editor of al-Wasat was kidnapped and beaten, or that the editor of al-Nida’ was the first journalist to be tried in the Special Press Court.6 The transformative potential of their work was evident. And despite these challenges, new independent news sources have continued to proliferate, many of them online.7 The staging of cross-ideological consensus on principles of good governance and the clearly articulated desire for transparent and accountable state institutions was a legacy of JMP activists – and their intersectoral coordination with activists outside of the partisan sector – that enabled the kind of popular mobilization witnessed in 2011. But if this were the whole story, the resilience of the independent media and its networked ties to JMP partisans would make it difficult to understand why the popular movement was neither led by nor particularly supportive of the JMP opposition.8 Yemen’s revolutionary movement is typically dated to February 11, 2011, the day Mubarak fell in Cairo and the proverbial torch was passed.9 Yet in the wake of the revolution in Tunisia and growing mobilization in Egypt, the JMP had already been organizing protests in mid-January – protests that were articulated as reformist, not revolutionary.10 As they lined up chairs in front of a dais, and decked themselves in pink as the “color of love” for Yemen, the JMP was playing the role of loyal opposition, making clear that its demands were not unduly threatening.11 Such protests were a natural extension of the narrow horizons of the JMP’s procedural reform agenda, as described in Chapter 2. The focus on procedural reforms over meaningful questions of political substance – particularly questions of gender equality and creedal freedom – were

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so divisive between and within the JMP’s member parties that they opted for policy silences on issues of great significance. As the head of the YSP’s Women’s Directorate explained: Of course, there are differences in ideology between the parties, but [the alliance] is largely about the ruling regime. This is why the JMP’s priorities are focused entirely on reform, whether political, economic, or administrative reform.12 This left many Yemenis alienated from the JMP, complaining that its leaders were more concerned about maintaining internal agreement than about substantive advocacy.13 Though centrist “JMPers” and their associational sector allies were helping to cement the JMP by building bridges to centrists in the YSP, the divisive issues that could not be accommodated across the ideological divide between the two parties drove party hardliners to develop new alliances outside of their parties. Thus al-Zindani helped to establish the Fadilah Group in the summer of 2008, in the wake of his 2007 Shura Council defeat. This organization of conservative clergy with ties to Islah and the ruling GPC helped to offset the emerging power of the JMP and fill its substantive policy vacuum by launching a broad attack on women’s rights and press freedom.14 In a different direction, Yassin Saeed No’man, the Secretary-General of the YSP, expressed grave concerns about his party’s divisions over the Heraak, or the Southern Movement, a populist movement in the South that had adopted secessionist demands by early 2009, demands that were making it increasingly difficult for the YSP leadership to balance between their constituents in the South and their alliance commitments in Sana’a.15 Some concessions on the part of Islah helped to ease this tension, if only somewhat. As one member of the ruling party observed: The most flagrant change that has come from within the JMP is with ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-‘Anisi. He doesn’t express the extremist views that he did only a few years ago, and he is even now pushing for the YSP to get back its properties that were confiscated in the South . . . and for general rights of southerners. In 1997,

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can you imagine this? The grievances against the regime have brought the parties together. Islahis and the YSP have the same basic concerns for the future.16 Others were less convinced. Dr. Muhammed ‘Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil, one of the central figures in the JMP, but a member of neither of its two largest parties, reflected on what he saw as the rational foundation for distrust: In terms of trust today, now there is no fear that one party will leave the JMP for the GPC. But can the YSP trust Islah to rule the country, or vice versa? In my opinion, you can’t trust any party to rule without some counterbalance. If a party can rule without acknowledging the others, it will do so, just like the GPC.17 As Yemen’s crises multiplied, the incapacity and substantive vacuity of the organized opposition fed the grievances and alienation of variously situated Yemenis around the country.18 The recurrent campaigns against al-Huthi loyalists in the North (no longer contained to Sa’ada itself), the increasingly secessionist undertone of the Heraak in the South, and the reorganization of Islamist radicals as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in 2009 were more than the organized opposition – organized around principles of electoral reform, economic reform, and other matters seen as perhaps less “existential” – could adequately accommodate. The crises also provided the regime with a proximate justification for repression of the JMP and its allies in the associational sector, as well as greater material resources (under the heading of “counterterrorism surveillance”) with which to do so. Thus journalists who wrote about AQAP and U.S.-Yemeni strategic cooperation were charged as terrorist accomplices, and newspapers and online news websites that reported on the war in the North were closed down or hacked, their archives looted or burned, and their editors driven into self-imposed exile. Against this backdrop, the JMP acquiesced to its own obsolescence, agreeing in 2009 to a postponement of scheduled parliamentary

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elections. Islah and the YSP were experiencing a crisis of trust – driven mainly by the uncertainty over the possible fidelity of their hardliners, with secessionism in the South and the resurgence of takfir via the Fadilah Group in the North. The prospect of effective electoral coordination was daunting, particularly given the low level of coordination that they managed in the 2006 municipal council elections.19 One Islahi activist working with a prominent democracy-promotion NGO explained to me at the time the relationship between the Fadilah Group and the elections: At the first meeting [of the Fadilah Group] only 15 people – the ones right around al-Zindani – knew what was going on, but the other 95 didn’t understand why the group had been established at this specific time. When the Fadilah Group issued a fatwa calling the Huthis kufar and saying that they were heretics, a large group of the ulema withdrew from Fadilah until the language was softened to only accuse them of sedition. The regime was behind all this. Fadilah was the straw that broke the camel’s back . . . There will be no elections. Irrespective of the official JMP position, there will be a boycott from Mukalla to Sa’ada, a populist boycott.20 While neither the Fadilah Group nor the electoral delay broke the JMP, they did help to make clear some of the limits on its efficacy. The fadilah group also led civil society organizations, especially those in the city of Taiz, to petition the JMP for membership, in an effort to formalize the kind of post-partisan opposition networks on which the JMP already relied. Unfortunately, this request was rejected.21 That these organizations would come to play such a central role in mobilizing protests in 2011, then, can be traced to their exclusion from what might have become a more broadly populist political movement, but whose leaders clung to their own partisan antecedents. In effect, the Yemeni revolutionary movement that began in 2011 became a revolutionary movement less because of a regional environment of ferment – though this undoubtedly mattered – than because of the failures of the reform project of the JMP. As Vincent Durac

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has observed, the practical achievements of the JMP, “have been very limited . . . it has been limited to persuasion and bargaining as tactics in its dealings with the regime. But these have proved ineffectual.”22 This failure itself was not driven by Islah, but by the combined effect of internal tensions within the alliance (and within Islah itself) and the regime’s effort to exploit these cleavages. The GPC’s own rhetoric characterized the opposition as divisive and particularistic, positioning itself as the inclusive and authentic repository of Yemen’s pluralistic traditions.23 This discourse implicitly played on salafi anxieties over hizbiyya, and was paired with the institutional practice of alliance formation with the salafi wing of the party through the Fadilah Group. Struggling to retain the coherence of member parties and the JMP itself, let alone to confront regime suppression, or to respond to a growing list of national crises, the opposition lost the ability to define or lead the revolutionary movement before it had even begun. The coup de grâce was the JMP’s agreement to sign the Gulf Cooperation Council agreement. On the one hand, the GCC process “provided an opening for the alliance to offer itself as an interlocutor with the regime and with international actors seeking to resolve the political crisis.” On the other, the JMP was perceived as hijacking a popular grassroots movement.24 The leadership of the JMP signed the GCC agreement in April 2011, undoubtedly hoping to miminize loss of life and generate a genuine political transition. At that stage, perhaps it would have been possible. But when President Salih demurred not once but three times, it was a humiliation to the opposition. The summer of 2011, when Salih was in Saudi Arabia following an assassination attempt, was marked by an escalation in regime violence against protesters, but also by allegations that members of the 1st Armored Division, troops loyal to renegade ‘Ali Muhsin alAhmar were colluding with the JMP to constrain protests critical of the JMP and its tribal and military allies through force. This effort to regulate the protest narrative from above added fuel to popular resentments of the opposition.25 In November 2011, Salih finally signed the agreement and a new transitional government was formed with JMP participation, bringing Islah and its JMP allies back into government. After nearly a year of bloodshed, however, many protesters could not

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swallow the GCC agreement’s immunity provision, and massive rallies and marches against the immunity law adopted by parliament stretched into the new year. On February 21, 2012, Vice-President ‘Abd Rabuh Mansour Hadi was elected in an uncontested presidential election, backed by the former ruling party, the JMP opposition, and the international community. What lessons can we derive from this account of Islah’s role in what amounts to the birth and death of Yemen’s partisan opposition? First, it is clear that the JMP was vitally important for the internal dynamics of Islah, empowering centrists by creating allies outside of the party and the partisan system. But it also drove hardliners to do the same, and it is difficult to say that the power of centrists within the party and the JMP alliance is the same thing as the moderation of a political party, when it also creates new avenues for hardliners to consolidate their own positions of influence. In other words, it helps to build the case that linear conceptions of moderation are not a useful way of understanding the effects of inclusion or participation in partisan competition. Second, the role of takfir in the 1990s, and its resurgence through the Fadilah Group, have made practices associated with inclusion, like cross-ideological alliance formation, another site upon which a politics of exclusion is enacted. These exclusions, which happen through discursive struggles, have material expression in the policies and practices that they authorize or prohibit. Today, as Yemen prepares for a “National Dialogue” process through which major institutional reform questions will be addressed, the JMP and its member parties – unlike the peaceful protesters who have criticized them – will have guaranteed representation in the meetings and a chance to shape the agenda. After a decade of cooperation, Yemenis remain uncertain as to what, precisely, that agenda might include, and what kind of future the partisans of the JMP, Islah among them, envision for Yemen.

Moderation and Inclusion, Revisted My aim in tracing the transformations of Islah and Hizballah has not been to advance claims about how faithful Islamists are to some idealized Islamist platform, nor to evaluate whether their compromises are

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genuine. Instead, I have examined how the efforts of partisans of each organization to “be authentic” (which has transnational, national, and subnational referents) rely on discourses and practices that transform, express, and ultimately impose meaning on the political field. In asking about the discursive and institutional effects of Islamist participation (or “inclusion”) in formal institutions, I began with a determination of “what I know.”26 In this case, this was that Islah had progressively moved between 1990 and today from being a member of government to being Yemen’s leading Opposition party, working closely with the Yemeni Socialist Party that had long been anathema to the Islamist movement in Yemen. In the language of the inclusionmoderation tradition, Islah had shown signs of “moderation,” though it was unclear whether this moderation was behavioral, ideological, or both.27 I now question the extent to which those two categories can be meaningfully disentangled. I similarly began with the observation that Hizballah had, over the same span of time, moved from its position as a recalcitrant anti-system party devoted to uprooting sectarianism through its revolutionary ideology, to making the decision to engage in party politics, becoming perhaps the strongest force in the Lebanese parliament, and eventually entering into the chambers of government itself. While few have ever called Hizballah “moderate,” much ado in the literature on Lebanese politics has been made about the party’s increasing pragmatism and commitment to Lebanon as a polity, though there is little consensus regarding the genuineness of these changes. Given these alternative trajectories, the work of this project began with the recognition that something other than “Islam” must be helping to determine the political positions of these two Islamist parties. In the language of social science, Islam could not possibly be the independent variable that generated two divergent paths, though both parties have unquestionably rooted their discourse and practice in their understandings of Islam. In her influential invitation to the use of interpretive method, Lisa Wedeen contended that studying, “semiotic practices with political effects can yield surprising findings,” and indeed this has been my experience with this project.28 When I abandoned my own commitment to determining whether these trajectories showed evidence of

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“moderation” and “pragmatism,” and simply began to ask Islahis, Hizballahis, and their interlocutors – through personal interviews, quotidian observation and interaction, and the interrogation of texts – what meaning they attached to these trajectories of change, I learned that the prevailing accounts of moderation or pragmatism were not terribly good representations of what party members themselves saw as driving change. Indeed, the words moderation and pragmatism were hardly ever used. Charting a course between the expectations of the literature and observations in the field therefore required that I undertake two distinct but interrelated projects in this book. First, the historical chapters endeavor to illustrate the local variability of Islamist parties, to suggest that something other than their status as self-identified Islamists has motivated, at least partly, their modes of engagement with existing regimes and alliance partners, and to ask what that might be. This asking has taken the form of textual analysis of party sources, historiographical accounts of differences in the character of the transformations in question, observations of partisans in practice, and in-depth interviews with members of the two parties and their major interlocutors. In the process of this inquiry, three principal observations emerged: 1) There is little in Islamist party practice that is predetermined by its Islamist “character.” While the title of this book suggests that the meaning and function of regimes – and expectations of and for the state – are being remade by Islamist actors (and they are), the book also supports the claim that the meaning(s) of the political demands of Islam are being remade by deliberative and contestatory politics, by engagement with Others, and by struggles to articulate (and dominate) meaning in plural political fields. 2) A scholarly focus on moderation and pragmatism ignores the pitched battles to determine the meaning of significant concepts, and how their meanings are deployed differently across space and time, to varying effect. In particular, it masks contests within parties and alliances as much as between them. As I hope the chapters on takfir and takhwin have revealed, the most obvious limit to the moderation thesis is seen in the struggles that both parties have engaged in to establish

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the terms of debate, to shape the contours of the linguistic market and determine both price and profit for themselves and those whom they engage. We cannot hope to measure linear movement between poles the very meanings of which are in motion. 3) Islamists’ ability to impose meaning on the symbolic field is neither unlimited nor uncontested. Indeed, there is nothing inevitable about the march of Islamism, and interlocutors are able under some – but not all – circumstances to challenge some interpretations advanced by members of Islamist parties. In Yemen, the fiercest pitched battles over the use of takfir have been intra-Islamist; in Lebanon, Hizballah’s takhwin has been devalued through competition. At the end of this project, if I am not unreservedly optimistic about Islamist efforts to affirm and empower state institutions, I am convinced of the value of Islamist participation in plural political fields in which ideas compete. I am also more convinced than I was before undertaking this work of the idea that the participation of Islamist parties should be evaluated in terms of local markets of meaning, not cross-national speculations about the effects of “Islamism” as a regional or global phenomenon. Despite the limitations of the JMP, the trajectory adopted by Islah since 1990 has empowered a group of young members committed to a democratic reform agenda, and contributed to the development of a pluralistic Yemeni identity capable of sustaining a year-long revolutionary movement. The trajectory undertaken by Hizballah has been more equivocal, its alliances less transformative, and its endorsement of state institutions arguably more instrumental. They have in common an affirmation of the notion of citizen voice and accountable state institutions but little else. Though it is outside the scope of this book, my research suggests that non-Islamist interlocutors also seek to alter the rules of the symbolic market through many of the same kinds of discursive strategies, though the specific idioms that they find most profitable often invoke other sources of authority outside of Islam. Like Islamists, whether they succeed will be determined by local markets of meaning, in which the value of loyalty to Islam, or the nation, or whatever else, is evaluated differently. But that is the subject of a different book.

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My hope is that this account of the transformations of Islah and Hizballah will contribute to an emergent body of work on Islamism that challenges aggregation and predictive expectations, and works toward the study of local meaning, with a particular focus on symbolic power and discourse. Through such work, scholars seek to give voice – as I have endeavored to do here – to a multiplicity of meanings within what are usually treated as bounded communities, and to foreground the struggles to control and determine those meanings. In this, we must reject a false dichotomy between what is said and what is done, and recall that words are actions that help create particular kinds of institutions. The power made manifest in naming, categorizing, and delimiting membership is, I hope, evident in this work. But these struggles do not take place only (or even principally) between the subjects of our research as political scientists. The recent focus by interpretivist scholars on cross-epistemological intelligibility, and efforts to bring the study of semiotics into the mainstream, serve to reveal some of the struggles that occur within our own field and research traditions.29 The kind of research focus that I am advocating (and hope that I have illustrated) will require a deepening of the ethnographic turn in the study of politics. My aim in writing this book is to contribute not only to this deepening, but also to the profitability of interpretive work in our own disciplinary market of meaning.

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NOTES

Introduction: Islamists, Opposition, and Inclusion 1 Shadi Hamid. 2011. “The Rise of the Islamists.” Foreign Affairs 90(3): 40–7. 2 National Public Radio. “Muslim Brotherhood Attempts to Charm U.S. Skeptics.” April 6, 2012. http://www.npr.org/2012/04/06/150085940/muslimbrotherhood-attempts-to-charm-u-s-skeptics 3 National Public Radio, “Muslim Brotherhood Charms U.S. Skeptics,” 2012. 4 Stacey Philbrick Yadav. 2010. “Understanding ‘What Islamists Want’: Contestation and Debate in Lebanon and Yemen.” Middle East Journal 64(2): 200. 5 Thomas Carothers. 2002. “The End of the Transitions Paradigm.” Journal of Democracy 13(1): 5–21; Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6 This wordplay stems from the Arabic terms for the three offices, each of which contains the word “president.” There is the president of the republic, the president of the ministers, and the president of the assembly. 7 Bassel Salloukh. 2006. “The Limits of Electoral Engineering in Divided Societies: Elections in Postwar Lebanon.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 39, no. 3: 635–55. 8 Alexander George and Andrew Bennett. 2005. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press. 9 Anne Norton. 2004. “Political Science as a Vocation.” In Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics. Edited by Ian Shapiro, Rogers Smith, and Tarek Masoud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 73.

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10 Jillian Schwedler. 2006. Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1. 11 Jillian Schwedler. 2011. “Can Islamists Become Moderates? Rethinking the Inclusion-Moderation Hypothesis.” World Politics 63(2): 347–76, 349–50. 12 The seminal collection of this work, originally published in 1996, was subsequently republished in 2005 as a two-volume series: Civil Society in the Middle East, edited by Augustus Richard Norton. Boston: E.J. Brill. 13 Carrie Rosefsky Wickham. 2002. Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism and Political Change in Egypt. New York: Columbia University Press; Asef Bayat. 2007. Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. 14 Schwedler, Faith in Moderation, 11–23. 15 Ibid., 214. 16 Pierre Bourdieu. 1984. Outline of the Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 17 Daniel Corstange. 2012. “Religion, Pluralism, and Iconography in the Public Sphere: Theory and Evidence from Lebanon.” World Politics 64(1): 152. 18 Schwedler, Faith in Moderation, 120. 19 While the majority of the Resistance is composed of Hizballah loyalists and the majority of Fadilah Group members are associated with Islah, both organizations contain members from outside groups. Members of Amal and even a small number of non-Shi’a participate in an auxiliary wing of the Resistance, and the Fadilah Group features members of the ruling party, the General People’s Congress, as well as politically unaffiliated salafis. This is elaborated in later chapters.

Chapter 1 The Road to Opposition: From Nizam al-Fatwa to the Joint Meeting Parties 1 Sayeed Thabit Sayeed. Interview with author. Sana’a, February 26, 2005. 2 Sheila Carapico. 1998. Civil Society in Yemen: The Political Economy of Activism in Southern Arabia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 189. 3 Schwedler, Faith in Moderation; Michaelle Browers. 2009. Political Ideology in the Arab World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Yadav, “Understanding ‘What Islamists Want,’” 199–213. 4 Sheila Carapico. 1993. “The Economic Dimensions of Yemeni Unity.” Middle East Report 184: 9–14. 5 For a conventional narrative of unification that focuses on the strategic considerations and varieties of external pressures, see: Charles Dunbar. 1992.

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“The Unification of Yemen: Process, Politics, and Prospects.” Middle East Journal 46(3): 456–76. For an excellent account of the ways in which these considerations both shaped and were shaped by quotidian practices of Yemeni “nationhood” that transcended the border between the YAR and PDRY and statist accounts, see: Lisa Wedeen. 2008. Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Ch. 1. Susanne Dahlgren. 2010. Contesting Realities: The Public Sphere and Morality in Southern Arabia. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Dahlgren gives an excellent account of the role of Islahi practice in introducing and circulating a new “moral framework” among a competing range of possible self-understandings on which Adenis draw. Dahlgren, Contesting Realities. By contrast, in the North, Steve Caton and Gabrielle vom Bruck emphasize the role of institutions, particularly schools, in spreading conservative ideologies associated with the Islah party: Steven Caton. 2005. Yemen Chronicle: An Anthropology of War and Mediation. New York: Hill and Wang; Gabrielle vom Bruck. 2005. Islam, Memory and Morality in Yemen: Ruling Families in Transition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ‘Abd al-Bari Taha. 2002. “The Islamic Movement in Yemen and Democracy.” In Islamists in Yemen. Vol. 2. Proceedings of the Aden University conference on “Religious Fundamentalists and the Dialogue of Civilizations.” 12–16 June 2002. Aden: General Center for Studies, Research, and Publications, 106 (in Arabic); Paul Dresch. 2001. A History of Modern Yemen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 53; J. Leigh Douglas. 1987. The Free Yemeni Movement, 1935–1962. Beirut: America University in Beirut, 124. Douglas, Free Yemeni Movement, 124. Vom Bruck, Islam, Memory and Morality. Douglas, Free Yemeni Movement, 67. Talk of takhaluf, or backwardness, is endemic in contemporary Yemeni discourse as well, with President Salih decrying on national television (and Al Jazeera) the backwardness of some of his countrymen. Douglas, Free Yemeni Movement, 177. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was dissolved by presidential decree on January 12, 1954, which drove the Brotherhood underground and limited its ability to aid Yemeni nationalists. For more on the relationship between Zubayri, No’man, and Islamonationalist synthesis, see: Laurent Bonnefoy. 2009. “Varieties of Islamism in Yemen: The Logic of Integration Under Pressure.” Middle East Review of International Affairs 13(1): 3. Dresch, History of Modern Yemen.

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14 ‘Abd Allah Hashim al-Siyani. 2002. The Muslim Brothers and the Salafis in Yemen: The Positions on the Islamic Schools, Party Work, and the Political Role of Women. Sana’a: Ra’ad Center for Studies and Research, 74–86 (in Arabic). 15 Laurent Bonnefoy and Marine Poirer. 2010. “The Yemeni Congregation for Reform (al-Islah): The Difficult Process of Building a Project for Change.” In Returning to Political Parties? Beirut: Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, 61–99. 16 ‘Abd al-Karim Qassem. 2002. “The Spread and Development of the Fundamentalist Movement in Yemen.” In Islamists in Yemen, Vol. 2, 26. 17 Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 173. 18 Robert D. Burrowes. 1987. The Yemen Arab Republic: The Politics of Development, 1962–1986. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 131. 19 Vom Bruck, Islam, Memory and Morality; Shelagh Weir. 2007. A Tribal Order: Politics and Law in the Mountains of Yemen. Austin: University of Texas Press. 20 The word madani can variously convey the idea of civil culture, urban sensibility, or in an explicitly political context, a commitment to a state based on rule of law. Specifically, it is suggestive of a state in which political authority is not derived from the military or the tribal system. Whether the law on which rule of law is built is secular, Islamic, or some combination thereof, is not clarified by the term itself, and there is some debate among Yemeni Islamists involved in the 2011 revolutionary movement about whether the madani state for which they call is compatible with an Islamic state. 21 ‘Abd al-Karim Shaiban. Interview with author. Taiz, August 11, 2005. 22 Carapico, “The Economic Dimensions of Yemeni Unity,” 98. 23 Quoted from the constitution of the GYA in Douglas, Free Yemeni Movement, 87. 24 Carapico, “The Economic Dimensions of Yemeni Unity,” 99. 25 Dahlgren, Contesting Realities, Ch. 4. 26 Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 142. 27 Ibid. 28 Nasr Ahmed Yehya. 2003. Extremism and Excommunication in Yemen: The Confrontation between the Congress and the Islah after the Assassination of Jarallah ‘Omar. Sana’a, Republic of Yemen: Dar al-Kutb al-Watani (in Arabic); Isa Blumi. 2011. Chaos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism. London: Routledge; Vom Bruck, Islam, Memory and Morality. 29 Muhammed Qassem No’man. Interview with author. Aden, September 17, 2005. 30 Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 197. This was a recurring theme in my interviews as well, not only with Southerners from the former PDRY, but also with those “Southerners” from the midland areas around Ta’iz and Ibb, in which tribal ties were less central to forms of social organization than in

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areas like ‘Amran or Sa’ada to the north. My own field research echoes Dresch’s observation that in the South, this was framed as an assault on the civilized or cultured character of Aden, whereas in the midlands it was more often framed as a threat to the madani traditions of the region, as discussed in n. 20. Qassem, “Fundamentalist Movement in Yemen,” 26. ‘Abd al-Wahab al-‘Anisi. Interview with author. Sana’a, September 27, 2005. Qassem, “Fundamentalist Movement in Yemen,” 26. Taha, “Islamic Movement in Yemen,” 121. Agence France Presse, April 19, 1990. Agence France Presse, April 19, 1990. Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 181. The party’s Islamic justification for participation is well articulated in its 1994 political platform (a statement of purpose distinct from its electoral platform and a more generalized outline of party objectives and attitudes), in which the Party discusses the concept of democracy in tandem with the Islamic principle of shura (consultation), holding that the party will work to “strengthen the constitutional institutions of the state, considering the parliamentary institution to be the practical instrument for representing the will of the people and concretizing the principle of shura.” Yemeni Congregation for Reform. 1994. Political Program. Sana’a: Yemeni Congregation for Reform, 5. Jillian Schwedler. 2004. “The Islah Party in Yemen: Political Opportunities and Coalition-Building in a Transitional Polity.” In Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach. Edited by Quintan Wiktorowicz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 209. Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 190. Schwedler, “The Islah Party in Yemen,” 209. Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 187. For a discussion of the basis for this embarrassment, see Chapter 3. For a discussion of al-Yadoumi’s ties to state security, see Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 175. This perception was confirmed in a number of my own interviews. By way of biography, Dresch also notes (n6, 251) that al-Yadoumi is a graduate of Cairo’s police college, and did not receive a classical Islamist education. Mustapha Ahmed No’man. Interview with author. Sana’a, February 20, 2005. Schwedler, “The Islah Party in Yemen,” 210. Ibid. Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 187. Nabil al-Sofee, at the time a leading member of the Majlis al-Shura and the former editor of the Islahi weekly, al-Sahwa, was particularly forthright about this objection in numerous interviews and informal interactions.

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On one specific occasion, he noted that Islah, as a party, “is conservative and traditional, and tied too closely to the tribes.” Nabil Al-Sofee. Interview with author. Sana’a, September 26, 2004. Amat al-Salaam Raja’, head of Islah’s Women’s Directorate and a member of the Majlis al-Shura also cited ‘urf al-nas as a core check on the ability or willingness of women to advocate for their rights under Islam. Amat al-Salaam Raja’. Interview with author. Sana’a, October 6, 2004. John O. Voll. 1983. “Renewal and Reform in Islamic History: Tajdid and Islah.” In Voices of Resurgent Islam. Edited by John Esposito. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 32–47. The imitation of traditional practice was repudiated as taqlid as early as the mid-nineteenth century by the Egyptian cleric, Rifa’a al-Tahtawi. For a more thorough discussion of Tahtawhi’s repudiation of taqlid, see: Albert Hourani. 1983. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Al-Sofee interview, September 26, 2004. Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 201. Sayeed interview, February 26, 2005. Note that he used “Wahhabi,” “salafi,” and “extremist” interchangeably throughout the interview, and when asked to distinguish between them, maintained that they meant the same thing. Few if any Yemenis whom I interviewed distinguished between the first two, though of course wahhabi suggests a more direct link to the influence of Saudi Arabia, often a costly charge. Jamal ‘Amer. Interview with the author. Sana’a, March 10, 2005. Mustapha Ahmed No’man. Interview with the author. Sana’a, March 10, 2005. Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 173, 142. For a succinct discussion of the growth of salafi thought among formerly Zaydi Northerners, particularly in the tribal areas, see: Shelagh Weir. 1997. “A Clash of Fundamentalisms: Wahhabism in Yemen.” Middle East Report 204: 22–6. For more elaborate treatment of salafi evangelism in formerly Zaydi communities in the North, see: Weir 2007. A Tribal Order; Caton, Yemen Chronicle. Yehya, Extremism and Excommunication. Morad Zafir. Interview with author. Sana’a, March 4, 2005. Faris Asad. Interview with author. Sana’a, March 3, 2005. Al-‘Anisi interview, September 27, 2005. Ibid. Jillian Schwedler. 2003. “Yemen’s Aborted Opening.” In Islam and Democracy in the Middle East. Edited by Larry Diamond, Mark F. Plattner, and Daniel Brumberg. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 49. Al-Sofee interview, September 26, 2004.

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66 Shouqi al-Qadi. Interview with author. Sana’a, September 10, 2005; Shaiban interview, August 11, 2005. 67 Abdo Baaklini, Guilain Denoeux, and Robert Springborg. 1999. Legislative Politics in the Arab World: The Resurgence of Democratic Institutions. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 208. 68 Marsha Pripstein Posusney. 2006. “Multiparty Elections in the Arab World: Election Rules and Opposition Responses.” In Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Regimes and Resistance. Edited by Marsha Pripstein Posusney and Michele Penner Angrist. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 101. 69 Renaud Detalle. 1993. “The Yemeni Elections Up Close.” Middle East Report 185: 8, 10. 70 Baaklini, Denoeux, and Springborg, Legislative Politics, 209. 71 Paul Dresch. 1996. “The Tribal Factor in the Yemeni Crisis.” In The Yemen War of 1994: Causes and Consequences. Edited by Jamal al-Suwaidi. Abu Dhabi: The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 33. 72 This argument is detailed well elsewhere. See especially: Schwedler 2003 , “Yemen’s Aborted Opening.” 73 Doctrinaire members of both parties can be heard expressing these sentiments in casual conversation even today. Members of the JMP alliance, as discussed in Chapter 2, tend to frame these sentiments as an historical phenomenon, but it is unlikely that the individuals most deeply committed to the JMP were ever quite as doctrinally committed in the 1990s. This points to a critique of the moderation-inclusion literature, insofar as it takes the attitudes of individuals as evidence of institutional moderation. For an elaboration of this point, see: Schwedler, “Can Islamists Become Moderates?”: 347–76. 74 Dresch notes that one YSP member on the five-member executive Presidential Council failed to win enough votes in parliament to secure the YSP a second seat, but that the Islahi Speaker, Shaykh ‘Abd Allah bin Hussein al-Ahmar, insisted that he take it in the spirit of unity. This act of largesse was not enough to stem the secession of the YSP leadership. Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 194. 75 Muhammed Qahtan. Interview with author. Sana’a, August 2005; al-‘Anisi interview, September 27, 2005. 76 Charles Dunbar. 1996. “Internal Politics in Yemen: Recovery or Regression.” In The Yemeni War of 1994. Edited by Jamal al-Suwaidi. Abu Dhabi: The Emirates Center for Research and Strategic Studies, 64. 77 Muhammed ‘Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil. Interview with author. Sana’a, September 25, 2005. 78 Carapico, “The Economic Dimensions of Yemeni Unity,” 182. 79 Taha, “Islamic Movement in Yemen,” 120. It is certainly true that I have never been able to view such a fatwa personally. At the same time, the existence of the fatwa is less central to this story than the widespread belief in

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its existence and the disciplinary effect that this belief exerts. For an example of this kind of symbolic effect, see: Lisa Wedeen. 1999. Ambiguities of Domination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Yehya, Extremism and Excommunication, 158–70. Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 197. Wahabiyya Sabra. Interview with author. Sana’a, January 10, 2009. Johara Hamoud. Interview with author. Sana’a, January 10, 2009. Schwedler 2004, “The Islah Party in Yemen,” 217–20. Baaklini, Denoeux, and Springborg, Legislative Politics, 211. Ibid., 213. Ibid. Carlo Binda. Interview with author. Sana’a, August 29, 2005. Binda was then the head of the parliamentary capacity-building program at the National Democratic Institute in Sana’a. Franck Mermier. 1997. “L’Islam politique au Yémen ou la ‘Tradition’ contre les traditions?” Monde Arab Maghreb Machrek 155, 12. Note that the term “scientific institutes” is in this context a translation from the Arabic, denoting Yemeni usage to refer to a veritable cottage industry of institutions teaching the “Islamic Sciences.” Mermier offers an excellent discussion of the growth of these institutes on the preceding pages, 10–11. Muhammed Qassem No’man interview, September 17, 2005. Ibid. Mermier, “L’Islam politique au Yémen,” 12. Stacey Philbrick Yadav and Janine Clark. 2010. “Disappointments and New Directions: Women, Partisanship, and the Regime in Yemen.” HAWWA: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 8: 74–7. Muhammed Qassem No’man interview, September 17, 2005. Weir 2007, A Tribal Order, 296–306. Mermier, “L’Islam politique au Yémen,” 13. Schwedler, “The Islah Party in Yemen,” 219. Wedeen, Peripheral Visions, 202.

Chapter 2 The Procedural Reform Agenda: Structural Limits of the JMP 1 2 3 4

Murad Zafir. Interview with author. Sana’a, April 3, 2005. Schwedler 2004, “The Islah Party in Yemen.” Ibid. The estimate for 1993 is from Detalle, “Yemeni Elections,” 10; the figure for 1997 is from Baaklini, Denoeux, and Springborg, Legislative Politics, 217. I have no officially published figures on turnout.

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5 Schwedler, “The Islah Party in Yemen,” 222. 6 The same resolution extended the parliamentary term from four to six years as well. Procedurally, the referendum to approve the changes was combined with municipal elections in 2001. 7 Yadav and Clark, “Disappointments and New Directions,” 78–92. 8 A maqil (pl. maqa’il) is a diwan of sorts, with varying levels of formality, during which political issues are frequently debated and conflicts are often resolved while attendees chew qat, a mildly narcotic drug native to Yemen and countries in the Horn of Africa. For more on the politics of qat chewing, see: Wedeen, Peripheral Visions, 103–47. 9 For example, the National Democratic Institute, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, the United Nations Development Program, USAID, and others have all run robust “governance” programs in Yemen for most of its post-unification history. For a critique of scholarly approaches to the study of democracy through formal institutions, see Wedeen, Peripheral Visions, 105–13. 10 Dresch, History of Modern Yemen, 208–9. 11 Wedeen, Peripheral Visions, 206. 12 While I have interviewed a number of the leading members of the JMP and cite those interviews here, I was absolutely (and frustratingly) unable to derive from these interviews any kind of systematic history of the JMP. The fragmentary account offered here is the best that I have been able to assemble, though it is roughly the same as those presented by both Browers and Durac. Browers 2009, Political Ideology in the Arab World; Vincent Durac. 2011. “The Joint Meeting Parties and the Politics of Opposition in Yemen.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 38 (3):343–65. 13 al-‘Anisi interview, September 27, 2005. 14 Ibid. 15 Yadav and Clark, “Disappointments and New Directions,” 78–92. 16 Stacey Philbrick Yadav. 2011. “Antecedents of the Revolution: Intersectoral Networks and Post-Partisanship in Yemen.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11(3): 550–63. 17 Sheila Carapico, Lisa Wedeen, and Anna Weurth. “The Death and Life of Jarallah ‘Omar.” Middle East Report Online, December 31, 2002. 18 Zafir interview, March 4, 2005. 19 There is widespread belief in Sana’ani opposition political circles (Islahi and non-Islahi) that ‘Omar’s killing was intended to simultaneously weaken the opposition by killing one of its most visible and accomplished proponents and discredit Islah by positioning the party as extremists. This suspicion was furthered by the regime’s aggressiveness in pursuing the execution of the assassin, despite objections from the victim’s family.

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20 Shaiban interview, August 11, 2005. 21 Ibid. 22 People who are described by others as wahhabi or salafi often describe themselves instead as ahl al-sunna, or people who follow the traditions (of the Prophet Muhammed). 23 Qahtan interview, August 24, 2005. 24 Muhammed ‘Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil. Interview with author, Sana’a, August 20, 2004. 25 Shaiban interview, August 11, 2005. 26 Stacey Philbrick Yadav. 2010. “Segmented Publics and Islamist Women in Yemen: Rethinking Space and Activism.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 6(2): 1–30. 27 Sarah Phillips. 2005. “Cracks in the Yemeni System.” Middle East Report Online, July 28, 2005. The fighting has continued intermittently since then, but I have seen no new figures. 28 For more on the Islah Charitable Society, see: Janine Clark. 2004. Islam, Charity, and Activism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. 29 Solofo Ramaroson. Interview with author, October 10, 2004. 30 I was present for a number of debates at maqa’il, as well as partisan and academic symposia, in which the specter of fitna was invoked in 2004 and 2005, in particular. This occurred mainly in discussions between YSP and Islah elites at what could be characterized a weekly “JMP maqil,” hosted jointly by two ideologically opposed members of the alliance later formally registered as one of the activities of the Yemeni NGO, the Political Development Forum. This chew, I would argue, was one of several informal practices that facilitated the formation and articulation of elite consensus within the JMP. 31 J.M. Cowan, ed. 1994. The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, Fourth Edition. Ithaca, NY: Spoken Language Services, 815. 32 ‘Ali al-Faqih. Interview with author. Sana’a, March 15, 2005. 33 Muhammed Qahtan. Interview with author, March 9, 2005; Ali al-Sarari. Interview with author. Sana’a, March 15, 2005. 34 Qahtan interview, August 24, 2005. 35 Weir, Tribal Order, 296–303. 36 Qahtan interview, August 24, 2005. 37 Robin Madrid. Interview with author. Sana’a, October 10, 2004. Madrid was then director of the National Democratic Institute office in Yemen. 38 Faris Asad interview, March 3, 2005. Members of the ruling GPC expressed considerable skepticism with regard to this claim, with the notable exception of Mustapha No’man, then Deputy Foreign Minister. 39 Detalle, “Yemeni Elections,” 9.

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40 Sayeed interview, February 26, 2005. 41 Yadav, “Understanding ‘What Islamists Want,’” 199–213. 42 The comment was made in August 2005 at a maqil with several members of the Journalists’ Syndicate in Ta’iz and writers for the government paper, al-Jumhuriyya. I took notes on the condition that I record only first names as they were given to me by my host, local syndicate president and journalist Fikri Qassem. 43 Binda interview, August 29, 2005. 44 Joint Meeting Parties. 2006. “JMP Document on National and Political Reform.” News Yemen, January 18, 4–7. 45 Qahtan interview, August 24, 2005. 46 Ibid. 47 Yadav, “Segmented Publics,” 19–24. 48 Ibid., 21. 49 JMP, “National and Political Reform,” 10. 50 Raja’ interview, October 6, 2004. For a dissenting view from within the Islahi reformist trend, consider the following comment on secularizing law: “Secularism is not looking to address religious issues, to make people unfaithful. What Yemen needs is to become simultaneously more secular, and more faithful.” Nabil al-Sofee. Interview with author. Sana’a, March 13, 2005. 51 JMP, “National and Political Reform,” 6. 52 Ibid. 7. For ease of use, I have used the English translation released by the JMP. Translations of the gerund, however, come across poorly in many ArabicEnglish translations, as reflected here, where “tolerance” appeared as “forgive.” After consulting an Arabic draft of the document sent to me by a JMP leader, I note that “forgiveness” should be more conventionally translated as “tolerance,” so I have included this substitution. 53 Ibid. 54 Republic of Yemen. 2000. Law of Crimes and Punishments. Sana’a: Ministry of Legal Affairs, 5. 55 JMP, “National and Political Reform,” 11. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 8. 58 Ibid., 11. 59 “The JMP’s position on managing the elections.” NewsYemen, March 7, 2006. 60 Ibid. 61 Sayeed Thabit Sayeed interview with author. New York: October 25, 2008; Sami Ghaleb. Interview with author. New York: October 25, 2008; Nabil al-Sofee. Interview with author. Sana’a: January 5, 2009. Muhammed al-Sabri. Interview with the author. Sana’a: January 1, 2009.

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Chapter 3 The Road to the Cabinet: Redefining Friendship and Enmity 1 Walid Charara and Frédéric Domont. 2004. Le Hezbollah: Un Mouvement Islamo-Nationaliste. Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 261. 2 For an account of the large number of internationally brokered and/or enforced efforts to manage domestic conflict in Lebanon, see: Samir Khalaf. 2002. Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon: A History of the Internationalization of Communal Conflict. New York: Columbia University Press. 3 Hizballah officials whom I interviewed were much more fluid than this literature would reflect in identifying their previous group affiliations and the process by which they came either to participate in the founding of Hizballah or join the existing organization. 4 Accounts of this number vary from a low of 800 to a high of 1,500, with the most compelling accounts positing the initial deployment of 800, pending further approvals from Syria, and eventually reaching a total of 1,500. 5 Augustus Richard Norton. 2007. Hizballah: A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press; Augustus Richard Norton. 1999. “Hizballah of Lebanon: Extremist Ideals vs. Mundane Politics.” New York: Council on Foreign Relations; Augustus Richard Norton. 1998. “Hizballah: From Radicalism to Pragmatism.” Middle East Journal 5 (4):147–59; A. Nizar Hamzeh. 2004. In the Path of Hizballah. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press; Amal Saad-Ghorayeb. 2002. Hizb’ullah: Politics and Religion. London: Pluto Press; Hala Jaber. 1997. Hezbollah: Born with a Vengeance. New York: Columbia University Press; Judith Palmer Harik. 2004. Hezbollah: The Changing Face of Terrorism. London: I.B. Tauris. 6 Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr. 2008. Shi’ite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities. New York: Columbia University Press; Naim Qassem. 2005. Hizbullah: The Story from Within. Translated by Dalia Khalil. London: Saqi Press; Charara and Domont, Hezbollah; Magnus Ranstorp. 1997. Hizb’Allah in Lebanon: The Politics of the Western Hostage Crisis. London: Palgrave. 7 Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizb’ullah, 10. 8 These are accepted sources among the Twelver Shi’a, the dominant Shi’i Muslim community in Lebanon. Both Sunni Muslims and other Shi’i sects place emphasis on different sources, though all share a commitment to the Qur’an and the Sunna, with different standards for establishing the reliability of a given account of the Prophet’s traditions. 9 Moojan Momen. 1985. An Introduction to Shi’i Islam: The History and Doctrines of Twelver Shi’ism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 196–7.

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10 Momen, Introduction to Shi’i Islam, 197. 11 Ruhollah Khomeini. 1981. Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini. Translated by Hamid Algar. Berkeley, CA: Mizan Press. 12 Momen, Introduction to Shi’i Islam, 196. 13 Denis McEoin. 1984. “Aspects of Militancy and Quietism in Imami Shi’ism.” Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies 11(1): 18. 14 Momen, Introduction to Shi’i Islam, 194. 15 See, for example: Augustus Richard Norton. 1987. Amal and the Shi’a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon. Austin: University of Texas Press; Fouad Ajami. 1984. The Vanished Imam: Musa al-Sadr and the Shi’a of Lebanon. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. More recently, Lara Deeb and Max Weiss have each offered rich reviews of historical developments among the Shi’a. Max Weiss. 2010. In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi’ism, and the Making of Modern Lebanon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Lara Deeb. 2006. An Enchanted Modern: Gender, Piety and Politics in Shi’i Lebanon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 16 Muhammed Raad. Interview with author. Haret Hreik, May 23, 2005. 17 Ibid. 18 Many of the academic and policy-oriented discussions of this text appear to draw on a significantly truncated and structurally reorganized translation of the Open Letter, published in Jerusalem Quarterly 48 in 1988. To date, only Norton’s 1987 translation, appearing as Appendix B in his book on Hizballah’s rival party, Amal, captures the original organization and content with sufficient fidelity. While I have drawn here on both Norton’s translation and the original Arabic text provided by Hizballah’s party office, the page numbers correspond to Norton’s appendix, for readers wishing to consult the text in English. For contrast, see: Jerusalem Quarterly. “An Open Letter: The Hizballah Program.” International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, January 1, 1988. http://www.ict.org.il/Articles/tabid/66/Articlsid/4/Default. aspx 19 Jaber, Hezbollah, 52. My own offprint from the Hizballah library is unadorned. 20 In the Arabic text of the Open Letter, Khomeini is referred to as “al-faqih al-qa’id.” Norton (1987) translates this as “the leader jurisprudent” but it might also be rendered as “the leading jurist.” Insofar as it is attached to the word wilaya it is a clear reference to the Khomeinist principle of wilayat al-faqih. 21 Saad-Ghorayed, Hizb’ullah, 12. 22 Raad interview, May 23, 2005. 23 Khomeini, Islam and Revolution. 24 Hizballah, “Open Letter,” 173. 25 Ibid. 175.

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26 Raad interview, May 23, 2005. 27 Raad interview, May 23, 2005. 28 May Chartouni-Dubarry. 1996. “Hizballah: From Militia to Political Party.” In Lebanon on Hold: Implications for Middle East Peace, edited by Rosemary Hollis and Nadim Shehadi. London: Royal Institute for International Affairs, 60; For an example of the first, see: Martin Kramer. 1993. “Hizbullah: The Calculus of Jihad.” In Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance. Edited by M. Kramer and R.S. Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 539–56. 29 Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizb’ullah, 65; Qassem, Hizbullah, 50–8. 30 Qassem, Hizbullah, 57. 31 Ibid. This is clearly an awkward translation, but I do not have the original Arabic text for comparison. 32 A. Nizar Hamzeh and R. Hrair Dekmejian. 1994. “The Islamic Spectrum of Lebanese Politics.” Beirut Review 7: 126–7. 33 Baaklini, Denoeux, and Springborg, Legislative Politics, 94. 34 Hizballah 1987, “Open Letter,” 176. 35 Raad interview, May 23, 2005. 36 Hamzeh and Dekmejian, “Islamic Spectrum,” 127. 37 For the recollections of participants in this conference and other internal party debates at this time, see the following documentary aired by the National Broadcasting Network, an affiliate of the Amal Movement: National Broadcasting Network. 2004. “Lebanon’s Parties: Hizballah.” Beirut: NBN. 38 Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizb’ullah, 26. 39 Kramer, “Hizbullah: The Calculus of Jihad,” 546. 40 Hassan Nasrallah. 2007. “Hezbollah Is Not an Iranian Community in Lebanon.” In Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Edited by Nicholas Noe. London: Verso, 89. 41 Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizb’ullah, 26. 42 As a point of internal compromise, while the faction associated with ‘Abbas al-Musawi “won” and Nasrallah “lost” in Tehran in 1989, the secretarygeneralship passed to Nasrallah only hours after ‘Abbas al-Musawi’s assassination in February 1992. He immediately pledged to follow in al-Musawi’s path, which meant simultaneously participating in elections and continuing to strengthen the Islamic Resistance. The assassination of al-Musawi, along with his wife and infant son, occurred only shortly before the elections, and is credited with reinvigorating Hizballah’s electoral efforts. Jaber, Hezbollah, 44–5. 43 Harik, Hezbollah, 58–9.

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Raad interview, May 23, 2005. Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizb’ullah, 26. Cited in Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizb’ullah, 27. Hamzeh and Dekmejian, “Islamic Spectrum,” 128. Qassem, Hizbullah, 104. Hizballah. 1997. Hizballah: Views and Concepts. Beirut: Al-Manar Television, 2. Muhammed al-Berjawi. Interview with author. Beirut, May 27, 2005. al-Berjawi interview, May 27, 2005. Qassem, Hizbullah; Raad interview, May 23, 2005. Nasrallah, “Not an Iranian Community,” 89. Raad interview, May 23, 2005. Usher, Graham. 1997. “Hizballah, Syria, and the Lebanese Elections.” Journal of Palestine Studies 26(2): 64. Judith Palmer Harik. 1996. “Between Islam and the System: Sources and Implications of Popular Support for Lebanon’s Hizballah.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 40(1): 56. Norton 1999, “Hizballah of Lebanon,” 7. Jaber, Hezbollah, 157. This certainly conforms with my own discussions in Beirut, in which friends and colleagues of a wide range of political and sectarian affiliations repeatedly noted that the Free Patriotic Movement (led by the then-exiled Michel Aoun) and Hizballah were the only two “real” parties in the programmatic and service-provision sense. Harik, Hezbollah, 86. Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. 1992. “Results of Pre-Election Poll.” Beirut Review 4: 164. A majority (53.5 percent) of respondents in the LCPS poll rated the economy the first priority in the post-war period, with the next-closest answer being “national reconciliation,” with only 18.4 percent. Government of Lebanon. 1993. “Horizon 2000 Economic Plan.” Beirut Report 5: 180–81. Norton 1999, “Hizballah of Lebanon,” 2. Harik 2004, Hezbollah, 81–2. Raad interview, May 23, 2005. Nasrallah, “Not an Iranian Community,” 89. Jaber, Hezbollah, 145–68. Ibid., 150. Norton 1999, “Hizballah of Lebanon,” 3. Jaber, Hezbollah, 164. Harik 2004, Hezbollah, 87. Jaber, Hezbollah, 159.

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Ibid., 158–9. Ibid., 164. Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizb’ullah, 109. Harik, Hezbollah, 85–86. Giles Trendle. 1993. “The Grass Roots of Success.” Middle East 220: 12. Harik 1996, “Between Islam and the System,” 55. Harik 2004, Hezbollah, 83. Harik 1996, “Between Islam and the System,” 56. Ibid. Norton 1999, “Hizballah of Lebanon,” 9. Harik 2004, Hezbollah, 77. Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizb’ullah, 18. Harik 2004, Hezbollah, 89. Raad interview, May 23, 2005. Ibid. Rafiq Hariri. 1993. “Interview with Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.” Beirut Review 5: 171. One specific example of this process is given in Chapter 5, with the case of takfir al-jo’a, wordplay by which hunger is identified as a cause of apostasy. In other words, retrograde social conditions (like hunger, illiteracy, etc.) and the political system that allows them to persist, are held responsible for the moral dilemmas faced by individuals. A documentary on the event was shown in Beirut in 2005 by a local human rights NGO: Société Civile. 2005. Leaded/Unleaded. Beirut: Société Civile. Hassan Nasrallah. 2004. “Press Conference of the Secretary-General, his Eminence Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, on Events of the Southern Suburb.” Haret Hreik: Hizballah Media Office, 5. He makes no explicit reference in his address to this being an anti-Shi’i transgression by the state, but it is implicit. For first-hand journalistic accounts of the events at Qana, see: Robert Fisk. 2002. Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon. Fourth Edition. New York: Nation Books, 669–89; Jaber, Hezbollah, 169–70. Hizballah. 1997. Hizballah’s Electoral Platform, 1996. Beirut: Hizballah Media Office, 2. Ibid, 2. Dalal el-Bizri. 1999. Islamistes, Parlementaires et Libanais: Les Interventions à l’Assemlée des élus de la Jama’a Islamiyya et du Hizballah (1992–1996). Beirut: Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain, 4.

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Ibid., 5. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 6. For one example of this, see the discussion of Imam ‘Ali as a model for combating kufr al-jo’a in Chapter 5. Hamzeh and Dekmejian, however, contrast Fadlallah’s position with that of Shaykh Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din, the president of the Higher Shi’ite Council, the official Shi’i religious institution recognized by the state. They point out that Shams al-Musawi, a product of the same hawzat al-‘ilmiyya as Fadlallah, Nasrallah, al-Musawi, and others, has always adopted a position in favor of democratic pluralism (al-dimuqratiyya al‘adadiyya), whereas the “non-committal” attitude of Fadlallah is seen by the authors, as a relatively more recent response to political realities. Hamzeh and Dakmejian, “Islamic Spectrum,” 118. Before my own interview with Fadlallah, his secretary vetted my questions and would not allow me to ask any questions that probed the cleric’s relationship to either Hizballah or Amal. Hizballah 1997, Hizballah’s Electoral Platform, 3. Ibid. The silence has not been total. See Qassem, Hizbullah, 30–32. Raad interview, May 23, 2005. Gibran Tueni. Interview with author. Beirut, May 5, 2005. Tueni interview, May 5, 2005. Ibid. Asma Andraous. Interview with author. Beirut, June 11, 2005. Ali Hamdan. Interview with author. Beirut, April 29, 2005.

Chapter 4 Hizballah in Government (and Back . . . and Forth) 1 Hassan Nasrallah, as quoted in “Hezbollah Prepared to Give Weapons to Army.” United Press International, February 16, 2007. 2 NicholasBlanford.“TheSevenVillages:OriginsandImplications.” NowLebanon, http://www.nowlebanon.com/Library/Files/EnglishDocumentation/ Other%20Documents/The_Seven_Villages-paper-final2.pdf, n.d. accessed March 31, 2012. 3 For a particularly good discussion of this, see Olivier Roy’s The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East, in which he argues that “Hezbollah is the key

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to unlocking the connection between the two axes [of Iran’s Shi’i leadership among Arab Shi’a, and broader pan-Islamic leadership of the “Israel refusal front”]. Olivier Roy. 2008. The Politics of Chaos in the Middle East. Translated by Ros Schwartz. New York: Columbia University Press, 120. For the limits of this project, see: Laleh Khalili. 2007. ‘Standing with My Brother: Hizbullah, Palestinians, and the Limits of Solidarity.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49 (2): 276–303. Hassan Nasrallah. 2007. “Victory.” In Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Edited by Nicholas Noe. London: Verso, 240. Lara Deeb. 2008. “Hizballah and Its Civilian Constituencies in Lebanon.” In The War on Lebanon: A Reader. Edited by Nubar Hovsepian. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 62. “Israel will be bombarded if Syrian army hit in Lebanon: Berri.” Agence France Presse, May 25, 2001. “Israeli threats serve only to make Arabs scared: Lebanese PM.” Agence France Press, May 21, 2001. AFP, “Israel will be bombarded,” May 25, 2001. Cited in Harik 2004, Hezbollah, 157. Khalili, “Standing with My Brother,” 284. The venue and topic of each speech was previously available at: www. nasrollah.org but I am no longer able to access the site. Last accessed August 20, 2004. Khalili, “‘Standing with My Brother,’” 283. “Hezbollah deputy chief reiterates ‘unconditional support’ for Palestinians.” Daily Star, April 15, 2005. Rola el-Husseini. 2008. “Resistance, Jihad and Martyrdom in Contemporary Lebanese Shi’a Discourse.” Middle East Journal 62(3): 407. Hassan Nasrallah. 2007. “The Second Intidada: October 5, 2000.” In Voice of Hezbollah, 247. Hassan Nasrallah. 2007. “On the Thirteenth Anniversary of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Death: June 4, 2002.” In Voice of Hezbollah, 270–1. Raad interview, May 23, 2005. “Hezbollah deputy chief reiterates ‘unconditional’ support for Palestinians.” Daily Star, April 15, 2005. John Kifner. “A Nation Challenged: Lebanon to Resist U.S. Sanctions on Hezbollah.” New York Times, November 6, 2011. Ibid. Matthew Lee. “Lebanon rejects Powell warning on Hezbollah attack.” Agence France Press, April 15, 2002.

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22 “War of words breaks over questioning Syrian presence in Lebanon.” Agence France Press, March 24, 2000. 23 “Maronite religious leader urges Syria to leave Lebanon.” Associated Press, August 22, 2000. 24 Alistair Lyon. “Opposition gains in Lebanon parliament elections.” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 29, 2000. 25 “Sunnis join attacks against calls for Syrian pullout from Lebanon.” Agence France Press, April 6, 2001. 26 For a good review of the basic mechanics of Syrian hegemony, see: Bassel Salloukh. 2005. “Syria and Lebanon: A Brotherhood Transformed.” Middle East Report 236. http://merip.org/mer/mer236/syria-lebanon-brotherhoodtransformed 27 United Nations. S/RES/1559 (2004), September 2, 2004. http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N04/498/92/PDF/N0449892. pdf?OpenElement 28 I attended several such marches and rallies in Beirut in autumn 2004, which rarely exceeded two or three hundred participants. At the beginning of the “color wars,” which would continue in the spring, participants at these fall protests wore a red-and-white sash, like the one depicted in the image in Chapter 6. 29 Some important occurrences in these months included the assassination attempt against Opposition leader Marwan Hamade, a series of Christian and Druze/Leftist protests around ‘Eid al-Istiqlal (Independence Day), and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s official announcement that he was joining the Opposition after threats against him from Syria. 30 “ABCs of Lebanon’s Contentious Elections Law.” Agence France Presse, May 11, 2005. 31 Tueni interview, May 5, 2005. 32 For an excellent mapping of the various electoral laws, see IFES’ 2011 report. International Foundation for Electoral Systems. “Electoral Districts in Lebanon.” October 5, 2011. 33 On the day of the deadline, this rumor was confirmed to me by someone on Berri’s personal staff, on condition of anonymity. 34 Sayyid Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah. Interview with the author. Haret Hreik, April 17, 2005. 35 “Exiled General Back in Beirut, Promising a New Era.” New York Times, May 8, 2005. 36 Hizballah and Free Patriotic Movement, “Memorandum of Joint Understanding Between Hezbollah and the Free Patriotic Movement.” NowLebanon, February 6, 2006. http://www.nowlebanon.com/Library/Files/

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EnglishDocumentation/Political%20agreements%20and%20manifestos/ hezbollah-FPM.pdf Accessed 3/31/2012. As a general rule, media accounts focused on “salah al-muqawama” (the weapons of the Resistance), and not “salah Hizballah” (the weapons of Hizballah). This was particularly true during the election period, which coincided with the fifth anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal. al-Intiqad, May 25, 2005, 6. Daily Star, May 27, 2005, 2. Raad interview, May 23, 2005. Salloukh 2006, “The Limits of Electoral Engineering,” 639. “Lebanese papers praise first round of parliamentary elections in Beirut.” BBC Worldwide Monitoring, May 31, 2005. “Hezbollah joins Lebanon’s cabinet for first time.” Agence France Press, July 19, 2005. “PM rejects U.S. criticism over Hezbollah.” United Press International, July 20, 2005. “Lebanese Hezbollah minister accuses U.S. of interference.” Agence France Press, July 20, 2005. “Shi’i ministers back in cabinet after premier’s assurances.” BBC World Monitoring, February 2, 2006. “Lebanon’s Dialogue Conference: Pro- and Anti-Syrian Leaders Sharply Split on Issues.” Agence France Press, March 1, 2006. International Crisis Group. “Hizbollah and the Lebanese Crisis.” Middle East Report No. 69. October 10, 2007, 2. This was a widespread expression in the run-up to the elections, and was particularly divisive in opposition circles; the widespread victory of HizballahAmal candidates in the South was taken as an affirmation of the Resistance, but it was certainly more contested in other parts of the country. “A day after Hezbollah’s election victory, Israeli warplanes fly over large parts of Lebanon.” Associated Press, June 7, 2005. Jumblatt told al-Jazeera in June 2005: “Hezbollah’s weapons belong to the Lebanese national resistance and are used to defend Lebanon against any Israeli aggression.” “Lebanon’s Jumblatt says electoral rival Awn aims to ‘destroy’ opposition.” BBC World Monitoring, June 12, 2005. By contrast, in National Dialogue talks on the issue, Jumblatt said that “the Lebanese state must have control over all weapons and territories.” “Hizballah should disarm: Jumblatt.” Agence France Press, May 7, 2006. AFP, “Hizballah should disarm,” May 7, 2006. Daily Star, July 12, 2006, 2. Ibid., 1.

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Daily Star, July 19, 2006, 7. Daily Star, July 16, 2006, 1. Ibid., 1. Daily Star, July 31, 2006, 3. Aram Narguizian. “The Lebanese Armed Forces: Challenges and Opportunities in Post-Syrian Lebanon.” Center for Strategic and International Studies working paper. Washington, DC: CSIS. February 10 2009. http:// csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/090210_lafsecurity.pdf Ibid. Bassam Fattouh and Joachim Kolb. 2006. “The Outlook for Economic Reconstruction in Lebanon After the 2006 War.” MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 6, 98. Melani Cammet and Sukriti Issar. 2010. “Bricks and Mortar Clientilism: Sectarianism and the Logics of Welfare Allocation in Lebanon.” World Politics 62(3): 399–403. The Gazette (Montreal), October 17, 2006. Ali Hamdan. Interview with author. Beirut, June 19, 2008. Jim Quilty. 2006. “Politics and Business, State and Citizenry: Preliminary Thoughts on the Response to Lebanon’s Humanitarian Crisis.” MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies 6, 90. Roger MacGinty and Christine Sylva Hamieh. 2010. “Made in Lebanon: Local Participation and Indigenous Responses to Development in Post-War Reconstruction.” Civil Wars 12(1–2): 50. Heiko Wimmen. “The Long, Steep Fall of the Lebanon Tribunal.” Middle East Report Online, December 1, 2010. Jim Quilty. “Lebanon’s Brush with Civil War.” Middle East Report Online, May 20, 2008. International Crisis Group, Hizbollah, 2. Hamdan interview, July 19, 2008. International Crisis Group, Hizbollah, 2. Jim Quilty. “Winter of Lebanon’s Discontents.” Middle East Report Online, January 26, 2007. Ibid. Jim Quilty 2008, “Lebanon’s Brush with Civil War.” Ibid. BBC Worldwide Monitoring, May 6, 2008. BBC Worldwide Monitoring, May 7, 2008. BBC Worldwide Monitoring, May 8, 2008. Ibid. Quilty 2008, “Lebanon’s Brush with Civil War.”

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80 Ibid. 81 Stacey Philbrick Yadav. “Lebanon’s Post-Doha Political Theater.” Middle East Report Online, July 23, 2008. 82 Hizballah. “The Hezbollah-Salafist Memorandum of Understanding.” NowLebanon, August 18, 2008. http://nowlebanon.com/Library/Files/ EnglishDocumentation/Political%20agreements%20and%20manifestos/ MOU.pdf 83 Melani Cammet. “Democracy, Lebanese-Style.” Middle East Report Online, August 18, 2009. 84 International Foundation for Electoral Systems. “Lebanon’s New Government.” November 9, 2009. http://www.ifes.org/publication/38e87b372599cdff387c7 6fd022fb123/Lebanons_new_government.pdf 85 Wimmen, “The Long Steep Fall.” 86 BBC Worldwide Monitoring, March 13, 2012.

Chapter 5 Harnessing Takfir in Yemen: Allegations of Apostasy and Symbolic Power 1 Shaiban interview, August 11, 2005. 2 Patricia Crone. 2004. God’s Rule—Islam and Government: Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 385. 3 “In every growing society, conservatism represents one term in a concrete tension within which onward movement takes place, the other term being liberalism or, as we have termed it, modernism.” Fazlur Rahman. 2002. Islam. Second Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 250. 4 Lester R. Kurtz. 1983. “The Politics of Heresy.” American Journal of Sociology 88(6): 1085. 5 Lisa Wedeen. 2007. “The Politics of Deliberation: Qat Chews as Public Spheres in Yemen.” Public Culture (19)1: 66. 6 Anne Norton. 2004. 95 Theses on Culture, Politics, and Method. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 65. 7 Ibid., 66. 8 Ibid. 9 Yadav 2010, “Understanding ‘What Islamists Want,’” 199–213. 10 In a defining 1953 work on the history of heresy and takfir, Bernard Lewis noted that “there are in fact several Islamic terms which are rendered as ‘heresy’ by Western scholar,” but concluded that “they are by no means synonyms.” In establishing this claim, he drew upon a heresiographic tradition stretching back to the origins of the tradition, but focused on medieval jurists, in particular, who devoted considerable intellectual effort to the categorization and prescription of punishment for different forms of heresy. Among the various

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terms which might be used to allege some manner of heresy in the Islamic legal tradition, the most common appear to be bid’a, ghuluww, zanadaqa, ilhad, kufr, and irtidad (or rida), each of which Lewis details, with the exception of irtidad. Bernard Lewis. 1953. “Some Observations on the Significance of Heresy in the History of Islam.” Studia Islamica 1: 43–63. Ibid., 62. Kurtz, “The Politics of Heresy,” 1086. Keith Lewinstein. 1992. “Making and Unmaking a Sect: The Heresiographers and the Sufriyya.” Studia Islamica 76: 75. Ibid., 75–6. Norton 2004, 95 Theses, 76. Lewinstein, “Making and Unmaking a Sect.” Browers, Political Ideology. See also: Stacey Philbrick Yadav. 2010. “Segmented Publics,” 1–30. Kurtz, “The Politics of Heresy,” 1087. This sentiment relies on a critical questioning of the possibility and value of identifying authorial intent, much less according it analytic primacy. “If one can discover, or, more probably, infer, the meaning that the first author intended the text to carry, one is not able then to conclude that this intention governed the unfolding of the text in practice, nor can one argue that this long-expired intent can limit or control the meanings to be found within words that belong to a language (and all the communities that employ that language) rather than to an author.” Norton 2004, 95 Theses, 21. Lewis, “Some Observations,” 58. Abdullah Saeed and Hassan Saeed. 2004. Freedom of Religion, Apostasy, and Islam. Surrey, UK: Ashgate. Leonard Lewy. 1981. Treason Against God: A History of the Offense of Blasphemy. New York: Schocken Books. Note that Lewy unpacks the relationship between blasphemy, heresy, and apostasy in this work, but maintains that these distinctions were not well formed in Christianity until the medieval period either. See especially Chapter 3. Sheila Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately. 1997. “Introduction to the Practices of Denunciation in Modern European History.” In Accusatory Practices. Edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 17. Robert Gellately. 1997. “Denunciation in Twentieth-Century Germany: Aspects of Self-Policing in the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic.” In Accusatory Practices, 185. The height of the Islah party’s use of takfir corresponds to the period preceding the constitutional amendment which established shari’a as the sole source of legislation in Yemen, and consequently stipulated that apostasy would be

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a capital offense under the penal code. This was also a period characterized by Islah’s effort to displace the Yemeni Socialist Party. This process can be traced in the accounts of Islahi discourse in the 1990s offered by scholars of that period. See, for example: Dresch 2001, History of Modern Yemen, 187–214; Carapico 1998, Civil Society in Yemen, 135–69. Republic of Yemen, Law of Crimes and Punishments, 5. The account given here did not emerge from a deductive intuition prior to the research on which it is based, but rather developed in response to concerns voiced by Yemeni interlocutors (from a wide variety of political positions) in interviews conducted for a related project. Concern over the proliferation of takfir and its effects on public discourse and political competition was brought to my attention during my first interview in Sana’a in September 2004. While I am drawing from multiple works by Bourdieu, the principle architecture of his market metaphor is laid out succinctly in two essays, “The Production and Reproduction of Legitimate Language” and “Price Formation and the Anticipation of Profits.” Both can be found here: Pierre Bourdieu. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Edited by John B. Thomson. Translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 43–89. Ibid., 70. Original emphasis. Dahlgren, Contesting Realities. This discussion was held at a qat chew convened at the headquarters of the widely circulated ‘Adeni newspaper, al-Ayam, in August 2005. For discussions of the development of this pan-Sunnism in Yemen’s plural Muslim community, see the following: al-Siyani, Muslim Brothers and the Salafis; Qassem, ed., Islamists in Yemen. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 72. Original emphasis. Ibid, 75. While the evidentiary burden for apostasy is very difficult to satisfy, the Yemeni penal code enumerates a range of crimes derived from it with a lower burden of proof; largely related to “insulting Islam” or its institutions, these have been leveraged against journalists and publishers as a means of policing public speech. Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 73. Farha Ghannam. 2002. Remaking the Modern. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 21. It took me the better part of a year to locate a copy of this book, and I ultimately received a copy (notably published in Beirut) wrapped in brown paper and given only after much protest by my neighborhood

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bookseller. Muhammed ‘Abd al-Wali. 1986. Sana’a: An Open City. Beirut: Dar al-‘Awda. “Aggressive Blasphemy Campaign Against al-Thaqafiah and its Chief Editor.” Yemen Times, July 17, 2000. “Samir al-Yusufi to the Yemen Times: ‘The case has definitely taken other dimensions which are neither logical nor related to Islam, but are political.’” Yemen Times, July 17, 2000. al-Quds al-‘Arabi, “Opposition says Yemeni land ‘relinquished’ to Saudi; newspaper trial continues.” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, July 17, 2000, 1. Human Rights Watch. 2001. World Report 2001: Middle East and Northern Africa Overview. http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/mideast/index.html Yemen Times, “Samir al-Yusufi to the Yemen Times,” July 17, 2000. In addition to the examples in Chapter 2, see the case of the closure of the Women’s Studies center at Sana’a University in 1999, ahead of the presidential elections. Yadav and Clark, “Disappointments and New Directions,” 74–77. “The Showdown.” Yemen Times, July 24, 2000. Yehya, Extremism and Excommunication; ‘Ali ‘Abd Allah al-Wasa’i. 2000. The Position of the Apostate in Islam. Sana’a: Yemeni Congregation for Reform; Muhammed ‘Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil. 2004. Islam and International Human Rights Declarations. Sana’a: Sana’a Modern Publishers; Muhammed ‘Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil. 2000. Human Rights in Islam. Published serially in al-Qitas 20. Human Rights in Islam was published in serial form in al-Qitas, the Lawyers’ Syndicate journal, but is currently unavailable in text. The discussion of it here is based on multiple interviews with the author, who characterized its argument was a truncated form of the later book, Islam and International Human Rights Declarations, discussed in greater detail here. al-Mutawwakil 2004, Islam and Human Rights Declarations, 47. al-Mutawakkil interview, August 20, 2005. al-Wasa’i, Position of the Apostate, 3. Note that “position” in the title is hukm in Arabic, most directly understood as the “legal position” of something, or a judgment of something in accordance with Islamic law. al-Mutawakkil 2004, Islam and Human Rights Declarations, 49–63. al-Mutawakkil interview, August 20, 2005. Charles Kurzman. 1999. Liberal Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 14. I follow Kurzman’s argument in suggesting that this is an example of “liberal Islam,” and not “Islamic liberalism,” suggesting with the former that al-Mutawakkil’s liberal positions are justified—and even required—by his understanding and expression of his Islamic faith, and not the reverse. al-Mutawakkil, Islam and Human Rights Declarations, 54.

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“ahl al-fitna w’al-tataruf ” cf. discussion of fitna in Chapter 2. Yehya, Extremism and Excommunication, 126. Ibid., 99. Carapico et al., “Death and Life of Jarallah ‘Omar.” Nearly all official party print materials, including the weekly al-Thawri newspaper, came quickly to include a picture or caricature of ‘Omar and some combination of the words “democracy” and “martyr.” It reached the level of political kitsch, as evidenced by my credit card–sized wallet calendar bearing his face and the slogan, widely distributed by the YSP in advance of its party congress. Perhaps ironically, it was members of Islah who first coined the expression. See Carapico et al., “Death and Life of Jarallah ‘Omar.” Ibid. al-Sofee interview, March 13, 2005. Qahtan interview, August 24, 2005; al-‘Anisi interview, September 27, 2005. Qahtan interview, August 24, 2005. I have chosen to include this comment anonymously, given the sensitive nature of the statement and in deference to the speaker’s comfort level. While it was made at a qat chew at which approximately forty people were present, all were members of the JMP opposition. All of the (few) Islahis in the room were known to have been critical of the proliferation of takfir. I conducted a number of interviews and informal conversations in Sana’a and outside of Yemen in 2008 and 2009 in which this sentiment was raised, but given the current instability in Yemen have elected not to provide specific names and dates. It should be made clear that the list of crimes carrying the customary hudud penalties (corporal and capital punishments) enumerated in the Yemeni constitution remains symbolic, as these punishments are not enacted by the state. That said, their formal inclusion in the constitution helps to establish a normative framework, a shared knowledge among members of the polity as to the gravity of the charge of irtidad. It also opens the door the criminalization of lesser but related charges, like insulting Islam or insulting the Prophet, which have been especially useful in cases brought before President Salih’s extraconstitutional Special Press Court since its establishment in 2009. “Yes, I’m Christian … and I’m Calling for the Building of Churches in Yemen.” al-Thawri, August 18, 2005. al-Mutawakkil interview, August 20, 2005. Qahtan interview, August 24, 2005.

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70 When he gave me these articles at our first meeting in September 2004, No’man gave me explicit permission to identify him as the author. Later “exiled” as Yemen’s ambassador to India, he revealed his identity as Abu Ahmed Mustapha on his blog, http://mustaphanoman.blogspot.com; The translation here, which was provided by No’man, is from MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 540, “Reformist Arab Diplomat: ‘Are We a Nation That Preaches Morality and Tolerance?’” The original article appeared in al-Sharq al-Awsat on May 8, 2002. The translation can be found here: http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/912.htm, last accessed July 13, 2012. 71 Self-censorship is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. My claim that there has been an increase in such practices is based on self-reporting by YSP members and other Leftists, as well as a comparison of comments made by individuals in group versus private conversations. 72 The list on which al-Zindani’s name appears is issued by the UNSC CounterTerrorism Committee, on which all members of the Security Council are represented. The list is available online at: http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/ committees/1267/tablelist.htm#alqaedaent 73 UN Security Council Resolution 1373, September 28, 2001. 74 Ibid., 2. 75 Ibid., 2. 76 Ibid., 3. 77 United States Department of the Treasury. U.S. Designates Bin Laden Loyalist. Document JS-1190. February 24, 2004. 78 Yemen Times, January 20, 2003. 79 Akhbar al-Youm, August 31, 2005, 1. 80 This would not be the last time that the JMP opposition would have to contend with al-Zindani’s willingness to go his own way. Even the growing strength of the JMP did not prevent al-Zindani from endorsing Salih in the 2006 presidential elections, or founding the Fadilah Group in 2008, as I discuss in the conclusion. 81 There is some evidence in the tone of official coverage of these events to suggest that No’man was being singled out. See, for example: “Yemen Agrees to Freeze al-Zindani’s Assets.” Yemen Observer, February 24, 2005. 82 Through a fortuitous turn of circumstance, I had a meeting with No’man on the morning that the statement was published and was present for this phone call. Though I only heard one side of the conversation first hand, this is No’man’s account, printed here with his permission. For obvious reasons, he has asked that I not reveal the identity of the caller. 83 ‘Abd al-Majid al-Zindani. Interview with SahwaNet, September 29, 2005.

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84 Personal communication with author via SMS, September 2005. In Yemen, as elsewhere in the Arab world, it is common practice to respectfully address a contemporary as “brother.” The adoption here of a father/son dichotomy adheres to the rules of familial metaphor, while clearly locating No’man in a subordinate position. Al-Zindani did not introduce the subordinate relationship, but he did make it public in a way that No’man had not. 85 In the first week of October 2005, al-Zindani’s attacks against al-Sofee were the lead issue on the cover of each of the major weekly independent and party newspapers in Sana’a. 86 Personal communication with author via SMS, November 1, 2005.

Chapter 6 Policing the Nation: Hizballah and the Discourse of Takhwin 1 ‘Ali al-Amin, cited in An-Nahar, August 22, 2006. Middle East Media Reporting Institute. “Lebanese Shi’ite Mufti of Tyre Ali al-Amin Harshly Criticizes Hizballah for Its Conduct in Recent Conflict.” MEMRI Special Dispatch 1295, August 26, 2006. http://www.memri.org/report/ en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1881.htm 2 This topic was discussed at length in a highly regarded Lebanese documentary: National Broadcasting Network. 2002. Sects of Lebanon: The Shi’a, Vol. 1. DVD. Beirut: NBN. 3 Fadlallah interview, May 17, 2005. 4 Ibid. 5 Hamdan interview, April 29, 2005. 6 El-Bizri, Islamistes, Parlementaires et Libanais. See particularly discussion of the debates over personal status law, 15–16. 7 “Hunger is an unbeliever.” Muhammed Yaghi. 1993. “Address to Parliament.” Debate on appropriations bill 2471, giving approval for a treasury loan in the amount of 10 billion lira to the Committee for the South. 17th assembly, first special session. July 9, 1992. Debates of the Chamber of Deputies. Beirut: Lebanese Government, 439. 8 Sadr al-Din al-Sadr. Interview with author. Ghobeiri, May 3, 2005. 9 Ahmed Issa. Interview with author. Ghobeiri, May 3, 2005. 10 Former Secretary-General of Hizballah, Shaykh Subhi al-Tufayli, was rejected from the party in large part because his appropriation of this idiom and creation of a popular movement on its basis was seen as a threat to the autonomy of the party. See Qassem, Hizbullah, 124–5 for a discussion of the “Revolution of the Famished.” 11 Al-Berjawi interview, June 1, 2005.

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12 Muhammed al-Berjawi. 1992. Debate on appropriations bill 2471, giving approval for a treasury loan in the amount of 10 billion lira to the Committee for the South. 17th assembly, first special session. July 9, 1992. Debates of the Chamber of Deputies. Beirut: Lebanese Government, 411. 13 In 1997, the statement dismissing al-Tufayli from the party declared that his actions “reveal after several months of similar moves that the shaykh’s actions do not fall in the realm of a plight movement. They are but an attempt to divide the domain.” Qassem, Hizbullah, 125. 14 Scott Lash. 1993. “Cultural Economy and Social Change.” In Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives. Edited by Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma, and Moishe Postone. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 197–8. 15 Ibid. 16 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 58. 17 Ibid., 54. 18 Ibid., 55. 19 Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizb’ullah, 20. 20 Cowan, Hans Wehr, 307. 21 “Arab Reports and Analysis.” Journal of Palestine Studies 14(3): 157. 22 It is worth noting that, in the previous account, Syria is labeled throughout as Arab Syria and that most republican states in the region have the word “Arab” in their formal name: the Syrian Arab Republic, the Arab Republic of Egypt, etc. 23 “Arab Reports and Analysis,” Journal of Palestine Studies 14(3): 157. 24 By this, I mean what is often called the “radicalized” phase of the Arab nationalist movement after 1958. 25 Al Jazeera. 2005. Lebanon’s War. DVD. Doha: Al Jazeera. 26 Norton 1987, Amal and the Shi’a. 27 This move came largely in response to another extraterritorial call, in the form of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, as detailed in Chapter 3. 28 Qassem, Hizbullah; Charara and Domont, Hezbollah. 29 Mahmoud Darwish. 1985. “The Madness of Being Palestinian.” In Journal of Palestine Studies 15(1): 138–41. 30 Hizballah 1987, “Open Letter,” 169. The Open Letter certainly pre-dates the post-war shift to nationalization, but the fundamental process of claiming to speak on behalf of the whole is similar. In later discourse, the “whole” is the (plural) Lebanese nation, as opposed to the Islamic nation evident here. Laleh Khalili also points out the ways Hizballah has periodically attempted to appropriate symbolic capital through spokesmanship on behalf of Palestinians through similar discursive techniques. Khalili, “‘Standing with My Brother’.”

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31 As an illustration of this shift in meaning, in the aftermath of being labeled a traitor in pro-Syrian Lebanese media following the publication of his Open Letter to Bashar al-Assad in 2000, Gibran Tueni noted, “it’s a pity that someone who calls for the minimum standard of sovereignty and independence for his country is accused of treason.” Gibran Tueni. “Open Letter to Bashar al-Asad.” An-Nahar, March 23, 2000, 1. In a reappropriation of the term several years later, after being elected to parliament following the Syrian withdrawal, Tueni made the following statement: “Any action against the [new Lebanese] government would be against the country and the people, and all those who back it would be collaborators in the war President Assad launched against Lebanon.” Gibran Tueni. “No to the New Tripartite Alliance.” An-Nahar, November 17, 2005, 1. In this, he was directly aping (if inverting) the structure and content of discourse common to Hizballah accusations of treason, particularly the “Israeli hand” allegation made by Nasrallah in May 2005 and discussed in Chapter 4. Tueni was assassinated less than a month later, on December 12, 2005. 32 Hizballah 1987, “Open Letter,” 169. 33 Ibid., 171. 34 Ibid., 179. 35 Ibid., 180. 36 Esther Webman. 1998. Anti-Semitic Motifs in the Ideology of Hizballah and Hamas. Tel Aviv: International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, 8. 37 For a discussion of the party’s successful attempts to deflect international pressure on the station in response to French and American allegations of anti-Semitism, see: Stacey Philbrick Yadav. 2005. “Of Bans, Boycotts, and Sacrificial Lambs: Al-Manar in the Crossfire.” Transnational Broadcasting Studies, Spring/Summer, 172–7. 38 Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizb’ullah, 112. 39 Qassem, Hizbullah, 105. 40 Ibid. This issue is described in some detail on 105–7. 41 Fisk, Pity the Nation, 662. 42 Augustus Richard Norton and Jillian Schwedler. 1993. “(In)Security Zones in South Lebanon.” Journal of Palestine Studies 23(1): 61–79. 43 Jaber, Hezbollah, 177. 44 Ibid., 198. 45 Ibid., 198–9. 46 Androus interview, June 11, 2005. 47 Jaber, Hezbollah, 199. 48 Charara and Domont, Hezbollah, 112. The authors nonetheless imply that these newcomers are maintained in separate battalions.

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Ibid., 149. Hamzeh, In the Path of Hizballah, 114–15. Qassem, Hizbullah, 127. Hamzeh, In the Path of Hizballah, 115. Qassem, Hizbullah, 129. Ibid, 129. Ibid., 130. Harik 2004, Hezbollah, 128. Ibid., 130. John Borneman. 2009. “Dreamwork and Punishment in Lebanon.” In Violence: Ethnographic Encounters. Edited by Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi. Oxford: Berg Press, 124. Ibid. Androus interview, June 11, 2005. John Borneman. 2011. Political Crime and the Memory of Loss. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 101. Borneman 2009, “Dreamwork and Punishment,” 125. Tueni interview, May 5, 2005. The March 14 Forces began as a loose coalition of political leaders representing the remainder of the “Opposition” alliance that swept the 2005 parliamentary elections under the leadership of Saad Hariri and Walid Jumblatt, minus temporary coalition partners from Hizballah and Amal. They were also joined by Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, following his release from prison. Borrowing their name from the largest of the Beirut Spring protests on March 14, 2005, the group represents an anti-Syrian consensus, but is not always unified in its approach to Hizballah and the question of disarmament. It lost its parliamentary majority in December 2010, after five years of fitful governance. “Lebanon’s largest and oldest newspaper, Al Nahar, which supports the opposition movement, said photos of segments of the crowd indicated that it numbered nearly 2 million. That would have meant that nearly half the population of the country was at the rally or in the miles-long traffic jams of people trying to reach central Beirut for the event.” Boston Globe, March 16, 2005. Civil Society ’05. 2005. Independence Day. Beirut: Librarie el-Bourj, 58. By “mobile generation,” The youth principally involved in the protest are among the most globally savvy in Lebanon’s history, many having grown up in the diaspora during the civil war and are in this sense “mobile.” But the word “mobile” also captures the focus on cellphones, called “mobiles” in Lebanon, and the role that they played in the coordination, imaging, and projection of this popular movement.

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67 Copies of images 6–10 and image 12 were provided for me in digital form by staff at an-Nahar, at the request of Managing Editor Gibran Tueni, to whom I owe particular thanks. I am especially grateful to Sherine Abdallah, the exhibit organizer, for walking me through her decisions on photo selection in painstaking detail, some of which are discussed here. Image 11 is my own. 68 Nicholas Blanford. “Pro Syria Voices Push Back.” Christian Science Monitor. March 9, 2005, 1. 69 Sherine Abdallah. Interview with author. Beirut, May 23, 2005. 70 Ibid. 71 All of these slogans are translated from photographs and field notes that I took in order to record commemoration in the different urban centers. Trips were made between April and June 2005. As elections approached, more public space was devoted to campaigning, and Hariri memorabilia was increasingly appropriated by campaigners seeking to “represent” his legacy. 72 MEMRI 2006, “Lebanese Shi’ite Mufti of Tyre.” 73 Michael Slackman. “Vast Lebanon Throng Hails Hezbollah Chief, Who Calls the Militia Stronger.” New York Times, September 23, 2006. As I argued earlier, Jews appear to be the one category of enemy in the Open Letter that is described in ascriptive, not behavioral terms. This can be classed, then, as a form of takhwin, alleging that Jumblatt represents forces or interests antithetical to Lebanon’s interest. 74 Ferry Biedermann. “Hizbollah ups ante against Lebanon PM.” Financial Times, December 8, 2006. 75 Nicholas Blanford. “Region’s Strife Tears at Lebanon’s Fragile Seams.” Christian Science Monitor, February 14, 2007. 76 “Lebanese army has confiscated Hezbollah arms.” Agence France Presse, October 10, 2006. 77 UPI, “Hezbollah prepared to give arms to army.”

Conclusion Whither Moderation? 1 Pierre Bourdieu. 1980. The Logic of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 115. 2 This estimate was given to me on March 22, 2012 via SMS by a Western journalist who has worked in Yemen throughout the uprising and prefers to remain unnamed here. 3 Yadav, “Antecedents of the Revolution,” 550–63.

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4 Freedom House. 2012. Countries at the Crossroads. Washington, DC: Freedom House. http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/countries-crossroads/2012/yemen. 5 Sheila Carapico. 2009. “Kill the Messengers: Yemen’s 2009 Clampdown on the Press.” In Viewpoints 11: Discerning Yemen’s Future. Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 6–7. 6 Jamal ‘Amer, editor of al-Wasat, was honored by the Committee to Protect Journalists for the attack he experienced in 2005; Sami Ghaleb was tried, but not convicted, on a range of charges in the new Special Press Court in 2009. I have interviewed both men on numerous occasions, inside and outside of Yemen. 7 See, for example, NewsYemen or al-MasdarOnline; some partisan news outlets, like Islah’s SahwaNet, have also shifted toward greater and more effective use of digital publishing. In the case of NewsYemen, whose editor is Nabil al-Sofee, moving the servers outside of the country has also increased the ability to report critically, but safely. 8 Nir Rosen. “How It Started in Yemen.” Jadaliyya, March 18, 2011. http:// www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/935/how-it-started-in-yemen_from-tahrirto-taghyir 9 Ibid. 10 Stacey Philbrick Yadav. “No Pink Slip for Salih: What Yemen’s Protests Do (and Do Not) Mean.” Middle East Report Online, February 9, 2011. 11 For more on the JMP as loyal opposition, see: Robert D. Burrowes and Catherine M. Kasper. 2007. “The Salih Regime and the Need for a Credible Opposition.” Middle East Journal 61(2): 263–80. 12 Sabra interview, January 10, 2009. 13 Sarah Phillips. 2009. “Politics in a Vacuum: The Yemeni Opposition’s Dilemma.” In Viewpoints 11: Discerning Yemen’s Future. Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 11–13. 14 Stacey Philbrick Yadav. 2009. “Does a Vote Equal a Voice: Women and Associational Life in Yemen.” Middle East Report 262: 43–4. 15 Yassin Saeed No’man. Interview with author. Sana’a, January 12, 2009. 16 Mustapha No’man. Interview with author. Sana’a, January 3, 2009. 17 Muhammed ‘Abd al-Malik al-Mutawakkil. Interview with author. Sana’a, January 4, 2009. 18 April Longely Alley. 2010. “Yemen’s Multiple Crises.” Journal of Democracy 21(4): 72–86. 19 I was in Yemen in late 2008 and early 2009, and spoke with leaders and mid-level partisans from the JMP parties, as well as the ruling party, on this topic. Most did not welcome the postponement—even ranking members of the GPC—but all saw it as the least-bad option, given the deteriorating

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circumstances and risk of a JMP boycott or partial boycott of the polls. On coordination and the municipal council elections, see Burrowes and Kasper, “Salih Regime.” Murad Zafir. Interview with author. Sana’a, January 3, 2009. Zafir interview, January 3, 2009. Durac, “The Joint Meeting Parties,” 358. Marine Poirer. 2011. “Performing Political Domination in Yemen: Narratives and Practices of Power in the General People’s Congress.” Muslim World 101: 202–27. Durac, “Joint Meeting Parties,” 363. Jeb Boone. “Yemen Protests Hijacked.” Global Post, July 3, 2011. Here I am referencing Wedeen’s contention that strong interpretive research methods entail determining what one knows and what one needs to know before determining how (or whether) it can be known. Lisa Wedeen. 2002. “Conceptualizing Culture: Possibilities for Political Science.” American Political Science Review 96 (4): 713–28. Schwedler, “Can Islamists Become Moderates?” Wedeen 2002, “Conceptualizing Culture,” 723. Peregrine Schwartz-Shea and Dvora Yanow. 2011. Interpretive Research Design: Concepts and Methods. London: Routledge Press; Patrick T. Jackson. 2011. The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of World Politics. London: Routledge Press; Rudra Sil and Peter J. Katzenstein. 2010. Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Ecclecticism in the Study of World Politics. London: Routledge Press; Ian Shapiro, Rogers Smith, and Tarek Masoud. 2004. Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics. Cambridge University Press; Norton 2004, 95 Theses; Wedeen 2002, “Conceptualizing Culture.”

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INDEX

‘Abd al-Wali, Muhammed, 147 Aden, 38–9, 40–1, 53 Al-Ahmar, ‘Abdullah bin Hussein, 30, 36, 62–63, 64, 163, 223 (n74) Akhbar al-Youm, 158, 161 Amal Movement, 70, 87, 89, 100, 109, 112, 114, 125, 126, 131, 167, 230 (n37) ‘Amer, Jamal, 33, 158, 249 (n6) Al-‘Anisi, ‘Abd al-Wahab, 30, 40, 162, 208 Aoun, Michel, 69, 80, 113, 116, 128, 231 (n58) Arab uprisings of 2011, 2–3, 12, 205–7, 210

Confessionalism, 60, 68, 138, 167 Cross-confessional alliances, 96, 109, 115, 170, 192 (Image 6) Deconfessionalization, 83, 88, 112–113 Institutions, 5–7, 12, 60, 76, 78, 80–81, 83, 88, 91, 93, 111–112, 167, 197 Patronage, 78, 84, 122 Civil Society, 05, 191, 247 (n66) Civil war, see Lebanese civil war and Yemeni civil war

“Beirut Spring”, 106, 178, 191, 204, 247 (n64) Al-Berjawi, Muhammed, 82, 169–70 Berri, Nabih, 89, 96, 104, 112, 116, 118 Bin Shamlan, Faisal, 58, 61–2 Bint Jbeil, 118, 120, 122 (Image 2), 123, 178 Bourdieu, Pierre, 144–5, 149, 156, 164, 166, 171–2, 205

Education ministry, 38, 42 Electoral districts, 36, 111–2 Electoral laws, 58, 94, 111–2, 225 (n6) “Events of May”, 127–30, 203

“Cedar Revolution”, 125–6, 191, 193 Commemoration, 90, 178, 187, 193, 198–200, 248 (n71)

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Dahiya, 87, 88, 91–3, 96, 119–20 Doha Accord, 15, 123, 130, 203

Fadilah Group, 14, 210, 211, 218 (n19) Fadlallah, Muhammed Hussein, 97, 112, 167, 201, 233 (n101, n102) Fiqh, 32, 43, 50, 55, 70–1, 152, 156 Fitna, 53–4, 81, 141, 226 (n30) Fneish, Muhammed, 115–6 Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), 69, 80, 113, 116, 125–8, 131, 231 (n58)

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264

ISLAMISTS

AND THE

General People’s Congress (GPC), 19–20, 24, 30, 36, 41, 45–6, 51, 148, 149, 157, 162, 208–9, 211, 218 (n19), 226 (n38), 249 (n19) Ghaleb, Sami, 158, 249 (n6) Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) agreement, 15, 20, 64, 211–2 Hadi, ‘Abd Rabuh Mansour, 212 Hamdan, ‘Ali, 100, 126, 167 Harakat al-Mahrumin (Movement of the Dispossessed), 72, 79, 169, 175 Harb, Ragheb, 73–4 Hariri, Rafiq, 84, 91, 96, 109, 167, 171 Assassination of, 110, 115, 125, 127, 189–90 Legacy of, 126, 198–200 Resistance, the, relationship to, 95, 200 Hariri, Saad, 111, 114, 129, 131, 167, 202, 247 (n64) and Future Movement, 128–9, 132, 198–9 Heraak, 208, 209 Hizballah, Amal Movement, relationship to, 70, 89, 104, 126, 218 (n19), 229 (n18), 236 (n49), 247 (n64) Hamas, relationship to, 106 Iran, relationship to, 69, 70, 76–7, 86, 117–8, 120–2, 188–9, 230 (n42), 245 (n27) Khomeini, relationship to, 72–6, 229 (n20) Open Letter, 73–6, 78, 81, 83, 94, 97, 107, 176–7, 229 (n18), 229 (n20), 245 (n30), 246 (n31) Palestinian solidarity, 105, 106, 174, 176, 245 (n30) Service provision, 81–7, 92 Syria, relationship to, 15, 69, 104, 108–9, 111, 117–8, 188, 193–4

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STATE

United States, relationship to, 104–5, 107–8, 115, 124, 187 Wilayat al-faqih, 70–2, 76–7, 97, 102, 229 (n20) Hizbiyya (partisanship), 13, 26, 28, 34, 141, 154 Al-Huthi Movement, 34, 54–5, 60, 209–10 Inclusion, Effects of, 11, 213 and Moderation, 10–1, 14, 212–4 Independent media, 155, 157–8, 160, 163–4, 206–7 Individualization, strategy of, 144–5, 150, 157, 159, 164 Interpretive methodology, 4, 9–10, 213–5, 250 (n26) Al-Iryani, ‘Abd al-Karim, 162 Islah, Formation of, 19, 22, 25–33 in Governing coalition, 30, 35 Internal factions, 28, 48, 49, 56, 62 JMP, role in, 13, 15, 39, 44, 46, 48, 52, 55, 59–61, 62, 64, 157–9, 208, 212, 242 (n64) Majlis al-Shura, 33, 35, 62, 222 (n49) Platform of, 12, 38, 41–4, 48, 221 (n38) in Transitional government, 211 Women’s Directorate, 63 Islamic Amal, 70 Israel, Hizballah discourse, 69, 73–4, 93, 102, 107–8, 177, 181, 236 (n49) Lebanon, occupation of, 74, 80, 93–4, 102–3, 179 Lebanon, withdrawal from, 93, 102–3, 108, 119, 177 War, 88, 89, 116–23 Jihad al-Binaa’, 88, 120 Joint Meeting Parties (JMP), 13, 15, 20, 39, 46, 48–64, 157–64, 205–12

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INDEX July War (2006), 111, 116–9, 201 Jumblatt, Walid, 111, 114–5, 116, 117, 118, 131–2, 190, 202, 235 (n28, n29), 236 (n50), 247 (n64), 248 (n73) Karman, Tawakkol, 51, 64 Khameini, Ayatollah ‘Ali, 72 Khiam prison, 186 (Image 4), 187 (Image 5), 187–8 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah, 70–4, 80, 105, 106, 177 Lahd, Antoine, 180, 184 Lahoud, Emile, 110, 189–90, 195 (Image 9), 195–7, 198 (Image 11) Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), 92, 117, 119, 130 Lebanese civil war, 79, 84, 168, 175 Madani, 24, 32, 220–1 (n20, n30) Maqil, 225 (n8) March 8 bloc, 67, 110–1, 113, 115–8, 121, 123, 124, 126–7, 129–32, 173, 203, 204 March 8, 2005 protest, 110, 125, 126 representations of, 193–7 (Images 7–10) March 14 bloc, 111–5, 117, 121, 123, 126–7, 129, 130–1, 171, 173, 202–3 March 14, 2005 protest, 197 Martyrs’ Square, 110, 126, 191 Miqati, Najib, 132, 167, 199 “Mobile generation”, 191–2, 247 (n66) Al-Musawi, ‘Abbas, 230 (n42), 233 (n101) Muslim Brotherhood, 1, 20, 22–3, 31, 33, 34, 41, 43, 44, 49, 50, 55, 58, 62, 64, 219 (n12) Al-Mutawakkil, Muhammed ‘Abd al-Malik, 51, 151–3, 158, 209, 241 (n53)

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265

Nasrallah, Hassan: 79, 80, 82, 85, 89–90, 92, 103, 105, 106, 108, 113–4, 117–8, 123, 128, 132, 177–8, 193, 202, 203, 230 (n42), 233 (n101), 246 (n31) National Democratic Institute (NDI), 56, 58 Al-Nida’, 158, 207 Nizam al-fatwa, 39–40, 44, 49, 55 No’man, Mustapha Ahmed, 22, 159–62 No’man, Yassin Saeed, 208 North Yemen, see Yemen Arab Republic ‘Omar, Jarallah, 47, 49, 60, 151, 152, 155, 163, 225 (n19), 242 (n59) Operation Grapes of Wrath, 93–4, 99, 103, 180–3 Partisanship, see hizbiyya People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), 8, 21, 27, 39, 144, 218–9 (n5), 230–1 (n30) Presidential Council, 8, 35–6, 41 Progressive Socialist Party, 110, 190 Al-Qaeda, 160 Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), 206, 209 Qahtan, Muhammed, 32, 47, 49, 51, 54–5, 61–3, 64, 159 Qana, 103, 118, 181, 188 Qassem, Naim, 77, 82, 107, 180, 184–5 Qornet Shehwan, 109–10 Raad, Muhammed, 73, 75–6, 79, 82, 85, 89, 91, 98, 107, 114 Raja’, Amat al-Salaam, 51, 59, 63, 64, 222 (n49) Resistance, the Criticism of, 98–9, 113, 117 Disarmament of, 102–4, 106, 110, 113–4, 116–7, 179

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ISLAMISTS

AND THE

Resistance, the (Continued) as Islamic Resistance: 177, 181, 230 (n42) “Nationalization” of, 94, 102, 180, 181–182, 229 (n30), 245 (n30) Politicians’ support for, 82, 104, 114, 118, 177 Popular support for, 102, 118, 181–12 Riad al-Solh Square, 110, 191, 193, 195, 197 Al-Sadr, Musa, 72, 79, 169, 175 Al-Sadr, Sadr al-Din, 169 Al-Sahwa, 30, 39, 149, 150, 152–3, 158, 221–2 (n49), 249 (n7) Salafis, Hizbiyya, attitude toward, 28, 34, 211 Islah, relationship to, 24, 26–8, 31, 38, 49, 63, 150 Wahhabis, as distinct from, 28, 34, 50 Zaydis, attitude toward, 34 Salih, ‘Ali ‘Abdullah, 6, 8, 12, 20, 29, 30, 35, 36, 38, 44, 45–6, 55, 56, 57, 62, 211, 219 (n11), 242 (n66), 243 (n80) Sayeed, Sayeed Thabit, 19, 32, 158 Sayyid (pl. sada), 6, 34, 55 “Security Zone”, 90, 95, 102, 179 Schwedler, Jillian, 10–1, 14 Sfeir, Boutrous Nasrallah, 109, 111 Al-Shamou’, 158 Sharon, Ariel, 103 Shebaa Farms, 102–4 Shuqayr, Wafiq, 128 Sidon, 200 Siniora, Fouad, 115–8, 123–4, 127–8, 130 Sleiman, Michel, 204 Al-Sofee, Nabil, 32, 146–7, 155, 158, 163–4, 221–2 (n49), 227 (n50), 244 (n85), 249 (n7)

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STATE

South Yemen, see People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen Southern Lebanese Army (SLA), 109, 179–80, 182–3 Southern Movement, see Heraak Sumud, 105, 107 Supreme Coordination Council for the Opposition (SCCO), 45 Ta’if Accord, 6–7, 78–9, 81, 102, 109, 113, 179–80 Ta’iz, 24, 28, 29, 32, 47, 57, 220 (n30) Takfir, 14, 21, 28, 38, 39, 56–57, 60, 137–143, 151 Against journalists and publishers, 147–50, 158–60, 163, 206, 240 (n35) Against Leftists, 39, 155, 239–40 (n25) Against progressive Islamists, 163 Against regime figures, 160–2 Circulation in semi-official papers, 157, 161–2 “Progressive” form in Lebanon, 138, 167–9 Takhwin, 14, 166, 170, 180, 185–6 and Corporeal metaphor, 173–7 as Contested, 166, 202–3, 248 (n73) Taqlid, 31, 222 (n50) Al-Thaqafiyya, 147–148 Al-Thawri, 159, 164, 242 (n59) Tueni, Gibran, 98–9, 108–9, 112, 188, 246 (n31) Tripoli, 199 Al-Tufayli, Subhi, 70, 79, 170, 244 (n10), 245 (n13) Tyre, 120, 200 UNICEF, 53, 86 UNIFIL, 181, 202 UN Security Council Resolution 1267, 160 UN Security Council Resolution 1373, 160

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INDEX UN Security Council Resolution 1559, 103, 109–10, 113, 117, 189–90, 193, 196 UN Security Council Resolution 1757, 124 UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), 124, 131 ‘Urf al-nas, 31, 221–2 (n49) Waad, 120–1 Al-Wasa’i, ‘Ali bin ‘Abdallah, 151–2 Al-Wasat, 33, 158, 207, 249 (n6) Wilayat al-faqih, 70–3, 76–7, 97, 102, 229 (n20) Al-Yadoumi, Muhammed, 30, 147 Yaghi, Muhammed, 169 Yehya, Nasr Ahmed, 151, 153 Yemen Arab Republic (YAR), 8, 21, 27, 36, 38, 39, 218–9 (n5)

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Yemeni civil war (1994), 37–40 Yemeni Journalists’ Syndicate, 148, 158, 163 Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), 19, 25, 36, 38, 41, 43, 45–6, 52, 53–4, 58, 60, 147, 155, 158, 208, 213, 223 (n74), 240 (n25), 242 (n59) Yemeni revolutionary movement, and JMP, 206–211 and Post-partisan nationalism, 210 Al-Yusufi, Samir, 147–149 Za’im (pl. zu’ama), 6, 84, 89–90 al-Zindani, ‘Abd al-Majid, 28, 30, 49, 51, 61, 62, 64, 148–50, 155, 157, 160–3 and Fadilah Group, 208–10, 243 (n80) and Al-Iman University, 49, 62, 149, 155, 161 Al-Zubayri, Muhammed, 22–3, 24

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