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Middle Eastern Studies


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Shiite Lebanon: Transnational Religion


and the Making of National Identities
Eyal Zisser
Published online: 11 Jun 2009.

To cite this article: Eyal Zisser (2009) Shiite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of
National Identities, Middle Eastern Studies, 45:3, 517-523, DOI: 10.1080/00263200902781663
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263200902781663

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Middle Eastern Studies,


Vol. 45, No. 3, 517536, May 2009

Book Reviews

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Shiite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities


Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr
New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, Pp.288, 26.95, ISBN 978-0-231-14426-1
Paul Bremer, Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for post-war
Iraq (i.e. governor of Iraq) following the spring 2003 American invasion, stated some
time after he nished his task that before he arrived in Baghdad he had never heard
anything about the Shiite community, which constituted, and still constitutes, over
half the population of Iraq. However, very quickly Bremer, like many other
Americans, was to learn the hard way about the existence of the Shiites in Iraq,
and elsewhere in the Middle East.
The occupation of Iraq by the Americans, in the view of many people, let the
Shiite genie out of the bottle, turning the Shiite community into an inuential, and
even leading factor locally and in other Middle Eastern countries as well. The force
and depth of this process of increasing power accruing to the Shiites has led many
people to assert that the twenty-rst century is likely to enter the history books of the
Middle East as the Shiite century, like the tenth century 1000 years earlier. After
all, Iran, the largest and most important Shiite state, has become a leading power,
inuencing the region around it, from the Persian Gulf, to Iraq, Syria, and the shores
of the Mediterranean, beginning in Lebanon and even reaching as far as the Gaza
Strip. In Iraq the leaders of the Shiite community managed to take control of the
government thanks to the democratic system introduced by the American occupiers.
The Iraqi Shiites have thus succeeded in achieving what none of their predecessors
managed during 1,400 years of Arab-Muslim hegemony over the Iraqi region. The
Syrian state, meanwhile, has been ruled for nearly four decades by members of the
Alawite community, whose origin is in the Shiite version of Islam, even if many
Shiites even now refuse to recognize the Alawites as part of the Shiite world. In
Lebanon too, the Shiites are greatly increasing their power. In recent years, for the
rst time in the history of the Lebanon, they have become the largest and most
inuential local community.
The Shiites rise to power all over the Middle East has roused sleeping demons,
and in the Sunni Arab world there are gures who hastened to issue warnings about
the emergence of a Shiite crescent, ranging from Teheran to Beirut, which casts a
menacing shadow over the Sunni Arab region.
The emergence of the Shiites as a leading factor in the Middle East has taken
place against a more general background of increasing religiosity, a tendency that
has been conspicuous in recent decades. The religion of Islam has been pushing aside
the secular nationalism that dominated the Arab world for many years, and certainly
ISSN 0026-3206 Print/1743-7881 Online/09/030517-20 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/00263200902853595

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518 Book Reviews


from the middle of the twentieth century onward. This tendency toward greater
religiosity also rouses concern, this time in the West, which is inclined to identify the
increasing power of religion with the increasing popularity of Islamic radicalism, one
of whose prominent manifestations is the appearance of radical movements like alQaida, led by Usama bin Ladin. The trend toward greater religiosity in the Muslim
world has naturally also found expression in the Shiite communities. Iran, the
largest and most important Shiite state, has fallen into the hands of clergymen who
in fact hold opinions that are radical even for many Shiite religious leaders and
experts in Islamic law.
The connection between these two tendencies the increasing popularity of
Islam and the rising power of the Shiites, led today by clergymen with a radical
world view has tended to cause many observers in the West to demonize any
concept or expression that falls into the category of Shiite Islam and to become
increasingly worried about the future of the Middle East. It turns out that
Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohrs book, Shiite Lebanon. Transnational Religion and
the Making of National Identities, seeks to deal with these worries, and perhaps
even to moderate them and calm people down. Lebanon was chosen to serve as a
test case, in light of which these issues, under whose shadow the Middle East has
found itself in recent decades, can be examined. Indeed, Lebanon is of special
interest, since the tendencies noted, which encompass the whole Middle East, have
especially far-reaching signicance in that country. This is because the process of
the Islamization of the Lebanese Shiite community, which began over four
decades ago, has reached a peak in recent years.
Anyone who has followed recent scholarship will know that the Shiites of
Lebanon, in the wake of their recent dramatic leap to prominence and power, have
become the subject of many scholarly studies. These have sought to investigate the
roots of the process of the Shiites rise, the various stages of the process, and its
signicance for Lebanons future. Representative of such studies are the following
books published in the last few years: Tamara Chalabi, The Shiis of Jabal Amil and
the New Lebanon: Community and Nation-State, 19181943 (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006); Rodger Shanahan, The Shia of Lebanon: Clans, Parties and
Clerics (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005); Houchang Chehabi (ed.), Distant Relations: Iran
and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006).
Besides these studies, many others, as might be expected, have been devoted to the
Hizballah organization, the leading force today among Lebanons Shiite community. Among the studies that may be mentioned are the following: Magnus Ranstorp,
Hizballah in Lebanon: The Politics of the Western Hostage Crisis (New York: St.
Martins Press, 1997); Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh, In the Path of Hizballah (Syracuse
University Press, 2004); Jamal Sankari, Fadlallah: The Making of a Radical Shiite
Leader (London: Saqi, 2005); Judith Palmer Harik, Hezbollah: The Changing Face of
Terrorism (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004); Hala Jaber, Hezbollah: Born with a
Vengeance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); Amal Saad-Ghorayeb,
Hizbullah: Politics and Religion (London: Pluto Press, 2002); and nally, Waddah
Sharara, Dawlat al-Hizballah, Lubnan Mujtama Islami [the Hizballah State
Lebanon an Islamic Society] (Beirut: 1996). These studies naturally focused on
such issues as religious ideology, organization and structure, political and military
behaviour, the web of relations with Iran of the Shiites in general and the Hizballah

Book Reviews 519

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organization in particular, since Iran extended its backing to them, and the struggle
against Hizballahs sworn and bitter enemy, the neighbour to the south Israel.
In the book under review, Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr focuses on very dierent
issues, having to do with questions of education and social and political activity, and
alongside all this and deriving from it, questions of religious, communal, and
national identity among the Lebanese Shiites. By means of these questions ShaeryEisenlohr seeks to raise doubts about the validity of several of the fundamental
assumptions lying at the base of most of the studies devoted to the Shiites of
Lebanon. As she says in the rst pages of her book:
In this book I show how certain social, political, and religious activities of
Lebanese Muslim Shiites since the 1960s, though often viewed as promoting socalled sectarianism, are not antagonistic to the discourse of Lebanese
nationalism. Far from posing an opposition to the nation, Shiite activities
have centered on a set of practices and ideologies that seek to break the
hegemony of Christian (mainly Maronite) narratives of Lebanon as a nation, to
place the historically marginalized Shiites in the center of Lebanese national
politics and self-imagining, and to change sectarian power relations, granting
Shiites more prominent positions. These alternative visions of nationhood
portray Shiites as ideal Lebanese competing for political inuence and
representation. In this context, transitional Shiite relations between Iran and
Lebanon have helped articulate a new Shiite-centered Lebanon national
narrative. (p.2)
The author adds:
By asking these questions, I wish to address two main concerns in modern
Middle Eastern Studies in light of the growing importance of religion and of
globalization in the area. First, I intend to contribute to the study of
nationalism in the Middle East. I analyze the nexus of religion and nationalism,
showing how religion is in fact an integral part of national imaginations. Shiite
activism in Lebanon since the 1960s cannot be explained as only instrumentally
motivated by a desire for more access to economic and political resources. It
needs also to be framed as part of the production of a specic nationalism in
which Lebanese Shiites break with the dominant national narrative of
Maronite Lebanon, with which most of them do not identify, and aim to
establish a national narrative dominated by a Lebanese Shiite vision of
morality, themes, and symbolism. (p.3)
There is no doubt that the uniqueness of the book under review, and therefore its
importance and contribution to scholarship, lie rst of all in its being a view from
within.
First, the book oers a view from within insofar as the author herself is concerned.
She tells us that while she was born in Germany and graduated from an American
university, she is the daughter of an Iranian family that lived for a while in Iran. As
such, she is able to identify with and feel part of the Shiite milieu in Lebanon, even
though she is not Lebanese by origin. And to a large extent she was also able to be

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520 Book Reviews


accepted in that milieu. This was so despite the fact that, as she testies, every time
she presented herself as a graduate of an American university doing research in an
academic framework, the people she was speaking with referred back to her Iranian
origins (p.13).
Second, the book oers a view from within insofar as it is based upon eld trips
and on-the-spot research in Lebanon. Shaery-Eisenlohr resided in Beirut for 14
months in 2000, 2002 and 2003. She is thus able to infuse her research with the direct
impressions of what she saw.
Third, the book oers a view from within insofar as it focuses on the struggles of
the Shiite community, and, even more, on the struggles of individual persons over
questions of identity, education, culture, and society, as these issues arose in daily
life.
Indeed, in this connection the author notes:
This study describes the production of three distinct Shiite Lebanese
nationalisms backed by Amal, Hizballah, and Fadlallah in light of their
dierent relationships with the Iranian government. Their nationalism is to a
large degree a product of competition among them. As such, their national
visions and the logic of their actions come to life when contextualized against a
background of this competition. (p.3)
The book thus portrays the character of the Shiite community in Lebanon in all its
complexity and examines the web of relations within the community and between its
dierent parts. It also examines the relationships and developing tensions between
religious faith, communal identity, and national identity within the Shiite
community. Finally, the book examines the tensions experienced between Shiite
identity and Lebanese identity, and between Lebanese Shiite identity and Iranianinuenced Shiite identity.
By discussing these aspects of the life of the Shiites and the Shiite faith in
Lebanon the author is able to piece together the dierent parts of the Shiite puzzle,
or perhaps it should be called a mosaic, one which includes the Amal movement, the
Hizballah organization, and nally, the prominent Shiite cleric Husayn Fadlallah,
who stands alone and acts as an independent factor within the Shiite community.
The way in which the dierences and tensions between the various Shiite
movements, organizations, and gures are discussed in the book, as well as the
impact of these dierences on the actors political and social behaviour, is absorbing
and instructive. One of the authors conclusions is that the Shiite community is not
in Irans pocket, and while Hizballah may talk with Iran and may even be in
partnership with it, the organization is in no way Irans client. The author also
concludes that the Iranian presence and even the increasing inuence of the Iranian
regime in Lebanon do not turn the Shiites into a faceless collective. She notes,
furthermore, that the dierences between the various Lebanese Shiite bodies are
based upon nuances in the manner in which they dene themselves and their
relationships to others, others within the Shiite community, others inside Lebanon,
and even the others who are the Iranians. In this way she distinguishes between these
forces in connection with the main issue that was and still is on their agenda, or
which characterizes them and their activities (and sometimes presents a challenge

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Book Reviews 521


they must face, as suggested by the subtitles the author chose for the paragraphs
which deal with these Shiite forces): Sadr and the Maronite state; Amal:
the Bourgeois Mahrumin; Muhammad Mahdi Shamsaldin: the time for change
has not come yet; Hizbullah: The most Loyal Citizens with intense transitional ties
(pp.3037).
Shaery-Eisenlohr makes the same argument, incidentally, in connection with Iraq,
which fell into the hands of the Shiites following the occupation of that country by
the United States. She notes quite correctly that the Shiites in Iraq are not made of
one cloth, and in any case they have their own unique character which clearly
distinguishes them from Iran and the Iranian version of the Shiite faith. This is a
very interesting observation, especially in light of the calls of distress being heard
throughout the Arab world over the possibility that Iran might soon gain control
over Iraq. Shaery-Eisenlohr raises this issue in connection with her brief discussion
of the question of the study of the Persian language among the Lebanese Shiite
community. The background to the decision to teach that language, the establishment of the Centre for the Study of Persian, and the process of the Shiitization and
Islamization of the study of Persian are each portrayed. Finally, as the bottom line,
the authors conclusions were that the attempt to spread the Persian language among
the Lebanese Shiites ultimately failed and that the latter did not show very much
interest in Persian (pp.58, 16471). This exposition is a good example of the close
connection in the book between discussions of daily life and social and cultural
matters, on the one hand, and far-reaching conclusions about the character of the
Lebanese Shiites that allegedly emerge from the analysis of these factors, on the
other.
In many ways this is a relevant book, because it portrays and gives concrete
examples of the diversity existing within the Lebanese Shiite community. It also
helps explain in a stimulating fashion the Islamic radicalism characterizing that
community, and it enables the reader to place this radicalism in a certain context.
Having said this, we note that in regard to the Lebanese Shiites it has been
claimed over the years that they have been a missing presence in the history of
Lebanon. In Shaery-Eisenlohrs book, however, with its intense concentration on the
story of the Lebanese Shiites, things have been turned around somewhat, and it is
not the Shiites who are the missing presence, but the members of the other Lebanese
communities. The Shiites are denitely not alone in Lebanon, and it must be
remembered that their story takes place in a certain context, in which Sunnis, Druze,
and Maronites live side by side with them. Thus, for example, when portraying the
history of Lebanon, it is impossible to ignore the interesting alliance that has existed
between Maronites and Shiites, beginning with Musa al-Sader and Fuad Shihab,
continuing with Nabih Barri and Elias Sarkis, and even Bashir Jumayyil and ending
today with Hasan Nasrallah and Michel Aoun. The close ties between Maronites
and Shiites makes it necessary to examine the claim in Shaery-Eisenlohrs book that
there is an alliance of the deprived which encompasses the Shiites among
themselves and the Shiites with the Palestinians, and the claim that the story or the
narrative of the Shiites contradicts fundamentally the narrative of the Maronites
(Chapter 1, Two Nations and One State: Shiite and Maronite Lebanon). The
claims made about the ShiitePalestinian connection also need to be examined
carefully. (Chapter 3, Shiite Piety and the Palestinian Cause: The History of a

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522 Book Reviews


Discourse). It is, of course, important to note the main competitors of the Shiites
today in Lebanon, the Sunnis. This competition takes place in the shadow of the
tension existing between the Sunnis and the Shiites in general, which one can try
to explain, and perhaps even diminish in signicance, but one certainly cannot
ignore.
In connection with the discussion of Hizballah, it should be noted that that
organization speaks very highly about accepting others, but in general those writing
about Hizballah, including, for example, Waddah Sharara in his book on the
Hizballah State, have come to the conclusion that the organization is one that
presents itself as an alternative to the state, and perhaps has already established a
state within the state. To be sure, Shaery-Eisenlohrs books presentation of
theoretical background material together with vivid descriptions of everyday
Lebanese life is important and relevant. However, it should be remembered that
no matter what the motives and explanations of Shiite activism might be, and no
matter how many dierent faces the Shiites might assume, the bottom line is still the
rise of Hezbollah to a powerful and dominant position in todays Lebanon. The
organization is very closely tied to Iran and maintains unprecedented military power,
which could lead it to take steps far beyond what even most of the Lebanese Shiites
expect and hope for.
It is impossible to ignore, for example, the important role Iran played in the
establishment of Hizballah and the array of ties Iran maintains with the
organization. Shaery-Eisenlohrs observations about Hizballahs putting o and
rejecting clerics sent from Iran (pp.1956) are important and interesting, even though
they are not backed up with any references. However, the book does not represent a
serious investigation into the military and political aspects of IranianHizballah
cooperation. Such studies have been made in recent years, and they indicate a much
deeper connection than was assumed and appeared on the surface. After all, how can
one possibly ignore the military dimension of Hizballahs activity? It is the strongest
armed organization in Lebanon, in possession of 50,000 rockets. This military might
is not the only important thing about Hizballah, but neither can it be ignored. Its
implications must be taken into account when assessing the Lebanese political
situation. Only time will tell whether Lebanon the society, the system, and the set
of arrangements will be able to survive and integrate the Hizballah organization
just as it was able to survive and integrate other organizations in the past. Or perhaps
Hizballah is a unique phenomenon, just as the process aecting the Lebanese Shiite
community is unique, among other things, on account of the demographic aspect,
which grants the Shiites and, of course, the Hizballah organization special power.
Incidentally, the demographic issue deserves to be studied in greater detail, for it will
impact heavily on the future of Lebanon. In this context, it would be instructive to
examine whether the character of the Shiite community is changing and in what
direction its is headed, in light of the conicting reports about a decline in the birth
rate of Shiites living in the large cities of Lebanon.
In sum, Shaery-Eisenlohrs book is important and interesting, and even refreshing.
It adds to our knowledge and understanding of the Lebanese Shiite community in
areas and aspects that are generally neglected in historical research. It is possible to
derive from the book some positive encouragement about what may be expected for
Lebanon in the future, especially in light of the argument that the tendencies lying

Book Reviews 523

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under the surface and the motivations at the base of these tendencies are dierent
than they seem at rst glance.
The book proves the importance of eld work, and of addressing issues such as
education and society and questions of identity, for ultimately it is these that
determine the worldview and behaviour of the individual person. Shaery-Eisenloh
writes with an air of great optimism and with the feeling that she has a mission to
defend the Shiites. One might venture to say that this circumstance does not detract
from her book, but rather adds to its value.
In this connection, it is tting to sum up by quoting the authors own words:
A willingness to share power across sectarian lines should be followed by
acknowledging the diversity among Shiites and accepting that there is no
inherent logic that Iran is the center of Shiism and that the Shiites from other
parts of the world coordinate their activities with Iran.
Every appeal for transitional religious solidarity and for postnationalism is
rooted somewhere in a nationalist agenda.
The future power struggles in the Middle East might then not be cast in the
familiar tensions between secularists and Islamists or Sunnis versus Shiites, but
dened in new, unexpected alliances across the lines.
Shaery-Eisenlohrs Shiite Lebanon constitutes an important contribution to
historical research on Lebanon, and along with other studies it will help in piecing
together the extremely complicated Lebanese mosaic puzzle.
Eyal Zisser
2009 Eyal Zisser

The New Turkish Republic. Turkey as a Pivotal State in the Muslim World
Graham E. Fuller
Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008, Pp.180, indices, $14.95,
ISBN 1-6012-7019-4
The New Turkish Republic is the rst book in a series which seeks to introduce
political hacks and policymakers to several pivotal states in the Muslim world. It
discusses the dierent foreign policy strategies which are currently open to Turkey,
and considers the prospects for Turkeys changing relationship with the USA. The
central thesis of the book is that Turkey is now entering into a new period of close
engagement with the Middle East, once again assuming an inuential role in the
region after a long period of self-imposed isolation from its neighbours.
Fullers analysis of Turkeys foreign policy is informed by years spent working
both in Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East. However, his analysis is not only
shaped by his long experience, but also by the particular nature of his work in the
region. Fuller is an ex-CIA ocer, and has also worked for the RAND Corporation
(a think tank linked to the US armed forces). It is not surprising then that Fuller
presents a picture of Turkish politics as viewed from an emphatically American
perspective. This approach seems tailored to the requirements of Fullers target

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