Harakat Amal (The Movement of Hope)

This is the first part of an extensive study of the mobilization of Lebanon’s Shi’a community, which has long been on the periphery of Lebanon’s political system and on the bottom of the country’s economic system. Notwithstanding the political activities of individual Shi’a zu’ama (political bosses), the Shi’a community qua community was marked by quiescence and even irrelevance for the conduct of politics in Lebanon. Only in the late 1960s did incipient efforts to mobilize the community become evident. 1 Those efforts were overtaken by the civil war that began in 1975. While the war temporarily eclipsed the Shi’as’ mobilization, it was the war and its broader political and socioeconomic consequences that provided the decisive impetuses for the assertive and important role that the Shi’as are today assuming in Lebanon. (I have corrupted the correct plural form “Shiya”’ so as to render a more readily recognized plural.) Especially in the shadow of the June 1982 Israeli invasion, it is evident that the Shi’as of Lebanon may well play a decisive part in determining the future and perhaps the survival of the Lebanese state.