Warriors of God Read Free Page B

at his cloak, and his black turban was knocked off his head. It took twenty minutes for him to reach the podium, while the celebratory shooting continued unabated.
    â€œI have words harsher than bullets, so spare your bullets,” he exhorted the crowd, urging silence so that he could begin.
    He castigated the government for its failure to meet the most basic needs of the people, noting that Baalbek itself, with a population of ten thousand, had only one government school, which dated back more than three decades to the French mandate era. He spoke of the south, battered by Israel, abused by the Palestinian armed factions that had taken root there, its people scorned, its waters plundered by the Lebanese authorities. The Shias, he thundered, were underrepresented in the civil service, industry, and academia. Thousands of Lebanese in the impoverished north and south were without identity cards, denying them basic state services as well as the right to vote.
    He cited Imam Hussein’s martyrdom, weaving together the religious imagery and symbolism of that earlier struggle against injustice with the plight of the contemporary Lebanese Shias. “Does Imam Hussein accept this for his children?” he asked rhetorically.
    Referring to the weapons on display, Sadr declared that “armaments are the adornment of men,” and he urged his followers to seize from the state what was rightfully due to them or to die in the attempt.
    This was the language of “rage and revolution” that Sadr used to galvanize the Shia population of Lebanon, to stir the community from its apathy and slumber and instill within it a spirit of determination, pride, and a quest for justice.
    Aql Hamiyah, at the time a student supporter of Sadr and who in the following decade would become the top military commander of the Shia Amal Movement, says, “There was a man and his name was Musa Sadr. It was Imam Sadr that woke up the sleeping giant that is the Shia of Lebanon.”
The Partisans of Ali
    No one knows for sure where the forebears of Lebanon’s Shia population originated or why they chose to settle in the mountains and valleys of the Levant. The paucity of recorded Shia history in this region attests to the community’s traditional dislocation from the affairs of its confessional neighbors, the Maronites, the Druze, and the Sunnis, whose political and social struggles form the backbone of Lebanon’s historical narrative.
    Shiism arose from the disputed succession from the Prophet Mohammed after his death in A.D. 632. Some of his followers believed that Mohammed’s successor, the Caliph, should be chosen by consensus. Others argued that the succession should follow through Mohammed’s family and that Ali, as the prophet’s son-in-law, was the rightful heir. The title of Caliph was bestowed initially upon Abu Bakr, Mohammed’s father-in-law and a close companion of the Prophet. Ali became the fourth Caliph, but for Ali’s supporters—the Shiat al-Ali, or Partisans ofAli—he was the first true Caliph, the beginning of a line of descendants known as Imams.
    The “Twelver” Shia tradition holds that Ali was followed by eleven more Imams, the last of whom, Imam Mahdi, went into occultation to escape his oppressors. According to the Twelver Shias, the return of this last Imam, the “hidden Imam,” will lead to the end of the world and to their salvation. The Twelvers comprise the majority of Shia Muslims—including those of Lebanon and Iran.
    Jabal Amil, the hill country historically bordered by Sidon in the north, Mount Hermon in the east, upper Galilee in the south, and the Mediterranean in the west, where much of modern Lebanon’s Shia population lives, fell under the sway of the Ottoman Empire in the early sixteenth century. Given its passive rural existence and its relative isolation from the centers of power, Jabal Amil attracted little direct attention from the