The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-Qaeda by Jerrold M. Post

Author:Jerrold M. Post [Post, Jerrold M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: 1403966117
Published: 2011-01-08T20:52:17.046000+00:00

9781403966117ts12.qxd 23-10-07 05:07 PM Page 161

C H A P T E R 1 1

HEZBOLLAH: THE PARTY

OF GOD

P R E C U R S O R T O H E Z B O L L A H

In 1978, while visiting Libya, Musa al-Sadr, a charismatic Lebanese Shi’ite Imam, mysteriously disappeared. The psychological and ideological foundations of Hezbollah can be traced back to this imam who arrived in Tyre, Lebanon in 1960 and began to organize Lebanese Shi’ites, who had been excluded from political and economic power since the Lebanese civil war of 1958. Attempting to form a Shi’ite mass movement, the charismatic al-Sadr established the Movement of the Deprived (Harakat al-Mahrumin) in 1974.

Emphasizing themes of victimization and humiliation, al-Sadr spoke eloquently of transforming the social movement into a military organization, the Battalions of the Lebanese Resistance, also known as Amal:

Today we shout out loud the wrongs against us, that cloud of injustice that has followed us since the beginning of our history. Starting from today, we will no longer complain or cry. Our name is not mitwali (a derogatory name for the Shia). Our name is “men of refusal,” “men of vengeance,” “men who revolt against all tyranny,” even though this costs us our blood and our lives. Hussein faced the enemy with seventy men. The enemy was very numerous. Today we are more than seventy, and our enemy is not the quarter of the whole world. 1

In Baalbeck, a month later, al-Sadr further emphasized this theme, which became the theological sanction for Shi’a youth entering the path of warfare:

“Arms are man’s beauty. What does the government expect? What does it expect against rage except revolution? ”2

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