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"December 2003" / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 349-387) / 387 leaves : maps ; 30 cm / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, Discipline of Politics, 2005

This thesis highlights a new approach to the programs and agenda of the Shi`ite representative body in Lebanon known under the acronym AMAL. The period studied is from 1969--1984. Previous studies have drawn insufficient attention to the important and quintessentially Islamic relation between religion and politics for this particular community. This relation becomes a focal point for this thesis. / Here, I study and tell the story of how a politically and socially marginalized sector of a society awakened unto itself and sought change in its political, social and economic position. This change involved a reaffirmation of specifically Shi`i doctrines, beliefs and motifs which helped this community assert themselves with a new identity during this fifteen year period.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of History and Politics, Discipline of Politics, 2005. / "December 2003" Includes bibliographical references (leaves 349-387).

This thesis addresses the question of the shift in the sectarian framing of political conflict and violence in Lebanon by focusing on the period between 2000 and 2010. Lebanon represents an interesting case where the saliencies of sectarian dichotomies have been drastically remodelled in only a few years following the Hariri assassination in 2005. Whereas most studies focus on long-term ethnic and sectarian conflicts, few have addressed the issue of fast remodelling of sectarian divisions in times of political turmoil. How do sectarian schisms shift in a short period of time? Why do some political changes affect sectarian dichotomies and not others? What factors can push some people to take part in clashes framed as sectarian violence? In short, how does political closure happen along sectarian lines? In order to answer these questions, this thesis uses a triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods to disentangle the relationship between political change and sectarianism. Building on the social movement literature, it argues that street mobilisations, understood as peaceful or violent collective action, are important mechanisms through which political conflict can assume sectarian overtones. It relies on a compiled dataset of protest events that occurred in Beirut between 2000 and 2010, and applies network analysis techniques in order to study coalition formations and shifts in alliances. This analysis is combined with semi-structured interviews with a sample of 29 residents of Beirut neighbourhoods that witnessed violent clashes in 2007/8. The analysis of my data suggests that the Hariri assassination marked a turning point in the dynamics of contentious politics in Lebanon, and acted as a catalyst for the emergence and consolidation of new coalitions and sectarian dichotomies. The study argues that sectarian political parties are the main channels through which political and sectarian depictions become interchangeable. It suggests that in order for a political shift to be understood in sectarian terms, two main factors need to be taken into account: (i) the competing political parties should represent sectarian communities that are able to compete demographically (in terms of size), and (ii) the competing parties should be able to represent the majority of their sectarian communities (intra-sectarian homogeneity). The analysis of my qualitative data explores the mechanisms at work during periods of collective violence, and shows that drivers such as peer pressure, neighbourhood-level networks, material grievances, pleasure in agency, ideology and previous fighting experience seem to explain individual decisions to participate in collective violence more than sectarian hatred. In fact, rather than being the primary cause of the violence, sectarian cleavages seem to have been crystallised by the 2007/8 episodes of violence. Consequently, this thesis concludes that whereas the conflict in Lebanon today is often understood and framed in sectarian terms, a closer analysis suggests that the conflict at a macro level is essentially political and its implications at the micro level can best be understood beyond the notion of sectarianism.

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The purpose for undertaking this case study of the Shi'a in Lebanon is threefold. First, as a hypothesis-generating case study, its objective is to formulate relevant hypotheses about religious resurgence and religious terrorism. This study achieves this objective by formulating 14 general and nine special hypotheses, and testing and confirming the latter. Second, the purpose of this study is also to explore the trajectory of the Lebanese Shi'a's sectarian mobilization. This exploration permits the conceptualization of geocultural immobility and its effect upon a religious minority. It deduces that the Lebanese Shiga's geo-cultural immobility is directly related to their active religious resurgence. The third purpose is to study the changes in the objectives and tactics of a religious minority, that of the Muslim Shi'a in Lebanon. This research is able, via its primary and secondary data, to show a relationship between the Lebanese Shiga's religious resurgence and their use of religious terrorism. This study introduces the concept of geo-cultural immobility. A minority's geo-cultural immobility is identified as an imposed low geographic mobility within a nation with low cultural pluralism. It establishes the Lebanese Shi'a's geo-cultural immobility, to which it attributes their religious resurgence. This Lebanese Shi'a religious resurgence is proven in this research to produce zealots needed by religious terrorist organizations. This study also introduces and defines religious terrorism as violent acts performed by elements of a religious organization or sect, growing out of a commitment to communicate a divine message. It distinguishes between religious terrorism, secular terrorism, and fighters for religious freedom, which are based on the actors' motives, affinities, and consciousness of the maliciousness of their acts. The primary and secondary data and the quasi-experiment in this research support its special hypotheses. They indicate a statistical correlation between eight Lebanese Shi'a cultural and religious attributes: (1) age, (2) marital status, (3) extent of Shi'a Imam's militancy, (4) personal religious commitment and religious resurgence, (5) zealotry, (6) geo-cultural immobility, (7) imprisonment of family members, and (8) willingness to commit terrorism.

Depuis les attentats du 11 septembre 2001, le galvaudage intensif du concept d’« islamisme » par les sphères médiatiques et politiques a eu pour effet de catégoriser de manière simpliste et illusoire des phénomènes sociaux très différents de par le monde, dans le registre du terrorisme. Dans ce contexte, le Hezbollah libanais -pourtant chiite et farouchement opposé à Al-Qaïda- a acquis un statut particulier dans la mesure où le Secrétariat d’Etat américain l’a désigné comme la principale menace terroriste dès 2002. Nous proposons ici une recherche casuistique sur le « Parti de Dieu ». Etude longitudinale retraçant l’évolution de ce mouvement milicien devenu parti politique, notre travail vise à mieux cerner ce « fait social » et à situer celui-ci au sein du vaste spectre des islams politiques. Nous synthétisons ici les phases de maturation idéologique que celui-ci a connues depuis son émergence et retraçons l’évolution structurelle de ce parti politique avant tout caractérisé par son projet de « société résistante ». Chacun de ces deux volets (idéologique et structurel) laisse entrevoir les interactions bilatérales qui se sont créées, dans la diachronie, entre le religieux et le politique au sein du Hezbollah, mais illustre surtout la soumission polymorphe de l’un comme de l’autre à la cause inébranlable de la résistance face à Israël. L’élément fondamentalement nouveau que nous apportons à la littérature scientifique spécialisée est une grille d’interprétation du cheminement global d’une grande partie de la communauté chiite du Liban. Celle-ci a pour point de départ le concept -initialement psychologique- de « résilience », et propose la transposition de ce dernier dans le champ sociopolitique. L’analyse qui en découle met en perspective l’« idéologie résiliente » et la « structure résiliente » que le Hezbollah a progressivement développées dans une optique stratégique. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished