The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Fadlallah, Muhammad Husayn (1935–2010)

Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, a leading Twelver Shi‘i religious authority in Lebanon, combined the training of a traditional Shi‘i jurist with the analysis and concerted activity of a political ideologue. He exerted a strong influence on the political aspirations and military activism of the Shi‘is of Lebanon, including Hizbullah (Hizb Allah) in particular; of Lebanese Sunnis; and of Shi‘is and Sunnis outside Lebanon. He was born in 1935 in Najaf, Iraq, the foremost center for Shi‘i legal education in the world, while his Lebanese father, ‘Abd al-Ra‘uf Fadlallah (1907–84), was studying and teaching there. The Sayyids claimed descent from the Prophet’s grandson Hasan through his son Hasan al-Muthanna. Fadlallah’s grandfather, Sayyid Najib (1863–1917), had been a scholar of some renown in Bint Jubayl, his hometown in southern Lebanon, where he taught at his personal madrasa (Muslim school). Fadlallah grew up in Najaf, studying first with his father and then under a number of other teachers, including Abu al-Qasim al-Kho’i (1899–1992), Muhsin al-Hakim (1889–1970), and Mahmud Shahrudi (1882–1974). He completed his education under Kho’i in 1965 and received from him a certificate recognizing him as a mujtahid or fully qualified jurist.

While in Najaf, Fadlallah showed a profound interest in literature, particularly Arabic poetry, and edited a journal titled Majallat al-Adab (Journal of literature). He also became involved in Iraqi politics, and his early debates with Marxists and secularists and his experience with the organization of leftist movements influenced his views concerning political action. He was inspired by the teachings and example of the prominent Iraqi Shi‘i authority Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, who advocated the involvement of jurists in political and social spheres and, before being executed by Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1980, played an important role in the Islamist political mobilization of Shi‘i youth through Iraq’s Da‘wa Party.

In 1966, having completed his studies, Fadlallah moved back to Lebanon and settled in al-Nab‘a quarter, an eastern suburb of Beirut populated by poor Shi‘is, immediately establishing himself as an effective community leader and an excellent teacher. He founded the Islamic Legal Institute, a center where students could study teaching the traditional curriculum of Najaf, and also built mosques and centers for Shi‘i religious ceremonies. In 1976, in the course of the Lebanese Civil War, the Nab‘a quarter was bombarded and eventually occupied by the Maronite Christian Phalangists. The experience of bombardment and being driven out of his home in a Beirut suburb along with thousands of other Shi‘i residents radicalized Fadlallah. During this time, he wrote the book al-Islam wa-Mantiq al-Quwwa (Islam and the logic of power) under heavy shelling and working by candlelight. It shared with other modern Arabic works on political theory an emphasis on resistance and the right to resist drawn ultimately from French anticolonialist writings, but it had an innovative aspect aimed at critiquing the traditional quietist position adopted by Shi‘i jurists. He drew on Friedrich Nietzche’s (1844–1900) 1887 work On the Genealogy of Morality, which critiqued the passive posture historically adopted by Christians, characterizing it as slave morality, and suggested that they should adopt noble morality instead, seeking to attain redress for grievances by taking revenge through action rather than through the imagined revenge traditionally adopted in Christian thought. Fadlallah applied this same argument to Shi‘i tradition, urging their jurists to adopt an activist stance and to become directly involved in social, economic, political, and military issues. The work describes two opposing groups, the mustaḍ‘afūn (the downtrodden), referring primarily to Shi‘is but also to Muslims in general, and the mustakbirūn (the arrogant), referring primarily to the United States and Israel, whom he held responsible for the crimes of the Phalangists. According to Fadlallah, following the examples of ‘Ali and Husayn, Muslims must oppose force with force; they have a duty to gain economic, political, and military power in order to resist these oppressive forces in an effective manner.

At this juncture, Fadlallah, newly ensconced in the Bi’r al-‘Abd quarter in southern Beirut, was named by Abu al-Qasim al-Kho’i, the leading jurist and religious authority in Najaf after the death of Hakim in 1970, as his representative in Lebanon. This gave Fadlallah access to khums funds—the 20 percent income tax collected from Shi‘i believers for religious purposes—which allowed him to undertake large charity projects such as the building of schools and hospitals. He, somewhat more than his quietist and learned rival Muhammad Mahdi Shams al-Din (d. 2001), filled the void left by the mysterious disappearance of Musa al-Sadr in Libya in 1978. Islam and the Logic of Power, published in 1976, had established him as a leading Islamist ideologue, and he continued to decry foreign influence in Lebanon and encroachments on Lebanese sovereignty, particularly in the journal of the Lebanese Muslim Students Organization, al-Muntalaq (The outbreak). Establishing himself in the role of mentor and guide to Islamist cadres throughout Lebanon, he wrote against the Israeli invasions of 1978 and 1982, as well as the presence of the multinational UN peace-keeping force in Lebanon, whom he saw as supporting the illegitimate rule of Pierre Gemayel’s government. For this reason, he endorsed the October 1983 attacks on U.S. Marines’ and French troops’ barracks. After the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982, Israeli aggression became a constant focus of his writings, which urged sustained and tactical resistance. By 1983, Fadlallah had become a major public figure in Lebanon and beyond.

Assessments of Fadlallah’s relationship with Hizbullah, the political and military Shi‘i movement that originated in the early 1980s and was backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, have varied. Some claim that he was the spiritual guide of the movement, that he had a major hand in directing it, and that he was directly responsible for planning its operations. Others deny this, clearing him of guilt for specific terrorist attacks. The CIA, taking the former view and holding him responsible for the deaths of 241 American servicemen in the Marine barracks bombing and also for kidnappings of U.S. and other European citizens in Lebanon in the early 1980s, attempted to assassinate him in 1985 with a car bomb outside the Imam Rida Mosque where he preached. An estimated 80 to 105 people were killed, but Fadlallah survived. Later, in 2006, during the war between Israel and Hizbullah, Israeli planes bombed his home, but he happened to be elsewhere. It is undeniable that he exerted an important influence over Hizbullah, inspired its leaders, and had close ties with the organization. His articles appeared regularly in al-‘Ahd (The pledge), Hizbullah’s official journal. His bodyguards were Hizbullah operatives, and they manned checkpoints on the way to his house and the Imam Rida Mosque. However, he did not accept an official role for both tactical and ideological reasons: he could deny responsibility for any specific actions taken by Hizbullah, and he did not want to have his opinion be hampered by an adherence to a particular political program.

Fadlallah was a radical yet pragmatic political ideologue. He was looked on with suspicion in the West because he condoned violence and strategic action against U.S. and Israeli interests. He insisted that Islamic resistance was not terrorism and that force must be met with force, and he urged armed resistance to the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. He wrote legal opinions justifying the use of suicide bombing against military targets and forbidding the normalization of ties with Israel, and he called for a boycott of American products. However, he often differed from hard-line ideologues in his pragmatism, for he showed himself willing to accept gradual, incremental changes and to work with other groups in Lebanese society, including the Christians. He also condemned the killing of civilians, and in particular denounced the 9/11 attacks as illegitimate. His approach differed from that of Musa al-Sadr, who had led a civil rights movement for Shi‘is in the 1960s and 1970s, for he saw that important changes were best achieved not by widespread social movements but by select, indoctrinated cadres through organized, tactical work. Much of his rhetoric, however, including the constant opposition of al-mustakbirūn to mustaḍ‘afūn, resembled that adopted by Musa al-Sadr and Ayatollah Khomeini. Fadlallah, at least by the late 1980s, did not endorse Khomeini’s concept of wilāyat al-faqīh, the absolute rule of the leading Shi‘i jurist, but rather supported a constitution that would allow wide participation of societal groups and would be controlled by a system of checks and balances. In 1988, he proposed a model he called dawlat al-insān (the human state), in an obvious reference to human rights guaranteed through regime change. In this he differed with the leadership of Hizbullah, who adopted the views of Khomeini and his successor in Iran, Khamene’i.

Fadlallah’s views on the top jurists of the Shi‘is also provide significant evidence of his independence of Hizbullah. Fadlallah, born in Najaf, had participated in the long tradition of study in the shrine cities of Iraq that was challenged by the rise of Qum as a major center of learning beginning in 1922. When Kho’i died in 1992, Hizbullah followed Iranian government circles in claiming that the leading Shi‘i jurist was first the Sayyid Rida Gulpayegani, who died in 1993; then Muhammad ‘Ali al-Araki, who died in 1994; and then the “leader” of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khamane’i. Throughout, Fadlallah accepted ‘Ali al-Sistani, who had acceded to the position of marja‘ al-taqlīd (source of emulation) in Najaf, as the leading authority. However, Fadlallah soon came to be recognized as a senior authority in his own right. In 1986, the Iranians had already recognized Fadlallah as an ayatollah and regional authority. Beginning in 1994, Fadlallah called for the marja‘iyya, the position of supreme legal authority for the Twelver Shi‘is, to be modified from a personal institution into an international organization, not unlike the Vatican, with specialized bureaus and functionaries; it should not be synonymous with the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 1995, Fadlallah’s supporters published a manual of his legal rulings, a necessary step toward recognition as a senior, international Shi‘i legal authority. His reputation continued to grow, in part because of his innovative legal positions, and before his death, some supporters even suggested that he should succeed Sistani as the next marja‘ al-taqlīd in Najaf. Fadlallah became known for his relatively liberal views on women, in keeping with his emphasis on resistance and mobilization. He encouraged women to participate in sports and to develop strength. He stressed that women had a social responsibility equal to that of men. He upheld the rights of women to resist violence and coercion of husbands or male relatives. He wrote fatwas (religious opinions) against honor killings and female circumcision and permitted abortion if the life of the mother was in danger. A number of jurists in Najaf and Qum accused him of violating consensus on some issues in which he rejected commonly accepted rulings in the Twelver legal tradition, including his qualified permission of cloning, his argument that Jews and Christians and indeed all people regardless of religious affiliation were not ritually impure, and the ruling that one may resort to astronomy to determine the beginning of the month of Ramadan, rather than relying on sighting the new moon with the naked eye.