Hezbollah

[nirgrahamUK]

@Marko

they don`t seem to levy tax jet take on some roles which states normaly claim only they can provide, so it would be interesting to know more about how they pull it off as something like that is definetely a challange to the state.

@http://www.strategycenter.net/research/pubID.118/pub_detail.asp

support and logistical capabilities which reside outside Lebanon and the Middle East. While Iranian and Syrian financial and political support is much noted for Hezbollah, the terrorist group also receives a significant amount of support from the Shi’ite Muslim diasporas of West and Central Africa as well as pockets in Latin America. The vast majority of these Muslim groups are Lebanese. Through these diasporas, numbering several hundred thousand people, Hezbollah raises millions of dollars a year while at the same time creating a mechanism for those families abroad to maintain contact and political participation in their home country.

and

One of the mechanisms used by Hezbollah in West Africa, as in Lebanon, is to levy “taxes” on those Shi’ite Muslim businesses and individuals who run legitimate businesses, as well as collecting from criminal enterprises run by sympathizers and militants.^[2] The organization has also attacked the properties of merchants who have resisted Hezbollah’s financial solicitations.^[3] Precise estimates of the amount West African revenue represents to Hezbollah are impossible, but the consensus among U.S. and European officials, as well as Lebanese businessmen, is that it is millions of dollars a year. Some of those that contribute do so to support Hezbollah’s social and political wing, positing a distinction between those enterprises and Hezbollah’s armed component.^[4]

[nirgrahamUK]

more on funding

http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2008/03/analysis_hezbol.php

@Dr. Walid Phares

The second major change according to these reports Hezbollah is a huge increase in annual budget funded by Tehran. Hezbollah’s funding was elevated from $400 million US to $1 billion. This ballistic leap would enable the organization to crush any opponent inside Lebanon and engage in worldwide operations against Western Democracies and Arab moderates. According to experts in Lebanon, the $400 millions figure was enough to pay for hundreds of social centers and thousands of salaries enough to insure a full control over the Shia community, its representatives in Parliament and buy significant influence inside the Sunni, Druze and particularly Christian community. One hundred million dollars alone, could pay for the activities of movements opposed to the Cedars Revolution and the democratically elected Government of Siniora.

[Marko]

@nirgrahamUK

i quote from caliphate.eu website

@www.caliphate.eu

Caliphate is a mainstream view

The aspiration of restoring the Caliphate is not a minority view held by extremists and terrorists as all Muslims believe in the idea of a Caliphate or Imamate as Shia refer to it although both are synonymous.

That is nonsense. The Shia revere the 12 original imams of old and await the return of the final imam to earth who is going to re-establish the Imamate. Hezbollah dont need to establish no Imamate, because it has been foretold the Mahdi is going to establish it when he returns to Earth with Jesus Crist. And if they wanted to, they couldnt because they don`t have the main ingredient, the final imam.

Any Sunni attempt to establish a Caliphate would be opposed since only their 12 imams were rightful bearers of that rank and therefore any Sunni Caliph would necessarily be an usurper. Their most revered martyr, the grandson of Mohammed fell at Karbala fighting the 4th Caliph precisely for being one such usurper.

[nirgrahamUK]

why not forward your informative post on the subject to caliphate.eu by-email? it would be interesting to see their scholarly response to your analysis.

im not an expert myself on the esoteric details of exotic religious fantasies. but a little digging on wikipedia turned up this.

@wiki

According to Twelvers, there is always an Imam of the Age, who is the divinely appointed authority on all matters of faith and law in the Muslim community. Ali was the first Imam of this line, and in the Twelvers’ view, the rightful successor to the Prophet of Islam, followed by male descendants of Muhammad through his daughter Fatimah Zahra. Each Imam was the son of the previous Imam, with the exception of Husayn ibn Ali, who was the brother of Hasan ibn Ali.^[4] The twelfth and final Imam is Muhammad al-Mahdi, who is believed by the Twelvers to be currently alive, and in hiding.^[9]

and

This changed with Iranian Revolution where the Twelver Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters established a new theory of governance for the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is based on Khomeini’s theory of guardianship of the Islamic jurist as rule of the Islamic jurist, and jurists as “legatees” of the Prophet Muhammad.

While not all Twelver Shi’a accept this theory, it is uniquely Twelver and the basis of the constitution of Iran, the largest Shi’a Muslim country, where the Supreme Leader must be an Islamic jurist.

so it seems clerics and true believers can act as though the imam is around, they are doing things in his name and in his absence

[Marko]

@nirgrahamUK

more on funding

http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2008/03/analysis_hezbol.php

This is not a credible source.

First the article itself makes other statements which are patentely false. "Those who rose against the Syrian occupation were mostly from the deprived and oppressed segments of civil society. And those who dared opposing Hezbollah’s domination of the country lacked the basic means of NGOs. The confrontation was totally unbalanced. Iran was pouring 400 millions of Petrodollars to roll back the Cedars Revolution while the latter was highly praised overseas but wasn’t a recipient of freedom funds."

Secondly the site is highly politicaly invested on the Empire/Saudi sponsored anti-Hezbollah side of Lebaneese politics.“The site started as Web presence for the massive street demonstrations that took place after Hariri’s assassination and has evolved into a daily news site with cosmopolitan liberal democratic politics”

[nirgrahamUK]

I concede the credibility of the source is questionable. however, there is a difference between funding facts, and opinions about which class feel one way about another. as libertarians we shouldnt offhand dismiss as uncredible any report where the unthinking statist drops in uncredible allusions to the supremacy of democracy and whatnot.

Lets scrub that article from this thread then. can you find a superior credible source that examines the relationship between hizbullah and iran?

[Marko]

@nirgrahamUK

so it seems clerics and true believers can act as though the imam is around, they are doing things in his name and in his absence

What exactly is your point? Yes, they can find an Islamic Republic on their own. No amount of twisting is going to make an Islamic Republic into a Caliphate however, which is what you claimed. Better to admit you got them mixed up with their mortal enemies at al-Aaeda and move on.

[nirgrahamUK]

@Marko

What exactly is your point? Yes, they can find an Islamic Republic on their own. No amount of twisting is going to make an Islamic Republic into a Caliphate however, which is what you claimed. Better to admit you got them mixed up with their mortal enemies at al-Aaeda and move on.

i bow to your superior knowledge of islam. what is the difference between an islamic republic covering the world and a caliphate over the same?

[Marko]

@nirgrahamUK

i bow to your superior knowledge of islam. what is the difference between an islamic republic covering the world and a caliphate over the same?

Islamic Republic Covering the World? Would that be the official name of it?

You`ve obviously already figured out the difference. Islamic Republics can exist side by side and can take any size, while the Caliphate can be only one and must encompass all Muslims.

I can assure you that Hezbollah is not after an Islamic Republic covering the world, if that was the problem you can sleep easy now.

[nirgrahamUK]

its bad enough it wants to force those in its territory to live under sharia law, what does the geographical boundary of the islamic state matter?

again, wehy debate with me when you can e-mail caliphate.eu and ask them ? you could say, ‘wehat about hte shia’. would be interesting and more fruitful than this, no?

[nirgrahamUK]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_unity

[Nerditarian]

@Marko

Who said anything about thinking of them as allies or supporting them? At the most I would say they are worth studying and depending on what is found perhaps be used as a model in those areas where they are not aggressors.

I’m sorry I minsinterpreted the point of this thread and got melodramatic at 1:30 AM. However, the point does remain that the same could be said for the Mafia. They could be used as a model for private people to take over government sectors in the areas where they’re not aggressors.

@Marko

Secondly, it is more than a stretch to say that providing aid and services with the sole motivation of gaining favour with the population already makes you a criminal. A good deed is a good deed, regardless of the motivation behind it.

But if the democratic party opened up a free breakfast society here in the US, I doubt anyone would find it worthy of support. And what they were doing has already been done by other private individuals hundreds of times, so they wouldn’t be worth studying.

@Marko

A good deed is a good deed, regardless of the motivation behind it. Also why must Hezbollah`s motivation for providing these neccesarily be machievellian? Is it really out of the question that they may genuinely care about their constituents?

If the democratic party started feeding the poor would you think it was out of the goodness of their hearts or in order to gain political favor? Would you think their efforts were worthy of studying?

@Marko

Furthermore, how does engaging in electoral politics autumaticaly makes them the devil`s spawn? Ron Paul engages in electoral politics, as did Frederic Bastiat, and Mises held a government post.

If islamic fundementatlism is part of your spiel, it’s an an entirely different story than if your a classical liberal or libertarian. People who engage in electoral politics to impose their wacky economic of political or social views on others are in fact bad guys. Like George Bush and Barack Obama and a dozen other politicans libertarians spend most of their political time opposing.

@Marko

Doubtlessly the USA has aggressed against as many induviduals as Hezbollah has, jet if I were to say that perhaps USA should be studied and aspects of its organisation used as a model in some other places (like North Korea) there wouldn`t be any of the indignation.

What’s worth studying here about the US that isn’t in Hong Kong and Singapore to a much larger extent?"

[Marko]

@nirgrahamUK

its bad enough it wants to force those in its territory to live under sharia law, what does the geographical boundary of the islamic state matter?

You mean what does factual accuracy matter? Of course it matters. It means they aren`t going to go on a conquest from Mindanao to Andalusia.

---

@Nerditarian

I’m sorry I minsinterpreted the point of this thread and got melodramatic at 1:30 AM.

Yeah, it`s those damn endorphins the brain produces to keep you awake. We all get that.

@Nerditarian

However, the point does remain that the same could be said for the Mafia. They could be used as a model for private people to take over government sectors in the areas where they’re not aggressors.

Well that is a splendid point then. There could be things to learn from the mafia too. In some places they do manage to be more popular than the state.

@Marko

But if the democratic party opened up a free breakfast society here in the US, I doubt anyone would find it worthy of support. And what they were doing has already been done by other private individuals hundreds of times, so they wouldn’t be worth studying.

But Hezbollah isn`t really a party. They are much bigger than that. They are a giant organisation with the party only one branch of this organisation and not even the most important one.

@Marko

If the democratic party started feeding the poor would you think it was out of the goodness of their hearts or in order to gain political favor? Would you think their efforts were worthy of studying?

Again, Hezbollah was born as an anti-occupation, liberation movement. If George Washington opened up a soup kitchen after the war would you give him some credit?

@Marko

If islamic fundementatlism is part of your spiel, it’s an an entirely different story than if your a classical liberal or libertarian. People who engage in electoral politics to impose their wacky economic of political or social views on others are in fact bad guys. Like George Bush and Barack Obama and a dozen other politicans libertarians spend most of their political time opposing.

Society governed by Islamic law is their goal, but there are reasons to belive they would not seek to impose it via a state. One is their own statements to that effect and the other is that that would be suicide and they are not dumb.

And anyways I would say things can be learned from bad guys. Jefferson was a slave owner jet many aren`t loathe to quote him.

@Marko

What’s worth studying here about the US that isn’t in Hong Kong and Singapore to a much larger extent?

Common law tradition.