POLITICIZATION OF THE SHIITE COMMUNITY IN LEBANON
Authors:   Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine, SKOROKHOD Yuriy 
Published: May 2024

B a c k g r o u n d . The experience of the development of Lebanese society as a social system shows that the political stability of deeply divided societies largely depends on the nature of the external factor. On the one hand, the exaggerated reaction of communities to events in Lebanese society as challenges aimed at restricting their interests led to the mobilization of efforts to support them from the outside. On the other hand, it was the external factor that acted as a catalyst for the formation of the political consciousness of Lebanese communities. In this context, the phenomenon of politicization of the Shiite community in Lebanon is of scientific interest. M e t h o d s .The following methods were used: system structural, system-functional, problem-historical, comparative, and content analysis. R e s u l t s . France's granting the Shiite community the status of an autonomous socio-cultural group within the framework of Greater Lebanon, created in 1920, began the process of expanding the political participation of the Shiite community, in which traditional political leaders (zu'ama) played a key role, in the activities of Lebanese society. The process of urbanization, which was accompanied by mass migration of the Shiite population to large cities, active involvement of some Shiites in left-wing ideologies, secular parties and movements, and the deepening crisis of the Lebanese political system, which unfolded in conditions of a high degree of influence of external factors (for example, the Syrian and Palestinian military presence, the Palestinian Israeli confrontation, the 1979 revolution in Iran and attempts to export the Shiite revolution, etc.) led to the weakening of the positions of Shiite zu'ama both within the Shiite community and in Lebanese society as a whole. In the context of the civil war (1975–1990), the process of blurring the common interests of Shiites at the community level was initiated, and a way out of the crisis was sought by intensifying external relations, transferring them to the plane of "special relations" with separate countries. In the mid-1980s, there was a fundamental difference in the approaches of Amal and Hezbollah, as the most influential Shiite organizations, to the vision of the role of the Shiite community in Lebanese society. C o n c l u s i o n s . During the period from the 1920s to the end of the 1960s – mid-1970s, the political mobilization of the Shiite community was carried out by traditional political leaders (zu'amas), primarily on the basis of patronage and client relations, while religious loyalty acted as a factor of unity of the socio-cultural group itself. In the context of the civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990) and the growing influence of external factors (in particular, the 1979 Shiite revolution in Iran), the formation of Shiite political consciousness was significantly influenced by organizations such as Amal and Hezbollah, which offered different visions of the role of the Shiite community in Lebanese society. The model of politicization of the Shiite community proposed by Amal was focused on raising the political status of Shiites within the reformed system of confessional democracy and involved the use of secular means, among other things. Hezbollah, on the other hand, considered the Lebanese political system illegitimate and in the mid-1980s set out to radicalize the political consciousness of Shiites and create an Islamic state in Lebanon similar to the Iranian one under Ayatollah Khomeini.