…till Syria got me asking: that there are Alawites in Lebanon too; that Hezbollah supports the Asad regime even though (I would’ve previously thought) they’re Alawite; that Alawites and Anatolian Alevis aren’t as consciously related as lots of people think, though they’re similar in many concepts and rites and are probably both a product — or remnant — of inherently heterodox frontier zones between Byzantine-Arab-Turkic-Iranian spiritual worlds, before the lines hardened; that the relationship of both to “mainstream” Shi’ism varies in intensity and in the degree to which they’re accepted by that mainstream as part of the fold (Alawites, as in the Asad-Hezbollah relation, more than Anatolian Alevis, who are kind of a world of their own); that Iran’s support of Hezbollah is part of a relationship that’s neither new nor one-way — that, in fact, Shi’ia clerics and theologians from southern Lebanon/Jabal Amil (including the Sadr clan) were instrumental in establishing Shi’ism as Safavid Iran’s state creed in the sixteenth century; that that happened in a kind of simultaneous, binary process, as such things tend to, with Ottoman Turkey becoming more orthodoxly Sunni…and more.
This is a cool, very informative book, though sometimes so personal and emotional and out-there-Persian that it becomes confusing as straight history or sociology:
Shi’ism: A Religion of Protest, Hamid Dabashi: http://www.amazon.com/Shiism-Religion-Protest-Hamid-Dabashi/dp/0674049454/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337903598&sr=1-1
and Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years, H.E. Chehabi: http://www.amazon.com/Distant-Relations-Iran-Lebanon-Years/dp/1845112555/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337903763&sr=1-1
Otherwise not good though…not Syria, not another spillover into Lebanon or its again becoming the catch-basin of Levantine conflict. None of it…
Men in a Beirut suburb burned tires and blocked roads after fellow Lebanese Shiites were abducted in the Syrian city of Aleppo. (Anwar Amro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)
Comment: nikobakos@gmail.com
Jadde: from Bosnia to Bengal 
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