La greffe et l’empreinte : chiisme et communisme dans le monde arabe

• Main Author: Nicolas Dot-Pouillard
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université de Provence 2019-09-01
• Series: Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée
• Subjects: Communism; Political Islam; Shiism; Iraq; Lebanon; Ideology
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/12727

Communism and Shia political Islam in the Arab world do not share the same ideological assumptions ; however, they do bear family resemblances, due to their historical relationship – particularly in Iraq and Lebanon – which can be broken down to three time sequences. From the 1950s, communist parties are anchored in marginalized Shia communities : the revolutionary narrative of Marxism and class struggle echoes Shia messianism. In the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian revolution, the dynamic is reversed : the anti-imperialist and eschatological narrative coming from Teheran fascinates the Marxist lefts, and encourages conversions to political Islam. The third sequence opens in the nineties, with the end of the Cold War : since then, Arab communists have displayed a political use of Shiism, that is not religious. By supporting Teheran and the Lebanese Hezbollah, some Arab Marxist activists try to reactivate a neo-thirld-worldist political worldview. Nevertheless, as have the proponents of Shia political Islam, they have abandoned for the moment any revolutionary aspirations.