Why Sects Glorify Their Defeated Leaders

By Hicham Bou Nassif | Weinberg Associate Professor of International Relations and the Middle East and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College-California

Hassan Nasrallah promised the Shiites victory but led them instead to daily disasters. From a logical point of view, Shiite crowds should not follow his coffin, weeping and beating their chests. But that is exactly what happened. This reality begs the following question: How is it that a leader whose sect has paid such a high price for his political adventures remains so popular among that community? 

The question is not new. Kamal Jumblatt got himself involved in the Lebanese Civil War and bet on dismantling what was termed ‘Political Maronism’ using the force of Palestinian arms. Hundreds of young Druze men died in battles with their Christian neighbors—and for what victory exactly?  

1. Displacing the Christians from the mountains? No, they returned to their villages after the war.
2. A shift in the balance of power between sects? It did change, but not in favor of the Druze; the influence of the Druze leadership in the pre-war First Republic was greater than after the civil war.

So, why then did Kamal Jumblatt throw himself so enthusiastically into the civil war, and why did he drag his youth into it? Also, in confronting Hafez al-Assad, Kamal Jumblatt bet on the Soviets, the Arabs and the Palestinians. Subsequent events proved all his calculations wrong. The price was very high for him personally, his country, and his sect. Yet, his legendary status within the Druze community remains intact to this day. 

The Christian case is no different. Consider their experience with Michel Aoun. Since 1975, thousands of Christian youths have died in defense of an area, or a small enclave, where they could live free from choices that were not their own, imposed by identities that were not theirs. 

The cost of building the ‘Eastern Zone’ through war was high, but the Christians built it. Then, Michel Aoun seized power in 1988. After 2 years of reckless adventures, the Christian community lost its own region, which, had it persisted, could have become a de facto geographical base for asserting their right to self-rule. Aoun also promised his supporters victory, and “breaking Hafez al-Assad’s head.” But the result of his policies was Hafez al-Assad’s victory, the fall of the Eastern Zone, and the return of the Christians to the fold of a centralized Greater Lebanon, after which their ongoing nightmare began. Despite this, Aoun remained widely popular, and a large Christian popular base awaited his return from exile before giving him 70% of their votes in the 2005 elections. 

The deification of defeated leaders is, therefore, not unique to the Shiite community. But the scene of mourners grieving for Nasrallah as Israeli jets fly low overhead, brings back the question of the relationship between Lebanese icons and their popular bases. What is the secret behind the sects’ worship for those who bring them ruin? I do not claim to have an answer. But one might venture the following: political facts mean nothing by themselves. What matters is how they are understood. And this understanding is shaped by four elites that explain, or rather should explain, to the public what is going on around them: the academic, media, political and religious elites. In our country, the movement of all these elites colludes to distort consciousness rather than stimulate it. In our country, academic research activity is almost absent. The class of independent intellectuals, detached from leaderships and thus capable of deconstructing their narratives, is weak and its influence is limited. 

As for the media, it is generally subservient. From the time Lebanese television devoted its screens to Michel Aoun’s appearances in the late 1980s, to the era of Hezbollah launching a true media empire later, the role of our media has been to fuel a quasi-religious partisan faith in leaderships. If we add to this that the job of MPs and ministers, produced by their reference parties, is merely to echo what their reference party says, and that religious leaders generally tend to align with the elites of their sects, the scene becomes entirely closed to any critical attempt. Moreover, Lebanon’s sects are characterized by mutual suspicion, fear, and deep-seated animosity.

All these factors push towards glorifying the sect hero rather than holding him accountable.

This article was originally published in Arabic by Nida al-Watan on 24 February 2025. The original can be found here.

The views expressed in this op-ed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of SyriacPress.