Lebanon (MNN) — Lebanon’s government has stated that it will need at least four months to complete phase two of its plan to disarm the militant arm of the Shia Muslim group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
The Monday announcement came more than a week after a divisive meeting between Lebanon’s army chief and a United States senator. Their meeting ended soon after the senator’s hot-button question on whether Hezbollah is a terrorist organization.
Photo of Lebanese army courtesy of Fahed27 via Pixabay
According to Pierre Houssney with Horizons International, the army chief’s response of “No, not in the context of Lebanon” has more merit than some might think.
“The question has vast local implications for a Lebanese person,” Houssney says. “If [the army chief] answered it ‘correctly’ [according to Sen. Graham], it would jeopardize his ability to be diplomatic in Lebanon and to actually deal with not only Hezbollah, but also the Shiite population.”
Houssney says Lebanon’s population is 33-35% Shiite Muslim. Lebanon’s military is made up of all the ethnic groups in Lebanon, including many Shiites. That means the army chief “cannot just go around and say that the political party to which they belong — which has actual seats in the parliament — you can’t just call that whole group a terrorist organization just because they’re viewed as a terrorist organization by somebody across the world,” says Houssney. “That doesn’t mean that [terrorism] is the only facet of this organization and this social movement that exists.”
A deeper dive on Hezbollah
To Houssney, Hezbollah is in fact responsible for a lot of the corruption and breakdown of law and order in Lebanon. He says this “because they [Hezbollah] have been financed for the past 50–55 years by Iran, to let Lebanon swing from Christian control over to Shiite control, so that Iran can expand its regional influence.”
However, the question of terrorism is different. “The definition of that, as far as I understand, is a group that uses violence for a political goal,” he says. While Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran, Christians in Lebanon still have to carefully consider the perspective of their neighbors as they engage in the political scene.
“What’s the difference between military violence and non-military violence?” Houssney points out. Perspective matters. In one case, a militant group could be called “freedom fighters.” In another, they could be called terrorists.
“From the perspective of Shiite Muslims, this [Hezbollah] is a freedom organization,” Houssney says. Not only does Hezbollah represent the Shiite Muslims (who are a minority in Islam globally), the group is also “viewed as a protector organization, a buffer against a very militarized neighbor to the south [Israel],” whom Houssney says has killed tens of thousands of people in Lebanon in invasions over the years.
This makes diplomacy incredibly challenging. “It’s not just about picking a side. It’s about bringing sides together. So we need Christian leaders in Lebanon who are able to bring together the populace of Muslims and Christians,” Houssney says.
A parallel to gospel ministry to Muslims
Horizons International is no stranger to the concept of diplomacy. Through many means, their team seeks to build bridges between Muslims and the gospel without compromise.
(Graphic courtesy of Horizons International)
“Muslims come from a very different worldview, and so even when a Muslim reads the Bible, they’re actually inserting a lot of the things that they’ve been taught by Islam into the Bible,” says Houssney. He calls it “contextual interference.”
“Our curriculum, called From Cubs to Lions, is actually helping Muslims, in light of their background, to understand the Bible as Christians understand it, but in a way that is different than how we would communicate it to somebody who’s from a Christian background.”
Pray for and listen to the global Church
Find your place in Lebanon’s story. Pray for unity across the global Church, especially in Lebanon, as believers there navigate many complex realities.
Houssney also warns against polarizing tendencies in news and social media. “There are different sides of issues, and people are increasingly seeing the other side as clinically insane,” he says. “I think it’s always healthy when we try to just listen to other people. Even if we disagree with them, even if we have a different religion them, [it] doesn’t mean that we’re compromising our biblical values.”
He suggests listening to Christians around the world and asking what it means to live out faith in Christ in different contexts. It might be Lebanon, it might be China, it might be America. “Those are going to be vastly different because of the political, social and [other] contexts of those places,” he says.
Header image: Beirut, Lebanon (Photo courtesy of Piotr Chrobot/Unsplash)
