Hezbollah

Hezbollah (pronounced /ˌhɛzbəˈlɑː/;Arabic: حزب الله‎ Ḥizbu 'llāh, literally "Party of Allah" or "Party of God")—also transliterated Hizbullah, Hizballah, etc.—is a Shi'a Islamist militant group and political party based in Lebanon. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese parliament. After the death of Abbas al-Musawi in 1992, the group has been headed by Hassan Nasrallah, its Secretary-General.

After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Israel occupied a strip of south Lebanon, which was controlled by the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a militia supported by Israel. Hezbollah was conceived by Muslim clerics and funded by Iran primarily to harass the Israeli occupation. Its leaders were followers of Ayatollah Khomeini, and its forces were trained and organized by a contingent of 1,500 Revolutionary Guards that arrived from Iran with permission from the Syrian government, which was in occupation of Lebanon at the time. Hezbollah waged a guerilla campaign in South Lebanon—SLA collapsed and surrendered, and Israel withdrew from Lebanon on May 24, 2000.

Hezbollah of Iran

The Hezbollah, or Party of God, (also HizbAllah or Hizbullah) is an Iranian movement formed at the time of the Iranian Revolution to assist the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his forces in consolidating power. References in the media or writing are usually made to members of the group — or Hezbollahi — rather than Hezbollah, as Hezbollah is/was not a tightly structured independent organisation, but more a movement of loosely bound groups, usually centered on a mosque.

Hezbollahi are said to "generally act without meaningful police restraint or fear of persecution," and initially attacked demonstrations and offices of newspapers that were critical of the Ayatollah Khomeini. They are said to have "played an important role on the street at crucial moments in the early days of the revolution by confronting those the regime regarded as counter-revolutionaries."

Once political challenges to the regime had died down, Hezbollahi attacks expanded to include a wide variety of activities found to be undesirable for "moral" or "cultural" reasons, such as poor hijab, mixing of the sexes and consumption of alcohol.Mojtaba Bigdeli is a spokesman for the Iranian Hezbollah.

Turkish Hezbollah

Turkish Hezbollah (TH) (Turkish: Türk Hızbullahı), also known as the Kurdish Hezbollah (Kurdish: Hizbullahî Kurdî‎) or just Hizbullah in Turkey, is a mainly Turkish Sunni Islamist militant organization, active against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the Government of Turkey. Although its members theoretically remain committed to violence, the organization has focused on non-violent activities during the last 10 years.

Background

In the 1970s various Turkish/Kurdish Islamists sought to work through democratic means to develop Islamism in Turkey. Many joined the National Turkish Student Association (Milli Türk Talebe Birliği, MTTB), the youth organization of the National Salvation Party. With the closure of these after the 1980 Turkish coup d'état, it appeared clear that the military was too strongly dedicated to secularism for the democratic route to be an option, and a group of Islamists launched the Union Movement (Vahdet Hareketi). The movement organised around two bookshops in Diyarbakır – Fidan Gündör's Menzil and Hüseyin Velioğlu's İlim. Until 1987 the groups gathered around these bookshops worked together.