Two stories about Hezbollah.
Hezbollah publishes new manifesto that tones down Islamist doctrine and goals, drops demand for an Islamic republic in Lebanon.
Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who read the new “political document” at a news conference, said it was time the group introduced pragmatic changes without dropping its commitment to an Islamist ideology tied to the clerical establishment in Iran.
“People evolve. The whole world changed over the past 24 years. Lebanon changed. The world order changed,” he said via a video link.
Hezbollah promotes mutaa marriage, even for virgins and women who have never married.
Hezbollah’s recent encouragement of this phenomenon highlights the compromises it had been required to make in order to remain the preeminent force among its domestic Shiite constituency. As the party gained strength due to its effectiveness in fighting Israel, it was forced to cope with the reality that many Lebanese Shiites did not share the Iranian-inspired religious beliefs of Hezbollah’s leaders. They came to dominate a community that was shaped by the secular leftist trends of the 1970s and 1980s, and the cosmopolitan culture embodied by Beirut.
