Figures aligned with Hezbollah are making an enormous effort to eliminate any critical distance or debate between Shiite religious convictions and the party itself. Public spaces are being flooded with heated arguments and cheap incitement campaigns against any critique of Hezbollah’s ideological use of religion to buoy its weapons and recast them as something sacred, rather than as what they are par excellence: a political-security matter.
This is not an ordinary polemic. What is happening is an organized effort to kill any space for debate between the Shiite religious creed and Hezbollah, so that weapons are redefined not as a political-security issue that concerns the state and sovereignty, but as a matter of “identity” and “doctrine.” At that point, any discussion or objection to these weapons becomes blasphemy against an entire sect, rather than a legitimate debate about governance and public decision-making.
This strategy has recently manifested in repeated campaigns, the latest targeting MP Paula Yacoubian after she criticized the party’s “doctrinal ideologization” in justifying its arms. Her remarks were framed as hostility to the sect, rather than a call to return the issue to its proper reference points: the state and the law.
What the party is doing—through clear, escalating techniques—is shifting weapons from the realm of “politics” to the realm of “sacredness” and collective identity. This did not happen overnight. The party has long understood the importance of tying all its policies to sacred chains, something it has done since its founding in the early 1980s, turning its popular bases into enclaves fenced off by slogans, images, and strict ideological discipline that leave no room for alternative interpretations.
Recently, Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri joined the chorus sacralizing the weapons by declaring, “The weapons of the resistance are our pride and our dignity.” With this, it is openly proclaimed that we are not dealing with “a Lebanese political weapon,” but rather with a weapon invested with a “sacred,” even messianic, function.
In politics as in religion, we can scarcely find any separation between the language used in an election season and that used during major religious commemorations like Ashura. Metaphysical terms such as “religious mandate” and “Karbala” are blended with talk of deterrence and arms, entrenching the weapons as part of a social-religious ritual that is difficult to approach. Criticism is portrayed as a betrayal of “the martyrs’ trust,” or as service to lurking foes. This is not an inference from outside the party’s discourse: its official platforms and parallel pulpits explicitly link the fact of “resistance” to religious and moral requirements that elevate adherence to arms and treat any retreat from them as an affront to dignity and duty. Even in elections, slogans are often deployed that tie every political matter to the weapons, such as the campaign line “We Protect and Build,” not to mention the notion of “religious mandate,” frequently used to buoy a party-backed candidate and to demonize any opponent.
Even during the recent Israeli war—and as southerners rushed back to their villages in the early days of the ceasefire—videos spread of a young woman approaching areas still controlled by Israeli soldiers, shouting that “we have not received a religious mandate to leave.”
But what about now?
The regional and international moment is driving the weapons file toward something like a wall: colliding with it would be fatal, and bypassing it seems impossible. Israel is linking any drawdown or withdrawal from the south to a serious path for disarming Hezbollah, something stated explicitly in official remarks in recent weeks. In parallel, Washington continues to press Beirut for a clear plan regarding the weapons, within initiatives that tie the cessation of Israeli strikes to steps by the Lebanese state to reclaim the monopoly over the legitimate use of force.
This trajectory is reinforced by an unprecedented international decision: the UN Security Council renewed UNIFIL “for one last time” until the end of 2026 and called for the start of an organized drawdown within a year, meaning, at least politically, the setting of a deadline for security in the south to pass exclusively to the Lebanese state. This signal changes the rules of the game: Beirut now has a final date to take the helm in the south, and the party faces an international noose tightening around the “gray zone” in which it has long operated.
Faced with this compounded pressure, Hezbollah is doubling down on creating an “existential fusion” between the Shiite community and its weapons. This is evident in the rhetoric of its leadership, which portrays calls for exclusive state control over arms as part of an “American–Israeli project,” warning that “the country will be surrendered” if the weapons are touched, and framing any debate on disarmament as treason or as serving “the enemy.” At this point, political disagreement becomes possible only on a narrow margin: either acceptance of the party’s security narrative as a collective creed, or accusations of betrayal of the community.
The direct outcome of this sacralization is the closure of politics. Simple questions such as: Who decides on war and peace? According to what strategy? What is the cost of deterrence and who bears it?—become taboos. Political and media figures are subjected to organized smear campaigns that fragment and distort their words out of context, turning public opinion management into something resembling digital inquisitions rather than public debate. Over time, Shiite communities themselves are estranged from the state: their security and dignity are tied to a partisan military structure elevated above institutions, not to a civic logic that protects everyone under one roof. Lebanon thus remains stuck in the condition of a “non-state,” its bargaining power growing weaker the more the weapons are “sacralized” and shielded from accountability or public planning.
Dismantling this strategy does not mean succumbing to external rhetoric, nor adopting an oppositional narrative framed in terms of demonization. On the contrary, dismantling begins with re-description: arms are a public matter to be determined by the state, the army, and parliamentary oversight, not a sectarian issue. The community is not the party; people’s faith and beliefs are protected, but what is under discussion is the monopoly on violence outside the state. From this point, the burden of proof can be shifted through precise questions that keep the issue in the political sphere rather than in the doctrinal one: What is the concrete objective of the weapons today? How is deterrence measured? Who is accountable for losses and costs? How is the relationship between the south, the economy, migration, and investment managed under a security decision independent from state institutions?
And are the weapons even capable of regaining the positions Israel occupied during the recent war?
To prevent the public’s fears from being used as a pretext for perpetuating taboos, practical guarantees must be proposed to address those anxieties: a gradual roadmap transferring the decision over arms in the south to the army; compensation and reintegration programs for fighters; social protection and local recovery projects administered by the state rather than through patronage networks. In this way, the party is deprived of the weapon of “identity blackmail,” and politics can be reopened through internal negotiation rather than diktats. Even calls for a national dialogue on weapons, including from the party’s allies, can be read as evidence of the possibility of returning the sovereign track to state institutions, away from the sanctity/treason binary that produces nothing but polarization.
The shortest path to civil explosion or permanent guardianship is to turn the question of weapons into a test of faith. The shortest path to building a viable state is the exact opposite: restoring the issue to its original nature, a sovereign matter to be decided by elected institutions whose outcomes are subject to scrutiny—not a doctrinal text guarded by taboos. Lebanese citizens, including a wide and diverse Shiite public, have the right to debate the cost, the effectiveness, and the alternatives—without being branded traitors or forced into sanctification. In a country emerging from a brutal war and facing an international resolution that prepares for the withdrawal of a UN force, broadening the margin for debate becomes a national responsibility, not a moral luxury.
