Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Alan Dundes, ed., The Evil Eye: A 

Casebook (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 

1981); Amitav Ghosh, “Reflections of Envy in an Egyp-

tian Village.” Ethnology 22 (1983): 211–233; Edward 

Westermarck, Ritual and Belief in Morocco, 2 vols. (New 

York: University Books, 1968).

exegesis

  See 

tafsir

.

exegesis

  

221  J

---

222

AF

J:

Fadlallah, Muhammad Husayn

 

(1935–  ) 

militant Shii religious leader and spokesman for the 

Hizbullah organization in Lebanon

Shaykh Fadlallah was born in Najaf, i

raq

, where 

his Lebanese father was a Shii religious scholar. At 

the Shii 

madrasa

 in Najaf, he pursued advanced 

Islamic studies in order to become one of the 

Shii 

Ulama

. He also became politically involved 

by opposing the growing influence of the Com-

munist Party in the Iraqi government during the 

1960s. Among the most influential people in his 

early career were Grand Ayatollah Abu al-Qasim 

Khui (d. 1992), one of the most prominent 

scholars of Shii jurisprudence (

fiqh

) in Iraq, and 

Shaykh Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (d. 1980), a 

politically active member of a prominent family 

of Iraqi religious scholars. In 1966, Fadlallah was 

appointed by Khui to serve the needs of Shia liv-

ing in the low-income neighborhoods of Beirut, 

l

ebanon

.

During the devastating Lebanese civil war, 

which lasted from 1975 to 1990, Shaykh Fadlal-

lah emerged as a leading community activist. 

Inspired by the success of the Islamic revolution 

in  i

ran

 of 1979, he played an instrumental role 

in organizing Shii militants in the early 1980s 

and became the head of h

izbUllah

 in 1985. He 

continues to be this organization’s chief spokes-

man. Fadlallah holds strongly anti-Israeli and 

anti-American views and combines them with an 

ideology of Islamic revolution and political 

Jihad

.

During the 1980s, he was implicated in assassina-

tions and kidnappings in Lebanon, the bombings 

of the U.S. embassy and of the U.S. and French 

military headquarters in Beirut, and the Lebanese 

Shii resistance to the Israeli occupation forces. 

Consequently, both Israel and the United States 

regard him as a terrorist leader, and there is some 

suspicion that the United States was involved 

in a failed assassination attempt against him in 

1985. Although he has been supportive of Iranian 

ayatollah r

Uhollah

 k

homeini

 and religious hard-

liners in Tehran, he has broken with them over 

their notions of Islamic government under the 

absolute authority of a religious expert (faqih). 

Instead, he has expressed support for a division 

of political power among religious and secular 

leaders. Much of his work in Lebanon has focused 

on charitable organizations and social services, 

which has won widespread support for Hizbul-

lah among the Lebanese Shia. He approves of the 

participation of women in public life, and he has 

also been a strong supporter of militant Palestin-

ian Islamist organizations, although not of Yassir 

F

---

Arafat’s  p

alestine

  l

iberation

  o

rganization

. In 

recent years, he has come to be regarded by many 

as the “spiritual leader” of the Lebanese Shia, and 

he appears to have shifted from radical militancy 

to grassroots social and political activism.

See also 

commUnism

; i

srael

; s

hiism

; 

terrorism

.