Subhi al-Tufayli
Subhi al-Tufayli / Subhi Al-Tafeeli was the founder of the Lebanese Hezbollah and its first Secretary-General in 1989. During his tenure, armed Islamic resistance operations against the Israeli presence in southern Lebanon escalated. He was expelled from the party after declaring civil disobedience against the Lebanese state in protest against the deteriorating social and economic conditions of Shiites in Lebanon.
Subhi al-Tufayli was born in 1948 in the town of Brital, south of the city of Baalbek in Lebanon. Al-Tafeeli studied religious sciences like his peers among the Shiite scholars. He traveled to Najaf in Iraq and received his lessons from Imam Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. His study companion at the time was Sheikh Abbas al-Musawi, the second Secretary-General of Hezbollah, who was killed by Israel on February 16, 1992.
He stayed for a period in Lebanon and then returned to Iran to continue his studies, and then to teach later, in the seminaries of Qom, until the victory of the supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini over the Shah’s regime, where he participated in the movements against this regime and was subjected to interrogation and arrest.
Al-Tufayli returned to Lebanon and in 1979 founded a group that included many Muslim scholars, which he called the “Gathering of Muslim Scholars,” and took the Bekaa region as its headquarters. Sheikh al-Tufayli was elected in 1989 as the first Secretary-General of Hezbollah, crowning a long political and religious career among the Shiites in southern Lebanon. After assuming his new position, he began to escalate the operations of the armed Islamic resistance against the Israeli presence in southern Lebanon, and to provide support for the Palestinian uprising. In May 1991, after new elections in Hezbollah, Sheikh Subhi al-Tufayli returned to the party's Shura Council. Then Abbas al-Moussawi took over the leadership of the party from al-Tufayli through direct elections in 1991.
Sheikh Subhi al-Tufayli became famous for leading the so-called Revolution of the Hungry, when he declared civil disobedience in 1997 in protest against the deteriorating social and economic conditions of Lebanese Shiites. He then returned to preaching among the Shiite sect, especially the poor among them. Hezbollah was not satisfied with the declaration of civil disobedience, so it decided on January 24, 1998, to expel Sheikh al-Tufayli from the party. Armed clashes broke out between his supporters and some Hezbollah members in the Ain Bourday district on January 30, 1998.
During the exchange of fire - in which the Lebanese army participated alongside Hezbollah - Sheikh Khader Talis and a Lebanese officer were killed. Despite the judicial rulings issued against him, he remained in his home, receiving his visitors and holding Husseini mourning councils with them every Thursday. In several press interviews, he criticized the Lebanese Hezbollah, and said that the party's role had changed in recent years from resistance to border guarding for Israel. He strongly criticized the Hezbollah forces' invasion of Beirut on May 7, 2008, seeing it as involvement in a sectarian conflict.
He also opposed Hezbollah's intervention in the Syrian war alongside Bashar al-Assad 's forces , seeing it as a threat to the Shiites and a mistake that would destroy the nation, which made the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces take the initiative to appreciate this position. He believed that the Syrian people's revolution had never been directed against any sect, denomination, or any component of the Syrian people, and that it was - and still is - aiming to create a society that guarantees justice, freedom, and dignity for all its people on the basis of citizenship without exception or discrimination.
Former Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheikh Sobhi al-Tufayli attacked Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, accusing him on 09 November 2019 of being the “biggest protector of corruption in Iraq and Lebanon.” In a video posted on social media, al-Tufayli addressed Khamenei, saying: “Isn’t it shameful to accuse someone who complains unjustly of being an ‘agent’ of other countries? Is this man killed in the street an agent? You say and confirm that you are the guardian of Muslims, not just Iranians. Does the guardian kill the hungry and protect the corrupt and criminals?” He added: “In Iraq, sir, at least 250 people were killed and 11,000 were wounded, and those who killed them were your gunmen, just as we were killed by your gunmen in Lebanon.”
Al-Tufayli continued, addressing Khamenei: “As happened yesterday, your group attacked the innocent and defenseless and burned their tents. Usually we cry over the burning of Hussein’s tents. It seems that we are witnessing a repeat of a second scene, but in different forms.” He added: “Sir, we say that the country has been destroyed, and thieves have been looting it since 1972 until now, and your group supports them, and they have filled the country with filth and corruption. Did our religion teach us to be filthy, corrupt, murderous, and aggressive thieves?” Al-Tufayli asked Khamenei: “What do you call the money you spent in Syria, which you use to buy the consciences of the world, and which you use to buy the media?”
Sheikh Sobhi al-Tufayli, known for his aggressive stances against Hezbollah and Iranian interference in the region, on 10 May 2020 considered that “the Lebanese people are descending under the current authority towards a real famine, but what is preventing them from exploding at the present time is the caution against the new Corona epidemic,” expecting a sweeping revolution in which the Shiite presence will be distinct with the decline of the Corona virus, hoping that “its end will be the building of one state for one people.”
In an interview with Al-Markazia, Al-Tufayli held the leadership of Hezbollah responsible for the corruption in the country, saying, “It bears full responsibility for all the injustices that have befallen the people, for the manipulation of the exchange rate of the lira against the dollar, and for the economic bleeding across the Syrian border back and forth.”
Regarding the economic plan approved by the government, he said, “I did not notice a rescue plan, and assuming that there is a valid rescue plan, its fate will be failure under the rule of the thieves who ate all the previous plans and with them the money that entered Lebanon,” considering that “Lebanon does not need to resort to the International Monetary Fund to get out of its crisis. It is enough for it, under a government that includes “the people of the country,” to recover some of what was looted from it so that it can stand on its feet and regain its health.
Sheikh Subhi al-Tufayli had previously described Hassan Nasrallah and the Speaker of Parliament as masters of corruption. He also attacked the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ali Khamenei, and accused him of being “the biggest protector of corruption in Iraq and Lebanon.” He declared his support for the Lebanese revolution and its slogan “All of them means all of them.” He had previously said, “When we say the victory of the uprising or the victory of justice or the defeat of corruption, it means the defeat of all the pillars of corruption.”
"Here, the party cannot defend itself and say, “I am not part of the corruption,” while it is the main defender of the corrupt. In 1997, it stood against the revolution of the hungry and the call for reform, along with Iran and Syria. At that time, the Lebanese state was close to responding to the demands, and if our revolution had succeeded then, we would not have reached what we have reached today. Hezbollah also protects corruption outside and inside its system, which includes many corrupt people, even if their names are not as prominent as others.
"So we see him clinging to this system and sponsoring it. He insisted in a striking manner on keeping the government and preventing its resignation. Then he tried to renew it and remained insisting for about two months on Prime Minister Saad Hariri and returning with a government like the previous one. He is the only one who insisted in a striking manner on keeping the government and defending it.” There is no doubt that Sheikh Sobhi al-Tufayli’s positions raise the suspicion of the masters of corruption in Lebanon, specifically “Hezbollah” and those who revolve around it.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
