Hezbollah : rationalizing the link between religion and politics

The purpose of this work is to prove that the seemingly apparent contradiction between\ud religion is separated from the political sphere can be rationalized. The empirical\ud demonstration of this argument is based on Hezbollah, a Lebanese organization that was able to combine secular ideas with its religious foundation. Mixing quantitative and\ud qualitative method of discourse analysis demonstrates that Hezbollah increases its\ud fundamentalist rhetoric during times of internal mobilization and decreases it during times of political expansion. It uses a more secular rhetoric when it wants to ally with non-Shiaa political parties. Primary sources such as speeches, official documents, and articles published in the party???s newspaper are used. Tracking words from 1982 to 2009 shows the evolution of Hezbollah???s religious and secular rhetoric, but it also allows a depiction of the change of meaning of key words in Hezbollah???s leader???s discourse. This work shows how Hezbollah is trying to rationalize the contradiction within its values