ABSTRACT
Eric Hooglunds description of the rural youth during the 1977–79 Iranian revolution could as easily have been of rural Lebanon during the sixties and early seventies: Almost all have relatives living in the cities, and their familiarity with urban life is as extensive as any native’s. During the revolution, many began to read the newspapers regularly and most have continued the habit on an irregular basis. Confessionalism as laid down in the National Pact merely consecrated and broadened what had been a constant in Lebanese political life since the 1926 constitution. The genesis of political action among the Shi’a masses is centrally rooted in the crystallization and consolidation of the ideology of Arab Nationalism. The Shi’a youths, seething with the anger of the dispossessed and of those trapped on the fringes of society, were ready for revolution. The Shi’a youth chose the revolutionary promises of the Lebanese left.
