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⁸ For an analysis of how the Iranian government, through its cultural center in Beirut, claims leadership of Shi‘ites in Lebanon and justifies its religious authenticity, see Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr, Constructing Lebanese Shi‘ite nationalism. Transnationalism, Shi‘ism, and the Lebanese State (Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2005): chapter three.

⁹ Perspectives of Hizbullah members on Iran are not the focus of this article. This is because I found that their critique of Iranian society often resembled the way the Iranian religious elite constructs differences to sections of Iranian society it views as immoral and anti-Islamic. That is, Hizbullah members’ construction of differences to Iranians often adopts the discourse of the religious elite in Iran in their struggles with the “reformist” camp. For accounts of how Hizbullah members imagine Iran, see Sharara, Widdah, Dawlat Hizbullah (Beirut, 1996), 217Google Scholar, 227, 278.

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¹³ For more details on this debate, see Stephan Rosiny, “ ‘The Tragedy of Fatima al-Zahra’ in the Debate of Two Shiite Theologians in Lebanon,” in The Twelver Shia in Modern Times: Religious Culture and Political History, eds. Rainer Brunner and Werner Ende (Leiden; Boston, 2001): 211.

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¹⁶ al-‘irfan 50, 6–7 (1963): 547.

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¹⁹ Information based on personal conversations with members of the Iranian Cultural Center in Beirut, members of the Iranian embassy in Beirut, and with Shaykh Ahmad Talib in Lebanon in 2002–2003. In 2003, a total of 1,500 Lebanese lived in Iran, six hundred religious students with their extended families, and an additional two hundred tullab who have married into Iranian families.

²⁰ Personal interview, Jibshit, 26 October 2002.

²¹ Personal interview, Jibshit, 26 October 2002.

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²⁵ Jane Hill, “The Refiguration of the Anthropology of Language,” Cultural Anthropology 1, no. 1 (1986): 89–102.