Chapter 7 considers the international relations of Tawhid, accounting for the factors behind its recurring tensions with the Syrian regime as well as its foreign alliances with Syrian Islamists, Fatah and Iran. It points to the role of the handful of Tawhid cadres who, as a result of their strong commitment to Islamist ideology, became the principle handlers of the movement’s foreign alliances with like-minded Islamist actors such as Iran. This, it claims, at first reinforced their influence within Tawhid, which they used in order to push its discourse and behaviour in an ideological direction and to make shared ideology the cornerstone of the movement’s foreign alliances with like-minded actors. But the chapter remarks that, as their influence became too strong and their ambition to turn Tawhid into a movement only driven by ideology clashed with the priorities of other factions, a heated debate gripped the movement and violence ensued, leading to the killing of several of them. And, tellingly, the period of late 1984 and early 1985, which corresponds to the decline in the influence of these ideologized cadres, also matches with a Tawhid behavior less driven by ideology than before, as it engaged in criminal practices and as its foreign relations turned more pragmatic.

Chapter 8 traces the downfall of Tawhid and analyzes in particular what led so many members to mobilize during their doomed struggles against the Syrian army in mid-1985 and late 1986. These two battles were framed as ideological conflicts pitting fundamentalist militants against partisans of a secular order and the chapter acknowledges the role of ideology, whether embraced sincerely or instrumentally, as it allowed for the enlistment of new Islamist recruits at the height of the fighting and for support from external Islamist allies. Yet it also notes that virtually all Tawhid factions mobilized, including those who were less or not ideologically committed. It argues that this stemmed from the movement’s ability to cast the battles as part of a local collective duty in line with Tripoli’s history as a rebel city. It also resulted from its readiness to enlist the support of neighborhood strongmen who were connected to their communities by strong ties of solidarity and were thus able to draw in many locals. Despite Tawhid’s success at mobilizing so many members, however, the Syrian army and its allies were too strong to be beaten and they ultimately defeated the movement in bloodshed.

The conclusion reflects on the rise and fall of Tawhid in 1980s Tripoli, pulling the story together and summarizing the concepts developed in the book’s attempt to grasp Islamist movements from below and how space and ideology affect contentious politics. In doing so, it suggests their wider relevance and offers a tentative agenda for future research.

Chapter 5 explores the dynamics of Tawhid’s engagement in low-level violence in Tripoli in 1982–3 and especially of the implementation of an “Islamic Emirate,” which amounted to the imposition of its Islamist ideological agenda onto the city. Tawhid’s ideological behaviour, instead of being homogeneous, came to vary sometimes significantly across space and to feature instances of inconsistencies with its declaratory ideology. This, the chapter claims, originated from its readiness to recruit less or not ideologically committed members who were often Tripolitan subalterns intent on utilizing the movement as a vehicle for their older social and political revolt. At first these urban poor provided the manpower Tawhid needed to implement its “Islamic Emirate” onto Tripoli. Yet, ultimately, this constituency dragged the movement into the city’s preexisting social antagonisms which were unrelated to ideology, pushing it to target the upper class and notables and to overthrow the local order.

Chapter 6 examines what accounts for Tawhid’s involvement in high-level, seemingly ideological violence in 1983 against Tripoli’s leftist movements and Christians. It acknowledges the causal role of ideology in this exercise of violence, mainly through the activism of a handful of highly ideologized Tawhid cadres who lobbied the leaders to engage in militant Islamist behaviour and exacerbated a climate of ideological polarization. But it also notes that, in spite of their increasing success in steering the movement’s behaviour in ideologically driven ways, these figures were a minority. Instead, the chapter finds that many of the rest of Tawhid’s members and leaders were not primarily guided by ideology in their exercise of violence, but rather by considerations of a primarily political, strategic, geopolitical and social nature. The heterogeneity of motivations which had led Tawhid to engage in violence became evident as the dynamics of conflict exposed too much variation across space and time to be solely guided by ideology. And, in a show of how the movement’s internal diversity could affect its behaviour, Tawhid would eventually be penetrated by criminals who steered its behaviour and exercise of violence in a direction at odds with its Islamist ideology.

Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the Tripolitan, Syrian-Lebanese and wider Middle Eastern contexts within which Tawhid would emerge, and it hints at some of the local themes which the movement would address. It explains the rapid growth of Islamist movements in 1970s Tripoli with reference to their readiness to embody the city’s older rebel identity and to their ability to tap into its pool of discontent, itself stemming from particularly acute local political and social grievances. These functions used to be fulfilled by leftist movements but the chapter notes how their failure to oppose the Syrian regime, which was fast becoming the arch-enemy of many Tripolitans in the local collective psyche, led to their decline and to the rise of Islamist movements instead, a trend also facilitated by the broader sense that Islamism had cultural and political momentum. This sets the scene to understand the local context within which Tawhid was created and rapidly grew in early 1980s Tripoli.

Chapter 3 provides an account of some of the other factions and individuals which created Tawhid in 1982. One of them, the Movement of Arab Lebanon, was like the Popular Resistance an originally leftist militia which embraced Islamism instrumentally, but its leader and members later turned more sincerely committed. Other factions and individuals, like Soldiers of God and scattered groups of Islamist individuals, had for their part always been sincerely committed Islamists. In addition to detailing their respective origins and trajectories, this chapter also traces the root of the merger of all these Tripolitan Islamist factions and individuals back to two regional events which threatened to spill over onto Tripoli – Syria’s February 1982 Hama massacre and Israel’s June 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Tawhid posed as a militant Islamist movement which claimed it would protect the city from foreign invaders, take the struggle to Syria and Israel and create an Islamic Republic in Lebanon. As a result, it rapidly attracted the constituency of Tripoli’s committed Islamists.

Chapter 2 zooms in on the Popular Resistance, one of the militant Islamist factions which would merge within Tawhid upon its creation in 1982 and was disproportionately strong in one neighbourhood of Tripoli only, Bab al-Tebbaneh. It explains how this originally Marxist group embraced Islamism instrumentally in 1980. This was because its leader, who also acted as the neighbourhood strongman or informal local leader, sensed that this ideology would fulfill strategic functions to his district in a new security environment, one especially marked by Syria’s 1976 military intervention in Lebanon and occupation of Tripoli. In this increasingly repressive context, Islamist ideology not only allowed the Popular Resistance to continue mobilizing Bab al-Tebbaneh’s residents and to keep their local solidarities alive; it also enabled the faction to ally across space and class with resource-rich ideological actors and to enlist the support of militant Islamist militias in the local feud which opposed the inhabitants of the neighborhood to the Alawi and pro-Assad nearby district of Jabal Mohsen. After the Popular Resistance eventually merged within Tawhid in 1982, it would drag the movement into its neighborhood rivalry unrelated to ideology, which affected its behavior.

Chapter 4 investigates why, despite a grand ideology which in theory had the potential to resonate in Lebanon’s entire Sunni Islamist constituency, Tawhid’s membership remained overwhelmingly confined to Tripoli. This, it is argued, partially stemmed from the highly fluid and heterogeneous nature of its militant Islamist ideology, which, beyond reflecting the commitment of some members, resulted from the fact that it fulfilled functions. These included outbidding rivals, strengthening internal cohesion and activating bonds of ideological solidarity with like-minded foreign actors to solicit their support. The fluid nature of Tawhid’s ideology, which drew on disparate Sunni but also Shia Islamist references, contributed to restricting its appeal among Lebanon’s more orthodox Sunni Islamists. Yet this chapter notes another factor which limited the appeal of Tawhid outside of Tripoli: the sense that its Islamist discourse was deeply embedded in local identities and narratives. And, while it partially traces this to a movement strategy to recruit locally, it suggests that it also resulted from its own internalized rootedness, which led non-Tripolitan Lebanese Islamists to conclude that Tawhid was more of a Tripolitan than an Islamist movement.

The introduction presents the puzzles which the book seeks to answer, introduces the literatures in political science and sociology which it strives to speaks to and contribute to, introduces the theoretical lenses it uses to unpack the cogs and wheels of the mechanisms at play in the Tawhid Islamist movement in Tripoli and discusses the methods on which research for this book has relied.