Summary
The document traces the historical development of education within Lebanon’s Shiite community from the Ottoman period through the French Mandate and into the modern era. It examines how educational institutions evolved from traditional religious schools to modern public and private systems before focusing on Hizbullah’s education network and its integration of academic instruction with religious and political identity. The discussion also explores the organization’s youth programs, funding, leadership, and educational philosophy within the context of Lebanon’s fragmented educational and political environment. Finally, it argues that education functions as a long-term mechanism for social organization, identity formation, and institutional resilience.
Key Takeaways
- Education has played a central role in shaping the political, religious, and social evolution of Lebanon’s Shiite community, moving through periods of marginalization, modernization, secularization, and later ideological mobilization.
- Hizbullah is described as having developed an extensive educational ecosystem that combines the official Lebanese curriculum with additional religious and ideological instruction, alongside youth organizations and social institutions that reinforce long-term organizational identity.
- The analysis argues that control over education has become a strategic instrument for building political loyalty, sustaining institutional continuity, and influencing future generations within Lebanon’s broader sectarian and political landscape.
To understand Hizbullah’s grip on Lebanon since 1982, it is essential to examine the educational machine created by the Shiite militia. For almost four decades, this machine has provided the manpower needed to dominate Lebanese politics.
Addressing Hizbullah’s strategy relating to Lebanese Shiites and education in educational, social, and national history raises a set of problematic issues regarding the stance toward existing political authority and its social roles, the relationship between education and religion, the perception of the nature and role of the school, and the outputs of the education system in society. These problematic issues and ambiguities are inherited despite subsequent changes; they are either reintroduced or acquire different dimensions, as is the case in political transitions across historical eras.
The synthesis of Hizbullah’s teaching methods, curriculum changes, and early-grade frameworks is based on internal documents, field reports, and analytical studies by Lebanese researchers and think tanks. This essay, however, is chiefly informed by decades of my direct observation as an intelligence officer focused on Lebanon and, in particular, Hizbullah.
Historically renowned as the “schoolhouse of the Middle East” for its elite private institutions and high literacy rates, the education system is deeply intertwined with the country’s multi-religious and political fabric. However, today, this famous legacy faces unprecedented and severe strain.
Modern educational architecture in Lebanon began under Ottoman rule, when Christian and Islamic sects built schools for their communities. Under the French Mandate (1920–1943), France institutionalized this multi-tiered system. The 1926 Lebanese Constitution guaranteed religious communities the right to run their own schools. The French also implemented a centralized baccalaureate system and made French the main language of instruction, alongside Arabic.
During Ottoman rule (1516–1918), the Shiite community’s education in Lebanon was marked by resilience, autonomy, marginalization, and modernization. Centered in Jabal Amil and the Bekaa Valley, Shiite communities (often called Metwalis) long operated outside the empire’s official Sunni education system.
In early Ottoman rule, Jabal Amil was a top center for Twelver Shiite scholarship. Towns like Jezzine, Karak Nuh, and Machghara had advanced, independent madrasas. Education focused on individual mentorship. Renowned scholars taught students in mosques, private homes, or special madrasas. Learning centered on Ja’fari jurisprudence, Arabic grammar, logic, theology, and philosophy.
Because the Ottoman state did not officially recognize the Shiite legal school, some Shiite scholars masterfully studied and taught Sunni Hanafite jurisprudence as well, using Sunni methodologies to navigate the imperial legal apparatus smoothly.
As the rivalry between the Sunni Ottoman Empire and the neighboring Shiite Safavid Empire of Persia intensified, the Shiite educational system in Lebanon faced severe pressure. Ottoman authorities closely monitored Lebanese jurists suspected of pro-Safavid leanings. In 1558, they executed Zayn al-Din al-Amili (Al-Shahid al-Thani, the Second Martyr), a renowned scholar from Jabal Amil. Seeking safety and advancement, many elite Lebanese Shiite scholars emigrated to Persia. The Safavids welcomed them and used their expertise to help convert Iran to Twelver Shiism. This migration greatly depleted Lebanon’s local teaching staff and institutional memory.
By the late 18th century, the autonomous educational system in Southern Lebanon faced its darkest period under Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, the brutal Ottoman governor of Acre. During Al-Jazzar’s campaigns to centralize control and crush local autonomy, the rich libraries of Shiite scholars were systematically pillaged. Historical accounts note that thousands of priceless manuscript volumes were confiscated and burned, reportedly fueling the ovens of Acre’s bakeries for days. This campaign severely crippled formal higher education in the region, forcing learning back into smaller, hidden, and highly localized kuttabs (elementary Quranic schools).
The late 19th century brought a dramatic pivot with the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms and the 1869 Law of Public Education, which introduced state-run primary and secondary schools (Rüşdiye). The Shiite community initially resisted sending their children to the new state schools, fearing imperial assimilation or forced alignment with Sunni state doctrines. They stuck to traditional kuttabs, which focused primarily on basic literacy and Quranic recitation. Realizing that total isolation would leave the community economically and politically disadvantaged, the Amili ulema adapted. Under Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876–1909), and with the blessing of regional governors, local scholars founded new, modernized madrasas (such as the school of Sheikh Ahmad Arif al-Zayn). These late Ottoman institutions brilliantly bridged the past and the future. They retained rigorous training in Twelver Shiite jurisprudence and classical Arabic literature, but newly integrated modern sciences, geography, and European languages.
By the dawn of the 20th century, this educational revival laid the groundwork for a new generation of politically conscious, highly educated Shiite intellectuals who would help shape modern Lebanon. The legacy of Sheikh Ahmad Arif al-Zayn and his groundbreaking journal, Al-Irfan, represents the absolute peak of late Ottoman educational and cultural reform for the Shiite community in Lebanon.
Launched in Beirut in February 1909, just months after the Young Turk Revolution restored the Ottoman constitution, Al-Irfan began as a monthly encyclopedic magazine. It quickly evolved from a local publication into a highly influential transnational intellectual bridge, connecting the Shiite intelligentsia of Jabal Amil with counterparts across Iraq (particularly Najaf and Karbala), Iran, and the broader Arab world.
Sheikh Ahmad Arif al-Zayn (1883–1960) was a distinctive Sidon-born intellectual. Educated in traditional religious circles yet shaped by the mainstream Nahda (Arab Enlightenment), he noted that Ottoman-era Shiite isolation led to political and economic marginalization. Al-Zayn rejected isolation as a strategy. He instead argued that advancement required a dual-track educational renewal: upholding Ja’fari identity while embracing modern science and literature.
In the early 1900s, few modern schools served Shiites in Southern Lebanon. Al-Irfan filled the gap as a substitute institution. Al-Zayn used the magazine to inform rural readers about global technology and education. The journal published translated articles on inventions, medicine, and industry. In 1913, it analyzed Japan’s education system to highlight how non-Western nations could modernize without losing their culture.
Ottoman curricula long ignored Shiite history. Al-Irfan countered with a section on Shiite Affairs, published poetry, recovered manuscripts, and provided local scholars with a platform for debates in Islamic philosophy.
Remarkably progressive for its era, the journal routinely advocated expanding public education for girls. Al-Zayn published essays on the emancipation and civic education of women, arguing that a society could not achieve true intellectual awakening if half its workforce and mothers remained illiterate. By shifting its main printing house to Sidon in 1910, Al-Irfan turned Southern Lebanon into an indispensable editorial hub. Nearly 90% of its subscribers were distributed across a vast network spanning Lebanon, the holy cities of Iraq, Bahrain, and Kuwait. It became the primary vehicle for what would eventually be called the “Angry Young Shaykhs”—a generation of Najaf-educated Lebanese scholars who used the magazine’s pages to launch polemics against both traditional, feudal landlords (zu’ama) and rigid religious obscurantism.
Through Al-Irfan, Sheikh Ahmad Arif al-Zayn successfully proved that the Shiite community was not an isolated peripheral group in the twilight of the Ottoman Empire, but an active, vital component of the modern Arab cultural renaissance.
Still, the Ottoman Empire ended its era with a deficiency in public education in Shiite areas and a fading of the prominence of hawzas (religious seminaries) and katatib (Quranic schools). With the declaration of the national state under the French Mandate in 1920, official education expanded, eliciting varying reactions in Shiite regions.
During the French Mandate period (1920–1943), the state of education among the Shiite community in Lebanon was defined by marginalization, institutional underdevelopment, and a heavy reliance on a resilient but localized traditional scholastic system. When Greater Lebanon (Le Grand Liban) was created in 1920, the socioeconomic and educational landscape of the Shiite community in the South (Jabal Amel) and the Bekaa Valley contrasted sharply with the highly institutionalized, missionary-backed education systems enjoyed by Christian—particularly Maronite—and to a lesser extent, Sunni communities in Mount Lebanon and the coastal cities.
Historically, the Shiite community possessed a deep-rooted tradition of Islamic scholarship, centered primarily in the towns of Jabal Amel (such as Nabatiyeh, Jezzine, and Bint Jbeil). However, this was an elite religious system rather than a broad, public educational framework: Higher education was almost exclusively religious, preserved through traditional madrasas or hawzas where ulama taught Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). The Kuttab: For the broader public, basic literacy and numeracy were restricted to village kuttabs (traditional Quranic schools). Because the Shiite regions were largely rural and peripheral under Ottoman rule, they completely lacked modern secondary schools, professional vocational centers, or secular public infrastructure.
When the French Mandate authorities took control, they did not prioritize public state education. Instead, they largely outsourced the educational sector to private, religious, and foreign missionary bodies—a policy that heavily favored communities with existing networks: The French administration heavily subsidized and supported Catholic missionary schools (such as the Jesuits and the Lazarists). This created a robust, modern educational network for the Christian population. The Mandate authorities allocated very little funding to public state schools in rural areas. Since the Shiite community lacked foreign patrons (unlike the Christians with France, or the Sunnis with connections to the wider Arab-Ottoman educational elite), their regions remained structurally neglected. The Mandate established French as a primary language of administration, higher education, and the civil service exam (Baccalauréat). Because Shiite schools focused strictly on Arabic and religious studies, the lack of French literacy systematically barred the community from social mobility and government employment.
Faced with state neglect, Shiite reformist intellectuals and religious leaders recognized that modernizing education was the only path to political and social emancipation. The late 1920s and 1930s saw the birth of indigenous educational societies:The Amiliyya Benevolent Society (Al-Jam’iyya al-Khayriyya al-Amiliyya). Founded in Beirut in the early 1930s (and later expanded), this society established the prestigious Amiliyya school. It combined a modern, secular curriculum (including sciences and languages) with Islamic values, serving as a critical hub for urbanized Shiites. The Jaafariyya School in Tire: Established by Imam Sharaf al-Din in 1938, it became a foundational pillar of modern secondary education in South Lebanon. It sought to provide marginalized youth with the tools to pass the official French exams while preserving their cultural identity.
Prominent scholars like Sayyid Muhsin al-Amin actively advocated reforming traditional teaching methods and integrating modern sciences into the community’s educational curriculum.
By the time Lebanon achieved independence in 1943, the educational gap between the Shiite community and other confessions remained vast, but the seeds of transformation had been planted. While the majority of rural Shiites still faced high rates of illiteracy and lacked access to state secondary schools, a newly emerging, educated urban Shiite middle class was forming in Beirut and Tire. This small but vocal educated group would lay the groundwork for the community’s rapid political mobilization and social demands in the mid-to-late 20th century.
Private schools were opened through individual initiatives after some failures, while the schools of the Amiliyeh Islamic Benevolent Association—founded in 1923—succeeded in providing education through the lens of modernization and in integrating Shiites into the issues of their society, a mission that continues to this day.
Following the declaration of national independence from the French Mandate, the general education curricula in Lebanon in 1946 presented religious education as a religious culture devoid of ideological indoctrination. This experience lasted until 1973. Since then, the state in Lebanon has remained unable to organize religious education in schools across various sects, including the Shiites.
While the historical legacy of Jabal Amil is closely associated with towering religious scholars and jurists, Lebanon has also produced a remarkably rich and diverse tradition of secular, Marxist, liberal, and cultural Shiite intellectuals.
Historically, particularly from the mid-20th century through the Lebanese Civil War, a vast portion of the Shiite intelligentsia was deeply integrated into secular leftist politics (like the Lebanese Communist Party) and avant-garde cultural movements.
Among the most influential non-religious, prominent Shiite intellectuals, writers, and cultural figures in modern Lebanese history are Hussein Mroué (1910–1987), perhaps the ultimate symbol of the “turban-to-Marxism” transformation. Born into a religious family in South Lebanon, he studied at the Islamic seminaries in Najaf. He later underwent a profound intellectual shift, becoming a leading Marxist thinker, literary critic, and member of the Lebanese Communist Party. His magnum opus, Materialist Tendencies in Arab-Islamic Philosophy, reinterpreted Islamic history through a historical-materialist lens. He was assassinated during the civil war due to his secular stance. Mahdi Amel (Born Hassan Abdullah Hamdan, 1936–1987) was a brilliant Marxist philosopher, cultural critic, and professor at the Lebanese University. He is widely considered the “Gramsci of the Arab World.” Amel dedicated his work to analyzing colonialism, sectarianism, and the nature of the Arab bourgeoisie, arguing that sectarianism is a tool used by the ruling class to prevent true class consciousness. Like Mroué, his secular brilliance made him a target, and he was assassinated in Beirut in 1987. Jawad Saida (1915–1999) was a prominent intellectual, writer, and journalist who contributed significantly to Beirut’s secular cultural landscape in the mid-century. He was known for his sharp critiques of traditionalism and his efforts to promote progressive socio-political thought.
Equally, with the emergence of influential external factors in the region—culminating in the Islamists seizing power in Iran and the export of the “Islamic Revolution”,the Shiites were mobilized and detached from their national society with a religious background in order to attach them to the expansionist project and influence of the Wilayat al-Faqih in Iran. Consequently, problematic issues regarding the relationship with the national state and its social roles resurfaced, particularly in upbringing and education, the direction of loyalty for the educated, elements of their citizenship culture, and the functional role projected onto the school in creating loyalists with the emergence of Hizbullah in 1982.
Amidst the winds of political Islam in the region, prominent Shiite religious figures launched religious hawzas (religious schools) and schools that returned religious education to a stage of creedal mobilization and the projection of cultural identity at the expense of national identity.
After returning from Iran in the late 1950s, the Iranian-Lebanese cleric Sayyid Musa al-Sadr, who is behind the Shiite political renaissance in Lebanon, founded the Institute of Islamic Studies in 1967. This was followed by the establishment of hawzas in the 1970s, such as the Islamic Sharia Institute, founded by Sayyid Nasim Atwi, and the Imam Mahdi school, founded by Sayyid Hassan al-Shirazi. Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, upon returning from Iraq, founded the Islamic Sharia Institute, which graduated many individuals who played roles in the Shiite movement, including Sheikh Ragheb Harb and Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah.
However, as the secular state schools collapsed, the ideological vacuum was filled by a new force. Imam Musa al-Sadr, had spent the years leading up to the war building an alternative framework. Al-Sadr realized that the secular Left was consuming the youth without offering them communal protection. He began creating institutions that merged modern technical education with a distinct Shiite identity. Established by al-Sadr in Tire, the Burj al-Shimali vocational school became a foundational hub. It provided technical skills to marginalized youth while instilling a pride in their specific sectarian identity, reframing the “deprived” (al-Mahrumin) not as a Marxist proletariat, but as a historical Shiite collective.
When the war began, the graduates of these technical institutions and the youth who felt abandoned by the secular Left’s strategic failures (especially after the Left aligned tightly with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, drawing Israeli retaliation onto southern villages) shifted their allegiance. They moved away from the universalist slogans of Marxism toward the defensive, Shiite identity-driven banner. A profound transformation had occurred, characterized by a massive push toward secular public education and political radicalization. Under the presidency of Fuad Chehab (1958–1964), the Lebanese state attempted a massive modernization project (Chehabism). For the first time, the state built a network of public schools (Madaris Rasmiyya) in the rural periphery, particularly in the South. For young Shiites, the public school became the ultimate vehicle for social mobility. It allowed them to break free from the feudal economic dominance of traditional Shiite landowning families (the Zu’ama, such as the As’ad, Hamadeh, and Osseiran clans). This educational boom culminated at the Lebanese University (LU) in Beirut, the country’s only public university. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the LU was flooded with first-generation rural Shiite students.
Instead of turning toward religious politics, this educated youth embraced universalist, secular ideologies. The curricula of public schools and universities were strictly French-modeled, civil, and modern. The student movement was dominated by the Lebanese Communist Party, the Organization of Communist Action, and various Ba’athist and Arab Nationalist factions. Teachers in rural public schools became the primary ideological recruiters. Figures like Hussein Mroué and Mahdi Amel were highly visible symbols, but thousands of unnamed public school teachers shaped a generation to view their socioeconomic deprivation not as a religious tragedy but as a class struggle. This era produced a unique hybridity: brilliant students from traditional religious backgrounds (often the sons of clerics) using their classical Arabic training to write Marxist treatises, secular poetry, and avant-garde literature in Beirut’s thriving press, such as Le Jour and Al-Nahar.
The outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 fractured this secular educational trajectory, replacing structural learning with the chaos of militias, displacement, and existential survival. The civil war physically dismantled the educational infrastructure that had built the Shiite intelligentsia. The Lebanese University and public high schools were physically split along sectarian lines or converted into barracks and shelters. The Israeli invasions of 1978 and 1982, combined with the brutal inter-Lebanese fighting in Beirut (such as the “War of the Hotels” and the structural collapse of the state), forced hundreds of thousands of Shiites out of the capital and back to the South or into the impoverished “Belt of Misery” (slums like Ouzai, Burj al-Barajneh, and Haret Hreik) in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Education became secondary to physical survival.
In 1979, the Imam al-Muntazar’s Hawza for Islamic Studies was established in Baalbek by Sayyid Abbas al-Musawi, who later became Hizbullah’s secretary general, and was succeeded after his elimination by Israel by Hassan Nasrallah. It received direct support from Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr in Iraq, as well as from Musa al-Sadr and Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. The Iranian ambassador in Damascus and the cultural attaché attended the foundation-stone-laying ceremony. The presenter of the ceremony, Sheikh Hassan Shahine, explained that the Islamic Republic of Iran had contributed $35,000 U.S. dollars and 10,000 Syrian liras toward the construction of the hawza.
Religious hawzas and institutes—including ones for women—proliferated in the South, Beqaa, and Beirut. In 1985, the Imam al-Sadiq Institute (women’s hawza) was established in Tire by Sayyid Muhammad al-Gharawi. In 2007, the Al-Mustafa International University for Islamic Sciences was established under the supervision of the then-Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
Private schools continued to open; in the South and Beqaa, 123 schools were counted. Through education and forms of creedal upbringing, they sought the dominance of the Shiite sectarian identity. This was accompanied by higher population density, particularly in Beirut’s Southern Suburbs, where enrollment in private partisan schools increased relative to that in official schools. By the early 1980s, associations and parties began opening schools and training teachers.
By the turn of the decade, two seismic events completely rerouted the community’s educational and cultural destiny: the fall of the Shah (1979) provided a model of successful Islamic governance. It offered an alternative to Marxism, one that felt indigenous rather than imported from the West or Moscow. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 shattered what remained of the traditional sociopolitical order. The secular Left was largely paralyzed or pushed underground.
When the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) arrived in the Beqaa Valley in 1982 to exploit this vacuum, they did not find a blank slate. They found a generation of displaced youth whose public schools were ruined, whose secular leftist dreams had collapsed in blood, and who were primed for a highly disciplined, heavily funded, and spiritually redemptive educational doctrine. This became the birthplace of Hizbullah.
The first school affiliated with “Al-Mustafa Schools” was established in 1974 under the supervision of the Islamic Religious Education Association, which later joined Hizbullah. Teachers followed training courses outside the official educational institutions of the Lebanese Ministry of Education. This meant these schools had different programs and educational outcomes than those in general education curricula.
Iran (And Hizbullah) Enter the Lebanese Educational System
In 1984, the Islamic Republic of Iran donated to build the Al-Murtadha school in Buday. Sheikh Muhammad Yazbek considered the school “one of the advanced sites of Jihad”. Throughout the 1980s, Iranian funding flowed alongside slogans and influence in support of “Hizbullah’s students” through the “Educational Mobilization”. In 1987, 198 schools benefited from aid in West Beirut and the Suburbs.
This massive funding was accompanied by escalating, provocative, and extremist discourse aimed at the Lebanese political system. Subhi al-Tufayli, former Secretary-General of Hizbullah, considered the system responsible for the tragedies of Muslims and that no one should reconcile with it. He emphasized that the “Islamic condition” would not be defeated and its children would not be deterred from their “Jihad for the sake of achieving their legitimate goals”.
Accordingly, since its inception, Hizbullah has been preparing the ground for a coup against the state and its roles, particularly in education, through the establishment of mobilization schools. By the time a student graduates, he is supposed to have adopted the technical skills to participate in a modern economy, but his moral and political compass is calibrated toward the strategic interests of Hizbullah and its patrons in Tehran.
Indeed, with the emergence of Hizbullah, general trends in religious education among the Shiites of Lebanon shifted from private initiatives and national discourse to a political mobilization project funded by Iran. Hassan Nasrallah (Former Secretary-General) frequently highlighted the strategic expansion of Hizbullah’s private school networks (such as the Al-Mahdi and Al-Mustafa schools) as an extension of the group’s core military and ideological mission: “We will continue expanding and developing these schools horizontally, vertically, and geographically, as they are deeply tied to our faith and jihadist mission.” (Address during an anniversary celebration of the Al-Mahdi Schools) . Nasrallah also framed the role of educators and religious leaders as a vanguard responsible for shaping public perception: “The elite are the men of religion, political leaders, media and press people, and teachers. Everyone can understand the truth and know what is right. These have the responsibility of showing this right and truth to the people.”
Sheikh Naim Qassem, today Hizbullah’s Secretary General, succeeding Hassan Nasrallah, is one of the founders of the Al-Mustafa school network (which caters primarily to the Shiite middle class and families of senior cadre). He has frequently written and spoken on the intersection of faith, knowledge, and warfare. According to Qassem, the educational objective is to “create an identity linking knowledge, jihad, education, and faith in service of the resistance, the homeland, and the nation, as preparation for the Imam Mahdi state.”
Education became a project of uprooting Lebanese Shiites from the causes of their society and nation. Shiite education, which previously intersected with the official Lebanese curriculum through private schools, was overturned.
The Education Recruitment is Hizbullah’s main organization responsible for the Lebanese education systems (state and private, separate from Hizbullah’s education system). The organization was established in 1985 as the “Student Recruitment.” It was preceded by the “Lebanese Association of Muslim Students,” which Hizbullah adopted in its entirety upon its establishment, adapting the existing organizational structure to its needs and objectives.
Schools of the Islamic Foundation for Education and the Islamic Religious Education Association (affiliated with Hizbullah) began to assume responsibility for organizing the preparation process and designing programs parallel to the public sector. Their role cannot be portrayed as similar to that of other private schools; they operate under directives limited to creedal content and detachment from national identity. Values and occasions are adapted to serve limited partisan projects and promote ideas from outside the Lebanese national context. By presenting religious figures like Khomeini or Khamenei as role models, upbringing becomes a functional tool for a political and partisan agenda. Thus, education under Hizbullah serves as a project of creedal mobilization to create loyalists.
The educational apparatus of Hizbullah is not merely a social service provider; it is the “soft power” engine of what the group calls the “Resistance Society” (mujtama’ al-muqawama). While the world focuses on its missiles and military maneuvers, Hizbullah’s most enduring infrastructure is its network of schools and youth organizations, specifically the Al-Mahdi and Al-Mustafa schools and the Imam al-Mahdi Scouts. Hizbullah manages a sophisticated, multi-tiered educational system that essentially functions as a “state within a state.” By 2026, estimates suggest Hizbullah oversees at least 22 direct schools serving more than 47,000 students, though the broader network of affiliated and “associated” institutions is much larger.
Hizbullah “Al-Mustafa” network
Hizbullah’s “Al-Mustafa” network includes six schools that incorporate high-dose Shiite religious studies into their curricula. The Al-Mustafa Schools (the Elite network): These schools target the rising Shiite middle and upper-middle class, as well as the children of senior party officials. The Al-Mustafa schools aim to produce the next generation of the “Resistance elite”—the doctors, engineers, and diplomats who will represent the party’s interests in professional sectors. Directed by the Islamic Religious Education Association and closely associated with Hizbullah’s leadership (such as Sheikh Naim Qassem), Al-Mustafa schools offer higher standards of academic facilities. They aim to compete with Lebanon’s traditional Francophone and missionary schools, offering an “Islamic alternative” that doesn’t sacrifice academic prestige for ideological purity. Managed by the Islamic Religious Education Association, these schools are overseen by top party leaders like Sheikh Naim Qassem. While still highly ideological, they maintain a more rigorous academic reputation, especially in sciences and foreign languages (English and French), to compete with Lebanon’s prestigious private and missionary schools.
The “Al-Mahdi” network, which operates within the Education Unit under Hizbullah’s Executive Council, was founded in 1993. The network comprises at least 17 schools (from elementary through high school) and is spread across Lebanon.
Having said that, it is obvious that the educational and youth-indoctrination systems of Hizbullah, jihadist organizations, and totalitarian regimes share a core strategic goal: the total mobilization of the next generation to ensure ideological continuity and military readiness. However, they differ significantly in their theological foundations and their ultimate vision of the state.
Regardless of whether the ideology is secular or religious, these systems share several structural pillars:
- Ideological Monopolism: Education is not a tool for critical thinking but for “molding” the individual. There is one absolute truth, and all competing narratives are suppressed.
- The “Cult of the Martyr/Hero”: Youth are taught that the highest achievement is self-sacrifice for the cause.
- Militarization of Childhood: Organizations like the Imam al-Mahdi Scouts (Hizbullah) use uniforms, drills, and paramilitary training to bridge the gap between school and the battlefield.
- Dehumanization of the “Other”: Education systems in these regimes identify a clear internal and external enemy—whether it is the “Jew”, the “Bourgeoisie”, or the “Infidel/Zionist” in jihadist ideologies—to foster group cohesion through shared hatred.
These institutions are designed to transform the Shiite community into a disciplined, ideologically uniform base, ensuring that the party’s survival is anchored in the minds of the next generation. Hizbullah views education not merely as a social service or an academic pursuit, but as a primary pillar of societal engineering and the building of what they term a “resistance society” (mujtama’ al-muqawama).
Hizbullah’s formal education system is bifurcated to reach different socio-economic strata of the Lebanese Shiite population, ensuring ideological coverage from the poor to the elite. The curriculum in Hizbullah-affiliated schools, particularly the Al-Mahdi and Al-Mustafa networks, is a hybrid system. It fulfills the legal requirements of the Lebanese state while weaving in a comprehensive “parallel curriculum” designed for ideological and religious indoctrination.
Historically, Hizbullah-affiliated schools, such as the Al-Mustafa and Al-Mahdi networks, marketed themselves as affordable, heavily subsidized alternatives to Lebanon’s premium, highly expensive secular or Christian private schools. They were designed to cater to lower- and middle-class families within the Shiite community.
However, Lebanon’s severe financial collapse forced these networks to completely alter their fee structures. To cover operational costs, pay teachers, and maintain facilities, the administration instituted “fresh dollar” requirements alongside Lebanese Pound components, sparking pushback from local families.
While elementary tuition in community private schools typically ranges from $2,000 to $3,500 USD, advanced secondary tracks and specialized programs can reach closer to $5,000 to $6,000 USD.
The Mandatory Lebanese State Curriculum
To ensure their students are socially and professionally mobile, these schools teach the standard subjects required for the Lebanese Brevet and Baccalaureate exams:
- Sciences & Math: Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Mathematics.
- Languages: Arabic is prioritized, but English and French are taught to high standards, especially in the Al-Mustafa schools, to compete with elite secular institutions.
- Humanities: Standard Geography and official Lebanese History (though often supplemented with the party’s interpretations).
- The Religious & Ideological “Parallel Curriculum”: This is where the “Resistance Society” is built. These subjects are often taught during dedicated religious instruction hours or integrated into other lessons. While these schools follow the official Lebanese state curriculum to ensure students can pass national exams, they overlay it with a heavy “Jihadist educational” program.
A core pillar of the curriculum is the absolute theological and political authority of the Iranian Supreme Leader (Ali Khamenei). Students are taught that Wilayat al-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) represents their primary loyalty belongs to this transnational religious leadership rather than the Lebanese state. Students are taught absolute religious and political allegiance to the Iranian Supreme Leader. This effectively shifts the primary identity of the child from a Lebanese citizen to a member of a global revolutionary Shiite vanguard.
Textbooks and classroom activities often glorify “martyrdom” (shahada). Concepts of self-sacrifice and the “culture of resistance” are normalized, making the transition from student to soldier a natural progression. History and religious studies are curated to foster a deep-seated hostility toward Israel and Western “imperialism,” often using inflammatory language that transcends political critique and enters the realm of systemic dehumanization. Textbooks and classroom materials glorify Shahada (martyrdom). Children are taught that sacrificing one’s life for the “resistance” is the highest moral achievement. The curriculum emphasizes the lives and “miracles” of the twelve Imams, alongside the hagiographies of modern figures like Ruhollah Khomeini, Ali Khamenei, and Hassan Nasrallah.
The traditional Lebanese national anthem often takes a backseat to ideological hymns in Hizbullah-affiliated schools, replaced by “Salam Ya Mahdi” (Peace be upon you, O Mahdi): This song, originally an Iranian anthem titled Salam Farmandeh (Salute, Commander), was translated into Arabic and popularized in Lebanon around 2022. It is not just a religious hymn; it is an oath of allegiance. It is sung at the beginning of each school day and in all events run by Hizbullah. By prioritizing these chants, the schools cultivate a “transnational” identity. The child learns that their primary duty is to a global Shiite revolutionary cause led by Iran, rather than to the multi-confessional Lebanese Republic.
In many Al-Mahdi and Al-Mustafa schools, mass rallies featuring thousands of children pledging loyalty to the “awaited savior” (and by extension, the leadership of the Wilayat al-Faqih in Tehran) have effectively replaced the nationalistic fervor usually reserved for the Lebanese state. It is common to see that most of the newly born children from parents who went through Hizbullah’s educational system call their children “shahid” (martyr), and when asked about their future, the response would be “Shahid!”
If the schools are the intellectual incubator, the Imam al-Mahdi Scouts (founded in 1985) are the physical and social training ground. With an estimated 100,000 members, it is one of Lebanon’s largest youth movements. Unlike mainstream scouting that focuses on civic duty and nature, the Mahdi Scouts integrate paramilitary training. Children as young as eight are organized into “tribes” and wear uniforms that mimic military fatigues. The scouts act as a vetting mechanism. Outstanding members are “marked” and transitioned into direct military recruitment tracks at age 16 or 17. By the time a young man enters Hizbullah’s military ranks, he has already undergone years of ideological conditioning, physical discipline, and loyalty oaths.
Beyond these two formal networks, Hizbullah’s “Education Unit” manages the Imam al-Mahdi Scouts, serving as the physical training and recruitment pipeline. It also runs dozens of technical schools that train youths in trade skills while maintaining a partisan environment and religious Hawzas (Independent seminaries for higher religious studies), bypassing traditional Shiite authorities in Najaf in favor of the Iranian school of thought. Hizbullah’s Scouts Network. Founded in 1985. There are thousands of scouts in dozens of tribes throughout Lebanon. The network’s activities also expanded into Syria after Hizbullah’s involvement in the radical Shiite axis led by Iran. The scouts range in age from eight to high school. As part of the training, especially in their teens, the trainees receive religious lessons. After the age of 16-17, many trainees join the organization’s military activities directly. The indoctrination of militancy can be seen in the scouts around the military parades they often carry out in public, and even through meetings with Hizbullah combatants. The Scout network is actually a recruitment platform for Hizbullah’s military units. The unit commanders locate prominent trainees, “mark” them, and recruit them for military activity.
In total, Hizbullah’s educational system ensures that from the age of five until university, a child can remain entirely within a “Hizbullah ecosystem,” insulated from any competing national or secular Lebanese narratives.
The school environment serves as a constant reinforcing loop for the party’s worldview:
- The “Mahdi” Magazine: Distributed in schools, this publication uses comics, puzzles, and stories to normalize themes of armed struggle and resistance to young children (ages 4–17).
- Militarized Play: Physical education and extracurricular activities often mimic military training. It is common to see mock “operations” where students in uniform “liberate” sites or perform military-style parades.
- Sectarian Identity & Global View: The curriculum fosters a specific Shiite identity that views the world through the lens of the “oppressed” (mustad’afin) versus the “arrogant” (mustakbirin), specifically targeting the United States and Israel as the ultimate sources of evil.
Hizbullah Sports Organizations – “Sports Recruitment:”
Hizbullah sees sports as a framework for educating the younger generation about its important values. Since Hizbullah’s main activity is military-jihadist, it is important to have a dedicated sports body to attract youth. Hizbullah benefits and profits from investing in sports on several levels. First and foremost, it is an important tool for indoctrination, spreading messages, and assimilating values in accordance with Hizbullah’s desires. Second, the investment in certain types of sports (martial arts, running, rope rappelling, shooting) embeds an element of preparation for military activity. In addition, sports are a source of income.
Hizbullah’s use of sports events for indoctrination, dissemination of messages, and assimilation of its desired values among the public. Hizbullah has created parts of its sporting events to provide the public with an opportunity to meet with “real” military activists, not just hear and see their hero stories on Facebook or in video clips on Al-Manar.
The “History Gap” and Sectarian Narratives
The issue about history teachings in schools stopping at 1943 (Independence) is a documented reality of the Lebanese educational crisis. Because Lebanon’s various sects (Maronites, Sunnis, Shiites, Druze, etc.) cannot agree on a single narrative regarding the 1975–1990 Civil War, the official state history curriculum largely ends at independence. In the absence of a unified national textbook for the modern era, Hizbullah’s schools teach a specific “Resistance History.” Hizbullah’s version focuses on the 1982 Israeli invasion, the 2000 withdrawal, and the 2006 war as the only relevant historical milestones. It frames the “Resistance” as the sole protector of Lebanon, often downplaying or omitting the roles of other Lebanese factions or the state army. As a result, a student in a Hizbullah school and a student in a Christian Maronite school will grow up with two entirely different “realities” regarding who started the civil war, who protected the country, and who the “real” Lebanese heroes are.
While the schools technically follow the Lebanese state’s requirements for science and math (to ensure students can pass the official Brevet and Baccalaureate exams), the humanities and ethics portions are heavily influenced by Tehran. The Islamic Foundation for Education and Teaching (which runs the Al-Mahdi schools) coordinates closely with Iranian educational experts. Education is framed as Tarbiyah (upbringing/nurturing) rather than just Ta’lim (teaching). This means every lesson, from biology to literature, is infused with the values of the Iranian Revolution, emphasizing struggle, self-sacrifice, and the rejection of Western “cultural imperialism.” By controlling these two pillars—History and National Symbolism—Hizbullah ensures that the next generation sees the party not just as a political choice, but as their very identity, separate from and often superior to the Lebanese state.
No doubt that the goal of this educational network is societal engineering. By controlling the environment where a child learns, plays, and socializes, Hizbullah creates a “cradle-to-grave” ecosystem. This prevents the permeation of liberal or secular ideas that might challenge the party’s authority. In the context of Lebanon’s fragile state, where the central government often fails to provide adequate public services, Hizbullah’s schools appear to many as a blessing. However, this “charity” comes at a steep price: the systematic politicization of childhood and the transformation of the classroom into a recruitment office for a regional ideological project. For Hizbullah, the most potent weapon in their arsenal is not the rocket, but the curriculum.
Hizbullah’s education portfolio is a critical pillar of its “Executive Council” (Al-Majlis al-Tanfizi), which oversees the group’s civil and social infrastructure. Following the major leadership shifts in late 2024, Sheikh Naim Qassem (Secretary-General) remains the ultimate ideological architect. He has a long history with the educational sector, specifically as the head of the Islamic Religious Education Association, which manages the elite Al-Mustafa Schools. His background as a chemistry teacher and his published books on Hizbullah’s ideology make him the primary authority on the “pedagogy of resistance.”
Three other officials share responsibilities of the educational system: As of early 2026, Mohammad Fneish (Head of the Executive Council) has reportedly been appointed to lead the Executive Council. In this role, he oversees the entire administrative “state within a state,” including health, social welfare, and education. He is tasked with restructuring these units following the conflicts of 2024-2025. Youssef Abbas, responsible for the day-to-day management of the Education Unit (Al-Ta’bi’a al-Tarbawiya), has long been identified as the point of contact for coordinating with the Lebanese Ministry of Education while ensuring that the “parallel curriculum” of Wilayat al-Faqih is integrated into schools. Finally, Dr. Hussein Sharafeddine, the General Director of the Islamic Foundation for Education and Teaching, specifically manages the Al-Mahdi Schools.
While Lebanese officials handle logistics, the Cultural Attaché of the Iranian Embassy in Beirut plays a silent yet pivotal role. His office ensures that the curriculum remains aligned with the Iranian revolutionary model and coordinates funding for the “Salam Ya Mahdi” style cultural projects that define the youth experience in these schools. Iranian soft-power influence efforts in Lebanon are ongoing and continuous, including in cultural and educational spheres. Hizbullah specifically focuses on Wilayat al-Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist), emphasizing absolute obedience to a religious leader (the Marja’). Hizbullah operates as a “state within a state.” It runs a private network of schools (the Al-Mahdi and Al-Mustafa schools) that operate alongside the official Lebanese curriculum, often supplementing it with religious and “resistance” modules.
Hizbullah’s system is unique in its longevity and social depth. Unlike the Taliban, which often destroys existing infrastructure, Hizbullah builds a parallel society. Their youth movements are integrated into a welfare system (hospitals, micro-loans, agriculture), making the education system not just a school, but an entry point into a lifelong socio-economic ecosystem.
In contrast, groups like ISIS or the Taliban often utilize “instant indoctrination”—rapidly radicalizing youth for immediate combat—whereas Hizbullah focuses on a “long-game” generational shift.
Financing of Hizbullah’s Educational Institutions
Hizbullah’s extensive civilian infrastructure—which includes networks of schools, hospitals, and social welfare programs—is financed through a decentralized, multi-layered economic model. The core funding sources include:
- State Aid from Iran: Western intelligence and security analysts indicate that a foundational pillar of Hizbullah’s budget is direct financial and material assistance from the Iranian government.
- The Diaspora and Business Intermediaries: The group relies heavily on voluntary donations, religious taxes, and mandatory collections from wealthy Shiite businessmen and commercial networks within the Lebanese diaspora, particularly in West Africa and the Tri-Border Area of South America.
- Commercial Investments: Hizbullah manages its own domestic and international investment portfolios, real estate ventures, and front companies to generate legitimate revenue.
- Informal Financial Infrastructure: The group uses informal banking systems, such as the Al-Qard Al-Hassan association (a micro-credit institution that effectively serves as its internal bank) and hawala networks, to move and park funds outside the traditional global banking system.
- Illicit Revenue Streams: Transnational smuggling, money laundering networks, and trade-based illicit enterprises generate substantial cash flow, part of which is funneled directly back into the civil budget to maintain public loyalty.
Hizbullah’s School System
Hizbullah’s schools are not standard charitable institutions providing social welfare. Rather, they act as an ideological incubator, systematically cultivating the next generation of loyal political supporters and frontline fighters to ensure the group’s long-term institutional survival.
To understand why Hizbullah’s school system is so effective, one has to view it not as a charity providing community services, but as a highly strategic, long-term investment in institutional survival.
When political analysts look at Hizbullah, they often focus on its rockets, its fighters, or its seats in the Lebanese parliament. But the key takeaway is that the classroom is actually the group’s most critical long-term asset, intrinsically linked to its survival.
While a traditional militant group relies on temporary political grievances or financial incentives to recruit adults, Hizbullah plays a much longer game. By taking control of a child’s world from age five through the Al-Mahdi Schools, the Al-Mahdi Scouts, and child-targeted media, Hizbullah performs what sociologists call “societal engineering.” Hizbullah reshapes the entire cultural fabric of the Shiite community. When a child grows up breathing, reading, and learning a specific worldview, supporting the “Resistance” stops being a political choice; it becomes their baseline reality and identity.
The educational system accomplishes what researchers call the “militarization of the imagination.” Standard schools try to shield children from political violence; Hizbullah’s schools actively normalize it. Historical battles are taught not just as history, but as an ongoing duty. Dead fighters are celebrated as heroes and “martyrs” on school walls, making self-sacrifice look like the highest possible achievement.
By the time a teenager is old enough to be recruited into the armed wing, they don’t see themselves joining a militant group; they see it as the natural, honorable graduation from their childhood.
Lebanon’s public infrastructure has historically been weak and fragmented. By stepping into the vacuum and providing high-quality, reliable private education—often subsidized by Iranian funds—Hizbullah binds families to the organization through deep gratitude and necessity. If a parent relies on Hizbullah to educate their children, provide medical care, and offer a career path, their loyalty to the group becomes ironclad.
Finally, rockets can be intercepted, and political alliances can shift, but an entire generation raised from kindergarten to believe in a specific ideology is incredibly difficult to dismantle. The educational system ensures that even if Hizbullah suffers massive military setbacks, it has a continuous, self-replenishing pipeline of dedicated fighters and loyal citizens waiting to step up.
