The public funeral ceremonies for Hasan Nasrallah, former leader of Hezbollah, are fraught with political and symbolic tensions. Sunday could mark a turning point for Lebanon and the entire Middle East, raising profound questions related to political theology
Ultimo aggiornamento: 16/12/2025 09:14:47
Nasrallah’s funeral, scheduled for Sunday, February 23, at the Beirut Sports City Stadium, promises to be a highly charged event. More than 80,000 people from 79 countries are expected to attend the ceremony, which will be concluded by the transfer of the former Hezbollah Secretary General’s body to a mausoleum under construction near the airport. His successor, Hicham Safieddine—killed on the night between October 3 and 4—will also be honored, though he will be buried in his hometown in southern Lebanon.
The risk of incidents is real. This public event—intended as a display of strength by the “Resistance”—comes despite Nasrallah having already been buried privately immediately after his assassination on September 27, 2024. Beyond the immense logistical challenge, the greatest danger is the possibility of uncontrolled gunfire triggering panic in the crowd. However, Hezbollah’s new Secretary-General, Naim Kassem, has assured that party members will maintain the level of discipline for which they are known.
An Israeli presence is also likely, at least in the form of drones and surveillance flights—perhaps even breaking the sound barrier, as has happened in recent days over Beirut’s skies; all this without forgetting that Israel has already announced its intention to maintain a presence in five strategic locations in southern Lebanon. In light of these developments, the government has ordered the airport’s closure during the funeral, while, for security reasons, Naim Kassem is expected to deliver his speech remotely from a secret location.
No one can ignore the symbolic weight of Sunday’s events. Beirut will be the stage for a confrontation between two competing visions of the Middle East: one represented by the militias, the “ring of fire” around Israel, and an unwavering commitment to resistance—an ideology embodied by Hasan Nasrallah and which suffered a severe blow in the war that began on October 8, 2023. The other vision is one of institutional rebuilding, which led in Lebanon to the recent election of President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, after more than two years of political deadlock. This passage is particularly delicate: on the one hand, the ceasefire remains fragile, vulnerable to the warmongering impulses of the Israeli government, while, on the other, segments of Hezbollah’s base are still struggling to come to terms with recent events. As Jeanine Jakhl writes for L’Orient-Le Jour, deep divisions have emerged between hardliners—prepared to take up arms against the Lebanese state, as they are currently incapable of attacking “the Zionist entity”—and a more pragmatic wing that recognizes the profound shift in regional dynamics caused by Nasrallah’s assassination and the fall of Assad’s regime in Syria.
This tension has been dramatically evident in the recent clashes following the government’s landing ban on an Iranian plane accused of carrying weapons for Hezbollah. This decision, which led to the indefinite suspension of direct flights between Iran and Lebanon, was perceived as an affront by Hezbollah militants. Many took to the streets near the airport, blocking traffic. In the ensuing riots, a convoy of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was set ablaze, and incendiary rhetoric raised fears of a repeat of the May 2008 clashes, when Hezbollah and Amal militias seized several Sunni-majority neighborhoods in western Beirut and attacked villages in the Druze region of the Chouf.
By Sunday evening, it will be clear whether Nasrallah’s funeral served as an occasion for Hezbollah to begin processing the grief of its defeat or if it marked the start of a new conflict. Whatever the case, two fundamental reflections can be made.
First, in an ironic twist of fate, Nasrallah’s funeral will take place in a sports complex named after Camille Chamoun—the most pro-American president in Lebanese history. In 1958, Chamoun called in the U.S. Marines, giving Maronites the illusion that the Americans, replacing the French, would ensure their “protection” at any cost. That illusion proved false. What Lebanon needs today is neither a revival of Chamoun’s policy—an ever-present temptation for parts of the Maronite and Sunni establishment—nor a continuation of Nasrallah’s line, which has been defeated on the ground. Instead, Lebanon needs to recover the approach of Chamoun’s successor, General Fouad Chehab—the last Lebanese leader to genuinely work towards institutional building. His tenure was marked by a series of reforms, modernization efforts, and infrastructure projects—precisely what Lebanon desperately needs today.
This as far as Beirut is concerned. But Nasrallah’s funeral raises a broader issue, one that extends across the Middle East and beyond: the merging of religion and politics, a principle that Hezbollah—"The Party of God”—has embodied from its very name. “Religion and the State are twin brothers,” Ardashir I, founder of the Sassanian Empire (r. 224–241 AD), is said to have stated—a maxim that has been tirelessly echoed in classical Islamic political thought. As long as political victories (or at least ties that can be sold as victories) reinforce religious authority, the two “twins” sustain each other. But there is also the other side of the coin. A close reading of Nasrallah’s final speech—available on the Oasis website in French translation—reveals that the premises of his strategy, which had proved valid until the outburst of the Gaza war, were upended by Israel’s deployment of new military technologies. There is nothing unusual in this; history is full of instances when an army, by leveraging technological advances ahead of its adversary, secures a decisive victory for itself. One need only recall the final confrontation between the Ottomans and the Mamluks in the Middle East or, closer to our time, France’s fall in June 1940.
Yet the tragedy of Ardashir’s maxim is that a military defeat immediately takes on a theological dimension. If “The Party of God” has been defeated, has God been defeated along with it? This is the core dilemma of political theology. This is the dilemma that Nasrallah’s funeral cannot escape.