Hezbollah (Iran)

'Party of God') is an Iranian movement formed at the time of the Iranian Revolution to assist the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his forces in consolidating power, initially by attacking demonstrations and offices of newspapers that were critical of Khomeini.

[1] Hezbollahi are said to "generally act without meaningful police restraint or fear of persecution,"[2] despite breaking the law by assaulting people and destroying property.

They are said to have "played an important role on the street at crucial moments in the early days of the revolution by confronting those the regime regarded as counter-revolutionaries.

"[3] Once political challenges to the regime had died down, Hezbollah attacks expanded to include a wide variety of activities found to be undesirable for "moral" or "cultural" reasons,[1] such as poor hijab, mixing of the sexes and consumption of alcohol.

[4] According to scholar Moojan Momen, the association between toughs and clerics became common during the era of weak government of the Qajar period, when "it became normal for the prominent" members of the ulama in any town "to surround themselves with a band of the town's ruffians, known as lutis, to their mutual benefit".

[Quran 5:56][8](italics added) ... and Ruhollah was the first name of the Islamic Revolution's leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini In the early days of the Revolution, Khomeinists — those in the Islamic Republican Party — denied connection to Hezbollah, and maintaining its attacks were the spontaneous will of the people over which the government had no control.

The Hezbollahi does not use eau de cologne, wear a tie or smoke American cigarettes.

[9] Hezbollah was instrumental in the Islamic Cultural Revolution against secularists and modernists at Iran's universities.