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- Volume 4, Issue 3, 2010
International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies - Volume 4, Issue 3, 2010
Volume 4, Issue 3, 2010
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The British, the Sunnis and the Shi'is: Social hierarchies of identity under the British mandate
More LessThis article deals with the beginnings of sectarianism in Iraq. In the course of the eighteenth century, many Shi'i clerics migrated from Iran to the shrine cities of southern Iraq (Karbala', Najaf, Samarra'). By the early nineteenth century the school known as Usulism had become the prevailing orthodoxy of Twelver Shi'ism, and this advocated a significant socio-legal role for the 'ulama at a time when the Qajar monarchy was seeking legitimation for its rule. Accordingly, a partnership developed between the monarchy and the 'ulama, which lasted until the 1880s and 1890s, when the clergy became highly critical of the monarchy's submissive attitude to foreign economic intervention, and joined in a series of protests that culminated in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11. For much of this period Shi'is did not form the majority of the population of Iraq, but their numbers gradually grew, largely as a result of the 'conversion' of what had been nominally Sunni tribes, most probably in protest a against Ottoman policies of sedentarization. The Ottomans became alarmed at this growth in Shi'i numbers, and at the growth in the influence of the clergy, but could do little about either. To facilitate its administration of the provinces, the Ottoman state made alliances with groups of notables on whom it came to rely. In Iraq, these individuals transferred their loyalties almost seamlessly to the British after the collapse of the empire in 1918. The Shi'i (clerical) leadership, on the other hand, called for the complete independence of Iraq, and insisted that the decision over whether Britain should stay in Iraq ought to be handed over to a Constituent Assembly. The British found it almost impossible to work with the Shi'i leadership, and effectively ran Iraq with the help of their Sunni clients. This arrangement continued throughout the mandate and monarchy, although, with the spread of universal education, the Shi'is complained increasingly about the underrepresentation of their sect in the ranks of the bureaucracy and at ministerial level.
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Efforts at cross-ethic cooperation: The 1920 Revolution and sectarian identities in Iraq
By Abbas KadhimThis article revisits the manifestations of amicable Shi'a–Sunni relations in the months leading to, and during the course of, Iraq's 1920 Revolution. During the 1920 Revolution there was cooperation exhibited by some social and religious leaders in both communities. They persuaded their respective constituents to disregard their mutual aversion and focus on the country's national interests. But many among the political and religious elite were not interested in such cooperation. On the one hand there were Sunnis who cooperated with the Shi'a and assumed an active role in the resistance to the British occupation in the Middle Euphrates region, but there were also those who refrained from participating in such activities, either because of their anti-Shi'a mindset or because they supported the British as a matter of social and financial interest, or were motivated by political ambitions, such as the political hopefuls in Baghdad and Basra. This group of 'non-cooperative' Sunnis publicly criticized the revolution and described the participants as short-sighted rebels and agents of foreign powers who allowed themselves to be used against the interests of the Iraqi people. Historically, Shi'a and Sunni members of the Iraqi elite fought over power, privileges and political control, while their constituents intermarried and entered in business partnerships. Similarly, Shi'a landlords maintained good relations and strong trust with Sunni city merchants and Sunni Bedouin camel owners who undertook the transport of the Shi'a farm produce from rural Middle Euphrates to the cities. But during the events that led to the revolution, Sunni and Shi'a leaders made extraordinary concessions towards each other. Sunni notables participated in Shi'a religious services and vice versa. The main aim of this article is to analyse the meaning of these events and their implications for the current and future Iraqi Shi'a–Sunni relations in light of the significant changes of power distribution since 2003.
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The territorial aspect of sectarianism in Iraq
More LessThis article examines the territorial aspect of sectarian relations in Iraq. The main argument is that such a territorial component is largely missing in Iraq and that historically, there have been very few attempts to connect sectarian identity in Iraq to specific, more restricted territories of the country. The article reviews the limited attempts in such a direction, both historically and in the post-2003 atmosphere. Today, federal options exist for governorates to merge into sectarian regions if they prefer to do so. So far, however, neither Sunnis or Shi'ites have demonstrated any great interest in the creation of such sectarian regions, which can be explained with the historical durability of the Iraq concept as a proto-region in late Ottoman times and the concomitant need to revise the near-omnipresent cliché of Iraq as a completely 'artificial' product lumped together solely thanks to the actions of industrious British imperialists.
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'Religious hatred shall disappear from the land' – Iraqi Jews as Ottoman Subjects, 1864–1913
By Orit BashkinThe essay discusses the ways in which Jewish-Iraqi cultural production of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century responded to processes initiated by the Ottoman state. Iraqi Jews, I argue, wished to integrate into both the Ottoman state and Iraqi society. Thus, Iraqi Jewish intellectuals gradually shifted from writing in Judeo-Arabic into writing in Arabic and Ottoman-Turkish, and this shift signified their commitments to both the Ottoman state and the Iraqi community. The publications of leading Jewish Baghdadi Rabbis, the accounts of Jewish travellers to Iraq and publications of Iraqi Jews in the Hebrew, Arabic and Turkish presses regarding Ottoman reforms and the constitutional revolution (1908) reveal how these Ottoman Jewish subjects advanced secular, non-sectarian politics in modern Iraq. The types of relationships that they hoped to maintain with the state and the cultural choices they adopted in order to integrate into it changed their self-perceptions and their perceptions of their Muslim and Christian neighbours. In the years following the 1908 revolution, in particular, Jewish intellectual production put forth the notion that the political community included more than the members of a particular religious community. The fact that the Jewish community was a small religious group did not engender a sense of cultural isolation, but rather generated processes of modification of certain imperial and local discourses into the Jewish community. This anti-sectarian approach further suggests that the Iraqi Hashemite kingdom had roots dating back to the Tanzimat and the Young Turk periods, and that state-building and nation-building efforts aimed at constructing non-religious civil affiliations predate the Hashemite monarchy.
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The security state and the practice and rhetoric of sectarianism in Iraq
More LessI make two propositions in this brief essay on sectarianism in Iraq: the first is that sectarianism as category of analysis of identity formation conceals as much as it reveals. Its use by political actors as well as producers of knowledge needs to be at all times analysed within specific contexts; the second is that the sectarianism of post-2003 Iraq cannot be understood by excavating its historical origins in late Ottoman, monarchical or early Ba'athist Iraq. Nor can it be solely attributed to the political arrangements made by the US-British occupation and its allies. It can only be understood by locating it in the specific kinds of violence, physical, bureaucratic and rhetorical, perpetuated by the Ba'athist regime and its opponents during the Iran–Iraq war and the 1991 intifada and its aftermath. The violence of the regime was not sectarian in nature, but informed above all by the logic of security. Nevertheless, the state and the party targeted populations, particularly in the south, that were perceived as a potential threat because of their communal affiliation. While the intifada was a largely non-sectarian popular rebellion, both the regime and the opposition portrayed it in sectarian terms.
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The sectarian state in Iraq and the new political class
Authors: Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. IsmaelThis article serves as a critical examination of sectarianism in Iraqi society and politics, considering both its historical origins and its contemporary manifestations. The article thus evaluates the sectarian question in two parts: (1) its historical context in the Iraqi milieu and (2) the uses of social sectarianism for political purposes in modern Iraq. This provides the framework for a critical evaluation of the assorted actors, both Iraqi and foreign, who have used sectarianism to advance their parochial interests in occupied Iraq. The historical survey of sectarianism examines the social and folkloric bases of social sectarianism in modern Iraq. We argue that the manifestation of sectarianism in contemporary Iraq was transformed from a social phenomenon into a political programme under the Anglo-American military occupation. Even before the occupation, a primary theme of global discourse on Iraq (1990–2002) was the attempt by external actors to embed political sectarianism into the political dynamics of Iraq. This essay argues that the violent and highly politicized form of sectarianism that currently characterizes Iraq is the result of a deliberate manipulation of social differences that had been largely transcended in Iraq's major urban centres through decades of national state-building. The processes of this 'new sectarianism' are evaluated in terms of the political and legal mechanisms that have been institutionalized in occupied Iraq. The primary instigators of this new sectarianism are identified as Anglo-American occupation authorities; regional actors; and critically, a class of 'carpetbaggers' – Iraqi expatriates who were parachuted into power by occupation forces and have since developed narrow sectarian constituencies in the pursuit of their parochial interests. The development of this expatriate political class is examined in terms of the patronage it receives from foreign forces, particularly American and British, and in its ongoing dependence on external actors.
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The political economy of sectarianism in Iraq
More LessConcentrating on the period since 1990, this article analyses the rise of sectarianism in Iraq with reference to the literature on the economics of conflict. The article posits that rising sectarianism cannot be viewed as the simple result of ongoing sectarian divisions, but is the consequence of the interaction of adverse initial conditions and of damaging policies and actions. Economic sanctions (1990–2003), I argue, laid the social and political basis for elevated sectarianism; post-occupation economic policies enabled this heightened sectarianism to be violently expressed. The article does not argue that sectarian sentiments or narratives are absent or irrelevant in Iraq, but rather presents a political-economic analysis of how and why such narratives have been ascendant.
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