Author : David Little
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 17,1 MB
Release : 2006
Category : Political Science
ISBN :
This volume provides a comparative consideration of attempts to manage and resolve nationalist conflicts in Bosnia, Sri Lanka, and Sudan--with two prominent thinkers examining each case--and examines how lessons from those situations might inform similar efforts in Iraq.
Author : Samuel Helfont
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 47,81 MB
Release : 2018
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0190843314
This book draws on newly available archives from the Iraqi state and Ba'th Party to present a revisionist history of Saddam Hussein's religious policies. The point of doing this, other than to correct the current understanding of Saddam's political use of religion through his presidency, is to argue that the policies promoted then directly contributed to the rise of religious insurgencies in post-2003 Iraq as well as the current and probably future crises in the country. In looking at Saddam's policies in the 1990s, many have interpreted his support for state religion as evidence of a dramatic shift away from Arab nationalism, toward political Islam. But this book shows that the 'Faith Campaign' he launched during this time was the culmination of a plan to use religion for political ends, begun upon his assumption of the Iraqi presidency in 1979. At this time, Saddam began constructing the institutional capacity to control and monitor Iraqi religious institutions. The resulting authoritarian structures allowed him to employ Islamic symbols and rhetoric in public policy, but in a controlled manner. By the 1990s, these policies became fully realized. Following the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, religion remained prominent in Iraqi public life, but the system that Saddam had put in place to contain it was destroyed. Sunni and Shi'i extremists who had been suppressed and silenced were now free. They thrived in an atmosphere where religion had been actively promoted, and formed militant organizations which have torn the country apart since.
Author : Caroleen Marji Sayej
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 39,12 MB
Release : 2018-04-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1501714767
Patriotic Ayatollahs explores the contributions of senior clerics in state and nation-building after the 2003 Iraq war. Caroleen Sayej suggests that the four so-called Grand Ayatollahs, the highest-ranking clerics of Iraqi Shiism, took on a new and unexpected political role after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Drawing on previously unexamined Arabic-language fatwas, speeches, and communiqués of Iraq’s four grand ayatollahs, this book analyzes how their new pronouncements and narratives shaped public debates after 2003. Sayej argues that, contrary to standard narratives about religious actors, the Grand Ayatollahs were among the most progressive voices in the new Iraqi nation. She traces the transformative position of Ayatollah Sistani as the "guardian of democracy" after 2003. Sistani was, in particular, instrumental in derailing American plans that would have excluded Iraqis from the state-building process—a remarkable story in which an octogenarian cleric takes on the United States over the meaning of democracy. Patriotic Ayatollahs’ counter-conventional argument about the ayatollahs’ vision of a nonsectarian nation is neatly realized. Through her deep knowledge and long-term engagement with Iraqi politics, Sayej advances our understanding of how the post-Saddam Iraqi nation was built.
Author : Mohammad Salih Mustafa
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 221 pages
File Size : 48,16 MB
Release : 2020-11-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 100020412X
Exploring a new political phenomenon in the Middle East, this book studies the reconciliation of nationalism and Islamism by Islamic political parties in the context of nation states. Islamism in Kurdistan has become significantly framed by the politics of nationalism. Although the concept of religious nationalism has been discussed substantially before, this work highlights a new brand of religious nationalism that has emerged as a result of intertwining nationalism and Islamism. The focus of this study is on the development of religious nationalism in the continuously tumultuous region of the Middle East. The volume investigates whether Islamism in Kurdistan is limited by the politics of nationalism – which is an accentuated example for the whole Middle East region. By looking at the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), the research studies Islamism in the Kurdistan Region to elaborate on this new type of politics. This is essentially due to the absence of a politically recognised nation state, which renders Kurds to be particularly susceptible to various manifestations of nationalism. Offering an account on the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Kurdistan Region, this original research on Kurdish nationalism will be a key text for students and researchers interested in nationalism, Islamism and Middle East politics.
Author : Hamdi Hassan
Publisher : Pluto Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 49,86 MB
Release : 1999-09-20
Category : History
ISBN : 9780745314112
To what extent has religion, identity and ‘otherness’ facilitated and accelerated armed conflict in the Middle East?
Author : Lahouari Addi
Publisher : Georgetown University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 33,42 MB
Release : 2018-07-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1626164509
Radical Arab nationalism emerged in the modern era as a response to European political and cultural domination, culminating in a series of military coups in the mid-20th century in Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya. This movement heralded the dawn of modern, independent nations that would close the economic, social, scientific, and military gaps with the West while building a unity of Arab nations. But this dream failed. In fact, radical Arab nationalism became a barrier to civil peace and national cohesion, most tragically demonstrated in the case of Syria, for two reasons: 1) national armies militarized nationalism and its political objectives; 2) these nations did not keep pace with the intellectual and political and cultural and social progress of European nations that offered, for example, freedom of speech and thought. It was the failure of radical Arab nationalism, Addi contends, that made the more recent political Islam so popular. But if radical nationalism militarized politics, the Islamists politicized religion. Today, the prevailing medieval interpretation of Islam, defended by the Islamists, prevents these nations from making progress and achieving the kind of social justice that radical Arab nationalism once promised. Will political Islam fail, too? Can nations ruled by political Islam accommodate modernity? Their success or failure, Addi writes, depends upon this question.
Author : Jerry M. Long
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 18,11 MB
Release : 2004-04-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780292702646
From a Western perspective, the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991 largely fulfilled the first President Bush's objective: "In, out, do it, do it right, get gone. That's the message." But in the Arab world, the causes and consequences of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and his subsequent defeat by a U.S.-led coalition were never so clear-cut. The potent blend of Islam and Arab nationalism that Saddam forged to justify the unjustifiable—his invasion of a Muslim state—gained remarkable support among both Muslims and Arabs and continued to resonate in the Middle East long after the fighting ended. Indeed, as this study argues in passing, it became a significant strand in the tangled web of ideologies and actions that led to the attacks of 9/11. This landmark book offers the first in-depth investigation of how Saddam Hussein used Islam and Arab nationalism to legitimate his invasion of Kuwait in the eyes of fellow Muslims and Arabs, while delegitimating the actions of the U.S.-led coalition and its Arab members. Jerry M. Long addresses three fundamental issues: how extensively and in what specific ways Iraq appealed to Islam during the Kuwait crisis; how elites, Islamists, and the elusive Arab "street," both in and out of the coalition, responded to that appeal and why they responded as they did; and the longer-term effects that resulted from Saddam's strategy.
Author : Sabah Mofidi
Publisher : Transnational Press London
Page : 101 pages
File Size : 13,95 MB
Release : 2022-01-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1801351090
This book shows how the state-based and stateless ethno-nationalist forces in the four countries overlapping Kurdistan, i.e. Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq, have politically deployed religion in their nationalistic confrontations in Kurdistan as the converging area between them. The stances and actions of these different antagonistic forces are analyzed, as well as the dynamics between them. Unlike other studies on Kurdistan, it focuses on Greater Kurdistan as the arena for nationalist conflicts, instead of looking only at separate parts of Kurdistan. The research presented in this book shows that both the religious state (Iran) and so-called secular states (Turkey, Iraq and Syria) make use of religious discourse and symbols in order to impose power over ‘their part’ of Greater Kurdistan and as a way of countering Kurdish nationalist movements. The dominant ethno-nationalist groups of Fars, Turk and Arab have politically used Islam, during wars and elections, to gain and maintain their power over Kurdish areas. Conversely, Kurdish nationalist groups have also tried to neutralize those states’ policies by evoking religious symbols and discourses. Nevertheless, as the book concludes, the unequal political power balance between the four states on one side, and the stateless Kurdish nationalist groups on the other, has resulted in the latter being restricted in using religion as a means to gain power in the region.
Author : Jordi Tejel
Publisher : World Scientific
Page : 578 pages
File Size : 43,33 MB
Release : 2012
Category : History
ISBN : 9814390550
The modern history of Iraq is punctuated by a series of successive and radical ruptures (coups d'etat, changes of regime, military adventures and foreign invasions) whose chronological markers are relatively easy to identify. Although researchers cannot ignore these ruptures, they should also be encouraged to establish links between the moments when the breaks occur and the longue durée, in order to gain a better understanding of the period.Combining a variety of different disciplinary and methodological perspectives, this collection of essays seeks to establish some new markers which will open fresh perspectives on the history of Iraq in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and suggest a narrative that fits into new paradigms. The book covers the various different periods of the modern state (the British occupation and mandate, the monarchy, the first revolutions and the decades of Ba'thist rule) through the lens of significant groups in Iraq society, including artists, film-makers, political and opposition groups, members of ethnic and religious groups, and tribes.
Author : Yitzhak Nakash
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 339 pages
File Size : 31,17 MB
Release : 2018-06-26
Category : History
ISBN : 0691190445
The Shi'is of Iraq provides a comprehensive history of Iraq's majority group and its turbulent relations with the ruling Sunni minority. Yitzhak Nakash challenges the widely held belief that Shi'i society and politics in Iraq are a reflection of Iranian Shi'ism, pointing to the strong Arab attributes of Iraqi Shi'ism. He contends that behind the power struggle in Iraq between Arab Sunnis and Shi'is there exist two sectarian groups that are quite similar. The tension fueling the sectarian problem between Sunnis and Shi'is is political rather than ethnic or cultural, and it reflects the competition of the two groups over the right to rule and to define the meaning of nationalism in Iraq. A new introduction brings this book into the new century and illuminates the role that Shi`is could play in postwar Iraq.
