Iraq: Competing Sectarian National Identities (Copy)
The question of sectarian divide and conflict makes up a substantive part of modern Middle Eastern history. If sectarianism is defined as social and political differentiation between religious sects, then the Shiite-Sunni conflict throughout the modern Middle East represents the most prevalent form of sectarian conflict. Particularly in the case of Iraq, sectarian conflict has escalated to a point of discrimination, state oppression, and most recently, civil war. A quick look at Iraq may suggest the false conclusion that sectarian violence is inevitable, based on deep-seated and primordial hatreds -- however, this understanding of “inevitable” conflict falls flat under historical scrutiny. Ba’ath disenfranchisement of Iraqi Shiites, and the later Shiite response to disenfranchisement, can be traced back to the colonial legacy of the British mandate. By institutionalizing Sunni hegemony through the imposition of the Hashemite King Faisal, the British mandate effectively concentrated power in the hands of Sunni elites. The resulting decades of sectarian discrimination and violence present competing national identities -- a Sunni Iraq and a Shiite Iraq -- effectively stifling national growth.
Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict in Iraq dates back to the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the imposition of the neocolonial British mandate on Iraq. At first, reactions to the British mandate included both Sunni and Shiite Iraqis -- most notably in the 1920s Revolt, which spread from the Sunni-majority city of Mosul to holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala. To appease the anti-British protesters while placating the Hashemites whom were promised an Arab State, the British brought the Sunni Arab King Faisal to the throne of Iraq (Lecture: Iraq -- Colonialism, Monarchy, Revolution). As Güldem Büyüksaraç argues, the British took no consideration of installing a democratic system that recognized individual Iraqi votes, instead ranking Iraqi religious and ethnic groups based on their “progressiveness” and loyalty to the British state (Büyüksaraç). As the Sunni elites ranked higher on the British list than their Shiite counterparts, and as a gesture of conciliation towards the Hashemite King for not granting him an Arab state from Aleppo to Yemen, the British imposed King Faisal and entrenched Sunni superiority in political affairs.
Sunni political hegemony continued to reinforce itself long after the departure of the British from Iraq, reaching its peak with the rise of the Ba’ath Party. As the Hashemite monarchy became tainted with the image of Western imperialism, Iraq fell into a series of coups and counter-coups between the 1940s and 1960s. The latest of these coups put the Ba’ath Party, an Arab nationalist socialist party led most infamously by Saddam Hussein, in power. Though secular in theory, because Sunni governmental hegemony had been asserted in Iraq from the days of the British, the Ba’ath became effectively a Sunni party (Lecture: Iraq -- Colonialism, Monarchy, Revolution). In reaction to complete Sunni political and economic hegemony in Iraq, Shiites began to show signs of discontentment: in 1958, Shiite theologian Muhammad Baqir Al-Sadr founded the Da’wa Party as a modern Shiite party pushing for an Islamic state (Lecture: Baathist Iraq). As a single party authoritarian regime, the Ba’athist party outlawed the Da’wa Party and enforced a wide-range of state oppression tactics against Shiites, from internal spying to mass arrests (Lecture: Baathist Iraq). These state oppression apparatuses only intensified in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which posed a direct threat to Iraqi Sunni hegemony by popularizing Shiite political mobilization (Lecture: Baathist Iraq). In 1980, not only did Saddam invade Iran, but he also executed Muhammad Baqir Al-Sadr and cracked down on Shiite dissent within Iraq, kindling the fires of the civil war to come.
In the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the execution of Saddam Hussein, sectarian violence in Iraq escalated to a point of a civil war between two competing national identities: a Sunni Iraq and a Shiite Iraq. After the policy of de-ba’athification and the creation of a new, entirely Shiite government, now-disenfranchised Sunnis angrily demanded political representation. The resulting war between Sunni Arab guerrilla insurgents and the Shiite Mahdi Army in Iraq represented fundamentally irreconcilable visions of Iraq. The Sunni insurgents taint Shiite Iraqis with the accusation of Iranian sponsorship, portraying the Mahdi Army as the “other” to the Iraqi nation (Haddad). Shiite participants in the civil war, on the other hand, characterized Sunni insurgents as “Wahhabis” and extremist oppressors, reciprocating the national othering done by Sunni militias (Haddad). Essentially, this back-and-forth othering represents a deadlock of sectarian violence and discrimination, completely stifling any hope for Iraqi national unity.
Sectarian relations in Iraq gradually deteriorated from relative unity against the British mandate in the 1920s Revolt, to complete mutual enmity in the Iraqi civil war. This turn of events showcases the dynamism of sectarian identity: sectarianism cannot be characterized as primordial and inevitable, rather, it is a direct consequence of the historical trajectory of power dynamics. By entrenching Sunni hegemony to the disregard of the Iraqi Shiite population, the British created a historical legacy easily perpetuated by Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party. The resulting exclusion of Shiites from the political system in Iraq fanned the flames of sectarian antagonism, which eventually erupted in the 2006-2008 civil war. Two competing visions of Iraqi national identity rooted in the dual sectarian identities left the two parties at a continuous disdain for one another. Today, post-war Iraq has rendered any semblance of Iraqi national unity completely in shambles -- a far cry from the aspirations of the inclusive anti-colonial revolts of the 1920s.
Works Cited
Haddad, Fanar. "Sectarian Relations in Arab Iraq: Contextualising the Civil War of 2006-2007." British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 40.2 (2013): 115-138.
Basil AlSubee
Prompt #3:
The 1979 Revolution
In contemporary historiography of the modern Middle East, many scholars characterize the period of the late 1970s and 1980s as the moment of a “rise in political Islam.” From Egypt to Iran, the discourse of shaping political institutions around Islamic ideals consumed many thinkers and theologians. Political Islam refers to any ideological system in which Islam holds political implications -- meaning that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Gülenist movement and AKP in Turkey, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Ennahda Movement in Turkey would all fall under the wide umbrella of “Political Islam.” Often, these ideologies emerge in response to the perception of failed secular institutions that require replacing with a purer, more righteous mode of governance. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 looms as perhaps the most quintessential movement operating under the framework of “Political Islam.” By responding directly to the perceived social and economic failures of the Mohammad Reza Shah regime, Khomeini built his legitimacy by appealing to the broader Shiite conceptions of moral authority through the concept of velayat-e faqih.
By the end of the Muhammad Reza Shah’s reign and the dawn of the Islamic Revolution, the Iranian participants had no shortage of reasons to be discontented with the Shah. Since his sponsorship of the US-led coup against Mohammad Mossadegh, the former Prime Minister who demanded complete nationalization of oil, the Shah doomed himself to an image of the “US puppet” (Abrahamian, Chapter 3). Not only did the Shah promote an overtly secular, anti-religion image of himself, but his “White Revolution” economic policies also largely disenfranchised conservative-minded rural elites and the traditional bazaari middle class (Abrahamian, Chapter 4). Additionally, Mohammad Reza’s neoliberal, “trickle down” economic policies created massive income inequality gaps that only further aggravated the increasingly urban masses (Abrahamian, Chapter 6). Unable to participate in political affairs due to the repressive SAVAK secret police apparatus, Iranian masses simmered in resentment towards the Shah and organized sporadic demonstrations -- until the arrival of Khomeini in February 1979 prompted a complete revolutionary cascade.
Khomeini’s arrival proved significant due to his presentation of an explicitly “Islamic” alternative to the decadent Pahlavi regime: the velayat-e faqih doctrine, or “rule of the jurist.” By putting the blame of the Shah’s failures on an inherently secular framework that excluded religion, Khomeini cast his legitimacy in an appeal to Shiite moral righteousness (Abrahamian, Chapter 5). According to velayat-e faqih, the jurist represents the closest means of executing Divine Will in the public sphere between the emergence of the 11th and 12th Shiite Imams. In a state where Shiite Muslims make up over 90% of the population, an appeal to religious identity can hold broad implications -- particularly in the aftermath of a regime that appeared to actively oppress religious sentiment. Khomeini capitalized on the failures of the Shah, marrying anti-imperialist rhetoric with appeals to broader Islamic moral purity. Though the 1979 Revolution initially brought together the bulk of Iranian society, Khomeini’s brand of political Islam ultimately won out against all other competing forms of political ideology -- attesting to its powerful appeal.
As in other Political Islamic movements, Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution loomed large both in Iran and abroad because of its ability to present a widely appealing, “morally superior” alternative to failed secular institutions. Political Islamic movements could hardly be separated from the secular institutions they directly react to: Hamas and the PLO, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nasser and Sadat regimes, the AKP and the secularist legacy of Atatürk, etc. In the case of the Islamic Revolution, Khomeini appealed to the broad sense of injustice under Shah Mohammad Reza, presenting velayat-e faqih as a social and political antidote. Because this blend of Shiite theology and political rhetoric held broad societal implications towards Shiite populations both in Iran and abroad, the 1979 Revolution became a threat to all secular regimes governing Shiite populations. In Iraq, for instance, the Ba’athist regime became wary of Iranian “exportation of the Revolution” to its Shiite population (Lecture: Baathist Iraq). Because the Ba’ath Party had historically excluded and oppressed its Shiite population from the political sphere, the Revolution could inspire a reaction against the “secular, morally decadent” Ba’ath. In fact, the perception of a threat from the Iranian Revolution, along with the sense that Iran would be weak in the aftermath of a regime change, largely motivated the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980 (Lecture: Baathist Iraq). Evidently, the Iranian Revolution turned heads for its widely popular appeal to the moral consciousness of Shiite Muslims in reaction to secular institutions.
As evident from the wide range of differing ideologies, Political Islam encompasses a variety of distinct ideals that share two main characteristics: a reaction to secular failure and an appeal to moral righteousness. Whether the Political Islamic movement pulls inspiration from Sunni Salafism as in the Muslim Brotherhood, or Khomeini’s Shiite velayat-e faqih as in the Islamic Revolution, it roots itself in “Islam” to present a broad moral ideal. Therefore, though the content of theology and policy in Political Islamic movements may widely differ, their broad appeals to morality in reaction to secular immorality brings them all together under the same fold. The roaring success of the Islamic Revolution demonstrates the archetype of an Islamic movement -- and one of the few to actually reach near-uncontested political hegemony.
