Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East 9781138649040, 9781315626031

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Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East

The Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East gathers a diverse team of international scholars, each of whom provides unique expertise into the status and prospects of minority populations in the region. The dramatic events of the past decade, from the Arab Spring protests to the rise of the Islamic state, have brought the status of these populations onto center stage. The overturn of various long-term autocratic governments in states such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, and the ongoing threat to government stability in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon have all contributed to a new assertion of majoritarian politics amid demands for democratization and regime change. In the midst of the dramatic changes and latent armed conflict, minority populations have been targeted, marginalized, and victimized. Calls for social and political change have led many to contemplate the ways in which citizenship and governance may be changed to accommodate minorities – or indeed if such change is possible. At a time when the survival of minority populations and the utility of the label minority have been challenged, this handbook answers the following set of research questions. What are the unique challenges of minority populations in the Middle East? How do minority populations integrate into their host societies, both as a function of their own internal choices, and as a response to majoritarian consensus on their status? Finally, given their inherent challenges, and the vast, sweeping changes that have taken place in the region over the past decade, what is the future of these minority populations? What impact have minority populations had on their societies, and to what extent will they remain prominent actors in their respective settings? This handbook presents leading-edge research on a wide variety of religious, ethnic, and other minority populations. By reclaiming the notion of minorities in Middle Eastern settings, we seek to highlight the agency of minority communities in defining their past, present, and future. Paul S. Rowe is Professor in the Department of Political and International Studies, Trinity Western University, Canada.

Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East

Edited by Paul S. Rowe

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Paul S. Rowe; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Paul S. Rowe to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rowe, Paul S. (Paul Stanley), editor. Title: The Routledge handbook of minorities in the Middle East / edited by Paul S. Rowe. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018024253 | ISBN 9781138649040 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315626031 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Minorities—Middle East. | Religious minorities—Middle East. Classification: LCC DS58 .R68 2019 | DDC 305.00956—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018024253 ISBN: 978-1-138-64904-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-62603-1 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra

To the victims of Da’esh in Iraq and Syria

Contents

List of Illustrations x List of Contributors xi Acknowledgements xiv 1 Introduction: reclaiming “minorities” in the Middle East 1 Paul S. Rowe Section I

Majority-minority relations in the Middle East 17 2 Religious minorities in the diversity of Islamic thought 19 David D. Grafton 3 Balancing identities: minorities and Arab nationalism 35 Noah Haiduc-Dale 4 The praxis of Islamist models of citizenship in a post-Arab revolt Middle East: implications for religious pluralism 46 Mariz Tadros 5 Minorities, civil society, and the state in the contemporary Middle East: a framework for analysis 60 Paul Kingston

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Contents Section II

Religious and ethnoreligious minorities 77 6 Tracing the Coptic Question in contemporary Egypt 79 Vivian Ibrahim 7 The Maronites 89 Alexander D.M. Henley 8 Palestinian Christians: situating selves in a dislocated present 100 Mark Daniel Calder 9 Persistent perseverance: a trajectory of Assyrian history in the modern age 115 Sargon George Donabed 10 Christians from a Muslim background in the Middle East 132 Duane Alexander Miller 11 The Yezidis: an ancient people, tragedy, and struggle for survival 146 Birgül Açıkyıldız-Şengül 12 The Mandaeans in Iraq 159 Shak Hanish 13 Bahá’ís in the Middle East 170 Geoffrey Cameron with Nazila Ghanea 14 The Alawites of Syria: the costs of minority rule 185 Leon T. Goldsmith 15 Particularism versus integration: the Druze communities in the modern Middle East 197 Yusri Hazran 16 Alevis in Turkey 212 Ali Çarkoğlu and Ezgi Elçi 17 The Samaritans 225 Monika Schreiber 18 Shi’i minorities in the Arab world 240 Laurence Louër

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Contents Section III

Ethnic minorities 253 19 The Kurds in the Middle East 255 David Romano 20 Armenians in the Middle East: from marginalization to the everyday 272 Tsolin Nalbantian 21 The Palestinian minority in the state of Israel: challenging Jewish hegemony in difficult times 287 Aviad Rubin 22 The Bedouin in the Middle East 301 Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder 23 The Berbers (Amazigh) 313 Bruce Maddy-Weitzman Section IV

Emerging issues and minorities in the Middle East 327 24 Sitting at the crossroads: sexual minorities in the Middle East 329 Merouan Mekouar and Jean Zaganiaris 25 Minorities and armed conflict in the Middle East 339 Paul S. Rowe 26 Middle Eastern minorities in diaspora 351 Andreas Schmoller 27 Middle Eastern minorities and the media 370 Elizabeth Monier 28 Western advocacy on behalf of religious minorities: practical reflections 382 Chris Seiple and Andrew Doran Bibliography Index

397 427

ix

illustrations

Figures 17.1 Map showing location of the Samaritan communities on Mount Gerizim and in Holon 17.2 The High Priest (2010–2013, second right) with part of his priestly entourage during a wedding ceremony on Mount Gerizim ( July 2012) The embroideries on the Torah mantles and cases are in Samaritan script (Ori Orhof ) 17.3 Congregants in the Samaritan synagogue on Mount Gerizim on Yom Kippur (October 2016) 17.4 Demographic development and gender ratio of Samaritans between 1853 and 2013

226

227 228 236

Tables 26.1 M iddle Eastern Christian diasporas in the world: by religious denominations 354 26.2 Diasporas of non-Christian Middle Eastern minorities 355

x

Contributors

Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder is Senior Lecturer at the Blaustein Institute for Desert R ­ esearch, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheba, Israel. Birgül Açıkyıldız-Şengül is Research Associate at Centre de Receherche Interdiscplinaires en Sciences Humaines et Sociales at Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3, Montpellier, France. Mark Daniel Calder is Postdoctoral Research Associate in Government and International Affairs, Durham University, Durham, UK. Geoffrey Cameron is Research Associate at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Ali Çarkoğlu is Professor of Political Science at Koҫ University, Istanbul, Turkey. Sargon George Donabed is Associate Professor of History, Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island, USA. Andrew Doran  is former executive director of In Defense of Christians, Washington, D.C., USA. Ezgi Elҫi is PhD  Candidate, Department of International Relations, Koҫ University, I­ stanbul, Turkey. Nazila Ghanea is Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law, University of Oxford, Oxford UK. Leon Goldsmith  is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat. Oman. David D. Grafton  is Professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at ­Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Massachusetts, USA. xi

Contributors

Noah Haiduc-Dale  is Associate Professor of History, Centenary University, Hackettstown, New Jersey, USA. Yusri Hazran is Research Fellow at the National Security Studies Center, Haifa University, Haifa, Israel. Alexander Henley is Marie Curie Research Fellow in Theology and Religion at Mansfield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. Vivian Ibrahim  is Croft Associate Professor of History and International Studies at the Croft Institute for International Studies, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi, USA. Paul Kingston is Professor of Political Science and Development Studies at the Centre for Critical Development Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Laurence Louër is Research Fellow at the Centre de Recherches Internationales, Sciences Po, Paris, France. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman  is Associate Professor in the Department of History of the Middle East and Africa, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. Merouan Mekouar  is Assistant Professor of International Development Studies, York ­ niversity, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. U Duane Alexander Miller is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Protestant Faculty of Theology at Madrid (UEBE), Madrid, Spain. Elizabeth Monier  is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. Tsolin Nalbantian is Assistant Professor of Modern Middle East History, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands. David Romano  is Professor of Political Science, Missouri State University, Springfield, Missouri, USA. Paul S. Rowe is Professor of Political and International Studies, Trinity Western University, Langley, British Columbia, Canada. Aviad Rubin is Senior Lecturer, School of Political Science, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel. Andreas Schmoller is Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Eastern Christianity, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria. Monika Schreiber is Librarian, The Jewish Library at the University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.

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Contributors

Chris Seiple,  is President Emeritus of the Institute for Global Engagement, an advisor to the Templeton Religion Trust, and a Senior Fellow at the University of Washington’s International Policy Institute and Initiative for Global Christian Studies at the Jackson School of International Studies, Seattle, WA, USA. Mariz Tadros is IDS Research Fellow and Honorary Professor in the Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. Jean Zaganiaris  is Research Teacher at the Centre de Recherche Economie Societé ­Cultnre, Muhammad VI Polytechnic University, Rabat, Morocco.

xiii

Acknowledgements

This collection is the result of several years’ work among a large number of people on behalf of the minority communities of the Middle East. We thank all those who have brought to light the experience of these peoples so long neglected in popular media and in scholarship. In particular, I would like to thank Routledge, and especially Joe Whiting, for providing the impetus for the project. Thanks also goes to all of the contributors for their timely and dedicated work on this volume. Midway through the preparation of this volume, I enjoyed an adjustment to my workload at Trinity Western University, which made it possible to dedicate more time and resources to the project, for which I am grateful. Thank you to my wife Karissa, who continues to support me as I dedicate time to documenting the lives of minority communities. She encourages and challenges me along the way. As I finalized work on this book, she gave birth to our son Kai. We hope and pray that he grows up to see a world in which minorities may no longer live in fear. Paul S. Rowe

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1 Introduction Reclaiming “minorities” in the Middle East Paul S. Rowe

A revealing headline featured on the satirical news site The Onion at the height of global concern over the rapidly expanding civil war in Syria announced: “Everyone in Middle East Given Own Country in 317,000,000 State Solution”. The involvement of multiple ideological, ethnic, and religious groups spoke to the apparent impossibility of achieving a harmony of interests in the region. The solution was simply to surrender to its intricacies. The article went on to quote a fictional president of the United Nations Security Council who stated that We are confident that with every man, woman, and child possessing his or her own autonomous area of sovereignty to run as he or she sees fit, we will avoid many of the conflicts that have plagued this part of the world for centuries.1 Such satire reflects the bemused response of a global public newly acquainted with the complexities of regional politics. Up until the year 2000, few but those most intimately tied to the region were aware of the underlying complexity that undergirded Middle Eastern societies – in this book defined as the larger Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Though the region has long had a reputation for its instability and violence, this reputation typically focused on the broad strokes of Middle Eastern politics: the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, or the rising tide of ­Islamism as a challenge to the secular tradition in Arab states. For the casual reader, the major cleavages of the Middle East paralleled divisions in global affairs. Important developments over the past twenty years have brought to light the vast diversity of Middle Eastern societies. In the wake of 11 September 2001, Western states began to parse among various populist Islamist movements in the region, highlighting the putative differences in the movement among the so-called moderates and radicals. The US decision to follow up its 2001 invasion of Afghanistan with an armed intervention in Iraq in March 2003 revealed just how fragile the Iraqi state was, composed as it was of disparate Arab Sunni, Shi’i, Kurd, Assyrian, Mandaean, Yezidi, Turkoman, and various other ethnoreligious groups. As chaos descended upon Iraq, the smaller communities increasingly found themselves caught in a maelstrom of violence that pit Iraqi nationalists, Sunni and Shi’i ­Islamists, and Kurds in a civil conflict over their shared territories.

1

Paul S. Rowe

Eight years later, the Arab uprisings that brought regime change to MENA fueled dreams of democratization and reform that served to bolster new forms of majoritarianism, even as activists and dissidents dreamed of a freer and more inclusive future. In Libya, Syria, and Yemen, demands for regime change ushered in protracted civil conflicts that once again revealed the diversity at the heart of Middle Eastern society, as battle lines deepened among ethnic and sectarian groupings. The vision of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (later claiming the more expansive title “Islamic State”, and popularly referred to by its Arabic acronym “Da’esh”) presented the most egregious form of majoritarian tyranny over the region. After establishing its power base in war-torn Syria, Da’esh embarked upon a genocidal campaign against all those who refused its narrow and austere form of Salafist Islam. Entering northern Iraq, Da’esh’s path of destruction disrupted life for a variety of smaller communities that had survived the multiple waves of violence that had taken place in the centuries before. Minority communities have been slowly departing the Middle East for generations, and their relative numbers have not kept up with the larger populations of Sunni and Shi’i Arabs. But it was the crisis caused by Da’esh that awakened the world to the imminent extinction of many of these communities. While most of these ethnic and religious groups, such as the Egyptian Copts, the Mandaeans of Iraq, or the Alawis of coastal Syria, have roots in antiquity, many of them had been ignored or neglected by analysts and scholars more interested in the wider cultural and political developments taking place in the region. The growing crisis of minority communities amid the breakdown of state authority and the growing popularity of Islamist majoritarianism, along with the dangers of democratization without liberalization, brought the concerns of these communities to light. The plight of these minorities has become especially important to Western states as they fled the region in large numbers amid the growing global refugee crisis of 2014–2016. The crisis revealed to the world how little the rest of us knew about these people groups whose relative size had long obscured them from view. This handbook is intended to help fill that lacuna. It is aimed at introducing the reader to the various communities in the Middle East that form minority populations, either in terms of their dispersion across many different states in the region, or as a proportion of the population in their own societies. In marshaling the most important scholars of these communities, our collection goes beyond mere introduction. This book informs the reader about the major and important debates that define the status of minority populations, the controversies that surround the very idea of “minority” status, and the concerns of integration and advocacy that bedevil public debates about the place of such minority groups in their own societies. Such a collection of essays could hardly be more timely. The global refugee crisis arising from the depopulation of Syria and northern Iraq, in addition to vast numbers of people from North Africa and Central Asia, has become an ongoing challenge for the region as well as for the Western states to which they had fled for sanctuary from persecution and violence. The imminent disappearance of entire communities in the Middle East raises concerns for world heritage and historical memory. And the ongoing crisis of governance and stability suggests that a solution for the future of minority populations may have a great deal to say about the future of citizenship in the region, no matter one’s faith, ethnicity, orientation, or politics.

Why “minorities”? First, however, a word about the title. The use of the term “minority” to refer to various ethnic, religious, and other groups within Middle Eastern society has come under considerable 2

Introduction

criticism over the past decade. Nonetheless, even the limitations of the term helps us to structure some of the common debates over minority status for the various communities that we discuss in this handbook, as we shall see. During the era of colonization, imperial powers preyed on internal divisions within colonial states in order to “divide and rule”. A common practice was for the colonial power to patronize specific religious or ethnic groups as trusted client elites. In many cases, this patronage was enabled by cultural and religious connections forged among coreligionists. As the Ottoman Empire crumbled over the course of the nineteenth century, British, French, and Russian efforts to bolster their own influence in the region led them to build relationships with indigenous groups. In the late colonial period, imperial interests were increasingly conflated with the interests of smaller communities of indigenous Christians, non-­conformist Muslim sects, and other groups whose cultural distinctiveness stood out. Imperial patronage of these groups led to their emancipation from Ottoman-era strictures under the Tanzimat reforms of the early and mid-nineteenth century – but they also built relationships between these communities and the newly arrived imperial powers from Europe.2 These relationships of patronage were both beneficial and problematic for the various Middle Eastern communities.3 Mixed motives underpinned the imperial efforts to improve the status of non-Muslim and sectarian communities even as the colonizers saw them as natural allies. Russian intrigues in the former Ottoman Empire contributed to the suspicion with which Ottoman Turks viewed Armenians in their own state, bringing lethal consequences to that community. Those Armenians who survived were divided by the patronage of Russian and Western powers and between contending religious factions, as Tsolin ­Nalbantian demonstrates in Chapter 20 in this volume. French support for their Maronite (Catholic) coreligionists undergirded the rise of ­Maronite dreams of statehood during the period of the Tanzimat, in which Western forms of citizenship were being adopted within the Ottoman Empire. This ultimately led to French intervention in the Lebanese civil war of 1860. Ultimately, French colonial patronage created a separate state of “greater Lebanon” in 1923. The French decision to divide the former Ottoman territories of Syria remains controversial among the native inhabitants of the region to this day. British colonial interests in Egypt also played a role in elevating Egyptian Coptic (­Christian) interests in the early 1910s, threatening to divide Egyptians on the basis of religion. Though the British authorities did not find Copts to be altogether trustworthy allies, modernization had elevated the Copts to influential positions in professional associations.4 When the Coptic Prime Minister Boutros Ghali was assassinated in 1910, some Copts saw the need for political organization along communal lines. However, most Copts resisted pursuing division and instead participated in the demonstrations that promoted Egypt’s nationalist revolution of 1919. In his historical critique of minority status under the French mandate in Syria, Benjamin Thomas White argues that the term minority was never used for Middle Eastern people groups until the early twentieth century. It came into use as a means of establishing the modern state. In the Ottoman context, the existence of a multinational state did not occasion the identification of various communities in their relative sizes. White goes as far as to say that “there was no articulated concept of ‘minority’ prior to the modern period because minorities did not exist: the concept acquires meaning only once certain conditions associated with the existence of the modern nation-states have been fulfilled”.5 As Ottoman power declined in Eastern Europe, the notion of national self-determination was embraced by liberals. The League of Nations, and later the United Nations, enshrined the idea of minority 3

Paul S. Rowe

rights among newly emergent nation-states.6 Later, as Europeans carved up new states out of the former Ottoman domains, under League of Nations “mandates”, colonial administration felt the need to articulate the rights of people groups based on what they held to be their primary identifying features.7 By the mid-1930s, religious sects and ethnoreligious groups were labeled “minorities” within the state, and modern sectarianism was born. Though the Ottoman Empire may never have described non-Muslim communities as minorities, they did enforce status differentiation between officially recognized Muslim and non-Muslim subjects. This marked a division between the dominant Muslim, non-Muslim, and heterodox communities, even in cases in which non-Muslim subjects formed a numerical majority. As modern states began to employ the term minority for these populations, the label acquired a more pernicious implication, resembling our use of the term to refer to a juvenile who has not yet achieved full rights as the adult majority. Anh Nga Longva refers to this inferior social status of a minority group as its “sociological” minority status as opposed to its “numerical” status.8 Many Middle Eastern communities are wary of embracing the status of minority if it widens the divide between fellow citizens. Under Islam, non-Muslim minority groups who were recognized as fellow monotheists came to be known as ahl al-kitab (“people of the book”). Islamic law considered these people ahl al-dhimma (“protected peoples”), or dhimmis. Though their religious practice was thereby protected under Islamic law, many non-Muslim groups today view dhimmi status as a second-class citizenship that limited their full participation in public life. In this view, recognition as minorities runs the risk of merely extending their dhimmitude into an uncertain future, one “fundamentally conditioned by fear”.9 Whether or not minority status implies a reduction in rank for non-Muslim populations, many still view it as an unnecessary way in which to divide them from the majority population. In his research on Palestinian Christians, Quinn Coffey notes that minority status can be seen as potentially threatening from the perspective of the ­ hristian communities themselves, not only because it can potentially lead to what they C view as unnecessary special treatment, but also because it can in some ways degrade the significant contribution that this community has made to Palestinian society.10 Saba Mahmood argues that the combination of religious minority rights with the language of secularism threatens both, since the state presumes a stance that elides religious differences even as it seeks to define citizens by their minority identities.11 Indeed, wariness about the (mis)use of the term minority led to a major firestorm in the press, and even to public riots in Egypt in 1994. When the Egypt-based Ibn Khaldoun Center partnered with the British ­M inority Rights Group to host a conference on the Coptic minority, public backlash focused on the way that foreign support was being marshaled to highlight divisions in Egyptian ­society. Egyptians, both Copt and Muslim, argued that it was inappropriate to label Copts a “minority” in their own homeland. The Coptic Orthodox Church agreed and criticized the way the conference had been framed. The furor ultimately forced the conveners to relocate the conference to Cyprus.12 Likewise, in Chapter 19 in this volume, David Romano observes that Kurds see minority status as “an impediment to either assimilation or full participation” in their societies. As a result, most Kurds resist using the term. Almost all of the groups ­profiled in this handbook have similar concerns. All of these objections – and more – to the facile use of the term minority to refer to the various non-Muslim, non-Arab, sectarian, and non-conformist communities are raised by our contributors throughout this volume. In some cases, our contributors seek simply 4

Introduction

to explore the distinctive histories and cultures of communities without reference to their status as minorities. In other cases, they refer simply to diverse groups or to non-majority communities. Nevertheless, the centrality of the term minority to their critiques, and the significance of this debate to our modern conceptions of the region, provides ample reason for us to comment on minorities in the context of the region, even if only to critique the concept. Beyond the contested nature of the term, our use of minorities in the title of this handbook is designed to highlight the numerical and demographic realities that leave these communities outside the mainstream – geographically, culturally, or normatively. In sum, our use of “minority” in the title of this volume is meant to convey the numerical distinction between Muslim, Arab, straight, and other “majority” populations and those of smaller cultural, religious, ethnic, or gendered communities. It is not intended to imply the subordinate status of any of these groups or the derivative nature of their activities. On the contrary, all of our contributors are interested in profiling their particular “minority” group as an actor or set of actors in their own right. We are interested in developing a fulsome understanding of these groups, with all of their own complexities, as self-constituting and self-directed communities in spite of the many challenges that they face.

Reclaiming agency The sociological use of the term minority defines the existence of ethnoreligious communities as a function of their relation to the “majority” populations of Arabs, Muslims, Jews, Iranians, or Turks. In this context, minorities are nothing more than a subject population, whose actions must be permitted by the society. Will Kymlicka and Eva Pföstl point out in a recent work that minority groups in Middle Eastern states have suffered from various stigmas.13 Dominant discourses define not only societal norms, but, in some cases, even the very legality of minority practices. Many minority communities must voice their concerns in dialogue with dominant social forces who set the rules of debate. For example, Rachel Scott illuminates the various ways in which Egyptian Christians (Copts) have adapted to the popularity and influence of political Islam as a defining feature of Egyptian political life.14 In his contribution to this collection, Sargon Donabed explains how the indigenous Assyrian “other” has been marginalized over the centuries by colonizing power brokers in London, Paris, Istanbul, Baghdad, Damascus, Irbil, or Mosul. Elsewhere, limitations in the political environment make it difficult for minority groups to bring about lasting change. An equally significant challenge for minority groups today stems from the emergence of regional rivalries between majority Sunni and majority Shi’i states, with established Sunni powers threatened by the perceived rise of a “Shi’i crescent” of states including Iran, Iraq, and Syria.15 In Chapter 18, Laurence Louër describes the way in which Iranian foreign policy looms over the status of Shi’i minorities, and whether or not there is a direct link between the two. Shi’i minority communities and non-Muslim minorities alike find themselves wedged between two majoritarian narratives competing with one another for regional influence. Of course, majority populations suffer under some of these limitations as well. In ­Chapter 5, which highlights the challenges of building a pluralistic environment for minorities in the ­ inorities have Middle East, Paul Kingston points out that over the past century and a half, m had to respond to domestic elites seeking to create national majorities to ­support their state-­ building efforts. Civil society and “uncivil” society exist in a context of u ­ neven ­development and fragile nation-states. The modernization of the Ottoman Empire, brought about by globalization and capitalist development, resulted in new opportunities for ­m inority communities that greatly benefited them. However, in the era in which the Ottoman state broke 5

Paul S. Rowe

down, new republican and dynastic regimes needed to engage in nation- and state-building. The process they undertook limited the growth of civil society among minority (and, truth be told, majority) groups. As a result, the modern state often forces minorities into its own desired form of organization. In Chapter 20 profiling the Armenians, Tsolin Nalbantian argues that the dominant paradigm of the nation-state “traps” Armenians in a foreign identity no matter where they have settled. Armenian populations have established themselves in several states for over a century but struggle to escape their history of exile. When we take for granted the dependence of minority communities on their social inclusion, we may lose sight of the real ways in which minorities have been able to transcend their position as a minority. Moreover, by defining a group as a “minority”, we may lose sight of the real divisions that exist within the minority – self-definitions, arguments over proper authority, identity, and orthodoxy – which divide minority communities themselves. Sectarianism and ­m inority-based politics define the individual simply as a member of a larger group. This logic promotes the sort of tribalism that contributes to the extremes of violence we have seen in the Middle East over the past decade. As we explore the very real dynamics of minority communities, we undermine such “reductive assumptions” that do not hold out in practice.16 Permissive and limiting conditions in the social and political environment may certainly affect the actions of minorities. However, in this handbook we are primarily interested in exposing the way in which minorities interact and influence their own plural societies as “informed social agents”.17 Over the past decades, scholars have rediscovered the lives of minorities as subjects in their own right, and not only as objects of larger political movements.18 Uncovering their agency reveals the way in which we may reclaim the concept of minority communities as something less than a derivative concept. Minorities have shaped the social and political world of the Middle East in significant ways over the centuries. Local concentrations of minority groups have provided them with local influence in several contexts. Leon Goldsmith points out that while Alawis are a minority in the state of Syria as a whole, they do make up a majority in certain regions of Syria. Local concentration and strong levels of group belonging (‘asabiya) have allowed them to dominate Syrian politics since the 1960s.19 At its foundation, Christians were considered a bare majority in the state of Lebanon. In Chapter 7 on the Maronites, Alexander Henley points out that the Lebanese National Pact grants the Maronites a particularly dominant position, and they are not overshadowed by any majority population. Christians continue to occupy half of the seats in the Lebanese parliament, and the president is always a Maronite Christian. In other cases, local concentration has helped to preserve a minority population. ­Egyptian Christians are especially numerous in the Upper Egyptian states of Minya, Asyut, and Sohag. During the savage assault on their community in 2015, Yezidis were able to retreat to the neighboring mountain stronghold of Jebel Sinjar for protection. And Kurds in the northeastern region of Syria have fielded one of the most successful fighting forces – the YPG militia – in the Syrian civil war since 2011. Where it is possible, minority communities have been especially influential as citizens and participants in the civil societies of the Middle East. For example, Palestinian and other ­Levantine Christians had an important role in helping to define the Arab nationalist movement of the early twentieth century, as demonstrated in Chapter 3 by Noah Haiduc-Dale. Duane Miller demonstrates how Muslim converts to Christianity are transforming the definitions of Christianity and introduce a new dynamic into the relations between Muslims and Christians. Geoffrey Cameron and Nazila Ghanea relate how Bahá’í have responded to ­efforts to marginalize their community through active participation as citizens. Ali Çarkoğlu 6

Introduction

and Ezgi Elçi discuss the many ways in which Turkey’s Alevis challenge both traditional forms of Islam and the way in which Turkey defines the notion of religion. Today, Palestinian Christians persist in identifying with the national movement for Palestinian rights as non-violent activists, as I demonstrate in Chapter 25 on minorities and conflict. Andreas Schmoller explores the many worlds of minorities in diaspora, who bring critical insights to bear on the politics of the home country, even as they create new politics in their states of settlement. Elizabeth Iskander demonstrates how contemporary media has provided a platform on which minorities may voice their interests and concerns. Much of what our contributors share is rooted in their own and recent scholarship that continues to illuminate the actions of minorities as agents in their own right. They demonstrate the way in which minority communities have responded in spite of crisis, persecution, or marginalization.

Minority communities lost and found It should not be surprising that a robust understanding of agency has lacked in the popular imagination when it comes to Middle Eastern minorities. Several popular books that deal with these communities stress obscurity, endangerment, and nostalgia. In his book From the Holy Mountain: a journey among the Christians of the Middle East, William Dalrymple describes the many dusty corners where he encountered various Christian communities.20 In The Lost History of Christianity, Philip Jenkins profiles the ancient significance of the Church of the East while simultaneously assessing its apparent demise.21 In Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms, Gerard Russell laments “humanity’s collective ignorance of its own past”, due to which we have lost track of numerous historic communities such as the Mandaeans, Yezidis, Druze, or Samaritans.22 Nostalgic references to forgotten kingdoms and lost histories suggest that there is little more than historic interest in considering such minority communities. Their present agency is little more than a fading vestige of past glories. The contributors to this handbook have found significant insights among communities that have been so putatively lost. In retelling the story of these minorities, they challenge the narrative of decline and nostalgia popularized in such texts. Minority communities might be categorized or understood in a variety of ways, but the order of the chapters follows a particular set of categorizations. Following a set of thematic essays that reflect on majority-minority relations in the Middle East on the basis of Islamic tradition, Arab nationalism, citizenship, and civil society, we begin by considering the many religious minorities that find their home in the region, then move on to ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, and then to modern challenges to which minority populations respond. What follows is a brief introduction to minorities in the Middle East, most of which are discussed in the chapters of this handbook. I begin with religious minorities. Though it is tempting to divide between Muslim and non-Muslim religious minorities, even this distinction is fraught with difficulties, considering the syncretistic accretion of pagan, Christian, and Muslim beliefs and practices among many of the minority religious groups found in the Middle East. Here, I parse among minorities that predated Islam and those that arose after the rise of Islam. Equally problematic in some cases are ethnic groups, often defined by their unique religious practices. For example, Judaism clearly elides the usual boundary that separates cultural and religious divides, and though Armenians have clear cultural and linguistic markers that differentiate them from neighboring communities, one of those is their unique Christian heritage. Nevertheless, where cultural and linguistic markers seem more germane to the definition of group identity, I have described these minorities as ethnic minorities. 7

Paul S. Rowe

Pre-Muslim minorities Today, the religious and cultural narrative of the Middle East emphasizes Islam as the dominant religious tradition of the region. Indeed, the birth and expansion of Islam as a religious tradition beginning in the seventh century ultimately did transform the cultures of the Middle East. Nonetheless, it is common for histories of the region to imply that the Muslim conquest led to a sudden and dramatic religious turn among Middle Easterners, promoting the immediate eclipse of pre-Muslim religions in favor of the dominant new order. In fact, non-Muslims remained the majority in most of the Middle East until the early Middle Ages. They practiced various indigenous religions and Christian traditions, many of which have persisted to this day. Crucial to their survival in many cases was the extent to which non-Muslim minorities could demonstrate that they were monotheists with a scripture of their own – which would qualify them as ahl al-kitab, “people of the book”, worthy of protection by Muslim authorities. These indigenous religious traditions include the following: Zoroastrians: Contemporary Zoroastrians preserve the ancient religious traditions of Persia, said to be the teachings of an ancient prophet known as Zoroaster, or Zarathustra. The Zoroastrian religion surrounds the eternal struggle between darkness and light, or between good and evil. At the center of Zoroastrian cosmology is the creator god known as Ahura Mazda, who rewards good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. He is in age-old conflict with a demonic spirit known as Angra Mainya. Rituals of purity and devotion are common practices, focused on structures known as fire-temples, where fires are maintained to signify the divine presence. The small community of Zoroastrians in Iran is focused on the city of Yazd, in which is found the only remaining Iranian fire temple. Under the regime of the Islamic republic, Zoroastrians are recognized with Christians and Jews as fellow monotheists, or “people of the book”, which provides them with a single political representative in the Iranian parliament and rights as a religious minority. Their status as defenders of the aboriginal faith provides Zoroastrians with a unique status that has been used to maintain the ancient traditions in spite of the constant decline of their numbers over the centuries.23 It is estimated that less than 10,000 Zoroastrians remain in Iran,24 while larger numbers migrated to India over the centuries, where they are known as Parsis. Kaka’i: The ancient indigenous religious practices of the Kurds remain among a community known as the People of the Truth (Ahl i-Haqq), also referred to as Kaka’i or Yarsanis.25 The religious practices of the Kaka’i are syncretistic and are said to resemble those of sects that developed later, such as the Yezidis and Alevis. However, their rituals and worship practices are deliberately shrouded in mystery as a defense against centuries of repression. Most of the Kaka’i speak the Gorani dialect of Kurdish. Kaka’i number up to 5 million, and they live among the Kurds of Iraqi Kurdistan and the Kurdish regions of Iran. In Chapter 28, Chris Seiple and Andrew Doran reflect on the lived experience of the Kaka’i as a community partnering with the outside world. Yezidis: In the mountainous region of northern Iraq, and in neighboring areas of Turkey, Syria, and Iran, several hundred thousand inhabitants engage in religious practices rooted in ancient cosmology and mystical teaching. They are known as the Yezidi, most likely in reference to the Umayyad Caliph Yazid I, or a later teacher who was his namesake. Though modern scholarship suggests that the Yezidi religion arose out of a fusion of indigenous practices and Islamic Sufism, Yezidi religious beliefs are not clearly rooted in Islam. Instead, they reference the existence of many celestial beings, the most noted of whom is the “peacock angel”, known as Melek Taus. In Yezidi teaching, Melek Taus is also known as Iblis, a name given to the devil in Islam. Confusion over the nature of Yezidi teaching contributed to their 8

Introduction

persecution at the hands of Ottoman and later Islamic movements over the years. Most Yezidis speak the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish, and many identify ethnically as Kurds. Until the recent genocidal campaign conducted by the Islamic State, Yezidis were concentrated in towns in northern Iraq, most notably in the area of Mount Sinjar, and in the mountainous region extending into northern Syria and Turkey. In Chapter 11, Birgül Açıkyıldız-Şengül describes the complex relationships that the Yezidis maintain with the Kurds, Arabs, and other factions in their ancestral home. Mandaeans: A small minority religious community concentrated in the valleys of Iraq, the Mandaeans date their origins back to the time of John the Baptist, in the years prior to the emergence of Christianity. The Mandaean religion focuses on the use of water in purification rites, and hence most Mandaean communities have been founded near rivers and streams. Mandaeans have never been numerous, but their number has dwindled dramatically in Iraq since the early 2000s: they now number less than a few thousand, the majority of the community having emigrated to Western states. In Chapter 12, Shak Hanish describes the complexities of Mandaean life in Iraq and in the diaspora. Jews: The Jewish faith arose out of the ancient traditions of the Jewish people, who inhabited the area of Palestine up to the first century CE. After the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Roman Empire in 70 CE, Jews dwindled in number in the ancient land of Israel, but their numbers increased in diaspora throughout the world. Large communities grew up throughout the Middle East, and remained throughout the centuries to come. Jewish groups developed wealth and influence in societies in Mesopotamia, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Yemen, Syria, Turkey, and Morocco.26 Following the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, political tumult and persecution led to the dramatic erosion of most of the Jewish population of the Middle East. Today, there are extremely marginal Jewish communities in several Middle Eastern states, as most have chosen immigration to Western states or aliya (migration) to the state of Israel. Nevertheless, concentrations of Jews remain significant in Iran (with an estimated population of 10,000 Jews) and Morocco (with an estimated population of 2,500).27 Samaritans: During the eighth century BCE, the ancient Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrian Empire. The neighboring Kingdom of Judah was later eliminated by the Babylonian conquest in the first half of the sixth century. However, the division of the J­ewish people between these two kingdoms created competing Jewish traditions. A J­ewish religious community remained in the hill country of Palestine. This group came to be known as the Samaritans. With the return of large numbers of Jewish exiles in the c­ enturies after the ­conquest of Israel, these two communities became distinct. The Samaritan c­ ommunity remained the smaller of the two, concentrated in their historic homeland. The numbers of Samaritans have dwindled today to small communities in Israel and the occupied West Bank. Nevertheless, in Chapter 17, Monika Schreiber articulates the ways in which Samaritans have adapted to the modern age and seen a renaissance in recent years. Christians: In addition to these religious traditions whose origins are in antiquity, today the most numerous pre-Muslim religious traditions are those of the Christians. Following the practice of the Middle East Council of Churches, it might be instructive to classify each of the Christian sects according to five “families” of Christendom in the Middle East. Further, one might understand the ways in which national identity contributed to specific divisions within each of the families. They include the following: The Church of the East: After the declaration of an edict of toleration for Christians in the Roman Empire in 313 AD, Christians gathered in several ecumenical councils convened to deliberate over the essentials of the Christian faith, or orthodoxy. From the very beginning, eastern churches that were established outside the territory controlled by Rome were 9

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politically alienated from the Roman Church. One eastern bishop, Nestorius, was at the center of a theological dispute over the nature of Jesus and his mother according to orthodox teaching. At the ecumenical Council of Ephesus, held in 431 AD, Emperor T ­ heodosius II declared Nestorius to be a heretic and sent him into exile. This condemnation was not ­recognized among the churches to the east of the Roman Empire. Over time, these churches developed their own hierarchy and traditions. Today, they are known collectively as the Church of the East. The most prominent of these churches today include the Assyrian Apostolic Church of the East and the Orthodox Church of India. The Assyrian Church figures prominently in the modern history of the ethnic Assyrians, an ancient indigenous socio-­ linguistic group whose roots are in northern Mesopotamia. This history is profiled in this volume in Chapter 9. The Oriental Orthodox Churches: Later, ecumenical councils of the church focused on refining the Christian theology that defined the nature of Christ. Regional rivalries also contributed to disputes that pit geographic areas of Christendom against one another. At the Council of Chalcedon, convoked in the year 451 AD, many of the church leaders from Egypt and the region of Syria refused to accept the dominant view that held that Jesus had two natures, at once human and divine, preferring instead to stress the unity of the divine-human nature. These churches broke from the Roman Church to create their own organizations and hierarchies. Today, the largest of these churches are the Coptic Orthodox Church (the national church of Egypt) and the Syriac Orthodox Church (popularly known as Jacobites, after a prominent sixth-century bishop). Devotees of the Coptic and Syriac Churches, in addition to other churches referenced later, bear reference in Chapters 6, 8, and 9 by Vivian Ibrahim, Sargon Donabed, and Mark Calder, respectively. The Eastern Orthodox Churches: Political divisions within the Roman Empire continued to plague the unity of the Roman Church. The toleration of Christianity within the ­Roman Empire had emerged at a time in which political power was already being formally divided between the eastern and western portions of the empire, and over the centuries, rivalries between the dominant church leadership in the two capitals, Rome and Constantinople (Byzantium), increasingly divided eastern and western Christians from one another. In the year 1054, these divisions led to a crisis of authority known to historians as the Great Schism, in which the bishops of Rome and Constantinople excommunicated one another. This created two rival Roman Churches. The Eastern Church came to be known as the Eastern Orthodox Church. Today, the Eastern Orthodox Church is represented by several self-­r uling (or autocephalous) churches that may be found throughout the Middle East. In Arabic, the R ­ oman origins of the church are reflected in the name Rum Orthodoxia applied to the ­Eastern Orthodox Church in the Middle East. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Rite Catholic Churches: After the Great Schism, the church led by the bishop of Rome (known worldwide as the Pope) had little influence in the Middle East. This began to change with the advent of the Crusades beginning in the late eleventh century. Crusader kingdoms brought with them the Latin rite performed in Western Europe and established churches in different parts of the eastern Mediterranean. The Roman Catholic tradition preserved in these churches is known as the “Latin” Church. In addition, beginning in the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church began to restore communion with a group of churches that recognized the authority of the Roman pope while retaining their own distinctive worship in their own liturgical languages. The first of these was an ancient church, the Maronite Church, that derives its name from a fifth-century monk. Maronites today are concentrated in the mountainous regions and central coastal cities of Lebanon. Beginning in the seventeenth century, Roman Catholic efforts to renew 10

Introduction

ties with various eastern churches led to the creation of several churches that also maintained their own liturgies and styles of leadership while recognizing papal authority, today known as Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. These include the Chaldaean, Syrian, Armenian, Coptic, and Greek Catholic (or “Melkite”) Churches, found in multiple locations throughout the Middle East. One particularly prominent Eastern Rite Church, the Maronite Church, is the focus of Alex Henley’s Chapter 7 in this book. Protestant Churches: Missionary activity undertaken during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries aimed at converting both eastern Christians and Muslims to Christianity planted clusters of Protestant Churches throughout the Middle East. Many of these Protestant Churches maintain links to the European and North American Churches that founded them, including the Anglican (Episcopal), Lutheran, and Presbyterian traditions. A recent development has been the emergence of small numbers of Muslim converts to Christianity, whose experiences inform Duane Miller’s Chapter 10 on Muslim converts to Christianity.

Post-Muslim minorities The dramatic rise of Islam as a religious, social, and political influence on the life of the Middle East in the seventh century was certainly the single most important historic event to shape the culture of the region. Nevertheless, within a few short years of the death of the Prophet of Islam, divisions within the community had become apparent. By the 650s, there were significant differences between the Muslims about the future of the Islamic community (the umma) and its leadership. A first effort to arbitrate among the leaders of the Muslims in 657 was opposed by a group now known as the Kharijites (Arabic khawarij). Divisions among the Muslim leaders led to a growing civil conflict over the next decade, known as the fitna. In 661, the Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, was assassinated by a Kharijite. His sons claimed the right to succeed him as caliph, a right that was contested by Mu’awiya, who commanded the largest army of the Muslims. The civil conflict between Mu’awiya and the “partisans” of Ali’s family ultimately led to the assassination of Ali’s son Hasan and the death of his younger son Hussein in the Battle of Karbala in 680. The partisans of Ali, or shi’at ‘Ali, are today known as the Shi’i, the smaller of the two main currents of Islam. Islamic culture of the seventh to the tenth centuries flourished in the major cities of the Middle East. It came into contact with Western, mainly Greek, influences in the fields of philosophy and theology. By the eleventh century, several different schools of thought had developed among the Muslims, including both schools of Islamic law known as madhdhabs and numerous sects led by mystical leaders known as Sufis. The various doctrines taught by Sufi leaders contributed to the diversity of Islamic teaching and created new sects defined by their peculiar fusion of ancient cosmology or their veneration of specific leaders in the Islamic tradition, most notably ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib. Some religious sects with their origins in Shi’i Islam were held to have exceeded orthodox Islamic devotion to the family of the Prophet, and labeled “exaggerators” (ghulat). Divisions within the world of Islam eventually laid the foundation for many modern minority sects. Ibadhis: The dominant religious sect of the state of Oman, Ibadhis are named for a ­seventh-century scholar who was a central figure in the development of Ibadhi theology. The Ibadhi sect had its origins in the early disputes between the Kharijites and the early Muslim rulers. Though Ibadhis do not recognize the succession of authority from M ­ uhammad, they did not agree with the Kharijite plot to assassinate ‘Ali. They originated in what is now modern-day Iraq, but early efforts to defeat the Ibadhis in battle drove them to the southern 11

Paul S. Rowe

reaches of the Arabian Peninsula, where they established their authority in the area between modern Oman and Yemen. Their descendants became the leaders of modern Oman. Shi’i: The followers of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib became the largest minority group of the Muslims. Their leaders were the descendants of ‘Ali, who came to be known as Imams. Over time, various of ‘Ali’s descendants developed separate followings among the Shi’i. In 740, one of ‘Ali’s descendants, Zayd ibn ‘Ali, led a rebellion against the Umayyad Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al Malik, in which Zayd was killed. Some of the Shi’i recognized Zayd as the proper successor to Muhammad: today, they are known as Zaydis, the majority of whom live in the northern reaches of the state of Yemen. Another group held that Ismail, the son of the sixth Shi’i Imam Jafar, was the most worthy successor to his father, although he passed away before he could ascend to the office of Imam. Those who held to the authority of Ismail and his descendants came to be known as Ismailis. Today, the largest group of the Ismailis is known as the Nizari Ismailis, who survive only in small numbers in the Middle East. Though both Zaydi and Ismaili Shi’is remain in locally relevant groups, the majority of the world’s Shi’i today are known as “twelvers” (ithna’ashari), in that they recognized the authority of a series of twelve Imams, the last of whom was said to have passed into “occultation” in the tenth century. In Chapter 18, Laurence Louër explores the diverse experiences of Shi’i communities throughout the region. Druze: During the tenth and eleventh centuries, a group of the Ismailis, known as the Fatimids, came to power in Egypt. Under the Fatimid Caliph al Hakim (r.996–1021), several mystical communities emerged. The most notable of these was a sect that emerged under the leadership of a theological teacher named Hamza ibn Ali. Though they originally embraced the title of muwahiddun (“unitarians”), their faith remained obscure and came to be named after Muhammad al-Darazi, a figure that they nonetheless considered heretical. Over the course of the eleventh century, Hamza’s disciples spread the faith in spite of persecution under Hakim’s descendants. In the late eleventh century, the Druze closed the door to conversions to the faith, and by and large the modern Druze are the descendants of the original community. By the twelfth century, the largest community of Druze had taken refuge in mountainous regions of present-day Syria and Lebanon, where the larger majority of the Druze remain. The Druze embrace a mystery religion that is revealed to only a small number within their own community, but the larger community is united by their common traditions and tribal loyalties. In Chapter 15, Yusri Hazran describes the unique features of the contemporary Druze communities that remain in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. Alawis: Within the Shi’i tradition, the veneration of ‘Ali came in many different forms. One tradition that developed in the area of northern Syria is that of the ‘Alawis. The ‘Alawi combined the veneration of ‘Ali with other mystical teachings, such as metempsychosis. In the eleventh century, their community came under pressure as Sunni authorities began to interrogate their teachings. Their response was to retreat into the mountainous region of northwestern Syria known as the Jebel al-Sahiliyya, where their sect preserved its unique teachings and developed a tribal organization.28 Today, the Alawis compose approximately 12% of the population of Syria and dominate the ruling Ba’ath Party. In Chapter 14, Leon Goldsmith demonstrates how Alawis have managed to survive and dominate Syrian politics up to the present day. Alevis: Sufi schools of Shi’ism seem to have contributed to the development of the mystical practices of the Alevi community of Turkey. Alevis, also known as Kizilbash, form a religious minority in the state of Turkey, where they comprise up to 20% of the population. Though their theology has its roots in Islam, and in particular in the veneration of ‘Ali, they do not follow the typical rituals of Islam, such as the pilgrimage, zakat, or regular 12

Introduction

prayers. Their distinctive religious practices set them apart from the majority community of Turks, for whom Alevi religious institutions do not fit into the usual categories of mosques, churches, or synagogues. In Chapter 16, Ali Çarkoğlu and Ezgi Elçi explore the lived experience of Alevis in Turkey. Shabak: A religious community of up to 100,000 members, the Shabak live in the Arab and Kurdish regions of northern Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. In their everyday life, Shabak usually speak the Gorani dialect of Kurdish or local Arabic. However, Shabak religious rites closely match those of the Alevis, revealing the likely Sufi origins of the sect. Shabak use the Turkish language and venerate a mystical understanding of Shi’i forms of Islam.29 In past decades, Shabak’s use of Turkish has led the Turkish state to claim that they are a Turkish minority, while their popular use of the Kurdish language allows them to integrate smoothly into Kurdish society as well. Bahá’í: During the mid-eighteenth century in Persia, Bahá’ísm emerged out of the teachings of two independent religious teachers, the Bab (1819–1850) and Bahá’u’lláh (1817–1892). The latter founded the Bahá’í faith, founded upon the oneness of humanity, the history of religion as progressive revelation, and the collective maturation of humanity. Bahá’í teachings were viewed as transgressive among the predominantly Muslim population of the Middle East, leading to the Bab’s execution in Persia in 1853, and the exile of Bahá’u’lláh, who ultimately passed away in the city of Akka (modern Acre, Israel). Over the following decades, the Bahá’í faith spread throughout the world, and there are small Bahá’í communities in many Middle Eastern states, though the largest numbers remain in Iran, where the faith first took root. In Chapter 13, Geoffrey Cameron and Nazila Ghanea discuss the challenges faced by the Bahá’í community throughout Middle Eastern states where their faith often goes officially unrecognized and frequently persecuted.

Ethnic minorities Kurds: The dominant ethnic group of the highland and mountainous region along the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey is the Kurds. The Kurds are an ethnolinguistic group that speaks a variety of similar dialects of Kurdish. Kurdish ethnic belonging is strong in this region, in spite of many tribal, linguistic, and religious differences among them. Kurds worldwide number up to approximately 35 million, the majority living in Turkey, followed by northern Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Kurds thereby form the largest ethnic group in the Middle East without a state of its own, making them a minority in several states. In Chapter 19, David Romano explores the complicated permutations of a group that forms a minority in several states, a majority in their own region, and continues to seek a state of their own. Armenians: Armenians are an ethnic group with ancient origins indigenous to the highland regions of central Anatolia and the Caucasus Mountains. Armenians are said to be the first national community to embrace Christianity, after Armenian King Tiridates III converted in 301. During the tumultuous years of the First World War, Armenians were subject to widespread systematic violence and dispersal from their ancestral homes, many of them fleeing into exile in various cities throughout the Middle East. Today, there are sizeable communities of Armenians in Damascus, Beirut, Istanbul, and Jerusalem, in addition to the modern state of Armenia, situated to the northeast of Turkey. In Chapter 20, Tsolin Nalbantian demonstrates how the reality of diaspora has had its mark on the complexity of Armenian identity. Turkmen: During the late Middle Ages, Turkic groups invaded the Middle East from central Asia, influencing the social and political life of the region. The last and most noteworthy 13

Paul S. Rowe

of these groups founded the Ottoman Empire in the fourteenth century. As a result of the migration of Turkish peoples, Turkish-speaking minorities are found in several states throughout the Middle East, most notably in Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Circassians: The native inhabitants of a region abutting the Black Sea north of the ­Caucasus, Circassians (or Adyghe) lived in the border region between the Ottoman and Russian ­Empires. Over the centuries, the majority of Circassians converted from indigenous beliefs to Christianity, and later to Islam. Circassians were enslaved and employed as mercenaries by successive empires in the Middle East, including the Ottmans, who brought C ­ ircassians to various parts of the empire to serve as soldiers. In 1864, Russia overran ­Circassia, sending thousands more Circassians into exile in areas throughout the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire welcomed many of the Circassians, providing them with lands and titles in return for loyal service of the empire. Today, the descendants of these Circassians may be found in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Iraq. Amazigh (Berbers): The indigenous inhabitants of the North African maghreb, the ­A mazigh (or Berbers), inhabit several areas of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, as well as several other North African states. While indigenous to the region, Amazigh do not form a majority in any state, but they number up to 25 million throughout North Africa. They speak various dialects of a single language, Tamazight. Politically, Amazigh have been marginalized for centuries: they were first identified as the “barbarian” inhabitants of North Africa by the ancient Romans. Today, Amazigh communities have differing relations with the various North African states, as Bruce Maddy-Weitzman profiles in Chapter 23 in this volume. Bedouin: In traditional societies, Arab tribes would live a nomadic pastoral lifestyle in rural areas in the desert. They would set up temporary shelters that made it possible to move in search of better pasture as weather and climate patterns shifted. Contemporary nomadic pastoralists are known as Bedouin. Large numbers of Bedouin remain in the desert regions of several Middle Eastern states, such as Syria, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. The developmental demands of modern states impose requirements on Bedouin that threaten to disturb their ancient way of life, often pitting urban communities against the interests of their desert neighbors. In Chapter 22, Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder explains how Bedouin have begun to transcend their marginalization throughout the region, and most particularly in the state of Israel. Palestinians in Israel: At its foundation, the modern state of Israel extended citizenship to all those residing within its borders. In addition to the Jewish population of the yishuv, this number included thousands of Arab Palestinians who had chosen to remain instead of fleeing the conflict. These citizens and their descendants form an ethnic minority, now numbering close to 1.7 million, or almost 21% of the population of Israel.30 Aviad Rubin describes the ways in which contemporary Palestinian citizens of Israel continue to challenge Jewish hegemony through political action in Chapter 21. Each of these minority populations exists in separate and connected spaces throughout the Middle East. In the chapters that follow, we aim to explore the lives of these minorities and to answer a set of interrelated questions. What are the unique challenges of minority populations in the Middle East? How do minority populations integrate into their host societies, both as a function of their own internal choices and as a response to majoritarian consensus on their status? Finally, given their inherent challenges, and the vast, sweeping changes that have taken place in the region over the past decade, what is the future of these minority populations? What impact has minority populations had on their societies, and to what extent will they remain prominent actors in their respective settings?

14

Introduction

We embark upon this task throughout four subsections. In the first, “Majority-Minority Relations in the Middle East”, several contributors address the general theme of minorities and their integration into the larger social fabric of the Middle East, in both historic and contemporary reflections. The second section, entitled “Religious and Ethnoreligious Minorities”, includes contributions profiling specific religious minority populations in context. In the third section, “Ethnic Minorities”, scholars consider the various minority populations for whom linguistic and cultural distinctiveness is the primary marker. Finally, in the fourth section, “Emerging Issues”, we deal with the rising significance of sexual minorities, the influence of diaspora movements, the media, and of minorities in the midst of conflict, concluding with a chapter dealing with contemporary advocacy for Middle Eastern minorities in Western states. This handbook benefits by the fact that in many cases, our contributors are members of the minority community that they profile, either by descent or adherence. Most others have spent considerable time among the minority communities that they describe. Our contributors come from a variety of scholarly disciplines, including anthropology, history, political science, and international affairs. This handbook is intended as something much more than a simple reference source: instead, each contributor provides us with much more than a guide to each of the minority populations. They also help to introduce us to the major theoretical and scholarly questions that influence our research into Middle Eastern minorities. As such, we hope to reclaim the study of minorities for a new generation of scholarship.

Notes 1 “Everyone in Middle East Given Own County in 317,000,000 State Solution”, The Onion [­online], 7 July 2014. Available www.theonion.com/article/everyone-in-middle-east-given-own-­ country-in-31700-36484 (Accessed 12 August 2017). 2 Timur Kuran argues that minority communities benefited disproportionately from their protection by the European powers, to whose authority they were effectively transferred as a result of the long negotiation of “capitulations”, later enshrined under the Tanzimat legal reforms. See Timur Kuran, “The Economic Ascent of the Middle East’s Religious Minorities: The Role of Islamic Legal Pluralism”, Journal of Legal Studies 33 (2004), 475–515. 3 Laura Robson, “Introduction”, Robson, ed., Minorities and the Modern Arab World: New Perspectives (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2016), 6–7. 4 Vivian Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 43–45. 5 Benjamin Thomas White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011). 6 Joshua Castellino and Kathleen A. Cavanaugh, Minority Rights in the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2013), 48–50. 7 Robson, “Introduction”, 5. 8 Anh Nga Longva, “Introduction: Domination, Self-Empowerment, Accommodation”, Anh Nga Longva and Sofie Anne Roald, eds., Religious Minorities in the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 7–8. 9 Habib C. Malik, Review of The Arab Christian: A History in the Middle East, Beirut Review 3 (Spring 1992), 116. Dhimmitude was a term coined by Bat Ye’or in her controversial history, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996). 10 Quinn Coffey, “Problematizing ‘Minorities’ in the Middle East”, Babylon: The Nordic Journal of Middle East Studies 1 (2016), 30. 11 Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). 12 Karim al-Gowhary, “Copts in the ‘Egyptian Fabric’”, Middle East Report 200 ( July–September 1996), 21–22. The conference led to the publication of a detailed report on the status of Copts in Egyptian society: Saad Eddin Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt (London: Minority Rights Group, 1996).

15

Paul S. Rowe 13 Will Kymlicka and Eva Pföstl, Multiculturalism and Minority Rights in the Arab World (Oxford: ­Oxford University Press, 2014), 1–25. 14 Rachel Scott, The Challenge of Political Islam: Non-Muslims and the Egyptian State (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010). 15 Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007). 16 White, Emergence, 194. 17 Longva, “Introduction”, 4. 18 Paul S. Rowe, “The Middle Eastern Christian as Agent”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 42, no. 3 (2010), 472–474. 19 Leon Goldsmith, Cycle of Fear: Syria’s Alawites in War and Peace (London: Hurst, 2015). 20 William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain (New York: Henry Holt, 1997). 21 Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2008). 22 Gerard Russell, Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms (New York: Basic Books, 2014), xx. 23 Navid Fozi, Reclaiming the Faravahar: Zoroastrian Survival in Contemporary Tehran (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2014). 24 Russell, Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms, 102. 25 Michael M. Gunter, Historical Dictionary of the Kurds, second edition (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2011), 28–29. 26 See, for example, Orit Bashkin, The New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012). 27 Jewish Virtual Library, “Jews in Islamic Countries: Iran” (n.d.). Available www.jewishvirtual library.org/jews-of-iran (Accessed 18 September 2017); “Jews in Islamic Countries: Morocco” (n.d.). Available www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jews-of-morocco (Accessed 18 September 2017). 28 Goldsmith, Cycle of Fear, 15–38. 29 Martin Van Bruinessen, “A Kizilbash Community in Iraqi Kurdistan: The Shabak”, Les annales de l’autre Islam 5 (1998), 185–196. 30 Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, “65th Independence Day – More than 8 Million Residents in the State of Israel”, 14 April 2013. Available www.cbs.gov.il/www/hodaot2013n/11_13_097e.pdf (Accessed 18 September 2017).

16

Section I

Majority-minority relations in the Middle East

2 Religious minorities in the diversity of Islamic thought David D. Grafton

The role of religious minorities in Islamic thought has received increased attention after the rise of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), or DA’ESH [al-dawla al-isl āmiyya f ī’l-Irāq wa’lSh ām]. In June 2014, militants from DA’ESH overran Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, and began to implement its puritanical interpretation of shar īʿa.1 The world received reports of Mosul’s ancient Chaldean and Assyrian Christian communities that fled or were caught under occupation. In addition, the ancient Yezidi community was subjected to bloody and barbaric treatment. Men of the community were executed and women were sold into slavery. DA’ESH committed wholesale genocide.2 In 2015 DA’ESH had carried out beheadings of Assyrian and Coptic Christians in what it called “retaliations” for the mistreatment of Muslims in other parts of the world. As justification for these acts, DA’ESH announced that it was enforcing the ancient Islamic “protected status” of indigenous Christians as dhimm īs, based upon Q 9:29. Christians were required either to submit to Islam, pay the jizya (a poll tax) and live under DA’ESH shar īʿa rule, or be killed. Those Christians who submitted had the Arabic letter nū n painted on their doors as a public sign of a religious minority. While Christians were given this “privilege” as members of the ahl al-kit āb (“people of the book”), such options were not given to the Yezidis, long considered devil worshippers, and thus, deserving of death. The application of these punitive measures on the religious minorities of DA’ESH may be extreme, but they elucidate some of the pressures facing religious minorities in some Muslim-majority countries, especially in the Middle East.3 Even before the rise of DA’ESH and al-Qaeda, several studies had drawn attention to the growing number of Middle Eastern Christians emigrating out of the Middle East because of the pressures of living as minorities.4 With the growth of conservative forms of Islam throughout the later part of the twentieth century, religious minorities have found themselves being pushed out of public spaces and retreating into the confines of their own religious communities. For example, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the largest Christian community in the Middle East (with perhaps as many as 12 million adherents in Egypt and millions worldwide),5 has become an advocate for Copts, providing resources not only in the form of spiritual care, but also in the form of social, medical and financial support at times. Faced with a strong undercurrent of public discord from members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists, and other

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conservative organizations, on occasion, Copts have been accused of seeking to create a “state within a state.”6 The second largest Christian community of the Middle East, the Maronites of Lebanon have not only become political actors but have taken up arms in protection both of their interests and of the nation, ideals which have sometimes been blurred. Since 1943, the National Pact of Lebanon has provided the platform for the Maronites to hold the position of the presidency of Lebanon, while the role of prime minister is reserved for the Sunnis and the speaker of the House of Deputies for the Shi’i. Once the largest religious community in Lebanon, the Maronite situation is an anomaly among other Middle Eastern countries where Christians are not only in the minority but have little political power, even if they are guaranteed official representation in the government (as in pre-war Syria and Iraq). The swift current of a dominant Islamic culture of the Middle East has always provided space for religious minorities but has also tried to define that space very carefully. The role of religious minorities has been based upon classical Islamic interpretations of the Qur’ān and Sunnah (the practice of the Prophet Mu ḥammad), and the precedents of his companions, namely, ʿUmar ibn al-Khatt āb. As David Marshall has suggested, Islam has always perceived an “ideal” form of Christianity it found in the Qur’ān to have a place within its theological framework as opposed to the “actual” forms of Christianity which the Muslims encountered.7 Thus, Christians and other religious minorities have often been viewed through the lens of ideal forms of an Islamic order of society (al-ni ẓām al-isl āmiyya), as opposed to the “actual” practice of Muslims throughout history. This chapter will review the ideal Islamic perspective of religious minorities and the actual practice of relationships within the Middle East. It will then look at how various modern Muslim authors have attempted to reconcile the “ideal” forms within the current world order that function under the premise of international individual human rights. We will then place the ideal Islamic forms within the broader framework of inter-communal relationships within actual Middle Eastern practice to provide a practical context. This reveals both opportunities and challenges for continued inter-communal political participation of religious communities within dominant Islamic cultural contexts.

“Second-class citizens” or “protected minorities” Bat Ye’or, in her work The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, presents a widely accepted view of the classical Islamic understanding of religious minorities under Islamic rule. Ye’or underlines the oppressive and penalizing effect. She writes; Twelve centuries of humiliation impressed upon the individual and collective psychologies of the oppressed groups a common form of alienation—the dhimmi syndrome. On the individual level it was characterized by a profound dehumanization. The individual, resigned to a passive existence, developed a feeling of helplessness and vulnerability, the consequence of a condition of permanent insecurity, servility, and ­ignorance. ­Humiliated and discriminated against, he projected onto his group a scornful, ­accusatory, self-­destructive hatred whose intensity varied in accordance with the extent of his desire to assimilate into the majority.8 This perspective of the dhimmitude, or the experience of living under a harsh Islam, has preferred the term dhimmi to define an existential state of being. The Islamicist Claude Cahen,

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however, has offered up a very different historical view of dhimm ī as a “second class citizen,” which designates the sort of indefinitely renewed contract through which the Muslim community accords hospitality and protection to members of other revealed religions, on condition of their acknowledging the domination of Islam.9 Both of these descriptions represent a vigorous debate about the very nature of Islam as either oppressive and violent or benevolent and just.10 Bat Ye’or and other critics of Islam (as well as the likes of DA’ESH) have more often than not viewed the status of minorities through the lens of particular verses of the Qur’ān and Ḥad īth (sayings of the Prophet Mu ḥ ammad) and various historical events as they have been articulated by later legal theorists (which we will review later in the chapter). We find these theories of interfaith relationships developed in the works of Abū Yū suf (d. 798), al-Māward ī (d. 1058), and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350), for example.11 These “ulam ā” (religious scholars) argued for an ideal al-ni ẓām al-isl āmiyya (an Islamic order of society) based on the foundation that all Muslims are equal under the law (spiritually and socially), regardless of their ethnicity, nationality or race. Non-Muslims, however, have different but protected rights and responsibilities under the political order. Proponents of an understanding of a just Islamic system that affords protection to religious minorities point to the particular verses of the Qur’ān that recognize the legitimacy and ascribe freedom of religion to Jews and Christians (see, for example, 5:48, and the often quoted 2:256, “There is no compulsion in religion.”). These advocates also highlight the precedent of the ­Sunnah of the Prophet through his declaration of the “Charter of Medina.” This document ­declared that Jews of Medina and Muslims were one ummah (community). The ­acknowledgment of the rights of the Jews in Medina was invoked as a blueprint for the M ­ arrakesh Declaration drafted by a global group of Islamic scholars in January 2016, which stated The objectives of the Charter of Medina provide a suitable framework for national constitutions in countries with Muslim majorities, and the United Nations Charter and related documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, [and] are in harmony with the Charter of Medina, including consideration for public order.12 Other advocates of the positive aspects of the dhimmi status note the historic role of the Arab Islamic empire in protecting Oriental Christians from the oppression of the Byzantines, who forced the Christological Chalcedonian formula on the Syrians, Egyptians and Armenians.13 Many have cited Coptic and Syrian sources that draw attention to how these Christians worked with the Arabs to overthrow the Byzantines. Of particular prominence has been the ­Copto-Arabic source of the History of the Patriarchs, ascribed to Sāwīrus ibn Muqaffaʿ (d. ca 987): The Lord abandoned the army of the Romans [Byzantines] as a punishment for their corrupt faith, and because of the anathemas uttered against them by the ancient fathers, on account of the Council of Chalcedon.14 Finally, proponents of a just rule of Islam over religious minorities point to the historic legacies of the ‘Abbasid rule in Baghdad and the Umayyad rule in Andalusia, the convenvencia of Jewish, Christian and Muslim co-existence.15

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In his own assessment of the relationship between a dominant Islamic society and the Jews, Mark Cohen has noted that the dispute over definitions has become so politicized and polemical that it becomes difficult simply to explore the topic without being drawn into the public debate. On the one hand there is the “myth of the interfaith utopia” and on the other the “countermyth of Islamic persecution.”16 The actual reality of inter-communal interactions, however, is never at either end of the spectrum but somewhere in-between. And, when reading Islamic legal sources, it is important not to assume that a particular religious opinion ( fatwa) was actually employed by rulers. Nevertheless, these opinions did have a wide-ranging consensus about the categorizing of religious minorities. It can also be said that theoretical ­Islamic legal systems put forward for the recognition and protection of minority religious practice and law have no comparable counterpart in Christendom and the Christian legal corpus.

The classical view of ahl al-kitāb and al-dhimma According to classical Islamic theory, minority communities that are granted protection, or dhimma, have particular rights, responsibilities, and limits to their political or social status. Early on in the history of the Muslim community there were legal distinctions between those that had converted earlier to Islam than others, and between Arab and non-Arab Muslims.17 However, as Islamic legal theory developed throughout the ninth century, Muslims were all considered equal in the eyes of religious law. While the actual practice of social stratification may not have aligned with Islamic theory, Muslims as a whole were to be distinguished from non-Muslims.18 Non-Muslims, then, fell into different categories. Some of these minorities might be foreign ambassadors or merchants temporarily residing in Islamic domains [musta’m īn], prisoners, or members of a protected religious community [dhimmī ].19 The ahl al-kit āb [People of the Book] is a term used to denote a special case. Jews, ­Christians and the Sabeans were singled out in the Qur’ān with praises for their religious beliefs (see for example, 5:69, 2:62, as well as 3:199).20 The ahl al-kit āb were recognized as specific communities who had received a direct revelation from God that was later passed on as scripture (even if the scripture was later judged inadequate or even corrupted in some form). Thus, Christians and Jews were in a different category from the Arab polytheists and granted specific social and political privileges for theological reasons, provided that they willingly subjected themselves to Muslim authority. Other religious communities, such as the ­Zoroastrians, were granted al-dhimma status according to various Ḥad īth, while others were continually excluded from such agreements.21 While not explicitly members of a recognized or revealed religion from the Islamic perspective, the Hindu and Buddhist communities of South and Southeast Asia were granted dhimmi status because the communities were too large to prohibit religious practices or force conversion. Thus, they were simply included in the provisions for practical rather than religious reasons. Those excluded from this status included the Manicheans, Yaz īd īs, Nuṣayr īs, Druze, Sikhs, Bābīs, and Bahá’í.22 The al-dhimma, then, were betwixt and between Muslims and polytheists (mushrik ūn) and were afforded a specific legal standing in society and before the law. For Jews and Christians, this was because of their recognized status as “people of the book.” The basis of granting protection to these ahl al-dhimma rests upon the interpretation of a specific verse of the Qurʾān, 9:29. Fight [qatilu] against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given as believe in neither God nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His apostle have forbidden, and do not embrace the true Faith, until they pay the poll tax [ jizya] out of hand and are subdued [ṣaghir ūn]. 22

Religious minorities in the diversity of Islamic thought

The verse was revealed after the Battle of the Trench in 627 and more than likely intended to be applied to the Jews of Medina who broke their agreement with Mu ḥammad by fighting with the Arab polytheists against the Muslims.23 The particular context of this revelation is important for how the subjection of minorities is interpreted, as we will see later in the chapter. In addition to this particular verse, later scholars enlist various Ḥad īth (sayings attributed to the Prophet) to support the subjugated status of these communities. Several medieval scholars that utilize these Ḥad īth to provide legal parameters for Christians and Jews include Ibn Naqqā sh (720/1320–763/1357) and Qalqashand ī (/1355–821/1418).24 Nevertheless, the first requirement of the ahl al-kit āb who were subjugated was to pay a poll tax [  jizya]. The purpose and application of this tax was to be debated by later Muslim scholars. Ultimately, the status of the dhimmīs became encapsulated in a tradition known as the “Covenant of Umar” ascribed to the second Caliph, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattāb (643–644). The earliest reference we have of a quid pro quo arrangement of payment of the jizya for protection comes from Abū Yūsuf ’s Kitāb al-Kharāj written around 798. Early Western research into this tradition by T.W. Arnold and A.S. Tritton, however, argued that the Covenant was most likely a creation of the Umayyad Caliph ‘Umar ibn ʿAbd al-Azīz (682–720) in order to support his government reforms.25 Nevertheless, the earliest extant version of this tradition is found in al-Shāfiʿī’s Kitāb al-Umm (820), al-Ṭur ṭūshī’s Sirāj al-mulūk (1126), Ibn ʿAsākir’s Tār īkh dimasq al-kabīr (1176), and Ghāzī ibn al-Wā siṭī’s al-radd ʿalā al-dhimma (1292), among various others. The Covenant of Umar provided religious and communal autonomy to the dhimm īs. The Covenant, as it came to be applied at times, provided each protected religious community freedom to arrange its own affairs, govern its own members and even apply its own personal status laws (such as divorce and inheritance laws). In matters of shar īʿa, any incident that involved a Muslim and a dhimm ī was reviewed within the Muslim courts. Those dhimm īs who so wished could always have their own cases reviewed by Muslim judges, rather than their own religious courts.26 This did happen on occasion when a member of the ahl al-kit āb believed that he would receive a more favorable ruling in the Muslim courts, especially in the cases of inheritance. In lieu of this political arrangement with the dhimm ī, by the thirteenth century the Covenant ultimately was considered a historic tradition that included variations of the following requirements:   1 Pay the jizya (poll tax) in return for protection from enemies;   2 Not bear arms or serve in the military;   3 Not display crosses in public, ring bells, have public processions or raise loud voices during worship or funerals;   4 Not speak against Muhammad or turn a Muslim from his faith;   5 Not aid enemies of the state;   6 Not sell wine or pigs to Muslims;   7 Wear distinctive clothing that clearly marks them as non-Muslims   8 Not ride horses or put on public displays of wealth;   9 Not own Muslim slaves; 10 Not build homes higher than those of Muslim homes; 11 Not build new places of worship or repair existing structures without permission.27 As David Freidenreich has stated, the primary purpose of these prohibitions was “to minimize the visible ‘footprint’ of Christianity within the Islamic world.”28 In some versions, the stipulations were specific and onerous. For example, in al-Ṭur ṭū sh ī’s version of the Covenant there is an agreement put forward by the Christian community that includes, “We shall show respect toward the Muslims, and we shall rise from our seats when they wish to sit.”29 23

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Certainly, a comment should be made about the requirement to designate one’s membership through the wearing of specific colors or attire. Numerous Islamic reports mention the blue turban or belt for Christians and yellow for Jews. These are often found in later references to an event or in legal opinions that describe what should be the normative practice of society by appealing to the tradition of the Covenant of ʿUmar. 30 The use of colors to designate communities is found in late antique and medieval literature and art. It was the Sassanian king Yazdegard I who recognized Christians and Jews and ascribed colors to their communities in the fifth century. At the Lateran Council of 1215, the Western Church adopted yellow as a public marker for Jews. Latin and earlier Byzantine Christian practices had their origin in an anti-Semitic view of the “Christ killers.” As noted by Sholomo Simonshon, … the Jews were to be punished for rejecting Christ and his message, for having been responsible for his death, for denying the truth of the Christian faith, and for adhering stubbornly to their erroneous and sacrilegious doctrines.31 Islamic prescriptions, however, were generated in order to distinguish religious communities for legal purposes. Given that the shar īʿa, as well as Jewish law and Christian canons, had their own religious regulations for personal status, as well as food laws, it became important to distinguish which laws applied to whom, especially in the market. 32 This was all the more important once Jews and Christians become socially Arabized as there was no clear way to distinguish members of each community linguistically or physically other than through style of clothing. Other legal jurists further explicated the legal status of the non-Muslims under shar īʿa. For example, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s A ḥk ām ahl al-dhimma, which was written during the first half of the fourteenth century, provides three different versions of the Covenant of ʿUmar and then goes on to stipulate further legal parameters for relations. His work is considered the first comprehensive elaboration of Islamic legal theory on relations with the ahl al-dhimma. Because of this, A ḥk ām has become popular among Salafists attempting to provide what they feel to be renewed balance to Islamic societies by re-implementing these prescriptions.33 As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the appearance of DA’ESH has brought many of these issues to the fore once again. DA’ESH is not the first modern Muslim organization to call for the “ideal” application of al-dhimma, but they have been the most successful in applying their ideal version of this contract. These radical Islamists have also succeeded in applying other interpretations of their shar īʿa on Sunni Muslims and those they consider to be mun āfiqūn (hypocrites), rāfidī (those who “reject,” literally the Shiʾa), kuffār (unbelievers and apostates), and the mushrik ūn (polytheists; Yezidis).

Actual practice and historical realities While the concept of al-dhimma has been viewed by some, including Salafists and radical Islamists, as well as non-Muslim detractors of Islam, as a static doctrine to oppress or impose “dhimmitude,” the actual practice of protection or execution of the prohibitions was highly contextual.34 As Khaled Abou el Fadl has noted, “Many of the institutions referenced in the Qur’an—such as the poll tax or the formation of alliances with non-Muslims can be understood only if the reader is aware of the historical practices surrounding the revelation of the text.”35 In fact, the concept of ascribing protection or status to a minority community in exchange for some form of freedom or privileges is not a uniquely Islamic concept or 24

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practice. In 410, the Sassanian ruler Yazdegard I (r. 399–420) officially extended protection over the East Syriac Christian community of his Zoroastrian empire. The Christians were recognized as a religious community with their own religious laws, rules and organization.36 Thus, the initial Islamic practice of recognizing religious minority communities was not only part of the religious concept of the “people of the book” but a general Near-Eastern political practice of realpolitik. Of course, Islamic sources developed their own version of this ancient practice. The first Arab Muslims who successfully conquered the Sassanian and Byzantine territories of Persia and greater Syria found themselves as a minority Arab elite ruling over a host of different linguistic and religious communities. The Arab Jewish tribes and major Christian cities negotiated their terms of capitulation and managed to secure a treaty. While these treaties were specific to each context, they came to include a number of common patterns, and ultimately became the basis of the Covenant of ʿUmar. Mu ḥammad made the first important treaty with the Jews of the oasis of Khaybar in 637. The Jews capitulated without a fight and were thus allowed to keep their lands and property. Based on this practice of Mu ḥammad (sunna), later jurists saw the response of surrender or active defense as critical to determining the rights of conquered peoples.37 Those who capitulated retained rights to their property, while those that fought forfeited their property rights. This was followed by the treaty with the Byzantine outpost of Tabū k in 630. Here we find the first reference to the “protection of God” (al-dhimma All āh) in conjunction with those who pay the jizya (as noted in 9:29). Following the death of Mu ḥammad, the Companions of the Prophet succeeded in defeating the Byzantine armies in Damascus, Jerusalem and the fortress of Babylon in Egypt. Each of these treaties included specific contextual items (such as taxation rights based on the flooding of the Nile, or the retaining of holy places in Jerusalem), but they all included payment of the jizya.38 Some later Islamic legal scholars interpreted the jizya as a penalty tribute for those Christians who engaged in war against the Muslims.39 Other jurists would come to see the jizya as simply the non-Muslim tax to the government, especially for those who capitulated without fighting. As the new Arab Muslim rulers settled into running a new empire, they left its vanquished administrative class in place so that the normal bureaucratic government procedures, namely tax collection and recording, could continue. The Arab Muslims needed officials who could oversee the process of the indigenous languages of Greek, Persian and Syriac. In addition, while the apocryphal Covenant of ʿUmar detailed the strict prohibitions of the public display of Christianity, in many places, architectural evidence indicates that church construction continued throughout the Umayyad era.40 Caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān (646–705) began the process of Arabizing the government and Islamicizing its landscape. His construction of the Dome of the Rock of Jerusalem was not only a religious structure but also a political statement that Arab Muslim rule was there to stay. He issued a proclamation that all government work was to be carried on in Arabic. However, Greek records continued up through 857.41

The jurists of the medieval period To return to the medieval jurists who ascribe strict prohibitions on the ahl al-dhimma, it is important to place their rulings within specific contexts. For example, the ‘Abbasid scholar al-Jāḥ i ẓ (776–869) wrote his Radd ʿal ā l-Na ṣārā during the reign of the ʿAbbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil, around the year 850. Al-Jāḥ i ẓ’s treatise was a response to the frustration of some Muslim aristocrats that Christians were demonstrating too much power and wealth in 25

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the imperial capital of Baghdad. One of the results of the work was al-Mutawakkil’s decree to banish Christians from government posts based on the historic tradition of the Covenant of ʿUmar. While the treatise and subsequent government proclamations have been used to demonstrate Islamic persecution, it is important to remember that such an edict was issued 100 years after the ʿAbbasids came to power. Al-Mutawakkil’s pronouncement was not the first, nor would it be the last.42 Despite the wishes of specific rulers, Jewish and Christian scribes, doctors and administrators continued to be employed even in government positions based upon their expertise.43 Two hundred years after al-Jāḥ i ẓ, the Shafiʿī jurist Abū al-Ḥasan al-Māward ī (974–1058) provided an overview of the prohibitions of Christians as had been reiterated by Islamic scholars before him in his al-A ḥk ām al-sulṭaniyya. He focuses much of his attention on the importance of the jizya and other taxes. Referring to 9:29, he argues that the purpose of paying the jizya “out of hand and subdued” (ʿan yadin wa h ūm ṣaghir ūn) may be interpreted to mean that the ahl al-dhimma should pay the poll tax only as they have the financial ability to pay, but that they should always be reminded of their servility to Islamic society. When his work is placed within the broader landscape of a changing dominant culture in the Middle East, his comments take on a different perspective. Christians (of all sects) were the largest community within the Umayyad and later in the early years of the ʿAbbasid empires. It was not until the large-scale conversions of Christians to Islam during the ninth and tenth centuries that there was an important cultural shift in which former Christians were now beholden to different laws and taxes, which impacted the imperial tax base. As noted by Wadi Haddad, there was a need to “organize departments of administration (diw ān) for the safeguarding the welfare of Muslims, the regulation and collection of taxes, and the attainment of normalcy and stability for the inhabitants.”44 Another example of the importance of historic context is that of Ghāzī ibn al-Wā siṭī’s al-radd ʿal ā al-dhimma (d. 1312). This was written during a particularly tumultuous time of Mamluk rule in Egypt during the late thirteenth century. While the period was not kind to the Copts, it was also fairly unpredictable toward the average Egyptian Muslim as well. Society was functioning less by religious ideals than through relationships of power and wealth. al-Wā siṭī was attempting to remind his Muslim rulers of their duty to abide by an Islamic order that superseded worldly and arbitrary rule.45 Throughout much of the medieval era, then, Muslim rulers were reminded by their ʿulam āʾ (scholars) about their responsibilities as Muslim rulers over the ahl al-dhimma in the name of the Covenant. The continual appeal to the Covenant denotes that it was often disregarded or not applied.46 When we remember that the Arab Muslims were numerically the minority community for at least 150 years, it stands to reason that any application of the ideal view of Islamic society would rub up against the reality of an empire where Christians still lived according to their own precepts as long as they paid their taxes and accepted Muslim sovereignty. However, moments of political crises often brought to the fore the reality that religious minorities lived under the authority of an Islamic empire. This is especially the case during the erratic rule of the Fatamid Caliph al-Ḥā kim (985–1021), when Christians achieved important successes while at the same time suffering from bouts of persecution.47

The Ottoman millet system While medieval Islamic histories and legal treatises are important sources, it is difficult to assess comprehensively the social-political relations in actual practice. As noted earlier, a fatwa (religious opinion) may have been issued precisely because, in a scholar’s opinion, 26

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Islamic guidelines were being contravened. Yet, this does not confirm that any such opinion was carried out in any systematic way. Another method to evaluate the place of Jews and Christians under Muslim rule, however, is to examine administrative and court records. The cache of documents found at Ben Ezra synagogue in old Cairo has provided an incredible amount of information regarding the lives of Jews in late medieval Egypt and is still being evaluated.48 It is not until the early modern period that we find a plethora of Ottoman records that provide insight into Christian-Muslim relations.49 Under Ottoman rule of the Near East (1517–1922), the role of al-dhimma was developed into what has come to be known as the millet system; that is, each religious community was granted legal standing to administer its own communal laws. The religious leader of the community (patriarch, metropolitan or chief rabbi) was responsible for collecting the necessary taxes of the community and administering communal justice. In other words, the millet system formalized the ancient dhimm ī structure into an imperial political system, the remnants of which are still adhered to in several Middle Eastern countries. Originally, all of the ahl al-kit āb fell under three primary millets: Greek Orthodox, ­Armenians and Jews.50 However, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, various communities petitioned local Muslim courts for their own communal laws to be recognized as a distinct taʾ ifa (community) from the others. Bruce Masters has noted that court cases submitted to the qāḍī (judge) of Aleppo during this period expose disputes between the Nestorians, Syrian Orthodox and Maronites, each petitioning to have their authority recognized to i­mpose and collect taxes over their own members.51 Thus, the original three minority ahl al-kitāb ­ultimately expanded to also include Syrian Catholic, Greek Catholic, Chaldean Catholic, Armenian ­Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Coptic Catholic and Protestants.52 From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, expanding European nations began to assert their political power over a weakened Ottoman Empire by adopting and sponsoring various millets.53 Known as the Eastern Question, European nations jockeyed for position for their own economic or territorial gains. This international interference had its origin in the Capitulations of 1569, when the Ottomans recognized the right of France to protect French merchants and priests in Ottoman territory. By 1673, the Capitulations were extended to the indigenous Christian religious leaders “who depend on France and profess the religion of the Franks.”54 In 1775, the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca asserted that Russia would claim protection not only of Russian subjects within the Ottoman Empire but also of all indigenous Orthodox Christians. Finally, due to British pressure, the Ottomans added Protestants to the list of legal millets in 1850. By the middle of the nineteenth century, European nations supported the legality of minority religious laws that were originally asserted under the ancient tradition of the Covenant of ʿUmar. Yet, they also pressured the Ottomans to remove or refrain from executing many of the prohibitions of the Covenant, such as the penalty of apostasy, by demanding the protection of minority rights.55 In addition to the complicated factors of the Eastern Question, the millet system was also prompted by Ottoman military and government reforms known as the Tanzimat.56 These reforms included two prominent decrees of Hatt-ı Şer ī f of Gülhane and Hatt-ı Hümayun in 1839 and 1856, respectively. These imperial decrees proclaimed the equality of all subjects before imperial law. In addition, the jizya was abolished in 1855 and replaced with the bedel, a military tax for Christians. In 1920, the Ottoman Empire was formally dissolved and in 1924 the Caliphate was abolished, leaving behind the secular republic of Turkey.57 While there was a Reformist Muslim movement that accepted the removal of the Covenant of ʾUmar as a necessity in the modern world, there were, and continue to be, Salafist (Wahhabi) and Radicalist reactions. A number of violent events occurred in response to the 27

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imperial proclamations of equality, the most vicious resulting in the massacre of C ­ hristians in Damascus in 1860. Not all of the violence was, or continues to be, undertaken solely for religious purposes, however. Local familial, economic and nationalistic feuds often take on religious language as justification.58

Reformist interpretations of an Islamic order The reform movement began as one response to the Ottoman Tanzimat era. One of the earliest and most controversial Muslim scholar to articulate traditional Islamic categories in modern international terminology was Rifaʿa Baḍ aw ī Raf īʾal-Ṭahṭ aw ī (1801–1873), who integrated French enlightenment ideas with classical Islamic ideas. Al-Ṭahṭ aw ī continues to be a center of debate. Two other important Reformist scholars who were vitally important in developing reformist responses were the Indian Sayed Ahmed Khan (1817–1898) and the Egyptian Mu ḥammad Abduh (1849–1905).59 Reformist views concerning minority rights within Muslim-majority countries have become more prominent ever since the United Nations (1948) Universal Declaration of ­Human Rights. Uncomfortable with removing God as the creator and originator of all human rights, the 1981 Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights declared that all social and political rights “are firmly rooted in the belief that God, and God alone, is the Law Giver and the Source of all human rights.”60 Article ten of the Declaration cites 2:256 as the basis that all non-Muslims will not be forced to accept shar īʿa, but will “be governed in respect of their civil and personal matters by Islamic Law, or by their own laws.” This article assumes that individual rights are lodged in the particular communities to which they belong. A few examples of Reformist views will suffice.61 The shar īʿa scholar Abdur Rahman I. Doi (1933–1999), who taught Islamic Law in ­Nigeria and Malaysia, argued that Mu ḥammad set the standard for the ethical treatment of the ahl al-dhimma through his respectful relationship with the Negus (king) of Abyssinia, and through the specific treaties he signed with individual Jewish and Christian communities. Under shar īʿa, then, non-Muslims living in Muslim-majority countries are equal in terms of human rights but distinct in terms of the “political administration” of their social and religious laws. The dhimm īs “enjoy complete religious, administrative, and political freedom” which is guaranteed by their paying the jizya, which he defines as a tax. This tax, he argues, is actually less than the taxes imposed upon Muslims living under shar īʿa.62 The Sudanese-American scholar Abdullahi an-Naʿim (1946–) has proposed that while the Qur’ān and Sunna are “divine sources of Islam,” their interpretation and implementation are guided by both independent human reason and “historical experiences of actual societies.”63 In the current international context of a “human rights-based concept of citizenship,” the historical contingencies of the dhimm ī needs to be replaced with the broader principles of revelation that apply to all of humanity. Here, an-Naʿim is following the ideas of his controversial teacher Mahmoud Mohamed Taha (1905–1985) who argued that God’s intention for all of humanity is based upon justice and mercy as found in the early revelations in Mecca, while the later revelations revealed in Medina were responding to specific historical instances only.64 An-Naʿim argues that the revelations in Mecca “can support the development of a modern concept of citizenship.”65 In fact, he refers to the experiences of both the Ottoman and Mughal Empires, which made the transition from medieval Muslim empires to modern states, as models for Islamic reform of the concepts of al-dhimma. In September 2014, more than 120 Islamic scholars from around the world issued an “Open Letter to al-Baghdadi” in which they chastised the leader of DA’ESH on a variety of 28

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topics. They indicated that they wanted to correct Abū Bakr al-Baghd ād ī’s understanding of Islamic history and law. In regards to the ahl al-kit āb, these ʿulam āʾ argue that Christians of Syria and Iraq who had been subjected to the jizya and other atrocities are “not combatants against Islam or transgressors,” but rather their ancestors fought with the Prophet against the Byzantines and “fall under ancient agreements.” Here, the scholars do not single out the Covenant of ʾUmar, but imply this and other treaties made by Umar, Khā lid ibn al-Wal īd, the Umayyads, ‘Abbasids, Ottomans and other respective Muslim states. Thus, the scholars appeal to historic contingencies. It is not clear, however, if these scholars would argue for the enactment of the other prohibitions of the Covenant of ʾUmar. Even so, when it comes to the jizya, their position is very clear. They argue that 9:29 can only be applied to those that have fought against the Muslims. Thus, it is a penalty tribute and not a general ongoing tax.66 Finally, there is the 2016 Marrakesh Declaration noted earlier. This gathering was organized by the Reformist scholar Abdullah bin Bayyah.67 The Declaration is intended to respond precisely to the question of what “paradigm concerning religious minorities” Muslims can put forward in the modern world. The Declaration argues that the modern world requires renewed emphasis on the Charter of Medina as a modern constitution for ­Muslim-majority countries. In this focus on Medina, however, the statement articulates that “rulings which promote peace have both primacy and supremacy” rather than the traditional method of abrogation.68 The Declaration’s argument is based on Muslim ethics grounded in the Qur’ān and Sunnah of the Prophet.

Religious minorities in the nation-state system Various interpretations of al-dhimma exist among modern Muslim lay scholars, lay activists and ʿulam āʾ.69 The lack of any unified authority structure in Islam ensures a wide diversity of views on this and every other matter. Those Muslims who argue for a traditional understanding of the religious minorities as being “subdued” by Islamic rule normally rest their arguments on the concept of abrogation (naskh) – that is, the earlier verses of the Qur’ān that proscribe congenial relations with the ahl al-kit āb were replaced by those verses revealed during the latter days of the Prophet’s life, including the 9:29 and the ubiquitous “sword verses” (9:5, for example). Thus, God’s last word to the Muslim community was to subjugate the ahl al-kit āb. This has been the view of DA’ESH. The Muslims who disavow the aforementioned conservative views argue that there is no consensus (ijmaʾ) on the order of revealed verses, that naskh is limited in scope to specific verses and that Qur’ānic passages should be interpreted with knowledge of the general context of the revelation (asbāb al-nuzūl). They advocate for positive inter-communal relationships based upon the prohibition against compulsion and the freedom of choosing one’s religion (2:256); that individual responsibility of belief is a human condition ( fitra) and that justice (ʿadl) and mercy (raḥmān) are the basis of general ethical principles for inter-communal relationships.70 For the Reformists and Progressives, then, the al-dhimma is a historic construct that is no longer applicable in the modern world.71 Even where the shar īʿa serves as a source of law for ­Muslim-majority countries, Reformists and Progressives reiterate that there is a distinction between God’s will as found in the shar īʿa and human interpretation ( fiqh). Shar īʿa in its “ideal” form functions for the purpose of assisting humanity, not to impose harsh penalties, and that international human rights laws are consistent with the principles of Islam.72 The Islamic Radicalist or Revivalist understanding of religious minorities reiterate the “ideal” views and arguments as set forward by Bat Ye’or and other detractors of Islam. Conservative forces within Islam and their Islamophobic interlocuteurs concentrate on the 29

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same issues but disregard other Islamic views as inauthentic.73 However, Reformist and Progressive Muslim scholars have focused on four primary themes which highlight agreement between Islam and a modern world based on individual human rights. First, proponents argue that Mu ḥammad did not leave directions for the organization of an Islamic government and that believers are left to organize themselves as they see fit, providing they adhere to Islamic ethical principles and guidelines. Second, Mu ḥammad’s Sunna provides guidance as to how to treat non-Muslims, especially Christians and Jews. For example, Mu ḥammad’s protection of the icon of Mary and Jesus found in the Kaba, positive relations with the Negus of Abyssinia, discussions with the Christians of Najr ān and the Charter of Medina (as noted earlier in the 2016 Marrakesh Declaration) all point to his positive relations with the ahl al-kit āb. This supersedes later Muslim practice. Third, the Qur’ān recognizes Christians and Jews as ahl al-kit āb who are to be respected (even if their beliefs diverge from orthodox Islam), especially those who extend hands of friendship and amity. Finally, those verses of the Qur’ān that are critical and punitive (such as the “sword verses of surah 9”) were revealed for specific occasions and applied to certain kinds of Jews and Christians, particularly those that broke their promises and Covenants with Mu ḥammad and the Muslim community. Thus, for these Muslims, the previous categories of al-dhimma were historical contingencies of the non-Qur’anic sources. The world context no longer requires medieval sources to organize the state or society. Rather, Islamic ethical principles can and should be applied to current international systems. It could be argued that this Reformist position is also an “ideal” perspective of the sources and does not take into account the “practical” problems of arbitrary rule in the name of another of Islamic laws to the detriment of disenfranchised minorities, such as in Sudan, Algeria, Nigeria, and most recently the DA’ESH-held territories of Iraq and Syria. Nevertheless, there remain vestiges of the Covenant and the dhimm ī status in certain countries, like Egypt where the laws restricting church-building are still enforced. Naturally, these laws pose difficulties for minorities seeking to protect their own human or political rights. Yet, in many Muslim-majority countries, the social-political structures are such that individual citizens are legally defined by their membership to a particular religious or ethnic community rather than simply as an individual citizen of the state. This also is a remnant from the millet system. However, challenging this tradition is not just a test for Islamic tradition. Christian prelates are also reluctant for their churches to relinquish the power to adjudicate personal status laws (e.g., divorce, inheritance, etc.). Thus, the role of minorities as legal entities in Muslim-majority countries with ancient Christian communities does not seem to be a practice that will give way easily in modern republican democracies.74

Notes 1 Khaled Abou el Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005), 195–200. 2 “Islamic State Committing Genocide against Yazidis, Says UN,” BBC World ( June 16, 2016) www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36547467 [accessed 15 November 2016]. 3 Omar Abdel-Razek and Miriam Puttick, “Majorities and Minorities in Post-ISIS Iraq,” Contemporary Arab Affairs 9, no. 4 (2016), 565–576. 4 See, for example, James Berry, “‘This Is Not Our Country’: Declining Diversity in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” The Muslim World 105, no. 3 ( July 2015), 281–298; and Bernard Sabella, “The Emigration of Christian Arabs: Dimensions and Causes of the Phenomenon,” in Andrea Pacini, ed., Christian Communities in the Arab Middle East: The Challenge of the Future (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 127–154.

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Religious minorities in the diversity of Islamic thought 5 The number of Christians in Egypt is hotly debated, as there has not been a census since 1986. At that point, Christians made up 5.7% of the population. In 2012, the Egyptian government claimed that indigenous Christians made up 6% of the population. The figure was based upon extrapolations from the 1986 census and a high emigration ratio of Christians. The Coptic Orthodox Church has refuted these numbers, insisting that there are between 12 and 15 million Copts within Egypt. See Abdel Rahman Youssef, “Egyptian Copts: It’s all in the Number,” Al-Akhbar English (September 30, 2012) http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/12728 [accessed December 18, 2016]; Pew Research Center, “How Many Christians Are There in Egypt?” (February 16, 2011) www.pewresearch.org/2011/02/16/how-many-christians-are-there-in-egypt/ [accessed December 18, 2016]. 6 During the presidency of Anwar Sadat, the Coptic Pope, Shenouda III, was accused of creating secessionist ideas among the Copts. 7 David Marshall, “Christianity in the Qur’ā n,” in Lloyd Ridgeon, ed., Islamic Interpretations of Christianity (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001), 24. 8 Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam (Rutherford, NJ: Farleigh Dickenson University Press, 1985), 143. See also her The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude: Seventh-Twelfth Century (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996); and Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson Up, 2001). 9 C. Cahen, “Dhimma,” P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W.P. Heinrichs, eds., Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd Edition, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_1823. 10 A variation of the dhimmitude perspective is that Christians are theologically blasphemers or kuffār, and thus liable for punishment. See Sam Shamoun, “The Quranic View of Christians – Fellow Believers or Unbelieving Polytheists?” www.answering-islam.org; www.answering-islam.org/ Shamoun/christians.htm [accessed December 18, 2016]. 11 Sarah Albrecht, “Dā r al-Islā m and d ā r al-ḥ arb,” in Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, and Everett Rowson, eds., Encyclopedia of Islam, 3rd Edition, http://dx.doi. org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_25867 [accessed December 14, 2016]. The literature on Islamic criticism of Christianity is broad and extensive. For a selection of medieval Islamic criticisms of Christianity as a religion, see Rifaat Eibied and David Thomas, The Polemical Works of ʿAlī alṬabar ī (Leiden: Brill, 2016); and David Thomas, Christian Doctrines in Islamic Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2008). 12 http://marrakeshdeclaration.org/marrakesh-declaration.html [accessed December 14, 2016]. 13 Youssef Courbage and Philippe Fargues, Christians and Jews under Islam (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997), 3–4. For an excellent assessment of the Christian sources of the conquest and their views of the ­A rabs, see Robert Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1997), 17–26. 14 Hugh Goddard, A History of Christian-Muslim Relations (Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, 2000), 37. It should be noted that the History of the Patriarchs is a compendium added to throughout the years by various authors. The authenticity of the quote is problematic. The difficulty with these statements is that they are far removed from the events of the day. See Mark N. Swanson, The Coptic Papacy in Islamic Egypt (Cairo: The American University of Cairo Press, 2010), 4–6. 15 See Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002). 16 Mark R. Cohen, Under Cross and Crescent (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 6–9. 17 See A.J. Wensinck and P. Crone, “Mawla,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd Edition, http://dx.doi. org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0714. 18 One of the first major studies of the practice of non-Muslims under Islamic rule was A.S. Tritton, The Caliph s and Their Non-Muslim Subject’s: A Critical Study of the Covenant of ‘Umar (London: Oxford University Press, 1930). 19 Yohanan Friedman, “Classification of Unbelievers in Sunni Muslim Law and Tradition,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 22 (1998), 163–195. 20 There has been considerable debate about the identity of the Sabeans. See Carra de Vaux, B., “alṢābiʾa,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1st Edition, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2214-871X_ei1_SIM_5007 [accessed December 14, 2016]; and A.F.L. Beeston, “Sābiʾa,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd Edition, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0950 [accessed December 14, 2016). 21 David Scott, “Buddhism and Islam: Past to Present Encounters and Interfaith Lessons,” Numen 42, no. 2 (May 1995), 144.

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David D. Grafton 22 Yohanan Friedmann, “Dhimma,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd Edition, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/ 1573-3912_ei3_COM_26005 [accessed December 14, 2016]. 23 This battle led to the expulsion of and execution of the males of the tribe of Qurayza. The tragic treatment of the Jewish tribes of Medina has become a major controversy in Jewish-Muslim relations. See Paul Lawrence Rose, “Muhammad, the Jews and the Constitution of Medina: Retrieving the Historical Kernel,” Der Islam 86, no. 1 (2009), 1–29. 24 For a thorough analysis of these Islamic sources, see Antoine Fattal, Le statut légal des non-­Musulmans en pays d’Islam (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1958). 25 For a review of these arguments, see David Grafton, The Christians of Lebanon (London: I.B. T ­ auris, 2003), 30–33. 26 Bruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 34–35. 27 Grafton, 33. 28 David M. Freidenreich, “Christians in Early and Classical Sunn ī Law,” in David Thomas, ed., ­Christian-Muslim Relations 600–1500, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1877-8054_CMR_COM_23956 [accessed December 16, 2016]. 29 Bernard Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, Vol. 2: Religion and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 218. See also Maribel Fierro, “Sir āj ­a l-mulū k,” in Christian-Muslim Relations 600–1500, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1877-8054_CMR_ COM_23896 [accessed December 14, 2016]. 30 C.E. Bosworth, “The Concept of Dhimma in Early Islam,” in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, eds., Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, vol. 1 (New York: Homes & Meier, 1982), 48. 31 Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1991), 95. For further restrictions on Jews under Christian rule, see Bosworth, “The Concept of Dhimma in Early Islam,” 38. 32 See David M. Freidenreich, Foreigners and Their Food. Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic law (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011). 33 Jon Hoover, “A ḥ k ā m ahl al-dhimma,” in Christian-Muslim Relations 600–1500, http://dx.doi. org/10.1163/1877-8054_CMR_COM_25396 [accessed December 14, 2016]. 34 The categorization of Islamic ideologies is critical for understanding the diversity of Islam. Here, I am using the classification as set out by William E. Shepherd, “The Diversity of Islamic Thought: Towards a Typology,” in Suha Taji-Farouki and Basheer M. Nafi, eds., Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 61–103. 35 Khaled Abou El Fadl, The Place of Tolerance in Islam (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 15. 36 William G. Young, Patriarch, Shah and Caliph (Pakistan: Christian Study Centre, 1974), 176. 37 See Malik ibn Anas, al-Muwa ṭṭa’, trans. Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley (London: Kegan Paul International, 1989), 183. See also al-Baladhuri, Kit āb Futu ḥ al-Buld ān, trans. P.K. Hitti and F.C. Murgotten (New York: Columbia University Press, 1916 and 1924) I, 92–94. 38 Philip K. Hitti, The Origins of the Islamic State (Beirut: Khayats, 1966), 187; Bernard Lewis, ed., Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 235–236; and Alfred J. Butler, The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1902), 33–35. 39 Ibn Ishaq, Kitāb ṣirāt rasūl Allāh, Ferdinand Wustenfeld, ed. (Gottingen: Dieterischsch UniversitatsBuchhandlung, 1860), 902. 40 Mattia Giudetti, “The Byzantine Heritage in the Da ̄ r al-Isla ̄ m: Churches and Mosques in al-Ruha between the Sixth and Twelfth centuries,” Muqarnas 26 (2009), 1–36. 41 Grafton, 61. 42 Grafton, 48–51; David Thomas, “al-Radd ʿalā l-Na ṣā r ā,” in Christian-Muslim Relations 600–1500, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1877-8054_CMR_COM_23713 [accessed December 17, 2016). 43 Grafton, 62–63. ̣ al 4 4 Wadi Z. Haddad, “Ahl al-dhimma in an Islamic State: The Teaching of Abū al-H asan ̣ al-sultāniyya,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 7, no. 2 (1996), 176. Mawardī's Al-ah kām 45 Alex Mallett, “Radd ʿalā ahl al-dhimma wa-man tabiʿahum,” in Christian-Muslim Relations 600–1500, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1877-8054_CMR_COM_25382 [accessed December 14, 2016]. 46 Grafton, 59–63; David Thomas, “Muslim Regard for Christians and Christianity, 900–1200,” in Christian-Muslim Relations 600–1500, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1877-8054_CMR_COM_25008 [accessed December 14, 2016].

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Religious minorities in the diversity of Islamic thought 47 For an extremely helpful exploration of this period, see Marlis J. Saleh, “Government Intervention in the Coptic Church in Egypt during the Fatimid period,” The Muslim World 91, no. 3–4 (September 2001), 381–397. 48 Sholomo D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, vol. 1–6 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967–1993). See also Mark R. Cohen, Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); and Moshe Ma‘oz, ed. The Meeting of Civilizations: Muslim, Christian and Jewish (Sussex: Academic Press, 2009), 54–65. 49 Masters, 28. For a list of the various studies using these records, as well as the limits to this method, see Masters, 31–37. 50 Masters, 61. 51 Masters, 63. 52 For an overview of these communities, see Anthony O’Mahony and Emma Loosely, eds., Eastern Christianity in the Modern Middle East (New York: Routledge, 2010). 53 See A.L. Macfie, The Eastern Question, 1774–1923 (London: Longman, 1996). 54 Charles A. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans: The Church and the Ottoman Empire 1453–1923 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 106. 55 Prior to the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, international responses to crises focused on the protection of communal rights rather than on individual rights across international borders. See UNHCR, “Human Rights,” www.ohchr.org/en/issues/pages/whatarehumanrights.aspx [accessed December 23, 2015]. 56 Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 34–66. 57 Grafton, 73–77. Two dated but still extremely rich studies on this period are Roderic H. ­Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–76 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963); Moshe Maʻoz, Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine, 1840–1861; The Impact of the Tanzimat on Politics and Society (London: Clarendon, 1968). See also Nazan Çiçek, The Young Ottomans: Turkish Critics of the Eastern Question in the Late Nineteenth Century (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2010). 58 See Leila Tarzi Fawaz, An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994). 59 William F. Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East, 6th Edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 2016), 111–123; Hourani, Arabic Thought, 130–160. 60 Salem Azzam, Foreword to “Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights” (September 19, 2981) www.alhewar.com/ISLAMDECL.html [accessed December 19, 2016]. 61 For further reading on Reformist views, see the very articulate argument of Ahmet Alibašić, “The Place for Others in Islam,” Comparative Islamic Studies 3, no. 1 ( June 2007), 98–123. For an overview of modern Islamist arguments, see Raymond William Baker, Islam without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 62 Abdur Rahman I. Doi, Non-Muslims under Shari’ah [Islamic Law] (Maryland: International Graphics, 1979), 23–24, and 59, respectively. 63 Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, Islam and the Secular State (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 134. 64 Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, The Second Message of Islam (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1987). 65 An-Na’im, 136. 66 Risāla muft ūḥa ʾ il ā Ab ū Bakr al-baghd ād ī, www.lettertobaghdadi.com/ar/ [accessed December 16, 2016]. 67 “About the Forum for Peace,” Marrkesh Declaration, http://marrakeshdeclaration.org/organizers. html [accessed December 30, 2016]. 68 “Background,” Marrakesh Declaration, http://marrakeshdeclaration.org/about.html [accessed December 30, 2016]. 69 John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Makers of Contemporary Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 13–15. 70 For example, see Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 18. 71 While Sheppard uses the category of Islamic Secularists, here I prefer to substitute that of Progressives as developed by Omid Safi in Progressive Muslims on Gender, Justice and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003).

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David D. Grafton 72 See the works of Mohammad Hashim Kamali, especially The Middle Path of Moderation in Islam: The Qur’anic Principle of Wasatiyyah (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 73 The term “Islamophobia” was coined by the British organization Runnymede Trust in its 1997 study, The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain: The Parekh Report (London: Profile Books Ltd., 2000), www.runnymedetrust.org/projects-and-publications/projects/past-projects/meb/report.html [accessed June 13, 2014). It is the “dread or hatred of Islam and therefore, [the] fear and dislike of all Muslims.” See also The Muslim Public Affairs Council, Islamophobia, www.mpac.org/issues/ islamophobia.php [accessed June 13, 2014]. 74 Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Ethnic Conflict and State-Building in the Arab World,” International Social Science Journal 50, no. 156 (1998), 229–242.

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3 Balancing identities Minorities and Arab nationalism Noah Haiduc-Dale

During the formative stage of Arab nationalism in the early twentieth century, newly formed Arab states developed strong collective identities to replace those lost by the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. This chapter examines three very different minority groups as they negotiated their place within Arab nationalism. One is an Arab religious minority (Palestinian Christians), the second a Muslim ethnic minority (Sunni Kurds), while the third shifted from an Arab religious minority to a non-Arab religious minority during this period ( Jews). The nature of a group’s minority identity greatly influenced their ability to fall within or without the dominant nationalist group. A minority’s relationship with nationalism depends on two very important variables: the first is the way the majority defines its nation. Equally important is the minority group’s self-definition. When these two definitions overlap, there is room for cooperation, but when they are exclusive, conflict is likely to occur. Of course, identification is neither predetermined nor historically stagnant, so a group’s understanding of itself can shift. Such changes are sometimes intentional decisions, while at other times they represent a subtler adaptation to particular social and political circumstances. Scholars often focus on the efforts of the largest groupings of people to determine the nature and meaning of nationalist identification, as indeed one might expect since such movements are often controlled by political leaders from a prominent ethnic or religious group. Yet minority groups contribute to national sentiments, and are also affected by them. During much of the twentieth century Arab nationalism drove regional political movements and served as a powerful ideological dream for many in the Middle East. Arab ethnicity and Islamic traditions vied for primacy in nationalist rhetoric. Yet not everyone in the region belonged to categories established by nationalist leaders. Minority responses varied depending on local political options, historical relationships between sub-groups, and the specific way in which a minority diverged from the majority. This chapter illuminates just a few of the many ways that minorities in the Arab world related to various strains of nationalism. This variety stemmed from the very basic fact that minorities are all minorities in different ways. Some, such as Iraqi Kurds, are linguistic and ethnic minorities. Others, like Arab Christians in Palestine, Jordan, and Syria, are part of the ethnic majority but represent a religious minority (though some Christians in Lebanon, and a tiny minority in Israel, argue that they are not Arab at all). A third categorization includes 35

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the Jews of various Arab countries and Coptic Christians in Egypt who are sometimes considered (by themselves and others) as part of the ethnic majority, while at other times they form a separate ethnicity, depending on specific trends at a given time. Still other excluded groups are not really minorities at all. The Shi’i Muslims of Iraq, for instance, were a subjugated majority during the reign of Saddam Hussein, though Shi’i are indeed a minority in the broader Arab world. Such differences led various groups to develop unique relationships with the nationalist ideologies of those in power. Of course, even within minority groups there were competing theories concerning the best approach to the rapidly changing world, though such individual sentiments are beyond the scope of this chapter. While identities are fluid, groups do not simply invent their shared sense of belonging from scratch. Rather, the way individuals and groups conceive of their place in society is influenced by historical, political, social, cultural, and religious factors, among others. Ultimately, “identity” is a question of degree or relative importance. Which identifying feature is most important to a group at a given time, and why? The answer to that question determines who is in, and who is out, of a particular grouping. As Benjamin Thomas White has clearly articulated, the word “minority” only holds meaning when a larger group of people has conceived of itself as a majority.1 Thus, a variety of alternative identities emerged in opposition to the increased importance of Arab and Islamic identification among the region’s numerical majority in the years following World War I. For centuries the Ottoman Empire managed a highly diverse ethnic, religious, and linguistic population. While it is true that non-Muslims were treated differently than ­Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, it was not necessarily because they were minorities. Rather, the Sultanate claimed legitimacy from religion, so percentages did not matter. In fact, for much of Ottoman history, Muslims barely comprised the majority of the overall population, if at all. Even after Greek independence in 1830, roughly a third of Ottomans remained non-­ Muslim, hardly an insignificant minority.2 Yet the Ottomans managed such diversity by insisting on the primacy of the leadership’s language (Turkish) and religion (Islam) for official matters while providing a great deal of leeway for its diverse imperial subjects. Thus, with certain limitations, most inhabitants could practice their own religions (including alternative forms of Islam), speak their own language, and manage their own cultural affairs without significant interference from the government.3 However, this began to change in the nineteenth century as the Istanbul-based leadership tried to turn the Empire into a ­European-style nation.4 Despite the Empire’s best efforts, it continued to lose power vis-à-vis Europe, and the second half of the century saw government efforts shift from Ottomanism to Islamism, and finally to a nascent version of Turkish nationalism as it sought to stave off European encroachment.5 Such top-down efforts influenced the way that provincial leaders identified themselves by insisting on a stronger connection to an Ottoman identity than most subjects had ever felt before. Yet such efforts also opened the door to alternative modes of belonging among those who felt alienated by governmental efforts to dictate their personal and political forms of identification. The Empire sided with Germany in World War I, and in 1922, the Allies dissolved it, marking the end of a long era of Ottoman control over the Arabic-speaking Middle East. Under the guidance of Mustafa Kemal, the Turks fought for and won their independence in Anatolia, which became modern-day Turkey. The Arab provinces were divided among the victors of the war under the guise of the League of Nations mandates, a “period of tutelage” during which European powers were charged with preparing the Arabs for entry into the modern political system. Many observers understood the mandate system as justification of traditional colonialism, but it was a necessary justification because, particularly 36

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following Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points speech in 1919, subjugated peoples all over the world were clamoring for self-determination. With the Empire gone, Ottomanism was no longer a possible political identity. Arab ideologues and pragmatic politicians had to develop a feasible and unifying identity on which to base their political legitimacy, and the Arabism born in the nineteenth century developed into a full-blown nationalism in the decades that followed. Political and religious elites throughout the former Arab provinces (which were governed by the British and French through the League of Nations mandate system) worked hard to create a sense of togetherness in pursuit of a national agenda. Thus, Arab nationalist movements of the early twentieth century did not emerge from the upheavals of World War I as fully formed ideologies. Instead, it was a period of contested visions of the nation as political possibilities emerged and evaporated. There was wide variation from region to region, though it is generally accurate that many rural Arabs remained comfortable with their tribal, village, or religious identities, while elites in the largest cities hotly debated the new political reality. Despite the many non-Muslims and non-Arabs in the region, scholars of Arab nationalism have traditionally ignored minorities’ influences. An important collection titled Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East published in 1997 does not include a single essay that deals specifically with minority groups, and references to groups such as Jews, Christians, and Kurds are scarce.6 This gap is problematic because minority voices helped to shape majority nationalism by demanding that the elite reconsider widely held beliefs about the significance of language or religion in determining national belonging. A more recent focus on Islam and nationalism has helped rekindle interest in alternative approaches, as has the recent spate of histories about the late Ottoman and mandate periods.7 Among the most important debates of the post-war era was whether to pursue pan-Arab nationalism or to embrace state nationalisms with borders drawn by colonial powers. While Adeed Dawisha convincingly argues that true Arab nationalism demanded, by definition, pan-Arab unity, the political realities of the twentieth century actually led to an awkward blend of Arab and local varieties.8 For some the decision was clear. Egypt had maintained relative independence from the Ottomans since Mehmed Ali’s rise to power in the early 1800s and also boasted distinct natural boundaries along the Nile River. Thus, state nationalism made logical sense, at least geographically speaking. Damascenes debated the benefits of embracing the newly drawn borders of Syria versus demanding a pan-Arab state including Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. Ultimately, the imposition of the mandates pushed most Syrians toward accepting the new boundaries. For Iraqis, the situation was entirely different since the state could claim neither distinct historical nor natural boundaries, and had been ruled on and off by the Ottomans since 1533. Moreover, the region comprised various ethnic and religious groups that did not easily merge into a simple, cohesive nation. The awkward formation of that state’s identity has had lasting consequences contributing to Iraq’s ongoing instability. The debate concerning state versus pan-Arab nationalism mattered a great deal to minorities, though not always in the same way. Some permutations of Arab nationalism were particularly inclusive of non-Muslim Arabs, though others excluded one or more sub-groups from their vision of the nation. As a result (lumping together a variety of variations for the sake of simplicity), minority groups generally responded in one of two ways: when theoretically possible, they supported a nationalist umbrella broad enough to cover their specific group. Alternatively, when minority leaders worried that their group would be excluded from the majority, they actively opposed the nationalist agenda. Their opposition took a variety of forms, such as pursuit of a more inclusive state identity, or, in locations where 37

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minority groups were densely concentrated, demanding colonial protections or even minority self-rule. Of course, the majority interpretation of national belonging also fluctuated, and minorities had to constantly adapt to such changes. The remainder of this chapter provides brief case studies of three minority groups and their interactions with Arab nationalism. The first examines Palestinian Christians as an example of a relatively small population of non-Muslim Arabs. Such groups tended to support secular nationalism, whether pan-Arab or state-centered. As long as the primary identifier was ethnic rather than religious, Christians could comfortably support either version of nationalism despite occasional strains. Second, ethnic/linguistic minorities, as might be expected, were far less interested in Arab nationalism. Such communities were excluded by definition from the Arab nation, leaving them with little choice but to seek an alternative relationship to that majority, through either greater autonomy within an Arab country or outright independence. The Iraqi Kurds represent this approach. Third, some communities imagined and reimagined themselves in response to specific political changes of the tumultuous twentieth century. In some sense this is true for all minority groups, but Zionism and the creation of Israel fundamentally altered Jews’ relationship to the Arab state.9

Palestinian Christians: supporters of Palestinian/Arab nationalism Arab Christians held leadership positions in some of the most prominent nationalist groups in the region. Individual Christians such as Michel ‘Aflaq of the Ba’ath Party and George Habash of the Movement of Arab Nationalists are often cited as evidence of Christian support for Arab nationalism, as indeed they should be. Yet a handful of prominent, elite politicians do not represent the whole. The broader community was often torn about how best to fit into the ever shifting nationalist scene and responded with a more nuanced approach. Palestinian Christians provide a fascinating case study for understanding the interplay between religious and national identification. While that community confronted many of the same issues present in Syria, Jordan, and elsewhere, the presence of the Zionist movement added an additional layer of complexity. Not only did minority groups need to work with the largely Sunni Muslim Arab population, but they also had to consider the impact their identification might have on the growing Palestinian-Zionist conflict.10 In 1917, at the start of British rule in Palestine, and continuing through the British departure from the country in 1948, Palestinian Christians represented just over 11% of the population. That number was further divided by denomination, though the Greek Orthodox composed a 43% plurality and the Latin Church (Roman Catholic) composed an additional 20%.11 Thus, these two groups, as well as a minute but politically active Protestant community, are the focus here. For a variety of reasons, Christians were wealthier, more likely to live in cities, and had better connections to the British than did the majority of Muslims. They also were more likely to be fluent in English due to higher levels of education among Christians who often attended missionary schools throughout the region. The bulk of Christians were adamantly opposed to Zionism. Many of the most vocal, politically minded Christians were advocates of whatever form of Arab or Palestinian nationalism had the most potential for success at a given moment. Khalil Sakakini, for instance, was a well-known educator who counted various British officials among his friends and even spent a year in New York.12 Like many other Christians in the years immediately following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Sakakini was an ardent Arab nationalist who supported 38

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the “Greater Syria” option which would have created an Arab kingdom in present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine. He even wrote the first “Arab national anthem” for that movement, titled “Saving the Homeland.”13 For many years, scholars described Arab nationalism in opposition to an Islamic identity. While some nationalists were avowedly secular, such a dichotomy is patently false. As with elsewhere in the region, Arab and Muslim identities were often conflated in Palestinian nationalist rhetoric. For instance, the preeminent Palestinian nationalist leader throughout the mandate was Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. While he was a strong advocate for Palestinian Christian participation in the movement, it was inevitable that having a religious leader as a nationalist leader would lead to some rhetorical overlap.14 Indeed, throughout the mandate, some of the most controversial issues centered on religious matters, including objections to an international missionary conference, perceived threats to the ­Haram al-Sharif compound where the Dome of the Rock is situated, and Muslim complaints that the British were unfairly giving government jobs to Arab Christians. As a result of such inter-Arab religious tensions, some Christians voiced their desire to seek political support elsewhere (perhaps even by cooperating with the British or Zionists), but the majority of Christian politicians adamantly advocated a strong secular national movement with plenty of room for Christian participation. Some even embraced Islam as an essential element of Arab identity and argued that Christians should expect new Arab states to have Islamic overtones, at least in a cultural sense. For instance, when confronted with Muslim complaints about the British preference for Christians in government employment, Isa al-Bandak, an Orthodox Christian from Bethlehem, suggested that “Arab Christians should be the first to recognize the rights of their Moslem Brethren over public positions and support them… [even] though some Christian officials might suffer.”15 Christians remained involved in the nationalist movement throughout the mandate, including playing an active role in the Great Revolt of 1936–1939, but the revolt and its aftermath led to a variety of changes in the 1940s. Most important for Christians was that the leadership, which had been composed of pragmatic, politically savvy Muslim leaders who believed in the necessity of Christian participation in the movement, was exiled by the British for its support of the violent political protests. Moreover, the revolt triggered broader participation in anti-British and anti-Zionist activities, with protests often led by rural rebels who were less likely to have lived side by side with urban Arab Christians. There is evidence that these rebel leaders sometimes denigrated Christianity, blurring the lines between Arab and British Christians, increasing fears of religious persecution among some Arab ­Christians.16 While many Muslims tried to overcome the communal divide, it was difficult for Christians to fully ignore flyers posted around the country calling for a boycott of Christians who “compromise the nation for their personal benefit.”17 The result was a subtle shift in Christian identification during the 1940s, with many community leaders advocating a stronger sense of communal solidarity. One example is the Union of Arab Orthodox Clubs which emerged in the 1940s as an important organization for Christians. While officially an apolitical social club, it served as a mouthpiece for the Orthodox laity on political issues as well. (The record is unclear concerning the success of other denominations’ efforts to create similar organizations, though Latin lay leaders did seek advice from the Union of Arab Orthodox Clubs (UAOC) officials about how to establish a club as well.) Despite this avowedly communal organization with a clear goal to advocate for their religious community, members of the UAOC were still intense Arab/Palestinian nationalists. Perhaps the best example of this is their club anthem which praises the Arab Orthodox as “young men of the nation,” “lions of the nation,” and 39

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“the army of the nation.”18 Nowhere in the song does the word “Orthodox” or “Christian” appear. That is, this ostensibly Christian organization wrote a specifically non-religious nationalist song to display their dedication to the nation rather than highlight their religion. The anthem was written in 1942, during a period when some scholars claim that Christians had been fully alienated from the nationalist movement.19 If the Orthodox Club is any indication, some Christians, at least, sought to use communal organizations to stake a stronger claim in the national movement. Other regional Christian minorities faced similar decisions and came to similar conclusions. Paul Sedra argues that, like Christians in Syria and Palestine, the Coptic laity stood in opposition to the church hierarchy which wanted to maintain its role as leader of a protected minority. Non-clerical Copts had much more to gain by becoming part of mainstream Egyptian society as individuals, not an identified religious community. Still, Copts in late-­n ineteenthcentury Egypt “never intended to forsake their Coptic communal identity. In their view, the Egyptian and Coptic dimensions of their identity were not irreconcilable. Quite to the contrary, they were mutually reinforcing.”20 Similar trends could be seen elsewhere, particularly in Syria and Jordan. The goal was never to abandon religious identification, but to imagine a nation in which religion did not define an individual’s relationship to the state. The most important conclusion to draw from this example is that while the P ­ alestinian Christian community did debate its role in nationalism, the most prominent mode of ­Christian identification demanded full membership as Palestinian Arabs. Christians did not abandon religious identification, but focused on “Palestinian Arab” as the community’s most prominent public label. The goal, then, was to become part of the majority by stressing a shared Arabness with Muslim Palestinians.

The Kurds: sub-nationalism Not all minorities are religious minorities, however, so seeking inclusion in an Arab ethnicity was not feasible for all groups. The implications of state boundaries drawn by colonial powers affected everyone in the Middle East, but perhaps none more than the Kurds. Even before the British combined three Ottoman provinces into one awkward state, Kurdish leaders agitated for an independent Kurdistan which would be established in the predominantly Kurdish regions of Iran, Turkey, and Iraq. At first, the situation looked good: both France and Britain promised to support Kurdish demands for self-determination, even including an independent Kurdistan in the unfulfilled Treaty of Sèvres signed in 1920. Early drafts of the Iraqi constitution listed Kurdish as an official state language, alongside Arabic. Kemal ­Ataturk’s successes in Turkey both annulled the Treaty of Sèvres and severed territory claimed by the Kurds from a future Kurdish homeland. In order to facilitate the 1921 “election” of Faisal Husayni, the British sought support from all elements in Iraq, including the Kurds. Wallace Lyon, a young British officer in charge of gathering signatures in Kurdish villages, followed his orders and used all his “influence, personal and official, to persuade the people to elect Faisal,” despite their reluctance.21 Kurdish reticence was well-founded. The 1925 Constitution abandoned Kurdish linguistic recognition, and King Faisal’s rule helped establish Iraq as a center of Arab nationalism. The international community also turned its back on the Kurds, with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne (which replaced the Treaty of Sèvres) ignoring the Kurdish question.22 The failure to create an autonomous Kurdish zone triggered dramatic resistance. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Kurdish leaders developed both an increased longing for independence and a nationalist language with which to make their demands.23 That is, by 40

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recognizing and then abandoning recognition of the Kurds as a unique national and linguistic community, the drafters of the 1925 Constitution ensured radical opposition. Kurdish leaders demanded independence in the name of Kurdistan, though both observers at that time and contemporary scholars argue that regional leaders took advantage of nationalist rhetoric for “securing or preserving the legitimacy and protection of their own regional power bases.”24 A scholar in the mid-1940s argued that the chief obstacle to Kurdish national independence lies in the inability of the Kurds to unite among themselves…. They consist and have always consisted of tribal groups owing allegiance to their individual chiefs, ready to unite against a common enemy but jealous of any interference in their own affairs by chiefs of another tribe.25 At least in the opinion mentioned above, despite the rhetoric it wasn’t “Kurdistan” that interested the ruling elite as much as the right to continue to manage their own affairs rather than being subjugated by a British or Arab-Iraqi government. Kurds coalesced around a national identity when they became a minority in relation to Arab nationalism and the British mandatory government threatened traditional tribal autonomy in Kurdish regions.26 The Kurds’ weak minority status was apparent. They could not overcome the fact that “Iraq was… a state born under the sign of national self-determination, and both Sunni and Shi’i elites could agree that the nation was essentially an Arab and Muslim one.”27 This shared sense of Arabness by 80% of the population led most Kurdish leaders to insist on independence or autonomy, and many responded with violence while the country was still under British rule. “Proto-nationalist” revolts erupted throughout Kurdish regions in the 1920s, but lack of coordination weakened their effect. An uprising led by nationalists from an emerging middle class in 1930 represented an important shift, since, for the first time, the tribal leaders were not in control.28 In fact, fierce Kurdish resistance almost torpedoed Iraqi independence in 1932 because of the concern it caused among members of the Permanent Mandate Commission.29 Relatively weak Kurdish national unity should not imply that it was any less real or meaningful than other nationalism. In fact, whatever their underlying reasoning, most Kurdish leaders were adamantly opposed to both Iraqi and Arab nationalism, since the former was often presented as a fundamental segment of the latter. Indeed, Iraq was the center of Arab nationalism before passing the mantle to Egypt in the 1950s. But in the aftermath of World War I, League of Nations’ policies dictated the nature of state formation, and Kurds, like other minorities, desired self-determination. As a result, Kurdish leaders developed the proper vocabulary of nation in order to maintain what they came to consider their traditional homeland. Iraqi independence from the British in 1932 marked a shift in the Kurdish approach to nationalism. With the loss of international support, however weak, Kurdish independence no longer seemed like a viable option. Parts of “Kurdistan” had been officially incorporated into Turkey and Iran, and the Iraqi segments were under the internationally recognized control of an Arab monarch. From 1932 until the fall of the dynasty in 1958, some Kurds actively participated in nationalist circles in hopes of building a less Arab-centric Iraqi nationalism. Most Kurdish leaders, however, were more active in pursuing group rights within the Iraqi monarchy, a tendency which strengthened Kurdish identity while they waited for a more opportune moment to exert its full influence on Iraqi affairs.30 That time may have arrived in the twenty-first century: Kurdish activists in northern Iraq clearly hope that the instability in the region due to the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime by the USA and the ongoing struggle against ISIS may lead to their long-desired independence. 41

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Arab Jews: from national to religious identification Given the antagonism between Jews and Arabs in the modern Middle East, it is hard to imagine a time when some Jews, like their Christian neighbors, actively sought roles in the Arab nationalist movement. Historical circumstances make it impossible to know how Arab Jews31 would have related to Arab nationalism in its heyday had the Zionist-Arab conflict not come to define Judaism in the Middle East in the first half of the twentieth century. While European Zionists pushed for a collective and politicized Jewish identity, Jews in Arab lands faced the same basic question as other minorities: how best to fit in the post-Ottoman Arab Middle East. Zionism was a radical departure from traditional Jewish approaches to relations with their local community, and it took Arab Jews a long time to embrace the European movement which was, in essence, a Jewish nationalist movement. That is, unlike their Zionist counterparts in Europe, Jews of Arab descent did not express a desire for autonomy as had the Kurds. Such a goal would have been unreasonable since Jews were thinly spread around the region rather than grouped in one geographic location. Instead, Jews clearly understood themselves as part of local Arab communities, though how “Arab” they identified as individuals varied from time to time and place to place. In fact, based in part on their role in nationalist politics in Egypt and Iraq prior to 1948, it seems likely that (like Arab Christians) many Jews in most places would have embraced secular Arab state nationalism. Understandably, the topic is deeply controversial, and prominent scholars of modern ­Jewish history disagree on how best to summarize Jewish opinion on the matter. Norman Stillman suggests that Jews had historically been set apart, and maybe even set themselves apart, more than other minorities (perhaps more like the Kurds than Arab Christians).32 Thus, they were not, in his assessment, very involved in nationalist movements even in the early years. Rather, they were supportive of European control in order to reduce Muslim dominance over their communal affairs, “for obvious reasons.”33 But the “obvious reasons” to which Stillman alludes are not in fact obvious at all. While he provides compelling evidence that in 1918 some Jews appealed to the British high commissioner of Iraq for all Jews to be granted Jewish citizenship, his conclusion is actually based on the assumption that Jews could never embrace, or be embraced by, Arab nationalism. 34 For many years, observers argued the same thing about Palestinian Christians, refusing to accept that state and Arab identities have often trumped minority ethnic or religious identification. Stillman acknowledges high levels of Jewish involvement in Egyptian politics as an exception, but Orit Bashkin suggests that Jews elsewhere also had a political and cultural home among Arabs. She argues that Jews in Iraq often thought of themselves as fully Arab, affected by the Arab cultural enlightenment (al-nahda), and as an important part of the Arab national movement. That is, “Jews saw themselves as part of the Arab community in whose cultural revival they shared and whose achievements they appreciated.”35 This sense of belonging to the Arab cultural and political milieu is more in line with that of Palestinian Christians and suggests that Jews, like other Arab minorities, were supportive, if sometimes wary, of secular nationalism. What makes the story of Arab Jews so unique is that the Zionist-Palestinian conflict which took shape in the first quarter of the twentieth century erased any chance Arab Jews had to participate in Arab or state nationalist movements. Particularly after the Palestinian leadership sought to internationalize the conflict during the 1929 “Wailing Wall Riots” by highlighting Zionism’s threat to Islam, pressure mounted from all sides for Arab Jews to identify themselves as religiously and nationally Jewish to the exclusion of their Arabness. 42

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Violent anti-Zionist protests in 1929 and the late 1930s, and the ultimate creation of the state of Israel in 1948, are often cited as turning points in the relationship between Arabs and Jews. These events slowly reshaped Arab Jews’ understanding of their place in other Middle Eastern states as well. Even Stillman confirms that while “Pan-Islamic, Pan-Arab, and pro-Palestinian feelings increased throughout the Arab world” following the 1929 events, most Jews in the region reacted cautiously but rejected calls for a wholesale shift toward a Zionist agenda.36 It was only after the establishment of Israel in 1948 that Jews lost any hope of incorporation into most Arab national programs. In Iraq, where Jews had been an essential part of the economic system and had participated at all levels of society, the government enacted overtly anti-Jewish laws which some have blamed on the Islamic nature of Arab nationalism.37 Of course, nationalists of the day understood their anti-Jewishness (however misguided) as a protest against Zionism and in support of Palestinian Arabs. Thus, Zionist efforts to incorporate all Jews in their nationalist movement combined with Arabs’ willingness to exclude Jews from their national identity ensured a new reality for Jews of Arab descent. Thus, Arab Jews were affected by international political processes that were far beyond their control. Their anti-Zionism suggests that some were at least moderately comfortable with their minority status, though others did demand greater protections from colonial authorities. Some whole-heartedly embraced nationalism, while still others embraced ­Zionism. Like all minorities, Arab Jews held a variety of opinions, though all Arab Jewish communities throughout the region were heavily affected by the turmoil in Palestine. By mid-century, the term Arab Jews had largely vanished, falling victim to the realities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and pressure from Zionist leaders. In an effort to convince other minorities in Arab lands to follow suit, Israel has actively sought to recast the identity of other minority groups. During the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), the Israeli government supported the right-wing Maronite/Phalange embrace of their Christian identity and encouraged them to sever ties from the Muslim Arab world, a relationship most clearly seen when the Israel Defense Force supported Christian militias as they carried out the Sabra and Shatila massacres of 1982.38 Inside Israel, there has been some success in convincing the Bedouin to accept non-Arab minority status, and there are ongoing, though less successful, efforts to convince Palestinian Christians to deny their Arabness in exchange for more rights within the state.

Conclusion The specific examples cited in this chapter are by no means comprehensive and gloss over many of the important arguments set forth by individual members of specific communities. Yet, taken as a whole, they highlight minority groups’ diverse responses to Arab nationalism in the early twentieth century. At a time of rapidly changing political and social circumstances, groups coalesced around particular elements of their identity and sought to formulate their group identification to either fit within the majority’s mode of identification or to solidify their unique status. Arab nationalism provided all Arabs, be they Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, with a potentially shared sense of belonging within a single cultural group. The tension between Islamic and Arab identification among Arab nationalist leaders worried some minority religious groups, but the possibility of a secular nation was strongly supported by many non-­Muslim Arabs. Non-Arab minorities had a harder time finding their niche in Arab nationalist politics, though some, such as Copts and Jews, have been able to slide between “Arab” and 43

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“non-Arab” over the years. Only minorities whose population is concentrated in a particular region (such as the Kurds) have sought outright independence during periods of political uncertainty. One final conclusion from this brief assessment is that identification is a fluid process and is subject to disagreement among members of the same group as well as between groups. Moreover, the way the majority (or politically powerful) group identifies itself largely determines the possibilities for all others. Thus, the twenty-first-century shift toward a more Islamically focused identification in some parts of the region may in turn lead some non-Muslim minorities to stress the importance of their own religious grouping. Such religious identification is not innate, predictable, or ancient, but rather waxes and wanes in response to specific historical and social circumstances.

Notes 1 Benjamin Thomas White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011). 2 Stanford J. Shaw, “The Ottoman Census System and Population, 1831–1914,” IJMES, 9:3 (­October 1978), 325–338. 3 See, for instance, Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, eds., Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of Plural Society, 2 Vols. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982). 4 Recent works on the late Ottoman period address this issues. See, for example, Michelle ­Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth Century Palestine (Stanford: ­Stanford University Press, 2011); and Julia Phillips Cohen, Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 5 See Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 1997). 6 James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni, eds., Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 7 In addition to those listed elsewhere in this chapter, see Jonathan Gribetz, Defining Neighbors: Race, Religion, and the Early Zionist-Arab Encounter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); ­Nicholas E. Roberts, Islam under Mandate Palestine: Colonialism and the Supreme Muslim Council (Routledge, forthcoming); and Serene Seikaly, Men of Capital: Economy and Scarcity in Mandate Palestine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). 8 Adeed Dawisha, Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 9 One additional case which is not discussed in much detail here is the situation in Lebanon, where a number of ethno-religious groups vied for political prominence. While clearly important, ­L ebanon is quite unique in the Arab world, so I have opted to leave it out of this more representative discussion. 10 For detailed accounts of Christians under the mandate, see Noah Haiduc-Dale, Arab Christians in British Mandate Palestine: Communalism and Nationalism, 1917–1948 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh ­University Press, 2013) and Laura Robson, Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011). 11 Justin McCarthy, The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics from the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 10. 12 Salim Tamari, “A Miserable Year in Brooklyn: Khalil Sakakini in America, 1907–1908,” Jerusalem Quarterly, 17 (2003), 19–40. 13 Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate, trans. Haim Watzman (New York: Holt and Co., 1999), 81. 14 Among the best accounts of Haj Amin al-Husayni remains Philip Mattar’s, The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement, 2nd ed., (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). 15 Central Zionist Archives S25/3004, Zionist memo to Palestine Zionist Executive, London, summarizing articles in Bandak’s newspaper Sawt al-Sha’b, 14 January 1928.

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Balancing identities 16 See Haiduc-Dale, Arab Christians, 138–144. Chapter 5 as a whole contends that Christians remained active in the revolt despite occasionally communal tensions. 17 Central Zionist Archive, S25/9350, Memorandum from the “Carriers of the Banner of al-­ Qassam,” dated Shuwaal 1355 (December 1936). 18 Israel State Archive P3061/50, Union of Orthodox Clubs-Jerusalem Anthem, 1942. 19 Yehoshua Porath, The Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion, vol 2: 1929–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 1977), 269–270. 20 Paul Sedra, “Copts and the Millet Partnership: The Intra-Communal Dynamics behind Egyptian Sectarianism,” The Journal of Law and Religion, 29:3 (2014), 491–509. 21 D.K. Fieldhouse, ed., Kurds, Arabs and Britons: The Memoir of Wallace Lyon in Iraq 1918–1944 (­L ondon: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 95. 22 Mahir A. Aziz, The Kurds of Iraq: Nationalism and Identity in Iraqi Kurdistan (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 61. 23 Aziz, Kurds, 65 and British and Foreign State Papers, 1926, Part I, Vol. CXXIII, London 1931, 83–02. 24 Aziz, Kurds, 63. See also Fieldhouse, Kurds, 37. 25 W.G. Elphinston, “The Kurdish Question,” International Affairs, 22:1 ( January 1946), 102. 26 Aziz, Kurds, 64. 27 Susan Pedersen, “Getting out of Iraq—In 1932: The League of Nations and the Road to Normative Statehood,” American Historical Review, 115:4 (October 2010), 975–1000. 28 Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds of Iraq: Tragedy and Hope (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 3. 29 Pedersen, “Getting Out,” 980. 30 C.J. Edmonds, “Kurdish Nationalism,” Journal of Contemporary History, 6:1 (1971), 95. 31 The term “Arab Jews” is quite controversial in some circles, though it works well to describe those who are religiously and ethnically Jewish but who were culturally and linguistically Arab. See, Yehouda A. Shenhav, The Arab Jews: A Postcolonial Reading of Nationalism, Religion, and Ethnicity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). 32 Norman Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 53. 33 Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands, 55. 34 “The Jews of Baghdad Petition for British Citizenship at the End of World War I,” 18 November 1918, president of the Lay Jewish Council and Acting Chief Rabbi to British Civil Commissioner, in Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands, 256–257. 35 Orit Bashkin, New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 26. 36 Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands, 97–100. 37 See related documents in Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands, 522–529. 38 For a powerful journalistic account of the massacre, see Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon, Chapter 11 (New York: Nation Books, 2002).

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4 The praxis of Islamist models of citizenship in a post-Arab revolt Middle East Implications for religious pluralism Mariz Tadros

This chapter traces the vicissitudes in citizenship praxis since the Arab revolts were instigated in 2010 against the backdrop of a highly volatile regional context, with a particular emphasis on the question of religious pluralism. It first argues that minorities’ experience of both the positive expressions of citizen agency and the deterioration in rights needs to be understood in the context of changing geopolitics of the region and the major insecurities that the majority of citizens have experienced, irrespective of their majority/minority status. It proposes that despite the varied impact of the reconfiguration of the regional power politics on different ethnic and religious minorities, there was more of a universal deterioration in the quality of citizenship rights for communities who happen to be religious minorities not only in the numerical sense but in the political sense as well. A combination of the breakdown in basic security provision (rule of law) with the political empowerment of Islamist political forces of all shades has led to increased vulnerability of religious minorities to targeting. The word Islamist here is used to refer to movements and political forces that would like to establish a form of governance, whether using violent or non-violent pathways, for the institutionalization of Islamic rule premised on their interpretation of the Shari’ah. It is to be distinguished from the term Muslim referring to supporters of Islam, the religion, who may or may not endorse Islamist movements’ vision of Islamic rule. Contrary to some of the scholarship that suggests that Islamist political thinking on the political community is compatible with notions of equal citizenship, this chapter argues that the qualifiers to citizenship characterizing conceptions of Islamic governance inherently undermine the prospects of using a common yardstick of equal rights and duties. The experience of religious minorities (who happen to be political minorities as well) in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Iraq between 2011 and 2016 suggests that the varied application of Islamic citizenship models failed to deliver on the notion of equal membership, rights and duties for all. However, it was not only religious pluralism that suffered, but also notions of diversity and tolerance for difference at large in the broader communities. 46

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Fragmented authority, contested citizenship Since the uprising in Tunisia in 2010, the Arab region has witnessed the most intense expressions of people power in the form of mass mobilization of citizens demanding bread, freedom and dignity, unprecedented in scale and intensity, in the twentieth and the ­t wenty-first centuries. However, the region has also witnessed the worst humanitarian disasters, with three states degenerating into civil war and chaos (Syria, Yemen and Libya), widespread statelessness and displacement and a threat of an outbreak of famine in Yemen. All peoples in the region have suffered to varying extents from the ripple effects of the reconfiguration of power and the geopolitics underpinning it. The notion of citizenship as a set of rights and duties underpinned by a social contract between the individual and the state has been deemed redundant in contexts where countries have fallen into civil war or suffered occupations (such as Iraq, first by the USA, and then by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham [ISIS]). The association of citizenship with nationality in terms of affiliation to a state has also been deeply challenged on account of the displacement of millions of Syrians and Iraqis and their becoming stateless. If citizenship were to be understood as a bundle of rights and duties, it is not only the people in collapsed states that have been denied the most basic of rights – although theirs has been the most extreme – but also populations suffering from economic hardship, corruption, lack of safety and absence of channels for demanding accountability. T.H. Marshall noted there are three dimensions of citizenship: the civil, political and economic.1 The civil entails the most basic guarantee of personal safety and protection of property. Marshall has been critiqued on account of the tautological sequence of rights representing an Anglo-centric pathway at odds with other country experiences. However, the three axes can be helpful as dimensions to explore the experience of citizenship among Arab Christians. With regard to civil citizenship in the regional context, state borders became porous, and there was a mass circulation of jihadists and weapons and the expansion of the illicit drug trade across borders after 2010. The rule of law collapsed not only in Libya, Syria, Yemen and parts of Iraq, but to a lesser extent in Egypt, where there was a breakdown in the ability or the willingness of the security forces to maintain law and order, especially in 2011–2013. As networks of terrorists expanded dramatically after the Arab revolts, citizens became vulnerable to militant attacks across the entire region and experienced curtailment of freedoms in the name of counter-terrorism.2 Such dynamics severely circumscribed the ability of citizens to experience protection of themselves and their property in the civil sense of citizenship. The second dimension of citizenship as per Marshall’s framing is the ability of citizens to engage in the political life of the nation. On the one hand, the floodgates of citizens’ engagement in protests were released, allowing for high levels of engagement in political processes, be they public forms of action to demand rights or participation in fairly free elections, and so forth. However, political participation was also hampered by the absence of security and electoral irregularities (e.g., in Libya). Finally, the modicum of economic rights that allow citizens to participate in the political life of the nation, as conceived by Marshall, has been severely undermined by economic crises, lack of stability and the failure of states to provide the most minimal of welfare rights and entitlements. The emergence of the so-called ISIS also challenged ideas of what constitutes a state. If the state were to be defined by its executive, judicial and legislative organization of power, then ISIS would qualify as a state. Yet its enactment of its understanding of what an Islamic state should comprise has deeply challenged conceptions of what underpins the social contract between individuals and those who govern them. 47

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Moreover, it is impossible to understand citizenship in the region as a relationship between citizens and states without giving due attention to the prevalence of fragmented sources of authority. The proxy wars fought in Yemen, Syria and Iraq suggest an absence of centralized national-level authority that citizens can hold to account. The proxy war is more complex than that existing during the Cold War between the two contending superpowers, Russia and the USA. While Russia and the USA are central players in the proxy wars happening in the region today (in particular in Syria), in Yemen, it is Saudi Arabia and Iran that are the key actors, and their influence extends into Syria as well. These proxy wars signify that citizens cannot assume that the local face of governance is the one that holds power, while simultaneously, as citizens, they have very limited power to hold to account those who operate behind the scenes or who govern at a supranational level. In such a volatile context, the notion of citizenship as identity and belonging has also been highly fluid and dynamic. On the one hand, in a context where almost a third (28%) of the population of the region is aged between 15 and 29 years,3 there was a flourishing of the expression of youth identity as a contestation of the rule of gerontocracy. In Tunisia and Egypt, the Arab revolts offered at the very early phases an opportunity for women to exercise their citizenship in ways that defy patriarchal norms and hierarchies. On the other hand, there has been a cataclysmic challenge to the idea of identity as a sense of belonging to a nation-state in many contexts. At the time of writing, the prospects of the Syrian and Iraqi states remaining intact are quite grim. However, even in Egypt and Tunisia where there are strong nation-states, there are severe threats to social cohesion. Egypt is battling an Islamist insurgency in Sinai where Islamist movements have directly targeted Christian citizens.4 In Tunisia, there are concerns that returning jihadists who have fought with ISIS in Libya, Syria and Iraq and whose allegiances are to an understanding of a political community fundamentally at odds with that of the Tunisian regime will cause a rupture in the social fabric of society.5 In short, what has been witnessed between 2010 and 2016, while needing to be examined in a historicized manner, represents a major rupture in the social contract underpinning relations between states and citizens, a release in the floodgates of citizens’ voice through highly progressive as well as violent forms of activism and the political empowerment of Islamist-based identities, where territorial boundaries are being redrawn. People have lived through high levels of insecurity, instability and a sense of unpredictability. Any understanding of the experiences of minorities in the region tends to be examined as part and parcel of these dynamic processes unfolding in the region.

Minorities and the dawn of Islamic citizenship The tectonic shifts in the region’s power configurations affected different minorities in highly irregular ways. The Kurds as the largest minority in the region have, on the one hand, experienced increased sovereignty and power in areas they control. On the other, they have been involved in intense warfare against ISIS, Turkey and Islamist factions in Syria. While the Kurds have by and large seen a positive reconfiguration in their status and power as a consequence of the breakdown of centralized authority in Iraq and Syria, this has not been so in Turkey. In Syria, the experience of Rojava has assumed international acclaim as a case study of an alternative model of governance and citizenship.6 The model was premised on communal ownership of resources, horizontal processes of people’s participation in ­decision-making and equality for women and men and high respect for religious pluralism.

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Other ethnic groups such as the Turkmen of Iraq have, by contrast, suffered a more precarious existence, being squeezed by both the Kurdish Peshmerga and ISIS. The experience of religious minorities is also likewise varied. Where religious minorities wield political power, such as the Alawis in Syria, the Sunni and Shi’i in different parts of Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen, their experiences of citizenship have been largely tied to the strength of their allies and their own powers in battling the opponents. However, where religious minorities have historically wielded limited political power, their experience across the region has largely been one of encroachment on their status and positioning in the country. At one extreme are the Yezidis and Christians who experienced a genocide in Iraq;7 at another are the Bahá’ís who have continued to be systematically harassed in Iran, Egypt and other parts of the region. On account of the commonality of the experience of people who happen to be minorities in the numerical-political sense, the focus in this second part of the chapter will be on the experiential elements of citizenship under Islamic rule, whether it be of the “moderate” kind under the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the more militant kind under ISIS in Iraq and Syria. While religious minorities’ experience of citizenship has been affected by a constellation of factors that include the contextual dynamics of insecurity that have affected the regional populations at large, they have been particularly affected by two factors: (i) the absence of rule of law and basic safety and (ii) the rise of new forms of Islamic citizenship. In pockets of Syria, Iraq and Libya, a combination of lawlessness and subjugation to various forms of Islamist authority presented an existential threat to the Christian populations. In other countries, such as Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood assumed a year in power when its candidate Mohamed Morsi won the presidential election in June 2012, the level of everyday forms of encroachment increased dramatically. Similar patterns of encroachment were observed in relation to the tiny (3,000 person) Christian minority in Gaza. In Tunisia, emboldened Salafi groups launched a number of assaults on shrines belonging to Sufis, and in some cases Sufi leaders were attacked.8 While Egypt and Iraq have long histories of systemic encroachment on the rights of religious minorities, the experiences of Syria, Tunisia and Libya diverged. In the latter, citizens’ rights were undermined by authoritarianism, but there was no targeting on religious grounds per se on a large scale. By contrast, it is possible to identify similar traits in the pattern of targeting religious minorities in post-2011 contexts where Islamist authorities assumed formal or informal power. Undoubtedly, there are many different factors that account for the different experiences of citizenship in different parts of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, and Islamist groups do not have a singular ideological standpoint on religious minorities. Different Islamist groups have different doctrinal positions on the rights of minority groups under their rule and in relation to differences among groups. Further, ideology is not the only driver that influences how Islamist movements engage with religious minorities. However, examining the ideological qualifiers associated with religiously mediated citizenship contributes in part to understanding recurring patterns of encroachment under different forms of Islamist governance in the period under study.

Ideological foundations of “Islamic citizenship” An understanding of “Islamic citizenship” requires an understanding of the construction of sovereignty, political community, governance, relations between peoples – all within an Islamic doctrinal construct, rather than a Western frame of analysis.

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Conceptions of identity and political community Historically, in Western scholarship, the concept of citizenship has been associated with the emergence of the nation-state and the idea that the government will exercise sovereignty over a territorially bound nation-state.9 While the concept has been deeply contested on several grounds, nonetheless one of its implications for governance is that those who rule normally have to show they are citizens of the country to which they belong and have allegiance. In contrast to national citizenship, some conceptions of Islamic citizenship are not premised on allegiance or belonging to the nation-state but to the universal Ummah, or members of the Muslim faith.10 This doctrine ­ rotherhood through to is shared by many Islamists from across the spectrum, from the Muslim B ISIS. This fundamentally affects the nature of authority, since those who rule need to ultimately possess one qualifier: being a Muslim. Mahdi Akef, a former Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood (the highest authority within the movement), once told a newspaper reporter that he would rather see a Malaysian head the country rather than an Egyptian Copt.11 In ISIS-­ occupied territories in Syria and Iraq, the Islamist authorities who ruled over the people in these areas were multinationals who demonstrated allegiance to the application of the principles of Islamic rule as dictated by ISIS leaders. In Libya, in parts of the country where Islamist militants assumed power, again, those who reigned in territories claimed came from different nationalities and were not necessarily of Arab or Libyan background. The implications of allegiance to the idea of an Islamic Ummah rather than a nation-state are far reaching. The concept of sovereignty is perceived in terms of allegiance to a universal faith, from which membership and belonging to the political community derive. The universal quality of such an allegiance has implications for governance in particular if those in positions of leadership are ruling over those with whom they have nothing in common except the same faith (and which may be practiced and understood differently depending on which part of the world they come from). The extent to which a common faith is sufficient to create a sense of solidarity outside the circle of those who rule and its implications for social cohesion has been underexplored in the case of Iraq and Syria under ISIS. As the central defining feature of belonging to the Muslim Ummah is to belong to the Muslim faith in much of Islamist doctrine, this inevitably has implications for those who come from religious minorities, and for Muslims whose concept of allegiance is to another marker of identity (i.e., territorial, class, ethnic, etc.) as well as Muslims who do not consider the implementation of the Shari’ah as the basis for governance. For religious minorities, the nature of their positioning in the Islamic Ummah is dictated by their belief system (whether they are from People of the Book or belong to other minorities) as well as the extent to which they demonstrate respect or subjugation to Islamic rule. Among the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence, there is agreement that the position of non-Muslims is first determined by whether they live in Dar al-Islam, that is the territory ruled by the Muslims, or whether they are in Dar al-Harb (the Domain of War), territories ruled by non-Muslims, that is Dar al-Kufr (the Domain of Unbelief ). If Christians or Jews, in other words, People of the Book, were to reside in Dar al-Harb, that is if they are in the territory in enmity with Islam, then they do not qualify for protection. If, however, the People of the Book were to reside in Dar al-Islam, they would come under the covenant of dhimmitude. The basis of this covenant is that the Muslim majority would afford non-­ Muslims the right to abode and protection in return for the payment of a jizya (poll tax).12 Much of the Islamic jurisprudence on the status of People of the Book in Muslim lands takes as a reference point the first covenant to be signed between Christians and the I­ slamic conquerors, what became commonly known as the Pact or Covenant of Umar. The Covenant 50

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of Umar was a treaty signed by the second Caliph, Umar Ibn al-Khattab, with Christians of Syria after they were conquered by the Islamic army. The treaty contained a number of articles that set out the conditions upon which the Christians were to be granted the right to live and be protected from assault. Such conditions include restrictions on freedom of worship such as We shall not build, in our cities or in their neighbourhood, new monasteries, Churches, convents, or monks’ cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims. It also includes articles prohibiting public displays of religion, making freedom of conversion one way only, to Islam: “We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it.” It also has a number of articles pertaining to distinct physical appearance and attire to differentiate them from their Muslim counterparts: “We shall show respect toward the Muslims, and we shall rise from our seats when they wish to sit.” Finally, it mentions discretion in religious practices so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities: We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims. We shall use only clappers in our churches very softly. We shall not raise our voices when following our dead. We shall not show lights on any of the roads of the Muslims or in their markets. We shall not bury our dead near the Muslims.13 From the seventh century and up to the establishment of modern-day citizenship in the nineteenth century and into the twenty-first century, the terms of the Pact of Umar have informed to varying extents the terms of engagement of People of the Book populations in their territory. However, different governance systems have interpreted and applied these principles with varying degrees of laxity or harshness, depending on highly complex set of factors including political economic drivers. It is critically important to note that even with the outset of citizenship, the underpinnings of the Pact of Umar have informed contemporary Islamic political thought on the rights and duties of non-Muslim subjects living in Muslim-majority contexts. For example, in order to qualify for being party to the covenant of dhimmitude, non-Muslims need to show respect and loyalty for the Islamic order under whose mantra they live and be mindful to not offend Muslims’ sensibilities in any way. The late Sheikh Mohammed Al Ghazali, one of the leading political thinkers in the Arab Sunni world, considered, for example, the objection by Copts in Egypt to the implementation of the Shari’a as one manifestation of the disrespectful behavior of non-Muslims toward Islam. What will be considered offensive to the sensibilities of Muslims is very much open for contestation and debate and very much based on the normative values that are espoused by those who rule. ISIS, for example, considered the People of the Book living under its territories to be disqualified from the protection that the covenant of Umar offered them on account of their transgression of the principle of showing allegiance and respect to Islam. They cited the insults waged by Christians against Islam as the basis for rejecting such protection. In one of their declarations, the leaders of ISIS cited: We believe that the factions of the People of the Book [i.e., Christians and Jews], and those of their ilk such as the Sabeans and others, are today in the Islamic State a people of war not enjoying a status of protection. They have violated what they agreed upon 51

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[with the Muslims] in numerous, countless regards. Therefore if they desire security and safety, they must create a new pact with the Islamic State in accordance with the conditions of the Pact of ‘Umar that they violated.14 The implications of this perceived deviance from the dhimmitude status is that their right to life and protection is not guaranteed, neither is their privileged position in comparison to other non-Muslim minorities, as will be discussed in the following section. It is the same position that ISIS had announced toward the Copts of Egypt in 2015 and 2017.15 When the Copts joined ­Muslims in an uprising against the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule in June 2013, this was interpreted by the Muslim Brotherhood and other supporters of President Morsi as an attack on Islam.16

Rights and duties The fundamental premise of the dhimmitude contract is that in return for protection as a right, the People of the Book have a number of duties such as the payment of jizya (poll tax). Some Islamic thinkers have considered the jizya in modern-day Muslim societies as redundant on account of the fact that part of the protection was that non-Muslims were not conscripted in the army, which is no longer the case today.17 However, the payment of the jizya is still a fundamental doctrinal principle underlying the status of non-Muslims among Islamist movements across the spectrum. While the Muslim Brotherhood has officially claimed that the payment of jizya is redundant in light of the modern-day citizenship, nonetheless, there is an acknowledgment that the differential status of People of the Book has implications on financial duties. In an Islamic state where there would be an institutionalization of a zakat system that Muslims would have to contribute to, there would need to be an equivalent for the People of the Book living in Egypt. For example, when asked whether once in power the Muslim Brotherhood will require the Copts to pay the zakat, a former deputy Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood, ­Mohammed Habib, answered in the negative but said that they would be required to pay double the taxes instead.18 In post-Mubarak Egypt in 2011, when Islamist movements in Upper Egypt experienced a flourishing, there were several incidents in which Christian individuals were asked to pay the jizya.19 ISIS imposed jizya on Christians first in Syria and then in Iraq, though the terms of dhimmitude were still not being upheld. In several cases, economic levies associated with payment of jizya were imposed, without the protection associated with it: women were still raped and churches destroyed.20 Proponents of the compatibility of an Islamic standpoint with equal citizenship point to the fact that religious minorities have the right to assume political office and their own family jurisprudence in an Islamic state. However, they both come with qualifiers. For example, while the Muslim Brotherhood’s position is to allow People of the Book to assume positions such as Members of Parliament (MPs), they would be prohibited from assuming the position of the head of state on the basis that this is a position of wilaya or authority, and in Islam, it is not permissible for a non-Muslim to have authority over a Muslim. The Brotherhood’s stance on which positions non-Muslims will be allowed or prohibited from occupying is largely determined according to the interpretation of wilaya. In the case of the presidency, the Brotherhood would choose a judicial interpretation in which the president is considered as presiding over al wilaya al uzmah. Other judicial options would include considering the presidency as wilaya sughra rather than wilaya qubra/uzmah, which would leave space to consider the different jurists’ position on the matter. However, the concept of wilaya still poses limitations on citizenship in actual practice. It is not only the Grand Imamate that is considered a “religious position,” and therefore 52

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unacceptable for non-Muslims to assume. Rather, it also applies to positions in the judiciary which involve the application of the Shari’ah. They are also prohibited by the same token: namely, that it involves a wilaya of a non-Muslim over a Muslim. The same would apply to the military (since the leadership of the military is not a strictly civil position since jihad is one of the highest forms of worship in Islam) and the administration of charity (sadaka).21 There is yet the dilemma of how to justify the representation of non-Muslims in parliament. The matter has been widely debated among Muslim Brotherhood scholars. Al ­Qaradawy’s position is that there is no objection according to Islamic jurisprudence to their participation in the representative councils (i.e., parliament) but they are only “to be represented according to a certain percentage” to ensure that the council is majority Muslim. He quotes the Qur’anic verse al momtahena 8, arguing that it would be sufficient that non-­ Muslims be represented in parliament so that they may express the demands of their group (gama’athom), just as women would represent the demands of their gender – “and so that they do not feel excluded from among the people of their nation and thus be exploited by the enemies of Islam.”22 In practice, the Brotherhood’s strong opposition to the appointment of a Coptic governor in Qena in April 2011 shows that the concept of wilaya applies to a wider set of leadership positions than the officially announced stance of its reference to the position of president only. According to several press reports, the mosques of Qena were transformed into platforms for the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis to call upon the people of Qena to reject the appointment of a Christian governor because there is no wilaya (authority/­ governance) of a non-Muslim over a Muslim. Among the most popular slogans raised in the public protests of Qena were: “Islamiyya, Islammiyya, not Christian, not Jewish,” “Raise your head up, you are a Muslim,” “There is no God but God, Mikhail is God’s enemy. We want a Muslim governor,” “There is no God but God, the Nazarene [the Christian] is the enemy of God” and “Salafis and Brotherhood one hand against the Nazarene governor!”23 Hence, the assumption of political office is accompanied by a set of qualifiers which ensure that the hierarchy of citizenship premised on religion is maintained. The same principle of qualifiers informs the principle of People of the Book ruling themselves. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has consistently pointed to the right of People of the Book to rule according to their own jurisprudence as evidence of the movement’s commitment to the concept of equal citizenship for religious groups. Yet in cases where non-Muslims’ jurisprudence does not make reference to aspects of governance, such as in the punishment of adultery or theft, then they would be required to abide by Islamic jurisprudence, for example, through the universal application of hudud ordinances. Al Qaradawy argued that non-Muslims are obliged to abide by the rulings of Islamic law which are enforced on Muslims “because by virtue of the dhimma, they have become bearers of the Islamic state nationality and so have to abide by the laws that do not touch on their creed or religious freedom.”24 Al Qaradawy argues: “I do not know what would make a Christian or Jew anxious about cutting the hand of a thief, be he Muslim or Christian, or flogging the adulterer or the drunk and other huddud verdicts?”25 The Muslim, he argues, receives these verdicts as part of his religion, and the non-Muslim as part of the state law which has been espoused by the majority.

The negation of minority rights of those who are not People of the Book There is a differential treatment with respect to religious minorities who are People of the Book and those who follow any other faith and who abide in Dar al-Islam. The principle of tolerance toward People of the Book under Islamist authority is not extended to other 53

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religious groups on doctrinal grounds. Historically, in the 1930s and 1940s when the Muslim Brotherhood worked with a certain level of freedom, they initiated campaigns in Egypt to uproot Bahá’ís and Ahmedis from Egyptian society.26 However, the intensity of the elimination campaign waged by ISIS against the Yezidis in 2016 was unparalleled in the last fifty years. ISIS’ espousal of a systematic policy of religious cleansing was informed by their doctrinal position on the Yezidis as unbelievers whom they must kill. The use of sexual violence, including sexual slavery and torture as a weapon of war, has featured in many conflicts witnessed worldwide that are not associated with Islamist forces. However, the use of sexual slavery in the case of ISIS is not only a form of gender-based violence or a weapon of war, it is also one that is a fundamental tenet of its doctrine.27 The ­revival of the sexual slavery practice prevalent during the Prophet Mohamed’s era many centuries ago is premised on doctrinal grounds that justify war booty. As Fawaz Gerges highlights, ISIS has also publicly boasted about its enslavement of Yazidi women in their magazine called Dabiq and in their propaganda videos. ISIS has justified its actions on religious grounds by juxtaposing the distant past with the present and selectively citing verses from the scripture or the Sunna (the traditions based on the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Mohammed) to justify their sex slavery. In an October 2014 article titled “The Revival of Slavery before the Hour,” the group argues that the Yezidi women “could be enslaved unlike female apostates [the Shia], who the majority of the fuqahā’ [experts in Islamic jurisprudence] say cannot be enslaved and can only be given an ultimatum to repent or face the sword…. After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Sharī’ah [Islamic law] amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority to be divided as khums [the one-fifth of booty or spoils that goes to the state].”28 Without in any way suggesting that the genocide that the Yezidis were exposed to under ISIS in Iraq is comparable to any encroachment on citizenship rights Egyptians experienced under the Muslim Brotherhood, it is, however, significant that in one of the clashes between the supporters and opponents of President Morsi’s regime in December 2012, the word “war booty” was used. One of the anti-Muslim Brotherhood political activists who was captured by Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi protestors reported being referred to as war booty while being sexually molested.29 What is at stake under Islamic citizenship models is predicament of not only the religious minorities – be they People of the Book or not (including atheists) – but also Muslims who deviate politically, socially or doctrinally from what is conceived of as the one and only version of Islam which all subjects are expected to adhere to. While much of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political thought has refrained from declaring other Muslims as kufar (apostates), the doctrinal stance taken by Sayed Qutb, one of the leading ideologues in the movement’s history, is one of condoning the use of violence against Muslims whose practices are considered anathema to Islam. At the other end of the spectrum is ISIS, whose takfiri stance has been used to justify widespread violence and killing against Sunni Muslim individuals who have been deemed as kufar. So far, there has been an examination of ways in which particular patterns of subjugating religious minorities under different models of Islamist citizenship have been justified on doctrinal grounds. However, in view of the homogenizing, totalitarian nature of such modes of governance, the question remains whether there are broader ripple effects for other 54

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minorities. Certainly, sexual minorities are considered unworthy of the rights of citizenship, even if they happen to be Muslims, a position that is again often justified on doctrinal grounds (see Chapter 24). However, what of other minorities, such as ethnic minorities who follow the same religious denomination? Very limited research has been undertaken on this. Everyday practice of religion always intertwines with the social, cultural and ethnic aspects of identity such as wearing the veil differently according to local custom or chanting religious songs in a different language. Whether such practices would be tolerated and the extent to which they would be seen as inimical to Islamist authorities’ different interpretations of religious doctrine will vary from one case study to another. However, it should not be assumed that since religion is the principle mediator of Islamic citizenship, variations on other grounds will necessarily be tolerated.

Concluding reflections and implications for future conceptions of citizenship in the region The focus in this paper has been on new variations in the institutionalization of Islamic citizenship since 2011. Islamic citizenship is not a new phenomenon in the region (for example, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan have long defined citizenship in this way). However, the enactment of different forms of citizenship in territories ruled by various Islamist factions has had a pronounced impact on religious minorities and religious pluralism at an unprecedented scale in the Arab world, contributing to a major reconfiguration of their societies. We have seen the application of such forms in Libya, by ISIS in Syria and Iraq, Hamas in Gaza and over a one-year period in Egypt ( July 2012–June 2012). On account of space limitations, it has not been possible to compare across all these contexts, though there are important recurring features across them.30 Equally important, the praxis of Islamic citizenship took on two variants, one associated with moderate Islamist movements (such as the Muslim Brotherhood) and the other with an extreme variation of jihadi-Salafism (ISIS and Islamist militants in Libya). Despite the variation in historical status and rights of religious minorities in countries as varied as Libya, Syria, Iraq and Egypt, nonetheless, the institution of Islamic models of citizenship in all these countries save Egypt presented an existential threat. The chapter does not suggest that understanding the practices of Islamists in relation to religious pluralism can be understood solely in ideological terms, as there are a variety of factors that come into play, including economic, political, cultural and individual agential ones. However, it does argue that without understanding the ideological framework, it is difficult to understand the normative framings which inform Islamist actors’ engagement with questions of pluralism. Concurrently, the chapter does not claim that the praxis of a non-Islamic model of citizenship is a magic bullet for inclusivity and pluralism. Certainly, a variety of non-Islamist regimes with different ideological framings and configurations of power have circumscribed the freedoms of all their citizenry, including religious minorities. What has been suggested here, however, is that the praxis of Islamic models of citizenship – that is, ones enacted by Islamist movements who have risen to power briefly – whether the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or ISIS in the Levant – exposes the conundrums not only politically but also ideologically in reconciling inclusivity with particular notions of governance. What has been argued is that Islamic doctrine on the nature of the political community (Ummah), the nature of identity (privileging of allegiance to a singular interpretation of Islam mediated by those in power) and the exercise of rights and duties (hierarchical and differentiated) allows for the identification of a pattern that shows the conditionality 55

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of citizenship, or citizenship with qualifiers. It also shows a pattern of encroachments, for example on the imposition of economic levies and a rejection of all minorities who do not belong to the People of the Book. The foundation of an Islamic citizenship is one in which religion mediates all aspects of private and public lives of all citizens in all spheres. The vision of a political community whose membership is based on a religious identity is problematic for pluralism more broadly because it does not recognize atheism or non-affiliation to a religious community. There are ultimately two groups: the Muslims and the People of the Book, and correspondingly, two sources of jurisprudence: Islamic or that espoused by the Christian or Jewish religions. This categorization undermines people’s free exercise of agency in choosing not to be affiliated to a religious group or to those ones in particular. The application of an Islamic reference produces an Orwellian reality in which all citizens are equal, but some are more equal than others by virtue of their religious identity as Sunni Muslims. This is manifest in the prohibition of non-Muslims of assuming wilaya over ­Muslims. The position of a duality of systems of jurisprudence also fails to secure full equality since the parallel systems are not imbued with equivalent power. Instead they are positioned in a hierarchy in which Islamic jurisprudence trumps all other sources of jurisprudence. It is important to note that allowing the People of the Book to have their own system of jurisprudence does not secure religious pluralism because other religions are not bestowed with the same rights. There are no universal rights for non-Muslims living in Muslim countries, and their very right to live according to their faith (or in the case of atheists without a faith in God) is threatened because the terms of religious pluralism have already been set through mainstream Islamic jurisprudence, which has been conservatively understood and interpreted by highly influential political thinkers and movements. It is significant, however, that while authoritarianism affects citizenship rights for all, irrespective of whether there was religious targeting or not, the institutionalization of Islamist authority, whether in formal assumption of power or informally through movements and forces in civil society, has not only encroached on the rights of non-Muslim minorities, but also on a broad cross-section of society that does not adhere to those in authority’s doctrinal or political viewpoint. While the focus of this chapter has been on ways in which the institutionalization of two praxes of Islamic citizenship (that of the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS) has influenced religious pluralism in twenty-first-century Middle East, more research is needed on the subtle ripple effects of a homogenizing praxis of citizenship on cultural, social and political divergence from what is prescribed as doctrinally sound and politically desirable. Much of the scholarship on inclusivity under Islamist authority makes a binary distinction between “moderate” Islamists and “radical” Islamists, juxtaposing the “mildness” of living under the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood compared to ISIS. While avoiding essentialism, this chapter has argued that despite the difference in level of violence and atrocity, they are best considered as different variants across a spectrum of expressions of Islamic citizenship. Whether Islamic citizenship is expressed in more extreme exclusionary forms in Iraq under ISIS or less so in Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood, it is underpinned by a number of recurring themes across the spectrum. On the one hand, the Muslim Brotherhood’s tolerance for Christians assuming the position of an MP or praying in an existing church cannot be compared to the systematic religious cleansing of religious minorities by ISIS in Iraq. On the other hand, there is significant resonance in doctrinal thinking on citizenship in relation to religious pluralism between the various factions, which is striking. Gerges suggests that the genealogy of ISIS lies in its cross-fertilization of the political thought of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political thinker 56

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Sayed Qutb and jihadi-Salafist doctrine.31 However, Gerges argues that the political doctrine of ISIS presents a mutation rather than evolution of jihadi-Salafi ideology. Despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS are different movements with distinct organizational and leadership systems, on the question of religious pluralism, they should be analyzed as varying positions along one spectrum. There are several implications of this for the future of Islamic models of citizenship in relation to religious pluralism. First, the defeat of ISIS as a movement will not eliminate the foundational doctrinal thinking on religious minorities. Such thinking is highly pervasive among both jihadi and non-jihadi Salafi and Wahhabi movements and in broader circles. Second, the binary differentiation that sees non-violent Islamist movements as the bulwark against the spread of radical Islamism fails to see that they operate along a spectrum, entailing different kinds of compromises for non-Muslim minorities. Third, the praxis of Islamic citizenship often involves an ideological-political economy nexus. The imposition of jizya is only one element of the political economy of Islamic citizenship with respect to religious minorities. In Libya, Iraq and Syria, Islamist militant groups justified the looting and appropriation of property, financial and in-kind resources belonging to religious minorities, be they People of the Book or otherwise, on the basis that doctrinally, the appropriation of their wealth is condonable. Practices of kidnapping religious minority individuals for ransom were widely prevalent during Morsi’s tenure in Egypt, in post-Qaddafi Libya and in Syria and Iraq. An analysis of the political economy dynamics of resource mobilization through religious profiling and targeting is critical for understanding elements of religious minority experiences under Islamist authorities. Moreover, when discussing religious minority experiences under Islamist models of citizenship, the focus on this chapter has been on variations across groups (People of the Book vs. others) and across countries and different Islamist movements. However, the distribution of the rights, duties and status of citizenship is also significant within groups. Gender, class and geographic location also influence the experiential dimensions of citizenship under Islamist authorities within groups in a very dramatic manner. The intersection of gender and religion influencing the exposure of Yezidi women to sexual slavery is a case in point. Finally, this discussion of Islamic authority focused by and large on Islamist movements whether in government (Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt), exercising authority in parts of territories informally (Libya) or through the instatement of features of statehood (ISIS in Iraq and Syria). However, in each of these contexts there is a myriad of other sources of Islamic authority which influence the praxis of Islamic citizenship in a major way. Al-Azhar University, for example, which is one of the highest authorities for theological learning and religious opinion for Sunni Muslims, greatly shapes how citizenship is conceived. Hosting a conference on citizenship and religious pluralism, Al-Azhar declared that citizenship is a concept that is compatible with Islamic doctrine and was institutionalized by the Prophet Muhammed in Medina. In an important document emanating from the conference, Al-Azhar declared that citizenship must rest on equality and rule of law guaranteed by a constitutional state.32 This is a particularly significant document, since it acknowledges the rights of Christians to equality and protection and makes no reference to the concept of dhimmitude. On the other hand, there is no mention of other religious groups, nor does it mention the right to non-belief, or atheism. The Al-Azhar document on citizenship begs the question of whether it recognizes if the contractual relationship between state and citizen – independently of their religious affiliation – is compatible with Islamic thought or whether it is suggesting that Islam can advance a form of Islamic citizenship that recognizes the rights 57

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of others. The difference may have major implications on the models of citizenship promoted in Muslim-majority contexts in the region and beyond. Whether Islamic models of citizenship have suffered a decisive blow in the light of the experiences witnessed since 2011 or whether they will be revived under different guises and leaderships remains to be seen. What is definitely clear is that for religious minorities, non-conforming Muslims and the non-religious, the praxis of Islamic citizenship so far has not invoked memories of inclusivity and equality.

Notes 1 Thomas Humphrey Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays (Cambridge: University Press, 1950). 2 Ali Bakr, “A Panoramic Perspective on Islamist Movements in the Middle East”, Mariz Tadros and Jan Selby, eds., Ruptures and Ripple Effects in the Middle East and Beyond: IDS Bulletin, 47, no. 3 (2016), 77–98. 3 Youthpolicy, “Middle East and North Africa Youth Facts”, n.d. Available www.youthpolicy.org/ mappings/regionalyouthscenes/mena/facts/#FN13 (Accessed 6 January 2018). 4 Mariz Tadros, “Copts of Egypt: From Survivors of Sectarian Violence to Targets of Terrorism”, Opendemocracy, 11 April 2017. Available www.opendemocracy.net/mariz-tadros/copts-egypt-­ sectarian-violence-terrorism (Accessed 6 January 2018). 5 Carlotta Gall, “Tunisia Fears the Return of Thousands of Young Jihadists”, The New York Times, 25 February 2017. Available www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/world/europe/isis-tunisia.html (Accessed 10 April 2017). 6 Can Cemgil and Clemens Hoffman, “The ‘Rojava Revolution in Syrian Kurdistan: A Model of Development for the Middle East?” Mariz Tadros and Jan Selby, eds., Ruptures and Ripple Effects in the Middle East: IDS Bulletin, 47, no. 3 (2016), 53–76. 7 US State Department, International Religious Freedom Report for 2016 (Iraq chapter), 2017. Available www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm. 8 Rob Prince, “Purge of the Marabouts: Salafists Target Tunisia’s Islamic Heritage”, Foreign Policy in Focus, 5 April 2013. Available http://fpif.org/purge_of_the_marabouts_salafists_target_tunisias_ islamic_heritage/ (Accessed 6 January 2018) and Borzou Daraghi, “Firebomb Attacks Damages Tunisia Shrine”, Financial Times, 14 January 2013. Available www.ft.com/content/02deb6ac5e60-11e2-8780-00144feab49a (Accessed 6 January 2018). 9 Anthony Smith, Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History, 2nd Edition (London: Polity, 2013). 10 Mariz Tadros, The Muslim Brotherhood in Contemporary Egypt: Democracy Redefined or Confined? (London: Routledge, 2012). 11 Tadros, Muslim Brotherhood. 12 Though whether they qualify for protection or not, and what constitutes protection, are both open for interpretation by the ruler in authority. 13 “Medieval Sourcebook: Pact of Umar, 7th Century?”, Available https://sourcebooks.fordham. edu/source/pact-umar.asp (Accessed 8 January 2018). 14 Quoted in Cole Bunzel, From Paper State to Caliphate: The Ideology of the Islamic State (­Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2015), 40. Available www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/ 06/The-ideology-of-the-Islamic-State.pdf (Accessed 6 January 2018). 15 Tadros, “Copts of Egypt: From Survivors of Sectarian Violence to Targets of Terrorism”. 16 Mariz Tadros, “The Backlash after the Demise: The Brothers and the Copts”, Middle East Institute, 12 August 2013. Available https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/essays/the-backlash-after-thedemise-the-brothers-and-the-copts (Accessed 6 January 2018). 17 F. Howeidy, Muwatenoon La zhimiyoon mouqef al gheir muslimeen fi moujtama’at mouslemah [Citizens Not Dhimmis the Position of Non-Muslims in Muslim Societies] (Cairo: Dar el Shorouk, 1985). 18 A. El Mouawfy, “Al Ikhwan yala’ab dor al daheyya….” [the Brotherhood play the role of the victim…”] Nahdet Misr, 16 January 2007. Translation by the author. 19 Tadros, Muslim Brotherhood. 20 Minority Rights Group, “No Way Home: Iraq’s Minorities on the Verge of Disappearance”, 4 July 2016.Availablehttp://minorityrights.org/publications/no-way-home-iraqs-minorities-on-the-verge-ofdisappearance/ (Accessed 6 January 2018).

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The praxis of Islamist models 21 Youssef Al Qaradawy, Al Deen wal siyassah [Religion and politics] (Cairo: Dar el Shorouk, 2007), 24. Translation by the author. 22 Qaradawy, Al Deen, 195. 23 Mariz Tadros, “Egyptian Democracy and the Sectarian Litmus Test”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 11 May 2011. Available http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/?fa=43944 (Accessed 8 January 2018). 24 Qaradawy, Al Deen, 43. 25 Qaradawy, Al Deen, 87. 26 Tadros, Muslim Brotherhood. 27 In an interview with twenty-one Yazidi girls who were taken into sexual slavery, the New York Times revealed that The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution. Interviews with 21 women and girls who recently escaped the Islamic State, as well as an examination of the group’s official communications, illuminate how the practice has been enshrined in the group’s core tenets. Rukmini Callimachi, “ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape”, New York Times, 13 August 2015. Available www.nytimes.com/2015/08/14/world/middleeast/isis-enshrines-a-theology-of-rape. html (Accessed 6 January 2018). 28 Fawaz Gerges, ISIS: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 32. 29 Mariz Tadros, “Politically-Motivated Sexual Assault and the Law in Violent Transitions: A Case Study from Egypt”, IDS Evidence Report, no. 8, July 2013. Available www.ids.ac.uk/publication/­ politically-motivated-sexual-assault-and-the-law-in-violent-transitions-a-case-study-fromegypt (Accessed 6 January 2018). 30 See Mariz Tadros, “Christians Coping with Insecurities in the Aftermath of the Arab Revolts: Converging and Diverging Strategies”, The Review of Faith and International Affairs, 15, no. 1 (2017), 21–30 for examples from Libya and Gaza. 31 Gerges, ISIS. 32 Al-Azhar, “Al Al-Azhar Declaration on Citizenship and Coexistence Issued by His Eminence the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar”, 28 March 2017. Available www.azhar.eg/observer-en/al-azhar-­ declaration-on-citizenship-and-coexistence-issued-by-his-eminence-the-grand-imam-of-­a lazhar (Accessed 6 January 2018).

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5 Minorities, civil society, and the state in the contemporary Middle East A framework for analysis Paul Kingston

The exercise of citizenship, the emergence of deliberative public spheres, and the flourishing of civic life depend upon the fulfillment of some basic political (pre)conditions – namely, the existence of stable, if not durable, political orders that seek and have some degree of capacity to protect the equal rights of individuals. These conditions can be especially important for cultural minorities who seek to entrench their rights as equal members of a national political community rather than as subordinate members of a political system that enforces differential rights based upon an individual’s membership in a particular ethnic and/or religious community. Throughout the contemporary history of the Middle East, however, these political conditions – for minorities and majorities alike – have never been strong and, in recent years, have deteriorated further in the wake of the destabilization of various states in the region as a result of the outbreak of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 and the intensification of geostrategic rivalries. Indeed, Raymond Hinnebusch has gone so far as to suggest that the region is experiencing a ‘sectarian revolution’ characterized by intense political competition along religious lines at the geo-strategic, national, and even local levels.1 In these current socio-political conditions, civic actors – including those emanating from minority ­communities – have found their political opportunities for exercising their rights as equal citizens increasingly constricted. Yet, these ‘un-civic’ realities have not always been the case in the modern history of the region. Nor have they gone (nor do they go) unchallenged. The constitutional movements in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ottoman Empire and the associational development that they spawned, for example, offered hope that new political orders based upon notions of universal rights, associational freedom, and citizenship might emerge. Similarly, secular nationalist movements in the colonial and early post-colonial period, ones built upon cross-cutting alliances between different classes and communities, offered some promise that more broad-based political orders might emerge in the post-colonial Middle East geared toward the promotion of social and political equality for all. Finally, the populist authoritarian 60

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republican experiments that came after – often described as promoting ‘revolutions from above’ – sought to concentrate and harness the power of the newly captured states to transform post-colonial goals of social, economic, and political equality into reality. Many of the civil and political activists supporting these agendas emanated from minority communities, seeing in them an opportunity to secure their inalienable rights as citizens rather than their contingent rights as members of a particular minority cultural group. The question that informs this chapter is this: Why has the promise of these efforts been so fleeting, leaving civil society activists – especially those emanating from minority communities – increasingly subject to regimes of discrimination and repression? To unpack the complex relationship between minorities, civil society, and state formation in the contemporary Middle East, this chapter sets out to accomplish several tasks. First, it will briefly unpack several conceptual debates relevant to examining the relationship between minorities, identity, and civil society politics in the region. Second, it will use a political economy lens to examine the kind of economic weight minority populations might bring to their civic and political demands – focusing on the differential effects that capitalist penetration and post-colonial development agendas have had on the economic power of minority populations. Third, the chapter will examine the contradictions in state- and ­nation-building – ones that can lead to both the ‘creation’ of majorities and minorities and the privileging of one over the other. The final section will examine the ways in which minority communities have been incorporated into regime structures and the effects that these have on the development of civil and associational life for members of minority communities. Throughout, the emphasis will be on the ways in which the various structural contexts within which associational life exists – class formation, state/nation formation, and regime formation – have had a profound influence over the development of opportunities for civic and associational life for minority populations.

Theoretical reflections on the politics of religion, identity, and civil society Historical processes of mixing, mingling, and migration of peoples within and through the Middle East have left the region with a legacy of cultural and religious diversity. At their root, the resultant array of cultural and religious identities are ‘banal’ and ‘everyday’ in ­nature – meaning that they do not necessarily translate into group competition and/or conflict. While some have described them as being a ‘latent’ source of group competition, endowing the region with ‘a structural tendency towards ethnic and religious political dividing lines,’2 this misses the crucial analytical truth that cultural and religious identities are not ‘givens’ in the socio-political arena. Rather, if politicized, they are usually the result of their interaction with socio-economic and political processes, and with agents that have instrumentalized these identities for socio-economic and political ends.3 The broader critical literature on sectarianism is helpful here. The work of scholars such as Osama Makdisi and Max Weiss on Lebanon, for example, highlights the importance of modern socio-political processes in explaining how religious forms of identity have become the dominant – though never exclusive – way of organizing social and political life. Makdisi, for example, emphasizes the complex and contingent effects of capitalist penetration and foreign penetration into the region in the nineteenth century combined with the parallel developments in the formation of modern states – effects which created a ‘far-reaching crisis of co-existence’ in the diverse setting of Mount Lebanon and led to ‘a reconfiguration of both religion and power’ in ways that began to privilege sectarian identity as a political 61

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organizing principle.4 Weiss similarly examines the institutional consolidation of sectarianism in Lebanon as ‘a hegemonic and dominant organizing principle’ through the lens of the complex historical relationship between the state, the nation, and the sect – highlighting in particular processes of ‘sectarianization from above and below.’5 As Weiss emphasized in his study of the ‘sectarianizing’ effects of the establishment of Shi’i legal institutions in ­Mandate Lebanon, the reproduction of sectarian difference within states and societies required ‘maintenance and work, through both practical and discursive means.’6 The lesson here is this – Lebanon’s hegemonic system of political sectarianism was not an inevitable product of its religious diversity but, rather, emerged as a result of the contingent interaction of a variety of modern socio-economic and political processes that sparked an array of ‘sectarianizing’ actions and reactions from a variety of political actors, elite, and subaltern alike. The concept of civil society also requires some clarification and unpacking. Individual civic society associations and associational networks may be able to determine autonomously their social and political orientations, but the power of their voices, and the overall thrust of civil society more generally, will be heavily influenced by the nature of the regime structures and the systems of political incorporation that surround them. As a plethora of current research has shown, the associational realm is heavily penetrated by social and political forces emanating from the state and the market, and it is the structuring effect of these forces that heavily influences both the nature of associational dynamics themselves and the extent of political opportunities available to associational activists.7 As a result of the influence of processes of uneven class formation and/or authoritarian processes of state formation, for example, associational life may not necessarily translate into a realm of open deliberation and organization but may also reflect the exclusionary dynamics that these processes spawn. Indeed, in the context of the contemporary Middle East, characterized as it is by particularistic and authoritarian political regimes ruling over diverse societies characterized by socio-economic inequality and underdevelopment, civil societies are unlikely to be open playing fields that provide universal and institutionalized opportunities to all. Rather, they are more likely to be realms of contestation that provide structural advantages to certain associational actors and networks – ones often working to reproduce a preexisting political and socio-economic order – while disadvantaging other associational actors that threaten the socio-political status quo. Indeed, as we shall see with respect to the relationship between minorities and civil societies in the region, these dynamics of restriction and exclusion have often resulted in the emergence of minority civil societies or what some scholars have called ‘mini-public spheres’8 – ‘islands of civil society’ whose agency is highly ‘restricted’ in the face of the more powerful exclusionary dynamics emanating from the various political spheres of the region.9 What we now turn to is an examination of the ebbing and flowing of some of these structural conditions and their effects on minority populations and the associational life that emerges from within them. We will examine three key factors. First, we will examine the effects of capitalist penetration and post-colonial strategies of accumulation on the emergence of associational life of the various countries of the region and of the participation of minority populations within them; second, we will look into the broad patterns of modern state formation in the region and the tensions between universalist dynamics of state-­building and the often particularist dynamics of nation-building that these processes spawned; and, finally, we will examine the resultant uneven processes of regime formation and societal incorporation, ones that fostered the uneven development of civil society and associational life, empowering some and constraining the development of others. 62

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Socio-economic development, minorities, and civil society in the Middle East The rise of civil society and associational life in general can, in part, be linked to the rise of social power, brought about by exponential increases in economic development and the social changes that emanated from it. In her research on the ‘making of global radicalism’ within the public spheres of the Eastern Mediterranean in the late nineteenth century, for example, Khuri-Makdisi places her analysis in the context of significant socio-economic change brought about by what she refers to as the first ‘foundational wave of globalization.’10 This brought transformative developments of rural-urban migration, the growth of cities (especially the port cities of the Ottoman Empire), dramatic increases in literacy, a significant expansion of labor markets that, in turn, spawned increased labor migration within the empire, and significant bursts of out-migration. In short, this first wave of globalization brought in its wake tremendous changes in the social structure of the empire, challenging the hegemony of traditional elites and bringing to prominence new social forces – an emerging new bourgeoisie, educated middle-class professionals, and an expanding and more socially mobile working-class. It is from these new social forces that new and more widespread forms of associational life began to emerge within the Middle East. Yet, these structural socio-economic transformations were not evenly distributed among the societies of the Ottoman Empire. Charles Issawi, for example, has described the ­Tanzimat reforms of the mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman period as having had advantageous effects for some within minority communities, removing impediments to their social mobility and freeing them to participate within the expanding Ottoman economy. Benefiting from connections with foreign ‘Christian’ powers and eventually from the foreign legal protection and commercial treaties, Issawi describes the minority communities as accumulating affluence and power ‘on an unprecedented scale’ in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.11 Christian minorities – Greek, Armenian, and in the context of Egypt, Coptic – participated actively in the expanding banking, commercial, and industrial sectors of the Ottoman economy, Kasaba describing them as becoming a ‘nascent bourgeoisie’ that had ‘far-reaching power and influence.’12 Christian minority populations were also at the forefront of creating and taking advantage of expanding opportunities in education provided by both Christian missionaries and the expanding Ottoman state, evidenced by the increasing presence of minorities and especially Christian minority groups within the bureaucracies and the professions.13 These advantages also translated into better health; Starkey notes that while Muslims lived, on average, between twenty-nine and thirty-two years in the late nineteenth century, Armenians lived, on average, closer to forty-nine years of age.14 Finally, on the subaltern end of the scale, minority groups took advantage of opportunities provided by expanding labor markets and increased possibilities for social mobility caused by improved communications and transportation infrastructure. This was particularly the case for marginalized ethnic and Muslim minority communities such as the Kurds, the Shi’i, and the Alevi – the first being called ‘the perennial migrants of the Ottoman labor force.’15 As postulated, there is a strong correlation between these socio-economic transformations and the emergence of ‘expanded public spheres’ in the region epitomized by growth of associational life. Khuri-Makdisi, for example, writes of the emergence of ‘new social spaces’ in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.16 Kasaba writes of the rise of ‘a vibrant civic life,’ especially within the non-Muslim quarters of expanding urban areas, consisting of schools, the press, professional associations, social clubs, as well as political organizations.17 Sharkey similarly writes of the emergence of greater amounts of secular and 63

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cosmopolitan space – space cultivated and frequented by the emerging urban middle-classes of the empire – that facilitated the emergence of ‘public spheres of deliberation’ driven by the ever-­expanding press.18 She also added, interestingly, that although these developments were particularly intense within the minority Christian communities, they also pointed to the emergence of ‘a flatter social terrain’19 in which some of the previous boundary-creating and discriminatory practices of everyday life – relating to such things as clothing, music, and food – were beginning to erode.20 One also began to see the emergence of civic politics within various religious communities – symbolized by the rise of a middle-class lay strata challenging the authority and power of their traditional clerical elites and demanding, among other things, the sharing of power through the creation of lay assemblies.21 Finally, Der Matossian also notes the emergence of new ‘exhilic’ public spheres as a result of the growth of minority diasporic populations in Europe and the Americas.22 These in turn gave rise to new ‘translocal, transregional, global intellectual networks’ that would become crucial in the growth of reform movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 23 In short, capitalist penetration and the social transformations that resulted from it were leading to what Tambar called ‘the pluralization of the public sphere’ in the Middle East.24 These differential benefits of early capitalist penetration into the Middle East region – benefiting in particular Christian minority communities – would eventually, and perhaps inevitably, come up against nationalist ‘majoritarian’ political forces associated with the emergence of more powerful states eager to spread these economic opportunities out more evenly, if not capture them disproportionately. In short, minority economic power – which helped to fuel the development and expansion of public spheres and associational networks in the late Ottoman and post-Ottoman periods – would find itself vulnerable to political forces associated with processes of state- and nation-building. This vulnerability of minority economic power emerged quite quickly with the rise of Turkish nationalism in the late ­Ottoman period, nationalism that led to ever increasing discrimination and violence against Christian communities within the Ottoman Empire’s Anatolian provinces and which would eventually result in a campaign of genocide against Armenian Christians, the expulsion of Greek Christians, and the liquidation of their collective assets during and after the First World War. In the Arab world, these processes would emerge later with the rise of the region’s ‘secular,’ authoritarian-populist states in the 1950s and 1960s in such countries as Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. It was in Egypt, for example, that Nasser’s nationalization decrees of the 1950s and early 1960s severely depleted the economic power of Egypt’s long-standing Coptic ­Christian bourgeoisie,25 precipitating a significant outflow of Copts and their remaining assets to ­Europe and North America, while also providing the Egyptian state with the economic tools to rechannel assets and economic opportunities toward its political clients. This process of consolidating ‘majoritarian’ economic power became even more pronounced with the onset of the neo-liberal era in the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s – an era characterized by a retreating state devolving increasing economic opportunities in a politically selective (though not necessarily or consciously sectarian) manner to a new clique of predominantly Muslim entrepreneurs.26 Furthering these processes was the rise of ‘petro-dollars’ that exploded into the political economy of the region and which led to a dramatic growth in the significance of Islamic enterprises across the Arab world, from social welfare clinics to ­Islamic financial institutions.27 While some diasporic minority communities began to compensate for these dynamics by investing in what Der Matassian has called ‘exhilic’ public spheres as a way of promoting the interests of minority communities in the region, this would not change the reality of a dramatic 64

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redistribution of economic power and opportunity in the selected countries of the region away from the previously prosperous minority communities. While the relationship between economic power and associational strength within the region’s civil societies is not a direct one, there is no doubt that these redistributive dynamics have had a profound effect on the economic underpinnings of associational life within these minority communities of the region.

Minorities, civil societies, and the contradictions of state- and nation-building One important insight from the previous discussion is that, while economic resources can be essential in providing foundations for the growth of associational networks and public spheres, they are not sufficient and, even if robust, still leave minoritarian associational networks vulnerable to political forces associated with processes of state-building, nation-­ building, and regime-building. All this attests to the derivative nature of associational life, civil societies, and public spheres in general, dependent as they are on broader structural features of modern political economies. This is not to say that the ‘agency’ of associational actors – minority or otherwise – cannot transcend structural constraints on public and civic life, economic or otherwise. Indeed, the initial success of the various ‘Arab Springs’ in 2011 attest to the potential of civic and associational innovation, courage, and determination to forge opportunities for the exertion of civic power against all odds. Their short-lived nature, however, also points to the primary importance of analyzing the political structures and processes that underlie civil societies if we are to understand their dynamics, opportunities, and, ultimately, constraints. Crucial to this analysis are the contradictory impacts of two parallel political processes on civil societies and minorities in the Middle East region – state-building and nation-building. The building of a modern state administrative apparatus, for example, could be looked upon as being essential for the emergence of national as opposed to localized public spheres and civil societies. Modern states – presumably responding to implicit imperatives emanating from the international system of states as a whole – make claims to establish sovereignty over an entire defined territory and population. As Benjamin White points out, along with this also comes a claim that the state ‘represents’ this population under its territorial jurisdiction. In order to actualize these territorial and representative claims, modern states have often sought to extend their administrative and infrastructural power throughout, and, in doing so, tend to penetrate over time deeper and deeper into society, especially with respect to the laws that govern the everyday life of the subjects/citizens and the ways that those laws are enforced. Using the conceptual logic of the arguments of Michael Mann, it is hoped that the extension of the infrastructure of the state will provide ‘utility’ to society as a whole, thereby generating social consent for the continued power, hegemony, and autonomy of the state apparatus itself while keeping society united under its sway.28 On the surface, this universalist imperative of state-building seemed to correspond to the rise of the secular-oriented, anti-colonial nationalist movements and the a­ uthoritarian-populist states that they created in the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s – predicated as they were on broadening the basis of state legitimacy from the elite-oriented colonial and neo-colonial states of the early post-Ottoman era. All emphasized the importance of working on behalf of the nation and, especially, on behalf of non-elite members of society such as workers and peasants. Moreover, all initially prioritized forms of secular nationalism in ways that would allow for the inclusion of religious (though not ethnic) minorities as full citizens; from these political imperatives flowed seemingly inclusive (though not democratic) constitutions, 65

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dramatic expansions in the size of states and of state employment, and a deeper penetration of the infrastructural apparatus of state administrations into the realms of education, health, and the economy. The key to all of these developments was the hope that all citizens would emerge as equal members of these new modernizing states, allowing for the emergence of unified national – rather than ‘mini’ and ‘segmented’ – public spheres and civil societies and for the participation of all on an equal non-discriminatory basis. Tambar, in his analysis of the historical transformations and challenges of the Alevi community in modern Turkey, referred to these hopes as being part of ‘the historical project of modernity.’29 The reality of state-building in the region has been dramatically different, however, leaving many within religious minority populations institutionally and discursively trapped within the confines of their own communities and communal civic realms. Saba Mahmood, in her recent book Religious Differences in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (2016), argues that part of the problem lies at the very heart of the modern secular governance project itself. In the quest to promote equality among citizens in societies with significant religious pluralism, she argues, secular states have often found themselves forced to intervene, regulate, and/or ameliorate conditions of religious inequality and conflict – be it in the legal, educational, or economic realms – that inevitably arise within civic life, interventions which violate the imperative of keeping religion outside of the realm of the political sphere. Indeed, Mahmood describes the secular state as often becoming ‘embroiled’ in these religious matters, a dynamic that paradoxically often exacerbates religious tensions, hardens interfaith boundaries, and polarizes religious tensions.30 Stresses Mahmood, ‘this is not the result of an incomplete process of secularization but rather inherent in that process.’31 However, the problem is not simply one of the secular state finding it difficult to avoid becoming embroiled in matters of religious difference within society. Rather, as is clear from the historical record in the Middle East, there also seems to be a structural disposition on the part of modern states not only to intervene in matters of religion and culture but also to do so in ways that undermine the claim of modern states to neutrality. In his The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (2011), for example, White argues that the modern state’s claim to be ‘representative’ of its population has pushed it to define ‘representativeness’ less in terms of a universal notion of citizenship and more so in terms of a particular cultural and/or religious identity. White refers to this process as the state searching for ‘an ideology of cohesiveness’ upon which to base its legitimacy. F ­ ledgling and politically unstable states, as have been the norm within the contemporary Middle East, are even more likely to need such an ideology to back up their claims. This legitimacy then becomes grounded in the notion – indeed creation of – ‘majorities’ and ‘minorities.’32 White argues that majorities and minorities, rather than being self-evident socio-political entities, are historically contingent ones, ‘created by the extension of the state’s control over, and claims upon, both population and territory.’33 These structurally driven processes of state and nation formation, however, also tend to set in motion competitive dynamics of ­claim-­m aking ‘from below’ between culturally hegemonic and culturally excluded ­communities – dynamics which are further intensified by the increasing focus of the international community in the modern period with the status of minorities around the world. Hence, the arguments of Mahmood and White indicate clearly that processes of modern state- and nation-building have built within them dynamics that can lead to the structuring of state-society relations within plural societies such as those of the Middle East in majoritarian and, hence, minoritarian directions. The imperative of modern secular states to penetrate society and establish infrastructural power on a comprehensive basis inevitably drives them to adjudicate over matters of the boundaries between the secular and the religious as 66

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well as conflicts that arise as a result of the inevitable inequalities between different cultural communities – be they ethnically or religiously defined. Moreover, as both Mahmood and White affirm, these dynamics and tensions are exacerbated by the structural tendency among states to base their legitimacy on particularistic ‘ideologies of cohesiveness’ – ones that end up ‘creating’ national majorities and minorities on a cultural/religious basis. Examples of the complications that arise out of these generic processes of state and national formation in the modern Middle East are legion. Ottomanism, ostensibly an ideology of political belonging based upon notions of equality and universal citizenship, morphed into virulent forms of Turkish (and implicitly Muslim) nationalism with catastrophic consequences for various Christian ‘minorities’ in the late Ottoman period as well as ongoing complications for ethnic and Muslim ‘minorities’ – from the Kurds (Mountain Turks!) to the Alevis – throughout the period of Turkey’s modern republic. Similarly, secular Arab ­nationalism – which provided the ideological underpinnings for various anti-colonial nationalist movements in the post-Ottoman period and the secular populist-authoritarian states that emerged from these movements – was never able to realize its universalizing promise. As a result, some states (such as Syria and Iraq) descended into authoritarian forms of minoritarian rule. Others – notably the authoritarian state of Egypt and virtually all of the monarchical states of the Gulf region – turned to various ideological forms of Sunnism as a way of consolidating majoritarian forms of national legitimacy and cohesion. These tendencies in nation-building processes in the contemporary Middle East away from secular nationalism and toward forms of religious nationalism are also being highly contested in Iraq and Syria – states that had either previously been effectively ruled by a minoritarian group (Iraq) or in which minoritarian political rule (Syria) is being highly contested. All of these examples point to the structural pressures and contradictions faced by the newly emerging states of the Middle East in their efforts to promote state- and nation-­ building. These pressures have often pushed states toward cultivating cultural forms of political legitimacy that can lead to discriminatory forms of political rule, ones that discursively create and reinforce understandings of the division of political power in majoritarian (and in some cases, minoritarian) ways. Yet, there is no fixed institutional path along which these discriminatory cultural pressures flow from the perspective of state-society relations. Nor is it clear what effect these will have on the civil societies and associative networks within these countries, majoritarian or minoritarian. Rather, each will depend upon the unique methods of political incorporation that particular regimes choose. What follows in the concluding section is an analysis of the most common patterns of minoritarian incorporation into majoritarian regimes and the effects that these patterns of political incorporation have had on the nature of the civil societies in which minority citizens participate.

Patterns of minoritarian political incorporation in the Middle East: implications for civil society This essay identifies three general patterns of minority political incorporation within the contemporary Middle East. The first is an exclusionary one – revolving around the unwillingness of particular regimes to recognize institutionally the political rights of religious or ethnic minorities within their countries, if not actively repress civil and political mobilization along minority lines. The case of the Alevi minority in Turkey will be used to examine the consequences for civil society actors of the state’s refusal to recognize and politically incorporate religious/ethnic groups on that basis. The second pattern of political ­incorporation – extremely common throughout the region – revolves around strategies 67

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of ‘mediated’ political incorporation of religious minorities. Brief case studies of the Shi’i communities within Saudi Arabia and the Coptic community in Egypt will be used to unpack these particular strategies of minority political incorporation and their impact on the participation of these minorities within civil society. The third pattern of minority political incorporation is a consociational one. This is the most inclusive of the three patterns from the perspective of political incorporation on the basis of ethnic and/or religious identities, but it is also one that poses distinct challenges for civic activists within minoritarian communities that wish to become involved in broader non-sectarian networks of civil associational life. The example of Lebanon will be used to elucidate the consequences for civil society activism in these contexts. Turkey’s republic is an example of a regime that refuses to accept institutionally, let alone discursively, the political rights of its ethnic and/or minoritarian religious communities outside the bounds of the Turkish nation-state (see Chapters 16 and 19). Tambar has described this approach as emanating from ‘an authoritarian state tradition that seeks to impose an artificial homogeneity, even uniformity, on the society,’34 and Carkoglu and Bilgili refer to it as an example of the Turkish republic trying to ‘conceal its diversity.’35 With respect to ­Turkey’s Alevi community, for example, the founders of the Turkish Republic were determined that the political rights of the Alevi would only flow to them as ‘Turks,’ as a foundational component of the Turkish Republic, rather than as a sub-entity whose formal political recognition might lead to a divided and Balkanized Turkey.36 Indeed, Tambar has described the Turkish state as being actively involved in ‘the governance of Alevi difference’ and in ‘the disciplining of [Alevi] national belonging’ – accepting the existence of distinct Alevi cultural traditions, but only if they are reformulated as examples of ‘national’ Turkish folklore.37 Initially, Alevi civil elites largely accepted this positioning in the secular republican state. They were described as being largely complicit in this masking of their distinctive ‘religious’ heritage and willing to keep their sectarian identity ‘concealed in the public space.’38 This remained the case well into the 1950s and 1960s, when processes of social transformation and urbanization led to the rise of a new generation of Alevi, including a ‘deeply progressive, egalitarian, and left-wing’ cadre of young students and newly urbanized, dislocated Alevi working-class elements. Rather than pushing for their rights as religious minorities, for example, their approach was to join radical secularist movements and demand greater socio-economic and political inclusiveness as Turkish citizens.39 It was only with the military coups of the 1970s and 1980s and the subsequent decision of Turkish authorities to adopt a more conservative ‘ideology of coherence’ that revolved around what has been called the ‘Turkish- [implicitly Sunni] Islamic synthesis,’ that a rising new generation of urbanized Alevi middle-class elites joined this cuturalist turn and began to shift the focus of their social and political activities in more religious directions. Indeed, by the turn of the twentieth century, Alevi civil society had significantly transformed and was described as becoming inundated with ‘public discourses on their community’s history, religiosity, and politics,’ Tambar noting ‘a virtual explosion of Alevism on the national public scene’ that was paralleled by calls, by European among others, for Turkey to show greater respect for the rights of its religious minorities.40 Hence, by the end of the twentieth century, Alevis attained the ability to represent themselves – as Alevis – ‘in public forums in the name of autonomous [and communal] self-expression.’41 At the same time, however, this activism has remained highly constrained by a Turkish state trapped by its ongoing sense of ‘unceasing [national] vulnerability.’42 The Turkish state continues to prevaricate about, if not work to prevent, politicized expressions of the Alevis as a (minority) religious community separate from the Turkish-Islamic (and implicitly Sunni) 68

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synthesis. It is noteworthy, for example, that the Turkish state, while sanctioning and even promoting associational activity in the realm of Alevi folklore and cultural practices, has banned politicized Alevi youth groups from forming.43 Hence, while socio-economic and political transformations in Turkey have opened up opportunities among Alevi civil society activists for the greater expression of Alevi identity, such activity continues to be highly constricted, subject to the disciplining effects of a regime determined to establish clear ‘limits to pluralism’ in the country in order to preserve the ideological fiction of Turkey as a culturally homogeneous nation-state.44 A second, and particularly dominant, pattern of political incorporation of minority populations in the Middle East revolves around the cultivation of separate mediated channels of minority representation, what Steffen Hertog has broadly called ‘segmented clientelism,’45 in which political access to the state is channeled through clerical or notable elites and intermediaries. This pattern of minority political incorporation has several key advantages from the perspective of an authoritarian regime itself. It is the method of political incorporation that reinforces a relationship of hegemony and hierarchy between the incorporated minority group and the politically dominant cultural group of a country; it is also a method of political incorporation that buttresses the moderating power of clerical or notable minority elites over potentially more contentious minority social groups such as the educated middle-classes, labor, and other subalterns. An additional advantage of this system of mediated representation is the very creation of separate channels of mediation. This not only facilitates the containment of civic activism within each minoritarian community but can also militate against the emergence of broader cross-cutting opposition to the regime in power. The relationship of the Saudi regime with its Shi’i populations is well depicted by this model of mediated representation of minority populations (see Chapter 19). In the state’s founding alliance between the Saud family and the Wahhabi clerical elites, the Shi’i, who predominate in the Eastern provinces of the country, were ‘left out of the state-sponsored grand narratives.’46 While a number of Shi’i clerics were hired to work on personal status matters within Saudi courts, general access of the Shi’i community to the Saudi state was at best periodic, contingent, and confined to clerical and notable elites who acted as intermediaries between the Saudi state and the Shi’i community.47 In exchange for Saudi patronage that would help to strengthen their authority as representatives of the Shi’i, for example, this Shi’i elite agreed to accept the legitimacy of the Saudi regime while working to limit public displays of Shi’i religiosity and contain expressions of political contention.48 This system did not go unchallenged – especially in the 1950s and 1960s when processes of Saudi state formation and economic development (especially transformative in the Eastern Provinces where the Shi’i predominated as a result of the expansion of the oil industry) were beginning to effect significant social transformation within Saudi society, including within the country’s Shi’i communities. Throughout the region, this precipitated the rise of new social forces – from workers to petty bourgeoisie elements to educated professionals – who began to establish new social organizations such as labor unions, and propagate secular leftist ideologies through newly created media forums that challenged the mediated and sectarian nature of political representation in the country.49 Though it contributed to a general expansion of the public sphere within the Shi’i-­ dominated Eastern Provinces, this expanding civil society, however, was never able to transform itself from the narrowly based networks of activists to nationally based social and political movements. Rather, in the face of the disciplining effects of Saudi repression, alternative external ‘mediators’ arose in the form of emerging Shi’i political movements in the Gulf and Iran, combined with periodic reformist efforts on the part of the Saudis to 69

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reinvigorate systems of mediated representation. These developments began to challenge the system of sectarian-mediated representation and were subsequently rechanneled into more broadly based demands for sectarian recognition itself by civil activists within the Shi’i communities.50 In short, political bargains with Wahhabi Sunni clerics at the onset of Saudi state formation have enshrined Sunni identity at the heart of the Saudi state, and this ‘ideology of cohesion’ has been reinforced by institutional mechanisms of political incorporation that have created a regime of differential citizenship for the country’s Shi’i population. This, in turn, has led to a narrowing of political opportunities for Shi’i civic and associational life, channeling their activities in communal directions. Mediated forms of representation have also become a dominant way of politically incorporating Egypt’s Coptic Christian community into that country’s authoritarian system of rule (see Chapter 6). The system was adopted during the era of Nasser in the 1950s and has taken the form of an ‘entente’ between the president and the Coptic patriarch. Initially, civil actors within the Coptic community had developed a long tradition of effective activism, both with respect to matters within the Coptic community itself – symbolized by the creation of the majlis al-milli in 1874 that had a powerful role in the affairs of the church – and within broader Egyptian civil and political society. Copts, for example, throughout the periods of British colonialism and subsequent monarchical rule, secured prominent places within politics as well as the public and private sectors. Bayat describes this ‘liberal’ monarchical period as being ‘the hallmark of Coptic presence and citizenship.’51 With the rise of authoritarian governance in Egypt, however, civic/lay power within the Coptic community has suffered. For example, as stated earlier, Nasser’s nationalization decrees struck a severe blow to the economic foundations of Coptic power, and lay influence was further weakened by Nasser’s decision – affirmed by subsequent Egyptian presidents – to designate the Coptic patriarch as the official channel through which the Egyptian state would deal with the Coptic community as a whole – a decision which was also accompanied by official decrees transferring power previously held by the Coptic lay assembly back to the clerical establishment itself.52 The ‘turning point’ in the communalization of political life in Egypt, however, came with the decision of Nasser’s successor, Sadat, to deploy Islam not only as a mobilizational tool against his Nasserist opponents but also as something that would be institutionally embedded within Egypt’s legal system and constitution. It was this latter decision, in particular, that led to increased tension between the Egyptian state and Coptic communal leaders fearful of their community’s diminished and subordinate place within Egypt’s Islamicizing polity. It also contributed to a considerable increase in tension within Egyptian society as a whole, tensions that have periodically broken out in the form of sectarian violence.53 The impact of Egypt’s turn toward ‘majoritarian’ Islamist forms of national identity on Egypt’s Coptic community has been profound. The overall effect has been to sectarianize Egyptian social and political life, transforming Egypt’s Copts into minority subjects of a predominantly Sunni Muslim state as opposed to citizens of an Egyptian state who also happen to be members of Egypt’s Coptic community. As Tadros lamented, ‘relations between the Coptic community and the Egyptian state have considerably narrowed.’54 It is not that Copts have not continued to participate in Egypt’s broader civil networks – indeed, for Copts interested in promoting social and political reform at the national level, there is little use trying to work through the channels of mediation controlled by the Coptic Orthodox Church, which is dependent on the maintenance of good relations with the Egyptian state. Neither (recently or in the past) is it the case that relations between Egyptian Copts and Muslims have become completely sectarianized. Bayat suggests that there remains a considerable degree of 70

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‘cosmopolitanism’ within everyday life in Egypt as ‘ordinary members of different ethnoreligious and cultural groups mix, mingle, intensely interact, and share values and practices – in the cultures of food, fashion, language and symbols, in history and in memory.’55 It is certainly the case, however, that considerable aspects of civic and associational life have been increasingly channeled in communal directions. Egypt’s public sphere is increasingly bifurcated into ‘mini-public spheres’ that are filled with displays of religiosity – Coptic or otherwise. Communalist public discourse has increased and notions of the Copts being an ‘oppressed minority’ have become increasingly prevalent. In response to the neo-liberal retreat of the state in the realms of development and social welfare, Egypt, like the rest of the region, has also witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of communally oriented social welfare associations and services.56 In short, Egypt, during its authoritarian period, has witnessed a dramatic increase in the communalization of civil and associational life, a phenomenon which is a direct result of decisions by contemporary Egyptian political leaders to use religious identities, discourses, and institutions as tools for structuring state-society relations. A third and perhaps the most inclusive of the ways in which minority communities have been incorporated into the political life of the region revolves around systems of consociationalism, or power-sharing, that is based on various forms of ascriptive categories and identities – what Picard calls ‘consensual democracy.’57 Lebanon has been the paradigmatic consociational system in the region – though with the descent of various countries of the region into protracted and fragmenting violent conflict (Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya), discussions of using power-sharing political arrangements are becoming increasingly prevalent. Consociational systems can vary,58 so it is difficult to generalize about the effects of such systems on the civil and associational life of minority communities as a whole. Nonetheless, by diving briefly into the case study of Lebanon, it is hoped that some general lessons might be inferred from Lebanon’s own experience. With no religious community making up a majority of the population, Lebanon is a country of minorities. Of course, it is also many other things too – a country of families, social classes, and individuals that think of themselves in part as Lebanese. Moreover, it was only in the mid-to-late twentieth century that Lebanon’s system of governance began to be organized around systems of democratic power-sharing between religious communities, the result of the coalescence of a variety of processes and politics in the Ottoman, French colonial, and Lebanon post-colonial periods.59 While religious identities and dynamics have never encapsulated the entirety of politics in the country, it is the case that both formal and informal aspects of Lebanon’s political system have privileged religious communities in its overall system of social and political incorporation. Executive power in Lebanon is allocated to members of three of the most significant sectarian communities in the country – the presidency to the Maronite Christians, the prime ministership to the Sunni Muslims, and the speaker of the Lebanese parliament to the Shi’i community. Moreover, Lebanon’s electoral system is based upon power-sharing between its religious communities, with the seats in its parliament being allocated (since the Ta’if Accords of 1989) on a 5:5 basis between Christians and Muslims. Finally, Lebanon’s 1926 constitution has enshrined the autonomous power of religious jurisprudence in matters of personal status law to each and all religious communities in the country – without the right of appeal to a national civil court. The results of these various constitutional stipulations have been to privilege religious identity as the basis of citizenship in the country and, hence, as a prior basis of access, to the political system as a whole. The effects of this religiously inclusive system of power-sharing for civil and associational life, however, have not been as inclusive as they might appear. The factionalized and 71

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fragmented nature of social and political life has left a legacy of a weak state, immobilized by factionalized debates and power struggles, and lacking in the kind of capacity and infrastructural power needed to regulate social and political life based upon universalist norms of citizenship. This has not debilitated civil and associational life in the country – evidenced by its long history and the current post-civil war burgeoning growth of civic associations and associational networks. Indeed, my study of post-war associational politics in Lebanon and of the advocacy efforts of a variety of rights-based, non-sectarian social policy associational networks concluded that these associational sectors have achieved some notable successes in the post-war period – among them the institutionalization of their presence within Lebanese civil society, the promotion of discursive and normative change in the ways that certain social policy issues are framed, and even some small incremental policy changes, achieved as a result of their ability to strike strategic alliances with actors located in some of the bureaucratic trenches of the Lebanese administration.60 Yet, although these associational networks have been able to carve out space within Lebanon’s civil society, they remain at a structural disadvantage in promoting their universalist demands as a result of the historically entrenched system of sectarian political incorporation in Lebanon. Just as the Lebanese consociational system structures politics in ways that privilege sectarian political actors, so too does it structure Lebanese civil society in ways that privilege the growth and influence of sectarian associational actors. While Lebanese civil society may have expanded exponentially in the post-war period, the vast majority of these associations are linked to the country’s political heritages of clan and community. This differential growth of civil associations relating to sectarian and clan-based affiliations has been reinforced further by trends in the country’s political economy, symbolized by the growing significance of diaspora financing that tends to flow into the country through sectarian channels. Fueled by these structural conditions, sectarian associations within Lebanon’s civil society have become dominant and act as a powerful mechanism working to reinforce and reproduce discriminatory systems of sectarian privilege, rather than transcend such privilege in order to establish universal norms and practices of citizenship in the country.61

Conclusion The Middle East region as a whole has seen a significant weakening of secular, universalist projects of state- and regime-building. Instead, there has been a turn toward culturalist projects of state- and regime-building, a turn that White and Mahmood suggest may, in fact, be endemic to all state- and regime-building projects, especially those within diverse plural societies with fledgling and/or weak polities as is the case throughout the Middle East. As Gengler noted, such cultural diversity may serve as a ‘latent’ (though not inevitable) source of group competition awaiting activation by structural and agential processes.62 These trends have been exacerbated by the uneven effects of capitalist development, ones that have at times empowered certain minority communities but which have also led to the rise of ‘nationalist’ counter-projects aimed at weakening the economic foundations of communal power. Further complicating processes of state- and regime-building has been the unequal place of the Middle East in the global arena, giving extra impetus to nationalist projects that have often worked to the disadvantage of the rights of cultural minorities seen as having ties with the West. Complicating this equation still further has been the rise of regional geostrategic rivalries that have had devastating effects for minority groups. In the 1950s and 1960s, this included the forced expulsion of the region’s Jewish population from Arab countries, developments which were paralleled by the rise of discriminatory regimes of 72

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citizenship for Palestinians remaining within Israel. More recently, it has manifested in rising geostrategic competition between states identifying themselves as representing Sunni or Shi’i interests that has unleashed a tide of sectarian contestation and violence throughout the Arabian peninsula, the Gulf, and into the Fertile Crescent states of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. These processes have had a profound effect on the structuring of civic and associational life in the region. There is no question, for example, that the region has seen a significant increase in the communalization of associational life – evidenced by the increase in communal civil discourse, the increased numbers of communal social welfare associations and networks, and, in many countries, the rising social and political influence of religious elites and clerics as a result of the wide-scale deployment of systems of ‘segmented clientelism’ across the region. The exact nature of the communalist associational turn and the degree to which communal actors have access to the political sphere vary from country to country, dependent on the particular systems of political incorporation that each regime deploys. As we have seen, Turkey has denied political access for minorities and has worked to discipline and contain associational initiatives within minority communities (as well as in secular leftist circles) that challenge the Turkish-Islamic national project. States like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have moved in a different direction and have chosen to recognize and channel minority associational and political activity through mediated channels controlled by communal elites while repressing more broad-based civil and associational activity. A third pattern of political incorporation is seen in Lebanon’s ‘consensual ­democracy’ – structured around communalist power-sharing projects – that has privileged communal associational activity while working to the disadvantage of civil and associational activities promoting universalist norms and practices of citizenship. Indeed, common to all states and regimes in the region has been the repressive targeting of civil and associational actors working to promote secular, universalist projects of citizenship, a reality that further reinforces the narrowing of political opportunities for civil and associational actors in communalist directions. It is not that boundaries between the civil and the communal are seamless. Rather, they are porous, tested by the activities of both secular-oriented and civic-oriented communal associational actors as well as by the everyday ‘cosmopolitan’ acts of citizens that work to challenge authoritarian political systems that repress and divide citizens through their varied systems of political incorporation. However restricted their political opportunities, civic actors linked to both minority and majority communities continue to transgress the bounds of restricted and differential citizenship put in place by the various regimes in the Middle East. However, as this analysis shows, it is also clear that because these associational projects represent potentially significant challenges to the structure of power within most states of the region, they remain highly vulnerable to the exercise of authoritarian power. The result is that civil and associational projects that aim to enshrine the rights of universal citizenship, for ‘minorities’ and ‘majorities’ alike, have been at an increasing disadvantage within the region, hemmed in by process of state-, nation-, and regime-building that have worked to promote differential rather than universal rights of citizenship.

Notes 1 See Raymond Hinnebusch, “The Sectarian Revolution in the Middle East,” Revolutions: Global Trends and Regional Issues 4, no. 1 (2016), 120–152. 2 Justin Gengler, “Understanding Sectarianism in the Persian Gulf,” Lawrence Potter, ed., Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 44. 3 See Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People, and the State (London: Routledge, 1989).

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Paul Kingston 4 Osama Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History and Violence in Nineteenth Century Ottoman Lebanon (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 17. 5 .Max Weiss, In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi’ism, and the Making of Modern Lebanon (­Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 123. 6 Weiss, In the Shadow, 230. 7 Joel Migdal, “Introduction: Developing a State-In-Society Perspective,” Joel Migdal, Atul Kohli, and Vivienne Shue, eds., State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 20. 8 Bedross Der Matossian, Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 47. 9 See Gordon White, “Civil Society, Democratization, and Development: Clearing the Analytical Ground,” Peter Burnell and Peter Calvert, eds., Civil Society and Democratization (London: Frank Cass, 2004). 10 Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 166. 11 Charles Issawi, An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa (London: Methuen and Company Ltd, 1982), 77. 12 Resat Kasaba, “A Time and a Place for the Nonstate: Social Change in the Ottoman Empire during the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’,” Joel Migdal, Atul Kohli, and Vivienne Shue, State Power and Social Forces (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 211 and 213. 13 Karen Sharkey noted that “whether literary or artisanal, the education offered in mission schools gave Jewish and Christian students a marked degree of social mobility relative to the Muslim population.” Karen Sharkey, A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 202. 14 Sharkey, A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, 201. 15 Kasaba, “A Time and a Place for the Nonstate,” 224. 16 Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 43. 17 Kasaba, “A Time and a Place for the Nonstate,” 213. 18 Sharkey notes, for example, that that between 1830 and 1870, over 100 Armenian papers emerged. Sharkey, A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, 251. 19 Sharkey, A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, 249. 20 Ibid., 243. 21 These were created in several Christian millet communities such as the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1860, and the Coptic Christians in Egypt in 1874. See Der Matossion, Shattered Dreams of Revolution, 1; and Paul Sedra, “Class Cleavages and Ethnic Conflict: Christian Communities in Modern Egyptian Politics,” Islam and Muslim-Christian Relations 10, no. 2 (1999), 228. 22 Der Matossian, Shattered Dreams of Revolution, 49. 23 Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 57. 24 Kabir Tambar, The Reckoning of Pluralism: Political Belonging and the Demands of History in Turkey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014), 21. 25 As a result of the nationalization decrees, Asef Bayat noted that Copts were estimated to have lost up to 755 of their property, Asef Bayat, “Everyday Cosmopolitanism,” Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 190. The result, as Mariz Tadros noted, was that “Coptic members of the aristocracy…became politically marginalized once their principle asset, land, was taken from them as a consequence of the land reform measures adopted by the new government,” Mariz Tadros, Copts at the Crossroads: The Challenges of Building Inclusive Democracy (Cairo: AUC Press, 2013), 64. 26 Elizabeth Picard, for example, has argued that ‘the new visibility and topicality of the minority question can be linked with the redeployment of the state in the Middle East, namely its retreat from the economic field and, in return, its strong involvement in the awakening and promotion of ascribed identities as well as their securitization’. See Elizabeth Picard, “Nation-Building and Minority Rights in the Middle East,” Anh Nga Longva and Anne Sofie Roald, eds., Religious Minorities in the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 337. 27 Nicholas Pelham, for example, pointing out the link between petro-dollars, the export of ­Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia, and the retreat of traditions of civic and political pluralism in the region as a whole, argues that ‘nothing has been more corrosive to Islam than the billions of dollars invested in replacing a pluralist Islam with a puritanical, anti-women, anti-Western Salafist brand’,

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28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 4 4 45 46 47 48

Nicolas Pelham, Holy Lands: Reviving Pluralism in the Middle East (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2016), 157. See Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanism, and Results,” European Journal of Sociology 25, no. 2 (1984), 185–213. Tambar, The Reckoning of Pluralism, 55. Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 106. Mahmood, Religious Difference, 116. Benjamin White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 29. White, The Emergence of Minorities, 94. Tambar, The Reckoning of Pluralism, 7. Ali Çarkoglu and Cagin Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics,” Anh Nga Longya and Anne Sofie Roald, eds., Religious Minorities in the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 289. Tambar, The Reckoning of Pluralism, 3. Ibid., 14. Alevis were described as practicing taqiyya, or hiding their identities, a practice facilitated by the lack of distinctive buildings or symbols of Alevi identity, Carkoglu and Bilgili noting that there was no tradition such as a call to prayer that would have called attention to the Alevis as a religious group in Turkish society, Çarkoglu and Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics,” 294. Çarkoglu and Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics,” 296. Tambar, The Reckoning of Pluralism, 23, 83. Ibid., 75. Ibid., 57. Ibid., 94. Tambar, The Reckoning of Pluralism. See Steffen Hertog, “Segmented Clientelism: The Political Economy of Saudi Economic Reform Efforts,” Paul Aarts and Gerd Nonneman, eds. Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 111–143. Toby Mathiessen, The Other Saudis: Shiism, Dissent, and Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 217. Laurence Louër, “Shi’i Political Identity in Saudi Arabia,” Anh Nga Longya and Anne Sofie Roald, eds., Religious Minorities in the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 224; and Matthiessen, The Other Saudis, 21. Matthiessen, The Other Saudis, 65. Notes Matthiessen, the clerical and notables…had an interest that Shi’i would define themselves as Shi’i, and that the state would continue to see them as such. Otherwise their role would become obsolete. So, state policies strengthened sectarianism, both by discriminating against the Shi’i Muslims on religious grounds as well as by dealing with them through their ‘traditional’ elites.

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

Matthiessen, The Other Saudis, 76. Louer, “Shi’i Political Identity,” 232. Bayat, “Everyday Cosmopolitanism,” 190. Tadros, Copts at the Crossroads, 61–81. See also Paul S. Rowe, “Neo-Millet Systems and Transnational Religious Movements: The Humayun Decrees and Church Construction in Egypt,” Journal of Church and State 49, no. 2 (Spring 2007), 329–350. Bayat, “Everyday Cosmopolitanism,” 190. Tadroz, Copts at the Crossroads, 64. Bayat, “Everyday Cosmopolitanism,” 187. Bayat, “Everyday Cosmopolitanism,” 204–205. Elizabeth Picard notes this to be a regional trend, remarking that public displays and legitimization of confessional affiliation and the rehabilitation of religious actors induced sectarian segregation in the urban space, dissonances in dress codes and ethos, separate education, segregated societies, and generally the organization of separate cultural and political lives – a trend reminiscent of the closed society of the late Ottoman Empire,

Picard, “Nation-Building and Minority Rights,” 338–339.

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Paul Kingston 57 Picard, “Nation-Building,” 325. 58 See John McGarry and Brendon O’Leary, “Iraq’s Constitution of 2005: Liberal Consociationalism as Political Perspective,” International Journal of Constitutional Law 5, no. 4 (2007), 670–698. 59 See Paul Kingston, Reproducing Sectarianism: Advocacy Networks and the Politics of Civil Society in Postwar Lebanon (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013), Chapter 2 for an analytical narrative about the emergence, consolidation, and reproduction of Lebanon’s sectarian democracy. For an excellent analysis and account of the emergence of sectarianism in nineteenth-century Lebanon, see ­M akdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism. 60 See Kingston, Reproducing Sectarianism, Conclusions. 61 Kingston, Reproducing Sectarianism. 62 Gengler, “Understanding Sectarianism,” 44.

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Section ii

Religious and ethnoreligious minorities

6 Tracing the Coptic Question in contemporary Egypt Vivian Ibrahim

In the last ten years there has been renewed interest in the Copts of Egypt. Unlike earlier generations of scholars who were largely concerned with religious practice1 and persecution,2 more recent authors have examined the socio-political climate of the twentieth century with the aim to better understand contemporary issues in Egypt. This has included the role of the Egyptian state3 and the tensions between various Coptic “communities”.4 This literature is part of a broader movement that seeks to redefine how one examines “minorities in the Middle East”. First, it acknowledges country-specific socio-political circumstances by avoiding essentialist or orientalist tropes—which predestine all religious and ethnic minorities to the same “fate”—persecution and discrimination. Second, the new wave of literature seeks to understand the real and lived experiences of minorities in the Middle East. This is a careful balancing act, which acknowledges the individual agency of “communities” and country-specific circumstances, and is, in part, influenced by earlier works like that of Pacini and Esman/Rabinovich.5 However, much of the new body of literature goes beyond merely a discussion of the Middle East, and is instead influenced by more global discussions of plurality, secularism and citizenship.6 This offers valuable insights into understanding questions of inclusion and exclusion in Egypt and how they have been shaped by transnational discourses. It is at this juncture of the global flow of ideas of modern citizenship, secularism and pluralism that this chapter is situated, examining the slow, but steady, transformation of how the “Coptic Question” has been defined—by both the Egyptian state and the Coptic “­community”—since 1952. The first section provides an overview of the “Coptic Question”, while the second examines some of the challenges in examining the Coptic Question. Today, a growing number of activists are pursuing a public identity for Copts, a form of the “politics of recognition” and the “right to difference”—terms influenced by Western discussions of pluralism. This is important since it highlights the engagement of the Copts with globalised and contemporary debates concerning citizenship. This is a controversial approach within the Coptic community, as well as between the Copts and the Muslim-majority and the Egyptian state, and to some extent has required new vehicles for Coptic self-organisation and expression, outside the older “neo-millet” institutions that had governed Coptic life for decades. It reveals how debates about religious pluralism in the Middle East, and specifically Egypt, have developed in light of the failure of the Arab Spring. Who are the Copts? 79

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‘As a minority, the Copts are unique. They are indigenous, the original human material of the Nile Valley, and as they are quick to point out, “Copt” is the Arabicised, then ­Europeanised, version of the Greek word for Egyptian. “Copts” means “people of Egypt”.7’ The etymology is significant, as it plays an integral role in the self-perception of Copts as the “true Egyptians”. This is in contrast to the Muslims, who, according to widely held Coptic perception, are from Arab “stock” and arrived in Egypt after the invasion of ‘Amr Ibn al’As in 641 AD.8 This myth, of course, does not take into account the vast number of Copts who converted, for various reasons, to Islam during the many centuries of Islamic rule. The Coptic Church, which claims to have been founded by St Mark, also goes to great lengths to assert Egypt’s geography to its own religious memory. The Orthodox Church asserts that the Holy Family took refuge in Egypt during the early years of flight. As a result, the spatial dimension is “experienced differently by them than by their Muslim compatriots…their sites of memory are a merger of both places and topics, the concrete and the abstract”.9 The number of Copts in Egypt is also a controversial topic. In 1927, a British census found that 8.7% of Egyptians were Coptic. In the years following the 1952 Coup, the number shrank to around 7%. In an official census conducted in 1996, the government estimated that the 5.7% of the population was Coptic. More recently, in 2006, the government refused to make census data on religious affiliation available.10 There is a lot of controversy about the accuracy and reliability of the statistics. Unofficially, the Coptic Church argues that as many as 20% of the population is Copt. In contrast, media and academics place the number at around 10%–15%. The Egyptian state remains opaque; there is, after all, no incentive to accurately conduct and release census results that highlight the true number of Copts in Egypt.

Trends in the Coptic Question Historically, the “Coptic Question” has been defined in a number of ways, all of which centre on the role of Copts in Egyptian society. The historiographical trends have placed varied emphasis on how the Copts fit into Egyptian narratives of the nation. This ranges from the Copts being seen as an integral kernel of the Egyptian nation—the 1919 national-unity ­d iscourse—to issues of rights, discrimination and even persecution. Positive relations between Copts and Muslims are at the heart of national unity narratives. This tends to focuses less on a “Coptic Question”, and more on an “Egyptian Question”— with the 1919 revolution at the centre. The popular uprising began after British colonial authorities denied Sa’d Zaghlul’s delegation, or Wafd, authority to travel to the Paris Peace Talks. The aim had been to make a case for Egypt’s independence. What ensued was a popular uprising, including women, Copts and Egyptians of all classes. Qommus Sergius was one of the most dynamic leaders to emerge out of the demonstrations. Sergius, a Coptic priest, became the first Christian in the history of Al-Azhar Mosque to stand and preach at its pulpit.11 For fifty-nine consecutive days, protestors would gather at Al-Azhar to hear the Coptic priest and his anti-colonial speeches. Sergius, whom Zaghlul later named the “orator of Egypt”, embodied the unity felt between Muslims and Copts. In the national imaginary, 1919 is a significant marker for the articulation of Egyptian identity and Egyptian-ness, with Copts and Muslims united against the British.12 Writing on the revolution, Coptic historian Milad Hanna has argued that: March 1919 instilled feelings that are prevalent in the conscience of every Egyptian until today and these are that ‘religion is for God, and the nation is for all’ [as well as] the slogan ‘long live the crescent [intertwined] with the cross’.13 80

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In national unity narratives, the Coptic Question involves the inclusion of Copts within a broader Egyptian Question. Legal codes and practices established by the Egyptian state, particularly after independence, also affected interpretations of the Coptic Question. For instance, an examination of the constitution in the period following Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s military coup of 1952 provides evidence of how the Copts were simultaneously included and excluded in the legal and legislative process. The 1954 draft emphasised civil liberties, labour rights and social justice for all citizens. However, the constitution also explicitly included a clause that only religions recognised by Islam—that is Christianity and Judaism—would be permitted. The legitimacy of any religion was based on an Islamic interpretation of acceptable practice, this served ultimately to exalt the religion of the majority (Islam) over that of any minority. What is particularly important to note is that even Coptic activists who lobbied Nasser sought to claim a political share for the Copts by ensuring their full inclusion in the constitution.14 This was not necessarily a demand for a “secular” document, but rather an acknowledgement of Christianity, Judaism and Islam as equal in legislative status. At times, Nasser claimed that he wished to pursue a secular agenda that would privatise religious belief, relegating it to an individual and family level but absent from the public sphere. In examining the evolution of the constitution, however, it is clear that neither Nasser nor his successors ever truly welcomed a policy of privatisation of religious belief. In fact, Nasser strengthened the state’s monopolisation over religion when legislation was enacted requiring a presidential approval for the election of all religious heads of communities. Pope Kyrillos VI, who was elected in 1959, was noted for his close and amicable relationship with the president, thus serving to strengthen the centrality of religious authority under the oversight of the state. Kyrillos, who had been a monk prior to his ascendency to patriarch, embodied a spiritual leader of the Coptic community while his close relationship to Nasser identified the president as the political leader of the state. The place of Islam in the constitution continued to be a contentious issue during the presidency of Anwar Sadat (1970–1981). In contrast to earlier constitutions, the 1971 document made a direct reference to the role of Sharia (Islamic law). After much public debate, Clause 2 stated, “Sharia is a principal source for legislation by parliament”. This was amended further to state that “Sharia is the principal source for legislation by parliament”. This established Sharia (at least in legal terms) as the main source for legislation in the state. This amendment not only affected the Copts as a religious minority, but also all citizens concerned with the character of the state. Should the constitution, as the embodying legislation of the state, be secular or religious, both as a question of principle and of practice? Despite the inclusion of Clause 45, which stated that “The State shall guarantee the freedom of belief and the freedom of practice of religious rites”, the question of Sharia shifted the focus of the document. The inclusion of Clause 2 diminished the role of those who did not identify with Islamic religious principles (Copts, non-practicing Muslims, secular Egyptians), thus serving to undermine any pretence of a secular vision of the state and popular plural participation in the legislative process. Instead, it emphasised the authority and dominance of the national majority, asserting a religious identity to the nation. This was most prominently brought to the forefront when Sadat declared himself the “believer President”. While this was a political tool to counterweight and unravel Nasserist alliances to the left, it had tangible outcomes in relation to the Coptic Question. The historiography of the 1970s is particularly interesting as there is a clear shift—­d irectly related to Sadat’s policies—from the national unity discourse to one of persecution. Janet Klein has argued minorities are “marked citizens” in the context of the Middle East.15 81

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Nasser’s regime widely practised discrimination against Copts, particularly with regard to employment in the government sector. However, Moheb Zaki argues that there was little sectarian tension.16 Discriminatory practices continued under Sadat, including the lack of permits to build and repair churches, the confiscation of waq f (religious endowment) land and, as already mentioned, the imposition of elements of Sharia law on the constitution.17 However, there was also an increase in sectarian tensions under Sadat. The release of Muslim Brotherhood leaders from prisons and exile, after the formal dissolution of the party in 1954, allowed the party and its offshoots, to operate freely. Sadat openly and publicly attacked the Coptic Church and in particular the patriarch, Shenouda III, whom he ultimately placed under house arrest in 1981. Violent attacks also increased: between 1971 and 1972, there were eleven reported incidents including the burning of a Church and properties in Khanka in Upper Egypt.18 In 1981, sectarian conflict reached its peak as fire-fights broke out in al-­Zawya al-Hamra district of Cairo. Nine Copts and eight Muslims were killed as police forces cordoned off the district, refusing to allow anyone to enter. Sadat was faulted by critics to the left, as well as Church leaders, for fostering an environment of turmoil. This is important as it stands in contrast with the prominent national unity narrative. The early years of Hosni Mubarak, who assumed presidency in 1981 after the assassination of Sadat, continued many of the policies of his predecessors. Pope Shenouda remained under house arrest for a further four years, and was only finally released in 1985. Discriminatory practices also continued, particularly with regard to government jobs and permits for building and repairing churches. The sense of insecurity, epitomised by attacks against both the state and Coptic structures, led to an increase in Egypt’s security apparatus. By the late 1990s, organised Islamist militants had been defeated at the cost of 20–30,000 lives.19 The problematic “Coptic Question” of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s was replaced with a resurgence of the national unity discourse. Pope Shenouda refrained from publicly attacking the state or making statements that could be interpreted as sectarian. Instead, he regularly appeared by the side of either the Shaykh Al-Azhar (the ranking Muslim public authority) or the Egyptian president at national events. This picture-perfect image of Copt and ­Muslim, side by side, was satirised in the 2008 film Hassan wa Morcos. The opening scene shows a group of Coptic priests discussing discriminatory practices and insulting Muslims, while a Muslim delegation insults Christians. A few moments later, the shaykh and priest stand together in the gathering, singing the praises of national unity.20 These scenes provide a fair reflection of many of the private and public discussions that were taking place in either community; “dirty laundry” was not to be aired in a public forum.21 The façade of national unity, particularly in Mubarak’s later years, was often performed. Nevertheless, sectarian conflict, particularly in Upper Egypt, also continued to be prevalent. In 2000, twenty-one Copts were killed in the village of Kosheh following riots between Muslims and Copts. In 2010, a drive-by shooting killed at least seven Copts outside a church in Nag Hammadi, resulting in mass protests. On New Year’s Day 2011, a bomb attack took place outside the Al-Qadissayin Church in Alexandria, killing twenty-three people and injuring ninety-seven. The state security apparatus was widely criticised in all these cases for failing to provide adequate safety for Coptic communities. In February 2011, Mubarak was toppled from power after a popular uprising, which lasted eighteen days. The position, which he had held for thirty years, remained vacant for a year, overseen by a transitional government led by the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces. In June 2012, Mohamed Morsi became, arguably, the first popular democratically elected president in Egypt’s history. Morsi, who had been a member of the formerly banned Muslim Brotherhood, proceeded in November of that year to grant himself unlimited power to legislate 82

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without judicial constraints. In June 2013, demonstrations called for Morsi’s resignation, leading to violent clashes.22 In a military-led coup, ‘Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi seized power, placing ‘Adly Mansour as interim president until Sisi’s election as president in June 2014.23 Joshua Stacher’s timely work published in 2011 predicted a transition and return to military rule. Stacher argued that the centralised executive in Egypt would aid the adaptability and continuation of an authoritarian regime (even if shortly interrupted by the Muslim Brotherhood).24 While the Egyptian state can now claim “stability”, the liberty of the average Egyptian, irrespective of faith, has been curtailed.25 As prominent political scientist Rabab el-Mehdi has commented, in addition to the clamping down of journalists, we have tens of thousands of detaineespolitical detainees. Anything from wearing a T-shirt condemning torture to expressing their views on TV or on university campuses can and will be detained. This is the most repressive moment that we have seen in the past 40 years in Egypt.26 It is necessary against this backdrop to redefine and examine the place of Copts in Egypt. Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, the Coptic Question has received renewed attention, leading some analysts to question whether Christian communities in the Middle East are living in the age of “identity politics”.27 More specifically, have Copts, particularly in light of the Arab Spring, articulated their claims for greater rights—read broadly as political, social, representative, religious—within the remit of global discourses? In October 2011, Coptic demonstrators, in part influenced by the success of Tahrir Square, staged a peaceful sit-in in downtown Cairo near the television building. This was in reaction to the continued difficulties in obtaining church building permits, and in particular the demolition of a church in Aswan that had failed to obtain the correct permits. The march and subsequent sit-in had been organised to end in front of the television building in Maspero; however, soon after arrival, the protestors were shot at by state security forces. State television broadcasters claimed that the protestors had attacked the army first and called on “honourable citizens to fight the Christian dogs”.28 Over 200 people were injured, while twenty-eight (mainly Copts) were killed. Candace Lukasik has argued that since 2011, groups such as the Maspero Youth Union— who were at the forefront of the march and sit-in at the television building—have sought to contest and reconstruct the social boundaries drawn by both the church and the state. The organisation, mainly comprised the same demographic as those in Tahrir Square, aims to promote political secularism as a solution to inter-communal tensions. In doing so, these youth organisations challenge the political hegemony of the Coptic Church.29 Will ­Kymlicka and Eva Pföstl have argued that in regions beyond the Middle East, minority activists “often appeal to global discourse as a way of legitimising their claims”, while also seeking to show that those claims are “compatible with existing local discourses”.30 This is important as it highlights the centrality of a locally specific approach. Coptic activists in Egypt have clearly been savvy about their use of global concepts, advocating new ways of thinking about inclusive citizenship, rights and participation. Central to this discussion is whether or not the Copts serve as the driving force for a transformation in Egyptian politics. In many ways, Coptic activism has gained traction because of existing civil and social forces, which have operated for some time.31 Moreover, it is also important to note that Coptic activists are often at odds with some global discourses, particularly the association with “secularism”. As Mahmood has pointed out, secularism is often evoked as the vehicle to promote equality of citizenship under the law and a key feature of a “modern society”.32 However, many 83

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Egyptian civil actors are extremely uncomfortable with notions of secularism. The result of this is that various movements—workers, political opposition groups and Copts—have tailored the notion of secularism to meet local norms and needs.

Challenging the narrative In considering the Coptic Question, there are three inherent methodological assumptions that have shaped historical discussions and need reconsideration. First, the usage of the term “minority”/aqalliyya in relation to the Copts is extremely problematic in the Middle Eastern context. As Seteney Shami has argued, the term “minority” in the Arab world is laden with baggage and is in turn often contested by Arab intellectuals as it is associated with repression and ethnic cleansing.33 In 1994, the Ibn Khaldun Center of Development Studies, based in Cairo, and led by sociologist and American University Professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim, organised an international conference entitled “Minorities in the Arab World”. An immediate backlash ensued; the Ibn Khaldun Center was accused of being a Western-backed organisation with the agenda to promote discord in the region. Indeed, Saba Mahmood has argued that there is a general fear in the Middle East that the “minority” question becomes a tool for foreign exploits.34 At the forefront of the allegations against Ibrahim was the prominent journalist and respected Arab commentator Muhammad Hassanien Heikal. Heikal, who had been closely associated with Nasser, had briefly been imprisoned under Sadat when he fell out of favour for being critical of the regime. Heikal claimed that there were no “minority issues” in the region. The impact of the allegations was immense, and the conference was forced to abandon Cairo as its venue.35 In the weeks that followed, public debates in Egypt and the Arab world took place on television and in print. Were there aqalliyya in the region and what did this term mean? While there was a lip service acknowledgement of diversity, for the most part, these discussions were superficial, failing to address some the major issues that faced religious and ethnic minorities in the region. Instead, the term aqalliyya largely fell subservient to nationalist labels of Egyptian/Iraqi/Syrian. It is worth noting that the hierarchy of the Coptic Church has perpetuated this discourse, supporting Egyptian state claims that the Copts are not an aqalliyya but rather Egyptian and thereby part of the majority. Put differently, and to borrow Paul Rowe’s terms, the church has sought the “perpetuation of a neo-Millet partnership”.36 For instance, the constitutional clauses, which actively discriminate against non-Muslims, have received the tacit, and sometimes explicit, support of the Coptic clerical hierarchy. Pope Shenouda III (1970–2012), while initially airing some concerns against Clause 2 in the 1970s (under Sadat), later altered his position (under Mubarak). Rather than removing the article he suggested the addition of a sentence “and People of the Book are judged according to their own laws”. 37 In 2011, both Pope Shenouda and the Council of Islamic Research rejected a proposal for a unified law on building places of worship. This would have addressed one of the most consistent issues raised by the Copts – the ability to practice religion freely without building restrictions. In rejecting the proposal, the church wished to consolidate its monopoly over communal affairs. Elizabeth Iskander has argued that in refusing a unified law—a symbol of a broader struggle to obtain greater equity for Copts in Egypt—the church highlighted that it “[…] preferred to have a separate law for Muslims and Christians and to maintain a quasi-­ Millet system in which citizens are governed by different laws according to their religion”.38 Put differently, the existing legal system strengthens the institution of the church, centrally grounding it to a unique and distinct Coptic identity, which is subsequently subsumed under the label “­Egyptian”. This stance is consistent with the pragmatism of the Coptic Church 84

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hierarchy which, has in large part, fostered a stable rapport with the Egyptian state. From the perspective of both the church and the state, this is a mutually favourable relationship. In acting as both the political and religious voice for the community, the church can consolidate its power and authority over the Copts, a role that has been continuously challenged by lay Coptic factions since the mid-twentieth century. These groups and their goals vary from the Maspero Youth Union—lobbying for increased political participation within a secular framework—to Coptic women’s advocacy groups—campaigning for religious reform. For instance, in the case of women’s groups, the issue of divorce has led to tension within the church. Divorce is forbidden except under exceptional circumstances. To get around church restrictions, a convoluted series of steps is undertaken in order to dissolve a marriage, the end result of which has been an apparent increase in the number of Coptic women converting to Islam. According to Islamic law, it is forbidden for a Muslim woman to be married to a Coptic man. The Ministry of Justice governs the legal procedure for conversion. The process is arduous and includes a certification of declaration, which first must be submitted to a police station followed by the Bureau of Conversion at Al-Azhar. Christian representatives are present throughout the process to ensure that no coercion takes place.39 Once this process is complete, the marriage, between the now converted Muslim woman to the Coptic man, is invalidated. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that it is not uncommon for the woman to revert to Christianity once the divorce is obtained. However, according to Laurie Guirgus, there are also a number of high-profile cases where Al Azhar has been unwilling to be party to these circumventions of church doctrine. This is particularly the case for applications for conversions to Islam made by the wives of Coptic Orthodox priests.40 Advocacy groups argue that the Coptic representatives present at the police station and conversion sessions place pressure on the individual to abandon conversion. In the particularly controversial case of a conversion attempt by Wafa Constantine, the wife of a Coptic priest, riots ensued. For some Copts, Constantine had been coerced to convert; little mention was made in media outlets about her long-term ill husband, the priest. In the case of Constantine, the state intervened; the symbolism of her conversion would unbalance the careful equilibrium built between the church and the nominally Muslim state. Constantine was returned to the Church, where, rather than obtain her divorce, she became a nun and has since lived in the seclusion of a monastery.41 Rather than turn a blind eye to the fake conversion, the state in this case acted as the enforcer of communal harmony. Related to the church’s attempt to consolidate its authority over the community, the Coptic Question also raises the problem of defining who is “the community”. Much of the literature talks of the Copts en masse, thereby reducing “the Coptic community” to a religious millet led by a patriarch. Here, there is a coupling of the term “minority” with dhimmi. The tendency to regard the Coptic community as one undifferentiated religious mass fails, however, to take into consideration the various classes, social and political struggles and actors. The Maspero Youth Organisation and its actions not only made visible internal conflicts over the composition of the “community”, but also highlighted some of the religious and political struggles that face the church. The Church, and particularly the papacy, has also pragmatically adopted a position whereby it supports “the lesser of two evils”. While it recognises state infractions against the Copts, the state is also viewed as a “protector” of Copts from alternate political Islamist forces such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which won the majority of parliamentary seats and the presidency in 2012. From the perspective of the state, the arrangement with the Coptic Church is also beneficial. It ensures that the church functions as a political and religious representative over the minority and can, to an extent, be held accountable for the community. 85

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Here, there is clear evidence of the collusion that exists between the state and the hierarchy of the church to secure ease of governance. Taken in a specific Egyptian historical context, the term “minority” is also contentious as it challenges the Egyptian national unity narrative. The centrality of Muslim-Coptic unity has played an important role in the imagination of the nation relying on popular rhetoric, repeated and performed as part of the vision of a modern “plural” Egypt. However, it is precisely this perpetuation of a national unity performance that has led to the “invisibility” of the Copts in the contemporary political landscape, with their minority rights subjugated to national needs.42 At the centre of a discussion of the make-up of the nation is the powerful image of the cross and crescent intertwined, symbolising unity between Muslims and Copts. Moncef Khaddar has argued that there is a distinction between “anti-colonial nationalism” and “state nationalism”. In his opinion, the former was “diverse and inclusive”, particularly when resisting colonialism. In contrast, he argues that state-nationalism is authoritarian and homogenising, “treating all forms of dissent as anti-national” and a threat.43 Labelled as a “minority”, the Copts would be a fixed and separate entity, effectively securing their unequal status and inability to participate fully in the national discourse. In elevating the idea of the “Egyptian” —representing the collective majorityover the status of minority/ies—such as Copts—the trend would be established in the future to view potential minority right claims as either subordinate or hostile to broader “Egyptian rights”. The saliency of the national unity/cross and crescent symbol is apparent in contemporary Egypt. For instance, in 2011, at the height of the uprising, the symbolism of 1919 played an important role, as Tahrir Square in the heart of Cairo became a focal point. The square personified an Egyptian utopia, Christians during Friday prayers on 4 F ­ ebruary 2011—­brandishing their wrists tattooed with a cross—protected Muslims while they performed their prayers. Two days later, Muslims encircled a Christian crowd performing ­Sunday Mass in Tahrir, ensuring that they too had a safe space for worship. Since Sisi’s coup in 2013, Pope Tawadros, who replaced Shenouda in 2012, has followed the same approach as his predecessor. Cautious in his statements, he has welcomed, at least publicly, a national unity narrative while attacks against churches and discriminatory practices continue to exist. At a time when political opposition is at its most repressive, the Coptic Question acts as a barometer highlighting the nature of the Egyptian state.

Notes 1 Otto Meinardus, Christian Egypt: Ancient and Modern (Cairo: Cahiers d’Histoire Egyptienne, 1965). 2 Edward Wakin, A Lonely Minority: The Modern Story of Egypt’s Copts (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1963). 3 Elizabeth Iskander, Sectarian Conflict in Egypt: Coptic Media, Identity and Representation (London: Routledge, 2012) and Sebastian Elsässer, The Coptic Question in the Mubarak Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 4 Vivian Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt: The Challenges of Modernisation and Identity (London: I.B ­Tauris. 2011). 5 Andrea Pacini, Christian Communities in the Arab Middle East: The Challenges and the Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Milton Esman and Itamar Rabinovich, Ethnicity, Pluralism and the State in the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988). 6 Kabir Tambar, The Reckoning of Pluralism: Political Belonging and the Demands of History in Turkey (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. 2014); Anthony Shenouda, “Reflections on the (In) Visibility of Copts in Egypt.” Jadaliyya Ezine, 18 May 2011. Available www.jadaliyya.com/pages/ index/1624/reflections-on-the-(in)visibilityof-copts-in-egyp. Accessed 22 May 2011; Eva Pföstl and Will Kymlicka, eds., Multiculturalism and Minority Rights in the Arab World (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2015).

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Tracing the Coptic Question in contemporary Egypt 7 Wakin, A Lonely Minority, 4–5. 8 For more on the Copts as the “true Egyptians” see Shawky Karas, The Copts since the Arab Invasion: Strangers in Their Own Land (Jersey City, NJ: The American, Canadian and Coptic Associations, 1985). 9 Sana Hasan, Christians versus Muslims in Modern Egypt: The Century Long Struggle for Coptic Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 17. 10 How many Christians are there in Egypt? Available www.pewresearch.org/2011/02/16/how-­ many-christians-are-there-in-egypt/. Accessed 31 July 2017. 11 Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt, 64. 12 Lami Al-Muti‘i, Mawsu’at hadha al-rajul min Misr (Cairo: Dar al-Sharuq, 1997), 426. 13 It is also worth noting that this slogan mirrors the Western exclusivist nationalist slogan of “one nation, one state” and remains extremely salient in the context of contemporary Egypt. Milad Hanna, Na‘am Aqbat, lakin Misriyun (Cairo: Maktabat Madbuli, 1980), 77. 14 Coptic activists lobbied Nasser to rectify the draft constitution—Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt, 164–168. 15 Note that this concept has been borrowed from Gyanendra Pandey, Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments and Histories (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006)—See Janet Klein, “The Perils of Minorityhood,” 21 June 2015. Avialable http://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2015/04/ the-perils-of-minorityhood.html. Accessed 10 December 2015. 16 Moheb Zaki, Civil Society and Democratisation in Egypt 1981–1994 (Cairo: Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies, 1994), 196. 17 David Zeidan, “The Copts – Equal, Protected or Persecuted? The impact of Islamization on ­Muslim-Christian Relations in Modern Egypt,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 10, no. 1 (1999), 53–65. 18 Karas, The Copts since the Arab Invasion, 120. 19 Elsässer, The Coptic Question in the Mubarak Era, 85. 20 Hassan wa Morcos, 2008 Directed by Ramy Imam. 21 This statement is regularly heard by Coptic interlocutors and news outlets. 22 See Abdullah al-Arian, “The Terror metanarrative and the Rabaa Massacre,” Jadaliyya, 15 August 2015. Available www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/18907/the-terror-metanarrative-and-the-rabaamassacre. Accessed 15 August 2015. 23 In popular Egyptian discourse, the June 2013 Coup is termed as “the second Revolution”. 24 This is in contrast to Syria, where Stacher argues the executive power was decentralised, ultimately resulting in Al-Asad’s protracted civil war. For details, see Joshua Stacher, Adaptable Autocrats: Regime Power in Egypt and Syria (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). 25 For instance, earlier this year, four Coptic teenagers were charged for insulting religion while completing a school project. Their teacher was initially sentenced to three years imprisonment, and the boys are currently awaiting trial. For details, see Mada Masr, 31 January 2016. Available www. madamasr.com/news/four-coptic-teenagers-tried-insulting-religion. Accessed 1 February 2016. 26 Rabab el-Mahdi, “5 Years after Protests Began against Mubarak, Where Does Egypt Stand?” National Public Radio (NPR), 25 January 2016. For full transcript see, www.npr.org/2016/01/25/464266197/5years-after-mubarak-was-toppled-where-does-egypt-stand. Accessed 25 January 2016. 27 See the introduction to Pföstl and Kymlicka, eds., Multiculturalism and Minority Rights. 28 Zeinab al Gyndy, “Outrage over State TV’s Misinformation and Anti-Coptic Incitement,” Al-­Ahram Online, 10 October 2011. Available http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/23813/Egypt/ Politics-/Outrage-over-state-TVs-misinformation-and-antiCopt.aspx. Accessed 25 January 2016. 29 Candace Lukasik, “Conquest of Paradise: Secular Binds and Coptic Political Mobilisation,” Middle East Critique 25, no. 2 (2016), 107–125. 30 Pföstl and Kymlicka, eds., Multiculturalism and Minority Rights, 3. 31 For instance, the emergence of the opposition group Kifaya or the textile union worker strikes in the delta city of Mahalla al-Kubra. For further details, see Joel Beinin and Frederic Vairel, Social Movements, Mobilization and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013); Joel Beinin and Marie Duboc, “The Egyptian Workers’ Movement before and after 2011 Popular Uprising,” Socialist Register 51, (2015), 1–22. 32 Also see, Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A minority report (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). 33 Seteney Shami, “Aqalliyya/Minority in Modern Egyptian Discourse,” in Carol Gluck and Anna ­Tsing, eds., Words in Motion: Toward a Global Lexicon (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 151–173.

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Vivian Ibrahim 34 Saba Mahmood “Religious Freedom, The Minority Question, and Geopolitics in the Middle East,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54, no. 2 (2012), 418–426. 35 Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “An Arab Culture of Denial,” Bitterlemons. Available www.bitterlemons-­ international.org/inside.php?id=261. Accessed 1 March 2009. 36 Paul Rowe, “Christian-Muslim Relations in Egypt in the Wake of the Arab Spring,” Digest of Middle Eastern Studies 22, no. 2 (2013), 263. 37 Iskander, Sectarian Conflict in Egypt, 180. 38 Iskander, Sectarian Conflict in Egypt, 177. 39 Laure Guirguis, The Copts and the Security State: Violence, Coercion and Sectarianism in Contemporary Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 33. 40 Guirguis, The Copts and the Security State, 34. 41 Ahmed Fouad, “Egypt’s Religious Conversion Controversy,” Al-Monitor, 21 October 2014. Available www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/10/egypt-copts-convert-muslims-crisis-kidnap pings.html. Accessed 1 February 2016. 42 Anthony Shenouda, “Reflections on the (In)visibility of Copts in Egypt.” 43 M. Moncef Khaddar, “Nationalist Ruling Parties, National Governments, Ideologies, Partisans and Statesmen: Human Rights Offenders and Human Rights Defenders in North African Post Colonial States and Societies,” Journal of North African Studies 17, no. 1 (2012), 67–96.

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7 The Maronites Alexander D.M. Henley

Maronites in Lebanon and the Middle East: ‘minority’ or not? Maronites constitute the most politically powerful Christian community in the Middle East, despite being far from the largest, due to their overwhelming geographical concentration in one small country, Lebanon. Of Lebanon’s population of about 4.5 million, Maronites make up at least 20%, putting them in a close third place to the Sunni and Shi’i Muslim communities.1 Hence, they constitute a numerical minority of the Lebanese, but the label ‘minority’ is arguably ill-fitting in its social, cultural, and political senses. As one of the largest of Lebanon’s eighteen state-recognized religious communities, the Maronite community is not overshadowed by any monolithic Lebanese majority. Indeed, Maronites could be said to enjoy many of the privileges we associate with majority status in this nation of minorities. They are central to the telling of Lebanese history, heavily represented in literary and popular culture, physically present both in the capital and virtually all major regions of the country (albeit with far from equal distribution), and hold a monopoly over certain key political posts including the presidency of the Republic itself. It is worth adding that while being one of three leading communities, the Maronites are also significantly the largest of Lebanon’s many Christian denominations, making them in practice the dominant spokespeople for the Christian ‘half ’ of the country.2 Far from being marginal, therefore, this small c­ ommunity – perhaps eight times smaller than Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority, for example – is often said to be the ingredient that makes Lebanon unique in the region: ‘a message’ or ‘an example of pluralism’ as Pope John Paul II famously called it.3 While the Maronites are most closely associated with Lebanon, there are historic populations across the Levant, particularly in Aleppo, Damascus, the Syrian coast, northern Palestine, and Cyprus, with a further presence in Jordan and Egypt. The origins of Maronite Christianity in fact lie outside Lebanon, in the Orontes valley of northern Syria, and the head of the Maronite Church traditionally styles himself as ‘Patriarch of Antioch and All the East’.4 The ancient patriarchal seat of Antioch, to which the Maronite patriarchs lay claim, is now in Turkey, and the whole Middle East is encompassed in their jurisdiction over ‘the East’. Today, Maronites in the Middle East make up fewer than half of the 3.4 million or more in this increasingly global community.5 In this light, one might think a discussion of the Maronites as a Middle Eastern minority to be of secondary importance to the Maronites 89

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as a transnational global religious community. Nevertheless, a strong attachment to Lebanon as cultural and religious homeland is evident across generations of Maronite émigrés. The Maronite Church itself, while slowly extending its reach internationally, promotes Lebanon as a ‘centre of gravity’ and even ‘promised land’ for a diasporic community.6 There have been widely differing views held by Maronites themselves on the question of minority, sometimes with consequent differences over the best political orientation for the community. On one hand, Lebanese Maronites have gained a reputation for what might be called a defensive minoritarianism or even ‘isolationism’ – a common accusation levelled by critics. Maronites have been the leading champions of Lebanism, the advocacy of a Lebanese state separate from greater Syria and sometimes also associated with a Western orientation or protectionism, as a means of establishing a secure refuge for Christian and other minorities. This attitude was met with hostility by many in Lebanon and the region as an anti-Arab policy, although it is important to note that many Maronites have embraced an Arab identity for Lebanon and cooperation with Arab neighbours. For instance, the first president of independent Lebanon, Bechara el-Khoury, had been imprisoned for resisting the French rule, and he led the new Republic into the Arab League as a founding member. The official policy of the Maronite Church has consistently favoured engagement and brotherly relations with ­Muslims within Lebanon to promote a sense of common citizenship, and with Muslims outside ­Lebanon to promote the interests of more vulnerable Christians elsewhere. Such a policy could be described as viewing Maronites as simultaneously part of a Lebanese majority and a regional minority.

A Maronite Genesis: ethnic and religious narratives Origin narratives have featured heavily in Maronite efforts at communal self-definition in relation to various neighbours, Muslim, Christian, and Arab. In the twentieth century, political Maronism has become associated especially with a claim to Phoenician heritage.7 The idea of descent from the ancient coastal Phoenicians provides grounds for a Lebanese identity separate from the Syrian Arab interior, and it gained considerable popular traction during the 1975–1990 Civil War for its particular relevance to the Mount Lebanon region in which Lebanese Maronites are historically concentrated, giving them a sense of ownership over Lebanese identity as its original people. Not only does it define a non-Arab, indeed pre-Arab, ethnicity, it also connects the Maronites’ ancestry to the beginnings of ­Western civilisation around the Mediterranean, as the Phoenicians are credited with bringing the ­a lphabet to Europe and elsewhere through maritime trade. Byblos, probably the pre-­eminent ­Phoenician port around the turn of the first millennium BCE, is now the modern town of Jbeil mid-way along Maronite Mount Lebanon’s coastal strip. The old town of Jbeil/­Byblos has been restored and promoted as Lebanon’s (perhaps the world’s) oldest continuously occupied settlement, and therefore as gateway to the nation’s roots. These roots include its linguistic heritage, by which is meant not only pride in the invention of the alphabet but also the development of a distinctive Levantine dialect of Arabic, argued by the nationalist poet Said Aql (1912–2014) to be so influenced by Phoenician and Aramaic that it constitutes a separate language from that of the Arabs. Other elements of the Phoenician history that have resonance today are its internationalism and mercantile model of civilisation. To middle-class members of an increasingly internationalised Maronite community, who made their wealth in Beirut’s service economy or as émigrés in West Africa or the Americas, the Phoenician ‘spirit’ seems alive and well. Although this idea has proven very popular, it would

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be remiss not to mention that most historians, notably Lebanon’s most famous historian, Kamal Salibi, have dismissed a direct connection between ancient Phoenicia and modern Lebanon for lack of evidence.8 Phoenicianism and similar ethnic narratives – including a narrative of Mardaite ancestry adopted by the Marada Movement, one of the major Maronite-led political parties – were successfully championed by secular Maronite intellectuals such as Said Aql and Charles Corm (1894–1963) in the twentieth century. Meanwhile, writers among the Maronite clergy have tended to emphasise a different origin narrative that identifies the community and its national character with the history of the Maronite faith and church institutions. This historical narrative begins around 685 CE, with the election of a patriarch by the monks of Bait Maroun on the banks of the Orontes River, in what was then the Roman province of Syria Secunda. In contrast to the urban development of most early churches, which coalesced around metropolitan sees, ‘with the Maronites the monastery was the point of departure’, arguably lending it a unique ecclesial character.9 Not only is the ascetic ideal – embodied in monks and hermits – central to Maronite spirituality, the monasteries continue to play a major role in religious and social life.10 ‘The religious organisation of the community has provided it down the centuries not only with a constant frame of reference, but also with a receptacle for its historical experience’.11 The strong monastic tradition and origin of the church has given monastic orders a significant place in the communal imagination, but above all ‘the patriarch is the embodiment of Maronite history and Maronite identity’.12 Nothing represents the religious narrative of Maronite history more clearly than the chain of ­seventy-seven Maronite patriarchs, who claim the authority of the Apostle Peter who founded the see of Antioch (as well as that of Rome).13 Although in reality ‘the early history of the Maronites before 1100 is almost totally veiled in obscurity’,14 epic stories of this period have formed the bedrock of Maronite religious history-telling.15 The narrative begins with John Maron, the first patriarch, and charts a course through religious persecution at the hands of Byzantines and successive Islamic empires to refuge in the isolation of Mount Lebanon, under the faithful leadership of successive patriarchs. ‘The patriarchs who were persecuted and sometimes martyred alongside their people became the living symbol of the Maronite experience’, according to a contemporary Maronite bishop.16 The remote mountain monasteries in which these patriarchs took residence during times of trouble have become the holiest places of pilgrimage for Maronites. Thus martyrdom and attachment to the God-given land of promise and safety have become hallmarks of Maronite spirituality and ideology. Popular culture portrays Mount Lebanon as ‘a standing fortress for the True Faith, guarded by vigilant Maronites against Islam and heresy alike’, with histories painted in Deuteronomistic themes that echo the sentiments of Jewish nationalism.17 These two narratives of Maronite origins – ethnic and religious – with their different tropes and characters, often coexist in the popular imagination. Combined, they work to set Maronites apart from neighbouring Arabs, Muslims, and Christians. They also complement each other in highlighting historic connections with Europe. Ironically, they may be products of widely diverging intentions for their authors, and they can be used to promote different visions of the community. A key point of contention is the role of the church: should this institution and its leadership be put at the centre of communal affairs as the living heart of what it is to be Maronite, or is religion a secondary and perhaps optional dimension of M ­ aronite life? A broader issue here is one of audience. Religious narratives are, of course, more exclusive in the Lebanese context. They tend to place Maronites as a small and

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persecuted minority within an already vulnerable Christian minority. Ethnic narratives, on the other hand, can include other Lebanese (or even Syrian) communities in a more majoritarian secular nationalist vision.

Maronites and the West: Catholicism, colonialism, and beyond A Western orientation features significantly in both mainstream origin narratives outlined earlier. Indeed, many Maronite nationalists view their ancestors as the originators of Western civilisation, whether through the Phoenician delivery of the alphabet to Europe, or through early Levantine Christians’ conversion and transmission of Christianity. The church emphasises not only its closer connection to the source of Christian faith, but also a uniquely long-standing relationship with European Catholicism. The Encyclopédie Maronite, for instance, asserts that ‘the Maronite Church has, since its origins, maintained its relations with the Holy See [i.e. the Catholic Papacy in Rome], and constantly shown its unerring loyalty to it’.18 In parallel with this, the same encyclopaedia’s introduction devotes space to a denial of the ‘accusation’ made by many historians that the early Maronites adopted the Monothelite Christology promulgated by Emperor Heraclius, and retained it even after the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople condemned it as heresy in 680 CE.19 The first clear documentary evidence of Maronite contact with Catholicism is William of Tyre’s account of their ‘wonderful change of heart’ towards Catholic doctrine during the crusades.20 It is more likely that the Maronite Church gradually fostered a relationship with Rome from then on, having been left friendless in the wake of the crusaders’ defeat. ‘It is reasonably certain that by the end of the sixteenth century the Maronite Church had become the ultramontane [Catholic] church in the Middle East in dogma, discipline, and submission to the See of Rome’.21 Whereas many Eastern Christian communities have sought to distance themselves from their crusading or colonising coreligionists in Europe, there has been a marked tendency among Maronites to highlight partnership instead. The communion of Maronite and Roman Catholic Churches gives meaning to the Maronites’ harried existence in the ­M iddle East, and gives them a claim to privileged relations with European Christians. As one Maronite priest puts it, ‘Together, they are responsible – the one in the West, the other in the East – for the development of authentic Christian faith. The Maronites, who guarantee Catholic continuity in the East, are mindful of their place at the forefront of this mission’.22 The Catholic connection has served Maronites well over the centuries. Opportunities for clergy to study in Rome helped foster a Maronite intellectual elite with international networks. A Maronite College founded in Rome under Jesuit supervision in 1584 institutionalized this exchange, carving out a permanent place for Maronite clergy in ­European academia and encouraging Jesuit interest in Lebanon. One notable graduate of the C ­ ollege, Joseph ­Simon Assemani, was sent by Pope Clement XII to hold a Synod for Mount ­Lebanon in 1736, a prime objective of which was to promote universal education. Maronites can take pride in the community’s early achievement of widespread literacy, with a major e­ ighteenth- and nineteenth-century growth in schools run both by the Maronite Church and the European Jesuits. French Jesuits opened Beirut’s second oldest university, the Université Saint-Joseph, in 1875, on the heels of the Syrian Protestant College that became the American University of Beirut. Throughout this period, European ties – especially with the Jesuit order – gave M ­ aronite merchants a significant advantage in developing Mediterranean trade relations. Close rela­ aronites tions in trade and religion with foreign powers – especially France – afforded the M a further privilege of protection. The French established a precedent as early as the sixteenth 92

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and seventeenth centuries of intervening with the Ottoman authorities on behalf of ­Maronites, and this precedent was to have a tremendous impact on the events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When conflict broke out between Druzes and Maronites of Mount Lebanon in 1860, Napoleon III sent troops to protect the Maronites. Following these events, European powers negotiated a semi-autonomous status for Mount Lebanon, governed by a Christian to be chosen by the Ottoman Sultan in consultation with Europe. This arrangement lasted more than half a century. Following the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the French arrived in Beirut once again as the protectors of the Maronite and other minorities, this time with a League of Nations mandate. The Maronite Patriarch, Elias al-Huwayyik, had led a delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, asking for a separate state in the name of Lebanese self-determination. The new ‘Grand Liban’ added great swathes of territory to Mount Lebanon, including the coastal towns from Tripoli in the north to Tyre in the south, as well as the Bekaa Valley inland. While this state reduced the Christians to little more (possibly less) than half of the population – a proportion that has gradually dwindled over the intervening century23 – it was conceived as a nation of minorities, carving out the corner of Syria with the greatest concentration of Christian, Jewish, and heterodox Muslim communities. The French Mandate built on Ottoman precedents of confessional representation and autonomy in religious affairs, widening this system to include recognition of seventeen sects (since increased to eighteen) and deepening it through sponsorship of communal ­institution-building and the granting of extensive legal powers. Lebanon secured its independence from colonial Mandate in 1943, when French rule was weakened amid the chaos of the Second World War. Independence was achieved through cross-confessional cooperation, culminating in a National Pact forged between Maronite and Sunni leaders. Along with an agreement to share power in the new Republic, the National Pact (al-mithaq al-watani) was premised on a double renunciation of foreign ties: Maronites giving up French protection and Muslims giving up calls for Arab unification. Lebanon was to be an independent Arab state, becoming in 1945 a founding member of the Arab League. Nevertheless, Western protectionism has continued to play a role in Lebanese Maronite politics. During the crisis of 1958, for instance, the Maronite President Camille Chamoun appealed for help from the United States under the Eisenhower Doctrine, and the subsequent landing of US marines on Beirut’s beaches prevented his government’s fall to Muslim opposition forces. A negotiated peace secured the election of another Maronite, Fuad Chehab, to the presidency once Chamoun had served out his term later that year. During the long civil war of 1975–90, Maronite parties again appealed for Western assistance, but were disappointed with the failure to gain decisive support from Western nations or even the Catholic Church. Certain Maronite militias, especially the Lebanese Forces and the South Lebanon Army, sought Israeli support against Muslim, Leftist and Palestinian forces, embracing the idea of an alliance of regional minorities.

Is Lebanon a Maronite creation? In the new Lebanon, Maronites were no longer a minority in contradistinction to an overwhelming or dominant Sunni Muslim majority, as they had been under Islamic empires.24 Unlike many other states in the region, Islam is not the official religion of Lebanon. Its Constitution, passed in 1926, did endorse religion but only in the most general terms through a professed commitment to ‘God Almighty’. Article 9 guarantees respect for ‘all religions and creeds’. Hence, the Lebanese state is not defined in secular terms but rather as 93

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a multi-confessional entity, with legal rights accorded to the recognised religious communities, especially in the field of ‘personal status’ or family law. This official multi-confessional identity has been encapsulated from 1920 to the present day in the special status conferred on all formal religious leaders, who stand as representatives of their communities to the state and were granted a right of appeal to a new Constitutional Court in the post-war constitution of 1990. The Maronite patriarch, like his Muslim and Christian counterparts, thus has a prominent role in national public life and is included in state ceremonies with a rank second only to the President of the Republic. Many Lebanese Maronites feel a particular sense of cultural ownership over Lebanon as an entity defined by Christian national aspirations. Maronites played a decisive role in gaining statehood after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and in the movement for independence from France in 1943. Significantly, Patriarch Elias al-Huwayyik and his successor Antoine Arida took leading roles in these events and have been called ‘fathers of modern Lebanon’.25 Ever since, the office of President of the Republic has been reserved by convention for a Maronite, with the premiership and parliamentary speakership allotted to a Sunni and a Shi’i Muslim, respectively. This makes Lebanon the only Arab country with a Christian president. A similar division of power in parliament guaranteed a ratio of six Christians to five Muslims until the Ta’if Accord of 1989, which adjusted the balance to a fifty-fifty split. In cabinet, certain key portfolios such as the Ministry for Foreign Affairs have traditionally been earmarked for Maronites. These conventions of the National Pact power-sharing system are defended by many Maronites as essential guarantees of Christian freedom from Muslim dominance. They have been a focus for criticism, however, by those who view them not as legitimate guarantees but as vestiges of the special privileges accorded to Christians by colonial powers. In Lebanese society more generally, Maronites and other Christians enjoy the freedom to practice their religion in public, a freedom contrasted with restrictions imposed on their coreligionists in some other Middle Eastern countries, where, for instance, there are limits on the building of churches or ringing of bells. The official weekend is Saturday and Sunday – despite Muslim campaigns for a Friday holiday – and Christian feasts are recognised alongside Islamic ones as public holidays: not only Christmas and Easter, but also St Maron’s Day and the Feasts of the Annunciation and Assumption. Lebanese culture is widely remarked to be relatively permissive and pluralistic, with values of tolerance and coexistence well established in public life. Maronite nationalists sometimes attribute these values to their community’s moderating influence on Islamic conservatism, leading to more relaxed attitudes towards alcohol, women’s dress and mixing of the sexes.

The war for Lebanon and the end of Maronite hegemony Resentment against the disproportionate weighting of power towards Christians – especially Maronites – came to a head in the 1970s, escalated in part by the forced relocation of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Jordan to Lebanon in September 1970. Although the Cairo Agreement of 1969 had theoretically normalised relations between the government and Palestinian guerrillas, allowing them to conduct operations against Israel from the south of Lebanon, the new influx of fighters in 1970 strained this relationship. The various factors leading to civil war in 1975 are too complex a subject for this chapter, 26 but the result was the arming of Maronite paramilitaries to defend the state. The Phalange Party (Kata’ib in Arabic), a right-wing organisation founded as a youth movement by Pierre Gemayel in 1936, clashed with Palestinians in Beirut in April 1975, after which conflict spread across the city 94

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and eventually the country. The two sides coalesced into a Christian ‘Lebanese Front’ versus a Muslim-Leftist ‘Lebanese National Movement’ allied with Palestinian factions, with front lines shifting and fracturing through the course of the next fifteen years.27 The Lebanese Front regarded the war as a struggle not only for dominance in government but for the very soul of Lebanon and the survival of its historic Christian communities.28 This sense of existential threat was reinforced by inflammatory opposition rhetoric such as PLO leaders’ declarations that ‘the way to Jerusalem is over the Lebanon Mountains and through Jounieh [a Maronite centre north of Beirut]’,29 as well as the rise of Islamist groups calling for an Islamic state in the 1980s.30 Sectarian fault lines quickly became embattled, displacing vulnerable populations to create increasingly homogeneous zones of control. The infamous Green Line demarcated a lasting boundary between Christian East Beirut and Muslim West Beirut, enforced then by roadblocks and snipers, now more subtly by political posters and graffiti.31 To the north, the main Christian zone encompassed the coastline and mountains from Beirut through Jounieh to Zgharta and Bsharri, just short of Tripoli. This area came to be known colloquially as ‘Marounistan’, a virtual mini-state defended and governed by a patchwork of Christian militias. Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims were largely expelled from Christian territory, and Christians in turn fled there from Tripoli, the Bekaa Valley, and the South – although significant militias also defended Christian villages in the South, backed by Israel. The Christian ‘Resistance’ centred in ‘Marounistan’ became a political and military force to be reckoned with, supported by an ideological movement that drew on religious symbolism as well as the identity narratives outlined earlier. The Université Saint Esprit in Kaslik, a monastic campus of the Lebanese Maronite Order, became the intellectual powerhouse of political Maronitism, driven by a think tank called the Lebanese Research Committee. ‘The Kaslik group served as a credible social catalyst that greatly influenced the Christian society’, publishing numerous pamphlets and academic studies that ‘emphasised the Islamic threat to the Christian minorities in Lebanon and the Middle East’ and ‘sought to legitimise the community’s right to defend itself ’ in historical and theological terms.32 Its successive Abbots, Charbel Qassis and Boulos Naaman, were members of the Lebanese Front and supported its programme both ideologically and logistically.33 Their Order’s monasteries across the country hosted training facilities, munitions depots, and regional bases for the militias, while reports circulated of monks participating in the fighting ‘with cassocks tucked up above their knees and kalashnikov rifles in their hands’.34 Militants received prayers, blessings, and packed lunches from Maronite priests, monks, and nuns, and adopted Christian iconography including the Cross, the Virgin Mary, and the Lebanese Maronite Saint Charbel Makhlouf.35 Meanwhile, the higher echelons of the Maronite Church hierarchy refused to sanction the militias, voicing scathing criticism of practices both on the front lines – such as indiscriminate bombardment of civilian neighbourhoods – and on the home front – such as extortion, drug-trafficking, and the supplanting of state infrastructure. Successive Patriarchs Antoine Khoreich and Nasrallah Sfeir as well as the Popes in Rome condemned the involvement of clergy in militia activities, eventually replacing Abbot Naaman with a quietist monk in 1986.36 The civil war marked the end of Maronite hegemony in Lebanon. Although the 1989 Ta’if Accord was accompanied by the slogan ‘no victor, no vanquished’, it redistributed some of the powers previously reserved for Maronites in government. As well as eliminating the Christian majority in parliament, the post-war constitution reduced the Maronite-held Presidency of the Republic to a largely ceremonial position, shifting the locus of power to the premiership and parliamentary speakership, both held by Muslims. While not the radical abolition of confessional power-sharing that had been sought by leaders of the Lebanese 95

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National Movement at the war’s outset, this outcome nevertheless represented a permanent defeat for the idea of a Christian-led Lebanon. To make matters worse, Ta’if ’s endorsement of a Syrian military presence in Lebanon had a most profound impact on the Maronite leadership, who were the most vocal opponents of intervention by an Arab state. Through the following fifteen years of Syrian hegemony in Lebanon, the major Maronite parties were suppressed, and their leaders exiled or imprisoned.37

A community in crisis: dwindling population and political divisions The Lebanese Maronite community never fully recovered from the trials of the war and subsequent repression under Syrian occupation. In the 1990s, its leadership was in disarray and the community at large was thoroughly demoralised, seeing few of the benefits of the ‘Pax Syriana’ and post-war reconstruction.38 Rather than regrouping as some other communities were able to do, this period saw a continued flood of Maronites leaving Lebanon to seek opportunities elsewhere. Maronite emigration was by no means a new phenomenon, having been well under way even before the twentieth century. The church had already recognised a need to serve its flock in the West in the 1890s,39 and by now diasporic communities in Argentina and Brazil may rival the population in Lebanon itself, with numbers in Mexico and Australia also in hundreds of thousands.40 The pre-existence of transnational Maronite networks has made the prospect of emigration more attractive and the reality somewhat easier. Maronite émigrés from Lebanon have a reputation for success in global business, perhaps due to a combination of French education and experience in Lebanon’s trade and service economy. Maronites’ Catholic faith has also helped smooth the process of integration in many parts of the world. Where church services in the Maronite rite have not been available, many have adopted Latin Catholic practice, raising their children outside of the Maronite tradition. The ongoing exodus of Maronites from Lebanon has posed a number of challenges for the community and the church. The Maronite Church has historically been ill-equipped to cater to a global community due to the territorial structure of the Eastern Catholic patriarchates: Eastern rite Catholics outside of their patriarch’s territory fall under the jurisdiction of local Latin rite bishops. A Maronite Synod held in 2004 made provision of church resources to the diaspora a key priority, recognising the failure to educate younger generations in their Maronite heritage.41 The Synod’s concern, however, has not only been one of expansion. It worried – as many others in the community do – that the number of Maronites in ­Lebanon ‘is continuing to decrease in a frightening manner’.42 On one hand, this is a matter of maintaining Lebanon as a living Maronite homeland, the land of their saints, shrines, and historic monasteries; on the other, it is a matter of political clout in a country that associates power-sharing with demographics. Maronites have increasingly been sidelined since the war changed the balance of power, and a shift in favour of Sunni and Shi’i Muslims has been justified in terms of those communities’ growing demographic weight. Some Maronites voice a fear that Muslim dominance may ultimately lead to persecution, as has happened at various times in their history, pointing to an Islamic notion of Christians as ‘dhimmis’, a status they perceive as second-class citizenship. Maronite marginalisation has been exacerbated by political suppression and internal divisions. Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea was the only major politician to be imprisoned after the civil war. Meanwhile, other Maronite figures – notably General Michel Aoun and Phalange Party leader Amir Gemayel – went into exile during the period of Syrian hegemony. Even since they returned to revive their parties upon Syrian withdrawal in 2005, their 96

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influence on national politics has been hindered by bitter rivalries carried over from wartime factionalism. Geagea’s Lebanese Forces and Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement gained the most electoral success, but quickly fell on opposite sides of a cripplingly polarised political system. Geagea joined the anti-Syrian ‘March 14’ coalition with the Sunni Future Movement, while Aoun joined the pro-Syrian ‘March 8’ coalition with Shi’i Hizballah. The two had fought a series of devastating battles for control of East Beirut in 1989–90, and fought just as fiercely over the presidency upon their return to politics after 2005. Even Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir, who pioneered a movement for religious and social revival in the 1990s, had emerged from the war tainted by disagreements with Aoun’s populist rejection of the Ta’if Accord. Those events had culminated in October 1989, with the storming of the patriarchal residence by a Maronite mob, which assaulted Sfeir and drove him to retreat from his seat near Beirut to the Syrian-controlled North. Sfeir remained a divisive character, recovering some credibility only with his public denunciations of Syrian occupation in 2000 onward. The Presidency of the Republic, the highest state office for a Maronite, has been weakened both by the post-war Constitution’s reallocation of powers and also significantly by prolonged interregnums. Between November 2007 and May 2008, and again from May 2014 to ­October 2016, the presidency lay vacant. The result of prolonged stalemates between opposing coalitions, these failures to agree on a candidate acceptable to both sides also further highlighted the political disunity of the Maronite community. A recent rapprochement between Geagea and Aoun, facilitated by a new Patriarch, Beshara al-Ra’i, finally opened the way for Aoun’s election as president in 2016. This cooperation – albeit excluding the Phalange Party, as well as Suleiman Frangieh’s northern Marada Party – may mark a new chapter for an embattled community. It has yet to be seen whether President Aoun will be able to resume an effective leadership role in a government now used to operating without a president. In Lebanon’s confessional system, Maronites have taken a back seat to Sunni-Shi’i contestation of power in the post-war era. Will this dwindling community, ever more conscious of its minority position, be able to reassert itself politically and culturally in Lebanese public life?

Notes 1 ‘Lebanon 2015 International Religious Freedom Report’, US Department of State, www.state. gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm?year=2015&dlid=256277, accessed 1 October 2016. 2 Considered ‘half ’ by political convention on the basis of the last official census, held in 1933, which listed Christians at slightly over 50%. This proportion has declined to about 35%, according to figures cited by the US Department of State (in ibid.), and was likely never entirely accurate even in 1933. 3 ‘A New Hope for Lebanon’, Apostolic Exhortation, 10 May 1997. 4 For general information on the Maronite Church, see S. Abouzayd, ‘Maronite church’, in Ken Parry, David J. Melling, Dmiri Brady, Sidney H. Griffith, and John F. Healey, eds., The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999); Michael Burgess, The Eastern Orthodox Churches: Concise Histories with Chronological Checklists of Their Primates ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005); Michel Hayek, ‘Maronite (Église)’, Dictionnaire de Spiritualité 10 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1980). 5 A census carried out by the Catholic Church recently estimated 3,358,504 (Annuario Pontifico, 2015). 6 Texts of the 2004 Maronite Synod, chapter 2, paragraph 5. 7 See Asher Kaufman, Reviving Phoenicia: The Search for Identity in Lebanon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004); Walid Phares, Lebanese Christian Nationalism (London: Lynne Reinner, 1995). 8 Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (London: Tauris, 1988). 9 Paul Naaman, Les Maronites et le Liban (Kaslik, Lebanon: Université Saint Esprit de Kaslik, 2005), 85. 10 For a discussion of the monasteries’ role in recent history, see Alexander D.M. Henley, ‘Politics of a Church at War: Maronite Catholicism in the Lebanese Civil War’, Mediterranean Politics 13,

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11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

no. 3 (2008), 353–369. On Maronite hermits, see Guita G. Hourani and Antoine B. Habchi, ‘The Maronite Eremitical Tradition: A Contemporary Revival’, The Heythrop Journal 45, no. 4 (2004), 451–465. Salibi, A House of Many Mansions, 229. Seely Beggiani, ‘The Patriarchs in Maronite History’, Journal of Maronite Studies 5, no. 1 ( January 2001), section 1. In recent centuries, it has been customary for patriarchs to adopt the name ‘Boutrus’ (Peter) as a sign of their apostolic succession – hence, the current patriarch is Bechara Boutrus al-Ra’i. On the ecclesiastical role of the Maronite patriarch, including his relation to the Pope in Rome, see John D. Faris, The Eastern Catholic Churches: Constitution and Governance (New York: Saint ­Maron Publications, 1992); Jose Chiramel, ‘Hierarchical Structuring in the Oriental Legislation’, in Jose ­Chiramel and Kuriakose Bharanikulangara, eds., The Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches: A Study and Interpretation (India: STAR Publications, 1993); Francis J. Marini, The Power of the Patriarch: An Historical-Juridical Study of Canon 78 of the Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium (Pontificium Institutum Orientale, Facultas Iuris Canonici, Rome: PhD Thesis, 1994); Salvatore Manna, ‘The Supreme Church Authority’, in George Nedungatt, ed., A Guide to the Eastern Code: A Commentary on the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, Kanonika vol. 10 (Rome: Pontifico Instituto Orientale, 2002). Burgess, The Eastern Orthodox Churches, 48. The earliest written history is thought to be that of Gabriel Ibn al-Qila’i in the late fifteenth century. See Salibi, A House of Many Mansions, 77–80. Beggiani, ‘The Patriarchs in Maronite History’, section 1. Salibi, A House of Many Mansions, 80. J. Mahfoud, ‘Apostolica Sedes’, in Louis Hage, ed., Encyclopédie Maronite vol. 1 (Kaslik, Lebanon: Université Saint Esprit, 1992), 375. Hage, ed., Encyclopédie Maronite, xvii. Cited in Kamal Salibi, ‘The Maronite Experiment’, in Michael D. Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi, eds., Conversion and Continuity: Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990), 433. Matti Moosa, The Maronites in History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 267. Yoakim Moubarac, ‘The Lebanese Experience and Muslim-Christian Relations’, in Kail C. Ellis, ed., The Vatican, Islam, and the Middle East (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 223. The last official census, held in 1933, counted a Christian majority. This census, and the question of its renewal, have been much contested. There is doubt over its accuracy, but as it has been a founding pillar of the country’s proportional power-sharing system of government, the holding of further censuses has been opposed especially among Christians. Having said this, I should at least note that the application of these terms before the era of ­nation-states can be problematic. Benjamin White argues that the word ‘minority’ did not come to be used in Syria and Lebanon until well into the Mandate period, because its flip side, ‘majority’, requires the modern notion that a common cultural identity form the basis of legitimate government. For the purposes of the present chapter, such terms remain useful at least insofar as they reflect how Maronites today may view their past. On this issue, see Benjamin T. White, Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: Politics and Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011). Fiona McCallum, ‘The Role of the Maronite Patriarch in Lebanese History: The Patriarch of Lebanon?’, Chronos: Revue d’Histoire de l’Université de Balamande 15, (2007), 65–88. See e.g. Kamal Salibi, Crossroads to Civil War: Lebanon 1958–1976 (Delmar, NY: Caravan, 1976). For the most comprehensive account of the civil war to date, see Theodor Hanf, Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon: Decline of a State and Rise of a Nation (London: I.B. Tauris, 1993). See e.g. the speeches of assassinated leader Bashir Gemayel, Words from Bashir: Understanding the Mind of Lebanese Forces Founder Bashir Gemayel from His Speeches (Beirut: 2010). Hanf, Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon, 1. See e.g. Gary Gambill, ‘Islamist Groups in Lebanon’, Middle East Review of International Affairs 11 (2007), 38–57. On the sectarian demarcation of space in post-war Lebanon, see Sune Haugbolle, War and Memory in Lebanon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Phares, Lebanese Christian Nationalism, 124–125.

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The Maronites 33 See e.g. the latter’s memoirs: Al-Insan, al-Watan, al-Hurriya: Mudhakkarat al-Abati Bulus Na’man [Man, Nation and Freedom: The memoirs of Abbot Boulos Naaman], 1968–1982 (Beirut: Sa’ir al-Mashriq, 2009). 34 Moosa, The Maronites in History, 298. 35 See e.g. Ghassan Hage, ‘Religious Fundamentalism as a Political Strategy: The Evolution of the Lebanese Forces’ Religious Discourse during the Lebanese Civil War’, Critique of Anthropology 12, no. 1 (1992), 27–46. 36 Henley, ‘Politics of a Church at War’, 353–369. 37 Meir Zamir, ‘From Hegemony to Marginalism: The Maronites of Lebanon’, in Ofra Bengio and Gabriel Ben-Dor, eds., Minorities and the State in the Arab World (London: Lynne Rienner, 1999), 111–128. 38 See e.g. Rola El-Husseini, Pax Syriana: Elite Politics in Postwar Lebanon (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012). 39 See Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi, eds., The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration (London: I.B. Tauris, 1992); George T. Labaki, The Maronites in the United States (Louaize, ­L ebanon: Notre Dame University, 1993). 40 Census in the Annuario Pontifico, 2015. 41 See chapter in Fiona McCallum, Christian Religious Leadership in the Middle East: The Political Role of the Patriarch (London: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010). 42 Texts of the 2004 Maronite Synod, ‘The Maronite Church in Her Global Expansion’, paragraph 12.

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8 Palestinian Christians Situating selves in a dislocated present1 Mark Daniel Calder

There is clearly no way of doing justice to the diversity of Palestinian Christian experience in a brief primer such as this. In fact, even defining the category of “Palestinian Christian” is more difficult than it appears, with both labels being themselves highly contested even before being placed next to one another. However, it is possible to explore what Palestinian ­Christians share and what divides them without pursuing a definitive account of their supposed group identity. My approach here, then, is to consider the diverse situations in which Palestinian Christians experience and narrate themselves, attending to commonalities and differences in both. This entails attention to environments broadly understood: the “clusterings” of lives in different places across historic Palestine, each inscribed by stories and meanings that have implications for everyday experience.2 We will therefore consider in turn Palestinian Christians’ situations in different landscapes, jurisdictions, group relationships (both to one’s own and others), and in relation to powerful circulating narratives, not least those that are distinctively Christian and Palestinian. This is an attempt to sketch a physical and symbolic ecology of Palestinian Christian diversity, their interrelationship with places, materials, others (human and non-human), and countless meanings.

Places and displacement We turn first then to the diverse locations in which Palestinian Christians live. While relationship to diaspora is an important feature of this experience, here we focus on those who reside in historic Palestine: the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, and Israel, where Christians are very unevenly distributed. Nearly three quarters of Palestinian Christians in historic Palestine are Israeli citizens living within the 1949 Armistice Line, or “Green Line”, that is, the borders of Israel prior to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. The largest population is in the north of Israel (92,200), with Nazareth, Acre, and Haifa all having large Christian populations, in addition to those living in villages and smaller towns. In the Palestinian territories, Christians are especially concentrated in the central West Bank in the Bethlehem (22,400) and Ramallah (12,800) areas. In Jerusalem, there are 12,500 Palestinian Christians – 8,000 in East Jerusalem, 6,000 of whom are in the Old City. There is also a smaller concentration of Palestinian Christians in the northern West Bank, including a much diminished community in Nablus, and in the eastern city of Jericho. 100

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As in Israel, Christians are disproportionately located in larger towns and cities, but some reside in villages, especially around Ramallah such as in the only wholly Christian village of Taybeh, and in Zebabdeh, near Nablus. A study by the Diyar Consortium estimates the presence of a little over 48,000 Christians in the West Bank including their claimed capital in East Jerusalem, out of 2.8 million Palestinians. The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics records the presence of around 120,000 Arab3 Christians in Israel (out of 1.66 million Arabs and a total population a little over 8 million). Gaza’s Christian population has, according to a 2014 report by the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), dwindled to 1313, much lower than the frequently cited estimate of 2,500–3,000.4 While the total population of Palestinian Christians in the West Bank, and even more in Israel, increased throughout the twentieth century – during the British Mandate, after the establishment of the State of Israel, and since the start of the Israeli Occupation in 1967 – each of its territories has experienced very significant Christian emigration, which, alongside a relatively high fertility rate among their Jewish and Muslim neighbors, has reduced the percentage of Christians dramatically, from around 10% to well under 2%.5 A report by Diyar shows that current inclinations among Christians to emigrate are driven primarily by economic hardship and regional political instability, accounting for the higher numbers of emigrants out of the Palestinian territories compared with Israel.6

Landscapes and jurisdictions This small territory comprises some strikingly different worlds. Haifa, where nearly 7% of the population is Christian,7 is a bustling city cascading toward the sea, and its Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze, and Bahá’í inhabitants reside in an urban coastal environment that might feel familiar to millions, separated only by water, from Barcelona to Beirut to Algiers. In contrast, the 450 or so Christians in the laid-back, ancient city of Jericho in the Jordan valley share a necessarily languid pace of life, not only with the nearly 99% Muslim population, but with more millions adjusted to the dry heat of the vast Levantine interior to the east.8 Those in Jaffa, now a suburb of Tel Aviv, dwell in an environment shaped by the concerns of a large commercially oriented metropolis, whereas those in the Old City of J­erusalem experience the intensity of contested space often navigated with reference to ancient scriptures. Acre’s old city on the northern Israeli coast, and Nablus, 50 miles to the south-east in the West Bank, share similarly evocative, maze-like streets and bustling markets, but the latter’s battle scars have been added to frequently over recent years, whereas Richard the Lionheart and Salah ud-Din are the warriors most often recalled in Acre. Some towns, including Nablus, but especially Gaza City, are increasingly characterized by relatively conservative Islamic norms, whereas villagers in Taybeh have added the celebration of Oktoberfest to their more traditional festivals since Palestine’s first brewery opened there in 1994. These diverse landscapes are subject to multiple jurisdictions. Israel is, within its own territory, a fully sovereign state, so while, say, Haifa’s outward-looking cosmopolitanism contrasts with Nazareth’s more fraught, suspicious relationship between members of the three main religions,9 Christians throughout Israel enjoy the rights of citizens, even as they endure various kinds of exclusion.10 This at least means freedom of movement and political enfranchisement, even though expressing any Palestinian national sentiment within Israel has become harder.11 The Hamas government in Gaza, though similarly a uniform jurisdiction, lacks monopoly of force, and multiple factions and militias compete with it. Movement in and out of Gaza is usually impossible due to the Israeli blockade. Residents have not participated in any formal democratic exercise since 2006. 101

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Compared with Israel and Gaza, jurisdiction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is complex. As part of the Oslo II Accord of 1995, the West Bank is divided into Areas A, B, and C, indicating different legal regimes: in Area A (18% of the total), the Palestinian Authority has de jure civil and security control; in Area B (22%), it has civil control but Israel retains security control; in Area C (60%), Israel is fully in control. In fact, residents of Area A do not live without interactions with the Israeli state. For residents of Nablus or the refugee camps in Bethlehem, Israeli troops are regular visitors, arresting suspected militants, activists,12 or stone-throwers. Villages such as Jifna or Zebabdeh are small isolated islands of Area A surrounded by Area C, meaning that, in effect, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for municipal functions and policing but is unable to function operate with the territorial sovereignty of a state. In Area C, meanwhile, the presence of settler colonies provides an extension of the Israeli state, including its military, into Palestinians’ everyday lives in those areas.13

Disconnection These diverse territories are most often narrated as part of one territorial whole, Palestine, just as some Zionists’ “Land of Israel” is conceived of as an organism, indivisible, resilient in the face of the superimposed boundaries of its current overlords, and in spite of its current fragmentation into different territories. This neither entails the adoption of certain myths of blood or land, nor the negation of the other based only on recent human history (although no doubt it can be both of these things). It is, to some extent, an expression of an ecological fact, specifically the necessary clustering of lives around the line-of-water divide of a mountain range extending from Jenin to Hebron, joining Palestine’s major non-coastal cities, which lie atop a large aquifer beneath the West Bank hills.14 This is the spine whose ribs extend west to the Mediterranean and east to the Jordan Valley. Notwithstanding this perception of an integral whole, if one word could describe the changes of the last few decades, it could be “disconnection”. Most recently, the land has seen the elaboration of an extraordinary architecture of control, which Eyal Weizman describes as a systematic attempt to “separate the inseparable” on the part of the Israeli state.15 At the micro level, striking examples of this include the respective Jewish and Muslim routes into the Ibrahim Mosque/Tomb of the Patriarchs and the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif, which recall the layered security architecture of airports. A larger-scale example of this is the colonization of the West Bank with settlements, serving as an extension of the Israeli state into the occupied territories, linked by a series of roads from which Palestinian-registered cars are prohibited and which further carve up Palestinian land. Bethlehem provides a particularly useful case study in this disconnection. Jacob Norris shows how the town’s merchants cultivated links with the far abroad over centuries, especially trading on their proximity to the Nativity story, giving the town a distinctive character of material and symbolic connectedness: to the Levant, to the Mediterranean, and in the nineteenth century to the far abroad, all refracted through the lens of Christian narratives.16 Today, however, the town provides a particularly striking example of the rapid reconfiguration of landscapes and the lives of those who dwell therein. The wall that isolates Bethlehemites from Jerusalem is probably the most imposing feature of this architecture of control, with the “Holy City” and the rest of Israel (or “48 Palestine”) inaccessible without one of 101 different, and somewhat arbitrarily allocated, permits.17 Disconnection from Jerusalem is more than simply a limitation on movement: it is to deprive Bethlehemites of a source of symbolic sustenance, as well as livelihoods and social relations. Bethlehem’s proximity to Jerusalem has long been a defining part of its civic identity and economy, allowing, for 102

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instance, easy access for pilgrims to Bethlehem’s holy sites and markets. Disconnection has therefore impacted the vital tourism industry, significantly reducing the numbers who stay in the town, a situation compounded by narratives of danger in the West Bank proclaimed by guests’ Israeli hosts on the other side of the wall.18 Meanwhile, parts that were once common agricultural areas, grazing and recreational spaces, such as around Makhrour to the west and Jabal Abu Ghneim to the north, have been cut off, the latter now superimposed with a settler colony which, though illegal under international law, has been designed to feel much like a suburb of Jerusalem from that side of the wall. And yet, my morning jog through Bethlehem would take me past David’s Well, the Church of the Nativity, sometimes as far as Solomon’s Pools or Herodion, together providing a reminder of a much prouder story. Across Palestine, in different places, the land speaks loudly of such ancient roots, of connection to the divine, and also of displacement, of confinement, of disconnection, and of a precarious present and contested future. Leaving aside those now uninhabited, mostly ruined, and often strategically forested Palestinian villages which were cleared in 1947–1949,19 the remaining dwelt-in landscape is already inscribed with multiple meanings in relation to which those who dwell therein make sense of themselves.

Group identifications We turn now to the human and symbolic realities in the environments in which Palestinian Christians experience and narrate themselves. I begin by noting a phenomenon in Levantine social life, which Suad Joseph calls “patriarchal connectivity”.20 In short, this entails imagining personhood in relation to one or more networks or quasi-domestic domains revolving around a patriarchal figure: clans, factions, sects, even corporations and governments can sometimes be characterized in these terms. According to Joseph, modern states in the Levant often afford these patriarchs considerable power, an arrangement which contrasts with the idealized, clearly defined public sphere of much Eurocentric social and political discourse, in which anonymous and autonomous individuals are imagined to interact primarily in terms of legally guaranteed individual rights. This phenomenon of patriarchal connectivity should not be imagined to determine all action, of course. Instead, it is like a widespread style of relational weave that is sometimes tight and sometimes much looser.21

Denominations It is from this direction that I want to consider the numerous ṭaw ā’if (denominations or sects) in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and raise the possibility that they are, or can be, particularly strong instances of these patriarchal networks. They retain some power over, for instance, administering family law, and a person’s membership of recognized churches also governs access to the countless “holy sites” which they all aspire to access. (Indeed, some of them function locally as clan-like groups,22 although this is not the case across Palestine.) Christianity is rarely, therefore, a private matter: a person’s denominational belonging is an important part of his or her social “location”, at least in the eyes of the law and other people. A little over half of Christians in the West Bank, and the vast majority of those in Gaza, belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, although some of these resent the endogenous appellation and describe themselves as either r ūm (Byzantine) Orthodox or simply as Arab Orthodox, contrasting this with the yun āni (Greek) hierarchy.23 A handful of my own Christian interlocutors in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Israel recalled the Patriarch 103

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Germanos (or Herman, 1534–1579) whose Hellenizing reforms, while primarily aimed at consolidating the power of his church against Latins in Jerusalem (and the Slavs who dominated the ancient monastery of Mar Saba to the east of Bethlehem), are remembered by them for de-Arabizing the hierarchy.24 Catholics in the West Bank are mostly “Latins” (Western rite Roman Catholics) with around 15,000 members, and are especially prominent in Bethlehem, while the 3,000 Greek Catholics are more evenly distributed. Latins number a little more than 30% of the West Bank population, and owe this in large part to the continual presence of Franciscans in the land since the Cairo-based Mamluks consigned the holy sites to them in the fourteenth century.25 There are also smaller Syriac and Armenian Catholic denominations. Protestants make up around 5% in the occupied territories, mostly Anglicans and Lutherans, while also including Presbyterians, Baptists, and independent evangelicals. Non-Chalcedonian 26 Syriac Orthodox, mostly in Bethlehem, and Armenian Apostolic (or Gregorian) Christians, mostly in Jerusalem, make up about 3% each. Jerusalem’s sectarian microclimate includes small communities of Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Tawahedo, and around a hundred Maronites. The Israeli Bureau of Statistics does not differentiate between denominations but between those identified as Arab (7.5% of the total population, and 93.5% of Christians) and those who identify as non-Arab.27 The largest church in Israel is the Greek Catholic Church, which is in communion with Rome and uses an Eastern Rite liturgy similar to that of the Orthodox churches. The Greek Orthodox Church is the second largest church, and its members are also distributed widely, while Latins, Maronites, and Anglicans have significant, if more localized, populations in Israel.

Communalism as a centrifugal force These churches are not, then, merely “denominations” in a pluralist kaleidoscope, but sometimes serve as agents of an institutionalized sectarian rivalry which may make demands on their members’ loyalties and can, at times, weaken Palestinian solidarity. From the fourteenth century, when the Vatican secured Mount Zion monastery from the Egyptian Sultan, Latin clergy, notably Franciscans, won increasing numbers of indigenous converts from an overwhelmingly Orthodox Palestinian population, with particular success in Bethlehem.28 The sour relationship between these two dominant churches led the eighteenth-century ­Ottoman rulers to take decisive action to enshrine the churches’ respective rights in law. The resulting “status quo” consolidated the power of the Greek Orthodox, less so of the Latin Catholic hierarchies, and sidelined others. Those who lost out then recall it bitterly.29 This competitive, sometimes acrimonious, intra-Christian relationship should be thought of in relation to a well-established political contest over the term “minority” (Arabic: aqaliyah) in the region. According to Benjamin White, experiencing oneself as belonging to a minority accompanied the emergence of the modern nation-state in the Middle East. 30 In the colonial and post-colonial contexts of the eastern Mediterranean, some Christians came to see legal recognition of minority status as essential to securing their rights in relation to a Muslim majority and, latterly, Islamic government. However, many others have resisted minority status on the basis that, having enshrined it in law and the popular imagination, all manner of negative experiences can subsequently be framed by the reified divide between the minority and the majority.31 Laura Robson describes how the Palestinian version of this contest emerged during the British Mandate as a way of thwarting the emergent, pluralist, and self-consciously modernist middle-class Palestinian nationalist movement. For Robson, this unified Palestinian identity 104

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narrative was carefully undermined by the colonial regime which it perceived, no doubt correctly, as a threat to its power. The enduring salience of sect in Palestinian Christian everyday life is, according to Robson, largely a product of the British communalist colonial logic. The British made access to political influence dependent upon the use of the communal hierarchies that they co-opted.32 Robson argues persuasively that this served in the end to marginalize Christians in the Palestinian national project while, in fact, this communitarianism may have as much reinforced intra-Christian division as Christian-Muslim division. Nevertheless, the British did not muster sectarian competition out of thin air. Instead, they exploited the problem of managing Christian rivalry which they inherited from foregoing Muslim regimes.

Palestinian nationalism This rivalry, however, should not be thought to determine all Palestinian Christians’ experience of self and other, even if it is an important social and political context. In certain dialogues, many Christians instead narrate themselves simply as Palestinians. Early ­Palestinian nationalism should be understood as an expression of anti-colonial modernity which connected landless peasants to the more powerful voices of educated elites33 in relation to the life of a territory, and connected the ancient toponym (used at least as far back as Herodotus) to the idea of a people whose destiny was bound with it.34 Christians played an important role in voicing this new popular consciousness. Advantaged, somewhat ironically, by their favorable access to foreign educational institutions and to global mercantile networks, members of the disproportionately urban and bourgeois Christian population played a prominent role in the emergence of Palestinian nationalism as an anti-colonial political force.35 Christians Najib Nassar and the al-Isa brothers were, as owner-editors of Al-Karmil and Filastin, respectively, particularly prominent, and used their newspapers for the advancement of education, resistance of Greek dominance in the O ­ rthodox church, and improvement of conditions for peasants. However, they soon mobilized their resources toward anti-colonialism and anti-Zionism. 36 A little later, ­Muslim-Christian Associations were founded by urban bourgeoisie, which were expressly anti-Zionist and self-consciously oriented toward challenging the British colonial assumption that Palestinians were hopelessly divided along religious lines.37 Notwithstanding the emergence of more exclusively Islamic versions of Palestinian nationalism and Christian communalism, there remain many advocates of this pluralist nationalism. Today, Christians are active in all of the major political factions (even including the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas38), and several of my interlocutors denied the everyday salience of sectarian difference, sometimes blaming the foreign-dominated clergy. A few of my interlocutors indeed described the churches’ power as a “2nd Occupation”. Typically, Christian and Muslim interlocutors would describe Palestinian Christian sects and Muslims as “fingers of one hand”. One Bethlehem resident told me, “Palestinians are one people… Sometimes [the Israeli checkpoint soldiers] would ask me, ‘You are Christian?’ smiling like I was a friend. I would say, ‘I am Palestinian!’ They become mad!”39

Constructive communalism This Palestinian national identification is narrated differently in relation to Christian and narrower sectarian identifications. Despite the churches’ ancient rivalries, something of an ecumenical relationship has developed, and, since 1948, the heads of churches have 105

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periodically put aside their differences to express opposition to Zionism40 (although they have likewise received criticism from their members for compromise and even collaboration with the Israeli state41). Perhaps a better indication of “constructive communalism” is found at the meso-level of local organizations. Take, for instance, the festive scouts parades, which mix Palestinian national symbols with those of the schools, clubs, and the religio-communal groups with which they are immediately associated. Moreover, one surprising finding of my own research was that communalist connections can be mobilized toward the expression of a wider Palestinian solidarity rather than against it. Some of my interlocutors were able to weave communalist and Palestinian identifications together to produce new syntheses. One particularly elegant one was that of my friend “Abu Daoud”, another Syriac Christian. Citing his community’s powerfully experienced links to ancient Aramean (or sometimes Assyrian) civilization, he told me he was, “Syrian Palestinian, that means we are Arabs. Some people will say, no we are not Arabs. But we are as Syrians the ancient pedigree of the Arabs. The Arab belongs to the Syrian. We are the Mother of the Arabs”.42 This, he argued, was the basis of his community’s belonging in the land of Palestine, despite the fact that most of the Syriac community are descendants of refugees from Southeast Turkey, arriving in Palestine in the first quarter of the twentieth century.43

Christians among Jews and Muslims Christians’ experiences and expressions of belonging do not, of course, occur in a vacuum, but respond to and internalize more or less explicit questions of identification borne of cohabitation with visible and materially important difference. In other words, narrating oneself as a Palestinian Christian must speak to the presence of non-Christians and non-Palestinians. Very often, Christians’ relationships with Jews and Muslims in Palestine are portrayed in black and white terms as either unproblematic or hopelessly conflictual. Christians’ relations with Jewish Israelis are either framed in terms that speak of Israel as the best place for ­Christians to live in the Middle East or in terms that emphasize violent Jewish militancy.44 Meanwhile, Christian-Muslim relations are either portrayed as one of minority “persecution”,45 or one of blissful harmony and unwavering solidarity. In fact, it should not be surprising that there is a vast range of relationships between Christians and their neighbors, from murderous violence46 to antagonism47 to strategic alliance, to everyday sharing and warm affection.48 Nevertheless, there are developments that have been framed by Christians as evidence of the Judaization and Islamization of their respective Israeli and Palestinian territories.49

Israel Recalling the checkpoint interaction Abu Daoud has described, a divide et impera logic influences contemporary Israeli engagements with Palestinians under its control. Likud parliamentarian Yariv Levin successfully promoted a bill ascribing to Christians and Muslims distinct status in law and “separate representation…because [Christians] aren’t Arabs”.50 This telling statement recalls the British connection of religious affiliation to political access by rendering it decisive in official identity classifications, and reflects increasingly dominant narratives of separation in Israeli discourse. Dividing their Palestinian population along confessional lines is not entirely new: a handful of Christians were allowed to return to their homes in Haifa, Nazareth, and the Galilee, providing they pledged to campaign against the anti-Zionist communists in the 1950s.51 However, the explicit connection of such divisive 106

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interventions with an alternative ethnoreligious narrative – the denial even of their Arabness – is a novel generalization of specific (Arameanist, Assyrianist, and Phoenicianist) communalist narratives to all Arabic-speaking Christians, and exploits the more extreme versions of these communalist narratives in service of the Israeli state.52 The Central Bureau of Statistics still records them simply as “Arab Christians”, however,53 and Una McGahern argues that Israeli state policy toward Christians is only preferential to the extent that it is divisive. McGahern frames Israeli policy toward Palestinian Christians as the product of “a dilemma”,54 problematizing, as this population does, the binary framing of Israel’s conflicts in terms of the “clash of civilizations” between a Muslim East and a Judeo-Christian West.55

Gaza and the West Bank In the Palestinian territories, likewise, there are important qualifications to claims of perfect harmony. The murder of evangelical leader Rami Ayyad in 2007 by unknown assailants in Gaza was especially disconcerting,56 but everyday constraints upon Christians’ freedoms there are more a function of wider developments than occasional murderous ­v iolence. Gazans are subject to periodic Israeli aerial assaults and ongoing, low-level Palestinian factional violence. The Hamas government has sought to stymie growing political support for their militantly exclusivist rivals (such as Jaish al-Islam, Jaish al-Ummah, Sheikh Omar Hadid Brigade, and Ansar al-Bayt al-Maqdis57) by demonstrating their Islamist credentials. While there can be no denying the shared experience of suffering due to Israeli blockades and periodic war, changing norms in dress, restrictions on public non-observance of fasts, and official regulations against co-education are cited by some of my Christian interlocutors as evidence of unwelcome Islamization. Nicholas Pelham argues that Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority treat Christians better than the Israeli government, and Christians certainly play a much bigger role in public life in the West Bank than in Israel.58 Christians in the West Bank still, of course, sometimes complain of poor relations with some of their Muslim neighbors.59 Whether this is framed as discrimination, Islamization, or just as trouble with the neighbors, depends greatly upon the individual and the context of the dialogue in which he or she is protesting. A key feature of this context in the West Bank is the movement of people. The demographics of Christians’ heartlands around Bethlehem have changed rapidly and radically. Alongside quite rapid emigration of many wealthier and better-connected Christians, the even more parlous situation to the south near Hebron and in the recently colonized areas of Area C to the east has increased the number of rural Muslims who have moved into the town, and whose previous experience of its everyday intersectarian coexistence is limited. Bethlehemite Muslims and Christians alike complained to me of incomers who had no “respect” for the interreligious equilibrium that, they said, previously prevailed. For some, demographic changes compound their sense of disconnection: no longer do their neighbors understand their hometown as meaning what it means to them. While a certain amount of this is anti-migrant sentiment that one may discern in countless other places among established elites, there are exacerbating factors that make it rather more understandable. Everyone in Bethlehem is aware of the “land mafia” who has had some success appropriating land through forgery and infiltration of the police.60 As disproportionately landed, Christians have been disproportionately victims of this criminality. This has as much to do with the weakness of the Palestinian Authority, confined as it is to discontiguous islands of responsibility, as to any external interference; however, these clan-based operations are 107

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rumored to be funded by “Saudis” and “Qataris”, pointing at least to how some Christians are connecting local realities to regional politics. How Christians respond is, however, not simply a question of perception but also of strategic interests. In 2013, a controversy arose around the purchase of land by the Syriac Orthodox patriarchate, in which the purported vendor disappeared with the money. After several weeks of internal debate over the best way to proceed, the Syriac community marched through Bethlehem, waving Palestinian flags and bearing photos of President Abbas, rather than asserting a defensive narrative of being targeted as Christians.61 This, I suggest, was an attempt not only to insist upon the community’s rights within the system supposedly guaranteed by the PA, but to affirm a stronger solidarity between the Syriac community and the Palestinian Authority by way of shoring up the latter’s authority in the face of clan competition and, perhaps, the targeting of Christians.

Contrasting publics Beyond state policy, meanwhile, it is important to acknowledge that Christian experiences as Christians will vary also in terms of an individual’s relationship to social norms. For some, patriarchal connectivity is a means of security and access to resources and influence; to others, it is a constraint upon individual freedom. Thus, the relative strength of liberal individualism in Israel, though heavily qualified in relation to powerful ethnoreligious and ethnonationalist discourses, has implications for some Christians. Notably, for ex-Muslim converts to Christianity, Israel affords a larger “liberal public” in which to practice their Christianity, which would be difficult, and potentially dangerous, in the context of closely knit patriarchal connectivity.62 While Duane Miller deals with the situation of ex-Muslims in more detail Chapter 10, it is important to recognize here that relationships between Christians and their Muslim or Jewish neighbors may be shaped by contrasting religious ontologies. The ontology implicit in patriarchal connectivity is that religion is woven into one’s social situation and is not exchangeable.63 As a consequence, it is especially in urban contexts such as Haifa and Tel Aviv that one can meet people for whom inherited patriarchal connections have been eschewed in favor of individualistic self-articulations. This liberal, negative freedom is therefore of considerable material value to, say, some ex-Muslim Christians or self-identifying members of sexual minorities.

Christian inheritance This reflection on contrasting experiences of being Christian alerts us to the possibility of distinctively Christian “content” to this social category. We should briefly consider these diverse, sometimes contradictory, but distinctively Christian expectations about the way the world works and the meanings that they inherit, adapt, narrate, and even sometimes reject in their everyday contexts. In recent years, increasing scholarly attention has been paid to various Palestinian ­Christian theologies, especially their interpretations of scripture. Building on the work begun by writers such as Naim Ateek and Mitri Raheb, Palestinian Protestants, whose co-­ religionists in the global north remain overwhelmingly pro-Zionist, have invested in strong rebuttals of “Christian Zionist” interpretations of scripture.64 However, while the political relevance of this may be considerable, I do not believe scriptural interpretation provides the key to Palestinian Christians’ everyday recourse to Christian symbolic resources. By far, 108

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the majority of them live with traditions of scripture-use that perform the Bible “prior” to interpreting it: the question of an individual’s understanding of it is secondary to their participation in its dialogue. I elaborate this elsewhere, but it connects to a broader experience of scripture as part of a liturgical drama that draws the Christian subject closer to God through entering into the redemption narrative as it were in the first-person.65 Or, as one evangelical ­Palestinian friend of mine reflected, following his attendance at a Greek Orthodox funeral, “When you chant scripture, you own it”. Importantly, in Palestine, this liturgical drama is connected to the everyday experience of the “holy land”: the setting of the Bible’s stories of divine engagement with humanity. Foremost among these stories is that of the Incarnation of God as Jesus in their land. Many of my interlocutors, even those who denied that they were religious, scorned the church hierarchies, and, indeed, dismissed (parts of ) scripture, nevertheless expressed an intensely felt connection to “Our Lord Jesus Christ”. As well as pointing to the problem of the “secular” category to describe the less overtly religious,66 it points more powerfully to the experienced presence of Christ, as it were as a living neighbor in his homeland. It has become controversial to describe Christ as “a Palestinian”, as this is felt by some to be simply an attempt to sanctify the Palestinian national cause or even as anti-Semitic erasure of the Jewish Jesus.67 This is to miss the quiet, everyday quality of experiencing this ­Palestinian Christ when dwelling in his land. It is in this land that Christians have, longer than anywhere else, experienced the presence of Christ in scriptural, liturgical, and orally expressed memory, and as a felt, living presence.68 In an important sense, dwelling as a ­Palestinian Christian in Palestine is to have daily reminders of the presence of Christ as one’s neighbor as well as, for some, one’s Palestinian redeemer. This does not demand the appropriation of Christ for parochial or nationalistic theology, but it has the potential to refract the everyday through a Christological lens. For instance, Mitri Raheb writes, with a Western Christian audience in mind: God himself becomes like our Palestinian refugees. He becomes one of us, one who was driven from his homeland. God is very close to us precisely at this time of occupation. Furthermore, he understands our suffering like no other because he himself underwent these sufferings. He felt them in his own body… Perhaps it is precisely now, under the occupation, that we can best understand the mystery of the child driven out of Bethlehem.69 Or, in a more vernacular account, a friend reflecting on the pressures of living in Bethlehem told me: “You know Rachel’s tomb? I live there. Our house is surrounded on three sides but we won’t leave. This is the land in which Jesus was born”.

Conclusion Palestinian Christians, then, share their ability to narrate widely diverse experiences in a divided land, with reference to a rich repertoire of Christian and Palestinian meanings: canonical, ecclesiastical, communal, sectarian, and, indeed, those drawn from recent ­Palestinian history, such as in the nascent national movement. Narratives of identification, like all meanings, do not reside in a parallel world, but are mediated in this world by their narrators and the physical environments in which they are narrated. Thus, to attempt to represent a group “identity” without attention to these environments is to risk missing an important element in the experience of self in relation to others. For Palestinian Christians, the decisive 109

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fragmentation of their homeland is an important part of this experience, not just context to it. If we want to grasp something of the diversity of this experience, therefore, it behooves us to attend to the creative process of self-narration rather than simply the more obvious, louder expressions of Palestinian and Christian identity in the Holy Land: those that are deemed by dominant discourses to be inadequately or excessively Palestinian, inadequately or excessively Christian, or provisional, ambiguous, and, sometimes, apparently contradictory.

Notes 1 This chapter is based in part upon PhD fieldwork, research pursued at, and financially supported by, the University of Aberdeen. I am grateful for the comments of Brian Calder, Yohanna ­K atanacho, and Daniel Bannoura on early drafts of this chapter. 2 See Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History (London: Routledge, 2007). 3 This excludes Hebrew-speaking Christians, foreign Christians, and Messianic Jews who identify as Jewish but confess the Messiahship of Yeshua ( Jesus) of Nazareth. 4 Figures for the West Bank from Rania Al Qass Collings, Rifat Odeh Kassis, and Mitri Raheb, eds., Palestinian Christians in the West Bank: Facts, Figures and Trends (Palestine: Diyar, 2012), for Israel from Central Bureau of Statistics (2016), and for Gaza from YMCA, Survey of the Christians of the Gaza Strip (Gaza: YMCA, 2014), estimates rounded to nearest 100. Additional Jerusalem figures are from Jerusalem Institute for Israeli Studies, “Table III/9 – Population of Jerusalem, by Age, Religion, and Geographical Spreading, 2014”, Statistical Yearbook. Available www.jiis.org. il/upload/yearbook/2016/shnaton_C0916.pdf (Accessed 21 September 2016). 5 See UK Government, Report by His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Trans-­ Jordan for the Year 1937 (1937). Available http://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/7BD D2C11C15B54C2052565D10057251E (Accessed 20 September 2016) for Mandate-era population figures. 6 Collings et al., Palestinian Christians, 48. 7 According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics 2016, Christians comprise 18,800 of a population of 278,900, and 15,300 Christians of a total Arab population of 30,700. This is a lower proportion than the 14% some of my academic interlocutors have cited in conversation, a figure for which I have found no source. 8 Collings et al., Palestinian Christians, 11. 9 See, for instance, Dan Rabinowitz, Overlooking Nazareth: The Ethnography of Exclusion in G ­ alilee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) and Una McGahern, Palestinian Christians in ­I srael: Non-Muslims in a Jewish State (London: Routledge, 2011), especially 125–149. 10 See Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Disciminatory Laws Database ( Jerusalem: Adalah, 2016) for a database of Israeli laws which they deem discriminate against nonJews or Arabs in particular. 11 Adalah cites, in particular the “Nakba Law” of 2011, which removes state funding from organizations that reflect Palestinian narratives of loss surrounding the establishment of the state of Israel, thus affecting historical and heritage work in Israel’s Arab community. 12 Patrick Strickland, “Israel Jails Palestinians for Facebook Comments”, Al-Jazeera [online], 23 May 2015. Available www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/israel-jails-palestinians-facebook-­comments150521082135363.html (Accessed 25 May 2017). 13 Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso, 2007). 14 Weizman, Hollow Land, 18. 15 Weizman, Hollow Land, 15. 16 Jacob Norris, “Exporting the Holy Land: Artisans and Merchant-Migrants in Ottoman-Era ­Bethlehem”, Mashriq and Mahjar: Journal of Middle East Migration Studies 1, no. 2 (2013), 14–40. 17 Chaim Levinson, “Israel Has 101 Different Types of Permits Governing Palestinian Movement”, Haaretz [online], 23 December 2011. Available www.haaretz.com/israel-has-101-­d ifferent-typesof-permits-governing-palestinian-movement-1.403039 (Accessed 25 May 2017). 18 Jackie Feldman, “Abraham the Settler, Jesus the Refugee: Contemporary Conflict and C ­ hristianity on the Road to Bethlehem”, History and Memory 23, no. 1 (2011), 62–95. Whenever I hired a car in

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19

20 21

22 23 24

25 26

27 28 29

30 31

West Jerusalem, I was told that my Israeli plates would mean I would have stones thrown at me in Bethlehem, which didn’t happen in sixteen months of fieldwork. In fact, some of my Palestinian neighbors in Bethlehem had Israeli-plated cars. Benny Morris, “Revisiting the Exodus of 1948”, in Avi Shlaim and Eugene Rogin, eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 37–59. See also Weizman, Hollow Land, 120; and Zochrot, List of Destroyed Palestinian Villages on Which JNF Sites were Erected. Available http://zochrot.org/en/article/52241 (Accessed 20 September 2016) on Jewish National Fund forests. Suad Joseph, “The Public/Private: The Imagined Boundary in the Imagined Nation/State/Community: The Lebanese Case, Feminist Review 57, no. 1, (1997), 73–92. Bard Kårtveit, Dilemmas of Attachment: Identity and Belonging among Palestinian Christians (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 53, shows how differently residents of Bethlehem experience these conservative patriarchal connections. In particular, times of upheaval “can serve to heighten tension between forces of conservation and forces of social change”, and conserving these patriarchal connections promises stability even as they constrain the freedoms of individuals to, say, marry for love. Mark Daniel Calder, “We Are the Mother of the Arabs: Articulating Syriac Christian Self hood in Bethlehem”, (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen, June 2015), 76. See Mitri Raheb, I Am a Palestinian Christian (Minnesota: Augsburg Fortress, 1995). Hanna Kildani, Modern Christianity in the Holy Land (Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2010), 20–29. On Germanos see also Nabil Matar, “An Arabic Orthodox Account of the Holy Land, c.1590s”, in Judy A. Hayden and Nabil Matar, eds., Through the Eyes of the Beholder: The Holy Land 1517–1713 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 27–52; and S. Khū r ī, N. Khū r ī and R. Abu Jābir, Khul āsạt t ār īkh kan īsat Ūrushal īm al-Urth ūdhuksīyah (Amman: s.n, 1992). On Slavic dominance of Mar Saba, see Joseph Patrich, “The Sabaite Heritage: An Introductory Survey”, in Joseph Patrich, ed., The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the Present (Leuven: Peters, 2001), 16. Charles A. Frazee, Catholics and Sultans: The Church and the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 59–60. The Council of Chalcedon of 451 was convened to arbitrate between those who thought Jesus Christ had a single composite nature comprising divinity and humanity and those who considered him to have two natures, one human and one divine. It resulted in the exclusion of “miaphysites” from imperially sanctioned orthodoxy. Syriac, Ethiopian, and Coptic Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches assert a non-Chalcedonian miaphysite Christological formula. Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, 2015. Oded Peri, “The Christian Population of Jerusalem in the Late Seventeenth Century: Aspects of Demography, Economy, and Society”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 39, no. 4 (1996), 410–411. One ethnographic vignette, taken from my fieldwork in Bethlehem, exemplifies these elements of Christian disunity. “Throughout the early hours of Christmas day, the Greek, Coptic and Syriac Orthodox offer liturgical worship in the packed Church of the Nativity, simultaneously and with the necessary involvement of the Palestinian Authority’s police. The Greek Orthodox patriarch will spend much of the night in the grotto, emerging to bless his gathered faithful, but the Syriac Orthodox only get a brief slot in the grotto at the end of the night. During this time, around 4 AM, their worship is supervised by one Greek Orthodox, one Roman Catholic and one Armenian cleric, located next to the corners of the grotto corresponding to their respective territorial rights under the status quo, and giving me the distinct impression of ecclesiastical policing. The rights of the Syriac Orthodox are, as with the other sects, minutely prescribed, to the extent that, when the photographer hired by the Syriac Orthodox stood on a step on the south side of the grotto, opposite the door through which the Syriac faithful were to enter and exit, he was told to stand down by the Greek Orthodox priest whose church retained sole rights to that staircase, even during Syriac Orthodox prayers. My interlocutor told me at mass on the following Sunday, ‘It used to be worse. They [the Greeks] used to put a chair right in the middle of the grotto and say that we couldn’t touch it or move it because it was a Greek Orthodox chair, and we used to break it and that caused lots of problems.’ I checked this story, as it sounded so far-fetched, with a number of interlocutors, including [Syriac priest] Abuna Butros, all of whom confirmed it. One indeed added that, ‘The Armenians pushed us to fight with the Greeks over a carpet last year”. Benjamin Thomas White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010). Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), has shown how the history of this contest in the southern and eastern

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32 33 34 35

36 37

38 39 40

41 42 43 4 4 45 46

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Mediterranean, especially Egypt, is closely related to liberal vs. communitarian debates about secular governance in Europe. See also H. Murre-Van den Burg, “Searching for Common Ground: Jews and Christians in the Modern Middle East”, in S. Goldstein-Sabbah and H. Murre-Van den Burg, eds., Modernity, Minority, and the Public Sphere (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 6–9. Laura Robson, Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 160. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 96. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 96. Maronite Neguib Azouri, a Syrian who served in Jerusalem, was one of the earliest to articulate Arab nationalism in opposition to Ottoman rule, Christian sectarianism, and early Zionism in 1905. See Anthony O’Mahony, ed., Palestinian Christians: Religion, Politics, and Society in the Holy Land (London: Mellisende, 1999), 44. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity, 126. Roberto Mazza, “Churches at War: The Impact of the First World War on the Christian Insti­ nthony tutions of Jerusalem, 1914–1920”, Middle Eastern Studies 45, no. 2 (2009), 220. See also A O’Mahony, ed., The Christian Communities of Jerusalem and the Holy Land (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003) and Abd al-Aziz Ayyad, “Arab Nationalism and the Palestinians 1850– 1939”, PASSIA [online], 1999. Available www.passia.org/publications/Arab-Nationalism/­A rab-­ Nationalism.pdf (Accessed 20 September 2016). Motasem Dalloul, “Christian Candidate on Hamas Ticket”, Al-Jazeera [online], 25 January 2006. Available www.aljazeera.com/archive/2006/01/200841012738354402.html (Accessed 20 September 2016). Calder, “We Are the Mother of the Arabs”, 84. See, for example, Committee of the Christian Union for Palestine, Leaders of all Christian Churches in Palestine Denounce Partition and Demand Arab Independence for the Holy Land. Available https://archive. org/stream/ldpd_11149941_000/ldpd_11149941_000_djvu.txt (Accessed September 2016); and Appendix 2 of Raheb, I Am a Palestinian Christian includes the full text of such statements up until 1994. See, more recently, Jack Khoury, “Palestinian Church Leaders Call on British MPs to Recognize Palestine”, Ha’aretz [online], 10 October 2014. Available www.haaretz.com/­israelnews/1.620135 (Accessed 11 October 2014). D. Wagner, Dying in the Land of Promise: Palestine and Palestinian Christianity from Pentecost to 2000 (Sawbridgeworth: Melisende, 2003), 167–171. Calder, “We Are the Mother of the Arabs”. For more on Palestine’s siryān, see Sebastian Brock and Witold Witakowski, The Hidden Pearl, Volume III: At the Turn of the Third Millennium: The Syrian Orthodox Witness (Rome: TransWorld Film, 2001) and Calder, “We Are the Mother of the Arabs”. Avi Lewis, “Vatican: Anti-Christian Violence Crosses ‘Red Line’ in Israel?” Times of Israel [­online], 10 August 2015. Available www.timesofisrael.com/vatican-anti-christian-violence-crosses-red-linein-israel/ (Accessed 15 September 2016). Justus Reid Weiner, “Human Rights of Christians in Palestinian Society”, Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, 2005. Available www.jcpa.org/christian-persecution.htm (Accessed 21 September 2016). Infamously, the Greek Orthodox custodian of the monastery at Jacob’s Well, Fr. Philoumenos Hasapis was hacked to death and his body mutilated after weeks of intimidation by Jewish militants in 1979. Meanwhile, evangelical leader Rami Ayyad was gunned down in Gaza in 2007 by suspected radical Islamists. Spitting at clergy and other Christians (including the author) is a widely reported gesture of hardline Orthodox Jews, especially in Jerusalem. See Anti-Defamation League, “ADL Urges Israeli Chief Rabbinate to Denounce Ultra-Orthodox Practice of Spitting at Christians”, Anti-­Defamation League [online], 2011. Available www.adl.org/press-center/press-releases/israel-middle-east/adlurges-israeli -chief.html (Accessed 30 September 2016. Several commentators have noted rising antipathy toward Christians (e.g., Daniel K. Eisenbud, “Jerusalem Church Vandalized with Crude Anti-Christian Slogans”, Jerusalem Post [online], 17 January 2016. Available www.jpost. com/­Israel-News/Jerusalem-church-vandalized-with-crude-anti-Christian-slogans-441762 (Accessed 20 September 2016), although the focus on Jewish anti-Christian violence tends to ignore the general growth in Jewish extremism which has as its most frequent target other, “heretical”

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50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59

60 61 62 63

Jews:  indeed, most desecration in Israel appears to be intra-Jewish (Elhanan Miller, “In Israel, More Jewish Holy Sites Desecrated than Christian, Muslim Ones Combined”, Times of Israel [online], 16 September 2015. Available www.timesofisrael.com/in-israel-more-jewish-holy-sitesdesecrated-than-christian-muslim-ones-combined/ (Accessed 15 September 2016). Some of my interlocutors in Bethlehem and Nablus, as well as those in Droeber (2014) framed negative experiences at the hands of PA police as religious discrimination, and Zionist-sympathizing Christians such as the First Baptist Church in Bethlehem have reportedly faced harassment. Julia Droeber, The Dynamics of Coexistence in the Middle East: Negotiating Boundaries between Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Samaritans in Palestine (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014). See Bowman’s account of Muslim-Christian (1993) and previously Jewish-Muslim-Christian (2007) shrine-sharing. Glenn Bowman, “Nationalizing the Sacred: Shrines and Shifting Identities in the Israeli-Occupied Territories”, Man 28, no. 3 (1993), 431–460; “Sharing and Exclusion: The Case of Rachel’s Tomb”, Jerusalem Quarterly 58, (2007), 30–49. Manal Jamal, “Beyond Fateh Corruption and Mass Discontent: Hamas, the Palestinian Left, and the 2006 Legislative Elections”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 3, (2013), 273–294, contests the idea that increased political support for Islamist parties is evidence of increased religiosity in any case. Jonathan Lis, “Knesset Passes Bill Distinguishing between Muslim and Christian Arabs”, Ha’aretz [online], 25 February 2014. Available www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.576247 (­Accessed 16 February 2014). Adel Manna and Motti Golani, Two Sides of the Coin: Independence and Nakba 1948, English-Arabic Edition, (Dordrecht: Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation, 2011), 130. Jerusalem Post, “IDF Christian Recruits on Rise as Soldiers Gather for Christmas Party”, Jerusalem Post [online], 23 December 2015. Available www.jpost.com/Christian-News/IDF-Christian-­ recruits-on-rise-soldiers-gather-for-Christmas-party-438212 (Accessed 5 September 2016). Israeli official discourse does not recognize their Arab citizens’ “Palestinian” self-identification. McGahern, Palestinian Christians, 91. Michael Dumper, “The Christian Churches of Jerusalem in the Post-Oslo Period”, Journal of ­Palestine Studies 31, no. 2 (2002), 51–65. See Mitri Raheb, “Christianity in the Context of Israel-Palestine and Within the Context of Two Major Monotheistic Religions”, in Christine Lienemann-Perrin and Wolfgang Lienemann, eds., Crossing Religious Borders: Studies in Conversion and Religious Belonging (Wiesbaden: Harrisowitz Verlag, 2012), 547–559. See Asmaa Al-Ghoul, “Hamas Cracks Down on Salafists in Gaza Strip”, Al Monitor [online], 10 May 2015. Available www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/05/palestine-gaza-striphamas-­salafist-attack-kidnapping-mosque.html (Accessed 25 May 2017). Nicholas Pelham, “Where Is It Really Better to be a Christian – Israel or Palestine?” Ha’aretz [­online], 11 May 2014. Available www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.590027 (Accessed 25 May 2017). Julia Droeber’s account of Christians in Nablus describes something similar, which she explains with recourse to Scott’s notion of “official” and “hidden transcripts”. While Christians will affirm Palestinian unity in public, she argues, it is behind closed doors and with confidantes that they will express a more authentic narrative of suspicion. Droeber’s account was not borne out by my fieldwork. On the contrary, a single interlocutor could express strong solidarity with his Muslim compatriot, then strong suspicion of local Muslims, and then return to narratives of brotherly affection all within a single conversation. I found that individuals whom I came to know well would use divergent narratives creatively, unpredictably, and without the progressive “unveiling” Droeber presents. The sense I had, in Bethlehem’s radically changed environment, was of a feeling around for narratives that made best sense of a disorienting everyday reality. This was not linear, but rather my interlocutors would dart between narratives that best framed a particular issue in which self hood and solidarity were implicated. Drober, Dynamics. Kårtveit Dilemmas of Attachment. Palestine News Network “‫ ”السريان األرثوذكس في مسيرة إحتجاجية إلعادة ما سلب‬Youtube [­online], 2013. Available www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKpxPkHaeTg&feature=player_embedded (Accessed September 2016). See Miller, this volume, and Raheb, “Christianity”. Raheb, “Christianity”.

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Mark Daniel Calder 64 See, for example, Munther Isaac, “Must the Land Divide?” scholarsleaders.org [online], 2012. Available http://scholarleaders.org/insights_essays/must-the-land-divide/ (Accessed 13 September 2016); and Yohanna Katanacho and Bishara Awad, The Land of Christ: A Palestinian Cry (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013). 65 Mark Daniel Calder, “Researching Palestinian Christian Uses of the Bible: Israeli and Israelite Violence as a Canonical Problem?”, in Paul S. Rowe, John H.A. Dyck, and Jens Zimmermann, eds., Christians and the Middle East Conflict (London: Routledge, 2014), 152–170. 66 A counter-sectarian perspective is often described as “secularist”, but one should use the term advisedly. There are certainly some who would exclude Islam and Christianity from political discourse, but far more common are framings of pluralist nationalism in terms of religious duty. Indeed, as Noah Haiduc-Dale shows, this non-secular pluralist nationalism was a distinctive feature of the early Muslim-Christian Association national discourse. Haiduc-Dale, Arab Christians in British Mandate Palestine: Communalism and Nationalism, 1917–1949 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013). This, indeed, was arguably the dominant narrative in the PLO under Yasser Arafat, as opposed to anything straightforwardly secular. In Lybarger’s account indeed, some of his “secularist” interlocutors expressed strongly non-secular accounts of the world: if secular is to imply a well-defined public sphere in which religious symbols and narratives are broadly excluded, as we have seen, such a public space is not easily identified in Palestine. Loren Lybarger, “For Church or Nation? Islamism, Secular-Nationalism, and Christian Identities in Palestine”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75, no. 4 (2007), 777–813. 67 Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Jesus Was Not Palestinian, Australian Church Says”, Ha’aretz [­online], 28 December 2015. Available www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.694221 (Accessed 17 September 2016). 68 Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels (London: SPCK, 2008), 29 and 205. 69 Raheb, I am a Palestinian Christian, 106–107.

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9 Persistent perseverance A trajectory of Assyrian history in the modern age1 Sargon George Donabed

Так тяжкий млат, Дробя стекло, кует булат. (The same hammer that shatters glass forges steel) Aleksandr Pushkin, Полтава (Poltava) 2

Introduction In 1853, while excavating near the northern city of Mosul, a young archaeologist named Hormuzd Rassam unearthed clay tablets containing the oldest known written narrative poem – the Epic of Gilgamesh. Over the years, Rassam revealed thousands of artifacts from the ancient world, many of which painted a more robust and vibrant Near East. It is that kiln that fashioned some of the earliest human societies and witnessed the rise of all three Abrahamic faiths and the transition of hundreds of political systems, where Assyria and its progeny find, both literally and figuratively, their beginning, and for some, their future. This chapter is largely a linear trajectory of the Assyrian predicament in the Middle East, as a case in point, a litmus test for threatened communities, illuminating patterns of hostility, dispossession, and displacement, but also perseverance, strength, and hope amidst peril. It approaches Assyrians as an indigenous and transnational society with the promise of creating a model that can be used for analyzes of similar communities around the globe. This approach undoes forms of violence against the community by making its history larger than the nation-state and dominant narrative. This is accomplished by demonstrating the importance of marginalized communities to generally accepted ‘major’ events, creating a paradigm where the community and its individual experiences are ‘vital to and exist in symbiosis with all others in order to illuminate’ the historical record. This paradigm shift creates a new reality that can be termed panenhistoricism, which, at its core, observes the minoritized (in this case Assyrian) history/existence transcendent of politically charged nation-states and majoritarian perspectives, all the while remaining immanent within majoritarian and/or state narratives that retain the major focus, force, and funding.3

Theories and definitions Writing the history of the marginalized has been arduous for many reasons, not the least of which is due to state-sponsored xenophobia that attempts to codify a largely heterogeneous 115

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region under a simple handful of identities based on politically driven nation-states. This, of course, happens around the globe and is a simple and powerful denial of existence. Unfortunately, it is perhaps most blatant in authoritarian and totalitarian countries, rentier states, and others, of which the current Middle East is largely reflective. Additionally, this has indoctrinated minoritized communities over time, usually through an educational system, causing division, loss of self, and, in some unlucky cases, outright zealotry against one’s own community leading to cases of auto-ethnocide in contexts seemingly as far removed (geographically at least) as diaspora communities. Scholars of Middle East Studies rarely pay heed to the marginalized and questions of ­indigeneity (beyond the Israeli/Palestinian discussion). Regularly, their communities are glossed over or dismissed as irrelevant. They may simply not fit into the ethnic narrative of the nation. At other times, their identification attracts a more active denial or aversion as being ‘too politically charged’ if the discussion of states, nations, and the majority populations thereof does not, definitionally speaking, fit the same political scaffolding. Others contend that even such a theoretical assumption becomes a way in which academia denies the existence of ­m inoritized people. From a Western academic perspective, this is extraordinary as American and European scholars have regularly addressed other minoritized communities in recent years. Some scholars have contended that the concept of minority was created circa World War I.4 While this may have been the case politically or legally, it would be peculiar to assume that communities or individuals were unaware of their status as ‘other’ so long as they had some experience of the larger political system. Linguistic evidence alone would argue that Middle Eastern communities did know there were different types of peoples, individuals, and communities in the regions they inhabited to a greater or lesser degree. Again the larger majority-minority picture can only come into a certain amount of clarity from a macro perspective. So, in that case, political and sociological tools like census takers and accounts would begin to make known the distinct ‘peoples’ in the region, invariably illuminating those with larger numbers and those with smaller numbers, depending on how they were categorized, and indeed categorized themselves. Prior to World War I and the usage of the term, communities existed which had varying degrees of power – political, numerical, or otherwise. Additionally, the actual statistics of peoples did not change with the acceptance of the political term: they were simply exposed to a larger audience, one which had a greater lens with which to work. In largely Muslim-dominated societies, where state apparatuses and rule of law are influenced by religious ideology, the most common way in which non-Muslims are identified is solely by virtue of their religious adherence. Because of this, caution is urged with the usage of the term ‘religious minority’ to refer to many of the peoples or communities who define themselves as distinct entities in the Middle East. It is evident that words can have a tremendous amount of authority. In this case, the term ‘minority’ may be largely to blame for the political, economic, and indeed academic situation of these communities. Further, the emic or endogenous identities of today have been largely influenced by years of exogenous or etic impressions that are then internalized and become, for future generations, the new emic discourse. Thus, part of the categorization must address temporal realities, how the community itself views itself at different periods, and to recognize that this is largely contextual and fluctuating throughout the course of history, and will continue to do so in the future. This shall help to circumvent anachronisms. In essence, minorities, by the very definition of the term, are those that are sometimes minor/less in the sense of power, whether by virtue of small numbers/population, lack of political authority and influence, or, in many cases, both.

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Yet, as a normative premise, it should be stated that the marginalized, particularly Assyrians in the Middle East, play a role far beyond what is sometimes assumed, acknowledged, and conveyed, both internally and externally. The community and its individuals can become the conscience of a society, a barometer of its vigor, for as ‘otherness’ fades, society stagnates, and stagnation begins a road to entropy. Furthermore, their narratives must not be mere footnotes to state and majority narratives as they exist in a symbiotic relationship with society as a whole. They are neither fully dependent on the society at large, nor is society at large independent of them, but rather all exist in a state of perpetual interdependence. But beyond all of that, they are in and of themselves, significant.

Historical background You must remember the past in order that you may adequately look forward to an oncoming future with hope or with fear. And if fate has made my origin to be in ruin and desolation, no outrage or lamentation will retard my assent to the fact that therein lies my fixed abode. I would like to write this upon the skies for all the world to see. I would like to write it, also, in the hearts of the children of Ashur in such a way that it will reach their souls – an extension of the soul of Ashur.5 David Barsum Perley As a largely ethno-religious group, the Assyrians are a transnational community or a collection of communities, all of which are indigenous to Mesopotamia and in particular, for over 2,000 years, to its northern reaches (effectively ancient Assyria and its environs) encompassing contemporary northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, and northeastern Syria. Their language and material culture constitute one of the oldest continuous traditions in the Middle East. From ancient Arba’ilū to Arbela during the Christian period in the ecclesiastical province of Adiabene between the fifth and the fifteenth centuries AD, the presence and culture of the people of upper Mesopotamia endures through to the modern day. Mosul, which in 2014 saw the expulsion of its entire Christian population under Da’esh rule, was the ancient capital of Nineveh. Kirkuk, the hotly contested oil-rich city in northeast Iraq, was once known as Kark ā d-Beth Slōkh (the region of Beth Garmai, ‘house/place of bones’) during the ­Christian period, and earlier still Arrapḫa during the Old Assyrian period, c. 2000 BC. The city of Dohuk in today’s Iraqi Kurdistan was once the ecclesiastical province of Bēt Nū hadr ā under the auspices of the Assyrian Church of the East. Ancient Matiate, the city of Midyat in southeastern Turkey, was and is the center of the region of Tur Abdin, sometimes translated from the Assyrian-Aramaic as the ‘mountain of the worshipers’ and the historic region of Syriac (Assyrian) Christianity. These people speak Assyrian, endogenously known as S ūrayt/S ūreth, a modern form of Mesopotamian Aramaic. Their Aramaic is more commonly known in scholarly parlance as Neo-Aramaic or Neo-Syriac. They also use classical Syriac (Aramaic as spoken in Edessa and its environs which became a codified literary tongue) as an ecclesiastical language.6 Their modern spoken dialects also retain an Akkadian influence, something which should come as no surprise as Aramaic and Akkadian were used simultaneously as official languages of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC).7 This remained the norm, and in fact Aramaic was the common language of the region when it was eventually supplanted by Arabic following the Arab Muslim invasions of the seventh century AD. Those Assyrians who speak

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a derivative of this language today self-identify as S ūrōyō/S ūrāyā derived directly from the Neo-Assyrian word Assū r āyu, which ‘had a shorter variant [Sū r āyu] in the seventh century’ [BC].8 Today, we use the English word Assyrian to describe these people. At the advent of Christianity, the Assyrians of different regions, often disconnected from the larger body of their brethren, adapted and adopted principles of the new political realities. Ancient Mesopotamian religion with its reverence of various gods and goddesses from Nabu (god of knowledge/wisdom) to Shamash (sun-god) to Sin (moon-god), Ishtar (goddesses of love/war), Adad (storm-god), and the head of the pantheon Ashur, began to wane at the same time that the Akkadian language waned. Even so, evidence for the continuity of both can be seen as late as the first and second centuries AD. Inhabitants of the kingdoms of Adiabene ruled by Narsai and Osroene (with its capital at Edessa) ruled by Abgar V, were converted to Christianity through the works of Thaddeus of Edessa, known to Assyrians as Addai, one of the seventy-two disciples of Jesus, in the third century. Some, however, had already contributed to the culture of the emerging Christian world. A student of Justin Martyr, Tatian, a renowned theologian of the period, created a synoptic rendition of the gospels called the Diatessaron as the standard text for the churches of Assyria and its environs for the next three centuries. Over the years, Assyrian Christians were splintered into various sects. Today, many continue to affiliate with one of a handful of religious denominations, some born in the early centuries of Christianity. The Assyrian Church of the East (pejoratively known as Nestorian and anathematized at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD) represents the ancient tradition of Assyrian Christianity. Some members of the Church of the East formed a Catholic offshoot known as the Chaldean Catholic Church of Babylon, which began its discussions with Rome in 1552/1553, but only came into full communion in 1830. A second traditional church is the Syrian (more recently Syriac) Orthodox Church, known sometimes as the Jacobite Church in honor of Jacob Baradaeus, a sixth-century bishop. This Oriental Orthodox church also has a Catholic offshoot, the Syrian (more recently Syriac) Catholic Church of Antioch, which entered into full communion with Rome in 1782. There are also various Protestant denominations among Assyrians, begun by American Presbyterian missionaries among others. In the past two millennia, the Assyrians have been more widely known by their ecclesiastical designations, increasingly Balkanized both internally and externally. They continued to be divided along these denominational lines, which were regional to some extent, and became more so as the communities became embedded in certain areas. The dispersion of the Assyrian community led to dialects of S ūrayt/S ūreth which have also fallen along denominational lines in some cases, furthering the distance between the communities. Such distinctions came to a head under the Ottoman Millet system which allowed confessional groups (literally ‘nations’) to rule themselves under their own laws. It was here that the sectarian divide of the Assyrians would become their greatest hindrance. Whereas the Armenians, though divided by authority (Catholics from 1831 and Protestants from 1850), were still identified and identified themselves in Turkish by the single term Ermeni, the Süryani (Syrian Orthodox) became further separate from the Keldani (Chaldean) millet which was recognized by the Ottomans in 1846. The Nasturi (Assyrian Church of the East) were never officially recognized as their own millet, and thus remained in limbo, geographically and politically.

The Assyrian community in the twentieth century Amid the colonial push to acquire new territories and spheres of influence in the latter half of the nineteenth century, smaller communities were squeezed between the powerful 118

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colonizers on the one hand, and the rise of local nationalisms and religious zealotry, both imitating and countering Western ideals, on the other. Assyrians were caught between various forces, few of them benevolent. Their colonization under Ottoman, British, and local regimes culminated in widespread massacres and deportations with the outbreak of World War I. The city of Qamishli, among other towns and cities that fell outside the modern state of Turkey, was settled in the aftermath of the events of World War I after upwards of 300,000 Assyrians were killed and thousands forcibly converted alongside Armenians and Greeks in a genocide against Christian minorities in the failing Ottoman Empire. In more recent times, Qamishli has once again featured as a sanctuary for Assyrians fleeing genocidal threats, though it too would become a battleground between Kurds, Arabs, and Assyrians. Relentless combat, killing, death, forced expulsion, and loss of home and hearth exemplified the early nineteenth century. The Assyrians of Urmia, Iran (today known as Rezayeh), refer to this time as Raqa raqa or more simply ‘the Flight’ or ‘the Escape’, as a mass exodus of 30,000 men, women, and children from among themselves and their Hakkâri brethren traversed the region, traveling more than 600 kilometers to Baqubah, a refugee camp thirty miles northeast of Baghdad. Records calculate almost a third dying along the way – some of exposure, others murdered by bandits on the road. In the Tur Abdin, large segments of the population fled over the Izala mountain range to the plains of Nusaybin (ancient Nisibis), settling in a place called B ēṯ Z ālin, which would become the first of many uneasy sanctuaries. Realizing the gravity of the situation, in mid-July, Mar Benyamin Shimun XXI, P ­ atriarch of the Church of the East, called a war council in which he and the tribal chieftains decided to approach the Russians for support in escaping the current siege and slow-wasting of their people. Promises of support furthered the Assyrians’ desire to connect with Allied forces; they hoped the Allies would plead with the Russians for assistance.9 While some help came, Benyamin Shimun was assassinated on 3 March 1919, by the Kurdish chieftain Ismail Agha Shikak (Simko) whom he had met under a flag of parlay. Elsewhere, Assyrians continued their struggles under Raphael Khan, Agha Petros Elia, Malik Khoshaba, and others. Besides military leaders, literary champions struggled with the pen, becoming ‘clogs in the machine’ that decided they were no longer of any value. Ashur S. Yousif (Yousouf ), born in the town of Harput in the Ottoman Empire, was a philosopher and author of the periodical Murshid Athuriyon (The Assyrian Guide). A prominent and respected professor at Euphrates College and someone who would be revered by Assyrians cross-denominationally (he was viewed as an icon by writers in Iraq and Iran), Ashur Yousif taught classical Armenian. In 1915, he, along with other intellectuals rounded up by the Turkish authorities, was hanged.10 Across the divide in the Urmia region of Qajar-ruled territories in contemporary Iran, American missionaries aided in the production of the Assyrian newspaper Zahrirē d-Bahra (Rays of Light), as early as 1848. It was published continually until the press was destroyed in 1918. Numerous other Assyrian publications were begun around the same time, perhaps the most independent of which was Kokhva (The Star), founded by Qasha Baba Nwiya-d-Wazirabad.11 With the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and later fall of the Qajar dynasty, and with the measured rise of the new nation-states of the Middle East, various communities asserted a desire for sovereignty and self-determination. To that end, four different Assyrian groups participated in the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, from Iran and the Caucasus, the United States, Iraq, and the Jacobite Patriarchate. The written manifesto of the desires of one segment was later formulated as The Claims of the Assyrians as Presented to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which defined the Assyrian people as including Nestorians, Chaldeans, Jacobites, a Maronite element, Persian Assyrians, Assyrians in Russia, and a Muslim Assyrian 119

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group that included Shakkaks (or Shikkaks) and Yezidis.12 While their desires did not bear fruit, the creation of various lines of communication had developed between Assyrian communities previously divided by political borders and religious adherence. In the years to follow, displaced Assyrians attempted to locate a new home. In Syria, Qamishli had become a burgeoning town. Refugees from Urfa (Edessa) were now settled in Aleppo. Assyrians fleeing Bohtan and Hakkâri in Turkey were now in Iraq, Illinois, and California. Those of Harput and Diyarbekir were now in California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, a two-hour drive from families from Urmia with whom they would later relate and intermarry regularly. Other families from Turkey and Syria immigrated to South ­A merica. In ‘Western’ contexts, they founded ethnic and religious institutions to help retain their heritage and pass it along to future generations.13 Those already dwelling in diaspora had never forgotten their birthplaces nor their families and people abroad regardless of region or religious affiliation. In this way, the diaspora became a blessing, allowing for the interconnectedness of these communities and their individuals to transcend diverse barriers that time and circumstance had placed in the way. ‘This rediscovery of each other is everywhere. It is a renascence, an awakening of the Assyrian consciousness that defies rational explanation after centuries of involuntary segregation’.14 Associations were created in earnest, some to focus on the ‘homeland’, while others on the community in diaspora. The Assyrian National School Association (ANSA) was initially founded in Stirling, New Jersey, in 1899, by the Diyarbakır community (having fled from the Hamidian massacres, 1894–1896). Taw Mim Semkath (initially rendered as Beth Yatm ē d-Othuroyē b-Qiliqiyā or the Assyrian Orphanage of Cilicia after its parent ANSA) was an orphanage and school that first opened in Adana, Turkey, in 1919, to house and care for orphans of the Assyrian genocide (known as the Seyfo).15 Founded with help from the French High Commissioner in 1921, the school was closed by the Turkish authorities and moved to Beirut, Lebanon, where it has remained through 2016.16 As they were able, men and women sought various roads to prosperity in their new societies. For those who had known only a soldier’s life, continued paid service became an option during the mandate period in Syria and Iraq under the French and British authorities. The prevalent misconceptions of Assyrians as British protégés began during this period.17 The notion was based predominantly on the usage of Assyrian fighting men in the colonial military force known as the Iraq Levies. It is this fact that is generally cited as the reason for anti-Assyrian and anti-Christian sentiment in the region. The levies served as a local colonial militia loyal to the British prior to the establishment of an Iraqi army. As a matter of course, it seemed that anti-British and anti-Christian attitudes were rampant in the region prior to June of 1919.18 This is curious since the levies were in fact founded by forty Arab tribesmen recruited by Major J.I. Eadie from around the town of Nasiriyeh. They were variously termed the Muntafiq Horse, later simply the Militia, and by the late summer of 1919, the Arab and Kurdish Levies. The forces were predominantly religiously Muslim, made up of Arabs, Kurds, and ‘Kirkuklis’ (Turkomans) through the years from 1915 until the Cairo Conference on Iraq in 1921. That year, Assyrian enlistment began in the spring at Mindan Camp.19 In August of 1921, the British mandatory authority granted Sunni Arabs a ruling hand in the region of Iraq, and Faisal I of the Hashemite line, who had asserted his claim as King of Iraq and Syria the previous year, ruled the region. The region of Jordan or Transjordan went to his brother Abdullah I, also the son of Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca and later King of the Hejaz. Turkey, on the other hand, proceeded along a vastly different path, one of secularism and militarism, under the powerful hand of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a Greek-born Turk, from 1923 onward. 120

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In the years following, Assyrians became part of the new systems when possible, and created others when not. Due to ingrained prejudice, most were not invited to engage in military or political service, and thus some sought alternative methods of recognition and attainment. Some invested their time in politics, others in family life, others still in literature and culture. Petros (Pyotr) Vasili, a young Assyrian born in Georgia, would become the father of Iraqi Communism, an organization not reflective of the Soviet form evident in Stalinism, but rather a possibility for non-Arabs and non-Muslims to challenge the status quo.20 Vasili became mentor to Yusuf Salman Yusuf (Fahd), first secretary of the Iraqi communist party. Assyrians began to find their place amidst the new burgeoning states of the region, creating opportunities where once few existed. All of this would shift yet again following the events of Simele. One year after independence from the former British mandate, the Iraqi military and local tribesmen partook in the indiscriminant killing of hundreds of Assyrian men in Simele village, marking the beginning of campaign to cleanse the region of a community that was seen as alien and threatening to the new Iraqi regime. Beginning on 7 August 1933, over 120 villages in the surrounding region up to the city of Dohuk were razed and looted. The destruction saw its zenith in the indiscriminant killing of hundreds of Assyrian men in Simele village on 11 August 1933, by Iraqi military and local tribesmen, but one year after independence from the former British mandate. Following the massacres, an eyewitness recounted, The soldiers then remained in the village, remaining about to find any male person and shoot him down. About evening they entered the places (i.e., the fort and other houses where the women and children had gathered together). Among the women and children there were nearly about hundred men and grown-up boys, who, being without arms to save themselves, had put on women’s clothes. They were all discovered by the soldiers and police (as every woman and other person in female dress was examined by the soldiers and the police) and they were all killed. I saw the police sergeant also dashing the priest’s two children of 4 and 6 years of age against the wall because they were clinging to their father and screaming after him as he was being taken away. Qasha Ishmail was taken outside, where he joined another priest, Qasha Irsanis [Arsanis], whom the police had found in another house. They were both murdered just below the fort in front of a house known as of Khishaba [Khoshaba]. Their beards were cut off and their hair was dashed in their mouths.21 After killing all the men, the soldiers stripped the dead, taking their things of value, and went after the women. The Arabs and the Kurds looted the village. Women deemed to be more attractive were mishandled, stripped, and let go. The wife of Yako, the supposed leader of the Assyrians, who left for Syria, was repeatedly violated, stripped, and let go, and so were her two daughters. The event, which continued for about one month, with upwards of 3,000 Assyrians killed, did not go totally unnoticed. It was used by a young Raphael Lemkin as the catalyst to thrust himself onto the international scene to confront the matter of physical and cultural destruction, something which would ultimately come to light in the Genocide Prevention Convention of 1948. But while the event seemed to garner some international discussion, the Assyrians remained in turmoil internally. Sectarian identities reemerged with a vengeance, and indeed the communities began to utilize their hard-won agency against themselves and their Assyrian identity. Anti-Assyrianist policies proliferated among the Chaldean Catholic and Syrian Orthodox Church clergy that later affected adherents. 121

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This period saw the beginning of a Balkanized identity, or in the common parlance of the Middle East, sectarian Assyrianism. In the wake of the 1933 massacres, the distinct church communities began advocating separate identities. While they had not become ‘ethnic’ in the true sense of a period of ethnogenesis, the distinction was palpable. So much so that by the late 1950s, every Jacobite church began removing the Assyrian name, replacing it with Syrian. There is some evidence to suggest this coincided with the rise of a secular movement within the Jacobite-rite church, namely the Assyrian Democratic Organization established in 1957. The interconnectedness between external pressure and influence, which goes on to change emic ideas, is intricate. Sometimes, groups change or shift identity of their own volition for survival, and sometimes because they have come to believe in a new form of identity after years of internalization. Sometimes, the change arises without any real conscious acceptance at all. For instance, following years of Turkification, The Assyrians were so bullied and oppressed that when former Turkish President Celal Bayar visited Mardin in 1956, the Syriac people there greeted him with banners that read “How happy is the one who says ‘I am a Turk’”.22 In the midst of this ethnic shift that became duly evident by the 1960s, some in Turkey immersed themselves within the parties and ideologies of the leftist movement (as they did in Iraq and elsewhere), but were largely consumed by its more numerous Kurdish elements, many from among the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Thousands of Assyrians began to flee Turkey due to continued cultural appropriation policies, from the annexation of physical territory to the acceptance of foreign familial and village nomenclature. By 1967, they had emigrated to Sweden, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and elsewhere. Further to the East, Assyrians began an urban shift that doubled its urban population from10,000 to 20,000 between 1950 and 1970. This was partly due to standard population increase but also due to rural fear that people experienced after the 1947 ransacking of dozens of Assyrian villages of the Urmia region, including pillaging and raping. Urban life and education offered Iranian Assyrians an outlet, and they capitalized on this option. On 21 February 1950, the Assyrian Youth Cultural Society (sīʿt ā saprēt ā d-ʿlaymē at ūrāyē ) was founded in Tehran, linked to such talent as Dr. Pera Sarmas and to works of famed writers including one founder of the first Assyrian political party, the Assyrian Socialist Party, Freydun Bet-Abram (Aturaya).23 It was from this active organization that the basis for the Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA) was laid, and which paved the way for its inception on 13 April 1968, in Pau, France. Assyrians retained recognition within the Iranian political system, albeit as a religious minority, and were offered a place in the Majlis of Iran. In 1959, Rabi William Ebrahimi was elected as deputy for four years. In the following election period, more participated in the electoral system and ran for office, where Assyrians had a continued presence. Homer Ashurian held the position until the time of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, when he and many other Assyrians fled the country. In the following years, new religiously inspired governmental pressures were felt by communities across Iran. Assyrian schools were forced to change names (a practice normalized in Iraq under the Ba’th party as well and long practiced in Turkey) – for example, the Sussan Girls’ School in Iran was renamed the Mariam Girls’ School during this period.24 Such processes were not out of the ordinary, and while some responded with indifference or silent apprehension, politics was politics. 122

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The power and reach of the propaganda was boundless. While Assyrians were aware of the necessity of the words and approach, some internalizing was only expected. In the following years, Persian language Assyrian periodicals would become a double-edged sword; on the one hand, they garnered wider readership and allowed non-Assyrians to learn the situation of the community, and at the same time it limited use and exposure of the Assyrian language, all the while permitting governmental scrutiny.25 Today, Yonathan Betkolia, the most recent Assyrian representative to the Majlis, also serves as the Secretary General of the AUA. As a result, many in the community deeply suspect Iranian governmental influence, if not direct control, over the umbrella organization that once held the largest membership of all Assyrian political parties. Back in Iraq, with the Simele Massacre still raw, Assyrian demographics were altered. Around seventy Iraqi towns and villages were destroyed, some by napalm. Others were forcibly abandoned, and more than 76 religious structures and other material items of cultural significance were destroyed during the 1960s. In 1974–78, various villages in the north were destroyed in an effort known as the border clearings. Beyond its dispossession of ancestral ties and displacement, the border clearings forcibly relocated thousands of men, women, and children to collective towns during a forced urbanization campaign. Not long afterward, in 1987–88, in the infamous Anfal Campaign, Assyrians lost over fifty cultural and historical sites, including ancient churches and monasteries, as well as some 2,000 reported deaths in the gas campaigns. Some estimate that the total Assyrian population of all denominations in Iraq dwindled from over 1 million to 300,000–400,000 between 1961 and 1991. Notwithstanding the tribulations, Assyrians were not without their own agency. For example, they founded numerous associations such as Kheit Kheit Allap or Khubbā w-Khuyadā At ūrayā (Assyrian Love and Unity) in the 1940s, and again Khuyad ā w-Kheir ūt ā At ūrayt ā (Assyrian Unity and Freedom) in the 1960s. They founded literary books and magazines like Mordinna Atouraya (in both Assyrian and Arabic) published by N ādi al-Thaqāfi al-Āth ūr ī (Assyrian Cultural Club) who held close ties with N ādi al-Riyadhi al-Āth ūr ī (the Assyrian Sports Club) established in March of 1955. The sports club became the home of Emmanuel ‘Ammo’ Baba Dawud (who played from 1957 until 1967, and later coached the Iraqi National Team).26 At one point, Baba, along with Edison David and Douglas Aziz, was the most celebrated athlete of the country. Their participation in politics and the greater history of Iraq was discernible, from the battalions of commander Hurmiz Malik Chikko of the 1960s and 1970s, to the first martyr of the ‘Kurdish’ Cause, whose monument stands in ‘Amēd īyāh, Iraq, Ethniel Shlimon of D ū re village in the region of Barwari Bala. Through the 1980s, Assyrians participated in governmental opposition groups, the most popular of which became the Assyrian Democratic Movement founded in 1979, and the most prominent unfettered Assyrian political party in Iraq into the new millennium though it has become stagnant in recent years. During continued demographic shifting, the community as a whole navigated an uncertain period.

Back to the future, or the present: navigating the expanse between home and diaspora A history of internal division contributes to the modern effort by internal and external forces to unify the Assyrian community. Paradoxical efforts to unify the community through strategies that are themselves divisive persist. This was epitomized in Iraq in 2003 at the Baghdad General Conference from 22 to 24 October, when members of the clergy of various sects, civic club members, and politicians from around the world met at the Sheraton Hotel in 123

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Baghdad, Iraq, at a meeting entitled ‘Our Unity and Our National Rights in Iraq’. Among the governing participants were Yonadam Kanna, secretary general of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, member of the Iraqi Governing Council, and representative for Mr. Paul Bremer, the American Head of Civil Administration in Iraq. The aim of the event was to present some kind of a unified front and to ascribe a unified nomenclature to use in the region. They settled on Chaldo-Assyrian (not unlike the French creation of Assyro-­Chaldean) and the term Syriac for the language of the people, only to be used in Iraq. Further, the conference stressed the importance of the community as the indigenous people of Iraq, deserving a self-administered region therein.27 This forced attempt at unity under a combined appellation ultimately failed. Political machinations affected political and clerical leaders equally. Assyrians were pit against one another. The backlash of this caused a further Balkanized Assyrian identity, both internally and externally. At this time, the Arabic term Masīḥī (‫يح ّي‬ ِ ‫ َم ِس‬Christian) became the norm for all the ecclesiastical Assyrian sects and indeed their language as well. The usage of this even spilled into Syria. In the northern environs, Assyrians were still referred to pejoratively in Kurdish as falla from Arabic fall āḥ for farmer/peasant.28 To add insult to injury, a dispersed populace hoped a new constitution of inclusion would be the answer. The new constitution was said to be inspired by the tragedies of Iraq’s martyrs, Shiite and Sunni, Arabs and Kurds and ­Turkmen and from all the other components of the people and recollecting the darkness of the ravage of the holy cities and the South in the Sha’abaniyya uprising and burnt by the flames of grief of the mass graves, the marshes, Al-Dujail and others and articulating the sufferings of racial oppression in the massacres of Halabcha, Barzan, Anfal and the Fayli Kurds and inspired by the ordeals of the Turkmen in Basheer … the drying out of their cultural and intellectual wells, so we sought hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder to create our new Iraq, the Iraq of the future free from sectarianism, racism, locality complex, discrimination and exclusion.29 There was no mention of the Simele massacres of 1933 that influenced a young Raphael ­Lemkin, the watershed moment for the nascent state and especially its military, or of Assyrians. In Turkey, Assyrians held a resurgence. A return and rebuilding period began around 2003 in which hundreds of families of the Tur Abdin and Bohtan (most immigrated to France) regions returned to their villages of origin to rebuild. Few still populated their ancient villages continually, though there has been no shortage of conflict. Despite strong backlashes, ­ ananyo) on the they continued to operate the major monasteries of Deyrulzafaran (Mor H outskirts of Mardin, and Mor Gabriel outside of Midyat – though the latter has met with major governmental and Kurdish pressure to annex large swaths of its estate.30 In political and academic discourse, for a time some elements had called them Semitic Turks, using Süryani(ler) only to refer to the various Assyrian churches. Yet, perhaps the most telltale sign of the discord that continued in the regions of Assyrian inhabitation occurred marginally earlier. In October 2000, Father Yusuf Akbulut, priest of St. Mary’s Church in Diyarbakır, was approached by reporters from the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet to share his views regarding the Armenian Genocide, which has seen a resurgence of discussion at the turn of the millennium. Father Akbulut’s response that Assyrians too suffered massacres resulted in him being charged with inciting racial hatred, and to his subsequent arrest. Akbulut was eventually released due to Assyrian advocacy and European pressure at a time where Turkey’s entrance into the European Union was a major cause for concern.31 124

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As with other communities, over time, individual families have relocated and been forcibly removed from remote regions to large cities, from Baghdad to Beirut, and the Assyrians are a prime example of such internal exodus and relocation. With the loss of their empires, kingdoms, and thus political authority, and as history is generally conveyed from a political perspective in national histories, they have been largely absent from the modern narratives of the region, with the majority now living in a ‘Western’ diaspora. In Western contexts, the Assyrians integrated into an assortment of societies from North America to various countries in Europe, Australia, and elsewhere, including countries in closer geographic proximity to the Middle East like Georgia and Russia, all the way to Australia and New Zealand. Without a national region or church to unite them, they have been left largely fragmented.

The recent predicament: between the Hammer and the Anvil With the power vacuum left in the wake of US relinquishment of Iraq, Assyrians find themselves in a precarious situation. On the one side, they are buffeted by nation-states and ethnocentric policies, and on the other, by religious zealotry. The Islamic State’s (Daesh, ISIL, ISIS, IS)32 advancement and its annexation of swaths of territory in early June of 2014 in Iraq, resulted in the cleansing of ethnic and religious minorities from Mosul, the ancient city of Nineveh, once capital of the Assyrian Empire and its environs. For contemporary Assyrians and their largely Christian communities, forced displacement was an outcome of a fatwa (a religious decree) that conceded them four possible options in the wake of the takeover: convert to Islam, pay the jizya, flee, or die. The fate of the Yezidis, many of them descending from the same Mesopotamian roots as the Christians, proved to be more devastating, resulting in the killing of thousands of people. Added to this was the sexual enslavement of thousands of Yezidi women (along with Christians), systematic and mass summary execution of Yezidi men and boys, and expulsion from Sinjar. These events have led to acknowledgment by the UN, the EU, and the US Obama administration to label these acts genocide and ethnic cleansing.33 A leap forward to Monday 23 February 2015: at dawn, residents of more than 35 villages along the Khabur River in northeastern Syria awoke to find IS fighters combing the region, razing villages, and plundering homes whilst rounding up and imprisoning civilians and destroying shrines, monasteries, and churches, including those of Tel Hurmiz, Tel Shamiran, Qaber Shamait, and Tel Baloua. In the aftermath, over 3,000 people were displaced, and an estimated 300 people were kidnapped. Almost simultaneously, across the border in Mosul – only recently emptied of many of its native inhabitants – IS spokespersons produced YouTube videos of the desecration of hundreds of ancient Mesopotamian artifacts (played in slow motion to the melody of a Koranic sū rah). They were presented as leftover elements of idolatry (‫ شرك‬širk) from the period of ignorance (‫ جاهلية‬jāhilīyah). They were next seen bulldozing portions of the ancient cities of Nimrud, Khorsabad (Dur Sharrukin), Hatra, and Assur. In an article in the UK-based Spectator from 27 February 2015, entitled ‘For modern-day Assyrians their present is under attack from Isis, as is their past’, Ed West harkened to a tweet by historian Tom Holland who remarked: ‘What #ISIS are doing to the people & culture of #Assyria is worthy of the Nazis. None of us can say we didn’t know’.34 Later, in a Guardian interview, Holland remarked, ‘It’s a crime against Assyria, against Iraq, and against humanity. Destroy the past, and you control the future. The Nazis knew this, and the Khmer Rouge – and the Islamic State clearly understand it too’.35 125

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Approximately seven months later, on 8 October 2015, IS released video, reportedly recorded on the eve of the Muslim feast day of īd al-a ḍḥā ‫( عيد األضحى‬feast of the sacrifice), illustrating in gruesome detail the execution of three Assyrians at point-blank range. They were Dr. ‘Abdel-Maseeh Aniyah of Tel Jazirah, Ashur Rustam Abraham of Tel Jazirah, and ­Bassam Issa Michael of Tel Shamiram, three villages on the Khabur River in the region of Al-­ Hasakah. As the executed fell, three more in orange jump suits were obliged to take their place. Meanwhile, IS threatened to execute the remaining 280 captives they had taken in February if a ransom of $50,000–$100,000 per hostage was not paid to them in the coming weeks.36 In the meantime, those who survived and were not caught as prisoners by Daesh have nonetheless come under threat, fleeing to neighboring countries to escape persecution, biding their time for passage out of the region, while many of those who remain do so as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in their home countries of residence. Members of their diaspora are spread around the world, including at least 100,000 in the United States, according to a 2009 U.S. Census Bureau survey, a number which has certainly surged in the seven years since. Yet, amidst the mass exodus, Assyrian culture, an element of integral world history, including its distinct language and religious’ traditions, remains under grave threat. Following this trajectory of aggression and hostility, Lebanese archaeologist Joanna Bajjaly discussed the genocidal attacks against the community by IS. ‘They reject others and dig up graves to say that no one comes before it nor after it, and all for financial gain, while the world loses a cultural legacy. The biggest losers are the Assyrians as a people and Iraq as a country. The world has lost an important part of human history. It is a loss for the Assyrians and the end of them in a way, because they tie their roots to this civilisation’.37 The future is, of course, uncertain. As of 2016 in Syria, Assyrians remained penned in the Wusta neighborhood of Qamishli as of 2015, and along the Khabur River as well as in Aleppo in the quarter known as Hay as-Suryan, settled by those families who fled Urhoy, ancient Edessa (modern Urfa), during the catastrophic events of World War I, among other regions.38 Given the most recent developments concerning the civil war, the destruction of Aleppo, the actions of Daesh, and the many changes that have taken place since 2011, prospects for survival in the region appear slim. Assyrians are caught between religious zealotry in the form of the Islamic State on the one hand, and the burgeoning Kurdish nationalist project on the other. Additionally, they are in many ways a pawn in a larger game of the greater political powers, predominantly the United States and Russia, in what some experts have termed a new Cold War. What hope is there for a minority among the great game of houses? Here a letter written by Roger Cumberland, American missionary in Dohuk, counting down the consequences ushered in by the Simele massacre, comes to mind in stunning clarity, but with a slight twist. He listed seven effects which could be observed again today for the current situation of Assyrians in the Middle East, particularly in the wake of Daesh. Seven and six – The governments of the region lack integrity to form legitimate governments that the people trust. In the case of the Assyrians and the lack of protection offered against the threat of Daesh, faith in current systems is virtually nil. Five – there is a fear of yet another gendercidal event (Cumberland mentioned ‘lack of Kurdish brides,’ indicating a fear of bride theft), as women and indeed children have been the major targets of sexual violence of extremist groups. Four – local intra- and intercommunity hostilities position the Assyrians at the epicenter. An example could be tensions and fighting between the Turkish state and PKK militants in Turkey, the PUK and KDP in the KRG region of Iraq, Syrian forces, and Kurdish YPG elements versus Daesh fighters in Syria, among others. Three, 126

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the international (Western) response was focused upon geopolitics and not on real protection. The Assyrians of Khabur were freed thanks to the agency of their kin in the form of payment for kidnapped individuals, and not by some large nation “protecting minorities”. Thus, two – because of said issues among numerous others, old Christian-Muslim animosities have arisen. These include general Assyrian Christian distrust of Muslims due to Daesh, and Muslim distrust of Christians due to Western intervention in the region. Lastly, we return to number one – the vanishing Assyrian warrior of old.39 Assyrians have been easy targets of militarized groups, whether state or non-state actors, from the 30 December 2015 terrorist attacks at three Assyrian restaurants in Qamishli, that killed over sixteen people, to the bombings and kidnappings in Khabur. In response, various military protection forces have been created, including the Khabur Guards, whose commander David Jindo was later assassinated by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) 22 April 2015.40 For their own protection and autonomy, the Assyrian diaspora has created their own endogenously funded armed security forces, including Sootoro and ­Gozarto Protection Forces (GPF), in the Syrian Jezirah. Their hope has been to remain independent of the Kurdish YPG, which has claimed the surrounding territory as an annexed Kurdish region called R ­ ojava.41 Through October of 2016 and with no end to the conflict in site, the GPF and Sootoro continue to train soldiers at the General Agha Petros Military Academy, established in 2014. And while sometimes fighting alongside the US-backed and recognized Kurdish party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its YPG militia, due to assassinations, threats, and distrust, the GPF/Sootoro have clashed with the Kurds as well. Across the border in Iraq, the Nineveh Protection Units (NPU) falls under the Iraqi Army’s Nineveh Liberation Operations Command. As of the offensive to liberate Mosul in October of 2016, they had over 300 soldiers and more than 2,500 recruits, but due to the inability to pay them, they remained sidelined.42 In Syria, where the IS threat was not taken lightly, the Assyrians feared the slow Kurdification of their regions. Mistrustful of the ­Kurdish pesh merga (so rather than the Kurdish rendering?) and the Iraqi National Army, neither of which stood to defend the villages of the Nineveh Plain, and deeply aware of their inability to defend themselves, the fall of Mosul generated a military movement among Assyrians. Nevertheless, within the central government of Iraq, there remains a desire to control the smaller Assyrian and Christian elements. In the Kurdish-controlled north, where land ownership is a major concern, and Kurdish-nationalist sentiment is on the rise, there have been more potent attempts to subsume Assyrian military groups into the pesh merga. One prominent example is the Dwekh Nawshe, a militia tied to the Assyrian Patriotic Party, which has a small number of recruits but a high profile due to its relationship with the KRG. Perhaps the largest military unit linked to the KDP and Massoud Barzani is that of the al-Majlis alSha’bi al-Kaldāni al-Suriyāni al-Āshuri known as the Heerasat (Tiger Guards), which numbers around 2,000 combatants. While they have not seen much fighting, their major objective is to accompany the pesh merga into the Assyrian regions of the Nineveh Plain and become the major ‘Christian’ force in the region for the KRG to spread influence and perhaps annex disputed territory for itself. The NPU (of the Assyrian Democratic Movement), under the command of Bahnam Abush, has managed to remain somewhat independent of Kurdish influence, though it is tied to the stagnating ADM. More significantly, in October of 2016, the NPU, with air support from the United States-led international coalition, liberated of the village of Badana, a Shabak village southeast of Mosul. Overall, the Assyrians as a distinct independent entity remain a thorn in the side of burgeoning Kurdish national aspirations, demanding indigenous status, land rights, and autonomy. Local political forces fear them as a threat to a homogenous Kurdistan where they 127

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become simply a religious minority – to be labeled Kurdish or Kurdistani Christians (reminiscent of the terms Turkish Christians or Semitic Turks, Arab Christians etc.) with no agency, nor history, of their own. The existential threats to the Assyrian community have arisen from two forms of threat throughout the last two centuries. External forces targeted the people themselves through forms of violence, particularly gendered violence such as rape or abduction of women and ­children, and extending to outright executions, killings, and ethnic cleansing. They also engaged in efforts to target Assyrian identity itself through ethnocidal (i.e., cultural genocide) acts – from the literal effacing of monuments predicated and justified by religious strictures, or encouraged through educational and political pogroms. Such external pressure is sometimes later internalized by the community at a future time, creating a continuous cycle of persecution, even against itself. On an even more theoretical yet literary level, as a multifaceted minority, they are frequently under threat of being subsumed by mainstream histories or narratives. This subordinating narrativization is a component of the larger existential threat against endangered life.43 Some Assyrians retain a powerful conviction that the rebirth of the ‘Assyrian warrior’ may be the only bulwark left against violence, displacement, and dispossession.

Conclusion This chapter has pondered the modern history of Assyrian communities, illustrating possible reasons they have become the target of atrocities, the types of agency or power they exert, and, finally, the fate of this/these community/ies and thus the place for pluralism in the current and future of a Middle East in danger of a brand of monoculturalism that fears even internal variety. The current crisis has only acted as a further reminder of the threat they have previously and continue to face as an ethno-religious, transnational, cultural, linguistic, and native/ indigenous group, beyond state narratives and majority perspectives, in the Middle East. Within Middle Eastern or West Asian arenas, there is a generally unvoiced notion that posits minorities, in this case Assyrians, as mere objects – victims of circumstances beyond their control. Things are done to them, rarely is anything of worth done by them, and thus perhaps due to this, their significance is reduced. The Assyrians, as a case in point, serve as a forewarning to said assumptions. In the truest sense, Assyrians are in and of themselves, a paradox. They currently remain largely segregated and Balkanized, with each religious/ecclesiastical body or church hierarchy advocating a separate ethnic identity based solely on church adherence. With the resurgence of crypto-Assyrians in places like Diyarbakır, and elsewhere, a dialogue concerning Muslim Assyrian inclusion has also risen to the surface.44 With this added to the mix, the Assyrian community continues to be historically and presently transcendent of regional, national, religious, linguistic, and other boundaries.45 Even amidst greater difficulties in the Middle East, they have produced great artists and teachers, athletes and scholars. The diaspora alone has created such talent as actor F. Murray Abraham, producer director Terrence Malick, tennis phenom Andre Agassi, and author and radio host John Batchelor. Perhaps even more closely related to the academic world was Alexander L. George, who served as Graham H. Stuart Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Stanford University and ­MacArthur Foundation Fellow. More than 150 years after Rassam, during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, archaeologist Donny George Youkhanna remained in the Iraq National Museum skirmishing with determined thieves when others fled. Were it not for him, thousands of relics of a grand civilization 128

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first uncovered by Rassam, would have become part of a black market antiquities trade. He was a humble man who, despite all odds, rose to the office of Director General of Iraq’s National Museum, Chairman of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, and President of the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, and without whom, even less evidence of a venerable past would exist. Assyrians like him continue as the innovators, embodiment, and defenders of Mesopotamian culture – reminders of what was and could be again. While threatened and struggling to survive in hostile regions, they continue to live and thrive. They continue to practice their unique culture, from forms of song such as rawe and lilyane, to the practice of Somikka (a Halloween-like holiday) to the Akitu/Ha b-Nison New Year celebration. Assyrian schools in diaspora and ‘homeland’ continue to exist, and while some have fallen under the influence of regional powers, there is instruction in modern Assyrian S ūrayt/S ūreth in various subjects. Artists and their mediums including poetry, dance, and sculpture have swelled as education has increased in most diaspora settings. There is again a powerful urge to learn the ways of the past, and reinvent them in the foreseeable future. Assyrians dig deep into their ancient and distant past regularly; sometimes to wonder what might have been, to mourn the destruction of the past at present, and to romanticize a bygone era. Others bemoan the present and speculate at some type of cosmic/karmic retribution for past misdeeds. Yet within the turmoil both within the region and within their community as a whole, they continue to stride forward, neither beholden to country of origin, nor ecclesiastical identification. Thus, Assyrian history, or the histories of its communities, cannot be lumped into one geographical region or a particular period nor should it/they be compartmentalized, but rather viewed as part of one trajectory, integrated and interwoven with each other and linked to the greater region. ‘Minorities’ and indigenous communities like the Assyrians serve as a litmus test for Middle Eastern society and culture. And further, retaining their heritage is both beneficial and indeed a necessity for both themselves and for society at large – a check and balance. ‘A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight’.46 Their distinctiveness is a reminder that simply by virtue of their existence, the Assyrians are greatly significant to the region. They, like other ‘minorities’, serve as revealers of truths or wisdom and formidable in their own right, intrinsically connected and of paramount importance to the viability and splendor of any region, and thus are anything but minor. In fact, it is precisely these marginalized communities like the Assyrians who, in their otherness, create a more vivid representation and fabric of the history, culture, traditions, and indeed direction of the Middle East.

Notes 1 The author would like to dedicate this work to those who continue to suffer at the hands of people who deem them of lesser significance. For the wolf pack of Profanity Peak. 2 Many thanks to Nina Georgizova for correcting the translation and for the correct spelling of the Russian text. 3 Sargon George Donabed, Reforging a Forgotten History: Iraq and the Assyrians in the 20th Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 263. 4 See Benjamin Thomas White’s work, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011). 5 David B. Perley, A Collection of Writings on Assyrians, ed. Tomas Beth Avdalla (Lulu, NY: Nineveh Press, 2016), 207. 6 Some early Assyrian-Americans also referred to their language as Assyriac. 7 For work on the Assyrian language, see Geoffrey Khan, “Remarks on the Historical Background of the Modern Assyrian Language,” Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies ( JAAS), 21, no. 1 (2007),

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Sargon George Donabed 1–6 and the Modern Assyrian Language Documentation Project at Cambridge www.research. ames.cam.ac.uk/research-groups/modern-middle-east-rg/public-policy-engagement/maldp. 8 Simo Parpola, “National and Ethnic Identity in the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Assyrian Identity in Post-Empire Times,” Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, XVIII, no. 2 (2004), 16–17. 9 Segments from the sections above were taken from Donabed, Reforging a Forgotten History, 61–62. 10 George D. Sefer, A Dream of a Long Journey (Unknown date), Modern Assyrian Research Archive (MARA). 11 For a longer discussion about the history of Assyrians in Urmia, see Arianne Ishaya’s “From Contributions to Diaspora: Assyrians in the History of Urmia, Iran,” Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies, 16, no. 1 (2002), 55–76. 12 Donabed, Reforging a Forgotten History, 13–19, 39, 263–264. ­ onabed 13 For more detailed photographic histories of communities in the United States, see Ninos D and Sargon Donabed, Assyrians of Eastern Massachusetts (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006); Maegan BetGivargis-McDaniel, Assyrians of New Britain (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2007); and Vasili Shoumanov, Assyrians in Chicago (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2001). 14 Perley, A Collection of Writings on Assyrians, 206. 15 This is seen in numerous wittings of writer Naum Faik and (As)syrian Orthodox Metropolitan of Mardin Mor Philexinos Yuhanon Dolabani, and in numerous ledgers and photographs now housed at the Modern Assyrian Research Archive. Thanks to Tomas Beth Avdalla for his aid. 16 See Assyrian Orphanage and School Association of America, www.schoolassociation.org. Of interest here is that the association has shifted to care only for ‘Syriac Orthodox Christian Children of the Middle East’ and entirely religiously focused school where once a broadly defined Assyrian mission once held sway. See the early renditions of the organization here www.schoolassociation. org/gallery/?album=3&gallery=6 prior to its fall into sectarianism. 17 See Donabed, Reforging a Forgotten History, 37 and 61. 18 J. Gilbert Browne, The Iraq Levies, 1915–1932 (London: Royal United Service Institution, 1932), 6. 19 Browne, The Iraq Levies, 1–15. 20 Assyrians have long held a prominent place in the communist parties of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran. 21 ‘Statement Made by Miryam, Wife of David Jindo, a Corporal in the Iraq Levies, Exhibit D to Supplementary Petition, Dated September 24, 1933, from the Mar Shimun, “Catholicos” ­Patriarch of the Assyrians to the League of Nations’, League of Nations Official Journal, 14, (1933), 1826. 22 Orhan Miroglu, “Court Battle Puts Spotlight on Turkey’s Assyrians,” Al-Monitor, March 19, 2013, www.al-monitor.com/pulse/culture/2013/03/turkey-assyrians-monastery.html. 23 The organization was perhaps most strongly a literary organization, disseminating thoughts and ideas in Assyrian. Illustrative of this was the 1974 establishment of an Assyrian National Library. There are numerous anecdotes of Assyrians living in Iraq and Syria (of Jacobite, Chaldean, and Eastern-rite), who recall as children hiding pamphlets and newspapers from Iran and passing them to learned adults in their hometowns, particularly in Qamishli, Syria. 24 Eliz Sanasarian, Religious Minorities in Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 76. 25 For post-revolution literature, see Marcin Rzepka, “Payā m-e Ā šuriyā n – The Assyro-Chaldean Publications in the Persian Language in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” Orientalia Christiana Cracoviensia, 2, (2010), 93–99. 26 Donabed, Reforging a Forgotten History, 138–139. 27 For a basic explanation of the outcomes of the conference, see Zinda Magazine IX, no. 34, October 27, 2003, as translated by writer Fred Aprim. www.zindamagazine.com/html/­ archives/2003/10.27.03/index.php and for latter explanation of said conference, Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project, ChaldoAssyrians: Resolving the Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac Identity Crisis, no. 2 July 2007, www.iraqdemocracyproject.org/issuefocus_chaldo.html. 28 Michael L. Chyet, “A Preliminary List of Aramaic Loanwords in Kurdish,” in Asma Afsaruddin and A.H. Mathias Zahniser, eds., Humanism Culture and Language in the Near East (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 288–289. 29 From the preamble to the Iraqi Constitution. See www.icla.up.ac.za/images/un/use-of-force/ asia-pacific/Iraq/Constitution%20Iraq.pdf. 30 Andrew Higgins, “Defending the Faith,” Wall Street Journal: Battle Over a Christian Monastery Tests Turkey’s Tolerance of Minorities, March 7, 2009, www.wsj.com/articles/SB123638477632658147; and Orhan Miroglu, “Court Battle Puts Spotlight on Turkey’s Assyrians,” Al-Monitor, March 19, 2013, www.al-monitor.com/pulse/culture/2013/03/turkey-assyrians-monastery.html.

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Persistent perseverance 31 Savannah Waring Walker, “World Briefing,” New York Times Magazine, December 22, 2000. Akbulut faced difficulty again in April of 2016, when his church along with others was seized by the government of Turkey and also damaged during Kurdish insurgent government military skirmishes. 32 All of these terms are used interchangeably in this work to refer to the same organization/group. 33 See Nick Cumming-Bruce, “ISIS Committed Genocide against Yazidis in Syria and Iraq, U.N. Panel Says,” The New York Times, June 16, 2016. 34 Ed West, “For Modern-Day Assyrians Their Present Is Under Attack from Isis, as Is Their Past,” American Spectator, February 27, 2015. 35 Kareem Shaheen, “Outcry over Isis Destruction of Ancient Assyrian Site of Nimrud,” The Guardian, March 6, 2015, www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/06/isis-destroys-ancient-­a ssyrian-siteof-nimrud (Accessed July 20, 2017). 36 ISIS Executes 3 Assyrian Christians in Hasakah, Syria, Heavy, October 8, 2015, http://heavy.com/ news/2015/10/new-isis-islamic-state-news-videos-pictures-executing-christian-execution-­ executed-assyrian-assyrians-ngo-ngos-full-uncensored-youtube/ (Accessed July 20, 2017). 37 Nohad Topalian, “Lebanese Archaeologist Slams ISIL’s Destruction of Assyrian Heritage,” alShorfa Magazine, March 20, 2015. 38 For a full discussion of the Urfalis see Mark Tomass, Multiple Resource Sharing Groups as Basis for Identity Conflict, in Önver A. Cetrez, Sargon Donabed, and Aryo Makko, eds., The Assyrian Heritage: Threads of Continuity and Influence, Studies in Religion & Society 5, Volume I (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2012), 243–277. 39 Paul Knabenshue, US ambassador to Iraq, to Wallace Murray, containing letter from Mr. ­Cumberland to Secretary of State, September 13, 1933, 890g.4016 Assyrians/110. 40 Mardean Isaac, “The Assyrians of Syria: History and Prospects,” Syria Comment, December 20, 2015, www.joshualandis.com/blog/the-assyrians-of-syria-history-and-prospets-by-mardean-isaac/. 41 Mardean Isaac, “Under Fire from all Sides: Syria’s Assyrians,” Syria Deeply, June 3, 2016, www. newsdeeply.com/syria/community/2016/06/03/under-fire-from-all-sides-syrias-assyrians. 42 See https://ninevehplaindefensefund.org for a more thorough explanation of the relationships, training, and background. 43 I would further argue that this is even more the case in the case of the non-human world. Plant and animal species and individuals and the environment as a whole (with the exception of elements that are of importance to humanity) are routinely swept under the rug, victims of ‘progress’ or simply unimportant to an anthropocentric way of life. See also Donabed, Reforging a Forgotten History for further detail on subordinating narrativization. 4 4 See the Facebook page of Diyarbakır Süryani Kültür Derneğ i that describes itself as Müslüman Süryaniler, www.facebook.com/suryanikulturdiyarbakir/ (Accessed July 20, 2017). 45 See Simo Parpola, Assyrian Identity in Ancient Times and Today, 18, http://etana.org/node/8043 and www.nineveh.com/parpola_eng.pdf (Accessed September 2, 2016). “It is the only identity that can help them to transcend the differences between them, speak with one voice again, catch the attention of the world, and regain their place among the nations.” 46 Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (Minneola, NY: Dover Publications, 2017 [1849]), 9.

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10 Christians from a Muslim background in the Middle East Duane Alexander Miller

The twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have witnessed the decline of many of the minorities throughout much of the Middle East. This is true both for ethnic minorities like A ­ rmenians and Assyrians, and for religious minorities like Jews outside of Israel, and Christians from the various ancient churches. But there is one religious minority that, while remaining very small as a percentage of the entire population, has experienced dramatic growth. In spite of the rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the civil wars in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, and the political instability following the so-called Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, this growth does not show signs of ceasing. This is the religious community of Christians who have converted from Islam, or as they will be called in this chapter, C ­ hristians from a Muslim background (CMBs). Religious conversion can be understood as turning away from one vision of God, humanity, and the cosmos, toward another such vision, regarding the previous one as flawed, incorrect, or inauthentic in some way, and regarding the new as somehow truer and more satisfying. In terms of conversions from Islam to Christianity, it is not uncommon then to have some dissatisfaction with Islam, the Qur’an, the Prophet, or the shari’a, coupled with some feature of Christianity—the Bible, the personality of Jesus, miracles, or dreams—that contribute to the conversion. Motifs for conversion among CMBs may be intellectual, experimental, mystical, or affectional. Such conversions often take pace gradually as the individual engages in a religious ‘quest’ to resolve some ‘crisis’ that called the old religious worldview into question.1 I will begin this chapter by outlining the best estimates for how many of these Christians live in each country of the region. I will then move on to examine some of the factors that these converts give when asked what motivated their conversion. As a Christian minority, we will then look at some of the key facets of their religious identity. In the fourth section, we will examine the outcomes of these conversions, specifically in terms of how the converts are treated by the state and their families. Finally, we will examine some challenges they face and the strategies that have been devised by the communities of CMBs in order to address the often-difficult context in which they find themselves.

How many and where? In 2015, Patrick Johnstone and I published “Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background: A Global Census,” wherein we presented what we considered to be our best estimates of 132

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believers in Christ from a Muslim background (BMBs) for each country as of 2010, which were our latest data. In that census, we drew on the most recent estimates we could procure from ministers and missionaries with in-country experience and adjusted populations based on population growth, church growth, and migration patterns.2 Before presenting the estimates for each country, it is necessary to clarify that while all CMBs are BMBs, the reverse is not necessarily the case. This is because there are reportedly some people who continue to identify as Muslims and not Christians in some cultural sense, while also understanding themselves as having been forgiven of their sins by God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The name of that doctrine in Christian theology is atonement, and it is a foundation of Christian theology in all of its traditions and varieties. By Muslims, the doctrine is generally understood to be anathema. The existence of these “Muslim followers of Jesus” in the region is in itself questionable, and there are no critical published case studies for scholars, or missionaries for that matter, to examine. That having been said, most or almost all the BMBs in the Middle East in the census we are examining can be considered to be ex-Muslim Christians. Substantial populations exist among the Amazygh (or Berbers) in Algeria, who in substantial numbers found that ­Christianity complemented their culture and language rather than suppressing it, which many claimed was their experience under Islam. A similar process has taken place in Iran, though there a high level of disaffection regarding the results of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 is also a force causing many Iranians to consider turning away from Islam.3 Note that these are moderate estimates for 2010, and so do not account for demographic changes related to the civil war in Syria. Finally, note that that the number is for residents, not necessarily citizens. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Morocco: 3,000 Algeria: 380,000 Tunisia: 500 Libya: 1,500 Egypt: 14,000 Saudi Arabia: 5,0004 Yemen: 400 Oman: 200 UAE: 200 Qatar: 200 Kuwait: 350 Israel: 300 Palestine: 200 Jordan: 6,500 Iraq: 1,500 Syria: 2,000 Lebanon: 2,5005

Regarding countries neighboring the Middle East, and sometimes included in the region, there are two important countries that should be mentioned: Our census also estimated 100,000 converts in Iran, though the number is certainly higher today, probably approaching half a million. The increase in conversions in Iran started around the time of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, as some people gradually grew disillusioned with the Islamic rule and felt that Islam had failed as both a political and, consequently, a religious system, and sought 133

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other manners of relating to God.6 The number in Jordan may be related to the fact that many CMBs who feel they must flee their home country for safety go there, and also because of a highly contextualized style of witness present there. In Turkey, there is a small but growing network of evangelical and charismatic Christian churches, and the number of converts there is about 4,500, up from a handful of converts in the 1960s.7

The growth of the CMB community At a time when the Muslim population is growing rapidly throughout most of the West and religiosity in the West appears to be declining among Christians, it comes to many as a surprise that substantial numbers of people are leaving Islam for Christianity. Indeed, the increase of conversions from Islam to Christianity is not isolated to the Middle East, but appears to be a global phenomenon.8 What are the key factors that have allowed for this new phenomenon to take place? This is the question to be addressed in this section. First, we can point to changes related to globalization. Globalization entails a context wherein people can much more easily come into contact with people with different religions and worldviews. On a personal level, this is true as large numbers of students have studied in countries where they were much more likely to meet an evangelistically minded Christian than in their home country. Moreover, the many instances of tumult in the Middle East have resulted in a steady flow of emigrants, some of whom come to the conclusion that Islam is to be blamed for the problems that led them into exile, and consequently seek another way of knowing God. Conversely, it is often easier for a business person to live in or travel to many areas of the Middle East than it was before. Part and parcel of globalization is the revolution in communications. This started out with Christian radio broadcasts but soon grew to the point where a Muslim in Mecca could fairly easily take part in a chat with fellow CMBs, read Christian books in Arabic, and listen to sermons or lessons via satellite. Historically, many Islamic countries could and did utilize their power to stymie the spread of such communications. They could shut down the distribution center, burn the Bibles, and expel the missionaries. But the nature of globalized communications, especially the Internet and satellite television, make this exercise of censorial power difficult, if not impossible. Christian ministries, especially evangelical and charismatic ones, have been quick to capitalize on these new modes of communication, such that even in a country that until recently had no indigenous church at all (Saudi Arabia, Yemen), the Christian message has become an option for those who wish to explore it. Another broad category of factors that have helped to create a context wherein the ­Christian message is more widely available is related to changes in how missionary work and strategy are carried out. For one, there has been a greater awareness of the importance of crafting communication to relate and connect to nuanced cultural and social situations. To what extent this crafting, called directed contextualization, can or should go is much disputed among missionaries, but there can be no question that some of the ideas have worked in certain situations. For instance, some missionaries realized that even if Arabs technically can read, many of them are functionally semi-literate and very few read for pleasure. Around this realization, and an appreciation for the orality of so much Arab culture, a ministry of storytelling and story-learning grew up.9 Others produced affordable recorded messages, so people, including entirely illiterate people, could listen to portions of the Bible.10 In terms of strategy, there developed a focus on the 10/40 Window, which identifies a rectangular portion of the earth stretching from Morocco to East Asia between 10˚ north and 40˚ north that is home to the largest number of people who have not been exposed to Christian teaching 134

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in the world.11 This helped mission agencies to focus on locating ethnic-cultural groups that had no Christian voice among them at all. The entire Middle East lies in the 10/40 Window. These are but a few examples of changes in practice and strategy among those trying to convert Muslims, though many more could be provided.12 Third, according to missionaries and converts, there is unquestionably a supernatural or transcendental aspect at play. Converts report many dreams and visions. While these only represent part of the larger process of religious conversion, they are mentioned often and with great variety in terms of their content. Missionaries who have reflected on this question often mention that there has been a substantial increase in prayer for the spread of the ­Christian message among Muslims. All three of these categories augment each other. New Bible translations that became possible because of advances in technology were then available easily and for free through the Internet. CMBs exiled from their homelands could continue to interact with Muslims back home more easily. Entire libraries of Christian literature or audio-visual media could be transferred from one smart phone to another in a minute via Bluetooth. The Muslim in an isolated town who had a mysterious vision or dream of Jesus or Mary now had multiple avenues for accessing more information. There was also a good chance that the Christian message an individual encountered had been tailored for his or her specific cultural context and thus more easily comprehensible. Indeed, there was a good chance that it was composed by a CMB from his or her own cultural milieu. Evangelicals had also, in substantial numbers, come to the conclusion that sharing the gospel with Muslims in the Middle East was of key strategic import in order for them to fulfill Jesus’ command to “make disciples of all people groups,” rather than the original evangelical strategy, called the Great Experiment, to “reform” the ancient, indigenous churches of the region into evangelical churches, trusting that those indigenous Christians would then evangelize their Muslim neighbors—a strategy that was largely unsuccessful.13 Underlying all of this is a sense of unease experienced by many Muslims that somehow Islam is not delivering the just and prosperous society that it promises. In Islam, at least as these converts construe it, the political and religious facets are two sides of one coin. Once the political claims of Islam are in doubt, the religious claims of Islam’s Prophet are all likewise called into question. Indeed, there is a general sense among many CMBs that what is often called “radical,” “fundamentalist,” and “jihadist” Islam is nothing more than Islam rightly understood and applied. As one young Palestinian convert from Syria provocatively told me, “I give thanks to God for Islamic State, because it is finally unmasking true Islam to the whole world.” If apostasy from Islam is a challenge to the perceived well-being of Islamic societies, this sort of rhetoric represents a challenge to the West, as most CMBs are incredulous that, from their point of view, the West is naively and voluntarily destroying its own future by abandoning Christianity while insisting that Islam is a “religion of peace.”

Reasons for conversion With this context in mind, we can turn to surveys of converts who were asked, “Why did you convert?” Multiple studies exist that explore this topic, but in evaluating them all, the most comprehensive list is that composed by Catholic priest Jean-Marie Gaudeul, who presents the following list, though I have rephrased some of his points for brevity and clarity:14 1 Jesus is so attractive. Many converts explain that the person of Jesus and his actions as portrayed in the New Testament were compelling and attractive. Specific examples were 135

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2

3

4

5

6

his treatment of women, especially when compared to the perceived problematic nature of Muhammad’s relations with his wives and his concubine. For instance, one convert from Israel told me that after reading the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), she could not imagine how such a sublime teaching could somehow be superseded by what she understood as the inferior ethics she found in the Qur’an and Muhammad’s life. Christianity satisfies their thirst for truth, in that it has a consistency that they did not find in Islam. There is in general a sense that Christianity as a faith encouraged its adherents to ask questions and engage in exploration, while Islam is perceived as restrictive and limiting. A new family. While Islam claims that there is an egalitarian unity and equality among all Muslims of all races, the lived experience of some converts did not live up to this claim. In the local church or fellowship of CMBs, they felt they had found a more nourishing and life-giving community that they desired to become part of. Acts of kindness carried out by Christians toward Muslims before their conversion are also cited as instances that caused the them to reassess their religious views about God and, again, Muhammad and Jesus. Christianity promises forgiveness through Christ, not by obeying a set of rules. C ­ hristianity has as a key doctrine the conviction that it is Christ’s death and resurrection that effectuate the forgiveness of sins for all who will receive it. In Christ’s words in Matthew 26:28, “This is my blood of the covenant, shed for you [the apostles] and for many, for the forgiveness of sins.” For Muslims who are worried about the afterlife and concerned with scrupulously keeping the five pillars of Islam in detail, this message is attractive. A God who is close to humanity. Converts felt that the transcendence of God in ­Islam made Him a distant, unapproachable figure. They contrast this with Christianity, wherein God’s word becomes not a book, but a human being. At the heart of many of the contextual theologies of CMBs is the conviction that the transcendent power and thus the distance of Islam’s deity make him unapproachable. The deity of Christianity, especially as understood through the doctrine of the Incarnation, is incompatible with the deity of Islam and Christianity is therefore more compelling and attractive. To this we should add a point from another study by Woodberry and Shubin:15 Dreams, visions, and miracle, as was covered in the previous section.

As stated earlier, underlying all of these, there is sometimes a sense of disappointment with Islam,16 which may provoke a search for an alternative. This disappointment pushes people away from their Islam, while the factors listed here attract, or pull, some people toward Christianity. Conversions always involve several of these factors in various orders, and it is not uncommon for a conversion to move from an initial questioning to an informed profession of faith over several years. Conversions very rarely happen in the space of less than three or four years. Regarding the movements in Algeria and Iran, an additional factor can be identified: that Christianity values its cultural heritage, whereas Islam is perceived as an Arabizing form of cultural imperialism. That Christianity not only sanctions but encourages for Amazigh (Berbers) in Algeria and Persians in Iran to worship God and read scripture in their own language has attracted hundreds of thousands of people who felt that Islam sought to impose on them a foreign language and culture. Regarding Algeria, this is coupled with the aftermath of a lengthy, bloody civil war wherein Muslims killed Muslims, calling into question the goodness of Islam, as well as a number of dynamic early leaders, consisting of both missionaries and indigenous Christians. 136

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Finally, it is also worth noting that “female conversions are strongly influenced by an awareness of Jesus’ treatment of women in the Gospels, include greater degrees of practical and experiential factors, and are complicated by the role of males in their immediate families.”17 The research area of differentiating between conversion dynamics based on gender and/or socio-economic class is one that, on the whole, has not yet been substantially explored.

Religious identity CMBs are often active in forming their own doctrinal positions and, especially, apologetics to answer the objections of Muslims, often their own friends or family members. CMBs very rarely compose what would be considered as “theological texts” in the Western tradition of systematic theology. Rather, often their theology-making takes the form of what Robert Schreiter calls wisdom theology and liberation theology.18 Wisdom theology is pragmatically oriented and seeks to communicate to Christians how to live the spiritual life, believing that the love of God is present with the believer even in the midst of persecution and loneliness. As converts relate their own conversion narratives, whether in the form of a book or in personal conversation, they will often provide advice in the form of commending this or that course of action which they had taken, or conversely, relate a poor choice they made and warn the audience not to make the same mistake. One man may relate how he revealed his new faith to family members, another may relate how she struggled to be accepted by other Christians in the local church, and yet another one may relate how he had to obstinately insist on being baptized to a pastor or priest worried about an outbreak of persecution. One can also identify liberation theology as a key locus of theology-making for some of these believers. Liberation theology understands the key theological artifact not as the writing of books or articles, but as praxis, which is an active attempt to exercise agency in order to subvert unjust social structures in the name of justice and the Kingdom of God. Unlike the better-known Latin American liberation theology, the unjust structure to be subverted here is not an economic system that oppresses the poor, but the Islamic shari’a itself. More will be said about this in a following section, but suffice to say that the shari’a as they experienced it did not allow for them to live out their new faith in safety and freedom. In their view, the shari’a need not be reformed but discarded in toto, construed as intrinsically in violation of fundamental human rights, namely the right to leave one’s religion for another (or no) religion. These efforts for social reform can be interpreted, at least in part, as an attempt of some members of this minority to sustain their convert identities while also insisting that they are loyal to their home countries and ethnic groups. This issue of integration while maintaining identity has been a recurring theme of the various chapters in this volume. In terms of denominational affiliation, the vast majority of CMBs subscribe to some form or evangelical or charismatic Christianity. Within the Middle East, when inquirers seek the care of the Orthodox or Catholic churches, they are generally turned away, though there are some exceptions. This rejection generally takes place either because clergy are incredulous that a Muslim would really want to convert, or because they are afraid that this conversion will lead to an outbreak of persecution because their actions have led to hurt feelings. ­Evangelical Christians, with their emphasis on intentional religious conversion, and their general conviction that a key purpose for the existence of the church is precisely to welcome, if not actively seek out, such converts, are the only option left. Furthermore, as discussed 137

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earlier, it has largely been Christians from such backgrounds that have taken the initiative to evangelize Muslims, whether through media, the sending of missionaries, or the ministries of indigenous churches. Up to this point, we have addressed several important questions for the emergence of this unique minority people in the Middle East. An outlier, it is in fact a growing minority, and in some countries a rapidly growing one. Furthermore, it is, among all the religious minorities in this book, the only one whose birth is less than a century in the past. This chapter has so far sought to account for the context wherein this growth occurred, some estimates of numbers of converts by country, and the reasons given by members of this minority for voluntarily deciding to join it (with the exception of the children, as will be addressed later). In the following section, the issue of the unique challenges faced by CMBs in the Middle East will be addressed.

Challenges faced by CMBs One useful ethnographic lens through which the struggles of CMBs can be interpreted is that of pollution, purity, and danger.19 Communities have many ways of dealing with elements that are considered to be sources of pollution. These sources of pollution that contaminate the perceived purity of the community are regarded as dangerous and must be delimited or eliminated altogether. Apostasy from Islam is widely regarded as a problematic source of pollution. The instruction of the Prophet as to how to address such sources of pollution is simple and clear—execution. But communities of Muslims have devised various additional strategies for either eliminating the source of pollution or making sure that it does not spread. Meanwhile, the convert is on a quest to form a new and stable convert identity, and this invariably involves an assertion of one’s own conversion as a free decision and the concomitant insistence that the convert’s new Christian identity be accepted and acknowledged.20 In other words, the “polluter” wants to be sanctioned and protected even while his choices and actions endanger the cohesion of his (Muslim) community—be it a family or a nation-state. The following sections about the challenges that CMBs face should be read with this ethnographic background in mind—that the CMB is perceived as a polluting presence, while the CMB asserts that the conversion is not pollution, but redemption and salvation. CMBs face a wide assortment of challenges as they seek to form and stabilize their convert identities. These challenges will be addressed here under the headings of challenges related to the state, challenges related to families, and challenges related to the Christian community.

Challenges related to the state and family Persecution or opposition from official government bodies differs from country to country, and sometimes from region to region within a country. In some countries, apostates can realistically expect to be incarcerated and interrogated by the state. This is especially true for converts who are vocal about their conversions and actively share their new faith with their friends and family. To avoid allegations that such prosecution constitutes persecution of Christians, with possible accompanying negative press, it is common for the state to produce some other charge. In rare cases, prosecution may actually end with an officially sanctioned execution. In other places (or at other times in the same country), the state does not actively oppose conversion. But differentiating between the former practice and the latter is difficult, because sometimes the state will question or incarcerate a convert not because of the conversion, but 138

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in order to maintain the peace among non-government elements who will take matters into their own hands. One might ideally hope that the state would incarcerate the people who threaten the well-being of the CMB who, after all, has merely exercised his or her human right to change religion. But this is very rarely the case. When the police are confronted with the choice between incarcerating a CMB (or a number of them) and confronting violent, fundamentalist, and often powerful elements within the Islamic society, the choice is an easy one. Here, then, the persecution is not occasioned by the conversion itself, but as an easy way to affirm the superiority and power of Islam, and thus placate those who would enforce the clear punishment prescribed by the Prophet: execution. A key challenge related to the state is that of legal recognition of religious conversion. Many countries ( Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, some of the Gulf states) will not legally allow the CMB to change his religious status from “Muslim” to “Christian” on his governmental records. Some countries do keep track of this information and allow the convert to change the status (Turkey, Israel). In countries that never had a Christian minority, the very possibility itself is novel—can one be a Yemeni Christian, for instance? Finally, many countries in the Middle East are in such a state of turmoil that there is, functionally, no rule of law regarding the matter at all. The question of one’s official religious status before the government is important to these believers, affecting everything from naming children to marriage to where one’s body will be buried. A key issue that many of the young communities of CMBs is facing is related to marriage and religious status. Consider a young lady who is a CMB who wishes to marry her Christian boyfriend in Egypt or Jordan. The shari’a does not allow a Muslim woman to wed a non-Muslim, and since she is a Muslim according to her religious identity, a lawfully recognized union is not possible. Even if the couple eloped to a country where a civil marriage is possible, the validity of that marriage might not be recognized upon their return. If it is recognized, it is likely that any children they have would be, according to the shari’a, registered as Muslims. This would mean that while the family might go to church, pray like Christians, and tell everyone they are Christians, if the children go to public school they will be obliged to participate in classes where they are instructed on Islam. Adults are often used to managing various identities—one person acts in a certain way in their capacity as professor, in another as his capacity is church deacon, and still another as a father or a spouse. This juggling of identities and modifying one’s speech and mannerisms based on the context is something that CMBs often do—acting one way around their parents and another around their brethren at church, for instance. While adults are often accustomed to this, it can be very difficult for children. The question of how to raise children who are, as far their school is concerned, Muslims, while their family says they are Christians—this is a question that is beginning to be confronted by CMBs throughout the region as children are now being born from the unions of people who converted as adults. What if the CMB was the man, and the woman a Christian? A different set of problems would be encountered. The shari’a does allow for a Muslim man to take Christian or Jewish wives. However, the children would be registered as Muslim, which would certainly be opposed by the woman’s Christian parents. Furthermore, family law issues would be resolved according to shari’a, any questions relating to divorce or child custody would be governed by the shari’a, and not according to the canon law of the church, which would be the case if two recognized Christians were married. There is a universal opinion among Christians and CMBs that the various Christian churches safeguard the rights and well-being of a woman better than shari’a courts do; such courts are often judged as being misogynistic and unjustly favoring men above women, and Muslims above non-Muslims. 139

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On a pastoral level, churches that have substantial CMB membership have largely settled for the least bad situation, which is to have CMBs marry one another.21 Others engage in advocacy, principally by telling their own conversion narratives, aimed at reforming their societies in the light of the justice and integrity they believe they have encountered in the person of Jesus Christ and his message. Which is to say, they argue for the abolition of shari’a as inherently dehumanizing and unreformable. Finally, it is not uncommon for CMBs to simply marry a foreigner and emigrate to the West, but the negative implication of this for the indigenous church is that it is robbed of the convert’s presence and leadership.22 From the point of view of the Muslim society, the “polluting” presence has been successfully expelled. In sum, then, most Islamic states uphold the orthodox shari’a in relation to conversion by refusing to recognize religious conversion from Islam to Christianity (while conversion from Christianity to Islam is always viable). This places a great deal of stress on CMBs, especially in the area of marriage and child-rearing. There are other perceived injustices related to this refusal to respect the CMBs human rights. In addition to those already mentioned, CMBs often cannot be recognized as clergy by the government, as clergy have the responsibility of signing legal documents for the church and issuing official documents like certificates of baptism and marriage. One of the key examples in this section regarding challenges faced from the state is related to marriage and family formation. While the starting point was indeed related to the state—the refusal to allow converts legally to change their religious affiliation—it was also noted that sometimes there was a familial element that compounded the problem.23 As a Lutheran in Bethlehem explained to me, the issue of religion is inextricably connected to family identity. There exists the conviction that leaving Islam necessarily means betraying one’s family, and alienation from family is widespread among CMBs. Even if Muslim family members want to continue to relate to a convert, there is often an overwhelming social pressure to force/entice the convert to “return to Islam,” or if that fails, to rid the community of the “polluting” presence of the apostate. As noted elsewhere, there are different strategies for achieving that. These include keeping the convert confined (more common for young women), killing the convert (which is rare, but can happen), forcing the convert to emigrate (more common), or forcing the convert into quietism (also common). At this point it is appropriate to focus on a set of special challenges faced by CMBs who are young women. In most societies in the Middle East, it is not acceptable for a young woman to live alone or to live apart from her family until she gets married. Furthermore, refusing marriage and opting for a life of singlehood is generally seen as unacceptable, though some women CMBs have indeed done this. Many young women CMBs find themselves living in homes with their family or extended family where they are expected to be faithful, obedient, and helpful to the family, even while simultaneously being treated with suspicion (at best), or outright physical abuse, or even to be in danger of their lives. The possibility of being murdered is indeed a real one, but when it does happen, it is usually carried out by a family member seeking simply to obey the Prophet’s command and also to “purify” his family’s honor of the “contaminating” presence of the apostate.24 If the young woman CMB is not able to find a fellow CMB to marry, and she is not willing to insist on the socially abnormal state of prolonged, single adulthood, she will marry a Muslim man of her family’s liking. At that point, her time and energy are focused on building a new family, and her involvement with other believers is generally curtailed, if not entirely stopped. Even in the unlikely case that her new Muslim husband accepts her status as an apostate, the demands placed on married women whose husbands are not also CMBs represent the end of involvement in CMB community. The convert may continue to 140

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hold to her Christian convictions, but apart from a community to support and affirm her and wherein she can achieve spiritual maturity—which is to say from a stable convert i­dentity— her voice as a believer will generally be muted. This, like the believer emigrating from the region due to marriage or intimidation, represents a success in delimiting the spread of the “impure” “contamination” of the Christian message in the otherwise “pristine” Muslim society. With the emigrant, the pollution has been excised altogether. With the CMB who marries a Muslim man and is separated from the local church, society has successfully isolated the contaminating presence, ensuring that it will neither spread nor grow.

Challenges within the Christian community CMBs participate in a number of different types of Christian communities, and these in turn are influenced by any preexisting Christian communities in the region and the level of freedom accorded to Christians in general. In order to form a new stable convert identity and to grow in spiritual maturity, taking part in the regular life of a Christian community is indispensable. However, Muslim inquirers (that is, who have not yet made a decision to convert, but who are seeking answers to questions) and CMBs face a number of difficulties as they try to find a new spiritual home. The best study of this quest for a new home is Kathryn Kraft’s 2007 doctoral thesis in sociology from University of Bristol. That thesis, Community and Identity Among Arabs of a Muslim Background who Choose to Follow a Christian Faith, is based on Kraft’s fieldwork among converts, most of them in Lebanon and Egypt.25 According to Kraft (and affirmed in my own fieldwork among converts in Israel-Palestine26 and Jordan), CMBs often seek out friendships with Christians who were born into Christian families, but they often encounter a lack of trust. This is true both when it comes to individuals and also when it comes to having church leadership trust a convert with a leadership position.27 One convert and former student of mine in Nazareth explained that rather than attending one of the evangelical Christian churches in the area, he preferred to attend a home church in a Jewish-majority town which worshiped in Hebrew. He explained that the evangelical churches, all of whose members were converts from Orthodox, Greek Catholic, and Maronite Christianity, would treat him with suspicion. But at the home church where many of the members were Messianic Jews, alone with a few CMBs, he was welcome. The Messianic Jews, as people who were on the margins of mainstream Jewish society (that is to say, liminal figures, as we shall see later) in terms of religious devotion, could sympathize with these CMBs who were likewise neither normal Muslims nor normal Christians. Another CMB from Nazareth, who was at that time a young lady, related how she had joined a local charismatic church, but when it came to taking part in the Lord’s Supper, she felt she was treated with extra scrutiny and suspicion. She was asked if she really understood the significance of the ritual. She complained to me that had she come from a Christian household, she would never have been treated like this. There is, then, a common concern among CMBs that they are not accorded the same trust and confidence that is accorded to people raised in Christian households. I did find one church in a city we will call Juduur where the pastor and leadership had been successful in creating a mixed congregation that was welcoming to Muslim seekers and CMBs. He was aware of these concerns about a double standard and explained that when a Muslim asks for baptism, he treats him the same way that he treats someone from a Christian background asking for baptism (or technically, rebaptism, as the church in question practices the so-called believer’s baptism). He furthermore explained that many of the other churches have good reasons to be suspicious based on past experience, but that making such pastoral decisions 141

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about seekers and CMBs out of fear and suspicion is not a faithful representation of Christian leadership or the pastoral office.28 The pastor also cautioned against another extreme, which is that of making the convert into a heroic figure and hero of the faith. But this error is much more common in the West, where tales of persecution and imprisonment often lead to the lionization of the convert before he or she has attained the spiritual and emotional maturity to handle the attention with the needed level of humility and prudence. An additional problem related to “celebrity converts” in the West is that Christians often assume that former Muslims are in fact authorities on Islam, the Qur’an, and Arabic. In reality though, most Muslims are like most people of any religion, having only a basic exposure to some form of local Islam. This can then lead to a misinformed church-going community who think they know something about historic, global Islam, while they may have merely heard a couple of anecdotes from a Palestinian or Pakistani town or city from one person’s life. These, then, are the two main options for the CMB: participation in a local evangelical church, or worshiping in a home church which may consist partially or largely of converts. But what about conversion to the ancient, indigenous churches of the Middle East? Broadly speaking, Muslim seekers and CMBs are turned away from Orthodox and, to a lesser extent, Catholic churches. The historical memory of dhimmitude has deeply influenced this facet of the life of the ancient churches: “Powerlessness placed intolerable burdens upon the churches, forcing them to make daily compromises while offering rich rewards for apostasy [from Christianity to Islam].”29 The prohibition against welcoming in converts from Islam was so profound that it was inscribed in the very geography of many towns and cities throughout the Middle East: Churches, synagogues, and other non-Muslim places of worship were restricted to l­ocations outside the central public areas of the city. Usually they were located in the ­residential quarters where those who frequented them lived. […] In principle, n ­ on-­Muslim communities remained constant, while only the community of Muslims was free to grow by way of proselytism. New mosques could therefore be built as needed, but non-Muslim places of worship could for the most part be only repaired or replaced.30 The prohibition of welcoming in converts, with only a few exceptions, has written itself so deeply into the psyche of the ancient churches that many of their clergy pre-reflectively dismiss the possibility altogether. A couple of notable exceptions can be found among the Coptic Orthodox and the Roman Catholics, though the latter are, like Protestants, relative latecomers to the region. In sum, CMBs encounter many challenges in forming lasting and meaningful relationships with other Christians and within their own churches. There is often a sense that Christians from Christian families are overly suspicious and wary of them, and the ancient churches turn them away instinctively, often telling them to try harder to be a good Muslim or directing them to an evangelical church.31

Conclusion A much-discussed structure that has been proposed in order to understand the faith of these Christ-centered communities is the C-scale of Timothy Tennent. In this scale, he proposes to differentiate between various Christ-centered communities (that is the C in the C-scale) based on how they integrate indigenous customs and forms into their worship. A C1 church would be an expat church worshiping in a foreign language, while a C5 community would 142

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probably look like a Muslim prayer gathering to the uninitiated, with separation of women and men, retention of dress, the use of reading stand for the Holy Book so that it does not touch the ground, chanted prayers in the local style, and so on. Among missionaries and practitioners, the primary debate has been regarding where the line from contextualization to syncretism is crossed. For instance, can the C5 community still confess the Shahada, confessing that in some way Muhammad was a genuine prophet? The most trenchant critique, which has led to the gradual abandonment of the C-scale as an useful analytical tool, is that the C-scale is based on a facile and simplistic understanding of culture and religion. As one veteran missionary and scholar noted, “Contextualization that results in a strong church will incorporate and transform such cultural forms as politics, education, economy, labor, social organization, and family systems.”32 In other words, the C-scale focuses on a superficial and ultimately shallow vision of religious identity and contextualization. The Latin word for a threshold is limina. This image of a place that is neither within nor without gave rise to the ethnographic term liminality. “Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial.”33 In seeking to really understand the context of CMBs, it is helpful to understand their liminality. With regard to their Muslim society and family, CMBs try to retain relational connections while rejecting the transcendent, prophetic dimension that is understood to undergird the very existence of said communities. They do not want to be perceived as “polluting” elements, and so some denounce the legal structures (the shari’a) that give them this status. In all of these things, they are liminal. In relation to the preexisting Christian communities, the CMB is also a liminal figure. In relation to marriage, this is a simple legal reality in many countries—the convert cannot marry into the preexisting community. In terms of friendship and leadership, their existence is accepted, but they are often treated with suspicion. They are accepted as Christians, but strange ones. This can result in the formation of their own CMB communities, wherein all are liminal, and therefore, for a brief time at least, normal. No wonder, then, that identity formation and the negotiation of these many different relationships—with state, family, spouse, children, church—are of central concern to the CMB. CMBs represent a numerically small but growing minority community in the Middle East. In this chapter, I have provided some estimates for the numbers of CMBs throughout the region, mentioned a list of principal factors that have helped create a context wherein this growth in the number of conversions could occur, and summarized some reasons given by these converts as to why they have made the decision to convert, and then focused on some of the key challenges they face as they seek to live out and grow in their new faith while also remaining members of their indigenous communities. The factors that have led to the upswing in conversions from Islam to Christianity show no sign of letting up, and reports of increased conversions of Syrian refugees to Europe appear to be evidence in favor of this. CMBs are a unique minority in the Middle East then, first because membership in the community is not ethnically or linguistically defined, but is voluntary. Second, because it is, alone among such minorities, experiencing substantial and sustained growth.

Notes 1 The key book on the topic is Lewis Rambo’s Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). But for a helpful historical background on conversion to ­Christianity, see also A.D. Nock’s classic Conversion: The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), also easily available in newer editions.

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Duane Alexander Miller 2 For a much more detailed explanation of our methodology, see Duane Alexander Miller and Patrick Johnstone, “Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background: A Global Census”, Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 11, article 10 (2015), 1–9. 3 For more on the Iranian movement, see Chapter 6 of Duane Alexander Miller, Living among the Breakage: Contextual Theology-making and ex-Muslim Christians (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016). 4 The original census proposed 60,000, but subsequent research and information reveal this figure to be too high. 5 Johnstone and Miller, “Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background: A Global Census”. 6 For a popular introduction to this topic, see Mark Bradley, Iran: Open Hearts in a Closed Land (Colorado Springs: Authentic, 2007). For a history of key actors and an analysis of how the Islamic Republic’s ability to delimit conversion has deteriorated, see Duane Alexander Miller, “Power, Personalities and Politics: The Growth of Iranian Christianity since 1979,” Mission Studies 32, no. 1 (2015), 66–86. All of the author’s writings may be accessed at no charge from his page at academia.edu. 7 For more on the growth of the church in Turkey, see James Bultema, “Muslims Coming to Christ in Turkey,” International Journal of Frontier Missiology 27, no. 1 (Spring 2010), 27–31. 8 David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam (Monument, CO: Wigtake, 2014) is a popular treatment of the topic on a global level. 9 For examples of this, see, for instance, Morgan Jackson, “The Gospel in Oral Tradition,” Lausanne World Pulse, October–November 2009, 9–16; Doug Bender and Steve Sims, “Short-term Trips, Bible Storying & Church Planting,” Mission Frontiers, January–February 2012, 10–13. 10 For an example of this, see Allan Starling, “Oral Communications and the Global Recordings Network,” Lausanne World Pulse, October–November 2009. 11 “What Is the 10/40 Window?” at Joshua Project. Available https://joshuaproject.net/resources/­ articles/10_40_window (Accessed 13 June 2016). 12 For a more detailed exploration of this, see Duane Alexander Miller, “Woven in the Weakness of the Changing Body: The Genesis of World Islamic Christianity.” Paper presented at Coming to Faith Consultation 2, Buckinghamshire, UK, February 2010. 13 For the overall failure of this strategy in Persia, see Robert Blincoe, Ethnic Realities and the Church: Lessons from Kurdistan (Pasadena, CA: Presbyterian Center for Mission Studies, 1998) and in the Middle East, see Peter Pikkert, Protestant Missionaries to the Middle East: Ambassadors for Christ or Culture? (Hamilton, ON: WEC Canada, 2008). 14 Jean-Marie Gaudeul, Called from Islam to Christ: Why Muslims become Christians (East Sussex: ­Monarch, 1999). 15 J. Dudley Woodberry and Russell Shubin, “Muslims Tell… ‘Why I Chose Jesus,’” Mission Frontiers, March 2001. Available www.missionfrontiers.org/pdf/2001/01/muslim.htm (Accessed 18 September 2013). 16 For more on the various studies that exist and my comparison of them, see D.A. Miller, “An Exploration of Christ’s Converts from Islam: Reasons Given for Their Conversions,” Journal of Asian Missiology 15, no. 2 (2014), 15–25. 17 Warrick Farah, “Factors Influencing Arab Muslims to Embrace Biblical Faith that Inform Adaptive Evangelism in Islamic Countries”, unpublished dissertation for Doctor of Missiology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena CA, 2015, 90. 18 Robert J. Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (London: SCM, 1985), 75–92. 19 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (New York: Routledge Classics, 2002). 20 That the formation of a stable convert identity is a key concern for the CMB is a main conclusion advanced by Seppo Syrjänen’s groundbreaking work on CMBs: In Search of Meaning and Identity: Conversion to Christianity in Pakistani Muslim Culture (Helsinki: Finnish Society for Missiology and Ecumenics, 1984). While his research took place decades ago in Pakistan, his observation about the construction of a stable convert identity is valid for CMBs in the Middle East today. Kathryn Kraft also pays ample attention to the issue of identity formation (see Chapters 7 and 8 of Kathryn Kraft, Community and Identity among Arabs of a Muslim Background who Chose to Follow a Christian Faith, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Bristol, Bristol UK, 2007). See also Chapter 2 of Miller, Living among the Breakage. 21 A fictionalized account of the marriage of two CMBs can be found in Brother Andrew with Al Janssen, Secret Believers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011). While the account is fictionalized, it is plausible and based on actual cases.

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Christians from a Muslim background in the Middle East 22 But note that some emigrant converts go on to form ministries aimed at people from their homeland, and deliver these via satellite or Internet. See, for instance, Palestinian Tass Saada with Dean Merrill, Once an Arafat Man (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2008). For Iran, see Saiid ­R abiipour, Farewell to Islam (Maitland, FL: Xulon, 2009) and David Nassir, Jumping through Fires (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2009). For an example of a British-Pakistani woman, see Hannah Shah, The Imam’s Daughter (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010). 23 For more on the challenges related to finding a spouse, see Kraft, Community and Identity, 205–208. For examples of how CMBs in the similar context of Pakistan address this difficult issue, see Tim Green, “Identity issues for ex-Muslim Christians, with Particular Reference to Marriage,” St Francis Magazine 8, no. 4 (August 2012), 435–481. 24 An example of one such martyrdom is that of a young woman from Saudi Arabia, Fatima al ­Mutayri (sometimes spelled Matayri). See The Way of Fatima: A Collection of Articles, Messages, and Poems Related to Fatima al-Matayri Who was Martyred in August 2008, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for her Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Translator unknown, July 2009, no publisher. The PDF is readily available online, or this author can supply it: [email protected]. 25 The thesis was later published as Kathryn Ann Kraft, Searching for Heaven in the Real World (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013), though I am citing from the doctoral thesis itself. 26 For more on conversion in Israel and Palestine, see my chapter “Christians from a Muslim ­Background in Israel and the West Bank” Azar Ajaj, Duane Miller, and Phil Sumpter, Arab Evangelicals in Israel (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016). 27 Kraft, Community and Identity, 200–205. 28 For further information on Juduur and how that community inadvertently planted a church consisting of converts from Islam, see Chapter 4 of Duane Miller, Living among the Breakage. 29 Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2002), 9. For examples of how this process actually resulted in the decline of certain churches, see Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996). 30 Bernard Weiss, The Spirit of Islamic Law (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 149. 31 Kraft, in analyzing this enduring state of disconnection from others, utilizes the sociological word anomie, by which she means, “the sense that one sees a glimpse of something more, and sets his/her hopes on attaining it, but is frustrated by an inability to achieve it” Community and Identity, 178). 32 Roger Dixon and Duane Alexander Miller, “Contextualization is More than Religious and ­Cultural Forms,” Journal of Asian Mission 15, no. 1 (May 2014), 26. 33 Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols (New York: Cornell University Press, 1967), 95.

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11 The Yezidis An ancient people, tragedy, and struggle for survival Birgül Açıkyıldız-Şengül

While the Middle East is shaken by military interventions, inter-communal conflicts and internal uprisings, devastating the whole region, it has also witnessed democratic social transitions and transformations such as the Arab Spring, post-Islamic social movements, the Green Revolution and movements of the urban rural poor. All these developments have contributed to changes and transformations in the political and cultural map of the ­M iddle East. Amid the upheavals and uncertainties of the past decade, leading to dislocation and reconstruction, the Yezidis unfortunately gained high visibility in the new genocide of 2014. In this period when the Middle East is reshaped, the probable role of the Yezidis as an ­ethno-religious group in the new Iraq remains an open question. Various religious and ethnic groups have fought for existence, sovereignty and independence since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. However, the Yezidis, not having military or political power to engage in an insurgency to protect themselves and demand their rights to live in their own lands and participate the political life of the region, have been forced to leave the region amid a range of massacres. In my book entitled The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion I provide the details of the Yezidi tragedy, exploring the plight of the Yezidis as a historical community in greater detail. Exactly a century after World War I reshaped the Middle East, the region again faced a new international military intervention with the declaration of a New World Order. The reorganization of the new global world and the restructuring of the Middle East cannot be imagined separately from each other. Following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the US military intervention was somewhat paradoxically presented as a first step in the inclusion of the Middle East in a New World Order redefined through democratic, liberal and pluralistic criteria. In 2003, with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the autocratic governments were to be abolished and instead democratic, pluralistic governments were to be established. Iraqi hopes that the fall of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein would lead to peace were dashed when Sunni Arabs, Shi’i Arabs and Sunni Kurds resisted efforts to create a united postwar Iraq. Each of these groups sought sovereignty rather than sharing the dividends of peace under pluralism. As I will deal in this article in detail, this process in Iraq continues. The process, which began in the Middle East in the 1990s, gained momentum after 11 September 2001. First, the greater Middle East became the scene of a new military intervention in Afghanistan. The war zone then extended to Iraq and Syria, which became 146

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not only the central battlefields for the forces of the region but also of world powers, each trying to give their own color to the shaping of the new world order. Although the overthrow of Saddam Hussein led to the formation of a more democratic and pluralistic political structure among the communities of Iraq, it also sowed the seed for new debates by dividing the Iraqi population between those who favored and those who opposed the intervention of America, just as the British intervention had a century ago. In this article, I will focus on the transformations in areas of Iraq where there remain concentrations of the Yezidi population. I will analyze the possibilities and limitations of the creation of a democratic, pluralist and liberal Middle East and Iraq, beginning with the period of American intervention, in the light of the politics that the Yezidis face. Within this context, in this chapter I aim to provide a perspective on how to overcome the difficulties and risks faced in the establishment of a culture of coexistence, and in ­inter-religious and interethnic dialogue among different religious and ethnic communities in Iraq. In addition, I seek to draw a framework for the legal and political status of the Yezidi ethno-religious minority group in Iraq and the larger Middle East. The chapter will address the subject in two parts. First, it will give a background to political dimensions of Iraq and discuss the situation of the Yezidis in central Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) between 2003 and 2014. The second part will deal with the causes and consequences of the 2014 Yezidi genocide. The Yezidis formed a military force, the Sinjar Alliance,1 to liberate Sinjar from ISIS in 2015, and to create a Yezidi autonomous region. The chapter will conclude by seeking to answer on how the process of modern militarization of Yezidi society, including both women and men, will affect relations with other groups. Future inclusion of Yezidi society in Middle East politics will depend upon the subjective relations of a new ethnic, political and militarized order. In this article, I draw on previously published materials, analysis of texts of scholars and researchers, reports and media sources, as well as new material gathered more recently in interviews with representatives of the Yezidis based in Dohuk.

Yezidis amid the politics of modern Iraq Iraq is a nation-state, established after World War I. Although the Kurds’ autonomous rights were guaranteed by the League of Nations, realpolitik of the period eroded Kurdish national rights. As a result, Iraq gradually turned into a Sunni Arab state. Kurds and Shi’is became the greatest obstacle to a Sunni Arab assimilation policy. Non-Sunni Arabs have been subjected to a range of physical and cultural violence, from cultural Arabization and Sunnification to forced population deportation. The Yezidis as a Kurdish community were seriously affected by these violent assimilation policies in the process. However, the process of assimilation of the Yezidis dates back long before the establishment of the Iraqi state. During the Ottoman period and at the hands of other Sunni Arab and Turkish states as well as Sunni Kurdish amirs, the Yezidis were subjected to a series of massacres and assimilation,2 and their numbers were greatly reduced. The fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the prosecution of the Ba’ath regime in international courts for crimes committed against both Shi’i and Kurds have made it possible to contemplate the possibility of a new political union between ethnic and religious communities. In 2006, Saddam Hussein was convicted and executed for the massacres committed against Shi’i in Dujail. Iraq’s 2005 constitution redefined Iraq as a federative structure consisting of three main territories, dominated by the Sunni Kurds in the North, Sunni Arabs in the central region, and Shi’i Arabs in the South. Following 2005, the political status 147

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and representation of the religious and ethnic minorities outside these three main groups manifested itself as a political problem. Northern regions in which Yezidis were numerous remained an area of confrontation between the Baghdad government and the KRG. The historic and geographic connection between the Yezidi region of Sinjar and the city of ­Mosul means that battles over Mosul are brought home to the Yezidis. The Yezidis are a Kurdish ethno-religious group who are monotheist and have a unique religious belief system. They are an ancient people of northern Mesopotamia, historically concentrated in northern Iraq, northern Syria, western Iran, southeastern Turkey, A ­ rmenia and Georgia. Today, many Yezidis also reside in diaspora, the largest number of whom are concentrated in Germany, where they form a recognized ethno-religious people group. The largest concentration of Yezidis are found in northern Iraq. According to the General Directorate of Yezidi Affairs in the KRG’s Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs, there were around 600,000 Yezidis in Iraq before 3 August 2014. A total of 350,000 of these lived in the Sinjar region, 15,000 in Tell Keyf, 30,000 in Behzane and Bashiqa, 51,000 north of those towns, 57,000 in Sheikhan, 50,000 in Dohuk and 15,000 in Mosul and Baghdad. 3 However, in the absence of reliable statistics, it is difficult to confirm these numbers. Yezidis designate themselves as Êzîd, Êzî or Izid which may have been derived from Yazad, Yazd or Yazdân in Middle Persian and Kurdish. Yaz- means “to worship, to honour, to venerate” and becomes the noun Yazata, “a being worthy of worship”, “a holy being” or “a being worthy of sacrifice.” Yazdân means “God,” and Izid means “Angel” in New ­Persian.4 A current etymology also derives the term Yazdân from ez da, meaning “I was created” in Kurdish.5 As for Arabic speakers, the word Yezidi derives from the name of the Umayyad caliph Yazid ibn Mu’âwiya, which is also supported by some Western scholars.6 The Yezidis inherited many cultural and religious beliefs, such as Zoroastrianism and Magism, which were mixed with the Sufi Islamic teaching of Sheikh ‘Adi, a teacher of the twelfth century. Thus, they created a syncretic belief system and developed a unique religious tradition. The Yezidis believe in one eternal God, called Xwedê, who is the creator of the universe. He is good and owner of every movement and sensation on Earth. According to the Yezidi belief system, God manifests as a holy trinity in three different forms: the Peacock Angel (Tawûsî Melek, or Melek Taus), Sultan Êzî and Sheikh ‘Adi (d. 1162). Moreover, God has delegated his earthly powers to seven angels, led by the Peacock Angel, who is responsible for human and worldly affairs. In the Yezidi belief, this angel is the mediator between God and the Yezidi people. The Peacock Angel leads directly to God and is not in opposition, but is an independent entity. It is the manifestation of the Creator, not the Creator himself.7 However, the Yezidis’ veneration of the Peacock Angel, and its association with the devil or Iblis in Muslim and Christian sources, have led others to label them “devil worshippers” and thus infidel and impure. The devil was identified with the fallen angel, who was expelled from Paradise because of his disobedience to God. And as the Yezidis pray to God through statuettes in the form of the peacock, they were considered to be Satan worshippers by many of their neighbors. On 3 August 2014, Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) militants invaded Sinjar region in northern Iraq to eliminate the “infidels” and altered the demography of the region by wiping out the Yezidi Kurdish population while resettling an Arab population in their place.8 Alongside the Yezidis, Shabaks, Christians, Kakais, Shi’i Turkmen, Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds were displaced from Sinjar region.9 The region had already undergone a heavy Arabization process by the Ba’athist government of Iraq to shift the demography with the forced relocation, transfer and settlement of Arab tribes between the 1960s and early 2000s. Land disputes continued in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 and 148

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paved the way for ISIS attacks in 2014.10 The displacement of the Yezidis and other minority communities in the Sheikhan and Sinjar regions followed in a long-running pattern set in the 1970s by the Saddam Hussein regime.

Yezidis in post-2003 Iraq Following the invasion of Iraq and the deposition of Saddam Hussein by the US-led coalition force in 2003, Iraq became a scene of internal wars, sectarian and inter-communal violence, massacres and persecution. The whole civilian population was severely affected by the conflict and violence. Besides the three major groups, Sunni Arabs, Shi’i Arabs and Sunni Kurds, small religious and ethnic minorities of Baha’is, Christians (Armenians and ­Chaldo-Assyrians), Jews, Palestinians, Roma, Sabian Mandaeans, Shabaks, Kakais, Shi’i Kurds, Turkmen and Yezidis were also caught up in the violence. The minority groups make up 10% of Iraq’s population.11 The level of violence escalated gradually in Iraq due to the attacks of sectarian military groups12 both from Sunni and Shi’i, formed to confront the US-led forces. The minorities were targeted by the extremists and suffered disproportionate levels of violence due to their religious and ethnic identities and political attachments. They have been subjected to killings, abductions, harassment, destruction of homes and business, torture, rape, forced conversion, mass displacement and genocide. Suicide car bombs were used to target civilians as weapons by Sunni militants, primarily al-Qaeda extremists in the Shi’i and Yezidi districts and cities. Between 2003 and 2013, both Sunni and Shi’i ­pilgrimage centers, mosques and tombs were destroyed by the sectarian forces in the revenge, as well as Christian churches and Yezidi holy places.13 Women were especially targeted for not obeying to strict Islamic norms and have become vulnerable to kidnapping and sexual violence. Operations by the group ISIS increased in intensity from 2013, with the intent to put an end to Iraq’s religious diversity and to form a Sunni caliphate in the Middle East. Minorities from disputed areas in northern Iraq, particularly in Nineveh and Kirkuk, were subject to daily threats to their lives.14 Due to the violence, many have fled the country and immigrated to neighboring countries15 or countries in Europe, the Unites States, Canada and Australia. The Yezidis were the most vulnerable to the attacks in this current conflict and face the greatest threat of extinction. The key question to be raised here is why the Yezidis were targeted more severely than other minorities? Numerous factors have contributed to the Yezidi tragedy in their history and in contemporary Iraq and other countries in the Middle East. Most Yezidis live mainly in the Sinjar, Behzane-Bashiqa and Sheikhan districts in northern Iraq. Some also live in the villages of Tel Keyf and Hamdaniye. Only 10% of the Yezidis reside in the KRG. Lalish, the spiritual center of the Yezidis, and Ba’adrê, the administrative center, are located in the KRG,16 though Sinjar, twin towns of Behzane-Bashiqa, Tel Keyf and much of Sheikhan are located in the Nineveh Province within the Iraqi government.17 A small number of the Yezidis also lived in Iraqi cities such as Baghdad and Mosul18 as well as in the Kurdish cities of Dohuk, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the areas where the Yezidis lived in majority in the Nineveh Province became an easy target for the extremist groups due to the Sunni Arab inhabitants’ support of the terrorist acts of al-Qaeda and ISIS.19 The cities of Tel Afar and Mosul became the stronghold of extremist Islamic groups in the province, which were located a short distance away from the Yezidi settlements. The Yezidis were also defenseless easy targets for the extremists as they have not developed their own self-defense in the deteriorating security environment of Iraq and they lacked political support.20 149

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However, the main cause is that their religion made them particularly vulnerable to the effects of the crimes. Yezidism is not recognized by Muslims as a religion of a Book (ahl al-­kitab), and thus it is not protected under Islamic law with the status of dhimmi like ­Christianity and Judaism, rendering Yezidis constantly vulnerable to attacks by Islamist radicals.21 Moreover, Yezidism was considered to be a Muslim heresy by the medieval Kurdish and Arab Islamic scholars, who argued that they had deviated from the right path.22 Therefore, Yezidis are considered infidels, apostates and renegades who must be eliminated or converted to Islam under threat of persecution and massacre. Sheikh ‘Adi (d. 1162), considered to be the reformer of Yezidism, is venerated at the mausoleum in Lalish, a site of Yezidi pilgrimage. Sheikh ‘Adi was originally an Orthodox Muslim and Arab from the Quraysh tribe of Umayyad origin. According to Islamic scholars, Yezidism was originally only a Sufi order, founded by Sheikh ‘Adi in the beginning of the twelfth century. ‘Adi’s Islamic doctrines were introduced to people living in the Kurdish Mountains of Hakkari region in the twelfth century. However, the community departed from the right Muslim path after his death and embraced a heterodox belief system.23 On the other hand, according to a Yezidi tradition, when Sheikh ‘Adi arrived in the region, there was a group of local people, Shamsanis, who were worshippers of the sun. They were attracted by Sheikh ‘Adi’s mystical ideas and developed mutual cooperation and defended themselves against their common enemy, the Abbasids. The disciples of Sheikh ‘Adi, known as ‘Adawis, were practicing Islam, while Shamsanis were practicing their own Iranian religions. The two sects allied with each other politically and, because of Sheikh ‘Adi’s diplomatic approach, united peacefully. In the course of time, the Shamsanis’ practices began to penetrate into Sheikh ‘Adi’s teaching.24 While modern Yezidis reject any association with Islam, Muslims continue to see Yezidism as a heresy or divergence from Orthodox Islam, meaning that they should bring its followers to the right path of Islam or wipe them out. Even though Islamic practices are observed in the Yezidi cult, the main Yezidi rituals point to the likelihood of pre-Islamic ancient Iranian religious roots of Yezidism. Yezidi ethnic belonging also contributes to their vulnerability. Radical movements have targeted the Yezidis as Kurds.25 Although not all Yezidis agree about their ethnicity, they are culturally Kurdish and speak the Kurmanji dialect of the Kurdish language. Only members of the Tazhi tribe residing in the towns of Behzane-Bashiqa in northern Mosul speak Arabic as their mother tongue.26 Some Yezidis in the Sinjar area also consider themselves ethnically as neither Kurdish nor Arab, but as Yezidi. The political party of the Yezidi Political Movement for Reform and Progress (YPMRP) represents this group of people. The YPMRP won 0.2% of the popular vote in the December 2005 Iraqi elections and received one seat in the Iraqi parliament. This view is also supported by a group of Yezidis in Armenia. Nevertheless, most Yezidis of Nineveh and Dohuk Provinces supported the Brotherhood List, representing a coalition of the two main Kurdish ruling parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which won fourteen seats in Mosul and obtained 89% of the votes in Sinjar and 96% of votes in Sheikhan.27 The Yezidis have commonly faced persecution by Arab nationalist groups without consideration of their sense of ethnic belonging. Moreover, the number of attacks on the Yezidi community increased after 2003, as they, like other Muslim Kurds, tended to support the American and the coalition forces. Their support of US forces rendered them vulnerable to Arab death squads working against the occupation Coalition Provisional Authority. Suicide attacks increased, targeting Yezidi individuals and villages. Important Yezidi leaders were targeted for assassination, including the Yezidi Prince Mir Tahsin Beg in September 2004, Pir Mamou F. Othman, former minister of civil society of Iraq, in July 2005, Dakheel 150

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Qassem Hassoon, the mayor of Sinjar, in 2004, followed by numerous other representatives of the community in 2005. During the same period, Islamist extremists distributed leaflets and hung up posters in Mosul calling for the death of the members of the Yezidi community as well as Jews, Christians and Americans.28 The imam of the local mosque in Sheikhan demanded that all the Yezidis either convert to Islam or face death.29 Following the ultimatum, Yezidi laborers in the Nineveh Province, mainly in Mosul and Sinjar, were killed for being infidels.30 Several were also murdered for smoking during the month of Ramadan and for selling alcohol.31 Yezidis who worked as laborers in the big Iraqi cities, such as Mosul and Baghdad, had to quit their jobs and return to their villages in the Nineveh Province as these cities became no-go area for Yezidis from 2003 onward. Yezidi women were abducted, and students at Mosul University were attacked by Sunni extremist groups. By the end of 2013, approximately 2,000 Yezidi students had stopped attending their classes at the university.32 Article 2 of the Iraqi Constitution, adopted by a referendum in 15 October 2005, guarantees the full rights to freedom of religious belief and practice of all individuals such as Christians, Yezidis and Mandean Sabeans. Article 3 also affirms that Iraq is a country of multiple nationalities, religions and sects.33 Even though Yezidi religious beliefs are officially guaranteed freedom in the Iraqi Constitution, and they are the second largest religious community in Iraq after Islam,34 the Yezidis continue to be discriminated against and massacred because of their religion. Even so, the KRG-controlled area in northern Iraq has been relatively stable, peaceful and prosperous since 2003, and its minorities, including the Yezidis, have enjoyed a more peaceful situation than in the rest of Iraq.35 The Kurdish parties, including the KDP, the PUK and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), have recognized and given symbolic importance to the Yezidis as adherents of the original Kurdish religion. The KDP, which controls most of the Yezidi areas in Nineveh Province, supported the Yezidis by financing their cultural and religious activities. The Lalish Cultural Centre, which has branches in most Yezidi town and villages, is funded, and the employees’ salaries are paid by the KRG.36 Moreover, both Kurdish parties, the KDP and the PUK, have rebuilt Yezidi villages destroyed by the Iraqi military and resettled Yezidis displaced by Arabs back to their villages in Sheikhan region.37 Kurdish authorities have also funded militias to protect minority communities, including the Yezidis, from outside violence. On the other hand, historically Kurdish-populated parts of Nineveh, Kirkuk, Diyala, and Salahaddin, which were under the control of former President Saddam Hussein and continued to remain outside of the KRG administration after his ouster, have seen violent attacks undertaken by the extremist Islamist groups.38 Accordingly, the Yezidis of Sinjar area in the Nineveh Province have suffered from unemployment, poverty and violence. Inhabitants of Sinjar and Behzane-Bashiqa were registered with the Kurdish Public Distribution System (PDS), but their cards may only be allowed to be used in their place of origin. Most Yezidi families depending on the PDS for a living were therefore unable to move to the more secure Kurdish-administrated region. The KRG maintained this policy in disputed areas in order to boost the likelihood that disputed areas would be added to the KRG in any referendum concerning the future of the contested territories. The Iraqi government has maintained formal jurisdiction over Nineveh Province. However, from 2003 to 2014, the KRG has gradually taken over the Kurdish-inhabited areas of northern Iraq, including Tel Keyf, Hamdaniya and parts of Sinjar. The Kurds believe and claim that these areas are historically Kurdish and should be included under the KRG administration; they also argue that the extension of Kurdish authority will serve to protect the diverse ethnic and religious groups of the area against terrorist attacks. Kurdish 151

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political party offices were opened to operate in the districts and Kurdish peshmerga were sent to defend the population. Kurdish claims that these areas be integrated in the KRG increased the tension between the KRG and the administration of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, especially in the beginning of 2010.39 Historic communities of these regions, Chaldo-­A ssyrians, Shabaks, Kakais, Turkmen and Yezidis, suffered in the violent attacks. The deadliest attack occurred with the capture of Mosul and Sinjar by the militants of ISIS in 2014, which resulted in the genocide of the Yezidis in August 2014.

Yezidis in the 2014 genocide and the current situation In the months prior to the occupation of Sinjar, ISIS began to seize large areas of Syria and Iraq. In June 2014, ISIS captured Mosul and then Tel Afar, both cities close to the Yezidi heartland. On 3 August 2014, well-organized ISIS fighters based in Mosul, Tal Afar in Iraq and Al-Shaddadi and Tel Hamis in Syria attacked the town of Sinjar and Yezidi villages located around Mount Sinjar.40 The Kurdish peshmerga forces were the only security force to protect the Yezidis in the region. However, the peshmerga withdrew when they learned of the advance of ISIS militants.41 ISIS fighters captured thousands of the Yezidis without resistance. Around 130,000 Yezidi men, women and children escaped to the upper plateau of Mount Sinjar in temperatures above 50 °C. Yezidis trapped on the mountain were rescued by the Kurdish guerrillas of the YPG (People’s Protection Units) and YPJ (Women’s Protection Units), and were transported through Syrian territory to the KRG in the following days. However, hundreds of Yezidis lost their lives to famine and thirst on the mountain.42 Those who were captured by ISIS were taken to detention centers in the ISIS-controlled areas of Mosul, Tel Afar and Baaj, and were forced to convert to Islam.43 Captured Yezidi women and girls were considered property of ISIS militants and became sexual slaves. Around 5,000 women were raped, murdered, tortured and sold in slave markets.44 Several Yezidi women and girls killed themselves before they were sold to ISIS fighters. Thousands of Yezidi men and boys are still missing.45 Yezidi temples and shrines were also destroyed46 and their villages were razed. On 6 August 2016, the ISIS militants also invaded Behzane and Bashiqa, and Yezidis of the towns escaped to the north and joined other Yezidis in the KRG.47 The Yezidi genocide in Sinjar immediately captured international attention. United States forces intervened with airstrikes against ISIS. The United States, United Kingdom, France and Australia sponsored emergency airdrops to the Yezidis who were trapped in the Sinjar Mountains without food and water. In addition, the proximity of Sinjar to the self-­ declared Kurdish state of Rojava in the north-eastern part of Syria and their rescue during the genocide by the YPG and YPJ guerrillas based there, situated the Yezidi community in the center of the fraught politics that embroiled Turkey, Syria, the Kurds and the USA in awkward political relationships. Having suffered under massacre, flight into exile, starvation and deprivation, and sale into sex slavery, the Yezidis formed their own military units. Kurdish forces based in the breakaway state of Rojava trained the newly created Yezidi militia, such as the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ) and the Êzidxan Women’s Units, and the Protection Force of Êzîdxan was founded to fight against ISIS. Yezidi peshmerga, composed of 2,000 Yezidis and led by Qasim Shasho, also fought against the ISIS militants to save the Yezidis and holy shrines in Sinjar.48 Establishment of new regular armies, composed of Yezidi women and men separately, indicates that the Yezidi community has begun to manifest itself as a political and military force in the region. ISIS’s crime utterly destroyed the Yezidi community in Iraq’s Nineveh Province. They were all displaced, captured or killed during the genocide of 2014. Their actions caused the 152

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displacement of over 500,000 Yezidis.49 A small number of Yezidis have returned to their homes in Sinjar after Sinjar’s recapture by the Kurdish forces with the assistance of the USled coalition’s air strikes in November 2015.50 However, as the villages were razed, they reside in the camps under poor conditions. An estimated 286,500–345,000 Yezidis live in refugee camps in the cities and towns of the KRG, mainly in Dohuk. These refugees depend on the support of the KRG, foreign aid agencies and international humanitarian organizations for their basic needs.51 Some of them are also in refugee camps in the Kurdish region of Turkey. Approximately 40,000 Yezidis left for Germany where already a large Yezidi community exists.52 At least 3,200 Yezidi women and girls remained in captivity in 2016.53 Those staying in the camps in Dohuk express the desire of returning to their places of origin in Nineveh Province, but because of the lack of security, they continue living in impoverished camps.54 Moreover, infrastructure, reconstruction and services are also lacking in Sinjar for Yezidis to return. The Yezidi tragedy of August 2014 only added to a series of massacres that the Yezidis have confronted in their history. It was not only the most blood-soaked massacre but also the enslavement and abuse of Yezidi women and children that created a festering sore in the community’s traumatic collective memory. The crime of Sinjar is considered by the Yezidis to be part of a long history of oppression and violence against them.55 Yezidis allege that their Sunni Arab neighbors assisted the ISIS militants to massacre the Yezidis.56 Similarly, their relationship with the Kurdish authorities was also strained due to the failure of peshmerga forces to protect the Yezidis in Sinjar during the ISIS attacks. Since 2014, the KRG administration has engaged in extensive efforts to regain the trust of the Yezidis and restore its authority in Sinjar. However, Yezidis feel that Kurdish authority promised to protect the Yezidis but abandoned them at the community’s critical moment. Therefore, Yezidis allege that they cannot trust anyone anymore, and hence there is a popular campaign among Yezidis for autonomy and control of local government and security services.57 On the other hand, Kurdish forces of the YPG and YPJ rescued thousands of Yezidis stranded on Mount Sinjar during the ISIS genocide in 2014, gaining the support of a large number of Yezidis. Many Yezidis have now joined the guerrilla forces. Yezidi forces, under the support of YPG and YPJ guerrillas, control much of the territory in Sinjar.58 These forces have maintained a continuous presence in the Sinjar area since 2014, and fought alongside the peshmerga against ISIS to retake the areas in Sinjar region in 2015. The Yezidis also believe that the Iraqi central government did not recognize the Yezidi genocide and took no role in its resolution. Moreover, the Iraqi government has not created a budget to redevelop the area of Sinjar after its liberation in 2015. Therefore, relations between the Yezidis and the Iraqi government continue to be tense.59 Despite their small number, the Yezidis are a fragmented community. Disunity arises due to their origins (Kurdish, Arab, Yezidi), language (Kurdish, Arabic), political and party affiliation (the KDP, the PUK, and the PKK/YPG-YPJ), religious caste system and secular, religious affiliations.60 In parallel with their affiliations and what they lived during the genocide of 2014, there are different opinions within the Yezidi community about whether Sinjar should become part of the KRG or Iraq, or whether the community should demand a separate autonomous region with its own self-defense forces. It is unclear who can or should represent Yezidi interests in Sinjar. Since the liberation of some of the Yezidi territories in Sinjar from ISIS, there have been struggles between Kurdish groups who fought together to retake Sinjar in 2015. This includes the KDP, the dominant power in Sinjar prior to 2014, the PKK, the YPG, the YPJ and their local Sinjari surrogate, the YBŞ. Sinjar is located in the middle of the KRG administration and the Rojava Canton established by the PKK in northern Syria and links these two areas ruled by the Kurds. Therefore, 153

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it has high strategic importance for the Kurds. Kurds, whose rights to create a modern nation have been denied since the beginning of the twentieth century, are trying to create a modern nation by transcending their sectarian, religious and regional divisions. In this process, the Kurds, divided among Sunni, Shi’i, Alevi, Ahl-i Haqq and Yezidi communities, are trying to achieve a modern and pluralist Kurdish national identity and sovereignty. Hence, the KRG administration has made efforts to integrate Sinjar into its administration to achieve its goal in the creation of an independent Kurdistan. The central Iraqi government also claims power in Sinjar, and Iran wants to secure a land corridor in Sinjar to reach Aleppo in Syria. Turkey’s interest in Sinjar has increased since 2014 when YPG and YPJ militants, affiliated closely with the PKK, developed a strong presence in the district. Turkey maintains strategic concerns over the relationship between the YPG, YPJ and PKK – seeking to disrupt their ability to organize in the region of Sinjar. All these regional political actors have their own agendas over Sinjar, threatening to tear up the social fabric of the Yezidi community. Yet, the Yezidis are searching for optimal solutions that would allow the Yezidis freedom from the rising regional tensions and restore peace and stability to start reconstruction and resettlement.

Conclusion Even though American intervention ended Saddam Hussein’s regime and provided opportunities for the creation of a new Iraq, it turned out that there would be more difficulties than first imagined, arising from Iraq’s ethnic and religious divisions. American intervention has radically furthered Arab and Sunni nationalism, and ethnic and religious groups have begun to see each other more as competitors and responsible for their own fateful destiny. The Yezidis, who have been subjected to several massacres in the post-2003 era, look for their place in the future Iraq as a political entity and a military power to protect their religious and ethnic identities. A referendum was held by the KRG on 25 September 2017, and 92.7% of Kurds voted for independence from Iraq, with a turnout near 73% of the population. The Yezidis of Sinjar and Sheikhan also voted overwhelmingly for independence. However, Iraqi troops entered the disputed areas and took over the towns of Kirkuk and Sinjar in October 2017 as Kurdish peshmerga forces withdrew. A chaotic atmosphere reigns over the country. Whether the future Iraq will become a federative structure or will be broken up into three separate states is uncertain. What Yezidis prefer is equally uncertain. It is not yet clear whether they will stay within the independent Kurdish State, which the KRG eagerly seeks, or whether they will establish their own autonomous region or act with the central government in Baghdad. The Yezidis will position themselves depending on how the future Kurdish state and Iraq will be shaped. This will be witnessed by the increasingly political and perhaps military aspects of this community, which have so far been recognized only by its ethno-religious character. The Yezidis will be able to take part in the transforming Iraq and the Middle East only through serious transformations, but it is too early to predict what these transformations will be. The majority of the Yezidis living in the Nineveh Province in Iraq were targeted by the ISIS fighters in August 2014, causing serious bodily and mental harm. Those who fled from ISIS’s crimes live in the displacement camps or have immigrated to Europe, Armenia or Georgia. A large number of displaced Yezidi also wish to leave for Europe for a better and safer life. However, returning displaced Yezidis to their places of origin in Nineveh Province is indispensable. Otherwise, the Yezidi community is at risk of extinction. How peace and reconciliation between the Yezidis and other communities will ensue and accordingly when all the displaced communities will return are open questions. Trauma resulting from ISIS’s crimes already has an impact on social harmony and cohesion of the region. Future 154

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peace-building efforts and common strategies need to restore the social fabric of Nineveh Province. The Yezidis have suffered at the hands of the Muslims throughout their history. Thus, their relationship with their neighbors have always been limited even with Muslim Kurds with whom they share the same culture and language. Those who lived in mixed villages and in the town of Sinjar with other populations had neighborly and working relationships.61 However, in the aftermath of the attacks, relationships and trust between the Yezidis and Arabs were completely destroyed. Yezidis remain keen to maintain good relations with their neighboring communities apart from Sunni Arabs who cooperated with ISIS.62 Some Yezidis are pushing for the removal of the Arabs from the region so that exiles may return their homes.63 Reconciliation between the Yezidis and Arabs living in the region therefore remains a fundamental and unsolved problem.64 The Yezidis require Sunni Arab leaders and institutions to condemn ISIS’s abduction and sexual enslavement of Yezidi women and children in the name of Islam. However, no such action has resulted.65 Yezidi villages and houses in the Sinjar area were destroyed by ISIS fighters in August 2014. Reconstruction of new settlements, including the provision of basic public services such as health care, education and criminal justice for internally displaced Yezidis, is necessary to encourage their voluntary and safe return. This might begin to restore normal life for the Yezidis affected by the wanton crimes of the extremists. In the meantime, inter-communal grievances continue to bedevil all the communities of northern Iraq, including the Yezidis in the Nineveh Province. These tensions are leading to the gradual rearmament of each group, triggering revenge attacks. Such revenge attacks will have a negative impact on the return of the Yezidi community. Thus security, law and order have to be reestablished in the region in order to provide protection to all minorities in general and to the Yezidi community in particular, preventing its extermination and preserving its religious uniqueness and community identity. People of Iraq have suffered exceedingly in the violence that has escalated in post-2003 era. Thousands of women, men, children and elderly people lost their lives in this war. Thousands of people abandoned their homes, their past and their future on their own lands, to pursue a living in safer countries. Some of them have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. Those who reached their destinations struggle to continue their lives as refugees, cheap laborers and second-class citizens. A large number have moved to safer parts of their own country and live today as displaced people in tents with the help of charitable institutions and organizations. Children grow up without an education or a future. The plight of northern Iraq today demonstrates the foolhardiness of military confrontations in the region. Instead, a newly germinated culture that allows the people to live together in peace and harmony with mutual acceptance is imperative. Various civilizations emerged, and they developed by interacting with each other in ancient Mesopotamia. ­M inority populations who have suffered the most in the conflicts in Iraq, such as the modern Yezidis, are the inheritors of the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations and cultures. The extinction of these people will not only imply the end of the Mesopotamian culture, but will also mean that one of the most important parts of the world’s heritage will be erased from the surface of the Earth. The protection of these unique people must be the duty of every person.

Notes 1 The alliance is composed of the Protection Force of Sinjar (HPÊ), the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ) and the Êzidxan Women’s Units (YJÊ). 2 Nowadays, the Yezidis also face assimilation in Orthodox Christian Armenia and Georgia. 3 Birgül Açıkyıldız, The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 33; International Organization for Migration – Iraq, Increased Incidents of Suicide Among Yazidis

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Birgül Açıkyıldız-Şengül in Sinjar, Ninewa, 2011. Available http://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/iom-emergency-needs-assess ment-increased-incidents-suicide-among-yazidis-sinjar-ninewa (Accessed 16 December 2016). 4 Garnik Asatrian and Victoria Arakelova, “Malak-Tawus: The Peacock Angel of the Yezidis,” Iran and the Caucasus 7 (2003), 2. 5 Açıkyıldız, The Yezidis, 35. 6 Austin Henry Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains (London, 1849), I, 300; Roger Lescot, Enquête sur les Yézidis de Syrie et du Djebel Sindjâr (Beyrout: Insitut Français de Damas, 1938), 60; Philip Kreyenbroek, Yezidism – Its Background, Observances and Textual Tradition (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1995), 95. 7 Açıkyıldız, The Yezidis, 73. 8 According to Noori Abdurrahman, head of the Department of Coordination of the KRG, ISIL’s aim was to make the West Bank of the Tigris completely Arab. See Judit Neurink, “Kurdish Official: ISIS Capture of Shingal ‘was part of Arabization campaign,’” Rudaw, 29 December 2014. Available http://rudaw.net/english/interview/29122014 (Accessed 17 November 2016). 9 Irene Dulz, “The Displacement of the Yezidis after the Rise of ISIS in Northern Iraq,” Kurdish Studies 4, no. 2 (2016), 132. 10 PAX, After ISIS: Perspectives of Displaced Communities from Ninewa on Return to Iraq’s Disputed Territory, 2015. Available www.paxforpeace.nl/stay-informed/news/after-isis-urgent-need-for-postconflict-peacebuilding-in-iraq (Accessed 16 December 2016). 11 Preti Taneja, Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication: Iraq’s Minority Communities since 2003 (London: Minority Rights Group International, 2007). Available http://minorityrights.org/publications/ assimilation-exodus-eradication-iraqs-minority-communities-since-2003-february-2007/ (Accessed 18 September 2016). 12 Namely, the Islamic Army in Iraq, Jamaat Ansar al-Sunnah (Assembly of the Helpers of Sunnah), the Badr Organisation and Mahdi Army (the Peace Companies). 13 The number of the churches in Iraq has lowered to 57 from 300. See Justus Weiner, Middle ­Eastern Christians: Battered, Violated, and Abused, Do They Have Any Chance of Survival? ( ­Jerusalem: ­Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2014). Available http://jcpa.org/article/middle-eastern-­ christians-battered/ (Accessed 13 June 2017), 13. See also for the attacks on the Christians in Iraq, Michael Youash “Iraq’s Minority Crisis and U.S. National Security: Protecting Minority Rights in Iraq,” American University International Law Review 24, no. 2 (2008), 347–351. 14 Minority Rights Group, Freedom from Hate: State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, 2014, 194, 211. Available http://minorityrights.org/wp-content/uploads/old-site-downloads/mrg-stateof-the-worlds-minorities-2014-executive-summary.pdf (Accessed 20 December 2016). 15 These countries are mainly Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Egypt. 16 While other small villages, namely, Dere Bûn, Khanek, Memê Shivan, Sina and the collective village of Shari’a located in Governorate of Dohuk, lie within the KRG, Ain Sifni, Beristak, the collective village of Mehed in Sheikhan district, Bozan and Beban in Tel Keyf all lie within the Nineveh Governorate of central Iraq. 17 Sinjar and Bashiqa were exposed to Arabization under the Ba’ath regime through violence, intimidation and assimilation in the years 1965, 1973–75 and 1986–89. Yezidi villages were destroyed or depopulated by the Arabs, and the Yezidi population was deported and resettled in the collective villages ('mujammma'at) far from their historic homelands. Yezidis were also declared to be Arab in origin to distance them from the larger Kurdish community. Açıkyıldız, The Yezidis, 60; Irene Dulz, Siamend Hajo, and Eva Savelsberg, “Persecuted and Co-Opted – The Yezidis in the ‘New Iraq,’” Journal of Kurdish Studies 4 (2008), 25. 18 The Yezidis left Baghdad due to the lack of security by mid-2004 and moved to the collective villages or Kurdish cities in the North, while the Yezidis of Mosul all left for Bashiqa (Dulz et al., “Persecuted and Co-Opted,” 25). 19 Sairan T. Ahmad, “The Role Played by the Kurdistan Regional Government in the Reconstruction of the Iraqi State,” Unpublished PhD Thesis. Exeter University, 2012, 253. 20 PAX, After ISIS. 21 Under Islamic law, dhimmi status is guaranteed for the non-Muslim communities of the ahl al-kitab, meaning protection for religious freedom and safety of person, honor, property and autonomy to run their own affairs in matters of religious practice, education and personal status law. However, Islamic law is not evenly applied throughout the Middle East. Christians and other minorities, recognized as ahl al-kitab, also face systematic persecution by the extremist Islamist groups in the current situation of Iraq (Weiner, Middle Eastern Christians, 12–13).

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The Yezidis 22 These famous Islamic scholars, ethnically Kurdish and Arab, are Ibn al-‘Athir (1160–1233), Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179–1229), Abd al-Karim al-Samani (d. 1167), Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328), Al-Hafiz al-Dhahabi (1274–1348) and Ibn Kathir (1301–1373). 23 Lescot, Enquête sur les Yézidis, 32. 24 Açıkyıldız, The Yezidis, 39. 25 PAX, After ISIS, 53. 26 Their dialect is spoken in Lebanon, not in Iraq. Their ancestors probably came to the region with Sheikh ‘Adi from Lebanon in the early twelfth century. 27 Ahmad, “The Role Played,” 106. 28 Chris Chapman and Preti Taneja, Uncertain Refuge, Dangerous Return: Iraq’s Uprooted Minorities, Minority Rights Group International Report (London: Minority Rights Group, 2009). Available. http:// minorityrights.org/publications/uncertain-refuge-dangerous-return-iraqs-uprooted-­m inoritiesseptember-2009/ (Accessed 7 January 2017); Dulz et al., “Persecuted and Co-Opted,” 32. 29 Sebastian Maisel, “Social Change Amidst Terror and Discrimination: Yezidis in the New Iraq,” The Middle East Institute Policy Brief 18 (2008), 4. 30 Human Rights Watch, On Vulnerable Ground. Violence against Minority Communities in Nineveh Province’s Disputed Territories, 2009, 42. Available www.hrw.org/report/2009/11/10/vulnerable-ground/ violence-against-minority-communities-nineveh-provinces-disputed (Accessed 18 ­September 2016). 31 Irene Dulz et al., “Persecuted and Co-Opted,” 28–29. 32 Minority Rights Group, Freedom from Hate, 194; PAX, After ISIS, 52. 33 Bill Bowring, “Minority Rights in Post-War Iraq: An Impending Catastrophe?” International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 5, no. 3 (2012), 331. 34 Correspondence with Mamou F. Othman, Former General Director, Presidential Diwan of ­Kurdistan Region, Dohuk, 2 January 2017). Christians have left Iraq due to increased attacks by extremists, and the Yezidis became the second largest religious group. 35 Ahmad, “Role Played,” 3. In the political and conflictual atmosphere of post-war Iraq, the Kurds benefited and have become politically strong and important political players in Iraq. The constitution of Iraq, ratified in 2005, guaranteed the KRG federal status and recognized the Kurdish provinces of Dohuk, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, as well as some towns of Kirkuk, Nineveh and Diyala Provinces as a legal region under the KRG. The constitution also ensured that the KRG has greater autonomy over foreign affairs and domestic politics and has the right to maintain its own military forces, the peshmerga. Kenneth Katzman, The Kurds in Post-Saddam Iraq, CRS Report for Congress, 2010. Available https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS22079.pdf (Accessed 13 June 2017), 5. 36 Correspondence with Khidher Domle, Dohuk, 29 December 2016. See also Dulz et al., “Persecuted and Co-opted,” 39, and Maisel, “Social Change,” 5. 37 Dulz et al., “Persecuted and Co-opted,” 37. 38 Ahmad, “Role Played,” 191; Bowring, “Minority Rights,” 320. 39 Katzman, The Kurds, 7. 40 Mount Sinjar is a 100-kilometer-long mountain range that runs east to west in the heart of the Sinjar region, with an elevation of 1,463 meters. 41 Loveday Morris, “Islamic State Seizes Town of Sinjar, Pushing out Kurds and Sending Yazidis ­F leeing,” The Washington Post, 3 August 2014. Available www.washingtonpost.com/world/islamic-stateseize-town-of-sinjar-pushing-out-kurds-and-sending-yazidis-­fleeing/2014/08/03/52ab53f148de-4ae1-9e1d-e241a15f580e_story.html?utm_term=.43d0bb75b1e6 (Accessed 18 September 2016). Human Rights Council, “They Came to Destroy”: ISIS Crimes against the Yazidis, 15 June 2016. Available www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/ColSyria/A_HRC_32_ CRP.2_en.pdf (Accessed 30 September 2016), 6. 42 Human Rights Council, “They Came to Destroy,” 6. 43 According to the General Directorate of Yezidi Affairs in the KRG’s Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs, 6,383 Yezidis were captured. 4 4 Khanna Omarkhali, “Transformations in the Yezidi Tradition after the ISIS Attacks: An Interview with Dr. Ilhan Kızılhan,” Kurdish Studies 4, no. 2, 149. 45 Human Rights Council, “They Came to Destroy,” 2, 21. 46 The shrines of Sheikh Mand in Jiddala village; Sheikh Hassan in Gabara, Malak Fakhraddin in Sikeeniya and Mema Resha in Solagh were all destroyed during the attacks in Sinjar region. ­Human Rights Council, “They Came to Destroy”, 19. 47 Idan Barir, “‘I Own Nothing Save My Dreams’: Ezidis Recount Their Tragedy,” Journal of Levantine Studies 5, no. 1 (2015), 138.

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Birgül Açıkyıldız-Şengül 48 Alongside Qasim Shasho, Hayder Shasho and Qasim Dirbu also had an important role in the fight. Correspondence with Khidher Domle, Dohuk, 29 December 2016. 49 Board of Relief and Humanitarian Affairs, Kurdistan Regional Government Ministry of Interior, Dohuk Governorate, IDPs and Refugees in Dohuk Governorate (2016), 2. Dohuk governorate accommodated around 452,000 people, mostly from Nineveh governorate, and some numbers from the Anbar and Salahaldin governorates (IOM 2015, in Dulz 2016, 140). According to BRHA, 85% of camp inhabitants in Dohuk governorate were Yezidis. IDP camps (Internally Displaced Persons) also hosted Sunni and Shiite Kurds and Shabaks (Board of Relief and Humanitarian Affairs, Kurdistan Regional Government Ministry of Interior, Dohuk Governorate, IDP Camps in Dohuk, 17. 50 The International Organization of Migration-Iraq recorded that 3,220 families returned to Sinjar and mostly live in the Sinuna camp in the north of Mt. Sinjar (IOM-Iraq 2016, cited in Dulz 2016, 145). 51 PAX, After ISIS, 17; Human Rights Council, “They Came to Destroy,” 34. 52 Human Rights Council, “They Came to Destroy,” 34; Correspondence with Mamou F. Othman, Dohuk, 2 January 2017. 53 Human Rights Council, “They Came to Destroy,” 3. The KRG government established the department of the Office of Kidnapped Affairs to offer financial support to Yezidis to save their family members from ISIL captivity. According to Hussein Qaidi, the head of the Office, 2,809 Yezid captures were freed by December 2016, of which 1,019 were women, 732 female children, 731 male children and 327 men. There are still 3,600 Yezidis in capture of which 1,200 are children. The Office of Kidnapped Affairs continues to coordinate for releasing the victims by securing ransoms and raising funds. Correspondence with Khidher Domle, Dohuk, 29 December 2016 (Khidher Domle met Hussein Qaidi on 3 December 2016). 54 Dulz, “Displacement of the Yezidis,” 144. 55 Human Rights Council, “They Came to Destroy,” 34. 56 Dulz, “Displacement of the Yezidis,” 142; PAX, After ISIS, 52; Correspondence with Khidher Domle, Dohuk, 29 December 2016. 57 Christine McCaffray Van den Toorn, “The Wars after the War for Sinjar: How Washington Can Avert a New Civil War,” War on the Rocks, 20 June 2016. Available http://warontherocks. com/2016/06/the-wars-after-the-war-for-sinjar-how-washington-can-avert-a-new-civil-war/ (Accessed 30 December 2016). 58 Yazda, Mass Graves of Yazidis Killed by the Islamic State Organization or Local Affiliates On or After August 3, 2014, 2016. Available https://tr.scribd.com/document/297210394/Yazda-Report-onMass-Graves-Jan-28-2016-2 (Accessed 25 December 2016). 59 Correspondence with Khidher Domle, Dohuk, 29 December 2016. 60 Dulz, “Displacement of the Yezidis,” 142. 61 PAX, After ISIS, 52. 62 Correspondence with Khidher Domle, Dohuk, 29 December 2016. 63 PAX, After ISIS, 53. 64 Correspondence with Mamou F. Othman, Dohuk, 2 January 2017. 65 Correspondence with Khidher Domle, Dohuk, 29 December 2016.

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12 The Mandaeans in Iraq Shak Hanish

The Mandaeans are also called the Sabeans (Sabians) or the Mandaean Sabeans. Their religion is one of the most ancient religions in Iraq, if not the most ancient, arising even before Christianity. Before the American invasion of Iraq in April 2003, Iraq was the original home to the Mandaeans, one of the oldest minorities in the Middle East. Since then, they have been a target of Islamic extremist groups, whether Sunni or Shi’i, aiming at their physical elimination, destruction of their homes, shops, and places of worship, and their faith. The name Mandaean is derived from the root “manda,” meaning “knowledge” in ­A ramaic, which is the language that was spoken historically by the Mandaeans.1 The word Sabeans (Sabians) came from the Aramaic root word “saba,” meaning to baptize, to dive, or to wash.2 Water is considered the source of life for the Mandaeans. Running water occupies a special position in the Mandaean Sabaeans’ rituals. It is used to baptize children, in marriage rites, and to celebrate religious events. Therefore, the Mandaeans were keen to build their housing on the banks of rivers. Some Arab Muslims have also called them “almughtasila” in the past, meaning “Bathers,” or those who are baptized or showered.3 Some evidence based on Mandaeans’ literature and religion suggests that the Mandaeans migrated from the Jordan Valley eastward to Harran, which lies on the border between Turkey and Syria today, and then moved to south of Babylon, where they stayed until the beginning of the twenty-first century, residing near the waterways of southern Iraq and nearby Khuzestan in Iran. Most researchers believe that their origin was in Palestine, but that they migrated to Mesopotamia due to Roman persecution where their beliefs were influenced by the beliefs of ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. A few others think that it is an ancient religion that flourished in Mesopotamia, citing examples that highlight the original Sumerian and Babylonian beliefs in the Mandaeans’ rituals.4 For the last two millennia, most of them have lived in what is Iraq today. In the mid-twentieth century, their original location was in southern Iraq, but most of them migrated to the capital city of Baghdad. Before 2003, the largest group of Iraqi Mandaeans were living in Baghdad in addition to several other communities in central and southern Iraq like Amara, Nasiriya, and Basra. The greater majority of the Mandaeans left Iraq after the 2003 American invasion, first for safer areas in the neighboring countries of Syria and Jordan as refugees. Most of those seeking freedom and survival were resettled in Europe, Australia, and North America.

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There is no accurate count of the Mandaeans, whether in Iraq, Iran, or around the world. Their number in the nineteenth century was about 4,000 people, stated in work published back in 1875. Their number had multiplied more than four times a century later, following the improvement of social conditions.5 Today, most estimates put them around 60,000 people, mostly in Iraq before 2003, and in Iran with an estimated number of 20,000, mostly in Arabic-speaking cities bordering the south of Iraq, such as in the area of al-Ahwaz in ­K huzestan.6 In the official 1965 census, there were 14,572 Mandaeans, and in 1977 the ­Mandaeans were about 16,000 people.7 Although there has been no statistical information on the number of Mandaeans in the last three decades, such information considered confidential by the governments and the Mandaeans themselves, one may approximate the number of them depending on old statistics and the natural increase of the Iraqi population. In the 1947 official census, Iraqis numbered 4,814,122 people, among whom the Mandaeans numbered 6,597. In the 1957 official census, Iraqis numbered 6,538,109, among whom Mandaeans numbered 8,956 people. In 2006, the population of Iraq was estimated to be 27,500,000, which would bring the population of Iraqi Mandaeans to around 40,000 – most of whom live in exile today.8 Abroad, in Sweden in early 2016, there were about 17,500 Mandaeans, and they may number up to about 20,000 today. This is the largest Mandaean community in Europe, where they have been admitted most easily as refugees. In Sweden, there are about eighteen Mandaean associations, almost one association in every province. The first religious temple, or Mandi, was established in 2003. The community has purchased 3600 square meters of property on the bank of two rivers to build the Mandi.9 In addition to Sweden, there are about 3,500 Mandaeans in Holland and 3,000 in Germany. In Australia, there are more than 10,000 Mandaeans, a large number of them originally from Iran. In the United States, there are more than 3,000 Mandaeans, and about 1,000 live in Canada.10 There are small numbers in several European countries like the United Kingdom, and about 1,000 live in New ­Zealand. Unlike refugees who are Christians or Muslims, the Mandaeans do not belong to the largest religious community that can provide them with protection and assistance. They are the most vulnerable group because of their size, comparing even to the Yezidis.11 An association, called the Union of the Mandaean Associations, was created abroad to bring the Mandaeans together to forge strong relationships and connections worldwide. The aim of the Union is to maintain the Mandaean culture and religion and to work for the survival of the group. Active in the union and the communities are the priests who perform their important religious rites. Most of the Mandaeans left Iraq in the three years following the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Their number was reduced to 10,000 people in 2006, but they are between 5,000 to 7,000 today – a few thousand living in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey.12 Some of them fled to a safer area in Iraqi Kurdistan where they worship freely near a tributary of the Tigris River granted to them by the Kurdish government. Today, Iraq is almost empty of its original Mandaean inhabitants.

Education, carriers, and existence Mandaeans were known as silver and gold craftsmen and boat builders. They monopolized this occupation even before the Abbasid Islamic era.13 Most Mandaeans are very educated people compared to the majority of Iraqis. Their laymen are often highly educated but know little of their old language and scripts, and they seldom attend religious ceremonies.14 Yet, they have a strong feeling of pride in their heritage, often claiming to belong to a religion 160

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that is older than Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Majority of the Mandaean youth turned to educational attainment and were attracted to modern professions, departing from past practices of their primitive crafts toward developing professions in jewelry that survived the development of modern industry. In modern Iraq, Mandaean engagement in social and economic life outweighs their small number. They proved to be the descendants of the Mandaean intellectuals who emerged in the various cultural and scientific fields in the time of the Abbasid civilization.15 With this social transformation, Mandaean interest in the exercise of their own religious rites declined, and they no longer adhered carefully to the religious taboos of their ancestors. This created a dilemma about their existence and created a real crisis for the survival of their religious beliefs. This has prompted some of them to think about adjusting their concepts and religious rituals to keep pace with modern life. Thus, this small group of people that broke isolation for centuries found itself on the verge of disappearing.16 The Mandaeans came to be better known for their professions than for their religious beliefs. Several prominent Iraqi figures are Mandaeans. Among them are the late Dr. Abdul Jabbar Abdullah, known for his globally recognized scientific achievements in physics and weather. He was also the founder and the president of the University of Baghdad. Similarly, among the prominent Mandaeans are the Iraqi writer Aziz Sbahi, fine artist Yahya Alsheikh, female poet Lameia Abbas Amara, poet Abdel Razzaq Abdel Wahid, Dr. Tahseen Issa, Dr. Abdel Azem Alsabti, and painter and poet Sawsan Salman Saif, in addition to a large number of writers, doctors, and engineers.17 In politics, leftist and Marxist ideas had gained success in their ranks, and three Mandaeans emerged as leaders of the Communist Party in the 1950s and 1960s, namely, Malik Saif, Sabeh Sbahi, and Sattar Khudair.18

Their language and religious teachings The original language of the Mandaeans is the Mandaean language, which is a dialect of Eastern Aramaic. Their scriptures are also in Aramaic. The alphabet consists of twenty-four characters, starting and ending with the first letter Alep, reflecting their belief that all things go back to their origins and beginning.19 Unfortunately, only about 100 people speak it currently, out of an estimated 60,000 Mandaeans. The clergy constituted almost 40% of those who speak it as part of the Mandaeans sacraments. Even the clergy do not speak the language in their own homes or even amongst themselves when they meet each other. Of the general public in Iraq, the language is spoken by no more than ten people. This spoken language dialect is doomed to disappear with the death of its speakers.20 The Mandaeans are the followers of John the Baptist, who is considered to be their last prophet and the fundamental figure in their religion. They recognize Adam as their first prophet. They are probably the only living gnostic religion of early Christianity. The Mandaeans are people born into the faith and do not accept converts to their religion. The most important ceremony of Mandaeans is baptism, performed in rivers or in canals linked to rivers. The Mandaeans believe in the oneness of God, calling him “The Great Living” or the “Eternal Living” in their sacred book the Kanza Raba, the Great Treasure.21 They share some similarities with Islam in the description that God is one and indivisible. With ­Christians, they share a devotion to baptism and the great importance of John the Baptist. Like Christians, they venerate Sunday, and it is their rest day.22 The pillars of their religion include praying three times a day facing north, fasting, charity, and prohibiting infidelity, murder, adultery, theft, lying, perjury, breach of trust, sorcery and witchcraft, charging interest, circumcision, drinking alcohol, and divorce.23 The Mandaean house of worship, or 161

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Mandi, is a temple where the Mandaeans’ holy books and baptism of the clergy and public are held, which is usually performed on the right banks of rivers. It is a simple and small house. The Mandi must have a channel that connects it with a nearby river.24 The Mandaeans believe that the Kanza Raba is the first sacred book. It was not translated into Arabic as a whole until in recent years for fear that neighboring Muslims might misconstrue its contents and persecute the Mandaean community. However, it was translated into Swedish in 1816, and German in 1825, by visiting anthropologists. The original Aramaic text of the Kanza Raba consists of 600 pages, with themes like the creation and composition of the world of light and the world of the darkness and the creation of earth and humans. The Great Treasure also deals with stories of the prophets and the versions of the creation, the apostles, and spiritual teachings.25 The Arabic version of the Great Treasure, which was issued in Baghdad in 2000, consists of about 446 pages that include a right side consisting of nineteen parts and a smaller section on the left side consisting of three parts, covering themes of the fate of souls and their ascendance to the world of light. The division of their holy book into a left and a right segment reflects the way the ­Mandaean religion views life and creation as a completed connected circle, not a straight line that starts in a point and ends in another. Here, life begins with the creation of the universe and humanity and hymns are to accompany this creation, located on the right side of the book. The rest of the book indicates that humans are preparing to return to their creator: they provided hymns and prayers to ascend. These are located on the left side of the book.26 According to the Great Treasure, the dark is at the bottom of the world, the world of bodies that plague their souls. The light is at the top of the world, the world that overwhelms the darkness.27 The Almighty Great Living is the one God, who was not born and was not preceded by a matter or idea in the universe; the universe was created by his order. The Great Living or the Great Alive dominates every detail of the universe and knows about any small or great thing of his world. According to Mandaeism, the first item in the universe is the water, and from it the “Great Old Living” created the light which is the clean water that pigmented the light objects before they descended to the underworld.28 The Great Treasure describes the story of the flood and Noah’s construction of the great ship. It does not call its people Sabaeans, but Mandaeans, the knowledge holders. In it, the word Nasoraein refers to those who are knowledgeable in the Manadaean religion. Therefore, the Sabaean name is irrelevant to them, applied to them by historians confused between them and the Sabaeans who knew the worship of the stars and planets. While the label is not recognized by the Mandaeans, they have accepted it as a reality.29 It provides them with protection because Sabaeans are mentioned in the Qur’an as people of the book who should be protected under certain circumstances. Kanza Raba is filled with phrases about the Euphrates and the Tigris because of the connection of the Mandaeans with these rivers and their water, The life flowed from water of the rivers, and the resurrection will occur when the Euphrates dr[ies] and the Tigris shifts from its course, and all water from seas, rivers, springs, and wells dry [up]. The light, which is the first item of water, [became] pure white robes worn by the Mandaeans when ascending to the world of light.30 Mandaeism shares many other religions’ taboos, such as murder, adultery, stealing, lying, perjury, dishonesty, false testimony, worship of desires, sorcery and witchcraft, circumcision, drinking, usury, weeping for the dead, eating dead animals and blood, divorce (except in 162

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special circumstances), suicide and end of life, abortion and torture, and harming the body. The Mandaeans are also not allowed to mourn the dead. Among their important rituals is the mass for the dead, with narrations form the Kanza Raba. They believe that the soul is freed from the body three days after death. Also, in the Mandaeans’ teaching, an individual does not complete his/her religion unless she/he gets married; those who are reluctant about it will be held accountable for it on judgment day.31 According to the Mandaeans, the universe is made up of two forces, the world of light in the direction of the north, and the world of darkness found in the south. There is conflict between the two forces of lightness and darkness. The creation of the world arose as a result of such conflict between the two forces. Although the human being was created by the forces of darkness, there is a “hidden Adam,” the soul, which has its foundation in the world of light.32 The end of the divine creation of Adam and Eve is to breed their offspring, to outlive the Earth, to be full of warmth and beauty, to conquer the world of goodness and light, and to defeat darkness and evil.33 White and other light colors are favorite colors of the Mandaeans because white belongs to the world of light and wearing it means wearing clothes of the angels. White cloth represents purity and cleanliness, and the priests wear it while praying and performing their other religious duties. Therefore, married couples must wear white clothes to symbolize the purity of light and purity of the human psyche. The Mandaean logo is called drvsh: it consists of two crossed sticks, or it may appear as what is called John’s flag, incorporating the two branches partly covered by two pieces of cloth, symbolizing two branches of an olive tree that divide the four sides of the universe.34 The Mandaeans have four main festivals to celebrate: the great feast that is celebrated for two days, the lesser feast for another two days, the day of creation lasting for five days, and the golden baptism feast that lasts for a day.35 The “great feast” is the New Year’s holiday called Alkursa. Its festival starts on the last day of the year. To celebrate it, the Mandaeans reserve enough food to last them for thirty-six hours, starting from the beginning of the New Year. In the last day, everyone, man and woman, young and old, go to the river to baptize three times, and then they continue the feast by visiting each other.36 The Mandaeans follow a special calendar for religious purposes that seems to be an extension of the ancient Babylonian calendar. This calendar year consists of twelve equal months. Their year begins in the month of February. The length of each month is thirty days, which is five days less than the normal solar year. To address this deficiency, the Mandaeans celebrate five days in the month of March. They call them the white days, and they believe that on these days, God created the universe.37

The basics of the Mandaean religion The Mandaean religion is based on the following five basic pillars: 1 A belief in one God is the first pillar of Mandaean religion. They recognize God to be the eternal, the creator of all, the one and the only one in domination who has no partner.38 2 Dyeing or baptism that must be performed in fresh water. The dyeing represents rebirth and purifying of hearts from sins and mistakes in order to fill up the individual with faith and love. Baptism rituals are practiced on occasions of marriage, birth, death, and feasts.39 Baptism is usually performed on Sundays, and each follower goes through it numerous times each year. This rite relates to Christian rituals of baptism with water. 163

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The Mandaeans’ books refer to Jesus Christ as nasoraea, meaning that he was a priest who started teaching their religion to others.40 3 Praying, which according to Mandaeism brings believers closer to the Great Creator (God), bonding them with Him spiritually to include them in His sympathy and compassion, to thank Him for his grace and care at all times, and to renew His covenant with gratitude. Every Mandaean believer is to lead three daily prayers in Aramaic. The first prayer is in the morning with the rising of the sun; the second prayer is to be in the middle of the afternoon, seven hours after the morning prayers; and the third prayer is in afternoon before sunset.41 4 Fasting to promote self-control is another pillar of the Mandaeans. They have two types of fasting. The first type is the big fast, which is apparently for the mind, heart, and conscience. It is to protect the individual’s physical senses from indulging in personal pleasures, to stay away from everything that hurts an individual’s relationship with God, and to refrain from all taboos mentioned in the religion. The second type is the small fast, which is to refrain from eating meat, fish, eggs, and the slaughter of animals, in specific and sporadic days, numbering thirty-six days in a year, all told.42 Therefore, Mandaean fasting is not like Muslim fasting but similar to Christian fasting, in refraining from meat and other products.43 5 Alms (Charity), which is to be an honest material or moral due given for the needy brethren and all those who are in need. It requires secrecy and is not to be advertised because it negates the reward of charity and incites vanity and a propensity for glorification. In Mandaeism, charity is not meant to be applied to parents since caring for parents is a sacred duty.44

History of persecution The Mandaeans are called the Sabaeans (Sabians) in Islam, and they are mentioned separately in the Qur’an in three different verses.45 They are considered believers in one God: “those who believe, and who are Jews, Christians and Sabians, believe in Allah and the last day and work righteousness, their reward is with their Lord, nor shall they grieve”(2:62). However, some Muslims have mistakenly tried to link them with those who worship the stars, and therefore Mandaeans were often persecuted. In the seventh century AD, one of the ­Mandaeans, named Anosh bin Dinqa, negotiated with the Islamic leader Saad ibn Abu Waqqas over his faith. He and his followers were granted protection by paying the special tax, the jizya, as other monotheist Christians and Jews did.46 Nevertheless, during the early days of the Islamic conquest of Iraq and the spread of Islam, the Mandaeans were persecuted and discriminated against in addition to social, cultural, and ethnic cleansing directed against them. Under the requirement to pay the jizya, thousands of them were killed, migrated, or forced to change their religion to Islam. The Muslims depended on some Qur’anic verses that state, “Fight those who do not believe in Allah, and do not forbid what God and his Messenger and don’t profess the true religion.” So, to protect themselves, most Mandaeans moved away to small rods and marshes as a way to maintain their religion and heritage.47 In the fourteenth century, the Mandeans faced genocide in Amara, south of Iraq. In Iran, a campaign of terror and mass exterminations was conducted against the Mandaeans, killing hundreds and forcing thousands of them to enter the religion of Islam. In 1782, in South ­Persia, a campaign of terror and genocide erupted against them in which their religious books were burned in an attempt to eliminate them, their religion, and their 164

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heritage. After the outbreak of the First World War and the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, and the ­English forces entering Iraq, killings and attacks, looting and abduction of women, and forced conversion led to the Mandaeans’ migration to other cities in quieter areas.48 Since the mid-sixteenth century, the Mandaeans became the target of Western Christian missionaries. These missionaries did not hesitate even to use the Ottoman Sultan’s Office to get them to obey the call of the missionaries and to “return” to their ranks of Christianity, as they were portrayed.49 The Portuguese were the ones who first called them John the Baptist’s Christians when they came to southern city of Basra.50 The majority of their Shi’i neighbors treated them as people with lesser social rank. The group was not safe from persecution that aimed at abandoning their religious beliefs. To save themselves, many avoided speaking their language, shaved their beards, took Islamic names, and changed their clothing, traditions, and customs to go along the Islamic environment, and therefore it became difficult to distinguish them from Muslims.51

Current persecution: the Baath, Islamists, and aftermath During the former Ba’ath regime in Iraq, the Mandaeans were discriminated against because their educated and prominent figures were associated to or supporters of Iraqi progressive organizations. During Saddam Hussein’s senseless wars conducted in the 1980s, the majority of the Mandaean youth were sent deliberately to the front lines, even though their religion forbade fighting wars. More than 25% of the total youth community in that period died in the war, while the Mandaeans in Iran were victims of war, persecution, and a campaign to convert them to Islam.52 After the American invasion of Iraq in April 2003, they were initially targets of Shi’i militia groups and other extremists in addition to extremist Sunni groups, especially Salafi extremists, who entered Iraq to fight the American and Iraqi government forces.53 The Mandaeans are considered unclean by many Islamist radicals. Following the invasion, persecution mounted against the Mandaeans. Many of their temples were attacked, and Mandaean women were sexually harassed in order to force them to convert to Islam. Some extremist Muslims consider Mandaeans to be atheists, in their minds making Mandaeans fair targets of their violence. A fatwa (religious ruling) was issued accusing the Mandaeans of adultery and calling for their conversion to Islam.54 Under threat and killing, hundreds of families were forced to convert to Islam. Rape of women, forced male circumcision, forced marriage after kidnapping, threats to confiscate property, kidnapping one member of the family and forcing the rest of the family to convert, and so forth were ways used by terrorists and extremist Islamists to convert them to Islam.55 Since 2003, almost 1,000 Mandaeans have been killed.

Migration Despite previous persecutions, the Mandaean community did not know forced migration as it is happening now due to their attachment to their homeland. Still, it can be said that individual migration of the Mandaeans had started in the 1960s as some individuals pursued emigration. This was mainly a result of murder, torture, and imprisonment when the Ba’ath party took power in the February 1963 coup. The emigration of Mandaeans escalated in subsequent years until it reached its peak at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s because of 165

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the intensification of repression, the fierce campaign of the Ba’ath regime to liquidate the patriotic and leftist forces, and the subsequent wars and economic sanctions of the 1990s.56 However, such emigration has turned into forced collective displacement involving thousands of Mandaeans after the fall of the dictatorial regime in April 2003, the lawlessness, and the emergence of political Islam and its radical elements. This caused random unplanned migration of tens of thousands of the Mandaeans to the neighboring countries seeking temporary shelter or asylum in the Western world.

The future of Mandaeans The Mandaeans preferred to steer clear of controversy due to the risks to their survival, especially since they were often targeted and pressured to convert to Islam. Their reaction was to stay in a more closed society. Persecution and murder perpetrated against the Mandaeans by their Muslim neighbors forced them to migrate. Originally this meant internal migration to the big Iraqi cities of Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk, Fallujah, Ramadi, Diyala, and others started in the second half of the last century as Mandaeans joined the ranks of those working in the inscription and engraving of metals. Today’s population living in exile is the global extension of a long process of migration. The future of the Mandaeans is at stake. Within a few decades, they will face extinction because their numbers are decreasing every year as they are displaced from their original land and assimilated into the cultures of the Western countries that granted them asylum. Their numbers are not increasing through conversion since their religion does not countenance a missionary movement. The death rate is higher than the birth rate since immigration to many countries reduces the prospects of marriage and settlement within the community.57 Large numbers of families have been separated in several distant countries. Many parents are in one country, while their children are in other countries, making it difficult to reunite. This further weakens social and family ties. The children begin to learn the language of the new country, its customs, and its culture, abandoning their home language and traditions. Some of the new generation have ridiculed and mocked the customs and traditions of their parents as backward.58 The dispersion of the Mandaeans in many cities and the lack of places of worship have caused young people to become detached from their group, engaging in consumption and the desire for modern technology surrounding them. This is contributing to the loss of their Mandaean identity. The community is actually moving “toward the unknown future” unless practical steps to avoid those challenges are taken. Part of the responsibility rests with the clerics who are to perform the Mandaeans’ religious duties and rituals in a flexible way to save the Mandaeans’ culture. These random migrations constitute a source of threat to the survival of Mandaeans. They lead to the disruption of connection among the Mandaeans separated by thousands of miles. They cannot practice religious rituals or marry others who are separated from each other. This could and will necessarily lead to the abandonment of ties to Mandaeism toward the feeling of belonging and inclusion in other foreign communities, peoples, and cultures.59 Therefore, there is little opportunity for continuation of their original heritage and culture. In Iraq, the Mandaeans have gained constitutional recognition. For the first time in their history, their name is mentioned in the new Iraqi constitution that was adopted in 2005. However, the constitutional texts have remained merely recognition on paper, for ­Mandaeans have no real protection for their existence as a minority. There remains no mention of their existence or their history in school curricula.60 If the Mandaeans are to be included as a people, they have to be included in history books and other curricula. 166

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The Mandaean language was declared an endangered language by UNESCO in 2006, and therefore it must be protected, and there should be programs or effective efforts to save it. International institutions should work with Iraqi national bodies to protect the Mandaeans’ culture, language, and heritage, and to declare their tradition as an endangered one in order to seek protection of the Mandaeans as a religious ethnic group.61 The High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) must consider granting the ­M andaeans refugee status as a group rather than on an individual basis, to keep this endangered group together in their native country and allow their religious practices to maintain their cultural identity.62 Another step would be to move the Mandaeans within Iraq, although this is hard to implement because even in Iraqi Kurdistan, it is hard to relocate as a group. Although the Iraqi Kurdistan region harbored over 80 Mandaean families, finding jobs for non-Kurds is a big problem. The Iraqi government should be held accountable for the survival and the well-being of a minority group like the Mandaeans; their property, archives, and history should be protected.63

Conclusion Most of the minorities that inhabited early Mesopotamia are facing unusual circumstances that are causing them to flee Iraq. Losing them will deprive Iraq of its mosaic of many communities. Although the Mandaeans have survived for centuries, there is a fear that their existence would cease by the end of this century. Persecution in their homeland and forced migration, which pushed them to seek refuge in the Western world, would cause the loss of their culture and identity in a globalized era. The exodus of tens of thousands of Iraqi ­Mandaeans since April 2003 will cost their existence amid the end of many other ancient ethnic and religious communities in Iraq. They lived in their ancient land for over 2,000 years, but they had to leave it for survival and to feel their humanity. They will face a similar fate of that of Iraqi Jews who were forced to flee Iraq in the 1940s. Iraq is being deprived of its current cultural mosaic as most of its Christians, Mandaeans, and large number of the Yezidi religious minority are fleeing Iraq.64 The fall of Saddam, which was supposed to bring peace to Iraq, has unleashed religious fundamentalism and extremism. The threatening attacks of terrorist organizations have become the greatest threat to the existence of the Mandaeans in Iraq. The presence of Islamic fundamentalist groups that do not believe in citizenship and recognition of others is fatal to Mandaenism. It was religious extremism, sectarian rhetoric, and racial hatred, in addition to harassment of girls and women in their offices, schools, or on the street to cover their heads, besides murder and bloodshed, which caused the exodus of minorities. Unless special attention is given to their plight, Iraq will lose its ancient and diverse ethnic and religious minorities. Ethnic minorities in Iraq lost much of their confidence in each other and in the government due to years of marginalization, fighting, ethnic and religious tensions, and threats of terrorism. The continued targeting of Mandaeans will soon drain Iraq of the oldest and smallest of its component populations. The demise of their heritage and culture will represent a loss, not only to Iraq, but also to all humanity. In sum, the future of the Iraqi minorities, including the Mandaeans, depends on stabilization, secularizing, and democratizing Iraq. Without stabilization, they will continue to flee the country, causing the loss of its indigenous people. The increasing number of Christians, Yezidis, and Mandaeans fleeing their country is a clear indication of the deteriorating conditions in Iraq since 2003. 167

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Notes 1 Rasul Ali, “Sabean: Ambiguity about the Oldest Monotheistic Religions” (Arabic), Middle East Online, 18 April 2010. Available www.middle-east-online.com/?id=91499 (Accessed 24 July 2017). 2 Zahir K. Aboud, “Mandaeans’ Rites of Running Water” (Arabic), Mandaean Union [online], 17 December 2013. Available www.mandaeanunion.com/ar/culture/item/997--‫الجاري‬-‫الماء‬ ‫طقوس‬-‫( المندائية‬Accessed 23 July 2017). 3 Ali, “Sabean.” 4 Ali, “Sabean.” 5 Aziz Sbahi, “The Last Gnostic People in History” (Arabic), Mandaean Union [online], 21 N ­ ovember 2012. Available www.mandaeanunion.com/ar/history/item/46-the-last-gnostic-people (Accessed 24 July 2017). 6 Ali, “Sabean.” 7 R. Khayoon, Religions and Sects in Iraq (Arabic) (Beirut: Alkamel Publications, 2008). 8 N. Alhayder, “The Iraqi Minorities Council: Sabian Mandeans Are Threatened with Extinction” (Arabic), Shams Alhoriya 6 August 2006. 9 Ali Abdul Aal, “Originality, Creativity and an Iraqi Identity” (Arabic), 24 February 2006. Available http://elsada.net/2103/ (Accessed 24 July 2017). 10 Personal Interview with Nashat Mandwee, 30 August 2016. 11 Suhaib Nashi and John Bolender, “The Plight of Iraq’s Mandaeans and Honderich’s Principle of Humanity,” Political Studies Association, Politics 29, no. 2 (2009), 93–99. 12 Personal Interview with Nashat Mandwee, 30 August 2016. 13 Khayoon, Religions and Sects. 14 Aziz Sbahi, The Origin of the Sabean Mandaeans and Their Religious Beliefs (Arabic) (Baghdad: ­A lmada House for Culture and Publication, 2008), 3. 15 Sbahi, “The Last Gnostic People.” 16 Sbahi, “The Last Gnostic People.” 17 Yasin Alnashe, “Mandaeans: History, Religion, and Ritual” (Arabic), Mandaean Union [online], 3 April 2013. Available www.mandaeanunion.com/ar/history/item/223-mandaeans-­h istory-dean-andritual (Accessed 24 July 2017). 18 Ali, “Sabean.” 19 Ali Almokhtar, “Sabean Mandaeans: The Original Home and the Beautiful Feasts” (­A rabic), Mandaean Union [online] 4 April 2013. Available www.mandaeanunion.com/ar/culture/item/238mandaean-culture (Accessed 24 July 2017). 20 Mustafa Hanno, “Mandaeans Are Threatened with Extinction in Iraq,” BBC Arabic, 2 June 2007. Available http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/world_news/newsid_6714000/6714395.stm (Accessed 24 July 2017); Qais Alsaadi, “Invitation to Preserve the Mandaean Language from Extinction” (Arabic), Mandaean Union [online], 6 April 2013. Available www.mandaeanunion.org/ar/mandaic-language/ item/274-invitation-to-preserve-the-mandaean-language-from-extinction. 21 Almokhtar, “Sabean Mandaeans.” 22 H. Mahmoud, “Sabeans Adjacent Rivers and Their Books Attributed to Adam,” Azzaman, issue 1429, 14 January 2003. 23 Hanno, “Mandaeans.” 24 Alnashe, “Mandaeans.” 25 Aboud, “Mandaeans.” 26 Fawzi Talab, “The Mandaean Association in Erbil” (Arabic), Mandaean Union [online], 8 November 2013. Available www.mandaeanunion.com/ar/culture/item/907 (Accessed 24 July 2017). 27 Rashid al-Khayoon, “Water Is the Origin of Light and Resurrection,” Mandaean Association in the Netherlands, n.d. Available http://mandaeans.page.tl/%26%231575%3B%26%231604%3B%26%2 31605%3B%26%231575%3B%26%231569%3B-%26%231575%3B%26%231589%3B%26%231604 %3B-%26%231575%3B%26%231604%3B%26%231590%3B%26%231610%3B%26%231575%3B% 26%231569%3B.htm (Accessed 25 August 2017). 28 Khayoon, “Water.” 29 Khayoon, “Water.” 30 Khayoon, “Water.” 31 Almokhtar, “Sabean Mandaeans.”

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The Mandaeans in Iraq 32 Suhail Almahnawa, “Learn about the Mandaean Religion, Society and Heritage: The Pillars of the Mandaean Religion” (Arabic), Mandaean Union [online], 27 December 2013. Available www. mandaeanunion.com/ar/culture/item/1015-‫ناـك رأ‬-‫ةـنايدـلا‬-‫( ةـيئادنـمـلا‬Accessed 24 July 2017). 33 Almokhtar, “Sabean Mandaeans.” 34 Aboud, “Mandaeans.” 35 Almokhtar, “Sabean Mandaeans.” 36 Mahmoud, “Sabeans.” 37 Ali, “Sabean.” 38 Almahnawa,”Learn.” 39 Almokhtar, “Sabean Mandaeans.” 40 M. Alasa’ad, “The Mandaeans: The Forgotten Folk,” Iraqi Democratic Union [online], 2008. Available www.fnrtop.com/vb/showthread.php?t=279132Bottom of Form (Accessed 1 December 2016). 41 Almahnawa, “Learn.” 42 Almahnawa, “Learn.” 43 Mahmood, “Sabeans.” 4 4 Almahnawa, “Learn.” 45 Alnashe, “Mandaeans.” 46 Faruq Abdul Imam, “Who Are the Sabeans,” MandaeanUnion [online], 18 June 2014. Available www. mandaeanunion.org/ar/culture/item/1270-%D9%85%D9%8E%D9%80%D9%80%D9%86%D9%87%D9%80%D9%8F%D9%80%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B5%D8%A7%D8%A8 %D8%A6%D9%80%D9%80%D8%A9 (Accessed 25 August 2017). 47 F. Alhayder, “Mandaean Sect: Big Challenges and Vague Future” (Arabic), Alhewar Almotamadi, November 2011. Available www.ahewar.org/debat/show.art.asp?aid=283846 (Accessed 1 December 2016). 48 Alhayder, “Mandaean Sect.” 49 Sbahi, “The Last Gnostic People.” 50 Khayoon, “Water.” 51 Alhayder, “Mandaean Sect.” 52 Alhayder, “Mandaean Sect.” 53 Khayoon, “Water.” 54 UNHCR, Background Information on the Situation of non-Muslim Religious Minorities in Iraq, October 2005. 55 Shak Hanish, “The Christians, the Yazidis, and the Mandaeans in Iraq: A Survival Issue,” Digest of Middle East Studies 18, no. 1 (2009), 1–16. 56 Alhayder, “Mandaean Sect.” 57 Alhayder, “Mandaean Sect.” 58 Alhayder, “Mandaean Sect.” 59 Sattar J. Rahman, Text of the Speech Delivered by Mr. Sattar Jabbar Rahman, Chief of Sabian Mandaean Sect, 2008. Available www.al-nnas.com/ARTICLE/is/20mn.htm (Accessed 24 July 2017. 60 Rahman, Text. 61 Rahman, Text. 62 Nashi and Bolender, “The Plight of Iraq’s Mandaeans.” 63 Nashi and Bolender, “The Plight of Iraq’s Mandaeans.” 64 Hanish, “The Christians, the Yazidis, and the Mandaeans.”

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13 Bahá’ís in the Middle East Geoffrey Cameron with Nazila Ghanea1

In numerical terms and in the human rights understanding of the term, Bahá’ís constitute a minority religious community in each of the Middle Eastern states. Yet the self-perception of Bahá’ís strongly departs from many of the characteristics that are commonly associated with minority populations.2 On the one hand, Bahá’ís consider the world as “one country,” and all peoples as members of that same global community. On the other, their faith tasks them—wherever they may reside—with obedience to the government and with working for the social development of their communities in collaboration with friends and neighbors. The Bahá’í vision of the future is an optimistic one, emphasizing the collective maturation of humanity and the inevitable establishment of universal peace. This optimism deeply influences their sense of belonging in Middle Eastern states (as elsewhere) and their lack of fear regarding their survival and long-term future. It stands in sharp contrast with what an impartial observer may consider their prospects in light of their history in parts of the region, the repression they have faced and continue to face in some of the states, and their numerical profile in each of them. This contrast between status and perception in relation to the Bahá’ís in Iran, Egypt, Iraq, Bahrain, and Jordan constitutes a dominant theme in this chapter. We begin with a brief overview of the history, teachings, and development of the Bahá’í community in the Middle East, followed by a discussion of some of the ambivalence of the Bahá’í community with regard to the concept of “minority.” Despite facing adverse circumstances in most countries in the region, the Bahá’í community has generally not argued for its emancipation within a political claim to “minority” status, though it has sought the associated rights guaranteed under international human rights law.3 It has also publicly argued for and sought to achieve greater recognition through constructive and positive means, nurturing bonds of collaboration and engagement with society, an approach that has been described elsewhere as “constructive resilience.”4 Bahá’í communities have responded to repression by seeking to participate actively in the life of their society—as part and parcel of living the principles of their faith—and have thus laid the foundations of their claims for equal citizenship.

The Bahá’í Faith In order to understand the Bahá’ís’ approach, some attention to the principles of their faith is merited. The Bahá’í Faith is an independent religion with established communities in about 170

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100,000 localities, virtually encompassing every part of the world. Its own records count over 5 million adherents, and the World Religion Database estimates that almost 8 million people identify with the faith.5 The earliest Bahá’í communities were founded in the Middle East, as the faith originated in Shiraz, Iran, in 1844. Until the late nineteenth century, most Bahá’ís lived within the territories of the Persian and Ottoman Empires. Today, however, the Bahá’í Faith is already recognized as the second most widespread religion in the world. This has largely resulted from the community’s systematic efforts to spread the faith and its teachings, and to establish elected administrative institutions in almost every country and territory.6 The central figures of the Bahá’í Faith are the Báb (meaning “the Gate” in Arabic, whose given name was ‘Alí Muhammad) and Bahá’u’lláh (meaning “the Glory of God” in Arabic, whose given name was Mirzá Husayn-’Alí). The Báb claimed to be the Twelfth or “­H idden” Imam, fulfilling prophetic expectations of Twelver Shi’ism, and sparking a millenarian movement that rapidly attracted large numbers of adherents in Qajar Persia.7 Followers of the Báb were brutally suppressed under Násiru’d-Dín Sháh Qajar, whose prime minister ordered the execution of the Báb in 1853. The Báb had foretold that his own revelation would be followed by the appearance of the long-awaited Promised One, a mantle that was publicly claimed by Bahá’u’lláh in 1863. Already a leader of the Bábí community, Bahá’u’lláh established the Bahá’í religion, with its own spiritual and social teachings. The central principle of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings is the fundamental oneness of humanity, which is the pivot around which the other principles revolve. He prohibited religious violence, emphasized the oneness of religion, and presented a vision of modernity which is built on the foundation of the harmony of science and religion and the spiritual purpose of this earthly life. Bahá’u’lláh described the history of religion as one of progressive revelation, in which a succession of messengers of God—or “­m anifestations of God”—brings divine teachings to guide humanity in its collective development. His message validated the essential spiritual principles of the world’s religions, while prescribing new social teachings—such as the equality of women and men, the abolition of prejudice, and the elimination of the extremes of wealth and poverty. Bahá’u’lláh claimed that his revelation marked the end of a “prophetic cycle” of expectation, and inaugurated a “cycle of fulfillment” during which the promises of peace and justice foretold by every world religion would be finally within humanity’s reach.8 Therefore, the Bahá’í vision of history is one that sees humankind increasingly unified in its endeavors and moving progressively toward a collective maturity. Bahá’u’lláh lived the rest of his life as a prisoner and exile. He was banished with his family from Persia, whence the Ottomans brought him to Baghdad, Constantinople, and Adrianople. During his time in Adrianople, he wrote a number of notable letters declaring his mission as a messenger of God to several rulers and monarchs, as well as Pope Pius IX.9 In 1868, Bahá’u’lláh and his family were banished by Sultan Abdul-Aziz to the penal colony of Akká in Palestine. While in Akká, Bahá’u’lláh authored a number of the core texts of the Bahá’í revelation, including the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, its book of laws. Although he was still a prisoner, the conditions of his confinement were gradually reduced, finally allowing Bahá’u’lláh to live his final years in a home outside of Akká. He died at the Mansion of Bahji on 9 May 1892.10 Bahá’u’lláh’s will designated his son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (meaning “Servant of Bahá’u’lláh,” given name ‘Abbás Effendi), as his successor and head of the Bahá’í Faith. Under ‘­Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry, the Bahá’í Faith spread to both the East and the West. He hosted visiting pilgrims and maintained extensive correspondence with Bahá’ís all over the world. These letters and 171

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other writings laid the foundations for Bahá’í administration, and directed plans for the global expansion of the Bahá’í Faith.11 Albeit technically still a prisoner, ‘­Abdu’l-Bahá oversaw the construction of the Shrine of the Báb in Haifa. Following the Young Turk ­Revolution in 1908, he was released from the indefinite house arrest imposed by the O ­ ttomans. In 1910, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá began a three-year journey that included visits to Egypt, several countries in Europe, and North America. In the course of these travels, he gave hundreds of private and public talks on a range of Bahá’í teachings, including Bahá’u’lláh’s vision of society, the oneness of humanity, racial unity, economic justice, the equality of women and men, universal peace, and the unity of religions.12 After World War I, the British Mandate of Palestine recognized his humanitarian efforts in service of the local inhabitants by conferring on him a knighthood of the British Empire. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá died in Haifa on 28 November 1921. His grandson, Shoghi Effendi Rabbani, was named the Guardian and head of the Bahá’í Faith in his will and testament. The passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá propelled the development of the Bahá’í Faith into a new stage marked by systematic growth and development. During his ministry (1921–1957), Shoghi Effendi led further expansion of the worldwide Bahá’í community, guided the evolution of its administrative order, oversaw extensive development of Bahá’í holy sites in Palestine (later Israel), and personally translated core Bahá’í scriptures from Persian and Arabic into English.13 Soon after Shoghi Effendi’s sudden passing in 1957, the world-wide Bahá’í community was guided by several of his appointed stewards to elect in 1963 the Universal House of Justice, the nine-member council—elected every five years—that is the head of the Bahá’í Faith today and whose establishment had been anticipated in Bahá’u’lláh’s writings. The House of Justice is based in Haifa, Israel, the spiritual and administrative center of the Bahá’í community since the time of Bahá’u’lláh. As there is no clergy in the Bahá’í Faith, annually elected nine-member Spiritual Assemblies guide Bahá’í communities at the local and national levels. The early history and emergence of the Bahá’í Faith already displayed the hallmarks of the approach to social development, self-perception, optimism, and response to repression that still characterizes its community. Even the attitude informing its worldwide expansion beyond its origins in Iran and neighboring territories was steeped in a desire to become an integral part of the communities it reached, a focus on social development rather than temporal or political goals, and a desire to find like-minded people with whom to cooperate in shared objectives. This approach becomes highly pertinent to the “minorities” question, as well.

Bahá’ís as minorities in the Middle East? Bahá’ís do not reject the fact that the definition of “minority” in international law applies to them in Middle Eastern states, insofar as they constitute a numerical minority, are not in power, and wish to maintain characteristics distinguishing them from the rest of the population (adherence to their faith).14 However, they do not consider themselves a “minority” in the sense of feeling separate from the rest of the population, seeking to establish a separate existence, or being entitled to special treatment. Therefore, they make a distinction between the political identification of minority status and the method that resonates with Bahá’í belief and practice, namely, buttressing these claims by living as equal citizens through a­ ctive and positive participation within society. Their practice claims rights guaranteed under ­domestic and international law, both freedom of religion or belief and the achievement of minority rights through collective rights, but emphasizes the participation of Bahá’ís as partners with all humanity.15 172

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The reluctance of the Bahá’í community to self-identify as a minority group also reflects the broader difficulty associated with claiming minority status in Muslim-majority states, as the dominant schools of Shi’i and Sunni political theology reserve the status of minority for pre-Qur’anic religions. As one observer has noted in a study of Bahá’í advocacy for ­human rights in Iran: Neither the Bahá’í International Community nor the Special Representative of the ­human rights situation of Iran has asked for the Bahá’ís of Iran to be recognized as one of the listed minorities in the Iranian Constitution. This is of enormous consequence for Iran, which may consider the primacy of Islam compromised by official constitutional recognition of a post-Islamic religion.16 Instead of seeking minority status, Bahá’í communities have sought full integration in the societies in which they live, along with the rights to which they are entitled as equal citizens.

Iran Since the inception of the Bábí religion in Iran in the 1840s—followed by the development of the Bahá’í Faith in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries—the community has faced recurring persecution and discrimination by political and religious authorities. The earliest Bábí communities were violently suppressed by the state, with thousands of Bábís killed between 1848 and 1850. Abbas Amanat traces one of the origins of this persecution to the rise of the Usuli legal school in the latter part of the late nineteenth century, which empowered jurists (mujtahids) to be the sole source of judicial authority complementary to the governing authority of the state.17 Their authority was challenged by the prophetic religious claim of the Báb to be the Hidden Imam, which prompted their efforts to have him declared a heretic. The sentence of execution was finally issued by the mujtahids of Tabriz in 1950 and carried out by agents of the state. Following the execution of the Báb, the Persian ‘ulamá (Muslim scholars) issued a variety of fatwas that charged the Bábís, and later the Bahá’ís, with apostasy and with being “at war with God.” This designation, and its propagation by religious authorities, effectively excluded the Bahá’ís from the category of recognized minority in Iranian society. Bahá’ís “were seen as a post-Islamic heresy whose very existence militated against the Islamic notion of prophetic finality,” which justified “all forms of discrimination, abuse, and aggression.”18 Despite Bahá’u’lláh’s explicit condemnations of violence by his followers and his own conciliatory efforts toward Qajar authorities, the state nevertheless “seized every opportunity to imprison, banish, torture, and execute individual Babis and Bahá’ís whenever its political interests and its waning popularity required.”19 The increasing fusion between the authority of the ‘ulamá and the state would have perilous consequences for Bahá’ís. By the 1920s and 1930s, it became common practice to refer apostasy cases to the state, which would then administer the penalties. Furthermore, this practice helped to underwrite at a deeper level in Iranian society the “othering” of the Bahá’ís, who were increasingly seen as being alien and outside the consolidated Shi’i nation.20 Over the course of the twentieth century, antagonistic religious and political leaders succeeded at fostering a cultural taboo in Iranian society that inhibited references to Bahá’ís outside of a derogatory register of language.21 The irony of this perverse development is that the Bahá’í community provides a window into the diversity that exists within Iran. Bahá’ís come from all religious, ethnic, class, and 173

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tribal backgrounds, effectively making the community a reflection of Iranian society itself. As Chehabi notes, the Bahá’ís in Iran “are much more integrated into the mainstream of ­Iranian society than other, ‘recognized,’ religious minorities.”22 Furthermore, the community has consistently professed a hopeful vision for the future and affection for the country of its origin. The construction of the Bahá’í community as an internal “other,” upheld by secular and religious actors alike, has made Iranian civil society “party to a contradiction that lives on to this day.”23 Notwithstanding these adverse conditions, the Bahá’ís of Iran pressed forward, developing internal administrative structures and publicly calling for recognition and toleration of their faith. They recognize the authority of the government and its role in guiding the progress of the nation, but they have sought accommodations that grant them equal standing alongside other religious communities. For instance, they did not consent to be officially classified as either Muslim, Jew, Christian, or Zoroastrian depending on the religion of their ancestors; and they have also not submitted personal matters to these religious courts. Shoghi Effendi described the Iranian Bahá’ís as a triumphant community… determined, more than ever before, to press, within the limits prescribed for it by its Founders, its claim to be regarded as an independent religious entity, and to safeguard, by all available means, its integrity, the solidarity of its members and the solidity of its elective institutions.24 In addition to their claims to religious and civil equality, Bahá’ís in Iran also sought increasing involvement in the life of society. One notable foray of the Bahá’í Faith into ­Iranian public life was its contribution to the discourse surrounding the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in the early 1900s, which led to the establishment of Iran’s first parliament.25 Bahá’u’lláh praised the constitutional form of government in his writings as early as the mid1860s, and in the 1870s, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá published one of the earliest Persian treatises in favor of democracy.26 By 1897, Bahá’í communities in Iran were beginning to establish elected governing councils to manage their internal affairs. There was broad support in the Bahá’í community, including from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, for the principles of the constitutionalist cause. However, after the establishment of the parliament in 1906, political fragmentation and conflict within the constitutional movement led ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to instruct Bahá’ís to refrain from associating with the process. Despite the influential role recent scholarship has accorded to Bahá’í discourses and actors in the constitutional revolution, the subsequent political turmoil led the Bahá’í community to dissociate itself from the political process and focus instead on other areas of social reform. Bahá’í initiatives to promote social reform included contributions to modern medicine in Iran,27 efforts to promote gender equality,28 and the development of modern schooling. Individual Bahá’ís have made notable cultural contributions to Iranian society, including architecture and classical music.29 Momen has argued that Bahá’ís were “at the forefront of the advances in education that were occurring in Iran” at the turn of the twentieth century.30 Bahá’í schools included study of the modern arts and sciences, departing from traditional Islamic education that emphasized rote learning. In accordance with Bahá’í teachings on gender equality, schools for both boys and girls were established. Momen estimates that by 1918–19, the dozens of Bahá’í schools in Iran accounted for about 10% of primary and secondary education in the country. For Bahá’í communities, the establishment of these schools was often their first point of entry into public life, following decades of intense persecution during the twentieth century. The schools welcomed pupils of all religions, followed 174

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government guidelines in curriculum, often taught Arabic and the Qur’án, but also closed on Bahá’í Holy Days. In some towns, children faced harassment on their way to school, and in others the buildings were attacked following incitement by local clerics. Motivated in significant part by anti-Bahá’í sentiments, in 1934, the Department of Education ordered the closure of all Bahá’í schools.31 The nationalist modernizing impulse under the Pahlavis generated new threats for the Bahá’ís. As Eliz Sanasarian notes, during this mid-twentieth century the left and the intellectuals entertained a negative view of the Bahá’ís… [and] many believed that Bahá’ísm [sic] was a fake movement founded in Iran by the British colonialists as an instrument of indirect rule in order to destroy Shi’ism and progressive movements.32 Although many Bahá’ís prospered during the Pahlavi period—primarily owing to high levels of education within the community—they were still periodically targeted for persecution when the Shah needed to shore up support among the clergy. In 1955, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi gave permission to Sheikh Muhammad Taqi Falsafi to propagate anti-Bahá’í teachings, which led to pogroms against Bahá’ís, their expulsion from schools and work, and the destruction of Bahá’í property—including the National Bahá’í Centre in Tehran. That same year, Hojjatiyeh—a secretive anti-Bahá’í society that would later be connected to Bahá’í persecution under the Islamic Republic—was founded.33 The Islamic Revolution, with its intoxicating and explosive mix of nationalism, populism, and political Islam, ushered in a new period of constant repression for the Bahá’ís in Iran. When the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini was preparing his return to Iran to seize the reins of the revolution, he was asked whether he would permit political or religious freedom for Bahá’ís. He replied: “They are harmful. They will not be accepted.”34 Bahá’í leaders were immediately targeted under the revolutionary state, and over 200 of them were executed or “disappeared.” Bahá’í centers were closed and sealed, teachers were banned from schools, children and youth expelled from classrooms and universities, the press propagated lies and hate about the Bahá’ís, and courts imprisoned them on fabricated grounds.35 The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center concluded that, “the Islamic Republic pursued a deliberate strategy designed both to deprive the Bahá’í community of leadership and to criminalise an entire faith.”36 During the drafting of the new constitution, Sanasarian notes that “anti-Bahá’ísm was obvious throughout the proceedings,” and every word and expression was debated to ensure the exclusion of Bahá’ís from all civil rights protection afforded to recognized religious minorities.37 The constitution was not the only official document that would direct the repressive government policy toward the Bahá’ís; in 1991, senior members of government signed a secret memorandum—later released to the public by a United Nations official—that outlined a plan to block the progress and development of the Bahá’í community. Bahá’ís were to be denied “any position of public influence,” “expelled from universities,” and denied employment “if they identify themselves as Bahá’ís.” It directed the propaganda institutions of the government to disseminate anti-Bahá’í material. The continued exclusion of Bahá’ís from all higher education and public sector employment, alongside a constant state-led campaign that has been characterized as incitement to hatred, indicates that this policy has remained in effect in the decades since it was announced. Although the government gradually curtailed its violent repression of the Bahá’ís, it adopted a new and insidious strategy: to use state-­ controlled media and bureaucracy to systematically exclude Bahá’ís from public life and official recognition.38 175

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Since the initial days of the revolution, the Bahá’í administrative bodies and the people serving on them have been the target of attacks. In the early 1980s, members of the National Spiritual Assembly and many Local Spiritual Assemblies were executed, or abducted and “disappeared.” In 1983, the Prosecutor General formally called for the dissolution of all Bahá’í institutions, a directive that was obeyed by the Bahá’í community. Through ad hoc arrangements, the community proceeded to see to its internal social and spiritual needs with the creation of local and national groups. These groups even entered into dialogue with the government on certain matters. 39 In the mid-2000s, however, a new wave of attacks was launched through state media channels, swiftly followed by directives from Iranian military headquarters for intelligence and police agencies to identify and monitor Bahá’ís. New steps were taken to keep Bahá’ís out of universities and many fields of work in the private sector. In 2008, the seven members of the Yaran, the informal group of Bahá’í leaders, were arrested and given twenty-year sentences—the longest of any prisoner of conscience in Iran. One of the most notable responses by the Bahá’í community to its oppression has been the creation of the Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education (BIHE), an informal educational program that has allowed scores of Bahá’ís in Iran to pursue advanced study.40 The New York Times called it “an elaborate act of communal self-preservation.”41 Through an international network of faculty—often teaching students by using distance education methods—the BIHE reports to have engaged some 700 instructors and administrators, and delivered over 1,000 courses.42 Those who complete required levels of study with the BIHE are able to enter, with certain restrictions, into a range of private sector professions in Iran. Their credentials have been recognized by dozens of foreign universities, where graduates have completed master’s and PhD programs. Many of these graduates have remained engaged with teaching through BIHE, whether by distance or upon returning to Iran. BIHE, too, has faced several waves of attack on its offices, staff, and students. In 2011, the Institute was declared illegal. In response to this extraordinary policy, the Bahá’í community—through its United Nations office—addressed a letter to the research and science minister of Iran and declared: “Bahá’ís cannot abandon their responsibility to ensure that their young people receive in Iran the best, the most useful education that can be provided to them.”43 Undeterred by the government’s intention to shut down the BIHE, the Bahá’í community has continued to ensure that informal arrangements remain in place to provide for the higher education of its youth. Notwithstanding the unceasing persecution directed at the Bahá’ís in Iran, there is a detectable sympathy for them growing within the Iranian population and diaspora, including among clerics. An increasing number of voices in Iranian society are expressing support for expanded civil rights, which would offer the Bahá’í community greater protection under the law.44 Bahá’ís have entered the public discourse on human rights cautiously, seeking to avoid polarizing issues while also supporting calls for the removal obstacles to the full participation of women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, and other oppressed groups in the life of society. In doing so, Bahá’ís have welcomed collaboration with a growing number of groups that are working for social reform in a manner consistent with the Bahá’ís’ commitment to the principle of the oneness of humanity and to the cause of unity. Related to this commitment to unity is a core principle of non-involvement in politics, which leads Bahá’ís to focus on processes of social reform and avoid contentious public engagement or political association. Indeed, in Iran they have consciously avoided association with political parties or groups that agitate for an overthrow of government.

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Finally, to understand the position of the Bahá’ís in Iran, it is essential to take into account how they see themselves. A letter from the Universal House of Justice to the Bahá’ís in Iran describes elements of the attitude toward suffering and adversity that Bahá’ís strive to adopt: You may be sure that it is not only history that tells of the courage and steadfastness of your community, but that the significance of a community that under severe and sustained oppression has remained forward looking, dynamic, vibrant, and committed to serve its society, is not lost on those who dispassionately view your present situation. Perhaps the most compelling and clear example of your constructive resilience is evident currently in your earnest striving for knowledge, in your commitment to the loftiest values of faith and reason which the Cause inculcates, and in your perseverance in pursuit of higher education. The world can see a community that has rejected the label of victim and chosen instead to draw on the highest reservoirs of solidarity and collaboration in its resolve to advance as a living entity—that its youth might progress and attain the heights of learning and that society itself benefit therefrom.45 Bahá’ís are encouraged to find creative and constructive responses in the face of oppression. Although scores of Bahá’ís have had to leave Iran as refugees, many have intentionally stayed in order to make some contribution to the future of their country. They look with hope and confidence toward a future when the Bahá’í Faith will be emancipated in the country of its birth, and they will be free to openly contribute to the well-being of their nation, and of the world, alongside their fellow citizens.

Arab states The challenges facing Bahá’í communities in Arab countries differ significantly from the persecution they suffer in Iran. In fact, they have generally achieved a greater degree of acceptance in many of these countries, including the establishment of administrative bodies, growing recognition of Bahá’í marriages, official participation in public life, web presence, and involvement in social reform. These advances have been made within a context in which Bahá’ís still live with a number of obstacles to full legal equality.46 Although in some countries the destabilizing effects of political changes across the region have contributed to uncertainty for the Bahá’ís, there are generally positive signs for the recognition and emancipation of the Bahá’í Faith through respect for the civil rights of its followers. In this section we provide brief snapshots of the situation of the Bahá’ís in four countries: Egypt, Iraq, Bahrain, and Jordan.

Egypt The presence of the Bahá’í Faith in Egypt extends back almost as far as the religion itself. A few Iranian Bahá’ís arrived in the 1860s, and soon afterward the community grew to include Arab Bahá’ís who converted from Muslim, Jewish, and Christian backgrounds. In the late 1800s, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá encouraged Mírzá Abu’l-Fadl Gulpáygání, a prominent Bahá’í scholar, to move to Egypt where he began teaching at the Al-Azhar mosque. Soon thereafter, the nascent Bahá’í community attracted negative attention from Salafi clerics, including ­Muhammad Rashíd Ridá, one of the early theorists of the “Islamic State.” When ‘­Abdu’l-Bahá later visited in 1910, the Bahá’í Faith received its first widespread public

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attention in the press. Most of it was positive, except for reactions—and, soon, fatwas—from some Muslim religious authorities.47 For the first half of the twentieth century, the Bahá’í community in Egypt—still relatively small compared to the Muslim and Christian populations—enjoyed relative liberty and official recognition. The National Spiritual Assembly of Egypt and Sudan—one of the first Bahá’í National Assemblies in the world—was established in 1924. A kind of official recognition was granted to the Bahá’í Faith through unusual means in the same year. A provincial religious court ruled that Bahá’í marriages to Muslim women were not permitted because, “The Bahá’í Faith is a new religion, entirely independent, with beliefs, principles and laws of its own, which differ from, and are utterly in conflict with, the beliefs, principles and laws of Islám.”48 Despite enabling discrimination against Bahá’ís in some cases, this ruling was sanctioned by the highest ecclesiastical authorities in the country and became an important precedent for Bahá’í communities across the region. As Shoghi Effendi wrote, it became a lever which the Egyptian Bahá’í community, followed later by its sistercommunities, readily utilized for the purpose of asserting the independence of its Faith and of seeking for it the recognition of its government.49 The ruling enabled the Bahá’í community to advance its case for recognition of the National Assembly as a body that could exercise the functions of a religious court in matters of personal status, issue marriage and divorce certificates, and oversee burials. By the 1950s, there were Bahá’í groups in twenty-four towns across Egypt, and a national center had been erected in Cairo. In 1960, the Bahá’í community in Egypt faced a major setback in its search for religious equality and recognition. Between 1946 and 1960, Bahá’ís had become the subject of an increasingly frequent number of fatwas that sought to deny them civil status based on Islamic law.50 On 19 July 1960, Nasser appeared to accede to these religious rulings, and passed Presidential Decree no. 263/1960, which effectively banned the Bahá’í Faith. The decree stated that, “All Bahá’í Assemblies and Centers existing in the two regions of the Republic are hereby dissolved, and their activities suspended… Individuals, bodies and institutions are forbidden to engage in any activity, as was conducted by these Assemblies and Centers.” The state took over all Bahá’í properties, including its national center, and Bahá’í activities were made into criminal offenses that could be punished with imprisonment.51 Despite the chilling effects of the presidential decree, the Bahá’ís found ways to live in Egyptian society. Indeed, Cantini writes that the Bahá’ís in Egypt “are one of the most active and visible religious minorities.”52 One of the reasons is the way in which they have been working over the years, through legal and public channels, to press their claim to full citizenship in Egyptian society. Following the presidential decree, the Bahá’ís had to rely on the good will of bureaucratic clerks in order to obtain official identification cards, which would often have a dash or “other” in the required section that listed the bearer’s religion. Clerks used this workaround to issue documents without officially recognizing the Bahá’í Faith. In 2004, an administrative decision by the Civil Status Department directed that the only religious affiliations allowed on an identification card are Islam, Judaism, and ­Christianity—effectively creating another barrier to Bahá’í citizenship. Because lack of access to an identification card makes it very hard to navigate everyday life, from registering a birth to attending school, the legal status of Bahá’ís in Egypt has been the subject of a series of high-profile court cases and public debates. Despite opposition by politicians linked to 178

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the Muslim Brotherhood and by conservative members of the Coptic Church to the enfranchisement of Bahá’ís, a handful of recent court cases have opened the door to allow Bahá’ís access to some civil rights. However, lacking clear recognition of their legal status as citizens, interactions with any public entities are fraught with uncertainty. Bahá’ís are, effectively, “undocumented” residents with limited citizenship rights. Since the overthrow of President Mubarak, the Bahá’ís in Egypt have sought to dispel misconceptions about their religion and contribute where possible to the discourse on the future of Egypt. One such contribution was an open letter addressed to the people of Egypt in April 2011. Widely distributed and discussed, the letter presents the vision of the Bahá’ís of Egypt for the future of their country, and it encourages a national conversation on certain principles, such as the oneness of humanity, the equality of the sexes, and the interaction between science and religion, to guide Egypt in its “new stage in its development.” It urges that, the process not move too quickly to the pragmatic and the expedient, and not be reduced to the deals and decisions involved in the distribution of power among a new elite who would presume to become the arbiters of our future.53 Egypt is still in a period of transition under the current government, but the situation of the Bahá’ís appears to be improving. The Bahá’í community made oral and written submissions to the committee tasked with amending the Egyptian constitution. The interim government has formally recognized, and expressed its appreciation for, these contributions. Newspapers and television shows have featured arguments for the recognition of the rights of the Bahá’ís as an integrated segment of society. With the support of the government, Bahá’ís are continuing to raise civil rights issues with the National Council of Human Rights. In so doing, they demonstrate that they are seeking to avoid making identity-based claims that would only accentuate any differences between themselves and their fellow Egyptian citizens. Instead, they are seeking protection for their civil rights while also trying to find ways to participate in Egyptian society.54

Iraq Iraq is home to the longest-standing Bahá’í community outside of Iran. The earliest followers of the Báb were sent to Iraq to spread the religion, and they were successful at establishing local communities. After the execution of the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh was exiled from Iran to Iraq. While living under house arrest in Baghdad, he helped to propagate the Báb’s teachings by authoring books and letters that would eventually constitute core texts of the Bahá’í scriptures. His growing influence in Baghdad eventually led the Ottoman authorities to exile him once again to Constantinople. Before departing in 1863, he gathered his family and followers in the Ridván Garden and openly disclosed his prophetic mission as the founder of a new religion. Virtually the entire Bábí community accepted his claims, and his declaration in Baghdad is today marked around the world as a twelve-day Bahá’í festival, punctuated by three Holy Days of special significance. The National Spiritual Assembly of Iraq was established in 1931, and it acquired a number of properties in subsequent decades. In 1952, the Bahá’í Faith was recognized in the government census.55 Following the 1958 coup and the rise of the Ba’athists, however, the fortunes of the Bahá’í community shifted. Although ostensibly the Ba’athists were secular Arab nationalists, they quickly proclaimed Islam to be the official state religion. In 1970, the Bahá’í Faith was officially banned, Bahá’í properties were confiscated, and orders were issued to 179

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delete all references to the Bahá’í Faith from official records. The Ba’athists imprisoned Bahá’ís and ordered their execution, solely on the grounds of their adherence to a religion not included among the officially recognized minority faiths. Since 2004, the Bahá’í community in Iraq has reestablished its administrative institutions, including its National Spiritual Assembly, and it has been successful at claiming compensation for a number of properties that had been confiscated under previous governments. In 2007, the government reversed a 1973 ruling that prevented Bahá’ís from obtaining national identity cards.56 Representatives of the National Assembly have cultivated friendly relationships with government agencies, journalists, intellectuals, and clerics, with the intention of contributing to greater inter-religious understanding and peaceful coexistence. Various government agencies have addressed official correspondence to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Iraq, signifying a degree of state recognition of the religion and its institutions which many other governments in the region have denied to the Bahá’ís under their jurisdiction. The Bahá’í community has struggled to obtain rightful ownership of its most important holy site in Iraq, the House of Bahá’u’lláh in Baghdad. The Bahá’í community had already rebuilt the house once in the early twentieth century, when it briefly regained possession of it. The building was once again confiscated just as reconstruction was almost completed, and the Bahá’ís advanced a case to its ownership that was eventually heard by the League of ­Nations. Despite receiving a favorable ruling from that nascent and short-lived institution, it remained out of the hands of the Bahá’í community, and its possession was eventually reverted to a Shi’a religious endowment. In 2012, the new government’s Department of Antiquities recognized the building as an exemplary model of period architecture and designated it a heritage site. However, the Shi’a religious endowment violated the decree in 2013 and razed the House of Bahá’u’lláh to the ground to make room for another building. Recognition of the Bahá’í Faith has advanced even further in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Bahá’í community has established a regional council in the territory, and its representatives have participated in processes related to the drafting of the constitution of the Kurdistan regional government. Their contributions to this process have included requests for protection of their civil rights, promotion of measures to ensure the well-being of children and youth, and the preservation of the environment. Bahá’ís have also found opportunities to contribute to high-profile public events on peace, co-existence, and the preservation of historical sites. Articles have appeared in prominent regional newspapers that present the Bahá’í Faith in a favorable light, and Kurdish television has reported on the Bahá’í Faith and interviewed Bahá’í representatives. The Bahá’í Faith is gradually being recognized as a part of Iraqi society, and its contributions to public discourse are increasingly accepted and welcomed.

Bahrain The Bahá’í Faith traces its origins in Bahrain to the mid-twentieth century, with records of the establishment of the first Local Assembly in Manama around 1963.57 The National Spiritual Assembly was established in 1978, and in recent years the Bahá’í Faith has obtained official government recognition. The Bahá’í community reports that it enjoys a significant degree of freedom in Bahrain, including respect for the right to hold meetings, own property, and interact with government and civil society organizations. Bahá’ís are able to register their marriages as civil marriages.58 As the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom notes in its 2016 report, “[m]ost Bahrainis acknowledge that their society has been historically tolerant of all faiths and religiously pluralistic to a degree that is notable in the region.”59 This perspective is confirmed by the experience of the Bahá’í 180

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community: its interactions with state and religious authorities differ markedly from those in other countries in the region. In addition to enjoying basic rights to religious freedom, Bahá’ís are also increasingly present and active in public life. In recent years, the Bahá’í community has gradually expanded its interaction with civil society organizations and the media, including starting its own majlis—a type of public gathering on issues of social concern. These interactions have focused on religious co-­existence and the advancement of women, both areas of public discourse that relate directly to core Bahá’í principles. Growing respect for the Bahá’í community has been reflected in its inclusion in a variety of official settings. Its representatives joined an official interfaith delegation to address the King. A Bahá’í has been invited to serve on the National Human Rights Institution of Bahrain. Another Bahá’í was reportedly invited by the Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society to monitor the 2010 state elections.60 As the Bahá’í community has entered more public spaces it has received favorable treatment by a cross-section of Bahraini society as well as by the media, and by both the written press and television.

Jordan Bahá’ís have lived in Jordan for many decades, and its National Spiritual Assembly was formed in 1975. Although they have not received official recognition by the government and encounter difficulties in matters concerning personal status, tolerance for Bahá’ís has reportedly increased in recent years. Bahá’í marriage certificates are recognized by the government, which issues civil marriage certificates on this basis. A number of Bahá’í cemeteries are registered to Bahá’í institutions. A series of apostasy lawsuits brought against Bahá’ís from Muslim family members were rejected in court in 2012. As in Bahrain, the Bahá’ís in Jordan are expanding their participation in public life. A Bahá’í-inspired non-governmental organization offers educational and youth empowerment programs in a number of neighborhoods and villages, and public schools have opened space for its activities. Bahá’í representatives have been welcomed into civil society spaces focused on issues of citizenship and freedom of belief, conflict resolution, and interfaith dialogue. Representatives of the National Assembly have developed an ongoing discussion with government officials aimed at resolving problems related to the personal status of Bahá’ís, who still have difficulty obtaining documentation that does not state their religion as Muslim.

Conclusion Across the Middle East, the obstacles to Bahá’í participation in mainstream society and to equal citizenship have not come from within the community itself, nor always from the society around them. Their marginalization from mainstream society has been a consequence of inter-related actions by political and religious authorities over the course of the twentieth century. Early in the century, Bahá’í institutions were generally recognized in countries where they were established, and the Bahá’í population enjoyed a degree of liberty and integration in the Muslim-majority society. Toward the middle of the century, however, prominent Sunni and Shi’a clerics increasingly issued fatwas and other religious interpretations that authorized the disenfranchisement and subordination of Bahá’ís, whom they regarded as apostates. Similar rulings stimulated prejudice and episodic repression in the past, but the evolution of political Islam over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has amplified these clerical voices and sometimes given them direct access to political power. Furthermore, as nationalism spread throughout the region, the state frequently became fused 181

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with religion, often in a manner that led to further marginalization of the Bahá’ís. Where they have been unable to claim even the subordinate status of “protected minority,” Bahá’ís have been “othered” as neither part of the national whole nor recognized as a minority group. As the instrumentalities of the modern state have developed, fresh challenges have arisen in obtaining the basic formal documents associated with citizenship: identification cards, passports, marriage licenses, and so forth. This interaction between religious rulings, the public rhetoric of clerics, judgments of state courts, and exercise of power through the modern state has exerted pressure to remove Bahá’ís from mainstream society. The responses of the Bahá’í communities to repression and marginalization, however, are noteworthy as they illustrate a unique kind of collective agency, one that is derived from core convictions of Bahá’í belief and thought. The first of these convictions is a refusal to dissemble or deny one’s faith. In some cases, Bahá’ís could have simply claimed to be Muslim and thus resolved any problems in their interactions with state authorities. However, they have largely declined to adopt this strategy and instead called for full recognition. A second principle is obedience to government. This does not prevent Bahá’ís from expressing their views in the public sphere, seeking legal redress, and building civil society coalitions to advocate for social justice. However, Bahá’ís have followed state laws and have not responded to injustice with violence. Unlike some religious and ethnic minority groups, they have also refused to align themselves with any political party or faction. Third, Bahá’í communities have sought to carry out their core religious principle of acting in service to society, despite the difficulty this often entails. Bahá’ís believe that they are laying the foundations of a new world civilization, based on universal spiritual principles, and their resilience in the face of repression and adversity has often been connected to their resolution in pursuit of this goal.61 For the Bahá’ís, the full implications of the recent changes sweeping the region since the “Arab Spring” have yet to be realized. There have been some promising and positive developments in countries where religious authorities do not have direct access to political power. Bahá’ís have entered the public sphere and seized opportunities to contribute to the progress of their countries. However, Iran has also been expanding its sphere of influence in the region, with potentially adverse consequences for Bahá’í communities in affected countries. In Yemen, for instance, the Iran-allied Houthis have assumed greater control over the government, which has been quickly followed by new persecution of Bahá’ís in that country.62 In view of the Iranian government’s strong antipathy toward the Bahá’ís and its stated policy to “confront and destroy their cultural roots outside the country,”63 its growing influence in the region is already associated with new religious intolerance. It remains to be seen whether recent steps toward a future of inter-religious equality can be sustained across the region in the years ahead.

Notes 1 The authors would like to thank George Costant, Nilufar Gordon, and other anonymous reviewers for their help with preparing this chapter. 2 For examples of such characteristics, see Mordechai Nisan, Minorities in the Middle East: A History of Struggle and Self-Expression (London: McFarland and Company, 1991). 3 For discussion on the need to respect and protect freedom of religion or belief of persons belonging to religious minorities, see Heiner Bielefeldt, “UN Doc A/HRC/22/51,” 24 December 2012. Available www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Religion/A.HRC.22.51_English.pdf. On minority rights-based approaches to the protection and promotion of the rights of religious minorities, see also Rita Izsák, “UN Doc A/68/268,” 5 August 2013. Available https://documentsdds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N13/418/69/PDF/N1341869.pdf.

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Bahá’ís in the Middle East 4 Michael Karlberg, “Constructive Resilience: The Bahá’í Response to Oppression,” Peace and Change 35, no. 2 (2010), 222–257. 5 Todd M. Johnson and Brian J. Grim, World Religion Database (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 6 Peter Smith, “The Bahá’í Faith: Distribution Statistics, 1925–1949,” Journal of Religious History 39, no. 3 (2015), 352–369; Peter Smith and Moojan Momen, “The Bahá’í Faith 1957–1988: A Survey of Contemporary Developments,” Religion 19 (1989), 63–91. 7 Abbas Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Bábí Movement in Iran, 1844–1850 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). 8 See Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By (Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1987), 57. 9 See Bahá'u'lláh, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts (Haifa: Bahá’í World Centre, [1868] 2002). 10 For a good biographical introduction to the life of Bahá’u’lláh, see Moojan Momen, Bahá’u’lláh: A Short Biography (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007). 11 See ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, trans. Marzieh Gail (Haifa: Bahá’í World Centre, 1997); ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of the Divine Plan (Haifa: Bahá’í World Centre, 1993). 12 See ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Paris Talks (London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1972); ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace (Wilmette, IL: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1982). 13 Biographical works include: Rúhíyyih Rabbani, The Priceless Pearl (London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1969); Ugo Giachery, Shoghi Effendi: Recollections (Oxford: George Ronald, 1973). 14 Francesco Capotorti, “Study on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities,” E/CN.4/Sub.2/384/Rev.1 (1979), para 568. Available http://hdl.handle. net/11176/340012 (Accessed 11 October 2016). 15 For discussion see Nazila Ghanea, “Are Religious Minorities Really Minorities?” Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 1 (2012): 57–79. 16 Nazila Ghanea, Human Rights, the UN and the Bahá’ís in Iran (Leiden, Netherlands: Martinus ­Nijhoff Publishers, 2002) 221. 17 Abbas Amanat, “The Historical Roots of the Persecution of Babis and Bahá’ís in Iran,” Dominic Parviz Brookshaw and Seena B. Fazel, eds., The Bahá’ís of Iran: Socio-Historical Studies (London: Routledge, 2008), 172–173. 18 Amanat, “Historical,” 175. 19 Amanat, “Historical,” 177. 20 See Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Anti-Bahá’ísm and Islamism in Iran,” Brookshaw and Fazel, eds., The Bahá’ís of Iran, 200–231; H.E. Chehabi, “Anatomy of Prejudice: Reflections on Secular Anti-Bahá’ísm in Iran,” Brookshaw and Fazel, eds., The Bahá’ís of Iran, 184–199. 21 Chehabi, “Anatomy,” 185; David Menashri, “Khomeini’s Policy toward Ethnic and Religious Minorities,” Esman, Milton J, and Itamar Rabinovich, eds., Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the State in the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 215–229. 22 Chehabi, “Anatomy,” 185. 23 Tavakoli-Targhi, “Anti-Bahá’ísm,” 224. 24 Effendi, God Passes By, 370. 25 See Kavian Milani, “Bahá’í Discourses on the Constitutional Revolution,” Brookshaw and Fazel, The Bahá’ís of Iran, 141–155; Moojan Momen, “The Bahá’ís and the Constitutional Revolution: The Case of Sari, Mazandaran, 1906–1913,” Iranian Studies 41, no. 3 (2008), 343–363. 26 Momen, “The Bahá’ís and the Constitutional Revolution,” 352. 27 Seena B. Fazel and Minou Foadi, “Bahá’í Health Initiatives in Iran: A Preliminary Survey,” Brookshaw and Fazel, eds., The Bahá’ís of Iran, 122–140. 28 See Soli Shahvar, Forgotten Schools: The Bahá’ís and Modern Education in Iran, 1899–1934. Vol. 11 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009); Moojan Momen, “Bahá’í Schools in Iran,” Brookshaw and Fazel, eds., The Bahá’ís of Iran, 94–121. 29 Perhaps the most notable example is Hossein Amanat’s iconic Shayhad (now Azadi) Tower, a symbol of Tehran. 30 Momen, “The Bahá’ís and the Constitutional Revolution,” 97. 31 Momen, “The Bahá’ís and the Constitutional Revolution,” 115. 32 Eliz Sanasarian, Religious Minorities in Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 115. 33 Sanasarian, Religious Minorities in Iran, 120. 34 See Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, A Faith Denied: The Persecution of the Bahá’ís of Iran (New Haven, CT: IHRDC, 2006), 21.

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Geoffrey Cameron with Nazila Ghanea 35 Firuz Kazemzadeh, “The Bahá’ís in Iran: Twenty Years of Repression,” Social Research 67, no. 2 (2000), 537–558; Moojan Momen, “The Bábí and Bahá’í Community of Iran: A Case of “Suspended Genocide?” Journal of Genocide Research 7, no. 2 (2005), 221–241. 36 IHRDC, A Faith Denied, 2006. 37 Sanasarian, quoted in IHRDC, A Faith Denied, 21. 38 IHRDC, A Faith Denied, Appendix 7. 39 For a discussion of the types of discrimination suffered, see Nazila Ghanea, “Driving While Bahá’í: A Typology of Religious Discrimination,” The Equal Rights Review 14 (2015), 53–70. 40 Friedrich W. Affolter, “Resisting Educational Exclusion: The Bahá’í Institute of Higher Education in Iran,” International Journal of Diaspora, Indigenous and Minority Education 1, no. 1 (2007), 65–77. 41 Ethan Bronner, “Iran Closes ‘University’ Run Covertly By the Bahá’ís,” The New York Times, 29 October 1998. 42 Bahá’í Institute for Higher Education. Available http://bihe.org/index.php?option=com_­content& task=view&id=35&Itemid=198 (Accessed 15 September 2016). 43 See Letter from the Bahá’í International Community to the Honorable Kamran Daneshjoo, Minister of Science, Research, and Technology, 24 August 2011. Available http://news.Bahá’í.org/sites/news. Bahá’í.org/files/documentlibrary/848_BICLetter_English.pdf, (Accessed 15 September 2016). 4 4 See Shirin Ebadi, Until We Are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran (New York: Random House, 2016). 45 Letter from the Universal House of Justice to the Bahá’í youth in Iran, 29 January 2014. 46 See Joshua Castellino and Kathleen A Cavanaugh, Minority Rights in the Middle East (Oxford: ­Oxford University Press, 2013), 135–138. 47 Johanna Pink, “A Post-Qur‘anic Religion between Apostasy and Public Order: Egyptian ­Muftis and Courts on the Legal Status of the Bahá’í Faith,” Islamic Law and Society 10, no. 3 (2003), 409–434. 48 Cited in Effendi, God Passes By, 365. 49 Effendi, God Passes By, 366. 50 Pink, “Post-Qur’anic Religion,” 416. 51 Pink, “Post-Qur’anic Religion,” 412. 52 Daniele Cantini, “Being Bahá’í in Contemporary Egypt: An Ethnographic Analysis of Everyday Challenges,” Anthropology of the Middle East 4 (2009), 34–51. 53 See An open letter from the Bahá’ís of Egypt to the People of Egypt, April 2011. Available http:// Bahá’í-egypt.blogspot.ca/2011/04/open-letter-to-people-of-egypt.html (Accessed 15 September 2016). 54 Saba Mahmood, “Religious Freedom, the Minority Question, and Geopolitics in the Middle East,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 54, no. 2 (2012), 418–446; Saba Mahmood, Religious Minorities in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 55 Ali Mamouri, “Iraq's Bahá’ís Continue to Face Persecution, Social Exclusion,” Al-Monitor, ­August 2013. Available www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/08/iraq-Bahá’ís-persecution-­r eligiousminority.html (Accessed 15 September 2016). 56 Muslim Network for Bahá’í Rights, “Roundup on status of Bahá’ís in Muslim-Majority Countries,” 22 September 2008. Available www.Bahá’írights.org/2008/09/22/roundup/ (Accessed 15 September 2016). 57 Bahá’í World Center, “The Bahá’í Faith, 1844–1963: Information, Statistical and Comparative, Including the Achievements of the Ten Year International Bahá’í Teaching & Consolidation Plan 1953– ­ ctober 2016). 1963.” Available http://Bahá’í-library.com/handscause_statistics_1953-63 (Accessed 4 O 58 US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, International Religious Freedom Report: Bahrain. Available www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2009/127345.htm (Accessed ­ ctober 2016). 4O 59 US Commission on International Religious Freedom, 2016 USCIRF Annual Report. Available www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/USCIRF_Monitored_Bahrain.pdf (Accessed 4 October 2016). 60 Muslim Network for Bahá’í Rights, “Bahá’í Elected to Bahrain Rights Panel,” 15 October 2008. Available www.Bahá’írights.org/2008/10/15/Bahá’í-elected-to-bahrain-rights-panel/ (Accessed 4 October 2016). 61 Karlberg, “Constructive Resilience.” 62 Human Rights Watch, “Yemen: Bahá’í Adherent Faces Death Penalty,” 1 April 2016. Available www. hrw.org/news/2016/04/01/yemen-Bahá’í-adherent-faces-death-penalty (Accessed 4 O ­ ctober 2016). 63 IHRDC, A Faith Denied.

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14 The Alawites of Syria The costs of minority rule Leon T. Goldsmith

The internal dynamics of the Syrian crisis of 2011–2018 have much to do with identity politics and the relations between the so-called minority and majority populations. Yet, little reliable scholarship exists on Syria’s largest and most influential minority, the Alawite Islamic sect.1 Ba’athist co-optation, censorship and repression over the last half-century muted almost all independent political expression by minority groups. However, the fragmentation of the Syrian state since 2011 has allowed the emergence of groups and individuals claiming to be representative of minority views and interests. The present state of scholarship on ­Syrian minorities, and in particular the Alawites, therefore, stands at an important departure point. Keeping in mind that much work is required to tap these [re]emerging sources, this chapter gives a brief introduction to the defining characteristics of the Alawites, efforts to integrate them into a Syrian nation-state, and major challenges facing the Alawite community going forward.

The problem of Syrian minorities? Modern Syria was built upon a mosaic-palimpsest of identities stretching back thousands of years. Yet, despite this super-diverse background,2 the issue of integrating subnational identities into a coherent state has been one of the most pressing problems in the Syrian context. At the outset of the Syrian nation-building project in 1946, Levant scholar, Albert Hourani, explained the resilience of subnational identities in terms of minority groups’ “rapid and superficial assimilation” and “preserving, beneath new modes of behaviour and in new forms, their old ways of living.”3 On the other hand, majority populations – whether considered on religious or ethnic grounds – generally accepted the heterogeneous nature of Syrian society and coexisted with minorities as long as established political and social norms were upheld. This balance of adaptation, accommodation and coexistence existed for centuries in the Ottoman millet system, which loosely administered the affairs of religious groups under the umbrella of imperial authority. In the twentieth century, despite French colonial efforts to the contrary in 1920–46, Syrian and Arab nationalists sought to bind diverse identities around the largest common denominators of shared history and ethnicity. While internally resilient, the Syrian communal balance was nonetheless prone to derailment by external interventions or domestic political mismanagement. This was the case 185

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when communal violence flared in 1850–60 in the wake of increasing levels of Western Christian socio-economic interference in the weakening Ottoman Levantine provinces. Similarly, perceptions of regime corruption and Arab states’ support to rebels played a part in the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood insurgency of 1976–82. Most certainly, political-economic mismanagement through the 2000s and “in-spill” of Sunni and Shi’i regional actors into the Syrian power vacuum from 2012 have contributed greatly to the sectarian dimensions of the current Syrian crisis. The common narrative of perpetual or latent sectarian conflict does not, however, accurately reflect the reality of intercommunal relations over the wide span of Syrian history. The religiously heterodox Alawites endured for around a millennium in the coastal regions of Syria, which shows the group’s pragmatism and ability to adapt to regional power shifts, but also the fact that the socio-political environment of historical Syria was not as fundamentally hostile for Alawites as is sometimes portrayed.4 With French colonial power in Syria slipping in the late 1930s, Syrians from all communities clamoured for independence in a unified Syria. For Alawites, however, this new nationalist vision was combined with an innate impulse to avoid dangerous political overreach and a lingering anxiety about the intentions of the Sunni majority. A meeting allegedly occurred between veteran Alawite tribal leader, Shaikh Saleh Al-Ali, and the French General Charles de Gaulle in October 1939. De Gaulle suggested that Saleh Al-Ali should assume a leadership position in Syria as a way to secure minorities against Sunni majoritarianism. The Shaikh, possibly suspecting a French design for maintaining influence via minority insecurity, is said to have rejected this idea outright, stating: “If Syrian Sunni are the target, we are all Syrian Sunni.” When asked later why he refused the offer, the Shaikh replied, “Any religious, ethnic, or partisan minority will not be able to rule Syria except with outside assistance. Along with such assistance there will be destruction of this minority and all of Syria.” Whether or not entirely accurate, this account repeated by Alawite sources is remarkably germane to the current situation for the Alawites and for Syria as a whole.5 Since the late 1960s, the Alawites of Syria have commonly been put forward as a classic example of minority rule in the Middle East. The main premise for this categorisation of A ­ lawites as a “dominant minority” stems from the Alawite origins of powerful military-­political figures such as Salah Jadid in the 1960s and the current ruling family, the al-Asad clan, from 1971.6 Hafiz al-Asad consolidated his presidency by incorporating Alawites as a key pillar of his rule within the state security apparatus and bureaucracy. In return, many Alawites made substantial gains in terms of their socio-economic status, security, and opportunities for advancement. The Alawites as a whole did not, however, benefit disproportionately from al-Asad rule. Many rural Alawites remained relatively poor, and nonconforming Alawites have been subjected to even greater levels of political oppression than other S­ yrians.7 Yet it is also clear that the majority of Alawites have been more likely to support the al-Asad regime than other Syrian demographics, and have largely remained, at least tacitly, supportive of the regime of Bashar al-Asad – who inherited power in 2000 – since the outbreak of the 2011 Syrian uprising. The reasons for this Alawite loyalty to the al-Asad regime could be explained by either the dynamics of group solidarity (‘asabiyya), as a consequence of economic co-optation, as a response to a security dilemma in relation to Syria’s Sunni majority, or as a result of manipulation of Alawite insecurities by political elites.8 Many Alawites have become increasingly anxious and disillusioned about the nature and performance of the Syrian regime, but struggle to see alternatives for their security. Thus, the perception of Alawite minority rule is perpetuated, and Alawites have remained conflated with the al-Asad regime and its brutal repression of the Syrian uprising since 2011. This could prove extremely costly for the ­A lawites, if (or when) a reckoning occurs with Syria’s Sunni majority, as the latter has 186

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increasingly been turned toward fundamentalism by the atrocities of the Syrian regime and its Iranian and Russian allies, the inertia of the international community and Arab-Gulf and Turkish support to Islamist rebel groups, including foreign jihadi fighters.9

Majoritarian views on Alawi status The shape of Syria’s national identity and dominant political culture has been an intensely contested question since its independence as a modern nation-state in 1946. The period of iron-fisted political authoritarianism under the Ba’ath Party from 1963 until its fracturing from 2011, more or less froze important intercommunal debates over national identity – a dangerous compression that exploded cataclysmically from 2011. Within this ongoing context of contestation, it is difficult to highlight clearly any consensus on the part of host populations’ perspectives on the status of minorities, such as the Alawites. In other words, the contours of what we would call the “majority” or “minority” in Syria has not been fully resolved. In most literature pertaining to Syria and the Levant, religious or ethnic affiliation is presented as the most common formula for defining host societies and minorities. Through this lens, the Alawites have been classified by the Sunni Arab majority of Syria as a heterodox religious sub-sect of Shi’i Islam. So, briefly, why have Alawites been considered as a heterodox religious minority? A ­ lawites are most commonly categorised as a minority due to their religious identity, which caused them to be placed outside of mainstream Islam. Alongside pre-Islamic Gnostic traditions, their beliefs include the elevation of the fourth Islamic Caliph and first Shi’i Imam ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib to near-divine status as well as a belief in metempsychosis (reincarnation).10 The elevation of ‘Ali is considered to be an exaggeration by most Twelver Shi’i Muslims and unacceptable by Sunni Muslims.11 Alawi religious scholars have denied their deification of ‘Ali, however, suggesting that the Prophet Muhammad and ‘Ali are both “manifestations” or “lights” of the creator, but not divine.12 Along with the Druze and Ismailis, Alawite heterodoxy has its roots in internal schisms that occurred within Islam beginning from the seventh century.13 The Alawites (or Nusayris) began to crystallise as a group in the ninth century with the career of the eponym of the sect, M ­ uhammad Ibn Nusayr (d.883 or 873). However, the individual attributed with formally establishing the sect was Abū ‘Abdallah al-Husayn ibn Hamdan al-Khasībī around 926.14 Variously defined as batiniyya (esoteric) or ghulat (extremists), the Alawites were persecuted at various times by the mainstream Shi’i or Sunni establishment. With the exception of a “golden period” coinciding with Shi’i Hamdanid rule in Aleppo in the tenth century,15 they were progressively pushed into the periphery of the Islamic world, eventually taking refuge in the mountainous topography of the Coastal Levant.16 The Alawites established a foothold in the coastal mountains of northwestern Syria throughout the eleventh century following increasing repression in the interior by, firstly, the Imami Mirdasids, and then Seljuk Turks after 1070.17 Alawite refugees followed in the footsteps of the Alawi missionary Abu Sa’id Maymun b. Qasim al-Tabarani, who came from Tiberius in the late tenth century. Al Tabarani was prominent in formalising Alawi doctrines and converting heterodox Shi’i and Christian peasants in coastal Syria around Latakia.18 During the Fatimid-Byzantine and Crusader periods (900s – 1290), the Alawites were relatively secure and lived with some autonomy as part of a diverse mosaic of communities, variously competing or cooperating.19 As the Mamluk state expanded and consolidated its authority in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries, however, the geopolitical and religious landscape of the Levant shifted toward a majoritarianism based on Sunni Islamic identity.20 Thus, the socio-political status of the Alawites became firmly defined as “heterodox” in 187

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relation to the “orthodoxy” of the Sunni majority. This marginal status was consolidated in the fatwas of Hanbali cleric Ahmed ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) issued between 1305 and 1318 that defined Alawites as non-Muslims and worse infidels than Christians, Jews or Mongols.21 This heterodox status and associated marginalisation continued more or less unabated for the next six centuries, throughout the Mamluk and Ottoman periods. Despite their long marginalisation from mainstream Syria, the Alawites persisted by exercising pragmatism in periods of political flux. In the turbulent first half of the twentieth century, power passed from the Ottomans to the French to the independent Syrian state. Each political change necessitated an accommodation with new hegemonic identities: from Sunni Islam and Ottoman identity, to the Levantine subnational identities promoted by the French in the 1920s and 1930s, and finally to Syrian and Arab identities from the 1940s.22 Intense debate over the wording of Syria’s landmark 1950 constitution gave a glimpse into the status of Alawites in the new Syria. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood insisted that the text of the constitution should include that the “state religion is Islam” regardless of minority concerns. This was supported by 56% of the twenty-three-strong constitutional committee.23 Eventually a compromise was reached whereby the new constitution read: “the president’s religion is Islam,” “Islamic jurisprudence is the main form of legislation” and “personal laws of religious sects will be preserved and observed.”24 Hafiz al-Asad tried to leave out the article asserting that the president’s religion be Islam in the draft of a new constitution in 1973, but was forced to back down due to public uproar.25 According to majority consensus on their unique religious identity, the Alawites are considered heterodox and form numerical minorities in Lebanon, Syria and southern Turkey. In Lebanon, they are estimated at less than 3% of the population,26 in Syria, 10%–15% amongst a 75% Sunni majority (at the start of the Syrian war), 27 and less than 1% in Turkey.28 There is also a small community of about 2200 Alawites in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights village of Ghajar.29 Thus, the Alawites possibly number around 3–4 million in total, concentrated in the north-eastern Mediterranean littoral, extending from northern Lebanon through coastal Syria and into Turkey’s Hatay, Mersin and Adana provinces. The historical heartland of the community is the Syrian coastal mountains, where the sect was scattered for centuries among hundreds of small villages. The largest concentrations of Alawites remain in the coastal region of Syria, including the cities of Tartous and Latakia, and since the 1970s, in different suburbs of Damascus, Hama and Homs.30 Opposing the definition of Alawites as a heterodox religious minority is the fact that Alawites are Arab, and therefore can be placed within the ethnic majority in the northern Levant, which is at least 90% Arab.31 Also, while Alawites are a minority by virtue of their religious identity in three main states where they are found, in the geographical area where they are concentrated on Syria’s coast, they are perhaps a 60%–70% majority.32 In the city of Latakia, Alawites are a 55%–60% majority in a population approaching 1 million, resulting in the largest metropolitan centre in the Arab world without an orthodox Sunni and/ or Twelver Shi’a Islamic majority.33 These proportions have possibly reduced due to large numbers of Sunni migrants arriving from the conflict areas of the Syrian interior since 2011. Unsurprisingly, Alawite efforts to integrate have centred on emphasising their characteristics of Arab ethnicity and loyalty to a Syrian national identity.

Alawite integration efforts In terms of demographic strength and capacity to interact assertively with the Sunni majority of Syria, the Alawites were the main actors among the heterodox minorities in what would 188

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become modern Syria. At Syrian independence, Alawites comprised 11% of the new state, numbering approximately 274,486 out of a total population of 2,487,027.34 As Syria gained its independence, Syrian leaders tried to downplay the issue of subnational identities within a new nationalist framework; however, concerns around integrating sub-national groups were evident. The veteran nationalist, Jamil Mardam Bey, expressed concern over the “problem of minorities,” which he saw as a “grave threat” to the new Syrian state.35 Syrian elites were at pains to seek the integration of the Alawites in order to cohere a viable state entity incorporating the interior and coastal regions. This was evident in the way that the Alawites were courted by Sunni political and religious elites throughout the mandate period at both the Syrian and the Arab national levels. For example, in July 1936, the Arab nationalist and grand mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Amin al-Husseini (1895–1974), issued a fatwa which strongly vouched for the Islamic nature of the Alawi religion, a decision that sought to smooth over religious divisions and strengthen Arab unity.36 Notably, the fatwa coincided with a decision by Alawite tribal and religious notables to accept the union of the Alawite-majority coastal region with the Sunni-dominated Syrian interior in late February 1936. 37 This was the death knell for any thought of maintaining an independent Alawite state under French protection. Over the following decades, Alawite “nationalist heroes” like Shaikh Saleh al-Ali (mentioned earlier), who had fought against French intervention in the early 1920s, assumed substantial significance as symbols of Syrian nationalism and the effort to assimilate narrow identities into a broader “Syrian” political culture. 38 Numerous political parties and movements with widely diverging ideological positions and ethno-religious interests, reflective of Syria’s diversity, competed for influence in the 1940s–1950s. Among these, the most attractive for Alawites were the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), the Ba’ath Party (meaning renaissance or resurrection) and, to a lesser extent, the Communist Party. The Alawites (along with Christians and Kurds) were drawn to the SSNP because of its secular and socialist focus and its willingness to incorporate heterogeneous groups under a single Syrian national banner.39 The Alawites felt they would be more secure within a national identity based on a shared historical heritage with other communities according to an essentialist “Syrian” identity. However, the Arab nationalism preferred by the Ba’athists also provided a vehicle for Alawites to extinguish their long-standing minority status. The decline of the SSNP from 1955 and the surge of Arab nationalism spreading from revolutionary Egypt meant that Alawites ultimately gravitated towards the Ba’ath and became well represented in its political and military wings. The socialism of the Ba’athists also saw the Alawites entering into a class coalition with poor rural Sunnis.40 A notable figure for Alawites in the ideological and political ferment of the early independence period was the Alawite scholar Zaki Al Arsuzi (1899–1968) from Antakya, who has been raised up by the Syrian regime – similarly to Shaikh Saleh al-Ali – as proof of Alawites’ centrality and loyalty to the Syrian and Arab nations.41 In addition to supporting the rise of the Ba’athists in Syrian politics, Alawites also looked to improve their Islamic credentials. In 1952, Alawite religious leaders successfully made a request to the mufti of the Syrian Republic to be recognised as part of the Twelver Shi’ite school.42 This decision further benefited Alawites when a historic fatwa from the al-Azhar religious school in Cairo recognised Twelver Shi’ites as “religiously correct” in 1958. The combination of these two rulings, along with the Husseini fatwa of 1936, put the Alawites nominally back inside the Muslim fold and in a better political situation in the overwhelmingly Sunni state of Syria. A strategy of closely aligning with orthodox Shi’ism was again deployed in the 1970s as a way to buttress the Islamic credentials of the new Alawite regime 189

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elite, and again in the 1990s as Syria headed towards a potentially turbulent political transition as Hafiz al-Asad’s health deteriorated.43 The history of the rise of the Ba’athists to power in 1963, and the eventual capture of supreme political power in Syria by the Alawite air-force officer, Hafiz al-Asad in 1971, has been well documented. But the crucial aspect to note was al-Asad’s pragmatic choices that expanded his coalition of support beyond his Alawite sect and other minorities. Al-Asad recognised the importance of winning over the Sunni religious establishment. Between 1973 and 1980, he made large personal donations to religious schools and charities in the conservative centres of Hama and Homs as well as regularly raising the salaries of officials in the religious institutions, and he allocated substantial state funding to the construction of new mosques.44 In addition to establishing a lucrative modus-vivendi with Aleppo and Damascus’ Sunni urban merchants, Hafiz al-Asad shrewdly co-opted tribal Sunnis from the Houran in the south and from the Jazeera in the north-east by providing them with positions in the state machinery.45 It was these decisions that formed an important bulwark for the regime against the possibility of a wider uprising erupting among majority Sunnis in support of the Muslim Brotherhood rebellion of 1976–82. The massacre undertaken by government forces at Hama in February of 1982, which involved both Alawite and Kurdish troops besieging Muslim Brotherhood fighters, razed most of the old city and cost around 20,000 lives.46 This was the turning point in the process of integration of Alawites in Syria. Subsequently, mutual insecurities between the Sunni Arab majority and Alawite minority would set Syria on a course for the conflagration that would envelop the country in 2011.

Challenges facing the Alawites The Alawite minority in Syria faces several serious challenges to its security and future survival as part of a unified Syrian state. These include its association with the al-Asad regime and perceptions of complicity with its brutal repression since the 1980s, and more acutely since 2011; rising conservatism and religiosity among the Sunni majority; the entrance into the Syrian-Iraqi arena of jihadists and Salafists such as Al Qaeda-affiliated groups and the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS), who see Alawites as the worst kind of infidels; a desire for revenge by the populations of inner Syria that have been ravaged by bombing of majority Sunni cities by the regime and Russia; and increasing environmental challenges for rural Alawites. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing Alawites is overcoming their own insecurities, which was a major contributing factor in the descent into the Syrian catastrophe in the first place. In March–April 2011, swelling anti-government protests cascaded from Dera’a in the Houran, to the Damascus suburbs, Homs, Idlib, Hama, the Jazeera and even the coastal Alawite heartland. Despite protesters looking to mitigate the danger of sectarian divisions by including and reaching out to Alawites, the spectre of possible revenge for the massacre at Hama in 1982 convinced many Alawites that the Muslim Brotherhood was behind the protests.47 Further, commonly held fears included a view that Saudi-backed Wahhabism lay at the root of the movement to depose al-Asad, purely because he was an Alawite “apostate.”48 This conjured up collective memories of Ibn Taymiyya – an important figure in the development of Wahhabi doctrine – and his fourteenth-century fatwas that negatively impacted Alawite social and political status for many centuries. These largely unfounded fears, during the early peaceful stages of the uprising, were certainly not allayed by a regime which was desperate to maintain unified support among the Alawites and other minorities. Such fears were actively promoted by the Syrian regime according to some sources.49 Therefore, the 190

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potential for a relatively peaceful political transition as per the Tunisian revolution became virtually impossible as the regime retained substantial support and successfully provoked the revolutionaries into violent retaliation. Syria had already experienced a period of rising religious conservatism among its Sunni majority throughout the 2000s, which posed a long-term challenge for the security of Syrian Alawites. Many factors were behind the resurgence of religious feeling in Syria, including regional events related to the U.S. War on Terror and the Iraq War. Syria’s changing social characteristics were also related to the struggles of rural Sunnis, who were grievously affected by severe drought in 2006–10 at the same time that the Syrian government shifted its focus from rural to urban development. In addition, the wider phenomenon of rising identity politics due to the effects of globalisation should not be discounted in the Syrian context. However, it is ironic that the al-Asad regime, which relies heavily on Alawite support, played a role in unleashing Sunni fundamentalism in the Levant. Syrian intelligence channeled Islamist fighters into Iraq, and occasionally Lebanon, in the mid-late 2000s as a foreign policy tool against regional adversaries. This carried dangerous side effects for Syrian stability and minorities. The attempts to control and direct jihadist currents in the region form an important backdrop to the emergence of large-scale extremist group formation within the Syrian-Iraqi conflict zone.50 Most concerning of all for heterodox groups like the Alawites is that six years of intractable conflict has resulted in a humanitarian tragedy that the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic described in 2016 as of “gargantuan proportions.”51 In this context, the potential for long-term radicalisation of displaced, traumatised and under-educated generations of Syrian youth is unprecedented. The nature and tactics of the Syrian regime present another challenge to the Alawites. As outlined earlier, Alawite survival has been contingent on a pragmatic policy of adaptation to power shifts. However, the grip on the Alawite sect by the al-Asad regime has seriously weakened any independent Alawite leadership emerging that could negotiate a sustainable future for the sect in Syria. The al-Asad ruling family is undoubtedly headed by President Bashar al-Asad. However, his younger brother Maher is known to be highly influential in designing brutal tactics to counter the opposition – both armed and unarmed. Early in the uprising, key regime figures, such Bashar al-Asad’s first cousin Rami Makhlouf, declared their intention to fight the uprising to the bitter end, which indicated at an early stage that the “concept of negotiation is alien to the inner core” of the regime.52 In addition, we can expect the regime to maintain its traditional policy of “out-waiting” its enemies, as has been clearly defined by German scholar Bente Scheller.53 This too bodes badly for ­A lawite long-term integration and security as the potential for a “tidal wave” of retribution by ­Syria’s Sunni majority is progressively increased the longer the conflict continues. Ordinary ­A lawites are becoming alarmed at the situation that the al-Asad regime has led them into. This has combined with frustration at the arrogance and detachment of the regime inner clique. Protests broke out in Latakia on 8 August 2015, with large crowds of Alawites demonstrating and demanding the execution of Suleiman Hilal al-Asad, a relative of Bashar al-Asad, who murdered an Alawi colonel during what appeared to be a road rage incident.54 The most complex challenge facing the Alawite minority perhaps lies in the collective mindset of the group. Insecurity and suspicion of majority persecution has been a hallmark of the community for centuries. In April 2016, a group of anonymous Alawites published a “Declaration of an Identity Reform.”55 The authors claimed they represented a group called The Alawite Initiative Forum, which represented up to 40% of the Alawite sect in Syria via a network of religious shaikhs inside Syria. The Declaration gives a glimpse of a possible attempt to wrest the Alawite sect out of its historic state of marginalisation and insecurity. 191

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The key points in the text of the article are that Alawism represents a “third model of and within Islam” and is therefore neither a sub-sect of Sunni nor of Shi’i Islam. The Declaration attempts to repudiate the minority status of the group, with all the “hardship or privilege” that such a status renders. But perhaps most importantly, the authors of the document declare that Alawites must transcend the legacy of Ibn Taymiyya’s fourteenth-century fatwas, which entraps the community in a state of insecurity vis-à-vis Syria’s Sunni majority.56 The document appears to be an aspirational statement related to what the sect needs to do in order to evolve and survive as part of a new Syria beyond the crisis, rather than an evidence of any fundamental shift away from the al-Asad regime.57 The document is impossible to verify at this stage and requires further study of its origins and implications. Meanwhile, Alawite spokesperson, Shaikh Ahmed Bilal, rejected the document as a fraud and a conspiracy against Syrian unity and Alawite loyalty to Bashar al-Asad in an interview with Russian media.58 Nonetheless, cracks are emerging in the seemingly impervious grip held by the Syrian regime over independent Alawite interests and strategies. Another notable event involving Alawite dissent, which should be mentioned, was the Alawite conference that was held in Cairo in March 2013. A central message of the conference was that “if a real change to a democratic system could not be achieved, the impetus for change would transform into religious fundamentalism.”59 This seems to have already begun to become a reality in Syria. In May 2016, a series of bombings hit the Syrian coastal cities of Tartus and Jableh, killing around 150 people. ISIS immediately claimed responsibility for the blasts, stating that they deliberately targeted “gatherings of Nusayris” (Alawites). These bombings, which followed similar attacks against Alawite civilians, including schoolchildren in Homs from 2014, signified that the vicious conflict that has been sweeping the rest of Syria is penetrating into the hitherto relatively secure coastal region. These serious security breaches in the Alawite heartland show that neither the Syrian regime nor its Russian and Iranian allies are capable of guaranteeing Alawite security in perpetuity, while the wider conflict remains unresolved.60 The complex and multilayered roles of external actors in the Syrian crisis is a large subject and beyond the scope of this brief chapter; however, it is important to note the competition emerging between Russia and Iran for influence over the Alawites. Both actors seek to consolidate their position in any future Syrian state by asserting their role as protector of the Alawites.61 The placement of sophisticated S300 air defense systems by Russia in the coastal region in 2016, indicates that Alawite security is becoming dependent on Russian willingness and ability to project its power in the eastern Mediterranean.62 It seems the concerns Shaikh Saleh al Ali had in 1939 about the costs of preserving minority rule through external support continue to be salient.

Conclusion In March 2011, a leading Alawite religious shaikh commented to this author on the uprising beginning to unfold in Syria: Democracy benefits all the people, this means that it benefits the Alawites and the S­ unnis, Christians and Jews…because they can express themselves, and they can say, for example: I do not support Bashar al-Assad’s policy, but I will not betray my nation by saying so… That’s why we want that the peoples respect each other, which means the Alawites respect the Sunni and vice versa. The Muslims respect the Christians and the Christians respect the Muslims. That’s what we hope.63 192

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Seven years later, the attempt to achieve democratic reform in Syria has proven disastrous for the Alawites and Syria, and intercommunal divisions appear irreparable. However, to argue that the type of authoritarian rule represented by the al-Asad regime is sustainable over the long-term is also wholly unrealistic. The case of the Syrian Alawites is a telling example of the costs of minority rule (or perceptions of minority rule). The al-Asad regime’s need for support from the minority Alawites and external actors is a major reason for the intractable and cataclysmic nature of the Syrian conflict. The problem of minorities, raised by Jamil Mardam Bey at the establishment of modern Syria in 1946,64 clearly remains unresolved at the structural level of Syrian politics and institutions. However, it is possibly at the conceptual and perceptional levels that the real issue of “minorities” lies. This applies to the international community also. A common black joke among Syrians is that if the “Syrian regime kills enough Sunnis, they will become a minority and then the world will take action.” Important debates and negotiations, such as those that occurred in the 1940s to 1950s, are needed among Syrians about how to re-conceptualise and then institutionalise Syria’s mosaic-palimpsest of communities in a more sustainable and representative fashion. While the conflict continues and the Syrian regime and its external backers repress any alternative narratives – such as, for example, the anonymous Declaration of an Identity Reform – such conversations will remain extremely difficult.

Notes 1 The Alawites are sometimes referred to as Nusayris. Their original name has been given as “al-­ Numayriyya,” reflecting the eponym of the sect, Ibn Nusayr’s membership of the Banū Numayr tribe in ninth-century Iraq. Ibn Nusayr’s full name was Abū Shu‘ayb Muhammad Ibn Nusayr al ‘Abd ī al-Bakr ī al-Numayri; the early name of the sect therefore relates to him but also to his tribal affiliation, i.e. Ibn Nusayr al-Numayri (from the Numayr tribe). From the tenth century, the group became known as al-Nusayriyya. This name change reflected a shift away from a tribal identity to a sectarian identity focused on the person of Muhammad ibn Nusayr. In the nineteenth century, European travellers and missionaries used the term, “Ansayrii,” which is likely a condensed form of al-Nusayriyya. The group retained this name in reference to themselves up until the 1920s when they were officially declared as Alawites during the French Mandate. This latest name change shifted the sect away from a heterodox religious identity towards a more orthodox association with Shi’i Islam. The name “Alawite” refers generally to adherents of the first Imam ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib. Today, the group prefers to be known as Alawites and asserts that the name Nusayri is only used pejoratively by opponents who wish to discredit them. This point was made clear during three interviews by this author with Alawite religious leaders in March 2011. See Matti Moosa, Extremist Shiites: The Ghulat Sects (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1988), 262; Yaron ­Friedman, The Nu ṣayr ī-‘Alaw īs: An Introduction to the Religion, History and Identity of the Leading Minority in Syria (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 6–7; Xavier de Planhol, Minorités En Islam, Géographie Politique et Sociale (Paris: Flammarion, 1997), 84. 2 Steven Vertovec, “Super-diversity and its implications,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, no. 6 (2007), 1024–1054. 3 Albert Hourani, Syria and Lebanon: A Political Essay (London: Oxford University Press, 1946). 4 See, for example, Stephan Winter, “The Alawis in the Ottoman Period,” Michael Kerr and Craig Larkin, eds., The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant (London: Hurst, 2015), 49–62. 5 Issa Ibrahim (Grandson of the Shaikh Saleh al Ali) email interview with the author, 2015 (in Arabic). 6 See for example: Mahmud Faksh, “The Alawi Community of Syria: A New Dominant Political Force,” Middle Eastern Studies 20, no. 2 (April 1984), 133–153; Daniel Pipes, “The Alawi Capture of Power in Syria,” Middle Eastern Studies 25, no. 4 (October, 1989), 429–450; Eyal Zisser, The ‘Alawis, Lords of Syria: From Ethnic Minority to Ruling Sect, Ofra Bengio and Gabriel Ben-Dor, eds., Minorities and the State in the Arab World (Boulder & London: Lynne Reiner Publishers, 1999). 7 Leon Goldsmith, Cycle of Fear: Syria’s Alawites in War and Peace (London: Hurst, 2015), 135, 191.

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Leon T. Goldsmith 8 For a full discussion of the causes of Alawite loyalty to the Al-Asad regime, see Goldsmith, Cycle of Fear. 9 Peter Sluglett, “Deadly Implications: The Rise of Sectarianism in Syria,” Martin Beck, Dietrich Jung, and Peter Seeberg, eds., The Levant in Turmoil: Syria, Palestine, and the Transformation of Middle Eastern Politics (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016), 39–55. 10 The Alawite belief in reincarnation was made clear to this author by an anonymous Alawite religious leader, who explained that when an old man dies, a child containing the soul of the deceased is born; he then presented an illustration depicting a man entering a door and a child exiting on the opposite side. 11 On Alawite beliefs, see Meir M Bar-Asher and Aryeh Kof ksy, The Nusayri-‘Alaw ī Religion: An Enquiry into its Theology and Liturgy (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Friedman, The Nusayr ī – ‘Alaw īs; Tord Olsson, “The Gnosis of Mountaineers and Townspeople: The Religion of the Syrian Alawites, or the Nusairis,” Tord Olsson, Elisabeth Ozdalga, and Catharina Raudvere, eds. Alevi Identity, (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1998), 178; Moosa, Extremist Shiites, 339. 12 See, for example, Haytham Mouzahem, “Who Are Syria’s Alawites,” Al Monitor, 12 May 2016. 13 Yusri Hasran, “Heterodox Doctrines in Contemporary Islamic Thought: The Druze as a Case Study,” Der Islam 87, no. 1/2 (2012), 224. 14 Kais M. Firro, “The ‘Alaw īs in Modern Syria: From Nusayr īya to Islam via ‘Alaw īya,” Der Islam 82, no.1 (2005), 1; Matti Moosa, Extremist Shiites, 259; Meir M. Bar-Asher and Aryeh Kofsky, “Dogma and Ritual in Kitab al-Ma’Aref by the Nusayri Theologian Abu Said Maymun b. Al-­ Qasim al-Tabarani (d.426/1034–35),” Arabica, LII, no. 1 (2005), 54. 15 Goldsmith, Cycle of Fear, 19–22. 16 De Planhol, Minorités En Islam. 17 De Planhol, Minoritès en Islam, 85; See also, Yaron Friedman, The Nu ṣayr ī-‘Alaw īs, 34. 18 Bar-Asher and Kofsky, “Dogma and Ritual,” 43; Friedman, The Nu ṣayr ī, Alaw īs, 41. 19 Jonathan P. Berkey, The Formation Of Islam, Religion and Society in the Near East, 600–1800 (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 251. 20 Devin J. Stewart, “The Maqām āt of Ahmad b. Abī Bakr b. Ahmad al-R ā z ī al-Hanaf ī and the Ideology of the Counter-Crusade in Twelfth-Century Syria,” Middle Eastern Literatures 11, no. 2 (August 2008), 224. 21 Yvette Talhamy, “The Fatwas and the Nusayri/Alawis of Syria,” Middle Eastern Studies 46, no. 2 (2010), 178–179. 22 Leon Goldsmith, “‘God Wanted Diversity’ Alawite Pluralist Ideals and Their Integration into Syrian Society, 1832–1973,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 4 (2013), 392–409. 23 For more discussion of the 1950 Syrian Constitution, see Radwan Ziadeh, Power and Policy in Syria (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 136. 24 Ziadeh, Power and Policy, 136. 25 Goldsmith, “God wanted Diversity.” 26 Raphael Lefevre, “Power Struggles Among the Alawites in Lebanon,” Carnegie Middle East Center, 1 January, 2014. Available http://carnegie-mec.org/diwan/54058?lang=en (Accessed 14 April 2014). 27 There has not been a Syrian census containing sectarian information since 1960. Demographer Onn Winckler argues, however, that the Syrian Alawite population is possibly much higher than the usual estimate of 12%; see: Onn Winckler, Arab Political Demography: Population Growth, Labor Migration and Natalist Policies, second edition (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2009), 34; see also, Yahya Sadowski, “The Evolution of Political Identity in Syria,” Shibley Telhamy and Michael N. Barnett, eds., Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East (London: Cornell University Press, 2002), 144. 28 The Alawite populations of the Turkish provinces of Adana and Mersin were estimated at between 247,000 and 329,000 in 2000 by Gisela Prozcházka -Eisl, and Stephan Prozcházka, The Plain of Saints and Prophets, The Nusayri-Alawi Community of Cilicia (Southern Turkey) and its Sacred Places (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010), 59; In 2011 Alawite informants in Antakya estimated the population of their community as approximately 500,000 out of a total population of 1,500,000 in the Hatay region, Turkish Statistical Institute. Available www.turkstat.gov.tr (Accessed 14 April 2014). 29 Asher Kaufman, “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie,” Middle East Journal 63, no. 4 (Autumn 2009), 541. 30 Leon Goldsmith, “Alawi Diversity and Solidarity: From the Coast to the Interior,” Kerr and Craig, eds., The Alawis of Syria, 141–158. 31 CIA World Fact Book, Syrian Arab Republic. Available www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworld-factbook/geos/countrytemplate_sy.html; CIA World Fact Book, Lebanon, www.cia.gov/ library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/le.html (Accessed 17 June 2014).

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The Alawites of Syria 32 French data from 1936 put the Alawites as 69, the Sunnis 17, and the Christians 14% of the Alawite state, Stephen H. Longrigg, Syria and Lebanon under French Mandate (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 207, n. 1. 33 The only possible exception is Muscat, the capital city in Oman, with its substantial Ibadhi population. The Alawite population grew from 29%of the population of Latakia in 1947 to an estimated 55% majority in 1994. Fabrice Balanche, “Le cadre alaouite I, Alaouites: une secte au pouvoir,” Outre Terre 2, no. 14 (2006), 79; Sadowski, “The Evolution of Political Identity in Syria,” 2002, 144. 34 Joshua Castellino and Kathleen A. Cavanaugh, Minority Rights in the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2013), 292. 35 Salma Mardam-Bey, Syria’s Quest for Independence 1939–1945 (Beirut: Ithaca Press, 1994), xxiv. 36 Paulo Boneschi, “Une fatwà du Grande Mufti de Jérusalem Muhammad Amin al-Husayni sur les Alawites,” Revue de l’histoire des religions, 122, no. 1 ( July–August 1940), 42–54; Talhamy, “The Fatwas,” 185–186. 37 Gitta Yaffe-Schatzmann, “Alawi Separatists and Unionists: The Events of 25 February 1936,” Middle Eastern Studies 31, no.1 ( January 1995), 28–38. 38 Elie Podeh, “Celebrating Continuity: The Role of State Holidays in Syria (1918–2010),” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 4 (2013), 428–456. 39 Michael van Dusen, “Political Integration and Regionalism in Syria,” Middle East Journal 26, no. 2 (Spring 1972), 132–133. 40 On 23 August 1962, Syria was first proclaimed “The Syrian Arab Republic” and an ensuing special census stripped 120,000 Kurds of their Syrian citizenship, Jordi Tejel, Syria’s Kurds (London: Routledge, 2009), 50; On the SSNP, see Daniel Pipes, “Radical Politics and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 20, no. 3 (August 1988), 303–324. On the Ba’ath Party, see Ulrike Freitag, “In Search of Historical Correctness: The Ba’th Party in Syria,” Middle Eastern Studies 35, no.1 ( Jan. 1999), 1–16; Malcolm Kerr, “Hafiz Al-Asad and the Changing Patterns of Syrian Politics,” International Journal 28, no. 3 (Summer 1973), 689–706. 41 See Keith D. Watenpaugh, “Creating Phantoms: Zaki al-Arsuzi, the Alexandretta Crisis, and Formation of Modern Arab Nationalism in Syria,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 28 (1996), 363–389. 42 Talhamy, “The Fatwas,” 187. 43 On the 1970s see Talhamy, “The Fatwas,” 190; on the 1990s, see, for example, Shaykh ‘Ali ‘Aziz al-Ibrahim, The Alawites and the Shi’a (Beirut, 1992); also three books were published by the son of Alawite Shaykh ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Khayr. Freitag, “In Search of ‘Historical Correctness’,” 12–13. 4 4 Ziadeh, Power and Policy in Syria, 139–40. 45 Andrew Tabler, In the Lion’s Den: An Eyewitness Account of Washington’s Battle with Syria (Chicago, IL: Lawrence Hill, 2011), 234. 46 Goldsmith, Cycle of Fear, 102–107. 47 For Alawite concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood, see Raphael Lefevre, “The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood’s Alawi Conundrum,” Kerr and Larkin, eds., The Alawis of Syria, 125–140. 48 This perspective was outlined by an Alawi religious leader in an interview with the author in March 2011. 49 Goldsmith, Cycle of Fear, 198. 50 Charles Lister explained this period in some detail. See Charles R. Lister, The Syrian Jihad: AlQaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency (London: Hurst, 2015) 51 Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, 11 August 2016, A/HRC/33/55, 19. 52 Anthony Shadid, “Syrian Elite to Fight Protests to the End,” New York Times, 10 May 2011. Available www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/world/middleeast/11makhlouf.html (Accessed 26 July 2017). 53 Bente Scheller, The Wisdom of Syria’s Waiting Game: Foreign Policy under the Assads (London: Hurst, 2013). 54 Leon Goldsmith, “Is Alawite Solidarity Finally Breaking,” Hurst Blog, 25 August 2015. Available www.hurstpublishers.com/is-alawite-solidarity-finally-breaking/ (Accessed 25 August 2015). 55 The official English translation of the “Declaration of an Identity Reform” is available at www. welt.de/pdf/1085/Declaration.pdf. 56 “Declaration of an Identity Reform.” 57 See Hassan Mneimneh, “The Alawites in Syrian Society: Loud Silence in a Declaration of Identity Reform,” Washington Institute, Fikra Forum, n.d. Available www.washingtoninstitute.org/fikra forum/view/the-alawites-in-syrian-society-loud-silence-in-a-declaration-of-identity-re; See

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58 59 60 61 62

63 64

also Leon Goldsmith, “SYRIA – The Alawite ‘Identity Reform’” The Maghreb and Orient Courier, 20 April 2016. Available http://lecourrierdumaghrebetdelorient.info/syria/syria-the-alawiteidentity-reform/. RT News, “Alawite Clergy Denies Western Media Reports of Syrian Sect ‘Distancing Itself from Assad,’” 7 April 2016. Khaled Yacoub Oweis, “Fearing Stark Future, Syrian Alawites Meet in Cairo,” Reuters, 23 March 2013. Leon Goldsmith, “Alawites Pay the Price for Backing Bashar Assad,” Politico Europe, 5 June 2016. Available www.politico.eu/article/isil-syria-alawites-pay-the-price-for-backing-bashar-assadvladimir-putin-russia/ (Accessed 5 June 2016). For a good discussion of Russian-Iranian competition, see Alexis Amini, “Russia and Iran: United in Syrian Civil War, Divided in Peace.” Geopolitical Monitor, 26 September 2016. Available https:// www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/russia-and-iran-in-syria-united-in-war-divided-in-peace/. Karen DeYoung, “Russian air defense raises stakes of U.S. confrontation in Syria,” Washington Post, 17 October 2016. Available www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-airdefense-raises-stakes-of-us-confrontation-in-syria/2016/10/17/85c89220-948c-11e6-bb29bf2701dbe0a3_story.html?tid=sm_f b (Accessed 26 July 2017). Shaikh Ali Yeral, Interview with the author, March 2011 (in Arabic). Mardam-Bey, Syria’s Quest for Independence.

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15 Particularism versus integration The Druze communities in the modern Middle East Yusri Hazran

Minority groups have long formed an important component of the social and cultural fabric of the Arab Middle East, their existence contributing to the pluralistic character of Arab society. Although the issue of numbers remains central to the distinction between majorities and minorities across the globe, the Arab Middle East is home to various minority groups.1 Numerical size becomes particularly relevant in the face of religious or ethnic divides or religious-social structures. While the Arab Christian communities and Copts are different from the majority in their religion, the Kurds and Amazigh differ ethnically, for example. Similarly, despite sharing cultural values and historical background with Sunni Muslim society, the Druze, Alawites, Ismailis, and Shiites are generally regarded as minorities. This reflects the fact that minority status is also a matter of particularism and behavioral patterns. It is reasonable to assume that minority as a political category has been connected with the transformation of the state in modern era and the emergence of the nation – “state which gives meaning to the twin concepts of majority and minority, understood as groups within a population: terms which emerged in a specific, contemporary context.” Therefore, the term minority derives mainly from its numerical political meaning.2 Furthermore, the penetration of Western civilization and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire created a new social and political order in the Middle East that, inter alia, paved the way for a reshaping of the dynamics of Arab society, introducing new values and institutions. This inevitably affected majority/minority relations. This chapter examines the case of the Druze and their attempts to become an organic part of the regional milieu, in particular during the post-colonial era.

The general features of Druze society in the Middle East The Druze community has been the object of Orientalist scholars’ interest from the nineteenth century onward, its history as one of the heterodox minorities of the region, origin, and religion having been discussed in numerous publications. Many works have also been written about modern Druze history, a substantial number of these not surprisingly focusing on the Druze of Lebanon due to their significance in the country—in comparison with the Druze of Syria and Israel—during the nineteenth century. Most authors have nonetheless 197

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adopted a rather monolithic approach toward the subject, presenting a monolithic view of the history of the Druze without taking the political, cultural, and social aspects unique to each separate community into consideration. Other, more “synoptic” studies have offered a general—and at times quite cursory—theoretical review of Druze history. Founded in Fatimid Egypt in the eleventh century under the patronage of the sixth Fatimid Caliph, al-Mansur—known as al-Hakim Bi-Amr Allah (996–1021 ce)—and known by its adherents as al-Tawhid, Druzism is viewed by orthodox Islam as a heterodox sect.3 The Druze movement split from Ismaili-Shi’i Islam in 1017, under the patronage of al-Hakim. Headquartered in Cairo, the movement soon took hold in Bilad al-Sham. Like its predecessor, however, it, too, failed to win over Egyptian society, most of which remained loyal to Sunnism.4 Druzism contains two major innovations with respect to Ismaili theology and doctrine—Al-Hakim’s divinity, and rejection of the conservative and abstract ideas of the ­Ismaili establishment.5 The Druze prefer to be known as Muwahhidun, reflecting their central belief in the oneness of God. Ironically, however, as in other Islamic cultural and religious phenomena, the community has come to bear the name of its second propagator, Nashtakin al-Darazi—who was excluded from the new movement and executed after being accused of violating Muslim opinion and rebellion against Hamza, the early leader of the sect.6 The most important Druze doctrine is belief in the divinity of the sixth Fatamid Caliph al-Hakim. Propounded by Hamza, this principle lies at the heart of the Druze conception of Tawhid (belief in the unity of God), according to which, human beings are not capable of escaping their physical nature, so their knowledge of God and His essence (lahut) is limited by space and time.7 He must thus appear in nasut (human form), like an image in a mirror. Rather than an incarnation of God, nasut is the manifestation of an image by which God accommodates Himself to human understanding.8 At an early stage, a dispute broke out between Hamza and the second promoter of ­Druzism, Nashtakin al-Darazi. Unsurprisingly, the two disputed the question of al-Hakim’s divinity. While scholars such as De Sacy and Hodgson suggest that al-Darazi “taught a doctrine which remains within the limits of the normal heterodoxies of Ismailism,” personal rivalry over the leadership of the new community probably also played a part in this clash. Representing al-Hakim as the personification of the transcendent Godhead, Hamza himself became the embodiment of entire reason (al-Aql al-Kulli), thus becoming the supreme leader of the new community. This claim is supported by the fact that Hamza’s principal accusations against al-Darazi all relate to the former’s status as leader of the new community.9 Druzism regards all previous religions as null and void, Hamza arguing that while they may have been necessary, they were false phenomena that Druze doctrine explains and supersedes.10 Druzism is also predicated on a belief in the eternity of the human soul. According to the Druze theory of reincarnation, human souls transmigrate from one body to another.11 In place of the biblical story of creation, Druzism adopted a theory of emanation. While the Druze practice of taqiyya (concealment) has been widely interpreted, frequently being adduced by Orientalists as the driving force behind Druze political behavior, it is primarily a religious and theological issue referring internally and externally to the epistles of wisdom (Rasail al-Hikma).12 Hamza commanded the followers of the new religion to keep the Hikma hidden from those unworthy of it. Only after his disappearance and probably at the behest of the fifth propagator, Baha al-Din, did the Druze begin to practice taqiyya, the Hikma being concealed from non-members of the community and the Druze themselves pretending to belong to other religions.13 Inspired by the esoteric and mystical philosophy of Ismailism, Druze doctrine refuted Islam’s five pillars as physical-religious duties, replacing them with seven spiritual principles: truth in speech, safeguarding and mutually aiding the brethren in faith, renunciation of 198

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all forms of former worship and false belief, repudiation of the devil and all forms of evil, confession of God’s unity, contentment with the divine law, and unconditional submission to God’s will and deeds.14 According to Bryer, these seven duties came to replace the seven duties of Ismaili Islam.15 As a syncretistic religion, Druzism combines elements and concepts from other religions and philosophical sources such as Shi’ism, Greek philosophy (particularly the Neo-Platonic and Gnostic streams), and Islamic Sufism.16 Like that of other heterodox groups, the legal status of the Druze within Orthodox Sunni Islam has been always problematic and controversial. It is thus misleading to speak of “the Islamic perspective” on the community. Sunni Ulema and chronicles usually class Druzism as one of the extremist heterodox groups of Islam known as al-Batiniyya.17 Although Druze existence in the region goes back to the eleventh century, the community has never been persecuted in a systematic manner by Sunni Islamic states as a religious collective. The Ottoman Empire even regarded it as part of Muslim society. In terms of Islamic theological and juridical principles, however, their status remains undetermined. As Zeynep Turkyilmaz observes: In theory, members of these communities were to be declared heretics [zindiks/rafizi/ zilla], unbelievers [kafir], or apostates [murted], and stripped of any legal status, this condemning all the men to death while declaring their wives, children, and property as booty to be legitimately apportioned amongst soldiers and Muslims. In practice, however, Ottoman authorities also subscribed to Sharia, being very selective about whom to target and when to do so. The enforcement of this specific principle against the heterodox communities has thus remained an exception rather than the rule, being primarily reserved for times of rebellion and unrest.18 The number of Druze in the Middle East is estimated today at around a million, scattered primarily throughout Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. A small community also migrated to northern Jordan at the end of the twentieth century, and to the diminutive diaspora communities currently existing in the Americas, Australia, and West Africa. Today, the largest Druze community is in Syria, estimated at around 700,000 (about 3% of the country’s population). As the Druze geographic distribution demonstrates, the Druze community is overwhelmingly rural and mountainous, most of its members living in the hilly areas of southern Mount Lebanon, Mount Houran, Mount Hermon, the Idlib area, the Galilean hills, and Mount Carmel. While it has been argued that this terrain has served to protect them against persecution at the hands of the Muslim-majority or state, this rationale does not fully explain Druze patterns of settlement. The Druze community’s tendency to isolate itself from its surroundings in order to distance it from the central power to preserve as much autonomy as possible undoubtedly played no less a role.19 The fact that, unlike other minority groups in the Middle East—such as Arab Christians or the Shiites—the Druze communities lack urban centers largely accounts for the durability and coherence of their traditional social order on the one hand, and economic and structural weakness in the fact of modernity on the other. Whether in Syria, Lebanon, or Israel, Druze society has been always been based on endogamous marriage, this circumstance directly contributing to the preservation of communal norms, values, and social relations within the kinship system. The Druze have been described as a model of internal social cohesion and a strong attachment to ethnic identity. Fuad Khuri observes four interconnected factors that have contributed to this internal social cohesion: the belief in reincarnation, which establishes amicable relationships between families, the influence of religious men (Shaykhs), territorial continuum within the areas populated by the Druze communities, and brotherhood (hifz al-Ikhwan).20 199

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The Druze community is also founded upon clanism—a system of social differentiation in which membership is determined through shared ancestors. Even when it lost its economic basis, Druze clanism maintained its social and political function, familial solidarity reinforcing internal Druze unity—“le Monolithisme Druse” in Kamal Junblat’s phrase.21 Clanism has also been responsible for the community’s traditional split into rival families— first the Qaysi and Yamani, and then, from the eighteenth century onward, the Yazbaki and Junblati. This division is compounded by that between religious uqals and non-religious juhals—this type of separation being a traditional feature of heterodox communities. The Alawites and Ismailis, who share numerous religious beliefs and philosophic tenets with the Druze, both exhibit the same structure. With regard to the social and legal status of women within the Druze community, while Druze doctrine posits legal and social equality between men and women, the latter’s social and moral status is primarily determined by the community’s patrilineal and patriarchal heritage, which establishes male superiority and discriminates against women. Shi’i Ismailism appears to be the inspiration for women’s legal status in Druzism as well as the community’s religious beliefs. Originating in an intellectual urban elite based on nuclear families, the principal propagandists of the new faith inherited this family law.22 Bryer goes so far as to claim that, in social terms, Hamza Ibn Ali’s most important contribution was the complete religious and legal equality he gave to women beyond the partial initiation they could gain in Ismailism.23 As early as the Druze Dawa (the early spread of the new doctrine), women were sent on secret missions—al-Sitt Sarrah, for example, being dispatched to southern Lebanon to reorganize the community in that region.24 Since that period and up to the present day, women have continued to play a prominent role in Druze history. In the nineteenth century, Al-Sitt Nayfeh Junblat was known for her ascetic philanthropy; Wadi at-Taym’s spiritual leadership was also recognized after her husband’s death. Druze women have not only occupied the highest spiritual positions but also played a leading role in politics and society. The most well-known figure in this respect is undoubtedly al-Sitt Nazirah Junblat, who led the ­Junblati faction during the French mandate in Lebanon.25 This blend of esoteric doctrine and social clanism has contributed greatly to Druze particularism over the centuries. As Joseph Gusfield notes, “Modernity does not necessarily weaken tradition. Both tradition and modernity form the bases of ideologies and movements in which the polar opposites are converted into aspirations, but traditional forms may supply support for, as well as against, change.”26 In this regard, the Druze political history in the modern Middle East embodies a creative model of synthesis between inherited traditionalism and Western modernization. Seeking to integrate into the new territorial statehood, many played leading roles in revolutionary-nationalist movements in an attempt to change the socio-political order on the one hand, and create a mechanism with which to abolish the majority/minority dichotomy on the other.

The Druze communities of the Middle East – a historical overview During the medieval period of Islam, Druze history was primarily that of the Druze in Lebanon. The appearance of the new religion signaled the commencement of Druze history in Lebanon, also opening a new chapter in the history of Mount Lebanon. Four centers emerged in the wake of rise of the new doctrine in the eleventh century—Mount Lebanon, Wadi al-Taym, Aleppo, and northern Palestine. In Lebanon, the Druze developed as a coherent tribal community that accepted the new religion.27 The Lebanese Druze community 200

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is thus more established and dominant than its Syrian and Israeli counterparts, stamping its seal on Lebanese history over the course of several centuries.28 The Druze presence in Mount Lebanon dates back to the eleventh century, the Druze narrative holding that twelve Arab tribes migrated to the region prior to the rise of Islam or during the early Islamic period and accepted the Druze doctrine. By the eleventh century, the Tanukh tribe had succeeded in creating a form of autonomous rule in Mount Lebanon that gained official recognition from the Muslim authorities in 1147. The Buhturid Emirate laid the initial foundations of a tradition of autonomous government that lasted until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The Maan Emirate that replaced it was contemporaneous with the Ottoman conquest of Bilad al-Sham, reaching its peak during the rule of Emir Fakhr al-Din al-Maani II (1590–1635). Expanding the territorial borders of his emirate, al-Maani both created a local militia force and formed a Druze-Christian partnership.29 This dynasty came to an end in Lebanon with the death of Emir Ahmad al-Maani in 1697, the leaders of the Qaysi faction—with whom the Maani were associated—choosing the Sunni Chehabi family to head the emirate.30 The struggle between the Qaysis and Yamanis was finally determined in favor of the Qaysi faction at the battle of Ein Dara in 1711, in which the Alam al-Din family was annihilated and many Yamani supporters either joined the victorious side or left Lebanon for Syria.31 The historical consequences of the Ein Dara battle were thus not limited to Lebanon but signaled the beginning of a concentrated migration—especially of Yamani families—to Mount Houran. This in turn led to a decisive shift in the demographic balance between Druze and Christians in favor of the latter, thereby initiating the beginning of the decline of the Druze in Mount Lebanon. The nine years following the Egyptian conquest of Bilad al-Sham (1831–40) were difficult for the Druze. Ibrahim Pasha’s policies, especially those of taxation and conscription, led to a large-scale Druze rebellion in Mount Lebanon and Houran. A year after the end of the Egyptian conquest, a series of civil wars erupted between the Druze and Maronite communities that lasted until 1860. These conflicts effectively constituted the final Druze effort to restore their preeminence in Lebanon. Despite proving their military superiority, the bloody civil wars were a political defeat for the Druze, who lost their dominant role in Mount ­Lebanon when the Mutasarrifiya system was established. The abolishment of the feudal system eradicated all the political and social privileges the maqtajiyyah had gained, the majority of whom were Druze. The political order established in Mount Lebanon following the bitterest civil war it had ever witnessed nonetheless introduced an effective form of governance, peace, and internal stability that reigned for six decades. During this period, however, the Druze lost their dominant status to the Maronite community. The Druze community in Syria also dates back to the eleventh century, when an important Druze settlement was founded around Aleppo. The principal Druze population center in Syria has nonetheless traditionally been Houran in the south. There is no historical evidence of the Druze inhabiting the area before the second half of the seventeenth century: Druze settlement largely appears to have followed the internal conflicts within the Lebanese Druze community and migration in the wake of the Ein Dara battle.32 It was also increased by the Druze-Maronite civil wars that took place between 1841 and 1860. The decline of the Druze in Mount Lebanon and corresponding development of Houran in the nineteenth century constituted the two most important events in the Druze history of this period. The Druze settlement in Houran led to frequent conflict with Bedouin tribes over land and water.33 The community also opposed the reform initiated by the Ottoman authorities in the second half of the nineteenth century, striving to retain its autonomous 201

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status and resisting Ottoman conscription and taxation. This defiance continued up to 1910, when the Ottomans finally subdued the Druze Houran community.34 Since the end of the nineteenth century, Syrian Druze society has witnessed various peasant and lower-class family rebellions against the grand feudal families in an attempt to eliminate the latter’s social and economic privileges. The leading feudal families—especially the al-Atrash family—­ nonetheless managed to maintain their preeminence in Jabal al-Druze.35

The Druze in Lebanon and Syria: vanguard revolutionaries The collapse of the Ottoman order and introduction of territorial statehood in the modern Middle East presented new challenge to Druze identity, the new modern and revolutionary ideologies and conceptions severing religion from politics and society paving the way for the integration of minorities. Although Arab Christian educators were the most prominent pioneers in this regard, many young and educated Druze also fell under the spell of pan-­A rabism and secularism—joined by the Shi’is in Iraq and Lebanon, Alawis and Ismailis in Syria, and Christians in the Palestinian national movement and the Fertile Crescent as a whole. As Hanna Batatu and others have evinced, secular nationalist- and/or left-wing-oriented parties have consistently formed a focus of support and attraction for minority groups. 36 Mansour al-Atrash, a Syrian Druze who held a senior position in the Ba’ath Party during the 1960s, notes in his memoirs (edited by his daughter) that the minorities joined the Ba’ath Party because it championed the principle of equal opportunity and the removal of all the obstacles facing minorities that prevented them from reaching top-ranking posts in public life.37It is worth emphasizing that the confessional system in Lebanon did not cause the collapse of the traditional political powers within the Druze community, as occurred in Syria following the Ba’ath rise to power in 1963. In spite of this fact, the leading forces among the Lebanese–Druze embraced revolutionary ideologies calling for the ultimate transformation of the political order in Lebanon. Druze political activists and intellectuals became prominent within the pan-Arab movement from the early decades of the twentieth century onward, with figures such as Emir Adil Arslan, Arif al-Nakadi, Ali Nasir al-Din, Farid Zayn al-Din, Ajaj Nuwayhid, and Fuad Hamzah embracing pan-Arab, pan-Islamic views.38 Although their activity was primarily intellectually propagandistic and limited to elitist circles, most of them had been active outside of Lebanon, occupying leading roles in pan-Arab politics. Another form of revolutionary activism was pan-Syrian nationalism, many young Druze—particularly in ­Lebanon—having joined the Parti Populaire Syrien (PPS) by the early 1930s. This is one of the most interesting phenomena in the political behavior of the Druze in Lebanon. The PPS was well known for the broad support it garnered from the Druze community in Lebanon. 39 Many sources, including the memoirs of senior officials in the party, relate that already in the 1930s, many Druze had begun joining the new party, most of them young and educated.40 In their pioneering study on political parties in Lebanon, Mokadessi and Lucien claim that the PPS had 25,000 members at the end of the 1950s, approximately 5,000 in Mount Lebanon and 3,750 in the south.41 PPS support among the Lebanese Druze community was undoubtedly a unique political phenomenon. On the one hand, the PPS’s secular and non-confessional ideology resonated with the political aspirations of many Druze (and others) who sought to free themselves from minority status, its anti-establishment and non-confessional platform of the party appealing to many. On the other, it also reflected the deep alienation of the Druze from the Lebanese political establishment. 202

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The waning PPS influence within the Druze community toward the end of the 1940s appears to have been due to the political developments following the 1949 coup d’etat— the oppressive policies pursued by the Lebanese authorities, the establishment of Kamal Junblat’s Progressive Socialist Party, and the mobilization of the Druze spiritual leadership against the party. As the PPS began losing power, Junblat’s faction emerged as a player in the political field. Like its predecessor, this party espoused a secular and anti-establishment ideology. When the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) was established in 1949, it had a dual goal—abolishing the confessional system and introducing a secular political system. Hereby, it sought to resurrect the historical Druze role in Lebanon under the guise of progressivism and revolutionarism.42 Junblat’s behavioral and ideological radicalization during the 1970s, which placed him on the front line against the establishment, spread across four primary spheres. He hoped to eradicate the Chehabi establishment, provide unrestricted support for Palestinian resistance organizations, cooperate with leftist and anti-establishment parties, and win over the ­Muslim population, particularly in Beirut. These four interlocking agendas undoubtedly directly contributed to the eruption of the civil war in April 1975. Leading the anti-­establishment leftist and nationalist forces in Lebanon until his death, Junblat was regarded by many as the “uncrowned prince of the left.”43 Despite the latter’s ignominious defeat, Junblat’s revolutionary project in Lebanon was the most important revolutionary experience in which the Druze were involved in the twentieth century. Junblat’s assassination in March 1977, presumably at the hands of Syrian agents, and the subsequent collapse of the anti-establishment front triggered a drastic change in Druze political behavior. Officially, Walid Junblat, who succeeded his father, continued to demand the end of the confessional system despite the new circumstances brought about by the Syrian military intervention. His actual policies rested upon two pillars, however—full integration with the pro-Syrian camp and the bolstering of Druze autonomy in Mount Lebanon.44 ­K amal Junblat’s death destroyed the Lebanese Druze dream of a secular and equal Lebanon, prompting increased segregation and estrangement from state politics. The Israeli invasion of 1982 encountered no Druze resistance not only because the community recognized Israeli military superiority but also because it had abandoned the principles of revolutionarism and pan-Arabism.45 As soon as the last Israeli units left the Chouf, a Druze militia united behind Walid Junblat, and supported by the Syrian Ba’ath regime, it launched a full-scale offensive against Lebanese forces and army positions. After the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Junblat—who remained the most prominent Druze leader—declared his commitment to the Taif agreement of 1989. Not significantly changing their status within the constitutional structure nor granting their political demands, this merely increased their parliamentary representation from six to eight of 128 mandates.46 Ironically, the community that had for years spearheaded the anti-establishment struggle and sacrificed its leader on the altar of the struggle for the secularization of the state thus became the defender of the confessional system, to which the Taif agreement gave renewed support and new institutional forms. Despite only forming approximately 3% of the population in Syria, the Druze have played a significant role in its modern history since 1918. The Great Syrian Revolt that broke out in the Druze Mountain was led by the Druze leader Sultan al-Atrash between 1925 and 1927. This event constituted the principal Druze contribution to modern Syrian history, and it has been imprinted on Druze collective memory as an anti-imperialist and nationalist revolt. As Philip Khoury observes: “The great revolt was a popular and widespread anti-­imperialist uprising with a pronounced nationalist orientation.”47 Rather than being confined to the 203

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political sphere, the Great Revolt epitomized the struggle in post-independence Syria between absent land elites who found positions within the colonial ruling system and new classes of more modest origin.48 Although the Great Syrian Revolt determined the future of Jabal al-Druze as part of the Syrian entity, the region retained its autonomous status vis-à-vis the central government in Damascus after Syria gained its independence, the first to subject it to rule in Damascus being Adib al-Shishikli and his military regime (1951–54). The Ba’ath Party’s rise to power in Syria constituted a decisive watershed in the country’s internal politics, paving the way for minority groups—in particular the Alawites and Druze—to play a formative role in governing the country and army echelons. Following the Ba’ath coup d’etat in 1963, the Druze become far more involved in internal Syrian politics, holding high posts in both the army and the Party. The most prominent of these who came to senior positions in the Ba’ath regime were Salim Hatum, Hammud al-Shufi, Mansur al-Atrash, and Shibli al-Ayssami. The latter was one of the founding fathers of the Ba’ath Party and reached the highest political position a Syrian- Druze had ever attained, becoming vice president under Amin al-Hafiz in 1965–66.49 The Druze officers’ attempt to take hold of the reins of power during the 1960s failed, however, effectively putting an end to Druze prominence in the Syrian military and political field. Salim Hatum’s abortive coup in September 1966 led to an extensive purge of many Druze from the army and Party alike.50 The removal of prominent Druze officers strengthened the position of the Alawite officers entrusted with executing the purge.51 Although the community’s influence began to wane when Hafez al-Assad took power in 1970, tightening his grip over the army and security establishments, it continued to support the regime and its secularist and socio-economic policies. As Hinnebusch notes: “A land-poor impoverished community possessing nothing but its drive for education and careers, had everything to gain from a state-dominated economy which would divert the control of opportunities from the private bourgeoisie.”52 The fact that the pre-1963-coup urban Sunni elite had traditionally discriminated against or excluded the Alawis, Druze, and other rural communities was a further incentive for the Druze to support the Ba’ath regime, which quickly began a policy of discrimination against those whom the Druze and other rural minorities perceived to have been their oppressors.53 It should be noted here that while the state politics in Syria, following the Ba’ath rise to power, have increasingly diminished feudal and traditional families’ power, in Israel and Lebanon, the state political structure has actually retained and even stabilized traditional leadership of the Druze communities in both countries. The collapse of the state authority in Syria exposed this reality and left the spiritual leadership as the main representative of the community.

The Druze in Israel: colonizing the mind in the post-colonial era In comparison with Syria and Lebanon, where the Druze participated heavily in both nationalist and leftist movements, the Druze community in Israel constitutes something of an anomaly. Their lack of power resources, small size, and peripheral location have all contributed to their historical marginality in Palestine. The Palestinian national movement’s neglect of the Druze reflected the deep rift between political elites and peasantry in Mandatory ­Palestine.54 Although several Druze dignitaries collaborated with the Zionist movement in the wake of the Arab Great Revolt of 1936–39, most Palestinian Druze neither fought alongside nor against the Zionist military forces during the 1948 war. When 1936 revolt failed and 204

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internal feuds began to ravage Palestinian society, Zionist activists began to be more aware of the advantages of mobilizing the Druze as “a knife in the back of Arab unity.”55 Guided by the principles set out by the League of Minorities, Israel’s strategic policy toward the Druze has not changed since the 1930s, mobilizing the Druze against Arab Muslims. Like the French Troupes Speciales in Syria and Lebanon and British Iraqi Levies, the Israelis separated Druze recruits within the minorities unit. In 1939, the Zionist movement devised a transfer plan for the Druze population in the Galilee and Carmel, seeking to settle the community in the Houran Mountains. Three decades later, immediately after the 1967 war, Yigal Allon, a Labor Party leader, again suggested creating a Druze buffer state between Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights and Houran Mountains, sponsored and armed by the Israeli government, to serve as the forefront of the struggle against the Arab eastern front.56 The Israeli establishment’s long-term concerted efforts to promote Druze recruitment to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) eventually reaped its rewards, Druze conscription becoming mandatory in 1956 at the instigation of a group of Druze notables.57 The government also patronized traditional leaders, whom it encouraged to promote Druze army service as a way of publicly legitimizing the move. As part of its goal of isolating the Druze from their cultural and national milieu, Israel recognized the community first as a religious minority and then a national group in 1956. By exploiting economic conditions and alliances with the traditional community leaders, it largely succeeded in eliciting Druze compliance with its decrees.58 In 1969, the Israeli government announced that it would no longer recognize Eid al-Fitr as a Druze holiday, replacing it with the day Druze religious figures visited the shrine of the prophet Shu’ayb near the depopulated village of Hittin. Despite the fact that the vast majority of Syrian and Lebanon Druze do not celebrate it, this became a Druze official holiday, schools being closed and working not being mandatory.59 This move was part of the Israeli effort to strengthen the position of the traditional religious leadership, which administered and continues to administer the holy place. Exhibiting no qualms about being used politically to ensure loyalty to the state of Israel, the spiritual leadership happily accepted the condition that soldiers serving in minority unit (yihidat ha-mi’otim) take their loyalty oath at the shrine—state leaders and government representatives also being received on this day. Many young Druze men consider army service as a means of self-realization, integration into mainstream Israeli society, and social mobility—as well as a source of income. According to one study from the late 1990s, 25% of the male labor force in twelve villages was employed by the security forces. Some also regard military service as affirming the “Blood Alliance” and brotherhood between the Jewish people and the Druze community—two persecuted minority groups—said to go back 3,000 years to Jethro’s giving of his daughter Zipporah to Moses.60 This view dovetails with the traditional Druze claim that the community is completely separate from Islam and its religion obligates loyalty to the ruling government.61 As Atashi notes: Since the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, when their religion first became established, the Druze have customarily maintained allegiance to the incumbent regime in the regions, where they have lived, as long as that regime has respected their way of life and their religion.62 This pseudo-religious doctrine of allegiance to the incumbent regime was in fact crafted in order to justify the network of special relations and cooperation that had developed between the Druze political and spiritual leadership and Israeli establishment. The move to 205

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represent loyalty to a government as a religious precept and manifestation of taqiyya arose due to the Druze minority status in a state in which they were encouraged to nationalize their sectarian uniqueness. The special treatment the Druze have frequently received and the army service have nonetheless brought few other privileges or benefits.63 The community suffers from the same exclusion, marginalization, and discrimination as the Arab population of ­Israel experiences as a whole. Druze land is confiscated and Jewish settlements erected around Druze villages, and the budget allocated to the community and official appointments also being minimal.64 Field study and historical accounts indicate that 64% of Druze land was confiscated by the Israeli authorities under various pretexts, public and security issues most commonly being adduced.65 Most of these land expropriations were performed during the period of the military rule between 1949 and 1966. With the exception of ­Daliyat al-­Carmel and ‘Isfiya, the Druze villages in the Galilee have also been under the same military rule imposed on other Arab villages. On these lands, twenty-six Jewish settlements have been established. After the launch of the Druze Initiative Committee, 20% of the Druze vote in the parliamentary elections of 1973 went to Rakah (the Israeli Communist Party)—a clear indicator of protest against the establishment. Taking note of the deteriorating relations with the Druze community, the government appointed two commissions to look into the issue and find ways to curb the growing trend toward national Arabization among young Druze. The first, formed in May 1974, was headed by Member of the Knesset (MK) Avraham Shekhterman. The second, formed in November of the same year at the request of the president’s adviser on Arab citizens’ affairs and chaired by Professor Gabriel Ben-Dor of the University of Haifa, was tasked with researching the means and measures necessary to restore friendly relations between the state and its Druze citizens.66 The commission’s recommendations included separating the Druze school system from that of the Arab minority and developing a new curriculum designed to strengthen Druze identity—that is, Druze mobilization without assimilation.67 As with the promotion of the Shuyab sanctuary religious cult and the invention of the Shuyab-Moses myth reinforcing the historical connection between the Jews and the Druze, the state thereby hoped to encourage a new Druze particularism based on the Zionist model.68 In 2007, the events at al-Buqay’a, where a riot over the location of a cell phone tower pit Druze villagers against the Jewish minority living in the town, marked a turning point in the relationship between the Druze community and the Israeli state. Had the accommodationist traditional religious leadership not thrown its weight behind containing the political fallout, these might have served as the launching pad for an organized protest movement designed to put the community’s relations with the state on a new footing.69 As Druze political behavior indicates, the state’s policies have not succeeded in truly changing the attitude of the younger generations: The Druze in Israel suffer from a sense of psychological uncertainty and often express a need to be understood and appreciated. It is necessary to know a good deal about their concrete problems and specific difficulties in order to understand and appreciate this need. Feelings of neglect and uncertainty are bound to generate foci of political dissatisfaction that will give rise, sooner or later, to political opposition to the state and what it represents.70 While the outbreak of the Druze protest movement – anticipated by Ben-Dor in his work with the commission of inquiry – has been delayed as a result of the popular uprising in 206

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Syria, this ongoing event presents the Druze in Syria and Lebanon alike with unprecedented challenge of Islamization and elimination of minorities groups in the Arab Middle East.

The Druze in the shadow of the Syrian uprising The recent popular uprisings known as the Arab Spring or Arab Awakening undoubtedly constitute one of the most significant events in the modern history of the Arab Middle East, affecting ethnic and religious minorities in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. Like other minority groups in the Arab Middle East, the popular uprising that erupted in Syria in March 2011 confronted the Druze community with new and unprecedented challenges. The uprising being largely limited to the Sunni majority and led by Islamic activists, it created great fears among the Druze regarding Syria’s future as a secular state, the community feeling itself to be caught between the anvil of anarchy and the hammer of Islamism. Bashar al-Assad’s rise to power had no significant effect on the Druze relationship with the regime. The popular uprising that erupted in Dara’a in southern Syria in March 2011 did not extend to their stronghold in Houran. The vast majority of the Druze remained loyal to the regime despite the support some intellectuals and elite figures—Rima Flehan, Muntaha al-Atrash, Jaber al-Shufi, and others—gave to the Syrian uprising. The rebel’s leaders found it very difficult to recruit Druze into their ranks, the vast majority of Druze soldiers in the Syrian army remaining loyal to the state.71 Rather than representing a form of taqiyya, as per the classical Orientalist school, however, Druze loyalty to the Ba’ath regime is primarily a function of the political and social structure of Syrian society and the way in which the uprising has developed. The increasing Islamization of the opposition, rise of jihadist organizations, and disintegration of state authority have driven many Druze into the arms of the regime. The community’s fear of jihadist Islam was validated in June 2015, when dozens of Druze were massacred in a small village close to Idlib in northern Syria by Islamic jihadist militants from al-Nusrah’s organization. Their loyalty to the regime and status as a heterodox sect on par with the Ismailis and Alawites—whom the Sunni orthodox regard as infidels—make their position doubly precarious in light of the emergence of Islamic jihadist challenge. While the spiritual leadership, known as Mashyakhat al-Aql, remained committed to the regime, Sheikh Wahid al-Balous—a popular religious leader—established a protest movement against it that also sought to defend Jabal al-Druze from the jihadists. When he was assassinated in September 2015, apparently by agents of the regime, his death failed to trigger any serious shift in the Druze attitude toward the regime, however. Five years after the eruption of the uprising, which led to a bloody civil war in the region, many Druze have concluded that the regime is the least of all evils, its collapse threatening to lead to the dissolution of the state itself. The Druze in Lebanon and Israel have both been significantly affected by the Syrian uprising. While Walid Junblat, the most prominent Lebanese Druze leader, declared his support for the uprising, others—such as Wiam Wahhab and MP Talal Arslan, who identify with Hizballah—support the regime.72 The Lebanese-Druze community is motivated first and foremost, however, by the deep fear it shares with its Syrian coreligionists of the jihadist expansion in Greater Syria and the implications of this development for Lebanon. Walid Junblat’s support of the Syrian opposition has been consistent and can be explained in the light of two factors—revenge for his father’s assassination at the hands of the Syrian intelligence services in 1977, and his strong ties with the Saudi regime and the numbers of Druze living and working in the Arab states in the Persian Gulf. The importance of this economic 207

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migration was revealed recently when the Arab states in the Persian Gulf imposed economic sanctions upon Lebanon, expelling migrants associated with Hizballah in retaliation for the latter’s military role in Syria. The Druze in Lebanon are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, on the one hand facing the increasing militaristic frenzy of Hizballah and the Shi’i demographic expansion into Mount Lebanon, and on the other hand the urgent threat of jihadist expansion into Lebanon from Syria. Serious concerns regarding Hizballah’s political orientation and military maturation have led many Lebanese Druze to adopt the Taif agreement and its reinforcement of confessionalism and Sunni hegemony in Lebanese institutionalized politics, emphasizing that their commitment to it derives from fear of a worse alternative—autocratic theocratic rule in Lebanon either by Hizballah or the jihadist Sunni organizations. Ironically, a large segment of the Druze community in Israel hopes for the Syrian regime’s survival, believing it to be the best guarantee of the safety of their coreligionists in Syria. The Druze spiritual leadership and other public personalities have organized solidarity demonstrations on behalf of the Syrian Druze, the monies raised by fund-raising campaigns being channeled to Syria through Jordan. The community has also violently protested the treatment of Syrian opposition militia members in Israeli hospitals in the north. While concerned about the fate of their brothers in Syria, they believe their welfare lies in continuing to depend on the Ba’ath regime, Israel’s bitterest enemy. Over the course of the Syrian conflict, some pundits have expected Israel to intervene in Syria on behalf of the Druze community to help it face the jihadist threat. The Syrian Druze themselves do not appear to wish for an Israeli military intervention on these grounds. However, many in Syria and Israel are convinced that Israel has established a modus vivendi with Islamic militant organizations in the Golan Heights. They are also skeptical that Israel would endanger its soldiers on behalf of supporters of the Ba’ath regime. Although the Druze spiritual leadership has initiated meetings with high Israeli officials, including the president and the IDF Chief of Staff, these are merely formal and designed for internal purposes. The community is well aware that Israel refrained from military intervention in 1954 when the Druze were under severe military attack by the Shishakli regime—despite the hundreds of civilian causalities and frequent requests and appeals by the Druze leadership in Israel. While the Druze in Israel have traditionally believed the autonomy of Jabal al-Druze in Syria to be the key to protecting their existence in the Middle East, the recent uprisings have evinced that this stronghold is under serious threat. More importantly, the “Arab Spring” has also revealed the structural weakness of minority groups in the Arab Middle East, the collapse of the state bringing an end to pluralistic Arab society in Syria. Unfortunately, the uprisings have not improved the lot of the many ordinary inhabitants in the Middle East— the Druze included.

Conclusion The “Arab Spring” has brought to the fore a number of issues, one of the most pressing being the breakdown of the pluralist model of Arab society and the existential threat faced by minority groups in the Arab Middle East. The popular uprisings, especially in Syria, have revealed the structural weakness and vulnerability of minority groups in the absence of state power and the failure of the social coherence mechanism of Arab society. The lack of regional or international support has reinforced this weakness. In the wake of a century of modernization and state-building, minority groups now realize that their existence is no longer self-evident. The Druze are not exempt from this realization and fear. Since 208

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the early twentieth century, the dominant Druze tendency in Syria and Lebanon has been toward integration and adaptation, the Druze in both countries supporting revolutionary processes and political moves toward modernizing and nationalizing the Arab milieu. The socio-­religious structure of Druze society was and still remains one of the reasons why its communal particularism is so easily harnessed to revolutionary and secular-oriented phenomena. This tendency has significantly increased in post-independence Syria and Lebanon. The dominance of these trends demonstrates the anomalous position of the Druze community in Israel. The history of the former since 1956 presents a unique case of the politicizing of Druze communal particularism. The disparity between the Syrian/Lebanese and Israeli Druze in political orientation, behavioral patterns, and identity politics is sufficient to prove that Druze behavior/identity cannot be generalized or simplified. The Druze historical experience in the modern Middle East has been shaped not only by their minoritism, communalism, and religious particularism, but also, and more importantly, by the interaction between these and their political-cultural milieu. Dissimilarity and diversity among the Druze communities are the function of differences in these patterns of interaction, proving that attempts to essentialize or homogenize the Druze in the Middle East are untenable.

Notes 1 Gabriel Ben-Dor, “Minorities in the Middle East: Theory and Practice,” Ofra Bengio and Gabriel Ben-Dor, eds., Minorities and the State in the Arab World (London: Lynne Rienner, 1999), 19. 2 Benjamin Thomas White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 36–37. 3 The French Orientalist Silvestre de Sacy’s 1838 article marked a watershed in research of the Druze religion. Silvestre de Sacy, Exposé de la religion des Druze (Paris: L’Imprimerie Royale, 1838). 4 Sami Makarem, “The Druze Faith,” Kamal Salibi, ed., The Druze: Realities and Perceptions (­L ondon: Druze Heritage Foundation, 2006), 1. 5 David Bryer, The Origins of the Druze Religion (PhD Dissertation, Oxford University, 1971), 54. 6 Makarem, “The Druze Faith,” 1. 7 Bryer, The Origins of the Druze Religion, 35. 8 Kais Firro, “The Druze Faith: Origin, Development and Interpretation,” Arabica 58 (2011), 86. 9 Bryer, The Origins of the Druze Religion, 49–51. 10 Bryer, The Origins of the Druze Religion, 70. 11 Anne Bennett, “Reincarnation, Set Unity and Identity among the Druze,” Ethnology 45, no. 2 (2006), 87–104. 12 Firro, “The Druze Faith,” 78. 13 Firro, “The Druze Faith,” 94. 14 Makarem, “The Druze Faith,” 5–6. 15 Bryer, “The Origins of the Druze Religion,” 93. 16 O.H. Thompson, “The Druzes of the Lebanon,” The Muslim World 20 (1930), 274. For more information on the sources of the Druze doctrine, see David Bryer, “The Origins of the Druze Religion,” Der Islam 52 (1975), 47–84, 239–262; 53 (1976), 5–27. 17 Firro, “The Druze Faith,” 81. 18 Zeynep Turkyimaz, “Anxieties of Conversion: Missionaries, State and Heterodox Communities in the Late Ottoman Empire,” Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of California, Los ­A ngeles, 2009, 158–159. 19 Salman Falah, The Druze in the Middle East (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, 2000), 13–15 (Hebrew). 20 Fuad Khuri, “Aspects of Druze Social Structure: There Are No Free-Floating Druze” Kamal Salibi, The Druze: Realities and Perceptions (London: Druze Heritage Foundation, 2006), 62–63. 21 Kamal Junblat, Ḥaqīqat al-thawrah al-Lubn ānīyah, 4th edition (al-Mukht ārah: al-Dār al-­Taqaddum īyah, 1987), 84; Samir Khalaf, “Family Associations in Lebanon,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 2 (1971), 243; Thomas Scheffler, “Survival and Leadership at an Interface Periphery: The Druzes in

209

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22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 4 4 45 46 47 48

Lebanon,” Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi, Barbara Kellber-Heinkele, and Anke Otter-Beaujean, eds., Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Near East (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 234. Aharon Layish Marriage, Divorce and Succession in the Druze Family (Leiden: Brill, 1982), 366–367. Bryer, “The Origins of the Druze Religion,” 95. Abas Abū Ṣā li ḥ and Sami Mak ā rim, Tār īkh al-Muwa ḥḥid īn al-Duruz al-Siyasi fi al-Mashriq al-Arabi (Beirut, 1984), 71–72. Yusri Hazran, The Druze Community and the Lebanese State: Between Confrontation and Reconciliation (London: Routledge, 2014), 29–34. Joseph R. Gusfield, “Tradition and Modernity: Misplaced Polarities in the Study of Social Change,” American Journal of Sociology 72, no. 4 (1967), 351. Falah, The Druze in the Middle East, 22. This also the way the Lebanese Druze see themselves: see the interview with Walid Junblat, alḤaw ādith 1344 (August 1982), 19; Raphael Patai, “The Druze: Enfants Terribles of the Middle East,” Research Report 3 (1984), 9. Albert Hourani, “Lebanon from Feudalism to Modern State,” Middle Eastern Studies 2, no. 3 (1966), 256–257; Pierre Rondot, “Quelques réflexions sur les structures du Liban,” Orient 6 (1958), 24. Iliya Harik, Politics and Change in a Traditional Society, 1711–1845 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 30; Kamal Salibi, “The Lebanese Identity,” Journal of Contemporary History 6, no. 1 (1971), 76. Abū Ṣā li ḥ and Mak ā rim, Tār īkh al-Muwa ḥḥid īn al-Duruz, 156; Harik, Politics and Change, 31; Salibi, “Lebanese Identity,” 20. Kais Firro, A History of the Druzes (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 33. Shakib Saleh, History of the Druze (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1989), 160–163 (Hebrew). Saleh, History of the Druze, 152–160. Saleh, History of the Druze, 142. Hanna Batatu, “Some Observations on the Social Roots of Syria’s Ruling Military Group and the Causes for Its Dominance,” Middle East Journal 35, no. 3 (Summer 1981), 339. Mansur Sultan al-Atrash, al-Jil al-Mudan: Sira Dhatiya (Beirut: Riyad al-Rayyis li-l-Kutub wa-lNashr, 2008), 160. Firro, A History of the Druzes, 356; Buʽayn ī, Dur ūz, 310; al-Ḥaw ādith 1362 (10 December 1983), 4. Kamal Salibi, “Lebanon since the Crisis of 1958,” The World Today 17, no. 1 (1961), 38; Anis Ṣāyigh, Lubn ān al- ṭāʾif ī (Beirut: Dar al-Sira al-Fikri, 1955), 159–160; Abd al-Alah al-Qubrisi, alḤaw ādith 1460 (26 October 1984), 93–94. Jubran Jurayj, one of the important leaders of the PPS, stated that as early as 1935, Saadah had paid a visit to the Druze village of Imatur in al-Shuf and met with the local members of the party, who belonged to the rival families of Abu-Shaqra and Abd al-Samd. Jubr ā n Jurayj, Maʽa An ṭūn Saʽādah (Beirut: Muʾassasat Fikr lil-Abḥāth wa-al-Nashr, 1982), 150; Jurayi, Min al-juʽ bah, 2:195–196; Shawqī Khayr Allā h, Mudhakkirāt Shawqī Khayr All āh (Beirut: Dā r al-Jad īd, 1990), 90. See Toufic Mokdessi and Lucien George, Les partis Libanais en 1959 (Beirut: Editions L’Orient, Al-Jarydah, 1959), 53; Tawf īq Maqdisī and Lucien George, al-A ḥzāb al-siyāsīyah f ī Lubn ān ʽām 1959 (Beirut: Manshū r āt al-Jar īdah wa-al-Ūriyā n, n.d.), 69, 72. For the social and political doctrine of the PSP and its role in Lebanese politics during the 1960s and 1970s, see Nazih Richani, Dilemmas of Democracy and Political Parties in Sectarian Societies (­L ondon: Macmillan, 1998), 33–65. Farid El-Khazen, “Kamal Jumblatt; The Uncrowned Prince of the Left,” Middle Eastern Studies 24, no.2 (April 1988), 178–205. Judith Harik, “Change and Continuity among the Lebanese Druze Community: The Civil Administration of the Mountains, 1983–1990,” Middle Eastern Studies 29, no. 3 (1993), 377–398. Hazran, The Druze Community, 279. Hazran, The Druze Community, 280. Philip Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 205. Michael Provence, The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 105.

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Particularism versus integration 49 Said al-Ghamidi, al-Inhiraf al-Aqdi fi Adb al-Hadatha wa Fikriha ( Jaddah: Dar al-Andalus al-Khadra, 2003), 700. 50 Nikolaos van Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996), 53–58. 51 van Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria, 59–60. 52 Raymond Hinnebusch, Syria: Revolution from Above (London: Routledge, 2001), 63. 53 Van Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria, 139. 54 Rashid Khalidi, “The Palestinians and 1948: The Underlying causes of Failure,” Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine (2nd edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 12–36. 55 Kais Firro, The Druzes in the Jewish State: A Brief History (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 55. 56 Shimon Avivi, Copper Plate: Israeli Policy towards the Druze 1948–1967 ( Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2007), 363–365 (Hebrew). 57 Rami Zeedan, Battalion of Arabs: The History of the Minorities in the IDF (Tel Aviv: Modan, 2015), 168–169 (Hebrew). 58 See Kais Firro, “al-Tajnid al-ijbari lil-Duruz fi al-jaysh al-Isra’ili: khalfiyya tarikhiyya” [Compulsory Conscription of the Druze into the Israeli Army: An Historical Background], Nadim ­Rouhana and Arij al-Khuri Sabbagh, eds., al-Filastiniyyun fi Isra’il [The Palestinians in Israel] (Haifa: Mada al-Carmel, 2011), 61–62. 59 Rabah Halabi, The Druze System of Education, 1975–1995, Unpublished M.A. Thesis, Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1997, 13 (Hebrew). 60 Larry Derfner, “Covenant of Blood,” Jerusalem Post, 15 January 2009; Firro, The Druzes in the Jewish State, 77. 61 Aharon Layish, “Taqiyya among the Druzes,” Asian and African Studies19 (1985), 275–277. 62 See for example Zeidan Atashi, Druze and Jews in Israel: A Shared Destiny? (London: Sussex Academic Press, 1997), 166. 63 Atashi, Druze and Jews in Israel, 5. 64 Arab Center for Alternative Planning, Da’iqat al-aradi fi al-baldat al-’Arabiyya al-Durziyya (al-Ma’rufiyya) [Land Pressure in Arab Druze (al-Ma’rufiyya) Communities] (‘Aylabun: ACAP, 2008), 1. 65 Arab Center for Alternative Planning, Da’iqat al-aradi, 8. 66 Halabi, Druze System of Education, 16–17. 67 Falah, The Druze in the Middle East, 196. 68 Kais Firro, “Druze maqamat (Shrines) in Israel: From Ancient to Newly Invented Tradition,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 32, no.2 (2005), 238. 69 This was the conclusion drawn by the participants at a one-day seminar organized by the Association for the Support of Democracy in early January 2007: see the Druze Initiative Committee, ‘An Buqay’a al-sumud [On Steadfast Buqay’a] (2008), 54–55. 70 Gabriel Ben-Dor, “The Druze Minority in Israel in the Mid-1990s,” Jerusalem Letters of Lasting Interest 315 ( June 1995). Available www.jcpa.org/jl/hit06.htm (Accessed 17 June 2017). 71 Gary Gambill, “Syrian Druze: Toward Defiant Neutrality,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, 4–5. Available www.fpri.org/article/2013/03/syrian-druze-toward-defiant-neutrality/ (Accessed 17 June 2017). 72 Gambill, “Syrian Druze,” 5.

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16 Alevis in Turkey Ali Çarkoğlu and Ezgi Elçi

The relationships between the Turkish state, the Sunni majority, and the Alevi minority have always been precarious.1 The roots of this fragility go back a long way, to the sixteenth century, the eastern campaign of the Ottoman Sultan Selim I and his war against the Safavids and their Emperor Shah Ismail I. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire also experienced the Jelali Revolts, a series of uprisings named for Celal, who was an Alevi preacher. However, the friction between Alevis and the state continued during the Republican period, and despite the official efforts, it has never actually concluded. 2 Our primary aim in this article is to explain the Alevi identity, their belief system, the discrimination to which they have been exposed, and their current situation following the recent Alevi opening, which was initiated by the present Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, or AKP) government in Turkey. The Alevi opening initiatives have mostly failed and have not gone beyond symbolic gestures such as breaking the fast during the holy mourning period of Muharram. There are also specific demands made by the Alevi community, expressed especially strongly starting from the 1990s, a period known as the “Alevi revival.” In addition, while Turkey’s EU membership process triggered a dialogue between the state and the Alevi community, the dialogue did not last long. Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War, expressing itself as a “Sunni” actor, and the Gezi P ­ rotests in 2013, in which the majority of the causalities and 78% of the detainees were Alevi according to the police report,3 signaled an end to the dialogue. Meanwhile, as Turkey’s EU membership process deadlocked, AKP gave up trying to win votes from Alevis who have mostly supported its rival, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, or CHP), since the 1970s.4 We will first try to summarize the Alevi belief system, along with the similarities and differences between Alevi and Sunni and Shi’i practices. We will also comment on population estimates and difficulties therein. Secondly, we will cover the historical background of Alevis amid the formation of the Turkish state, starting in the Ottoman period. Thirdly, we will touch upon the demands of Alevis and the difficulties that they experience in their daily lives. Fourthly, we will evaluate the Alevi openings during the AKP period, the reasons for their failure and more contemporary developments, followed by our conclusions. 212

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Who are the Alevis? Those writing on the roots of Alevis all agree that the concept “Alevism” is a modern construct.5 Referring to the first Turkish-Turkish Dictionary, Kamus-ı Turki, Dressler explains the definition of the word Alevi: “(1) descendant of Ali and Fatima and (2) followers of Ali.” Alevism is hereditary: if one was not born as Alevi, then she or he cannot become an Alevi. For most of the literature, Alevism is not treated as a Shi’i sect, but it is a “syncretic, pluralistic tradition, including elements from Islam, shamanism, Christianity, and the pre-Christian religions of rural Anatolia.”6 Those Alevis who have Turkoman origins, arrived in Turkey from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, during the Seljuk and Ottoman periods, typically using the route from Khorasan along the Caspian shore to Azerbaijani Iran, and finally arriving into Anatolian peninsula. Alevis (and also Bektashis) are the followers of Hacı Bekta ş -ı Veli, a Turkish dervish who came to Anatolia around 1230, possibly during the Mongol invasion of Anatolia.7 Alevis believe in the fundamental Muslim creed. However, their interpretation and symbolism attached to fundamental principles diverge in many instances from the Sunni mainstream. “Prayer (namaz), the fast in Ramadan, zakat and the hajj are alien practices to most Alevi communities.”8 Predominantly, Alevis do not go to Mecca for pilgrimage. In contrast, the village that Hacı Bekta ş settled, the shrine of Elmalı Abdal Musa, and the town of Pir Sultan Abdal are considered holy places to which the Alevis make their pilgrimage. Their place of worship is not a mosque: rather, they gather in cemevis (houses for cem – cem referring to a ceremony for praying), instead of engaging in Salah prayers with the other Muslims. Both male and female Alevis gather for the cem ceremony, unlike other Islamic sects in which men and women pray separately. They do not fast during Ramadan, but do so during the month of Muharram, as they mourn for Hasan and Hussein, who were killed in Karbala by the Umayyad forces in 680 AD. They pray in Turkish (or Kurdish among Zaza Alevis), and not in Arabic. Religious leaders known as dedes lead the cem, and Alevis believe that dedes are descendants of Ali. These dedes must be a member of an ocak (hearth), and each Alevi village is linked to an ocak. Their belief system devotes holiness to Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet of Islam, and they believe in a trinity of religious authorities – Hak (Allah, God), Mohammed, and Ali. As among Shi’i, the Twelve Imams are sacred figures for Alevis.9 Melikoff’s depiction of a cem is worth quoting: In the Alevi communities, myth takes the place of ritual and the ceremonies are the repetition on earth of archetypes that took place in the Other World, beyond Time. For instance, the Ayin-i Cem [ceremony of Cem] is the repetition on earth of the Banquet of the Forties that took place during the Night of Mirac, the ascension of the Prophet [Mohammad].10 Although Alevis accept the Qur’an as their holy book, the mystical poems and musical ballads (deyi şler and nefesler) which remain as oral tradition are also sacred. Alevis even (partly) reject the five pillars of Islam. Cemevis have no distinctive signs and no call to prayer.11 The difficulty of estimating the Alevi population can be summarized in one sentence: unless an Alevi tells someone he is an Alevi, it is hard to discern.12 Alevis have no distinctive linguistic or physical characteristics to distinguish them from the Sunnis. Since their immigration from rural to urban areas began around the 1960s, the density of the Alevi population has diminished. Hence, though it is possible to identify Alevi villages through 213

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anthropological study, it is impossible to determine the Alevi population in urban and metropolitan areas. It is also impossible to predict the Alevi population by looking at their class and economic characteristics because Alevis are spread throughout the various socio-­ economic strata of Turkish society. Lastly, there is no census data of the Alevi population.13 According to Reha Çamuroğ lu, “the [Alevi] community in question is not a minor one, with approximately 15–20 or, according to other estimates, 6–10 million adherents. It represents at the very least 10%, and more probably 25% of the entire Turkish population.”14 These distinctive characteristics have always meant that Alevis are perceived as a challenge to the establishment. Due to their rejection of mainstream Islam and support for Shah Ismail during the sixteenth century, they were stigmatized and excluded from power and remained in the periphery during the Ottoman period. The dominant Sunni Islamic character of the state shifted to a secular structure after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, yet the precarious relationship between the Alevis and the state moved to a new level.

Historical background of the Alevis versus the state Policies of repression and assimilation were launched against Alevis during the Ottoman period, beginning in the nineteenth century. The Bektashi tradition in the Ottoman state was abolished, and the Sunni sects became dominant in the upper strata of the Ottoman Empire. During the reign of Abdülhamid II, the Sunnification and assimilation policies were accelerated. Similarly, Alevis experienced these policies during the reign of Mahmud II. As the Ottoman rulers launched modernization and centralization efforts, they aimed to subordinate Alevis to the center.15 Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman state launched programs for training Alevi imams and building mosques for distributing the Sunni catechisms.16 Starting from the Ittihat ve Terakki Partisi (Committee of Union and Progress, or CUP) period in the early twentieth century, Alevis were further defined as Turks who preserved their ancient Turkic beliefs, fusing them with Islam. From then on, the existence of Alevis has always represented a dilemma for the Turkish state: they are ethnically Turk, which is useful for building a pure nation-state, but they were not Sunni. This dilemma persisted during the Kemalist period of the early Turkish Republic.17 In line with the Islamic tradition, all Muslims belong to the ummah and hence under the Ottoman Empire, and minorities were never identified among the Muslim population. Neither Kurds nor Alevis were defined as minorities in the way that Greeks, Armenians, and Jews were. The young Turkish republic inherited this policy. Since the Treaty of L ­ ausanne referred to minorities in Turkey as “non-Muslims,” this implied that minority groups included only the Greeks, Armenians, and Jews who came to be identified as official minorities. However, if one looks at the details of the text of Lausanne, there are also rights bestowed on Muslim minorities.18 In the following period, the Republic continued to favor Sunni Muslim Turks and disfavored the groups who did not belong to this definition.19 The early Republican years were difficult for Alevis. While the new republic did not have an official religion, unlike its predecessor the Ottoman Empire, the law on closing the tekkes and zaviyes (the dervish lodges) in 1925 also terminated the existence of cemevis. However, this was by no means the worst development for the Alevi community during this period. In 1937–38, the Dersim Rebellion took place in eastern Turkey. What began as a tax revolt developed into a campaign for the Turkification of the region by the state. A rebellion among Alevi tribes was put down with military force, the ultimate estimated death toll ranging from 10,000 to 70,000.20 Yet, another problem originated during the same period: the 214

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establishment of the Diyanet İşleri Ba şkanlığ ı (Directorate of Religious Affairs, or DIB) as the government regulator of religion in daily lives. However, as the time went on, DIB became the promoter of Sunni Islam by excluding and stigmatizing Alevis. The Sunni dominance of the DIB remains a major problem for Alevis, which will be evaluated more broadly later.21 Alevis have always operated at the intersection of two religious cleavages in the Turkish Republic. On the one hand, there are significant sectarian differences between Sunnis and Alevis. On the other hand, Alevis are caught in the middle of lifestyle and cultural differences that divide the secular and Islamist trends in Turkey. While the Republican regime has suppressed Alevis, they adopted a secularist worldview for protection against Sunni Islam. Events like the Dersim Rebellion did not become an obstacle for Alevis to support the secular republican regime. However, for Alevis, Sunni Islam has always been a primary threat in comparison with the Republican policies. During the 1950s and early 1960s, they predominantly supported the Democrat Party (Demokrat Parti, or DP) and the Justice Party (Adalet Partisi, or AP). Later, they mostly voted for the CHP, and to a lesser extent the Workers’ Party of Turkey (Türkiye İşçi Partisi, or T İ P) and the Unity Party of Turkey (Türkiye Birlik Partisi, or TBP) – the only Alevi party in Turkish political life. As the center-right parties leaned toward conservative Sunni voters, the Alevis distanced themselves from the right, and amid the political atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s, they sided with center-left or socialist parties. The institutionalization of a Sunni versus Alevi axis also coincided during the same period.22 Urbanization and immigration from rural to urban areas set the stage for the development of the Alevi community during the 1960s. Rapid urbanization led to resettlement in the major cities, yet most of the Alevis who are accustomed to living as a community either established separate Alevi neighborhoods or they socialized within leftist organizations. In addition, immigration to Europe as foreign workers led to the establishment of an Alevi diaspora, especially in Germany and Belgium.23 During the 1970s, Turkey experienced street demonstrations and armed clashes between ultra-rightists and extreme-leftists. In addition to the political violence, Turkey also encountered sectarian violence in Malatya (1978), Sivas (1978), Mara ş (1978), and Çorum (1980). In all of these events, a provocation led to mass killings and ended up with the mass exodus of the Alevi population. During the coalition period of the Nationalist Front, three labels were used to stigmatize and justify attacks against Alevis: they were either “Communist,” “Kurdish,” or “Kızılba ş.”24 Being a Kızılba ş (redhead) came to be synonymous with being communist (reds), and the governments of that period either tolerated or failed to suppress these attacks. The 1980 military coup d’état annihilated the political left, and Alevis (and Kurds) who commonly socialized within the leftist organizations suffered under the military regime. The military junta not only wiped out the leftists but also launched a project to promote a synthesis of Turkish and Islamic identity as a means of boosting Sunni Islam as an antidote to communism. In line with this Turkish-Islamic synthesis, military rulers introduced the policy of building a mosque in all villages, which Alevis rightly perceived to be an assimilation project.25 As the rise of political Islam persisted, the Alevis continued to side with center-left parties during the 1990s. Alevi voters were attracted first to the Social Democratic Populist Party (Sosyal Demokrat Halkçı Parti, or SHP), then the CHP, which was reopened after the removal of political bans introduced by the military regime, and the Democratic Left Party (Demokratik Sol Parti, or DSP). Meanwhile, the rise of political Islam became an increasing concern for the military-bureaucratic elites. The Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, or RP), the Islamist successor of the 1970s-era National Salvation Party (Milli Selâmet Partisi, or MSP), 215

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won a significant victory and became the third party in the 1994 local elections, by winning six metropolitan areas, including Istanbul and Ankara. During this period, the Alevis’ support for secularism was attractive to the secular military-bureaucratic elite. The cultivation of support among Alevis reversed the prior marginalization of the Alevi community.26 However, two tragic events prevented full reconciliation between the state and Alevis during the 1990s: the Sivas and Gazi Massacres of 1993 and 1995. On 2 June 1993, a group of mostly Alevi intellectuals gathered to commemorate Pir Sultan Abdal, a dissident Alevi poet of the sixteenth century. A mob gathered by radical Islamists set afire the Madımak Hotel where guests of the event were staying. The security forces did not intervene in the attack, and thirty-three participants lost their lives. On 12 March 1995, a group of unidentified people opened fire with automatic weapons at a local kıraathane (coffee house) in the Gazi neighborhood of Istanbul, which has a predominantly Alevi population. The day following this tragic event, Alevis gathered to protest, but the police brutally suppressed the demonstration. The events spread to other places and, as a result, seventeen people lost their lives in Gazi and six in other locations. Police bullets were found in the bodies of seven people who were killed in Gazi.27 According to Çarkoğ ku and Bilgili, there are three major factors that led to the revival of Alevi identity during the 1990s: urbanization, or the emptying of rural Alevi villages; the collapse of the Soviet Union and the defeat of socialism; and the “continual rise of the pro-Islamist movement in Turkey, ending with its capture of the executive office as a single party government in 2002.”28 In addition, Alevis also experienced the increasing sectarian awareness of the Alevi bourgeoisie. This coincided with the establishment of the first Alevi organizations, such as the Pir Sultan Abdal Cultural Association (Pir Sultan Abdal Kültür Derneğ i, or PSAKD), the Cem Foundation, and the Ehl- i Beyt Foundation, and the launch of the first Alevi radio and TV channels.29 Turkey concluded the 1990s with extensive economic and political crises that led to the rise of AKP at the beginning of the 2000s. Under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, AKP launched a series of Alevi workshops along with other initiatives related to minorities in Turkey such as the Kurdish peace process. Nevertheless, Alevi openings ended in failure due to many reasons, which will be discussed in the following sections. However, before continuing to explain the failure, it is important to cover the demands of Alevis and the discrimination that they were exposed to during the Republican period.

Alevi complaints and discrimination In a nutshell, we can say that there are four basic complaints of Alevis: Sunni dominance of the DIB, the status of cemevis, the mandatory religion courses, and the obstacles to upward mobility.30 As mentioned earlier, the DIB was established to control public religious practice in Turkey. According to the founders of the Turkish Republic and the supporters of Kemalist ideology, Sunni Islam is prone to extremism and should be domesticated so as to preserve secularism in Turkey. However, according to Alevis, the DIB is assigned to promote Sunni Islam at the expense of Alevism (and other minority religions in Turkey). This has been especially true with the ascent to power of AKP. Though the DIB claims to be above sectarian divides, its work is perceived as an assimilation initiative. According to the DIB, Alevism is just a mystical interpretation of Islam: the department does not, therefore, recognize Alevism as a separate sect.31 The second issue is related to the status of cemevis. According to the International Religious Freedom Report of the US Department of State, there are approximately 2,500 to 216

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3,000 Alevi cemevis in the country, a number which is far from adequate to the population of Alevis.32 As mentioned earlier, thanks to the Treaty of Lausanne, the utility costs of non-Muslim minority places of worship, including Greek and Armenian churches and Jewish synagogues, are covered by the government. As a non-recognized Muslim minority, Alevi cemevis are not approved as an official place of worship. Despite the recognition of some local municipalities’ cemevis as an official place of worship, the AKP governments have denied national recognition.33 Again, according to the International Religious Freedom Report of the US Department of State, In August [2015] the Supreme Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s decision that cemevis are places of worship and should be exempt from paying utility bills. The lower court had held that cemevis had been known as places of worship for Alevis for hundreds of years, and a charter referring to cemevis as places of worship was not in contravention of the constitution or prohibited by law. At the end of the year, the government had not legally recognized cemevis as places of worship although several municipalities led by the opposition Republican People’s Party recognized cemevis and waived utility bills.34 However, the interesting point about the local recognition of cemevis as the places of worship is that although these municipalities are led by CHP, the municipality councils have members from different parties, including the AKP and the MHP. We have no data related to the vote choices of these members, but what we do know is that even though Alevis by and large vote for the CHP, some vote for other parties for various reasons.35 The DIB continues to refuse to recognize cemevis as places of worship. The former president of the DIB, Mehmet Görmez, specifically emphasized that the recognition of cemevis as alternatives to mosques as a place of worship is a “red line.”36 More recently, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned Turkey’s violation of the right to freedom of religion and violation of the prohibition of discrimination based on related articles of ­European Conventions in the case of Izzettin Doğan (chairperson of Cem Foundation) v. Turkey. It is emphasized in the ECHR verdict that, The Court held in particular that the authorities’ refusal amounted to a lack of recognition of the religious nature of the Alevi faith and its religious practice (cem), depriving the Alevi community’s places of worship (cemevis) and its religious leaders (dedes) of legal protection and entailing numerous consequences with regard to the organization, continuation and funding of the community’s religious activities.In the Court’s view, the Alevi faith had significant characteristics that distinguished it from the understanding of the Muslim religion adopted by the Religious Affairs Department. The Court therefore found that there had been interference with the applicants’ right to freedom of religion and that the arguments relied on by the State to justify that interference were neither relevant nor sufficient in a democratic society.37 The third issue is related to mandatory religious courses in Turkey. These courses were introduced during the 1980s military regime in line with the junta’s aim of promoting Turkish–Islamic synthesis.38 Although non-Muslims are exempted from attending religious instruction courses, it is mandatory for Muslims, whether Alevi or Sunni. According to Alevis, these courses are part of an assimilation policy and “the state is forcing Alevi students to learn the Sunni interpretation of Islam and to ignore Alevi identity totally while claiming to be talking about Islam as a whole.”39 The ECHR has come to several verdicts related to 217

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the mandatory religious courses, which emphasize that “compulsory religious instruction in Turkish public schools violates the rights of religious minorities.”40 According to the court verdict in the case of Zengin v. Turkey in 2007, the existence of mandatory religion courses is a violation of rights to free education. The court emphasized “the inadequacy of the Turkish educational system, which, with regard to religious instruction, does not meet the requirements of objectivity and pluralism and provides no appropriate method for ensuring respect for parents’ convictions.”41 Yet another issue related to the mandatory religious courses is the textbooks of these courses. In the textbooks issued for the 2015–2016 school year, Alevism was indicated as a “tradition,” and cemevis are defined as “the places that gathered for cem.” According to these textbooks, cemevis are the places in which the people engage in sufi discussions, soup kitchens for the poor, guesthouses, and houses for unity, peace, and brotherhood as well as houses for wisdom, education, and culture” but not for worship.42 Most recently, the elementary school textbooks defined cems as a folk dance.43 Last but not least, Alevis also complain about the obstacles that they experience in achieving upward mobility, especially in the Turkish public sector. The claim is that there are very few Alevis who hold important public office. According to the Minority Rights Group International, In the previous parliament [elected in 2002], there were no Alevis among the 354 AKP deputies. Upon protests, the AKP leadership nominated a number of Alevis, as a result of which there are four Alevi AKP members of the 2007 parliament. In 2010, only one out of Turkey’s 81 provincial governors was an Alevi.44 Yet another issue is the section of the Turkish ID card that specifies one’s religion. Non-Muslims were free to identify according to their religions, but Alevis were obliged to fill it as Muslims. In April 2006, the obligation to declare one’s religion on ID cards was annulled. According to the new regulations, one may now declare oneself to be Muslim, Greek Orthodox, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist, No Religion, or Other. The new regulation still does not allow Alevis to fill this section as “Alevi”; instead, the option Muslim covers both Sunnis and Alevis. While some Alevis leave the religion section of their ID cards blank, many are concerned that this could lead to discrimination, and many do not see a problem with simply accepting the label “Muslim.”45 These demands and concerns raised by Alevis motivated a series of public demonstrations during the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s. Finally, in 2007, the AKP government launched a series of workshops addressing the problems of Alevis. These initiatives have simply failed. The Syrian Civil War and the Gezi protests have eclipsed the process, and as a result, Alevis have distanced themselves even further from the AKP government.

The AKP period: Alevi openings and failure The first interaction between Alevis and the AKP goes back to the trials of the Sivas Massacre of 1993. Many of the attorneys who defended the suspects in the attack later became AKP deputies.46 Moreover, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attempted to demolish the Karacaahmet Cemevi while he was mayor of Istanbul.47 In addition, AKP was founded by the reformist wing of RP, which was an Islamist-conservative party. As a result, Alevis were suspicious of the intentions of the AKP at its early years in tenure. Alevis have always questioned AKP’s sincerity and have always been suspicious of the democratization efforts of AKP.48 218

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The successful transformation of Turkish public life during the first years of AKP rule stemmed from the euphoria surrounding Turkey’s bid for full membership in the EU. T ­ urkish governments launched a series of reform programs to fit its structure to the EU criteria starting in 2001. AKP successfully continued the reform process until around 2007. Actually, this Alevi opening was part of a series of democratic openings including the ­Kurdish, Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, and Romani initiatives.49 The first efforts at rapprochement between Alevis and the state began during the first period of AKP rule (2002–2007). Alevi organizations were extended legal recognition, and the state television channel broadcast programs on Alevi practices and rituals. Sait Yazıcıoğ lu, the Minister Responsible for Religious Affairs, and Alevi AKP deputy Reha Çamuroğ lu led enhanced reconciliation efforts during the second AKP government after 2007. 50 Between June 2009 and January 2010, seven workshops were held with the attendance of 300 participants, chaired by Minister Faruk Çelik and Necdet Suba şı.51 In a nutshell, these workshops transformed from a forum for discussion of Alevi concerns to an effort to subjugate Alevis’ demands to the concerns of the Sunni majority. Firstly, most of the participants, except during the first and the last workshops, were predominantly Sunni. While the first workshop was designed as a forum for Alevi participants discussing their demands with the government, in the last forum, Sunnis and Alevis participated in equal numbers.52 According to Derya Özkul, “the final report clearly articulated a protective stance from the Sunni majority perspective, and considered Alevis only from their own dominant ideology.”53 The major demands and complaints of the Alevi community, the role of the DIB, the mandatory religious courses, the status of cemevis and dedes, were all discussed during these workshops alongside minor ones such as the renovation of Madımak Hotel as a museum of shame. Apparently, none of these debates were satisfactorily concluded from the standpoint of the Alevi community. In addition, two remaining significant demands of Alevis – halting the construction of mosques in Alevi villages and delegating the administration of Alevi-Bektashi shrines to the Alevi-Bektashi foundations and associations – are not indicated in the final report. While the Madımak Hotel is being renovated as a “Center for Science and Culture,” adding two attackers’ names to the list of casualties along with the other victims frustrated Alevis.54 We can say that there are three fundamental reasons for the failure of these workshops and reconciliation: (1) Alevis are an inherently heterogeneous community, (2) AKP’s conservative ideology limits its willingness to extend full religious freedom to Alevis, and (3) there remains psychological mistrust between Alevis and the AKP.55 First of all, there are basically two kinds of Alevi organizations, supporting different views regarding the problems of Alevis. One group including the Cem Foundation and Ehl-i Beyt Association takes a moderate stance, which claims that Alevism stands within the tradition of Islamic beliefs and practices. Another group, including the PSAKD and Alevi-Bektashi Federation (ABF), has a more unconventional position, which claims that except for believing in Hak-MuhammedAli, they do not perform Islamic practices and therefore Alevism does not belong to Islam.56 These differences also reflected their attitudes during the workshops. For example, while the Cem Foundation supports state protection and relief for cemevis and dedes, the ABF is firmly against any state intervention, including protection. For ABF, the DIB is a tool of state aimed at the Sunnification of Alevis and others. They also oppose the payment of salaries of dedes by the state.57 The second issue is related to AKP’s conservative ideology and its limitations as regards religious freedom. On the one hand, as a conservative party, AKP’s constituency consists 219

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of predominantly Sunni conservatives who may not approve of concessions to Alevis. The need to protect their voting base limits the AKP’s room for manoeuvre. Secondly, the elite of the AKP, including the people responsible for the opening project, reacted in a “Sunni reflex” to the issue rather than handling it as a matter of human rights. The existence of DIB and mandatory religious courses are essential for the AKP top brass, and they seek to defend their interests at every turn.58 Regarding the third issue, an interesting public opinion survey held by the Institute of Strategic Thinking (Stratejik Düşünce Enstitüsü) following the Alevi opening indicates the Alevi mistrust of the initiative and the psychological obstacles to rapprochement.59 Despite many methodological problems and criticisms that one could direct toward this work, it nevertheless sheds some light on the issue at hand. According to this report, only 14.9% of the Alevi respondents were satisfied with the opening process, while 49.2% of them were unsatisfied. Only 5.7% of the Alevis positively responded to the question “Do you think that the government’s opening initiatives on rights and freedoms are beneficial for resolving the problems of Alevis?” In all, 61.1% of the Alevis found these initiatives insufficient. While 34% of Alevis found Erdoğan’s attendance at a Muharram iftar positive, 30% found it neither positive nor negative, and 28.9% found negative, which are very close percentages. A total of 59.8% of the Alevi respondents indicated that these initiatives are merely extensions of the policies of Sunnification. While 38.8% of the interviewees stated that they did not experience any kind of repression by the public institutions, 44.5% said that there is a structure within the state that prevents Alevis to be hired as civil servants. In sum, these results could be taken as evidence for psychological obstacles to Alevi reconciliation.60 Yet another attempt at rapprochement is the aforementioned Muharram iftars (breaking of fast). Although there is no tradition called iftar in Alevism, starting from 2008, Muharram iftar became a traditional event hosted by AKP leaders. Out of 1000 participants, barely half were Alevis in 2008, and out of 279 Alevi associations, only six attended. President Abdullah Gül organized the 2012 iftar in the presidential palace, which was a top-level recognition of an Alevi ritual by the Turkish state. After becoming president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also carried on this tradition.61 One can argue that the propaganda rallies before the 2010 constitutional referendum buried the attempts at reconciliation. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decision to question opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğ lu’s Alevi identity during election rallies a­ lienated Alevis from the AKP.62 Erdoğan also criticized the judicial decisions of the time and said that “Yargıyı dedeler yönetiyor” (the judiciary is being ruled by dedes), further alienating the Alevi population.63 After the 2011 parliamentary elections, Alevi initiatives were dropped. The Syrian Civil War that began in 2011 also had an enormous impact on Turkish domestic and foreign politics. Besides the massive influx of refugees to Turkey and fundamentalist terror attacks led by the Islamic State, Turkey’s objections to the Kurdish advancement in Northern Syria, combined with the way in which opposition to the Assad regime highlighted Turkey’s Sunni identity, concerned both Kurds and Alevis in Turkey. When CHP and its leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğ lu opposed AKP’s policy toward Syria, Erdoğan reacted with “Esad’la mezhep yakınlığ ınız var ondan mı destek oluyorsunuz?” (Is it because of your sectarian affinity with Esad that you support him?”)64 As mentioned earlier, the casualties of the Gezi protests were predominantly Alevi, and the demonstrations in other neighborhoods during and after Gezi took place mostly in Alevi-populated places such as Okmeydanı, Gazi, Armutlu, and Tuzluçayır. It is impossible to argue that Gezi was an Alevi protest, but many, especially young, Alevis attended these demonstrations against the government. The excessive use of force by the riot police 220

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in those neighborhoods caused a reaction in return. In the end, the attitude of the government and public officials in those Alevi neighborhoods evoked memories of previous adverse experiences.65 Before concluding, we have to touch upon four more issues. First, naming the recently built third Bosporus Bridge after Sultan Selim I, who in the public memory of Alevis is responsible for mass Alevi killings in the early sixteenth century, frustrated Alevis.66 Second, Erdoğan offered a public apology for the victims of the Dersim Massacre in November 2011, which was an extraordinarily positive development in mainstream Turkish politics.67 Third, in 2013, the University of Nevşehir was renamed for Hacı Bekta ş - ı Veli, who is a vital figure for Alevis.68 Last but not least, the project of building Syrian refugee camps close to Alevi villages in Mara ş and Sivas frustrated the local Alevi population. The Alevis argue that the government’s hidden aim is to change the demographic structure of these places at the expense of the Alevi population.69 As can be understood from these developments, the relationship between AKP and the Alevis continues to be bittersweet.70

Conclusion The large Alevi community with their heterodox belief within an increasingly imposing Sunni Muslim majority of Turkey presents a suis generis case of religious minority within the fragile democratic setting of Turkey. With their rising public demands for official recognition, Alevis have imposed a significant challenge to Turkish democracy. The nature of these pleas being primarily faith-based and hence similar to the Sunni Islamist demands renders them perhaps more challenging to the new political status quo under the pro-Islamist AKP tenure. Alevi heterodoxy has a historical background which renders many of the demands voiced by the current Alevi movement sensitive to both pro-Islamist and their opponents. What we do know is that Alevis in Turkey have concrete problems and demands of the Turkish state. Alevis have always suffered from the oppression of the center despite allying with the elites from the 1950s until the 2000s. The efforts of the AKP government to ameliorate the problems of the Alevi population remain inconclusive. Except for some symbolic gestures such as iftars, the Turkish state is still seen as discriminating against the Alevis. There are reasons to believe that Alevis still live in fear and anxiety even in urban areas. There are still people who mark the houses of Alevis by putting signs in Ankara, Didim, Adıyaman, Malatya, and so on. According to the leaders of Alevi organizations, these perpetrators take courage from the apathy of security forces and the discriminative discourse of the government.71 Alevi voting behavior has diversified during the latest election period in Turkey. Although most Alevis vote for the CHP, a considerable number of them also voted for Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi-HDP) in the June and November 2015 elections.72 Again, a significant number of Alevis voted for Selahattin Demirta ş who was the co-chair of HDP during the presidential elections in 2014, instead of voting for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğ lu, who was the joint candidate of many parties including CHP and MHP and the former chairperson of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation.73 Given the internationalized civil war in Syria and the still continuing refugee crisis, it may be difficult to keep the Alevi community completely isolated from the surrounding regional developments, especially when domestic political dynamics allow exploitation of these issues by the leadership of major political parties. Under such dire circumstances, the political demands of the Alevis have proven difficult to be resolved, and, as of the writing of 221

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this article, they seem to have been kept in the back burner. However, given the size of the Alevi minority and its historically grounded basic constitutional rights, these demands are not likely to disappear from the political agenda before being adequately addressed.

Notes 1 Ali Çarkoğ lu and Nazli Çağ in Bilgili, “A Precarious Relationship: The Alevi Minority, the ­Turkish State and the EU,” South European Society and Politics 16, no. 2 (2011), 351–364. 2 Fethi Acikel and Kazim Ates, “Ambivalent Citizens: The Alevi as the ‘Authentic Self ’ and the ‘Stigmatized Other’ of Turkish Nationalism,” European Societies 13, no. 5 (2011), 713–733; ­Abdulkader Yeler, “Shi’ism in Turkey: A Comparison of the Alevis and the Ja’faris,” Journal of Shi’a Islamic Studies 3, no. 3 (2010), 331–340. 3 Hurriyet Daily News, “78 Percent of Gezi Park Protest Detainees were Alevis,” Hurriyet Daily News 25 November 2015. Available www.hurriyetdailynews.com/78-percent-of-gezi-park-­protestdetainees-were-alevis-report-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=58496&NewsCatID=341 (Accessed 3 August 2017). 4 Talha Köse, “Identity Dynamics of the June and November 2015 Elections of Turkey: Kurds, Alevis and Conservative Nationalists,” Insight Turkey 17, no. 4 (2015), 105–123. Mehmet Bardakçı, “The Alevi Opening of the AKP Government in Turkey: Walking a Tightrope between Democracy and Identity,” Turkish Studies 16, no. 3 (2015), 349–370. 5 Those people known as Alevis were formerly known as “Kızılba ş” (red heads) due to their headdress, which was a red bonnet with twelve facets. However, today the word Kızılba ş carries pejorative and negative connotations. Kızılba ş implied heresy, political disloyalty, and immorality, particularly during the last years of the Ottoman Empire. Acikel and Ates, “Ambivalent Citizens: The Alevi as the ‘Authentic Self ’ and the ‘Stigmatized Other’ of Turkish Nationalism”; Markus Dressler, Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Markus Dressler, “Turkish Politics of Doxa: Otherizing the Alevis as heterodox,” Philosophy & Social Criticism 41, nos. 4–5 (2015), 445–451; Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, “Alevis under Law: The Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey,” Journal of Law and Religion 29, no. 3 (2014), 416–435; Irene Melikoff, “Bektashi/Kızılba ş: Historical Bipartition and Its Consequences,” Tord Olsson, Elisabeth Özdalga, and Catharina Raudvere, eds., Alevi Identity: Cultural, Religious, and Social Perspectives (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 2005), 1–10; Yeler, “Shi’ism in Turkey: A Comparison of the Alevis and the Ja’faris.” 6 Gareth Jenkins, “ECHR Ruling Highlights Discrimination Suffered by Turkey’s Alevi Minority,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 4, no. 189, 2007. The Jamestown Foundation, Available www.jamestown. org/programs/edm/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=33075 &tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D= 171&no_cache=1#.V8M0j5h97IV (Accessed 2 August 2017). 7 Melikoff, “Bektashi/Kızılba ş.” 8 Martin Van Bruinessen, “Kurds, Turks and the Alevi Revival in Turkey,” Middle East Report, No. 200 (July–September 1996), 7. See also the entry on Alevi beliefs at A Guide to Muslim Diversity. Available www.guidetomuslimdiversity.com.au/the-alevis.html (Accessed 10 October 2017). 9 Acikel and Ates, “Ambivalent Citizens: The Alevi as the ‘Authentic Self ’ and the ‘Stigmatized Other’ of Turkish Nationalism”; Ali Çarkoğ lu and Nazli Çağ in Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics,” Anh Nha Longua and Anne Sofie. Roald, eds., Religious Minorities in the Middle East: Domination, Self-Empowerment, Accommodation (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2015), 289–308; Hurd,” Alevis under Law: The Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey”; Ayhan Kaya, “The Alevi-Bektashi Order in Turkey: Syncreticism Transcending National Borders,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 16, no. 2 (2015), 275–294; Yeler, “Shi’ism in Turkey: A Comparison of the Alevis and the Ja’faris.” 10 Melikoff, “Bektashi/Kızılba ş,” 8. 11 Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics”; David Shankland, “Maps and the Alevis: On the Ethnography of Heterodox Islamic Groups,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 37, no. 3 (2010), 227–239. 12 John Shindeldecker, “Turkish Alevis Today,” 1996. Available www.alevi.dk/ENGELSK/Turkish_ Alevis_Today.pdf (Accessed 2 August 2017). 13 Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics”; Shankland, “Maps and the Alevis.”

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Alevis in Turkey 14 Reha Çamuroğ lu, “Alevi Revivalism in Turkey,” Olsson, Özdalga, and Raudvere, eds., Alevi Identity, 98–99. 15 Acikel and Kazim Ates, “Ambivalent Citizens.” 16 Dressler, “Turkish Politics of Doxa.” 17 Acikel and Ates, “Ambivalent Citizens: The Alevi as the ‘Authentic Self ’ and the ‘Stigmatized Other’ of Turkish Nationalism”; Dressler, “Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam.” 18 Baskin Oran, “Lausanne Barış Antlaşması,” Oran, ed., Türk Dı ş Politikası: Kurtulu ş Sava şından Bugüne Olgular, Belgeler, Yorumlar, 12th edition, vol. 1 (Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, 2006), 215–240. 19 Kaya, “Alevi-Bektashi Order.” 20 Bilgin Ayata and Serra Hakyemez, “The AKP’s Engagement with Turkey’s Past Crimes: An Analysis of PM Erdo1ğan’s ‘Dersim Apology,’” Dialectical Anthropology 37, no. 1 (2013), 131–143. We will not here go into the debate whether the Dersim operations were undertaken against the Alevi or Zazaki identity of the people of Dersim. What is clear is that there is a concentration of Alevis in Dersim, and the Alevi and Zazaki identity of this population is inseparable. Talha Köse, “Between Nationalism, Modernism and Secularism: The Ambivalent Place of ‘Alevi Identities’,” Middle ­Eastern Studies 49, no. 4 (2013), 590–607; Derya Özkul, “Alevi ‘Openings’ and Politicization of the ‘Alevi Issue’ During the AKP Rule,” Turkish Studies 16, no. 1 (2015), 8096. 21 Acikel and Ates, “Ambivalent Citizens”; Hurd, “Alevis under Law”; M. Hakan Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 22 Acikel and Ates, “Ambivalent Citizens”; Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics”; Köse, “Identity Dynamics”; Nil Mutluer, “The Looming Shadow of Violence and Loss: Alevi Responses to Persecution and Discrimination,” Journal of Balkan and near Eastern Studies 18, no. 2 (2016), 145–156. 23 Kaya, “Alevi-Bektashi Order”; Hurd,” Alevis under Law: The Politics of Religious Freedom in Turkey”; Shankland, “Maps and the Alevis: On the Ethnography of Heterodox Islamic Groups.” 24 Acikel and Ates, “Ambivalent Citizens.” 25 Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “A Precarious Relationship.” 26 Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “A Precarious Relationship”; Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics.” 27 Mutluer, “Looming Shadow”; Kaya, “Alevi-Bektashi Order.” 28 Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics,” 297. 29 Mutluer, “Looming Shadow”; Kaya, “Alevi-Bektashi Order.” 30 Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics”; Kaya, “Alevi-Bektashi Order”; Bardakçı, “Alevi Opening.” 31 Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “A Precarious Relationship.” 32 US Department of State, Turkey 2016 International Religious Freedom Report” (Washington, DC: US Department of State, 2015). Available www.state.gov/documents/organization/269120. pdf (Accessed 9 October 2017). 33 Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “A Precarious Relationship”; Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics.” 34 US Department of State, Turkey 2015 International Religious Freedom Report” (Washington, DC: US Department of State, 2015), 9. Available www.state.gov/documents/organization/256463. pdf (Accessed 2 August 2017). 35 Ali Çarkoğ lu, “Political Preferences of the Turkish Electorate: Reflections of an Alevi–Sunni Cleavage,” Turkish Studies 6, no. 2 (2005), 273–292. 36 Hurriyet Daily News, “Legal Status to Alevi Worship Houses a ‘Red Line,’ says Turkey’s Religious Body Head,” Hurriyet Daily News, 3 January 2016. Available www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ legal-status-to-alevi-worship-houses-a-red-line-says-turkeys-religious-body-head.aspx?pageID=238&nID=93366&NewsCatID=393 (Accessed 2 August 2017). 37 Available http://hrwf.eu/turkey-ecthr-refusal-to-provide-a-public-service-to-followers-of-thealevi-faith. 38 Özkul, “Alevi ‘Openings.’” 39 Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “A Precarious Relationship,” 358. 40 Hurd “Alevis under Law,” 427. 41 Hurd, “Alevis under Law,” 428. 42 Serdar Korucu, “Din dersi kitaplarında ayrımcılığa devam: Alevilik ‘gelenek’, Hristiyanlar ‘istismarcı’” 2015 (Turkish). Available www.demokrathaber.org/genclik-egitim/din-dersi-­k itaplarindaayrimciliga-devam-alevilik-gelenek-hristiyanlar-istismarci-h54936.html (Accessed 25 September 2017).

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Ali Çarkoğlu and Ezgi Elçi 43 Fethi Yılmaz, “İ lkokul kitabında Alevileri kızdıran ifade” 2017 (Turkish). Available http://odatv. com/ilkokul-kitabinda-alevileri-kizdiran-ifade-1909171200.html (Accessed 9 October 2017). 4 4 Minority Rights Group, “Alevis – Turkey.” Available www.minorityrights.org/minorities/alevis (Accessed 31 January 2017). 45 Özkul, “Alevi ‘Openings’”; Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “A Precarious Relationship.” 46 Özkul, “Alevi ‘Openings.’” 47 Mutluer, “Looming Shadow.” 48 Morat Borovali and Cemil Boyraz, “The Alevi Workshops: An Opening without an Outcome?” Turkish Studies 16, no. 2 (2015), 145–160; Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “A Precarious Relationship”; ­Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics.” 49 Mutluer, “Looming Shadow”; Bardakçi, “Alevi Opening”; Özkul, “Alevi ‘Openings’”; Talha Köse, Alevi Opening and the Democratization Initiative in Turkey, 2010. Available www.setav.org/en/ alevi-opening-and-the-democratization-initiative/ (Accessed 3 August 2017). 50 Çarkoğ lu and Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics”; Borovali and Boyraz, “Alevi Workshops”; Talha Köse, “The AKP and the “Alevi Opening”: Understanding the Dynamics of the Rapprochement,” Insight Turkey 12, no. 2 (2010), 143–164. 51 Borovali and Boyraz, “Alevi Workshops.” 52 Borovali and Boyraz, “Alevi Workshops.” 53 Derya Özkul, “Alevi ‘Openings,’” 86. 54 Borovalı and Boyraz “Alevi Workshops”; Bardakçı, “Alevi Opening”; Özkul, “Alevi ‘Openings.’” 55 Köse, “The AKP”; Çarkoğ lu & Bilgili, “Alevis in Turkish Politics”; Bardakçı, “Alevi Opening.” 56 Bardakçı, “Alevi Opening”; Özkul, “Alevi ‘Openings.’” 57 Köse, Alevi Opening. 58 Bardakçı, “Alevi Opening.” 59 Stratejik Düşünce Enstitüsü, Alevi Raporu, 2009 (Turkish), 50–58. Available www.sde.org.tr/tr/ newsdetail/sde-alevi-raporu/1750 (Accessed 3 August 2017). 60 Köse, Alevi Opening. 61 Özkul, “Alevi ‘Openings’”; Bardakçı, “Alevi Opening.” 62 Bardakçı, “Alevi Opening.” 63 Radikal, HSYK Ba şkanvekili’nden Şok İddia (2010). Available www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/ hsyk-baskanvekilinden-sok-iddia-1017733/ (Accessed 1 December 2017). 64 Mutluer, “Looming Shadow”; Fikri Sağ lar, “İ nce’den acı sözler!” 2012 (Turkish). Available www. birgun.net/haber-detay/ince-den-aci-sozler-10701.html (Accessed 3 August 2017). 65 Bardakçı, “Alevi Opening”; Mutluer, “Looming Shadow”; Kaya, “Alevi-Bektashi Order.” 66 Bardakçı, “Alevi Opening”; Ishaan Tharoor, “Istanbul’s New $3 Billion Bridge Has a Very Divisive Name,” 27 August 2016. Available www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/08/27/ istanbuls-new-3-billion-bridge-has-a-very-divisive-name/?utm_term=.02b13d985b1f (Accessed 9 October 2017). 67 Özkul, “Alevi Opening”; BBC, “Turkey PM Erdogan Apologises for 1930s Kurdish Killings,” 23 November 2011. Available www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-15857429 (Accessed 9 October 2017). 68 Bardakçı, “Alevi Opening.” 69 Ali Dağ lar, “Mara ş’tan sonra Sivas Divriğ i: Alevi nüfusu yoğ un ilçeye mülteci kampı hazırlığ ı,” 12 May 2016. Available www.diken.com.tr/marastan-sonra-sivas-divrigi-alevi- nufusu-yogun-­ ilceye-multeci-kampi-hazirligi/ (Accessed 3 August 2017). 70 Bardakçı, “Alevi Opening”; Mutluer, “Looming Shadow”; Kaya, “Alevi-Bektashi Order.” 71 Ilgili Haberler, “Alevi kapılarının işaretlenmesi yeni katliamların habercisi,” T24, 7 May 2012 (Turkish). Available http://t24.com.tr/haber/alevi-kapilarinin-isaretlenmesi-yeni-katliamlarinhabercisi%2C203338 (Accessed 3 August 2017); Mehmet Menak şe, “Alevilerin evleri yine işaretlendi,” Cumhuriyet, 23 May 2015 (Turkish). Available www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/turkiye/ 283273/Alevilerin_evleri_yine_isaretlendi.html# (Accessed 3 August 2017). 72 Ali Çarkoğ lu and Kerem Yıldırım, “Election Storm in Turkey: What do the Results of June and November 2015 Elections Tell Us?” Insight Turkey 17, no. 4 (2015), 57–79; Köse, “Identity Dynamics.” 73 Hasan Akba ş, “Aleviler: CHP, Alevileri kaybetti, Demirta ş ise kazandı,” Evrensel 12 August 2014 (Turkish). Available www.evrensel.net/haber/89824/aleviler-chp-alevileri-kaybetti-demirtasise-kazandi (Accessed 3 August 2017).

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17 The Samaritans Monika Schreiber1

The Samaritans, an ethno-religious group with roots in antiquity, represent the smallest religious minority in the modern Middle East, with overall population numbers ranging below 800 at the time of this writing. At present, they dwell exclusively in two demarcated residential centers: on their sanctuary Mount Gerizim right above the Palestinian town of Nablus, which has been their traditional hometown until the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987, and in Holon, a former “development town” on the southern edge of the Tel Aviv area in Israel, where a separate Samaritan neighborhood was founded in the early 1950s. Regarding language and a wide array of social values, food preferences, and other everyday habits, the Nablus Samaritans are clearly an Arab society. The Holon Samaritans, on the other hand, speak Modern Israeli Hebrew and have absorbed much of the daily culture of Israel. Generally though, the linguistic-cultural distinction between the two halves of the community is not easy to draw. The Holonites have preserved a great deal of their Arab cultural legacy, while most Samaritans of Nablus, owing to the community’s close political ties with Israel, are well familiar with modern Israeli culture (Figure 17.1). There are two interrelated pillars of Samaritan group cohesion: (1) their religion and (2) their social structure. Moreover, the Samaritans share (3) a common sectarian history, most of which has been characterized by loss and decrease, the adaption to foreign majority rules, and, as a consequence, flexible and ambiguous representations of group identity.

Religion Membership in the Samaritan community requires the unquestioning assertion of four major tenets of faith, which are to a large extent shared with Judaism: 1 2 3 4



There is One God, the God of Israel. There is One Prophet, Moses Son of Amram. There is One Holy Book, the Torah (Pentateuch) as revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai. There is One Holy Place, Mount Gerizim, in the historical land of Samaria.2

In other words, the Samaritans have a biblical religion that stands in the Israelite tradition. Their Bible, however, is thinner than that of Jews or Christians. Their only holy writ and 225

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Figure 17.1  M ap showing location of the Samaritan communities on Mount Gerizim and in Holon.

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formative document is the Torah (Pentateuch), the Five Books of Moses. They transmit the text in a characteristic language and script: Samaritan Hebrew set in the old Hebrew script of the third- and second centuries BCE. Theirs is an exclusive place of worship, not shared by any of the other Abrahamic religions: Mount Gerizim (Hargrizīm), which rises 886 m over the rocky hills of the Samaria region. Being an ancient geopolitical term, the latter is at the root of the ethnonym “Samaritans,” which translates into Sh ōmrōnim (Hebrew) and S āmīr īyīm (Arabic). The mountain’s intrinsic sacredness is a recurrent biblical trope which appears both in the Torah (Deut 11:29, 27:12) and outside of it ( Josh 8:33; Judg 9:7). Samaritan religious authority is represented by a hereditary caste of priests who trace their origins back to the biblical Tribe of Levi. At its head, there is the High Priest (Koh ēn G ādōl), who is appointed to his office according to the principle of seniority. It is important to note, at this point, that Samaritan religion has never fostered a historically durable class of lay scholars legitimated by academic training that would correspond to the Jewish rabbis. By the same token, Samaritan religious law, which focuses on direct (sometimes ad hoc) interpretation of the Pentateuch alone, has never been codified in an authoritative corpus comparable to the rabbinical texts (the Mishnah, Talmud, and others) (Figure 17.2). Free to practice their religion in either local group, the modern Samaritans pursue a set of religious practices that shows affinity to that of rabbinical Judaism, but is particular enough to serve as a marker of difference from it.3

Calendrical festivals Every Samaritan individual is obliged to keep the Sabbath and the seven annual festivals prescribed in the Pentateuch: (1) Passover (Pesa ḥ, Exodus 12), (2) the Festival of the Unleavened Bread (Ḥag ha-Matsot, Exod 23:15, 34:18), (3) Pentecost (Shavuʿot, Exod 19; Lev 23:15–22), (4) the Festival of the Seventh Month (the Samaritan New Year, Lev 23–25), (5) the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur, Lev 23:26–32), (6) the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot,

Figure 17.2  T  he High Priest (2010–2013, second right) with part of his priestly entourage during a wedding ceremony on Mount Gerizim ( July 2012). The embroideries on the Torah mantles and cases are in Samaritan script (Ori Orhof ).

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Lev 23:33–36, 23:39–44), and (7) the Assembly on the Eighth Day (Shemini ʿAtseret, Num 29:35). In addition, the Samaritans observe two semi-festivals, (9) Tsimmut Pesa ḥ and (10) Tsimmut Sukkot, sixty days before the respective holiday. The dates of the festivals are usually close to the Jewish ones, but never coincide with them due to the peculiarities of the Samaritan calendar. The liturgical languages of the Samaritans are Aramaic and Hebrew in their s­ pecial ­S amaritan variants. The extensive sabbatical prayer rituals are held in Samaritan ­s ynagogues (Figure 17.3),4 while the three annual pilgrimages (Pesa ḥ/Matsot, Shavuʿot, Sukkot) are marked by an act of pilgrimage to the summit of Mount Gerizim. Pesa ḥ, ­centering on an animal sacrifice (as in the original prescriptions of Exodus 12), is the ­b est-known ­S amaritan festive event, documented and photographed countless times over the past ­century and a half. 5

Lifecycle rituals The Samaritans practice the following rituals of initiation: (1) circumcision of male infants on the eighth day after birth (Gen 17:10–14); (2) redemption of the first born (Exod 13:11–16; Num 18:15–16); (3) completion of the reading of the Torah (Ḥatimat Torah), a ceremony confirming a child’s religious maturity; (4) betrothal and wedding celebrations that span an entire week and draw heavily on the Samaritan heritage of Arab folklore. The wedding contract (ketubbah) stipulates the bride wealth, which, however, has gradually become redundant as a financial provision for the bride in the course of the twentieth century. Laid out in Samaritan script and read aloud by a priest as highlight of the wedding ceremony, it is still vital proof of validity of a Samaritan marriage; and (5) funerals take place in the Samaritan cemetery on Mount Gerizim on the day of death and are followed by seven days of mourning.

Figure 17.3  C  ongregants in the Samaritan synagogue on Mount Gerizim on Yom Kippur (October 2016). (Ori Orhof, courtesy of the Allṭī f family.)

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Purity and impurity In Samaritanism, the intransigent duality of ritually pure and impure, grounded in biblical law, is a pervasive idea with numerous practical consequences that impinge gravely on social relations, both inside the community and in its dealings with strangers. Impurity resulting from genital discharges has profound effects, especially where it affects women during menstruation and after childbirth (Lev 12; 15:19–28). Samaritan doctrine has a much more rigorous approach to female impurity (niddah) than any rabbinical current in that it forces a woman into physical isolation for the duration of seven days (menstruation), forty days (after the birth of a boy), and eighty days (when she is having a girl). The infant is untouchable for ritually pure persons as is the mother, her clothes, and most of the things she has touched or sat on. Once the spell of niddah has passed, ritual cleansing of bodies and objects is accomplished, with water and fire as the main agents of purification. This custom causes significant disruptions of family life and child-rearing. Its difficulties are anything but denied, but simultaneously, the majority of Samaritans today value it as a vital marker of sectarian identity. Its observation is the basic condition of acceptance for non-Samaritan women prepared to join the community through marriage, and is at the same time considered to be the major hurdle to such a transition (more on the subject of interfaith marriages later). Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, Samaritans still insisted on the ritual impurity of strangers, avoiding even indirect physical contact with non-Samaritans whenever possible – a trait that shaped outside perception of the group for many centuries. The Samaritans follow the biblical dietary laws (kashrut). Its most important proscriptions concern meat not slaughtered by Samaritans according to Samaritan ritual stipulations (Gen 9:4; Lev 2:13; Num 18:19), the mixing of meat and dairy (Exod 23:19, 34:26; Deut 14:21) either directly in the pot or secondarily through contact with agents such as dishes or cutlery, and the common ingestion of both species of food.

Social structure6 The Samaritan community is essentially a community of descent that invokes the biblical mythology of the Twelve Tribes of Israel in its claim to a common Israelite identity. A ­Samaritan person is by definition a descendant of a tribe of Israel: the Tribe of Levi is the origin of the priestly caste in the Bible and thus, as mentioned, regarded as the forerunner of the Samaritan priesthood. Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of the biblical Joseph, are thought of as tribal ancestors of all the other Samaritans. According to the prevalent patrilineal idiom, Samaritan families are imagined as factions of those ancient tribes, spawned by fission along lines of fathers and sons. Thus, in daily life, Samaritan society is divided into extended families and also stratified this way. There exist presently five to six such lineages in the overall community, from the smallest clan of seventy-eight individuals to the largest clan counting 220 souls in 2013. Support and perpetuation of the family are regarded as a paramount personal obligation. This is mirrored in the fact that currently, over 50% of all marriages in the Samaritan community take place between members of the same extended family. An average of 20% of marital unions is contracted with the daughter/son of the father’s brother, the closest permissible category of kin.7 In terms of Samaritan social values, collectivity ranks far ahead of individualism. The demands of religious observance, and a tight-knit web of kinship, together suffuse all spheres of life, fostering in people an attitude of self-effacement for the benefit of tradition and the 229

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collective good. Not unsurprisingly, in our times, the increasing influx of Western values in the region poses certain challenges to the traditional Samaritan lifestyle, the full effects of which are still unforeseeable. We will get back to the subject at the end of this essay.

History Origins and early history The Samaritans are a people whose religious and ethnic origins have been notoriously difficult to explain due to the poor reliability of the ancient sources. There is, however, a broad historical nexus within which it seems safe to assume that Samaritanism has developed as a separate religion. This involves three essential cornerstones. First is the ancient ritual site on Mount Gerizim, dedicated to the biblical deity YHWH, as its religious foundation. The site, probably dating back to the Iron Age, was developed into a full-fledged temple, surrounded by a temple city, at some point in the fifth or fourth century BCE. Second is the historic continuation of the population of the Northern Kingdom of Israel as its ethnic base. These were the people who worshiped YHWH on the mountain, although in the aftermath of the Assyrian conquest (722 BC), when the kingdom was downgraded to a province by the name of Samerina/Samaria, it would be better to think of them as an ethnic mix. Third is the evolution of Judaism as a distinct religion as its historical trigger. This dynamic played out among the returnees from the Babylonian exile (586–538 BCE), focusing on the exclusive sanctity of Jerusalem, the old capital of the former Southern Kingdom of Judah, and of the new Jerusalem temple (Second Temple). This led to the gradual ideological and practical expulsion of the Gerizim congregation from a powerful new definition of Israelite peoplehood and identity. The ensuing religious conflict of interests between Samaria and Judah ultimately left the Gerizim temple destroyed by a Jewish army in 111/110 BCE. This may have been, the point in time at which the rift between the adherents of Gerizim and those of Jerusalem became final.8 While it is far from clear how things developed in detail back in those days, modern scholars consider as certain that at the turn of the eras, Jews and Samaritans were facing each other, as well as Roman rule, as two related but separate religions. Things look differently, though, from the viewpoint of Jewish halakhah (religious law). Following a narrative from the Hebrew Bible that mentions the deportation of the complete Northern populace by the Assyrian conquerors and its replacement by foreigners from Babylonia (2 Kings 17), rabbinical Judaism has traditionally denied the Samaritans’ claim to descent from the Tribes of Israel. As a consequence, they have also denied the Samaritans a clear-cut Israelite identity, be it ethnic, religious, or cultural. As we shall see later, this tradition has profound consequences on the modern Samaritans’ interactions with religious Jews.

The Samaritans under Islamic dominion: stagnation and decline As difficult as it may be to imagine in view of the minute minority encountered today, in the eyes of the ancient world, the Samaritans were prominent regional players. During ­Western Roman (63 BCE–395 CE) and Byzantine (395–642 CE) rule over Palestine, they were numerous: estimates range anywhere from 90,000 to over 1 million.9 Their religion was dynamic and widely practiced: population numbers sufficed to sustain a sweeping religious and administrative reform,10 and even to maintain a couple of Samaritan sects.11 The fact that they possessed political and military power tried and tested in the Roman period, enticed the Samaritans to put up multiple armed resistance movements against the Byzantine emperors 230

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in a desperate attempt to defend their religion against the Empire’s project of Christianization of the region. The ensuing, and devastating, civil wars are regarded as the genocide of the Samaritans who entered the Islamic era exhausted both physically and intellectually.12 During early Arab rule, coinciding, more or less, with the ʿUmmayad period (661–750), there was a brief phase of respite for the remnants of the Samaritan people, a time for sorting out their new existential agenda as a relic, a small sect struggling to hold on to the vestiges of their religion. Samaritan chronicles referring to that time speak very favorably of ­Mu ḥ ammad and even mention a treaty he had made with them promising safety to the Samaritans, their synagogues, and possessions13 – a narrative that is echoed in certain oral accounts still today.14 Throughout antiquity and well into the first centuries of Islamic domination, the Samaritans had spoken and written Aramaic, the region’s long-term lingua franca. At some point toward the end of the first millennium AD, however, they gradually replaced it with Arabic until, in the eleventh century, they had turned to producing all their literature in this language, including a translation of the Pentateuch, works of biblical exegesis, and chronicles. As aforementioned, however, Arabic never became a liturgical language of the Samaritans. Little has in fact been known in the Islamic world about the Samaritans, owing to their scarcity and seclusion. The general perspective was strongly influenced by one minor Qurʾanic legend (20:88–97), where a mysterious character called as-S āmiri makes the golden calf and lures the Israelites into worshiping it. Divine retribution condemns him to avoid bodily contact with other human beings by calling out “l ā misāsa” (Don’t touch!) as a warning cry. This part of the narrative matched the daily experience of the majority society with the Samaritans. As mentioned, the minority’s high concern with issues of ritual purity had created solid interpersonal barriers between them and non-Samaritans. The ritual purification of artifacts produced by non-Samaritans, or even of coins and other things foreigners had merely touched, was one of the paramount cases in point.15 Meals were not shared because of the Samaritans’ strict dietary regulations. For all of these reasons, the Samaritans (to the extent they were known at all) were established as the l ā-misāsīyyah, the “Touch-me-not” sect, within the Arab-Islamic sphere.16 The Qurʾanic story, however, also triggered some folk beliefs that the Samaritans were actually worshiping a calf during their rituals.17 This, together with an even older legend from Roman times saying that the group was venerating the statue of a dove on Mount Gerizim, brought forth a suspicion of the Samaritans being idolaters rather than genuine monotheists, a rumor that has kept circulating among Muslims and Jews alike more or less into our times.18 At the same time, however, it was recognized that the Samaritan religion shared with ­Judaism the belief in the Five Books of Moses. On the legal level, therefore, Muslim authorities classified the Samaritans as a “Jewish sect,” regarding them de facto as belonging to the ahl al-kit āb and thus to the community of dhimm īs, members of a permitted non-Muslim religion who had to buy their protection through heavy taxes ( jizya). During the long era of Islamic hegemony – from the Arab conquest of Palestine (633–642) and the ensuing succession of Arab-ruling dynasties to the Crusaders (1099–1291), ­Mamluks (1291–1516) and the Ottoman Turks (1516–1918) – the Samaritan minority, weak as it had been at its beginning, experienced a further and steady decline into near-­a nnihilation. Deprived of their former military prowess and, in fact, insufficiently protected by a kit ābi-status that was generally shakier and more challenged than that of Jews and Christians, Samaritans suffered more than the other local minority religions from religious intolerance, economic duress, and Muslim intertribal warfare. The first mass conversions to Islam, enforced either by direct physical threat or by hunger and poverty, as they were triggered by excessive jizya 231

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demands, happened already prior to the turn of the first millennium. Accordingly, between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries, Samaritan population numbers seem to have decreased into the low four-digit-range and below.19 This number still sufficed to sustain a Samaritan Diaspora: batches of Samaritans were living not only in Nablus, close by their sacred mountain, but also in other towns in Palestine (mainly Caesarea, Gaza, and Ashkelon) as well as in more remote cities such as Damascus (tenth to seventeenth centuries) and Cairo (equally until around 1700).20 After a relatively peaceful 200 years under Crusader dominion, the Samaritans met fresh hardships under the Mamluks, so that at the onset of Ottoman rule, there were only about 500 individuals left.21 The Ottoman Empire failed to recognize the Samaritans as a separate millet (self-administrating religious community) like the other acknowledged minorities, but simply counted them among the Jews for tax purposes. The community, however, did have a seat in the diwān, the local council, of Nablus, while Samaritan individuals were admitted to certain profitable, but generally perilous, government jobs of the sort that were usually reserved for non-Muslims, such as bankers and tax collectors (ṣarrāf) to local governors.22 Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, much of the ever more precarious situation of the Samaritans was due to the notorious weakness of the Ottoman central government, which resulted in the rise of local families to governorship and uncontrolled power. Their infights spawned arbitrary violence, pillaging, and tyranny against the Samaritans: it is telling of their plight that between 1785 and 1832, they were forbidden to ascend Mount Gerizim, not even for the purpose of offering the Pesaḥ sacrifice so central to their religion. Especially hazardous times recurred in the wake of the revolt against the comparatively tolerant rule of Ibrahim Pasha (1831–1840). Anti-Samaritan riots in Nablus resulted in three cases of enforced Samaritan apostasy to Islam, which were tied up with a campaign by the local ʿulam ā (Islamic legal authorities) to outlaw Samaritan religion as an unbiblical faith.23 Talking to Samaritans in the 1990s, I found that the tribulations of the late Ottoman era were still deeply burnt into the collective memory of the community and quoted as evidence for Arab and Muslim intolerance and propensity to violence. The Tanzimat reforms implemented in 1860 did introduce a more orderly rule in ­Palestine, putting an end to the immediate danger of violent annihilation of the ­Samaritans, but it was too late to save them from the miserable state into which they had fallen in the course of the previous centuries. All that was left by the mid-nineteenth century from the self-­a ssured and war-like people of antiquity was a sorry remnant of 150, maybe 170, individuals, huddled together in the jam-packed and squalid Ḥārat as-Samarah (“Samaritan Street”) next to Yasminah, one of the Old City quarters of Nablus, who barely survived into the twentieth century.24 British Mandatory Palestine (1920–1948) and the Yishuv, the prestate Jewish nation-building project, encountered a waning sect at the verge of extinction.25

The twentieth and twenty-first centuries: revival in new surroundings In all the 1500-odd years after the near-genocidal defeat of the Samaritans during the civil wars of the Byzantine period, the community had been in painfully slow, but constant, decline. Century after century was spent mostly under oppression and in debilitating poverty. In the early twentieth century, the historical fate of the Samaritans took an unexpected turn for the better. At that time, the Zionist nation-building project had already encouraged steady progress in the economy, public health, and education in the region. The developments attracted a constant trickle of Samaritan households from Nablus. They 232

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settled down in the newly bustling area of Jaffa/Tel-Aviv and, since the early 1950s, in a separate sectarian neighborhood in nearby Holon. Here the Samaritans learned to interact with ­secular-minded Jews. They may have been slow to adopt their European tastes, their secularity, and social values, but through integration in the national labor market, school system, and the army,26 they quickly absorbed their language, Modern Hebrew, and accepted it as their new mother tongue within a generation. Samaritans had met Jews in their traditional environment – Nablus had housed a small Jewish community since the Middle Ages – but they were used to being treated by them with religiously justified mistrust and disdain. By contrast, the representatives of the “new Jews” turned out to be prepared to revise the ­anti-Samaritan rabbinical attitude and to allow them the claim to a Hebrew sub-identity that would be viable in a Zionist setting.27 The proposal of religious and social equality within a renewing Hebrew society, and ultimately of a modern citizenship, was a spectacular novelty and a boost to self-confidence, which explains, until this day, much of the Samaritans’ love for Israel and their staunch support for even the most robust Zionist ideas. The other reason why the majority of the Samaritans today favor the Israeli Right over the Left is that since immediately after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in the wake of the Six-Day-War in 1967, the entire community has enjoyed unrestricted travel between Holon and Nablus/Mount Gerizim – a necessity for social cohesion and religious reassurance under the conditions of geopolitical split. This being arguably the Samaritan political agenda of our times, people tend to support whoever promises to hold on to the Jewish presence on Palestinian territory, thus keeping the border open. While the Samaritans had (in opposition to rabbinical tradition) informally been granted the Right of Return as early as in 1949,28 it was not until a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1994 that all Samaritans were found to possess an irrevocable legal title to the entirety of civic rights and duties normally reserved for halakhic Jews. While for the Israeli group it was a legal hedge for their accustomed prerogatives, the decree altered the status of the Nablus group in significant ways. Any local Samaritan may now apply for Israeli nationality anytime without changing abode, receiving in the bargain invaluable boons such as free access to all sectors of the Israeli job market, full admission to the country’s social security and health system, and use of the good roads reserved for the Jewish settler population. Not surprisingly, the large majority has since seized the chance (and ways around Israeli army conscription have easily been found for male youths). It is thus safe to say that even that contingent of Samaritan families who had never left the vicinity of Nablus, but spent decades trudging through the economic and political straits of British and Jordanian rules, are today as prosperous, healthy, and self-confident as they have ever been. On top of it all, as we shall shortly see, both groups have managed not only to halt the long-standing demographic deterioration, but even to increase in numbers. This brilliant success story is not altogether perfect, however. The modern Samaritans are, after all, an anomalous enclave in either of their contemporary habitats, a condition that is bound to provoke irritation, which, alas, sometimes leads to hostilities. One significant source of trouble for Israeli and Palestinian Samaritans alike is the deep-seated antipathy coming from Jewish Orthodoxy, a rapidly growing and increasingly influential sector of ­Israeli society, which of course refuses to accept them as anything akin to Jews.29 This becomes a political problem whenever Jewish religious parties run government functions, 30 and is a nuisance in everyday encounters. Scorn and assault, added to by the perennial experience of fruitless religious disputations, prompt Samaritans to conceal their identity in front of Orthodox, or obviously traditionally minded, Jews whenever they can.31 Moreover, 233

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the secular inhabitants of the Jewish residential area surrounding the Holon neighborhood are not necessarily pleased with the acoustic impact of the minority’s lifestyle. The periodic clashes focus on the widely audible Samaritan nightly prayer rituals just as strongly as on people’s predilection for Arab wedding bands. Politically grounded mistrust, on the other hand, is not at the center of Samaritan-Jewish conflict. Strenuous as this may be, Samaritan-Palestinian relations are even more complex and fraught. The Nablus majority cares little about the theological distinctions between S­ amaritans and Jews, seeing as they have traditionally counted in the minority with the Jewish people anyway. And the recent acknowledgment of the Samaritans as Jews in the civic sense by the State of Israel is hardly the kind of news that would make Arab Muslims look at them otherwise. Nablus Samaritans go to great lengths dissociating their faith from Judaism, but find it often difficult to get credence.32 Not unlike the secular Israeli government, the Palestinian National Authority on the West Bank, dominated by the Fata ḥ movement (of which a couple of Samaritan families are members), encourages an official discourse in which the Samaritans are explained as an “integral part” of the Palestinian nation, fellow Palestinians equal to Muslims and Christians, and like them involved in the ongoing nation-building process. During festive receptions and public events, the notion is eagerly touted by Muslim and Samaritan officials alike. 33 ­Samaritan public relations aiming at building acceptance of the community as special yet loyal Palestinians are a daily routine for the local community representatives. But at the same time, the local majority is well aware of Samaritan double allegiances. Already at the beginning of the First Intifada (1987), the Samaritans awoke to a violent backlash, which impelled the minority to gradually abandon their small sectarian town neighborhood at the foot of Mount Gerizim and to develop their traditional holiday camp site on the summit of the mountain into a permanently inhabitable village secured by Israeli army posts. Developments such as the extensive acquisition of Israeli citizenship in the aftermath of 1994, with all the attendant privileges, or the accession of 110 local Samaritan individuals to the right-wing Likud bloc in 2004,34 can hardly be kept secret in a small-town setting bristling with political tension. Thus, “off-stage,” the Palestinian Samaritans face significant political misgivings, which, in turn, have a negative effect on their sense of security and keep the Samaritan collective memory of humiliation and intimidation by a Muslim majority alive rather than putting it at rest. In private, Nablus Samaritans express sentiments of frustration and disdain that contradict the public narrative of national brotherhood. This, in combination with an obvious sense of loyalty to Israel that is clearly enunciated by many, makes for an extremely refracted identity discourse of a sort the Holon Samaritans, granted all their trouble with Jewish ­Orthodoxy, do not have to conduct.35 Naturally, social relations between the Samaritans and the majority societies in whose midst they live are not framed by politics alone. The above-mentioned biblical dietary regulations (kashrut) significantly infringe on Samaritans’ freedom to share meals with people of different creeds. Wary of getting in even indirect touch with non-permissible meat, ­Samaritans politely, but firmly, refuse private dinner invitations. They prefer to bring their own lunchboxes to school or to the army base. They also feed hospitalized relatives homemade meals, and reduce the consumption of hotel or wedding buffets to raw greens and dry bread. As a matter of fact, however, owing to the similarities between Samaritan and Jewish kashrut (particularly the absolutely congruent meat-in-milk-rules), the danger of dietary accidents is inherently slighter in the Israeli than in the Palestinian context. Moreover, modern

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Israeli trends toward vegetarianism and veganism have made it increasingly easy to find viable places to eat out, as well as to employ professional vegetarian catering at Holon Samaritan weddings. And generally, many Israeli Jews will perceive of Samaritan dietary skepticism as a mirror image, if a skewed one, of their own behavior, and look at it as a commonality that outbalances, feelings of alienation with a sense of relatedness. Muslim cooks, on the other hand, are not concerned whatsoever about mixing meat and dairy, therefore products of Muslim kitchens are out of bounds on principle – save perhaps for venues where one may be 100% sure that no meat ever enters the production facility (bakeries would be an example). It fits the picture that, in Nablus, Samaritans are proverbial for their fussiness about food (“Why, are you a Samaritan?” is said to be a common remark directed at people who refuse a meal), while, as a rule, Samaritan gastronomic exclusivity seems to feel more jarring to their Nablus than to their Holon neighbors. It not only contradicts Arab cultural values of hospitality and sociability, it also gives Nablus locals one more reason to question the existence of a common bond between minority and majority.36 Marriage rules create a set of gendered boundaries determining who may join the community from the outside and who may not. The Samaritans, as mentioned, frame their notions of descent and identity according to the dictate of patrilinearity, meaning that children derive their identity from the father and his male ancestors. All traditional Middle Eastern societies think the same way about these things, except for Judaism, where the principle of matrilineal descent was introduced in parallel to patrilineal descent in order to define social and religious identities. Against this background, Samaritan, just like Muslim females, are never deliberately given away in marriage to men from different creeds. Owing to a strongly preventive education and a close-knit social web that ensures the tight monitoring of unmarried girls, alliances between Samaritan women and foreign men have indeed been rare exceptions so far, even though for a powerless minority in a liberalizing environment it is difficult to forestall them completely. In Israel, most of the eight cases of female defection reported between the 1940s and present times were bound up with female sexual misconduct in one way or the other. Meanwhile, in Nablus, only one marriage of a Samaritan woman to a Muslim man has been reported in recent years.37 Samaritan men, in turn, are structurally permitted to marry foreign girls, because the community will accept their children as Samaritans regardless of their mother’s original identity. This had been prevented for many centuries, since Arab Muslims and Christians also guard their daughters from the advances of strangers, often under the threat of death. Thus, one of Zionism’s blessings from the Samaritan viewpoint has been the advent of a comparatively liberal Jewish community in the region, from which they may pick wives without endangering anybody’s lives, a privilege that Samaritan males have realized in roughly forty cases since 1923. It is worth mentioning that all Jewish spouses come from the secular echelons of society; quite obviously, orthodox Jewish girls will not want to become Samaritans. At the beginning of our century, even two secular Muslim women from Azerbaijan joined the ranks of the Holon Samaritans. Nablus Samaritan men will hardly find Jewish Israelis willing to settle down with them in an isolated spot deep inside Palestinian territory. Therefore, but also due to the special concern with the blue blood of the priestly family, to which the majority of the Gerizim community belongs, the new custom did not take root there earlier than 2003. So, in all but one of the six mixed marriages that have happened the men resorted to “imported brides” – more precisely, to Christian girls from Ukraine interested in well-off foreign husbands irrespective of their religion.38

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The Samaritans are clearly not too particular about the religious and national origins of their foreign brides. There is no ideology behind these marriages. On the contrary, they contradict the community’s interest in safeguarding its jeopardized tradition. But the S­ amaritans have been an endangered species for a very long time, plagued by genetic maladies39 as well as by a peculiar quirk of demography – an ongoing surplus of male over female births.40 Everybody familiar with the pervasive rhetoric of dearth and male frustration, which has dominated the Samaritan social narrative from the nineteenth century until the turn of this century at least, can fathom the amount of pressure emanating from a bizarre demography.41 Intermarriage is a plain strategy of survival, no more, but certainly also no less, since it has helped the community to come a long way from the wretched sectarian relic whose ultimate demise seemed imminent just 100 years ago. Those stranger wives, who usually sacrifice a free secular existence to a life deeply shaped by religion and complicated further by menstrual taboos, have contributed vitally to sustained demographic growth: without them, population numbers would never have soared from a pitiful 150 souls around the turn of the last century to 756 by 2013. They keep broadening the genetic pool of the community, thus easing the effects of chronic inbreeding, and have alleviated the psychological and social problems stemming from the male youth bulge.

Thoughts about the future42 The great demographic crisis of the previous centuries seems to be mastered. But while the traditional existential worries of the Samaritans are gradually being reduced, others have popped up in turn that center on the long-term viability of the Samaritan lifestyle under the auspices of hybridization and modernity (Figure 17.4). 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 1853 1860 1909 1931 1960 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 2000 2004 2006 2008 2010

Total

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Males

800 700 600 500 400 300 200

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1853 1855 1860 1901 1909 1922 1931 1948 1960 1969 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 2000 2001 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2013

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Figure 17.4  Demographic development and gender ratio of Samaritans between 1853 and 2013.

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Notwithstanding their priceless input into the demography and fitness of the Samaritan community, foreign wives are still seen as an alien element, raising concern about their offspring’s fidelity to the creed of their fathers and their ultimate loyalties. And this is not to mention the ambiguous identities of the children born from Jewish mothers, who may claim a Jewish identity due to the principle of matrilinearity inherent to Judaism, a circumstance which intrinsically facilitates defection.43 Add to that the fact that, over the last two decades, some of those mixed families have chosen to locate away from the Samaritan neighborhood and to live more private lives in other places in Israel, where they interact much more frequently with Jews than with coreligionists. Not a few Samaritans today also fear that intermarriage may become more popular than strictly necessary, creating, by the end of the day, a surplus of nubile Samaritan daughters and, as a consequence, a situation that would be liable to tear up the community’s most sensitive flank. As mentioned at the beginning, the continued existence of the Samaritan community has always been a function of its traditional collective value system. It includes individual submission to the demands of religion as well as to parental authority, the renouncement of full participation in the lifestyle of the majority, and similar social practices. This is no easy sell among today’s young generation, especially in modern Israel. Alas, some of the more explicit attempts at combining an emphatically individualist life with the preservation of a Samaritan identity have resulted in self-exclusion rather than in a sustainable compromise.44 Thus, the most burning question today is whether the Samaritans, saved from physical extinction, will survive “in a world undergoing changes that seem more radical and threatening to ancient traditions than any time before.”45 It is not going to be easy: for a vulnerable minority, recurrent, externally induced cultural and political change is inevitable, and the Samaritans have become extremely skilled at readapting themselves to vastly dominant majorities in the course of their long history. That said, the last things they will ever let go of are the handful of enduring religious dogmas that define their faith. Their awareness of being the only guardians of the true Torah and the sacred mountain will always remain at the core of their identities. This is their mission in history, the ontological premise of their existence, the reason why they are, and need to stay, in the world. However their lives may look otherwise, as long as there are people who believe in the sanctity of Mount Gerizim, there will be Samaritans.46

Notes 1 I dedicate this essay to Andre Gingrich, great teacher and inspirer, on the occasion of his retirement. 2 Monika Schreiber, The Comfort of Kin: Samaritan Community, Kinship, and Marriage (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 19–24. This is the explanation long given by the Samaritans themselves in their community paper, A.B. – The Samaritan News. However, they allow for some flexibility concerning the emphasis, arrangement, and phrasing of their core dogmas, so that currently a variety of enumerations circulate in the literature and on the Internet. See Reinhard Pummer, The Samaritans: A Profile (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 289–295. 3 For overviews of Samaritan religious phenomenology, see Reinhard Pummer, The Samaritans (Leiden: Brill, 1987), Pummer, Samaritan Rituals and Customs, Alan D. Crown, ed., The Samaritans (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989), and Pummer, The Samaritans, 2016, 257–288; Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 87–135. 4 There are currently four active Samaritans neighborhood synagogues: two in Holon and two on Mount Gerizim. The Nablus town synagogue has fallen into disuse after the Samaritans left their old quarter for the new Gerizim village.

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Monika Schreiber 5 See, inter alia, Julius H. Petermann, Reisen in Orient (Leipzig, 1860); Gustav Dalman, “Das ­Samaritanische Passah im Verhältnis zum jüdischen,” Palästinajahrbuch 8 (1913); Joachim Jeremias, Die Passahfeier der Samaritaner und ihre Bedeutung für das Verständnis der alttestamentlichen Passahüberlieferung (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1932), Pummer The Samaritans (1987), 21 and plates XXXII– XXXVII. Plenty of reports and pictures of this festival are to be found on the internet. 6 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 159–179. 7 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 180–242 offers a thorough discussion of modern Samaritan marriage patterns. 8 Most contemporary scholars go with this timeline (for a recent reestablishment, see Gary N. Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans: The Origins and History of Their Early Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), yet there is an important alternative theory saying that the religious and ethnic rupture between the North and the South happened as early as at the time of the erection of the Gerizim temple: Magnar Kartveit, The Origin of the Samaritans (Leiden: Brill, 2009). For a broader discussion, see Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 15–25. 9 Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 188. 10 It took place in the fourth century and was incited by a leading religious and military figure known as Baba Rabba: Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 45; Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 131–134. 11 Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 119–127. 12 For more on the turbulent history of the Samaritans in late antiquity, see Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 43–46; Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 131–140. 13 Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 143–144. 14 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 126. 15 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 121. 16 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 120–122. The terminology can be traced back to the geographers Idrisi (eleventh century) and Al-Biruni (twelfth century). 17 Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 158. 18 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 36, 52n51, 63. 19 Among the scarce demographic sources of the time are the Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela (1170), the Arab geographer Dimashqi (around 1300), and the Italian rabbi Ovadiah da Bertinoro (late 1400s). Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 47; Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 188. 20 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 48; for more on the ancient and medieval Samaritan diaspora, see ­Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 180–187. 21 Ottoman Tax records and other documents provide fairly accurate figures for the sixteenth century, see Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 155–156. 22 Ṣārraf īn incurred a high risk of being held hostage or even murdered. See Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 49; Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 156–156, 161–162. 23 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 50, 141. 24 Contemporary accounts of the community’s poor condition include Julius H. Petermann, Reisen im Orient Bd. 1, 1852–1855 (Leipzig, 1861); Mary Eliza Rogers, Domestic Life in Palestine (London: Kegan Paul, 1989 [1862]); John Mills, Three Months’ Residence at Nablus and an Account of the Modern Samaritans (London: J. Murray, 1864); J. A. Montgomery, The Samaritans: The Earliest Jewish Sect (New York: Ktav, 1907), 24–45. 25 All demographic estimations and data from antiquity to our times are arrayed in Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 187–190. 26 The Israeli Defense Forces draft male Samaritans from lay families. Members of the priestly family as well as women are exempted from service (Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 61). 27 For details about how this was accomplished, see the paragraph on Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Zionist functionary, second president of Israel, and personal friend of the Samaritans, in Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 52–58. 28 According to the Right of Return, which is based on the rabbinical ruling concerning “Who is a Jew,” Jews take precedence over non-Jews in Israel, especially in terms of immigration. 29 The anti-Samaritan attitude of traditional Judaism has been officially confirmed in a legal decision by the Tel Aviv Rabbinate from 1985/86, which aims, ultimately, at the prevention of Jewish-­ Samaritan marriages (Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 59, 63–65). 30 The 1994 Supreme Court decision was preceded by the mid-1980s attacks on the Samaritan entitlement to the Right of Return by members of government from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party (Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 59–61).

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The Samaritans 31 Julia Drober, The Dynamics of Coexistence in the Middle East: Negotiating Boundaries between ­Christians, Muslims, Jews and Samaritans in Palestine (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 174; Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 74–75, 82n100. Members of the Jewish settler population of Samaria have repeatedly bullied ­Samaritans verbally and physically. 32 Droeber, The Dynamics of Coexistence, 173–174, 212. Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 76–77. 33 Droeber 2013, 92–93; Schreiber 2014, 77. 34 Schreiber 2104, 82. 35 For random examples of this zig-zagging, see Schreiber 2014, 80–83. Julia Droeber describes official and “off-stage” discourses about the “Other” among Muslim majority and Christian and Samaritan minorities in Nablus in detail, analyzing them with the help of the concept of “public” and “hidden” transcript as developed by James C. Scott in Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). 36 See Droeber The Dynamics of Coexistence, 151–150, on limits to communal eating in Nablus; ­Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 122–125, on both local groups. 37 Four out of the eight wayward Israeli Samaritan women are sisters whose escapes were closely linked and happened in the process of a larger family conflict. See Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 141–148. 38 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 322–326. 39 Among the more widespread genetic conditions of the Samaritans are Usher syndrome type 1 (deafness combined with visual impairment), spastic paraplegia, and the blood disorder ­thalassemia. See ­ atsheva Batsheva Bonné, “The Samaritans: A Demographic Study,” Human Biology 35, 61–89; B Bonné-Tamir et ,al., “Genetic Mapping of the Gene for Usher Syndrome Linkage Analysis in a Large Samaritan Kindred,” Genomics 20, 36–42; Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 276–278, 281–282. 40 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 292–293. 41 Early reports of Samaritan worries about the small choice of mates include Petermann, Reisen im Orient; Rogers, Domestic Life, and Mills, Three Months. For the present see Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 285–295. 42 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 360–368. See also Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 302–304. 43 There have already been precedents: Schreiber Comfort of Kin, 141–148, especially cases 3, 4, 6, 9, 11. 4 4 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 329–330; Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 303–304. 45 Pummer, The Samaritans (2016), 304. 46 Schreiber, Comfort of Kin, 368.

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18 Shi’i minorities in the Arab world Laurence Louër

Even when they are a numeric majority, as in Iraq and Bahrain, most of the time Shi’is in the Arab world are not part of the highest strata of the social hierarchy, be it in terms of status and/or class position. They generally express deep-seated feelings of being discriminated against, and the rhetoric of Shi’i Islamic movements often refers to the Shi’is as the “deprived” (al-mahrumin) or the “oppressed” (al-musta’dafin). This way of experiencing themselves as victims echoes the historical marginalization of the Shi’is in the power struggles that followed the death of Prophet Mohammed. The origin of the Sunni/Shi’i divide indeed lies in the two main factions that contested for the succession to Muhammad: the Shi’is thought that the latter should have been followed by a line of imams recruited into the lineage of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet’s cousin and trusted companion, and Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter. According to the Shi’is, the Imams have access to hidden meanings of the divine message and have been entrusted by God to reveal them to an elite. While Ali became the fourth caliph, his descendants never ruled after his death, and the imams were only religious and community leaders. Their line died away in 874 with the disappearance of the twelfth imam. The majority of Shi’is (known as ithna’shari, or “Twelvers”) think he has been occulted by God to protect him against plots of the caliphs and that he shall return at the End of Time to install truth and justice. Sunnis, for their part, do not recognize the pretense of the Shi’is that Ali and his descendants should have ruled after Muhammad. While a lot of Sufi mystic orders recognize Ali and the imams as figures with special abilities to decipher the esoteric aspects of the divine truth, non-mystic Sunni currents, especially the more literalist ones like Wahhabism and Salafism, refuse any idea that there is something more to know than what was actually revealed in the Qur’an. Many see the devotion that the Shi’is show for their imams as a sign that they recognize prophets after Mohammed and hence transgress the Islamic dogma that he was the last of God’s messengers. Beyond theological divergence about the Imams, Sunnis often see Shi’is with suspicion, as a factious community who have no loyalty other than to their religious authorities and who are prone to act on behalf of Iran. This is the result of a major historical event that has had a profound impact on Sunni-Shi’i relations: the institution of Shiism as the Iranian state religion by the Safavid dynasty in 1501, and the use of Shiism by the successive Iranian regimes as a tool to project influence across borders. On a symbolic level, this has resulted in 240

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“Iranianhood” being seen as an essential element of Shi’i identity by outsiders, so that Shi’is have been perceived either as ethnic Iranians or as agents of Iranian influence. In this general framework, we observe numerous variations in the position of the Shi’i minority communities in different national settings. Two main factors play out in these variations: the circumstances of the incorporation of the Shi’is in the state-formation process and the geopolitical context. These factors intermingle and mix in different ways, intensifying or lessening the impact of one another.

Shi’is in the state- formation process Shi’i minorities are incorporated in nation-states in the framework of different institutional and political arrangements. Even in the most hostile contexts, they have been able to maintain themselves institutionally as a distinct collective.

Lebanon: multicultural incorporation Among the Shi’i minority communities, Shi’is in Lebanon are the ones who have most benefited from the establishment of the modern nation-state in the beginning of the twentieth century. Launched under the auspices of the French mandatory power in the 1920s, the formation of the Lebanese state was a twofold project. On the one hand, it was a consociational project in which the numerous sectarian groups coexisting on the territory of the new state would be represented in the political and administrative institutions according to a system of quotas calculated on the basis of the demographic weight of each group as reflected in the 1932 census. On the other hand, the Lebanese state was very much a Christian Maronite project tailored in order to guarantee Maronite domination over the polity, as they were the largest group at the time of the census, followed by the Sunnis and the Shi’is.1 Very soon, after the so-called National Pact of 1943, this project transformed into power-sharing between the merchant elites of the Maronites and the Sunnis, who distributed among them the most important political institutions, namely, the office of the President of the Republic, which falls to the Maronites until today, and the office of Prime Minister, which falls to the Sunnis. The Shi’is, for their part, were allotted the Presidency of the Parliament, a much less important institution.2 While the National Pact has institutionalized the Shi’is’ minor position, the creation of the Lebanese state has also allowed the Shi’is to gain a measure of recognition unequalled under Ottoman rule. Indeed, before the national era, the Shi’is not only had no institutional status under a regime that did not recognize officially the existence of non-Sunni Muslim sects but also had no clearly defined identity in the eyes of outsiders. Gathered in the southern parts of the new state, they were a population of mostly poor peasants who were commonly referred to as “Mutawali” by others, a derogatory term connoting backwardness and religious intolerance and also implying an unclear ethno-national identity, with some suspecting that the Mutawali were actually Iranians. By making religious identity the backbone of the new state, the French mandate fostered the clarification of the Mutawali’s identity: they were incorporated as Twelver Shi’is, and, progressively, they mobilized in order to build sectarian institutions, especially personal status courts and, in 1967, a community council – the Higher Shi’i Council – which would serve to regulate community affairs and act as their representative in front of the government as well as the authorities of the other sects.3 In no other context prior to the 1979 Iranian revolution do we see a Shi’i movement playing such an important role in encouraging Shi’i incorporation. The religious scholar Musa 241

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al-Sadr arrived in Lebanon from Iran in 1959. He was an Iranian citizen, but a member of a very reputed clerical family with roots in the Jabal Amil in south Lebanon. He undertook to empower his coreligionists so as to reinforce their bargaining power among the other communities, in particular the Maronites and the Sunnis. He initiated the creation of the Higher Shi’i Council in 1967, and, in 1973, in the context of proliferation of militias that preceded the unfolding of the civil war (1975–90), he created the Movement of the Deprived. This movement gave a voice to socially ascending Shi’is and soon developed a militia, the Lebanese Resistance Regiments.4 Under the acronym Amal, the militia transformed into a political party after the end of the war in 1990. Under a mostly lay leadership, Amal has concentrated on incorporating Shi’is into the state bureaucracy and channeling public funds to the Shi’i-populated areas.

Kuwait and Oman: the Shi’is as strategic communities In Kuwait and Oman, the Shi’is have been a key element of the system of power, as political or economic allies of the rulers. Again, this specific configuration is a legacy of the modalities of the state-formation process. In the case of Kuwait, state formation began somewhere in the eighteenth century, with the progressive gathering of a collection of groups from various tribal, ethno-national, and sectarian backgrounds. A handful of merchant families belonging to the Bani Utub Sunni Arab tribe, originating from the central parts of the Arabian Peninsula (Najd), constituted itself into an oligarchy and designated one of them, Sabah, as the ruler. While a dynastic form of rule was formed in which power was transmitted within the Al Sabah clan, it was agreed that the other Bani Utub clans would be consulted on important policy matters, most notably succession. The Shi’is were not incorporated in this power-sharing mechanism, which was restricted to the Bani Utub. At the time, the Shi’i population probably consisted of a handful of ­Iranian families. Today, it is organized into three main ethno-national communities who, for the most part, migrated to the emirate over the course of the nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth century. The largest one, the ‘Ajam (sing. ‘Ijmi), has roots in southern Iran and displays typical diasporic patterns, often speaking Persian dialects in their family circles and keeping family ties with Iran. Two other Shi’i groups claim Arab descent: the Baharna (sing. Bahrani), who trace their roots to Bahrain, and the Hasawiyyin (sing. Hasawi), who trace their roots to Hasa in Saudi Arabia (i.e., the region of Hufuf ) and belong to the Sheikhiyya, a mystical current of Twelver Shiism.5 Overall, estimates by the Shi’is themselves put the proportion of Shi’is among the Kuwaiti population at roughly 30%.6 The strategic relationship between the Shi’is, in particular the ‘Ijmi merchant notables, and the Al Sabah dynasty crystallized when, at the end of the nineteenth century, Emir Mubarak the Great broke the power-sharing mechanism, killing his rival brothers and calling on the British to protect him against possible reprisals. As a result, the Bani Utub “founding families” constituted an opposition struggling to reinstate power-sharing. The so-called Assembly Movement of 1938 was a key episode when, in a difficult economic context, these families established an elected assembly that demanded to be included in the p­ olicy-making process. This was to no avail, however, as the assembly was disbanded, and some of its members arrested, while others fled to nearby Iraq. The Shi’is played a key role in the failure of the assembly. Indeed, because they were not part of the Bani Utub oligarchy and their allies, their notables had not been invited to participate in the election and thus were not represented in the assembly. Moreover, the assembly took a decision that endangered Shi’i interests, notably forcing the dismissal of the emir’s powerful secretary, Molla Salih, an 242

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Iranian Sunni who acted as their advocate before the emir. The assembly also ignored Shi’i demands to create Shi’i sectarian institutions, in particular a school and a personal status court. Many of the founding families actually considered the Shi’i as I­ ranians who had no loyalty to ­Kuwait, a perception that was seemingly only confirmed later on when many of their leaders, who had built strong relations among Iraqi activist circles, embraced Arab nationalist ideas. Some of them even declared that they were favorable to an incorporation of Kuwait into Iraq. This resulted in the Shi’i taking to the streets to bring the assembly down, with the full support of the emir. After independence in 1961, Kuwaiti rulers accepted the establishment of a parliament with legislative powers. Until the 1980s, the Shi’i members systematically sided with the Emir when the parliament opposed the government, which was appointed by the emir and headed by a member of the Al Sabah dynasty. Actually, the Shi’is have tended to consider the Kuwaiti state as their best guarantee against the anti-Shi’i tendencies of various segments of the society. In Oman, the construction of the modern state was not impacted by the need to include a Shi’i population. The demographic factors at play rather concerned the dialectic between the interior and the littoral. Inner Oman, a mountainous and fertile region, has been characterized by loose and unstable alliances between Arab tribes professing Ibadism, a current of Islam derived from Kharijism. From the eighth century until the 1950s, this region hosted states governed by Ibadi imams. The littoral, by contrast, has been home to a cosmopolitan society made of Arab tribes but also of ethno-national and sectarian minorities who have been involved in maritime trade. The littoral, rather than the interior, has been the constituency of the Al Bu Said ruling family, a dynasty composed of “merchant princes” 7 who has ruled over Oman since the mid-eighteenth century and, in particular, has developed Oman’s imperial realm in Africa and Northern India. In this context, the challenge of state- and nation-building has always been more to incorporate and gain the loyalty of the tribes of inner Oman than of the coastal populations, who have had a vested interest in the maintenance of the maritime empire and by and large shared the economic interest of the Al Bu Said rulers. The coastal population has included a Shi’i minority, like in Kuwait, which is structured into ethno-national subcommunities: the ‘Ajam, the Baharna, and the Lawatiyya (sing. Lawati). Altogether, they represent only a small but influential minority.8 While there are controversies about the origins of the Lawatiyya, who themselves claim an ancient Arab origin, they are most probably Ismailis from Sind in today’s Pakistan who converted to Twelver Shiism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Until today, they often speak a vernacular language close to Sindi and Gujarati. They came to Oman soon after the arrival to power of the Al Bu Said dynasty in the mid-­ eighteenth century and became British subjects after the latter took control of India. The Lawatiyya are by far the most visible Shi’i group because they wield important influence in the Omani economy. This is the legacy of their involvement in import-export trade in the nineteenth century, which was favored by the strong relations they were able to build with the ruling dynasty and the British, who forced the Al Bu Said rulers into a protectorate between 1892 and 1971. Based on their economic position, they moved to the political and bureaucratic sphere, holding important ministerial portfolios under the rule of Sultan ­Qaboos and being overrepresented in high-ranking bureaucratic positions.9 The Baharna have followed a similar pathway. As for the ‘Ajam, they do not hold powerful positions as do the Lawatiyya and the Baharna, but they are well represented in the lower ranks of the police and the army,10 another sign that no concern about the Shi’i’s loyalty has plagued the Omani state-building process. 243

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Saudi Arabia: sectarian pragmatics Saudi Shi’is have had to confront the problem of being incorporated in a state whose founding ideology included ideas deeply hostile to Shiism. Indeed, the modern Saudi state was formed in the early twentieth century as the result of the conquest of the major part of the Arabian ­Peninsula by the Al Saud, a family who had made themselves the armed proponents of the ideas of Mohammed ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792). This preacher advocated a particularly strict version of Sunni orthodoxy rooted in the Hanbali school of law. Focused on the necessity to not deviate from the principle of God’s unity, the Wahhabis have battled against all practices of what they deem associating human beings to the cult of God, therefore condemning and banning the Shi’i rituals of celebrating the Imams and visiting their tombs. In 1925, they even ordered the destruction of the mausoleums of the four Imams lying in the Baqi’ cemetery in Medina. Elevated to the status of state ideology, Wahhabism has complicated the incorporation of the Shi’is in the Saudi kingdom, and Shi’is have suffered from various forms of discrimination which have been well-documented:11 They face restrictions in the practice of their creed, the regions they inhabit have been left underdeveloped, and they have been prevented from ascending to the most rewarding positions in the state administration. However, despite the negative consequences of the ideological and religious antagonism between the state and the Shi’is, the position of the Shi’is in Saudi Arabia has been characterized by the ability of the incumbents to make pragmatic compromises with Wahhabism for the sake of state-building. For example, the Al Saud rulers have resisted the pressure of Wahhabi zealots to implement policies of mass-Wahhabization. As a result, the Shi’is were permitted to maintain a separate collective existence as a distinct sect of Islam (madhhab). They have maintained their own personal status courts in which family affairs are dealt with according to the ja’fari school of law. These jurisdictions have been integrated to the Ministry of the Interior and have permitted the emergence of a group of Shi’i notables loyal to the Saudi state.12 Shi’i usually refrain from displaying their sectarian identity overtly in routine mixed Sunni-Shi’i contexts. Nevertheless, in the places where they represent the overwhelming majority, such as the city of Qatif and the surrounding villages, they are allowed to practice their rituals in the public space, and the mosques’ call to prayer follows the specific Shi’i formula: “I testify that Mohammed is the Prophet of God and that Ali is the vice-regent (wali) of God”. This accommodation with Wahhabi tenets shows that, in the eyes of the Saudi rulers, religious objectives stricto sensu were never a priority. They initially did not perceive Shiism as a counter-ideology likely to endanger their rule and, overall, the Shi’i population was not seen as a major pole of opposition. What they demanded of Shi’is, as from the other citizens of their realm, was political loyalty. As a matter of fact, upon the conquest of the Eastern region where most of the Shi’is live to this day, the majority of the Shi’i notables calculated that the new power would bring stability to a region plagued by Bedouin raids and neglected by the ­Ottomans. They argued in favor of pledging allegiance to the Al Saud in exchange for a degree of religious recognition.13 This was a sign that the Shi’is’ loyalty was initially not a crucial issue, and when the kingdom’s oil wells were discovered in the Shi’i-populated areas of the Eastern Province, the oil industry – a strategic economic sector to say the least – recruited many Shi’is.

Shiism as a geopolitical factor An important factor which has had an impact on the position of the Shi’is in the modern state is the way Shiism has played out as a geopolitical factor following regime change and/or 244

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threat to the incumbents. Shiism as a geopolitical factor is very much about what Iran is doing, what Iran is perceived to be doing, and how Sunni incumbents have used the “Iranian threat” – real or imagined – to fulfill their own political needs.

The Iranian revolution and its exportation The advent of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 has represented a major drift in regional geopolitics. The stated aim of the new regime to “export the revolution”, and its denunciation of the “impious” and “unjust” rulers of Arab states who were classed as lackeys of Western imperialism jeopardized the established arrangements regulating Sunni-Shi’i coexistence in several Arab countries. Even where these arrangements were the most favorable, the position of the Shi’is was seriously altered. Several states had to deal with the radicalization of the Shi’i Islamic movements. Contrary to a still widespread perception, these movements did not emerge in the aftermath of the revolution as creatures of the Islamic Republic. The majority of them had emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly as the offspring of two Iraqi movements which had developed into transnational networks:14 al-Da’wa al-Islamiyya (the Islamic Call) and the Message Movement (al-Haraka al-Risaliyya). Al-Da’wa was created around 1957–58 by a handful of young ulema coming from prominent clerical families. They were teaching in the seminaries of Najaf and enjoyed close ties to city’s marja’iyya, the higher Shi’i religious authority.15 The Message Movement aggregated around the al-Shirazi family, who were established in the city of Karbala and embodied a center of religious authority that rivaled the Najafi marja’iyya. Because of its intimate link with the al-Shirazi family, this group is often nicknamed the “Shiraziyyin”. Despite their rivalry, al-Da’wa and the Shiraziyyin shared similar objectives: they wanted to fight against secularization and the consequent decline of the Shi’i clerical institutions, and they thought that an Islamic state overruled by the marja’iyya should be established in Iraq and anywhere possible. Building on the transnational organization of the Iraqi marja’iyya, which was tied to Shi’i communities worldwide by dense networks, these two movements developed chapters in the Arab states’ Shi’i communities, mostly in ­Lebanon, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.16 Before the unfolding of the Iranian revolution, the Iraqi Shi’i Islamic movements and their regional offspring did not necessarily espouse a radical revolutionary perspective. Many first and foremost focused on societal Islamization. The Iranian revolution fostered a shift of perspective. Most of these movements espoused enthusiastically the revolutionary call of Ruhollah Khomeini and made themselves the proponents of his wilayat al-faqih doctrine, the ideological backbone of the Islamic Republic, which supports the idea that a genuinely Islamic state should be ruled by a senior Shi’i cleric. In several countries, mass protests were organized by the Shi’i Islamic movements in an attempt to arouse a revolutionary upheaval or to mobilize the Shi’i community. In Lebanon, the creation of the Islamic Republic fostered the emergence of ­H izballah, which, to date, remains the country’s most important Shi’i political organization. The movement built on existing activist networks, in particular some segments of the aforementioned Movement of the Deprived (Amal) and the local chapter of al-Da’wa, and sought to garner Iranian support to create a paramilitary organization to combat the Israeli presence in the South. The interest for Iran was both to consolidate its influence among Lebanese Shi’is and to position itself as the foremost actor in the fight against Israel. In the context of the civil war, the emergence of Hizballah greatly contributed to empower the Shi’i community in Lebanese society. Indeed, when the war ended, Hizballah had succeeded in establishing 245

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itself as the sole actor of the resistance against Israel and, as a result, obtained the right to keep its weapons despite the general disarmament of the militias that had been agreed to in the framework of the 1991 Taif agreement that put an official end to the civil war. Building on this legitimacy, it transformed into a full-fledged political party, participating in elections, sitting at the parliament, administering some municipalities, and even holding some ministerial portfolios (after 2005). However, beyond its integration into Lebanese institutional politics, Hizballah built for itself a position of quasi-state actor, having its own army, its own media, and its own telecommunication channels and providing numerous public services in Shi’i areas. As a result, while the 1943 institutional arrangements which gave the Shi’i community only a lesser institutional position have not been revised, the Shi’is who, according to all estimates, are today the largest of the eighteen officially recognized sects, have succeeded in establishing themselves as central actor in the Lebanese power balance. This has been particularly evident in the framework of the political realignments that followed the assassination of Prime ­M inister Rafiq al-Hariri in 2005, and the subsequent withdrawal of Syrian troops which were stationed in Lebanon since 1976. The most important ally of Syria, Hizballah was successful in preserving Syrian influence and in preventing anti-Syrian forces from fully implementing United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 of 2004 that Hariri had pushed for with the aid of his French and American allies. It demanded the departure of the Syrians troops and, what became the key issue, the disarmament of militias – namely, Hizballah.17 The Islamic revolution also altered the pattern of relations between the Shi’is and the state in Kuwait. The 1980s indeed saw the emergence of a Shi’i political opposition to the ruling family. It came from the ranks of the local chapter of al-Da’wa and pledged to follow the so-called Hizballah line or Imam’s line which supports the validity of the wilayat al-faqih doctrine and hence the legitimacy of the Islamic republic of Iran as a formal institutional architecture. This group, which took the name of the Islamic National Alliance in the late 1990s, came to dominate Shi’i parliamentary representation, pushing away the remnants of the Shi’i elite who had been at the core of the Al Sabah-Shi’i nexus. The aim of the group was never to overthrow the Kuwaiti regime but rather, in collaboration with other opposition forces, to force the ruling family to relinquish more powers to the parliament. However, its position was made difficult in the 1980s when Kuwait was the target of several terror attacks from 1983 onward, perpetrated by Iraqi and Lebanese Shi’i Islamic militants who most probably acted at the request of Iran, which, at the time was trying to dissuade Kuwait and other countries from supporting Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war (1980–88). Only marginal Kuwaiti complicity was at stake in these attacks, which were condemned by the Shi’i parliamentary opposition, but these events proved to have lasting effects on the relations between the ruling family and the Shi’is. At first sight, they contributed to further breaking up the old pattern of coalition between the Al Sabah and the Shi’is, pushing the ruling family to cultivate other constituencies, most notably Sunni Islamists and tribal powers.18 In 2008, however, the Al-Sabah-Shi’i coalition was revived in the context of the reopening of political debates on these events. This occurred after the MPs of the Islamic National Alliance decided to organize a mourning ceremony for Imad Mughniyya, a leading member of Lebanese Hizballah who had just been assassinated in Damascus. Because Mughniyya had always been suspected as one of the masterminds of the 1980s attacks, the move sparked considerable broadly based criticism, including among the Shi’is. The Islamic National Alliance was expelled from the opposition parliamentary bloc, and some of its members were even briefly arrested. This was a golden opportunity for the rulers to broker a new deal. They showed full support to the Islamic National Alliance against all the accusations that they 246

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were traitors and Iranian agents. In exchange, the Islamic National Alliance agreed to put an end to its oppositionist stance. It was subsequently dissolved into a wider Shi’i coalition, gathering all the various religious and political tendencies existing with the Shi’i community. The new group became a trusted ally of the government.19 In Saudi Arabia, the post-revolution Ashura celebrations20 in November 1979 degenerated into street fighting between the police and the penitents, an event that has remained in local Shi’i memory as the “Intifada of Muharram 1400.” The incident led to the arrest or exile to Iran of dozens of members of the local chapter of the Shiraziyyin, which took the name of the Organization of the Islamic Revolution in the Arabian Peninsula soon afterward. This episode deeply altered the established routine between the Shi’is and the Saudi state. In the eyes of the incumbents, the Shi’is now represented a direct security threat, which needed to be curbed. The answer was twofold. On the one hand, repression fell on the activists. The over-representation of Shi’is in the oil sector became a problem, and ARAMCO, the national oil company, was careful not to recruit Shi’is anymore in sensitive positions. On the other hand, the government chose to improve the infrastructure of the Shi’i regions in order to counter the sense of discrimination and abandonment that these regions’ underdevelopment was nurturing among many Shi’is.21

The Iraqi regime change A turning point in Middle Eastern history and geopolitics, the 2003 Iraqi regime change by a US-led coalition has had an important impact on Sunni/Shi’i relations in a set of countries. The deposition of Saddam Hussein first disrupted the traditional Iraqi pattern of Sunni sectarian hegemony. A Shi’i-dominated coalition, mostly composed of Shi’i Islamic movements whose officials had been in exile in Iran, Syria, or London for years, took control of the most powerful political institutions. Rather than trying to co-opt parts of the Ba’ath regime, the option of the new government, supported by the American occupation forces, was to exclude totally the ancient political elites and thus risk to alienate large segments of the Sunni population. This resulted in a state of quasi-permanent guerilla war ever since, in which various transnational Sunni jihadist movements allied with elements of the local Sunni Arab tribes and ex-officers of Saddam Hussein’s army. Again, the issue of Iranian involvement and the ways in which the arrival to power of Shi’is in Baghdad would or would not increase Iran’s regional influence was central in the debates about Iraqi regime change. Nothing best illustrates the terms of the debate, in particular among Arab Sunni incumbents, than the now famous interview given by King Abdallah II of Jordan in December 2004, in which he warned about the constitution of a “Shi’i crescent” likely to destabilize the Middle East. Clearly, Iraqi regime change was seen by local rulers as opening an avenue to Iran to extend its influence throughout Arab lands. Many pointed at the risks of the Middle East policy of the Bush administration and feared that its project of reshaping the Middle East actually included a grand bargain with Iran that would result in a new Shi’i-American alliance dominating the region. This perception was particularly acute among Gulf rulers, first and foremost in Saudi Arabia, which, since the attacks of 11 September 2001, was criticized worldwide for nurturing an intolerant form of Islam of which Shi’i minorities had been one of the victims. This was the way the 2004 annual report by the US State Department on International Religious Freedom presented the situation of Shi’is in Saudi Arabia. Controversy over this portrayal provoked a tense local debate in a context where, emboldened by this general atmosphere, Saudi Shi’i activists were mobilizing in various ways to demand the recognition of the Shi’is as a legitimate component of the nation. 247

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As a result, Saudi Arabia, soon followed by several other Gulf monarchies, engaged in a move to reach out to their respective Shi’i populations. This mostly consisted in granting the Shi’is a measure of official recognition as a distinct sectarian community (madhhab). While this move did not profoundly modify the position of Shi’is in the social stratification, it improved their lot in terms of religious freedom and gave their leaders an increased visibility in the local public debate. In Saudi Arabia, the quasi-systematic impediments to the construction of Shi’i mosques and other religious buildings were removed and the system of personal status courts was expanded. In Kuwait, the Shi’is obtained the creation of an independent waq f administration in the Ministry of Religious Affairs. In Qatar, the government decided to create a Shi’i personal status jurisdiction. A similar attempt was made in Abu Dhabi, which failed, however, due to the lack of involvement of local Shi’is, who feared this would result in increased state control over their family affairs.22

The Arab Spring and the Shi’ization of Alawites and Zaydis The series of uprisings that shook several Arab countries in 2010–11 was another turning point. Indeed, it resulted in a renewal of sectarian tensions that unfolded because of the sectarianization of the Syrian, Bahraini, Saudi, and Yemeni protests, in particular following the meddling of foreign powers which have tended to act as “sectarian patrons”, namely, Saudi Arabia (and to some extent other states of the Gulf Cooperation Council) and Iran. In Syria and Yemen, the sectarianization process entailed a redefinition of the identity of the A ­ lawites and the Zaydis, respectively, which came to be increasingly labeled “Shi’is” and seen as Iranian proxies. Syrian Alawites and Yemeni Zaydis, however, actually display important doctrinal and ritual differences with Twelver Shiism, which makes their categorization as “Shi’is” problematic and also obscures the understanding of the specific dynamics of these communities. Twelver Shiism is an orthodox rationalist form of Shiism which crystallized progressively from the tenth century onward and became largely majoritarian by contrast with sects that have retained some esoteric elements characteristic of primitive Shiism and/ or have experienced distinct doctrinal and identity developments. In Syria, the regime has been dominated by members of the Alawite minority (roughly 11% of the Syrian population) since the 1970s, first and foremost the al-Asad family, who has taken control of the local Ba’ath party and has also cultivated other sectarian minorities (Christians and Druze in particular). The Alawites are historically related to the Shi’i Imams but they separated from those who became the Twelvers after the death of the eleventh Imam. They have a distinct esoteric creed, and most Twelvers consider them as “ghulat”, a derogatory term by which Twelvers designate deviant Shi’i sects. Many Twelvers – and of course many Sunnis – would even doubt that the Alawites are actually Muslims. 23 In this context, the opposition to the rule by the al-Asad family regime, in which Sunni Islamic movements related to the Muslim Brotherhood have been central since the 1970s, has regularly mobilized a sectarian repertoire, describing the Alawites as non-Muslims. After the Iranian revolution, the enduring alliance between Syria and Iran has further nurtured the sectarian aspect of the repertoire of the Syrian opposition. This alliance has been based on a commonality of interests, most notably the common hostility toward neighboring Iraq and the will to present oneself as part of the front of refusal of any compromise with Israel. In neighboring countries, however, it has been regularly portrayed as based on the common “Shi’i” identity of the two regimes. Beyond the religious gap between Alawites and Twelver Shi’is, this perspective has ignored the deep ideological rift between the Syrian 248

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Ba’ath regime – Arab nationalist, secular, and even at some point anti-religious – and the Islamic Republic – a theocracy which has put religion at the center of its legitimacy.24 In this context, the 2011 protests in Syria were seen as a golden opportunity for Sunni Arab countries, in particular the Gulf monarchies who most fear Iranian empowerment, to weaken Iran by supporting the Syrian opposition. The Saudis and the Qataris were the most active in this respect, supporting politically and financially both the lay and Islamic opposition, and being accused internationally of being responsible for the rise of ISIS. Among most Gulf incumbents, the defeat of the Syrian regime came to be seen as a matter of vital interest. In the same way that the Iraqi regime change had been apprehended, any victory of the Syrian regime was seen as likely to embolden the Shi’is everywhere and increase Iranian outreach. In these countries, the public debate about the Syrian conflict became highly polarized along sectarian lines, with the Sunnis mostly supporting the opposition and the Shi’is mostly supporting the regime. In the case of the Yemeni civil war, we find again among the belligerents members of a sectarian minority often labeled “Shi’i”. These are the Zaydis, who separated from mainstream Twelver Shiism following a dispute over the succession of the fourth Imam. Zaydis established an imamate in northern Yemen in the ninth century, which survived until 1962, and subsequently established a republican regime. Today, Zaydis may represent as much as 40% of the population. Despite shared historical roots with Twelver Shiism, the development of Zaydism over several centuries showed a constant rapprochement with Sunni Islam which was accelerated after the fall of the imamate, when the successive Yemeni regimes promoted a form of generic Islam aiming at diluting Zaydi distinctiveness and avoiding the dangers of sectarian polarization.25 In this context, it even became hard to actually distinguish a Zaydi from a Sunni in Yemen, and the idea was widespread that Zaydism was in fact a fifth school of Sunnism. In the late 1980s, a Zaydi revivalist movement progressively developed around members of the al-Houthi family, who came from the aristocracy of sada (descendants of the Prophet) who used to control the Imamate regime. The Houthis – as they rapidly came to be customary called – wanted to invigorate the Zaydi identity against the encroachment of what they saw as Saudi-sponsored Salafism, but also defend the declining position of the sada in the society. After the unification of Yemen in the early 1990s, Zaydi revivalism led to the creation of a movement headed by Hussein al-Houthi, the Young Believers, which became involved in the intricacies of Yemeni politics. After having been supported by the government, it became increasingly critical of its policy, in particular its alignment with the USA after the attacks of ­September 2001. After the government tried to arrest the movement’s leader in 2004, the dispute degenerated into an armed conflict centered in the northern city of Sa’da and its surroundings. Well before the 2011 uprising, this conflict was often presented in the Arab public debate as the result of Iranian and Hizballah meddling. As a matter of fact, the Young Believers were influenced by typically Iranian revolutionary themes, rhetoric, and even symbols. However, closer scrutiny of their ideology shows that it included points radically adverse to Iranian revolutionary ideology, which is infused with typically Twelver doctrines. For example, the writings of Hussein al-Houthi were often anti-clerical, denouncing the ulema’s erudition as impeding the direct relationship between God and the believers and calling on Muslims to go back directly to the Qur’an.26 Such a fundamentalist stance contradicted the clerical dominance characterizing the institutional architecture of the Islamic Republic and its ideology. Actually, it comes closer to typically Sunni-Salafi ideas, revealing the will of the Houthis to call to a wide Yemeni audience but also the specific Yemeni context of Zaydi-Sunni convergence. 249

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The Sa’da conflict particularly worried the Gulf monarchies, and first among them Saudi Arabia whose incumbents saw the Houthis as mere Iranian proxies causing troubles at their border. In 2009, the Saudis decided to pursue a military intervention on Yemeni soil to fight the Houthis’ encroachment on their territory. Their involvement prefigured the larger intervention they launched in 2015, spearheading a coalition of Arab states against the Houthis, who had allied with their previous foe, president Ali Abdallah Saleh, who had been deposed in 2012 following the Yemeni “Arab Spring” protests. That year, the Houthis had succeeded in gaining control of large portions of Yemeni territory, including the capital Sana’a. While Iranian involvement in the Yemeni conflict was not on the same scale as in Syria, the worsening of the conflict following the Saudi-led intervention pushed the Islamic Republic to intensify its direct support to the Houthis. Generally, as in the Syrian conflict, the Arab public debate about the Yemeni war became highly polarized along sectarian lines, in particular in the Gulf monarchies, where Shi’is backed the Houthi rebels and their allies while the Sunnis cheered on the victory of the incumbents. The Syrian and Yemeni conflicts developed in a context where Saudi Arabia and Bahrain were confronted to protests at home, which consolidated these two countries’ perception that the defeat of the “Shi’i” factions in Syria and Yemen was vital for the preservation of their own internal stability. Indeed, the 2011 Arab Spring protests in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain were Shi’i-dominated movements. In Bahrain, while the protest initially cut across sectarian lines, it was rapidly framed by the existing Shi’i Islamic opposition movements and thus seen by Sunnis as a sectarian revanchist movement. It was quelled with the help of Saudi and Emirati troops, leading to a wave of repression that resulted in the imprisonment of dozens of activists and the banning of the Shi’i Islamic opposition movements. The Bahraini uprising spilled over to some Shi’i villages in the vicinity of Qatif in the Saudi Eastern province, in which the police regularly confronted groups of youth throughout 2011 and 2012. This ended with the arrest of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. The execution of this well-known figure of the local Shi’i opposition in January 2016 sparked protests throughout the Shi’i communities, from Lebanon to Iraq and Iran, leading Saudi Arabia to cut its diplomatic ties with Iran following the sacking of its embassy in Tehran.27 This overall context generated an upsurge of sectarian polarization in most Gulf monarchies, where, contrary to what had happened in the previous period, the incumbents engaged in often radical anti-Shi’i propaganda and supported sectarian Sunni movements. This was most visible in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where rulers delegitimized the protestors by portraying them as Iranian agents driven by Sunni hatred, ruling out any prospect to respond positively to demands for democratization.

Conclusion A peculiarity of the Shi’i communities in the Middle East is their sensitivity to regional dynamics and, in particular, to the developments of inter-state relations. This results from the strong association of Shiism with Iran since the sixteenth century and the often tense relations that Iran has had with its Arab neighbors. This does not mean that Shi’is do actually act as the Iranian fifth column that many Sunnis think they are, but that they are constantly attributed Iranian leanings and asked to prove their ability to be loyal citizens, giving precedence to their national rather than sectarian identity. This is true even of the communities that have historically displayed only an elusive relation to the Shi’i Twelver orthodoxy that has been at the heart of Iranian national identity since the Safavid era. 250

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Related to this, another feature of Shi’i communities is the debate and struggle that exist between different actors to define what is Shiism and what it means to be a Shi’i. Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has deployed efforts to attract to its fold sects historically related to S­ hiism, but which have long developed separate doctrinal and communal dynamics, and whose belonging to Islam is sometimes even contested, as is the case of the Syrian Alawites. These efforts have not been met by success since doctrinal rapprochement with Twelver S­ hiism has concerned only marginal segments of these communities, who were often motivated by political rather than religious reasons. Zaydis are the clearest example of that. However, the period that has opened in 2011 with the “Arab Spring” has been marked by renewed dynamics of Shi’ization of these two communities in the context of civil wars and meddling of sectarian state powers. The main issue at stake, here, is whether these processes will move from the status of speech act to that of lasting transformations of experienced identities.

Notes 1 The 1932 census found that Shias represented 15.9% of the total Lebanese population (including residents and oversees). Rania Maktabi, “The Lebanese Census of 1932 Revisited. Who Are the Lebanese?” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 26, no. 2 (November 1999), 235. 2 Marie-Joëlle Zahar, “Power-Sharing in Lebanon: Foreign Protectors, Domestic Peace, and Democratic Failure,” Philip G. Roeder and Ronald Rothchild, eds., Sustainable Peace. Power and Democracy after Civil Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005). 3 Max Weiss, In the Shadow of Sectarianism: Law, Shi‘ism, and the Making of Modern Lebanon (­Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010). 4 Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam. Musa Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1987). 5 Toby Matthiesen, “Mysticism, Migration and Clerical Networks: Ahmad al-Ahsaʾi and the Shaykhis of al-Ahsa, Kuwait and Basra,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 34, no. 4 (2014), 386–409. 6 On the characteristics of Shias in Kuwait, see Laurence Louër, Transnational Shia Politics. Religious and Political Networks in the Gulf (London: Hurst, 2008), 45–65. 7 John B. Kelly, Arabia, the Gulf and the West (London: Basic Books, 1980), 108, quoted in Dale F. Eickelman, “From Theocracy to Monarchy: Authority and Legitimacy in Inner Oman, 1935–1957,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 17, no. 1 (February 1985), 4. 8 Estimates most often speak of 3%–4% Shia in the national Omani population. See Marc Valéri, “High Visibility Low Profile: The Shi‘a in Oman under Qaboos,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42, no. 2 (2010), 253. 9 Valéri, “High Visibility Low Profile,” 256. 10 Valéri, “High Visibility Low Profile,” 254. 11 See, for example, the report by Human Rights Watch, Denied Dignity. Systematic Discrimination and Hostility towards Saudi Shia Citizens, September 2009. Available www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/ reports/saudi0909webwcover.pdf. 12 Toby Matthiesen, The Other Saudis. Shiism, Dissent and Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 13 Guido Steinberg, “The Shiites in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia (al-Ahsa), 1913–1953,” Rainer Brunner and Werner Ende, eds., The Twelver Shia in Modern Times: Religious Culture and Political History (Köln: Brill, 2001), 244–245; Matthiesen, The Other Saudis, 45–64. 14 The notable exception was the Movement of the Deprived in Lebanon. 15 The Shia doctrine and the institution of the marja‘iyya (al-taqlid) (emulation of the source) developed from the second half of the nineteenth century. The doctrine stipulates that every Shia who is not a mujtahid (a man capable of practicing ijtihad, that is the interpretation of the religious sources) must follow the rulings of a particularly knowledgeable mujtahid who has declared himself, and has been recognized by his pairs, as a marja‘(al-taqlid), a source of emulation. 16 Laurence Louër, Shiism and Politics in the Middle East (London; Hurst, 2012), 27–49. 17 On the history and development of Hizballah, see Aurélie Daher, Hizballah: Mobilisation and Power (London: Hurst, 2016).

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Laurence Louër 18 Louër, Transnational Shia Politics, 167–176. 19 Rivka Azoulay and Claire Beaugrand, “Limits of Political Clientelism: Elites’ Struggles in Kuwait Fragmenting Politics,” Arabian Humanities 4 (2015). Available https://cy.revues.org/2827#bodyftn15 (Accessed 5 August 2017). 20 Ashura commemorates the martyrdom of the third Shi’i Imam Hussein at the hands of the caliph Yazid in 680 in Karbala. 21 Louër, Transnational Shia Politics, 161–167; Toby Matthiesen, The Other Saudis, 101–110. 22 On the post-2003 debates and Saudi policy towards the Shias, see Louër, Transnational Shia Politics, 243–250 and Matthiesen, The Other Saudis, 181–193. 23 Yaron Friedman, The Nusayris-Alawis. An Introduction to the Religion, History and Identity of a Leading Minority in Syria (Leiden: Brill, 2010), chap. 3, 175–222. 24 On the Syrian-Iranian alliance, see Jubin M. Goodarzi, Syria and Iran: Diplomatic Alliance and Power Politics in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009). 25 Laurent Bonnefoy, “Les identités religieuses contemporaines au Yémen: convergence, résistances et instrumentalisations,” Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, no. 121–122 (avril 2008), 199–213; Gabriele Vom Bruck, “Regimes of Piety Revisited: Zaydi Political Moralities in Republican Yemen,” Die Welt des Islam 50, no. 2 (2010), 186–187. 26 Samy Dorlian, “The Sa‘da War in Yemen: Between Politics and Sectarianism,” The Muslim World 101, no. 2 (April 2011), 194. 27 On sectarianism in the Gulf post-2011, see Toby Matthiesen, Sectarian Gulf. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring that Wasn’t (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013) and Frederic Wehrey, Sectarian Politics in the Gulf. From the Iraq War to the Arab Uprisings (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).

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Section III

Ethnic minorities

19 The Kurds in the Middle East David Romano

This chapter will begin by briefly explaining who the Kurds are, along with their geography, history, and contemporary status. This is followed by a discussion of the Kurds’ minority status and why most Kurds do not like being labeled a “minority.” Their preference notwithstanding, the Kurds remain a minority in every state in which they reside, and as such they face several challenges – including a few that are unique to the Middle East. The choice of Kurds in the Middle East has generally been either to assimilate or to resist central government authority. Repeated and multiple Kurdish rebellions against central government authority characterized much of the twentieth-century history of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, with Syria seeing its first serious Kurdish armed uprisings in the twenty-first century. The core of the chapter provides a brief outline of this history, as well as Kurdish efforts to engage with the political systems of their respective states or take advantage of moments of weakened central government power (such as occurred in Syria and Iraq following the “Arab Spring”). It concludes by considering the changes in the region and the extent to which the Kurds can no longer be ignored by the states that rule over them and by the international community.

Who are the Kurds? The Kurdish homeland of Kurdistan (from the Persian stan, meaning “land of…”) centers on the Zagros mountain range where the borders of present-day Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria meet. Large communities of Kurds also exist in the plains and valleys near this mountain range, from northwestern Syria and central-eastern Anatolia in Turkey to the flat lands around Kirkuk and Kalar in Iraq and Khermansha and Khorramabad in Iran and parts of Armenia. Smaller pockets of Kurdish population can be found east of the Caspian Sea, in Azerbaijan, central Anatolia, and the major metropolises of Istanbul,1 Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran, and Beirut. Kurds were once mostly tribal and nomadic pastoralists, aspects of their cultures which continue to provide important symbols to the imagination of Kurdish identity today. For hundreds of years, the majority of Kurds lived as Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire, with a smaller number finding themselves within the various Persian empires centered on modern-day Iran. While some Kurdish principalities within these empires gained autonomy or semi-autonomy, and some even tried to revolt in order to attain full independence from the Sultan in Istanbul, no 255

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Kurdish state ever emerged from these empires. In any case, the pre-twentieth-century Middle East had yet to fall under the spell of nationalism, so Kurdish ethnicity usually remained a private affair while one’s religion took on more political overtones.2 Estimating the number of Kurds in the world today remains a tricky task, given the politicized nature of the question and the lack of a reliable census in any of the countries in which they predominantly reside. Somewhere around 30 million is a common estimate today. ­M ichael Gunter provided the following estimate, collated from various sources: there may be as many as 12 to 15 million Kurds in Turkey (18 to 23 percent of the population), 6.5 million in Iran (11 percent), 4 to 4.5 million in Iraq (17 to 20 percent), and 1 million in Syria (9 percent). At least 200,000 Kurds also live in parts of the former Soviet Union (some claim as many as 1 million largely assimilated Kurds live there) and recently a Kurdish diaspora of more than 1 million has risen in western Europe. More than half of this diaspora is concentrated in Germany. Some 25,000 Kurds live in the United States.3 This would make the Kurds the largest nation without a state in the world. The issue of whether or not the Kurds even constitute a nation, however, is not without controversy. A nation can typically be viewed as an “imagined community”4 sharing a language, culture, and sense of self, or an ethnic group typically defined by its language and culture.5 As a result of never having had their own state to standardize a single Kurdish language, and perhaps also because of their geography and the difficulty of travel between remote mountain tribal communities, Kurds today still speak a number of different dialects or, according to those who would deny their status as a single nation,6 different languages. All of these dialects or languages are related to Persian and are part of the Indo-Aryan language family. Kurmanji (or Northern Kurdish) is the largest dialect, spoken by most Kurds in Turkey and Syria and a portion of those in Iraq, followed by Sorani (or Central Kurdish) in most of Iraqi Kurdistan and Iranian Kurdistan, followed by Gorani (or Southern Kurdish) in parts of Iraqi Kurdistan and southern Iranian Kurdistan. There also exist many sub-dialects of each major dialect, such as the Hewrami sub-dialect of Gorani. In general, however, there exists a fair bit of mutual intelligibility between these dialects, despite significant grammatical differences and variations in vocabulary. Additionally, groups such as the Zazaki (also called “Dimli”) speakers in central-eastern Turkey generally identify as Kurds, although their language is further removed from those mentioned and not generally intelligible to a Kurmanji or Sorani speaker.7 While the majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims, there also exist Shi’i Kurds, Jewish Kurds, and Kurds who practice lesser known religions, such as Alevis, Kaka’is (sometimes referred to as Ahl e-Haq or Yarasan), Zoroastrians (often claimed to be the original religion of the Kurds), and Yezidis. While Alevis typically claim their religion to be part of Islam, Kaka’i, Zoroastrian, and Yezidi Kurds do not. Some Yezidis, although their religious texts are all in Kurdish, claim an exclusively Yezidi identity separate from the Kurds. Most ­Kurdish-speaking Christians do not view themselves as Kurds.8 Following World War I, the Ottoman Empire lost much of its remaining territory. The Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 mentioned, among other things, the possible creation of a Kurdish state out of some of these territories.9 The treaty was vigorously opposed by the remnants of the Ottoman army led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, however, as it would have left only a small portion of present-day Turkey to the Ottomans – dividing up the rest between Greece, France, Britain, Italy, the Armenians, and possibly the Kurds. Most Kurdish tribes, 256

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being Muslim, joined Kemal Ataturk in the military campaign to oppose the treaty, which he framed as an effort to prevent the infidel powers from carving up the last remaining Muslim lands of the empire.10 After successful military campaigns against the Greeks and the Armenians, Ataturk prevailed, and the Treaty of Sèvres was replaced by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne – which laid out Turkey’s modern borders but made no mention of a Kurdish state. Immediately following the Treaty of Lausanne, Ataturk moved to abolish the Ottoman Sultanate and Caliphate and create a new secular state based on Turkish language, culture, history, and identity. Feeling betrayed, Kurds who thought they were fighting for a Muslim state (which would include them as full Kurdish Muslim members), as well as Kurdish tribes to whom Ataturk had promised autonomy, revolted in 1925. This was the first in a series of Kurdish revolts in modern Turkey.11 The Treaty of Lausanne also allowed the French creation of Syria and the British creation of Iraq, both former Ottoman territories. The Kurds of Kurdistan thus found themselves divided by the new modern states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. While many now refer to Kurds from these states as “Iraqi Kurds” or “Syrian Kurds,” the Kurds themselves use Kurdistan-centric terminology – referring to the parts of Kurdistan in Turkey as “Kurdistani Bakur” (“Northern Kurdistan”), the part in Iraq as “Bashur (“the South”), that of Syria as “Rojava” (“The West”), and the part of Kurdistan in Iran as “Rojhelat” (“The East”). Besides the aforementioned differences in dialect, the new states ended up with different writing systems when Turkey adopted a modified Latin script. From this point on, a Kurmanji-speaking Kurd in Turkey might speak the same dialect as a Kurmanji-speaker in Syria or Iraq, but one could not write a letter to the other since the latter wrote Kurdish in the Arabic script. A Kurd farther afield in Armenia would even use the Cyrillic script to write Kurdish. This, combined with the separation of borders, different education systems, different states and cultures, emerging class differences, and preexisting religious and tribal divisions amongst the Kurds, greatly hampered any efforts toward pan-Kurdish unity. Kurds in all the parts of Kurdistan nonetheless generally see themselves as kin and one nation, but in practical terms they are much more divided. While many Kurds yearned for their own state, many others, over time, assimilated to the dominant language and culture of the states in which they found themselves.

Minority status or minority label? A minority is technically any group within a system that is numerically inferior to another, especially when the other forms over half the total within the system. In sociology and politics, however, the definition can become more complicated than this. Sociologist Arnold Rose defines a minority as “a group of people, differentiated from others in the same society by race, nationality, religion, or language, who both think of themselves as a differentiated group and are of thought by others as a differentiated group with negative connotations.”12 This sense of the definition carries with it pejorative connotations ascribed to the minority by the majority. According to Rose, such a minority need not even be a numerical one – rather, the term can be used to describe the subordinate status of a group. In this usage of the term, blacks in many parts of the southern United States might be the majority, but they are still minorities due to their relative power and status vis-à-vis white southerners. Similarly, Shi’is in Bahrain are the majority, but the country is ruled by a Sunni royal family and elite, so for sociologists such as Rose, the Shi’is of Bahrain are a minority. With the post-World War I division of Kurdistan into four parts controlled by the new states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, Kurds became a minority everywhere they lived – in 257

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both the numerical sense and the sociological sense described earlier. Without exception, each of these states – ruled by Turkish nationalists, Persian nationalists, or Arab nationalists (respectively) – relied on central government authority to embark on aggressive campaigns against their Kurdish population, aimed at subjugating and assimilating the Kurds.13 Kurds in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria do not generally like it when people apply the term “minority” to them, however. This antipathy toward the term probably stems from a number of related factors. First, there remains the pejorative connotations toward the aforementioned minorities. The modern Middle East as a whole did not prove overly kind to various minorities, and some regimes made a business of blaming minorities for whatever problems ailed the country. Second, in Ottoman times, minorities (millets) were exclusively non-Muslim communities, who were tolerated and enjoyed government protection (most of the time) but lacked equality with Muslims. Third, for many Kurds, the term “minority” seems to imply that they have lesser rights to their land and place in society and the state than others. For a people who see themselves as the indigenous inhabitants of the area, present long before Turkic and Arab migrations to Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent, this remains unacceptable. Finally, “minority status” can be seen by many Kurds as an impediment to either assimilation or full participation in the political system as Kurds. As a result, and even though international law provides minorities with a set of legal rights and norms that states are pressured to respect, Kurdish political parties to this day reject the minority label and eschew claims for minority status and protections. Instead, they demand things like equality, including equal group rights in states dominated by Turks, Persians, or Arabs. This means full Kurdish education rights, Kurdish media and publishing, local government services in Kurdish, Kurdish as a recognized official language of the state, and so forth. With the exception of Iraq after 2003, these are all still denied to them. Ankara, Tehran, Damascus, and pre-2003 Baghdad denied the Kurds these rights because they feared a rise in Kurdish nationalism that might accompany such freedoms. Kurdish nationalism, state elites reasoned, leads to demands for still more group rights, decentralization of power, autonomy, and possibly secession of the Kurdish regions. Since none of these states have been very democratic (even Turkey after 1950, which became a very illiberal electoral democracy), the preferred approach of state elites was simply to crush manifestations of Kurdish identity. This problem of crushing even the mildest minority demands proved especially acute in the Middle East due to an array of factors. First, states in the Middle East compared to other regions seem especially fragile, with their legitimacy challenged from both below and above.14 From below, the usual array of competing loyalties from family, tribe, class, and ethnicity challenge the Middle Eastern state. From above, however, Middle Eastern states face challenges unique to the region – from pan-Arabism, pan-Kurdism, pan-Turanism, and, most recently, pan-Islam. All these challenges call into question the legitimacy of existing states and their borders, which were largely determined by the British and French colonial powers. While Turkey and Iran are exceptions in this regard (they were not colonial creations like Iraq and Syria, which may account for the relatively stronger states in both countries), many Kurds nonetheless question their forced inclusion within these states. Kurdish nationalists point back to the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which seemed to promise the creation of a Kurdish state, and ask why every other nation got theirs (including some twenty-two Arab states, some of whom are pejoratively described as little more than “gas stations with flags”), but the Kurds remain subjugated by others. State elites in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria thus felt under siege by these challenges, believing that they could not afford to give an inch lest their challengers take a mile. Instead, they responded to what most people would view as legitimate demands from groups like the Kurds with an iron fist. 258

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Second, the Middle East retains key geo-strategic and economic importance for the rest of the world. While the United States and other world powers might have no problem ignoring “an ethnic bush war” in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, such was never the case for the modern Middle East. In their quest for stability in oil supply and influence, world powers armed Middle Eastern states like Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria extremely well. A ready supply of arms meant governments of these states could more readily turn to military solutions for whatever problems ailed them, including Kurdish disaffection and rebellion. The Kurds, in turn, occasionally found support as well from world powers (although not often – hence the famous Kurdish proverb of “The Kurds have no friends but the mountains”): Iraqi Kurds revolting against Baghdad in the 1960s and 1970s received aid from the Shah of Iran, the CIA, and the Mossad. While none of these actors (with the exception of Israel) actually wanted to see the Kurdish revolt in Iraq succeed, the Kurds proved useful to them in weakening a problem regime in Baghdad.15 Finally, and likely related to the two factors described earlier, the Middle East remains the least democratic region on Earth. While South America, Africa, and much of Asia all experienced their “democratic wave” in the 1980s, the Middle East remains a land of mostly autocracies, monarchies, radical republican dictatorships, and corrupt oligarchies. Although the “Arab Spring” beginning in 2010 seemed finally to herald the coming of the ­M iddle East’s democratic wave, with the exception of Tunisia, the effort stalled (­ Bahrain), lost its way (Egypt), or collapsed into grinding civil wars (Libya, Syria, and Yemen). Within such a neighborhood, Kurdish aspirations – especially the Kurdish nationalists’ dream of a Kurdish state – seemed fraught with too many obstacles and difficulties. Chris Kutschera’s well-known 1994 documentary on the Kurds, for instance, was entitled Mad Dreams of Independence.

The choice of assimilation or resistance The long and complex history of the Kurds cannot be presented here adequately. Nonetheless, a brief overview of the challenges and opportunities Kurds faced in the different states they found themselves in after World War I may assist readers wishing to understand this group of people better. To begin with, the sudden creation of modern borders dividing Kurdistan (with the exception of the border between the Ottomans and Persia, which had existed for some time) presented Kurds with both problems and opportunities. Some communities saw themselves suddenly divided in half by the new borders – as in Nusaybin/Qamichly, a town on the new Turkish-Syrian border. The northern part of the city became Nusaybin and Turkish, while the southern part became Qamichly and Syrian. For the Kurds living there, however, it was still “Kurdistan,” and their kin on the other side – sometimes brothers and sisters and first cousins – were still family. Traffic between the different parts of Kurdistan suddenly saw severe restrictions, and even nomadic shepherds who once grazed their flocks at will according to necessity (mountain pastures in summer, the valleys and plains in winter) were now expected to respect the new socially constructed states to which they felt little allegiance. While some Kurdish elites knew the ways of modernity quite well and had studied in cities like Istanbul, Cairo, and Tehran (where many adopted the new ideology of nationalism around the same time as their Turkish, Arab, and Persian peers), most did not. The Kurdish regions of the Ottoman and Persian empires had always been far from the urban centers of power, which held very loose and tenuous control over these areas. For centuries, the Kurds generally looked askance at government officials, as these people usually only turned up in 259

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order to collect taxes or conscripts for the military. Yet suddenly modern governments intent on centralizing power, modernizing, and mobilizing the entire population behind the regime and its ideology, showed up and demanded Kurds’ allegiance and obedience. Their children had to attend state schools to learn the new states’ languages, ways, and expectations. Some took well to the changes, learned the languages of their states, assimilated or at least learned to navigate the new social and political structures, and advanced themselves. In many instances, however, the Kurds reacted with resentment and resistance to the new order of the day. Many Kurds found a living smuggling goods and people over the new borders, in defiance of government laws. The mountains of Kurdistan in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq (Syria is not as mountainous) also offered Kurdish rebels refuge and hiding places from government authority, and many revolts broke out over the years.16 The new borders provided Kurdish rebels sanctuary, as one could flee Turkish military forces toward the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, for instance. As these revolts continued, they increasingly moved from what one might describe as more religious, reactionary responses to increasing secular state control to uprisings infused with a Kurdish nationalist spirit. Kurdish elites, students, professionals, and then even average Kurds increasingly asked why their regions were the poorest in the new states, and surmised that the answer lay with their ethnicity and discrimination from other groups controlling the state.17

Turkey18 In 1923 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk successfully concluded Turkey’s “War of Independence” to abrogate the Treaty of Sèvres and force different borders on the international community. The Ottoman Empire was once a very diverse, multicultural, and multireligious polity. With the loss of its Arab territories, the forced population exchange with Greece (in which most of Turkey’s Greek Orthodox population was transferred to Greece and Greece’s Muslim population sent to Turkey), and the Armenian/Assyrian genocide, the new Turkish republic was left with only one politically significant minority: the Kurds. Ataturk quickly decided to base the new state on one language and culture (Turkish), all the while making the somewhat contradictory claim that “Turkishness” was a civic identity rather than an ethnic one, and hence open to all the “Turkish” citizens who suddenly found themselves within the new republic’s borders. With the goal of making everyone submit to the new order and become new Turks, the government quickly moved to ban public use of other languages – which principally meant Kurdish. When the first Kurdish (and religious reactionary) revolt broke out in 1925 (the Sheikh Said revolt), the political scene in Ankara had not yet solidified. Different factions argued about the possibility of creating a liberal electoral system, restoring Ottoman symbols such as the Caliphate, various levels of decentralization or centralized government rule, and so forth. The Sheikh Said revolt provided Kemal Ataturk and those following him (who would come to be known as “Kemalists”) the opportunity to declare emergency rule – which also proved instrumental in silencing critics and opponents in the capital and rest of the country. The Sheikh Said revolt – which was demanding a Muslim Kurdish state – was brutally crushed, and the new Kemalist government imposed authoritarian control over the country until 1950. The Turkish state used its power to try and forge a new, modern, secular, and uniformly Turkish population. In a sort of Turkish variant of the “white man’s burden,” civil servants (teachers, doctors, administrators, police) from western Turkey were sent to the Kurdish east and southeast of the country to educate, reform, modernize, and discipline. Many or even 260

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most of the Turkish civil servants took up this task with the genuine belief that they were helping the people there, ridding society of outdated traditions, feudal economic relations, and tribalism in order to build a better country for everyone. To this end, Kurdish language use in schools, public offices, publishing, political campaigns, government services, and similar venues was forbidden. Kurdish festivals, music, and similar markers of a distinct Kurdish identity were likewise banned, to the point that state officials even denied the very existence of a Kurdish minority in Turkey. On hillsides across Turkish Kurdistan (and elsewhere in Turkey), the Turkish military wrote out in large stones slogans such as “Happy is he who calls himself a Turk” and “The homeland is indivisible,” visible from miles away. This was not a “racist” policy, as no real racist aims to assimilate members of the other group to their own group. Rather, “ethnic chauvinism” better describes the approach, wherein the superiority of Turkish language and culture over others was asserted. In the new order, any Kurd who learned Turkish fluently and kept their ethnic identity to themselves (never saying “I am Kurdish,” for instance, but rather proclaiming that “I am Turkish”) could advance as far as they liked in society, business, or even politics. Those who insisted on publically claiming a Kurdish identity, however, were deemed disloyal and saw themselves shunned, repressed, imprisoned, tortured, or killed by the state. Subsequent major Kurdish revolts in 1927–30 and 1937–38 were crushed by Ankara, with tens of thousands of lives lost in the process. Large numbers of rebellious Kurdish tribes and elites were also forcibly relocated to non-Kurdish parts of the country following their defeats. In each case of revolt, Kurds proved divided – if Sunni Muslim Kurds rose up against the state, Alevi Kurds generally sat things out or even helped government forces repress the rebels (during Ottoman times, Alevis suffered many attacks from Sunnis). If Alevi Kurds rose up (as in 1937–38 – see Chapter 16), the Sunni Kurds sat things out or helped the state. The same thing often occurred between different Kurdish tribes, with traditional tribal rivals refusing to join an uprising or actively helping the state to crush it. From 1938 until 1984, no Kurdish rebellions occurred in Turkey. The state’s program of assimilating its Kurdish population seemed to be moving forward. Many children born to Kurdish-speaking parents in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s failed to learn Kurdish. Often their parents felt the language would only hamper their children’s prospects in such a climate, and they made efforts to speak Turkish to their children even as they spoke Kurdish among themselves. Other Kurdish children learned Kurdish as their mother tongue, but were sent to schools (sometimes forcibly sent to Turkish boarding schools, akin to the residential schools in North America that aimed to eliminate aboriginal languages and cultures in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s) that forbade the use of Kurdish. Although the first years of school were often difficult and very traumatic for these children, with frequent beatings if teachers overheard them speaking to each other in their native Kurdish, the s­tudents quickly became more fluent in the language of the state than in their mother tongue. The schools likewise taught the state’s version of history (for instance, the Sheikh Said and other ­revolts were “religious tribal reactionaries refusing modernity,” rather than Kurdish revolts), ­Turkish holidays, Turkish symbols, and similar things, all the while belittling anything ­related to Kurdish identity. Many Kurds in Turkey thus stopped identifying as Kurds. Others continued to identity as Kurds but could no longer speak Kurdish well, or not at all. To this day, self-identifying Kurds in Turkey are much more likely to either not know Kurdish or to speak Turkish better than Kurdish, compared to Kurds in Syria, Iraq, and Iran who tend to speak Kurdish as their primary language. In 1984, however, a major Kurdish revolt once again emerged in Turkey in the form of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). With its roots in the Turkish Left and various Marxist–Leninist 261

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movements of the 1960s and 1970s, the PKK differed from previous ­Kurdish insurgent groups: it was not religious or tribally based, but rather stemmed from student activists who split from the Turkish Left and patiently worked to start a Maoist style rural insurgency in the Kurdish parts of Turkey. At first, the PKK aimed for a Kurdish state that would unite all the parts of Kurdistan, end capitalist exploitation of everyone (not just Kurds), and elevate women to equal status with men. In the late 1970s, the PKK began eliminating local rivals and competing Kurdish parties before finally directing its guns toward the Turkish state. The group proved ruthless, especially in its early years, targeting not only Turkish military forces and police, but also the teachers sent to assimilate Kurdish students, government officials, and even on occasion the families of Kurdish “village guards” that the Turkish state established to help fight the PKK. The government response was likewise brutal, with emergency rule placed on most of Turkey’s Kurdish provinces, some 3,500 Kurdish villages forcibly evacuated,19 mass disappearances of Kurdish activists by illicit government-directed death squads, and endless military campaigns in the mountains. From the outset of this insurgency, the Turkish state insisted that this was not an “ethnic conflict,” but rather a problem of “terrorism” fomented by hostile foreign actors, that not all Kurds supported the PKK (which was true, but at the same time the PKK did develop a mass following), and that economic development would “dry the swamp” that had allowed the PKK to emerge (a viewpoint which conveniently side-stepped the PKK and many Kurds’ principal demands, which focused on the denial and suppression of Kurdish identity, language, and culture). The PKK insurgency succeeded in one of its primary goals, which was reviving Kurdish identity and pride in Northern Kurdistan. With every successful ambush of Turkish forces and every year that NATO’s second largest army failed to defeat the rebels, many Kurds once again began to take pride in their Kurdish identity – including once pejorative stereotypes of “stubborn, warlike, bandit, insubordinate Kurds.” As the guerrilla war progressed through the 1980s and 1990s, it became increasingly difficult, even absurd, for state officials to deny the existence of Kurds and a Kurdish identity in Turkey. By 1990, the policy of complete denial was dropped and the ban on Kurdish language partially relaxed (education, most publishing, media, government services and political campaigns in Kurdish were still forbidden, but one could more easily play Kurdish music and speak Kurdish in other public venues, and one could publicly acknowledge that Kurds existed in Turkey without facing arrest). Further government reforms in the late 1990s and up until 2015 would relax these restrictions on public manifestations of Kurdish identity still further, although not to anything approaching Western minority rights standards. By the mid-1990s, the PKK also shifted its goal from secession and the establishment of a Kurdish state to more autonomy within a more democratic Turkey. Pro-PKK ­Kurdish political parties were established during this period, although every time they elected candidates to local offices or the national parliament, the parties quickly saw themselves banned and their politicians arrested.20 The most famous instance of this occurred in 1994, when Leyla Zana – the first female Kurdish politician elected to the Turkish Grand National Assembly – spoke in both Turkish and Kurdish during her swearing-in ceremony, calling for “­Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood.” This caused an uproar in the Assembly, and she was immediately accused of fostering division within Turkey and being a member of an illegal organization. She was imprisoned for several years following this incident. The insurgency and counter-insurgency raged especially fiercely in the 1990s. In the early to mid-1990s, entire parts of eastern Turkey became “no-go” zones for Turkish forces every night. The PKK fielded some 15,000 fighters and had supporters estimated in the range of several million.21 Some 40,000 people lost their lives (mainly soldiers, guerrillas, 262

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village guards, and Kurdish civilians22). On and off ceasefires were declared, although at the time of this writing, the insurgency and counter-insurgency are again in full swing. In 2002, the election of a Muslim-identity based party – Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) – briefly offered the hope that a resolution to the Kurdish conflict in Turkey might materialize. The AKP’s early focus on democratic reforms, economic development projects, and a discourse focused on Muslim identity more than Turkish nationalism appealed to many Sunni Kurds (if not Alevis), and many voted for the party. The AKP reciprocated by pursuing a “Kurdish opening” and eventually began informal peace negotiations with the PKK. Kurdish votes then helped propel the AKP to several successive majority governments in Turkey, which allowed the party to push the Turkish military out of politics (the military used to wield a veto on issues related to the Kurds, Islamism, and foreign policy, and intervened frequently in the political process in Turkey) and consolidate its rule of the country. All this ended around July 2015, however, when negotiations broke down and fighting between the state and the PKK resumed.

Iran23 Because roughly half the world’s Kurdish population originates from within the borders of present-day Turkey, this chapter devoted a bit more attention to the history and situation there. Other parts of Kurdistan also remain very important, however, and Iranian Kurdistan (or Rojhelat – Eastern Kurdistan) has the second largest number of Kurds: around 6.5 million (roughly 11% of Iran’s population) compared to Turkey’s 12 to 15 million (18%–23% of the population there). Although the Kurdish language (or languages depending on one’s politics) has little relation to Turkish or Arabic beyond some shared vocabulary, it is part of the same language family as Persian. Perhaps because of this shared linguistic link and cultural similarities, Kurds in Iran did not generally face the same level of denial and ethnic chauvinism as those in Turkey. Successive Iranian regimes’ fear of Kurdish dissidence and separatism nonetheless led to a series of repressive measures over the years. A few years before the Sheikh Said revolt in Turkey, the Kurdish agha and tribal leader Ismail Simko led a revolt in Iranian Kurdistan. Once again, many competing Kurdish tribes sided with the government during the revolt, despite Simko’s declaration of a Kurdish state in areas under his control. Simko’s plunder of neighboring Christian, Azeri, and fellow Kurdish tribes added to his reputation as more of an opportunist (taking advantage of Iranian government weakness at the time and simply seeking to expand his personal power) than a Kurdish nationalist. His roughly twelve-year revolt was defeated in 1930 when Iranian officials invited him to parley but ambushed and killed him instead. Following this, a number of smaller skirmishes and troubles in Iranian Kurdistan continued to characterize what was an uneasy relationship between Kurdish populations and the Pahlavi monarchy in Tehran. The Shahs of Iran tried to pursue a similar strategy as the Turks, seeking to assimilate Kurds to Persian language and culture (which they renamed “Iranian,” as if this would square the circle of forcing other ethnicities into what was essentially a Persian identity). The strategy involved forcibly resettling troublesome Kurdish elites and tribes further east within Iran, banning education and publishing in Kurdish, and generally trying to create one united and ethnically homogenous population under their rule. Although public use of the term “Kurd” was not banned, the general intent of the policy was comparable to that in Turkey. The Iranians proved less successful than the Turkish government in this (which itself only enjoyed limited success in the matter), probably due to lesser state capacity and a relatively less effective civil bureaucracy within the Iran of the Shahs. Modern Iran is also a 263

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much more diverse country than Turkey, with other large minorities such as Azeris, Baluch, Arabs, and Lorrs among others. Immediately after World War II, a seminal moment occurred in Kurdish nationalist history. Occupied by Soviet, American, and British forces (each with their spheres of control within Iran), the Iranian government appeared close to powerless. The Soviets flirted with the idea of creating pro-Soviet puppet states out of Iran’s minority-inhabited periphery that they occupied, sponsoring both an Azeri (the largest minority in Iran) and Kurdish state (the second largest minority). When on 22 January 1946, Kurdish leader Qazi Muhammad declared the establishment of the Republic of Kurdistan based in Mahabad, the event sent shock waves through Kurdish communities in all parts of Kurdistan. The Republic’s main military forces were those of Iraqi Kurdish leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani, who had recently fled Iraq with his tribal forces following a failed uprising there. To this day, the name of the square where the declaration of independence was made (Chwar Chra – “four lamps”) evokes strong feelings among Kurds, with some sites and even a prominent hotel in Iraqi Kurdistan named after the square. The Republic of Kurdistan only lasted some eleven months, however, before the Americans and British convinced the Soviets to withdraw from Iran. The Iranian military then moved on the nascent republic (along with its Azeri neighbor) and crushed it. In the decades following, smaller incidents of Kurdish unrest and uprisings (such as the brief 1956 rebellion in Kermanshah) occurred, with Tehran either crushing rebellious Kurdish leaders or co-opting them (by promising to exempt cooperative large Kurdish landowners from land reform programs, for instance). Guerrilla warfare waged by groups like the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Iran and Komaleh (a Marxist Kurdish group) erupted sporadically during the 1960s and 1970s. Kurds also participated disproportionately in the Iranian Communist Party (Tudeh), given its promises of equal respect for Iran’s various ethnicities and religious groups (most Kurds in Iran are double minorities – Kurds and Sunnis in a majority Shi’i country). When the Iranian revolution occurred and overthrew Mohammed Reza Shah, Kurds looked forward to a new government that would recognize them and offer decentralization, federalism, and autonomy for Iranian Kurdistan. Relations with the new emerging Islamist power elite led by Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran quickly broke down over these issues, however. Two opposing radio sermons – between Khomeini and a Kurdish Sunni religious leader – exemplify the competing interpretations of Islam and minorities at the time. In his radio address of 17 December 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini said: Sometimes the word minorities is used to refer to people such as Kurds, Lurs, Turks, Persians, Baluchis, and such. These people should not be called minorities, because this term assumes there is a difference between these brothers. In Islam, such a difference has no place at all. There is no difference between Muslims who speak different languages, for instance, the Arabs or the Persians. It is very probably that such problems have been created by those who do not wish the Muslim countries to be united…They create the issues of nationalism, of pan-Iranism, pan-Turkism, and such-isms which are contrary to Islamic doctrines. Their plan is to destroy Islam and Islamic philosophy. Sheikh Izz al Din, a well-known Sunni Kurdish religious leader, disputed Khomeini’s interpretation of Islam, however, and responded that Islam does not require that all Muslims should be governed by a single group of people. It recognizes that people are divided into different groups, nations and tribes. There is no reason within Islam why these groups should not order their own affairs. 264

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He then went on to accuse the emerging regime in Tehran of not being truly Muslim: What we have is not a religious government, but a dictatorship under the name of Islam. They are using the name of religion to oppress the people, and the people know this. In Sunni Islam there is no imam as political leader or na’ib (deputy) imam. The role of the clergy is to be a morshed, or guide, in knowing God. You will also find some shi’i clergy who reject Khomeini’s concept of the faqih [government of a just jurisconsult]. It is not an Islamic regime.24 Of course, we know who won this particular dispute. New Iranian Revolutionary Guards were sent to suppress Iranian Kurdistan after the nascent theocracy consolidated its rule in Tehran, with tens of thousands killed in the process. During the Iran-Iraq war that broke out shortly afterward, some Iranian Kurdish parties tried to use the opportunity to rise up again – assisting invading Iraqi forces in the process – but were soon crushed as the tide of the war swung to Iran’s favor. At the time of this writing, a number of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups are based in Iraqi Kurdistan, occasionally engaging in guerrilla attacks on Iranian forces across the border. Their goals seem remote, however, for a number of reasons: Kurds only form some 11% of Iran’s population, Iranian Kurdish parties remain extremely divided, they have yet to make common cause with Iran’s other minorities (Azeris, Lorr, Baluchis, Arabs, and others), and the regime in Tehran appears stronger than ever. Brief relaxations on Kurdish publishing and media (but not education) under the Rafsanjani and Mousavi presidencies have also since been reversed, and the Kurdish region of Iran remains the poorest in the country. Although a Kurd in Iran can freely proclaim his or her ethnic identity today, he or she cannot demand things like Kurdish language rights, decentralization of government, or Kurdish education.

Iraq25 In South Kurdistan, resistance against incorporation of the Kurdish areas (part of the “Mosul Villayet” according to Ottoman administrative districts) into the new British-created state of Iraq began even before the fact. The British created Iraq in 1925, but Kurdish unrest began as early as 1919 (when Britain used air power to bomb Kurdish villages in revolt against its rule).26 Sheikh Mahmoud Barzinji led the most significant of the early revolts of what would become Iraqi Kurdistan, between 1919 until his final defeat in 1932. When the League of Nations approved British control of the territory that would become Iraq, it agreed to do so with the stipulation that “The desire of the Kurds that the administrators, magistrates and teachers in their country be drawn from their own ranks, and adopt Kurdish as the official language in all their activities, will be taken into account.”27 Under the Iraqi Hashemite Monarchy of King Faisal, some efforts to respect this promise were made. Limited Kurdish education, publishing, and participation in governance occurred. Even before the monarchy’s overthrow in 1958, however, these permissive policies fell prey to Arab nationalists in Baghdad (particularly Said Husri, the Education Minister under the King) who wished to assimilate Kurds to the Arab majority in the country. These people imagined Iraq as an integral part of the Arab world and displayed little patience for the objections of the Kurdish minority (at some 20% of the population, the largest ethnic minority in the new country). While Kurds remained formally recognized as such, education, publishing, and other symbols of Kurdish difference were soon banned. 265

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In 1943, the first of a new series of Kurdish revolts broke out, this time led by Mullah ­ ustafa Barzani. When this revolt failed, Barzani and his tribal fighters fled to I­ ranian M ­Kurdistan, where they assisted in the establishment of the aforementioned Republic of ­Kurdistan. After the monarchy’s overthrow in 1958, Barzani was invited back to Iraq in the hope that he and his forces might help the new republican government of Abdul Karim Qasim against its various opponents. Barzani helped the new government against its communist, Ba’athist, and pan-Arab domestic rivals, and in return Qassim recognized “Kurdish national rights” in the new Constitution (whatever that meant) and spoke of “Arab-Kurdish brotherhood”.28 By 1961, however, relations with Qassim soured and the Kurds revolted again. During the 1960s and 1970s, Kurdish rebels scored significant victories against Iraqi forces and controlled their own territory for much of that time. In 1975, however, they suffered a decisive defeat when assistance from the CIA and Mossad coming through Iran was cut off (as a result of Baghdad’s negotiations with and concession to Tehran regarding a long border dispute between them). Kurdish rebels took to the field again in the late 1970s and then once more during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980–88, refusing to give up on their demands of “Kurdish autonomy within a democratic Iraq.”29 In an effort to find a “final solution” to this Kurdish unrest, Saddam Hussein’s government in Baghdad launched a campaign of genocide against the Kurds known as the Anfal. The name was taken from a sura in the Quran that discusses the spoils of war against unbelievers – although in this case the Kurds were mostly fellow Muslims-their disbelief had more to do with rejection of Saddam’s Ba’athist dictatorship and Arab nationalist narrative. Beginning in 1987, between 50,000 and 182,000 Kurdish civilians were killed by the regime, often after being rounded up (men, women, and children) in their villages, transported to execution fields in the south of Iraq, and then buried in mass graves.30 As part of the campaign, Saddam’s regime also used its air force to bomb Iraqi Kurdish villages with chemical weapons in the spring of 1988. The most famous attack occurred on 16 March 1988 in the town of H ­ alabja, killing some 5,000 Kurdish civilians in a single day and leaving many more disfigured or maimed for life. Halabja became a symbol for Kurds in all parts of Kurdistan, similar to how Jews think of the Holocaust. Just as the Holocaust convinced many more Jews that they needed their own state to be secure, many Kurdish nationalists see Halabja as a gruesome illustration of why they cannot remain minorities at the mercy of often terrible regimes. During the 1990–91 Gulf War, Iraqi Kurds (along with Arab Shi’is) heeded U.S. President George H.W. Bush’s call for Iraqis to rise up against Saddam. But when the rebellion failed, it appeared as if Saddam’s forces would inflict another large massacre upon the Kurds as they were doing to the Shi’i rebels in the south, killing tens of thousands in the spring of 1991. The Iraqi Kurds thus gained de facto autonomy under allied protection in order to prevent the massacre. They held elections in 1992 and formed a coalition government between the two main winning parties, the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). In 1994, the KDP and PUK began fighting over the few revenues entering their blockaded autonomous zone, however, and the civil conflict lasted until 1998. After that they formed two separate administrations in their respective fiefdoms, but in 2002, they began the process of reuniting their governments. When Saddam was overthrown in 2003, this autonomy was finally enshrined in the new Iraqi Constitution of 2005 – along with full recognition of Kurdish linguistic, cultural, and other rights. Disputes with the newly elected and majority Shi’i Arab government in Baghdad were not long in coming, however – mainly over the extent of Kurdish autonomy (particularly regarding control of oil resources in Iraqi Kurdistan) and “disputed territories.” The Kurdistan

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Autonomous Region’s borders were recognized as those that formed by accident in 1991, based on where Saddam’s forces had retreated to in order to avoid coalition air strikes and Kurdish guerrilla attacks. The Kurds claimed that additional territories south of this line with majority Kurdish populations should have the option of becoming part of the Kurdish region, to be decided in a referendum by December 2007 according to Article 140 of the 2005 Constitution. Baghdad blocked the referendum from taking place, however, and by 2013–14, the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces looked close to starting a war over the issue.

Syria31 Kurds in Syria only number around 1 million (9% of the total population) according to Gunter’s aforementioned estimates. Other sources, such as Minority Rights Group International, give a higher estimate of two-and-a-half million Kurds in Syria. 32 In any case, Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in the Syrian “Arab” Republic (the official name of the Syrian state). During the French mandate of 1923–43, Kurds along with other nonSunni Arab groups such as the Alawis and Druze were disproportionately recruited by the French into the police and military in order to help control the Sunni Arab majority in the country. Kurds also participated actively in politics and the first military coups in the country (given their high presence in the military). Druze and Alawis military officers purged the Kurdish ones from top echelons of the military in the early 1960s, however (after which Alawi officers purged the Druze, and then Alawis from certain tribes purged Alawis from others, leaving only the Ba’athist Assad family and their allies in the top rungs of power by 1970). Out of power by 1962, the Kurds faced a virulently nationalist non-Kurdish central government in Damascus – a situation not unlike what Kurds faced at the time in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. In 1962, the government in Damascus conducted a special census for the Kurdish regions of the country and determined that some 100,000 Kurds in northeastern Syria were “foreigners.” They revoked their citizenship (even though they had no other citizenship), confiscated their lands (which were then distributed to Arab government supporters), denied them education, jobs, healthcare, legal marriage certificates, passports, and government services, and generally left them without a future in the country. By 2010, these truly “stateless” Kurds in Syria numbered some 300,000. Although anti-government sentiment generally ran high in the northern Kurdish regions of the country, no uprisings occurred in Syria until very recently. This likely had to do with one factor above all others: unlike other parts of Kurdistan, the Syrian Kurdish regions lack high mountains. Much of Rojava is quite flat, in fact. With nowhere to hide from government authority and forces, the Kurdish minority had little choice but to deal with their fate. As in neighboring countries, Kurdish education, publications, media, and other manifestations of Kurdish identity were strictly forbidden by the Syrian Arab Republic. While many Syrian Kurdish political parties did form and try to engage in activism, they suffered from many internal divisions and faced continual arrests, torture, and executions at the hands of the government. They never managed to become more than an occasional irritant to ­Damascus. The only thing Damascus did permit Kurdish nationalists beginning in the 1980s was the right to join the PKK, a Kurdish group fighting Turkey. Damascus used this as leverage against Ankara in a number of disputes, especially Turkey’s damming of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers that provided most of Syria’s water supply. As a result, a large number (perhaps 25%) of the PKK’s fighters were Kurds from Syria.

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Conclusion: the “Kurdish Spring”? The instability that the “Arab Spring” brought to Syria and Iraq proved both an opportunity and a threat for the Kurds. As Syria descended into civil war in 2011 and 2012, it was not only al Qaeda in Iraq - which had largely been defeated in Iraq by 2010 - that went there to find its new fortune (renaming itself the “Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham,” and then just “The Islamic State”). Veteran guerrilla fighters of the PKK – a large number of whom were Syrian Kurds – also returned to Syria, and together with Syrian Kurds sympathetic to the PKK formed the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its affiliated People’s Protection Units (YPG). The PYD/YPG rapidly filled the emerging vacuum in Rojava as Syrian forces turned their attention to Sunni Arab areas of the country in revolt. They carved out autonomous cantons in Rojava and fought fiercely against ISIS in the area. 33 In the process, the Syrian Kurds gained a lot of international sympathy – for their fight against ISIS, for their elevation of women’s rights (they even incorporated a large number of women fighters and commanders into their forces), and for their protection of minorities and secular Sunni Arabs who fled to their cantons for protection from ISIS (including Christians, Yezidis, Armenians, and others). When ISIS returned to Iraq (after conquering large swaths of non-Kurdish areas in Syria), it was the Kurds – Iraqi Kurds with the help of the PKK and Iranian Kurdish parties – and American air power that finally blunted their advance. The Kurds in Iraq thus gained a lot of sympathy for the same reasons as those in Syria, as they provided protection to refugees from ISIS no matter their ethnicity or religion. In Iraq as in Syria, however, the Kurds also took advantage of ISIS’s weakening of central government control. When the Iraqi army fled the initial ISIS attacks in Mosul and the north of the country, they abandoned all the aforementioned disputed territories around places like Kirkuk, Makhmour, Sinjar, and Kalar. Kurdish forces promptly replaced them and announced that these lands would not be returned to central government control, but would rather become part of the Kurdistan Region (perhaps after a referendum similar to the one mentioned in Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution). The main thing preventing Kurds in Iraq from seceding – control of disputed territories with their Kurdish populations and the oil in places like Kirkuk – was now apparently settled in the Kurds’ favor. In Syria, Kurds against all odds had somehow also managed to carve out a de facto autonomous region. This sparked a great deal of unease – especially in Turkey and Iran, but also in the United States and other countries, all of whom fear the instability that might come with a Kurdish push for secession and statehood. Ankara intervened militarily in Syria in August 2016, aiming especially to put a stop to Kurdish gains there, given that the PYD/YPG is closely linked to the PKK guerrillas currently fighting in Turkey.34 At the time of this writing, Iraqi army forces, Shi’i militias, and Kurdish forces are cooperating to liberate Iraq’s Mosul (Iraq’s second largest city) from ISIS’s control, but already dark clouds seem to be looming regarding what will happen after Mosul’s liberation. Will the disputed territories issue come back to stoke conflict between today’s anti-ISIS allies? Will the Kurds in Iraq make a break for independence and statehood? Will they find common cause with their kin in Syria, or with Iranian Kurdish fighters planning on returning their focus to Iran after the battles in Iraq and Syria end? Whatever comes of this maelstrom of change in the region, the international community and the affected states should remember one thing when it comes to the Kurds: the potential instability that comes with Kurdish demands and ambitions should not be compared to a false alternative of a stable Middle East. The region is far from stable, as attested in part by 268

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myriad Kurdish revolts described in this chapter. A large reason for the instability comes from existing states’ failure to deliver better lives to their people, and their denial of people’s rights, identity, and desire to have a say in the policies that govern them. Even small measures of democratization or liberalization cannot occur while simultaneously continuing to suppress the Kurds.35 The suppression is costly in both material terms and in human lives, and is often used as an excuse to deny a broad spectrum of rights to everyone in the affected countries. Those desiring peace and stability might consider that the Kurds need to be properly and fully accommodated as a group, or allowed to go their own way outside of current state borders.

Notes 1 One should probably not describe Istanbul as “a small pocket” of Kurdish population, actually, seeing as it is the city with the largest Kurdish population (around 2 to 4 million). Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey is the largest predominantly Kurdish city, however (close to 1 million inhabitants). 2 The famous Muslim leader Salah al Din (known as Saladin to the West), who defeated the ­Christian crusaders, was Kurdish, for instance. In a pre-nationalist era when religion was more important than ethnicity, most of the world simply remembers him as Sunni Muslim. He also went on to found a Muslim rather than Kurdish dynasty. 3 Michael Gunter, Historical Dictionary of the Kurds (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield, 2011), 3. 4 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1983). 5 John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, eds., Ethnicity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 6 In today’s world of nation-states, the prevailing norm views nations as deserving of their own state. Denying that the Kurds are a nation therefore serves as a politically expedient way of denying their right to a Kurdish state. 7 More details on this are available at http://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdishculture/kurdish-language/ (Accessed 2 December 2016). 8 As with most generalizations concerning identity, there are exceptions to this, such as the ­Christians of Shaqlawa and Koya in Southern (Iraqi) Kurdistan, who do tend to consider themselves Kurds. For more on Kurdish religions in general, see Driver, G.R., “The Religion of the Kurds,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London 2, no. 2 (1922), 197–213. 9 Section I, Article 64 of the Treaty of Sèvres stated: “If within one year from the coming into force of the present Treaty the Kurdish peoples within the areas defined in Article 62 shall address themselves to the Council of the League of Nations in such a manner as to show that a majority of the population of these areas desires independence from Turkey, and if the Council then considers that these peoples are capable of such independence and recommends that it should be granted to them, Turkey hereby agrees to execute such a recommendation, and to renounce all rights and title over these areas. The detailed provisions for such renunciation will form the subject of a separate agreement between the Principal Allied Powers and Turkey. If and when such renunciation takes place, no objection will be raised by the Principal Allied Powers to the voluntary adhesion to such an independent Kurdish State of the Kurds inhabiting that part of Kurdistan which has hitherto been included in the Mosul vilayet.” For the full text of the treaty, see https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Peace_Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres (Accessed 2 December 2016). 10 For more on this, see David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2004), Chapter 7. 11 For more on this, see David Romano, The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Chapter 2. 12 Arnold Rose, “Minorities,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2008). 13 For a full history of this, see McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, Chapters 11–21. 14 Raymond Hinnebusch and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, The Foreign Policies of Middle Eastern States, 2nd edition (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2014), Chapter 2.

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David Romano 15 For a tragic tale of the Kurds sense of betrayal in this affair, see David A. Korn, “The Last Years of Mustafa Barzani,” The Middle East Quarterly 1, no. 2 ( June 1994). 16 In Arab, Turkish, and Persian society, the Kurds already had a reputation for lawlessness and banditry as well as being fierce warriors, similar to that of many mountain people on the periphery of state control. This continued in the twentieth century. 17 For more on this kind of politicization of ethnicity amidst competing groups, see Donald ­Horowitz, “Group Comparison and the Sources of Conflict,” Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 18 For the purposes of brevity, the account here is the author’s summary. Readers wishing more general history, detail, and documents relating to the Kurds and Turkey should consult sources such as the following: Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State (London: Zed Books, Ltd., 1992); Ugur Ümit Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Robert Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880–1925 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989); Mehrdad Izady, The ­ avid Kurds: A Concise History And Fact Book (Washington, DC: Taylor and Francis Inc., 1992); D Romano, The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); ­David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds; Nader Entessar, Kurdish Politics in the Middle East (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2010); and Cengiz Gunes, The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance (New York: Routledge, 2012). 19 Norwegian Refugee Council, Profile of Internal Displacement: Turkey, 16 July 2003. Available www. internal-displacement.org/assets/library/Europe/Turkey/pdf/Turkey+-July+2003.pdf (Accessed 31 May 2015). 20 For more on this, see Nicole F. Watts, “Allies and Enemies: Pro-Kurdish Parties in Turkish Politics, 1990–94,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 31, no. 4 (1999), 631–656. 21 Cengiz Gunes, “Kurdish Political Activism in Turkey: An Overview,” Singapore Middle East Papers 8, no. 2, August 2014. 22 Gunes, “Kurdish Political Activism.” 23 As with the background section on the Kurds in Turkey, what follows is the author’s general summary of similar issues in Iran. Besides the general Kurdish studies sources recommended at the outset of the section on Turkey, readers wishing more details should consult (among others): Abbas Vali, Modernity and the Stateless: The Kurdish Question in Iran (London: I.B. Taurus, 2016); Kerim Yildiz and Tanyel Taysi, The Kurds in Iran: The Past, Present and Future (London: Pluto Press, 2007); Wadie Jwaideh, Kurdish National Movement: Its Origins and Development (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006); and Hussein Tahiri, The Structure of Kurdish Society and the Struggle for a Kurdish State, Kurdish Studies Series No.8 (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 2007). 24 Radio Tehran, Speeches of Ayatollah Khomein and Sheikh Izz al Din, December 1979, quoted in McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 271–272. 25 Besides the general Kurdish studies sources recommended at the outset of the section on Turkey, readers wishing more details should consult (among others): Mohammed Ahmed, Iraqi Kurds and Nation-Building (New York: Palgrave, 2012); Ofra Bengio, The Kurds of Iraq: Building a State within a State (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012); Mahir Aziz, The Kurds of Iraq: Ethnonationalism and National Identity in Iraqi Kurdistan (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011); and Choman Hardi, Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan – Iraq (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). 26 McDowall, The Modern History of the Kurds, 154–155. 27 Ismet Chériff Vanly, Le Kurdistan Irakien: Entité Nationale (Neuchatel: Les Editions de la ­Baconnière, 1970), 148. 28 Vanly, Le Kurdistan, 150. 29 This has long been the identical demand of the Iranian Kurdish parties as well. 30 For more on this, see Kanan Makiya, “The Anfal: Uncovering an Iraqi Campaign to Exterminate the Kurds,” Harper’s Magazine, May 1992, 53–61. 31 Syrian Kurdistan has until very recently received less academic attention than other parts of ­Kurdistan. Besides general sources such as David McDowall, two sources readers may wish to consult are: Michael Gunter, Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War (London: Hurst & Co., 2014) and Jordi Tejel, Syria’s Kurds: History, Politics and Society (London: Routledge, 2009). 32 “Syria,” Minority Rights Group International, October, 2011. Available http://minorityrights. org/minorities/kurds-5/ (Accessed 29 November 2016).

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The Kurds in the Middle East 33 Although ISIS included a few Kurdish Sunni Muslims, Islamist political movements never seemed to get much traction among the Kurds after the 1920s. This probably has to do with several factors: First, Kurdistan has always been a region with a very religiously diverse demography; second, Islamist regimes and Arab states brandishing Islamist rhetoric repressed the Kurds for many years; and third, secular Kurdish nationalism remains a largely untested option for Kurds opposing the central governments that rule over them. 34 The resumption of the war between the PKK and the Turkish state was caused, in large part, due to events in Syria and particularly the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane. For a more detailed discussion of this, see David Romano, “The Arab Spring’s Effect on Kurdish Political Fortunes,” Insight Turkey 17, no. 3 (Summer 2015), 53–63. 35 This is the principal thesis of a recent book on the issue: David Romano and Mehmet Gurses, eds., Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

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20 Armenians in the Middle East From marginalization to the everyday Tsolin Nalbantian

Scholarly works on Armenians in the Middle East focus on the events and consequences of the Armenian Genocide considerably more than on Armenians’ economic, political, and social involvement in the Middle East. This chapter adds to the growing scholarship on that involvement and traces how Armenians’ senses of belonging and identities have shifted over time. While covering the Middle East as a whole, it will focus on Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Turkey. It begins with a short historic introduction of the Armenian communities in the Ottoman Empire and its subsequent break up, and then examines how Armenians lived in the Middle East in the era of the nation-state. The first written reference to Armenians dates back to the sixth century BCE, with the majority living in areas that became part of Turkey and Iran.1 As a country, Armenia was rarely a regional power (a notable exception is the rule of King Tigran the Great, 95-55 BCE); rather, it was perennially lodged between larger rival empires, including the Roman, Parthian, Sassanid, Safavid, Ottoman, and Russian ones; also, it was subject ­ rmenians to Mongol and Turkic tribal invasions from Central Asia. 2 Nevertheless, A developed their own language, “an independent, one-language family within the ­I ndo-European group.” 3 Also, they often used Christianity – they were the first people to collectively adopt that faith, in the fourth century – to determine who is Armenian and who is not. In fact, Armenian church sees have historically played, and continue to play, powerful roles not only in religion but also in local and transnational politics, identity construction, and society. During the Ottoman Tanzimat reform period, in the mid-nineteenth century, ­A rmenian participation in the economic and political spheres greatly depended upon their location, class, and party affiliation.4 Although the empire experienced a constitutional revolution in 1908, soon thereafter, the now governing Young Turks’ policies became increasingly ­xenophobic; Armenians were increasingly suspected of foreign loyalties and subject to discriminations.5 During World War One, the Young Turk government mass deported ­A rmenians and perpetrated genocide, an event that has become the pivot of modern Armenian history.6 The Armenians who survived created new communities in Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.7 This dispersion, and attendant political and sectarian divisions, have accentuated the diverse character of Armenians’ lives worldwide. 272

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Marginalization Seminal studies on modern Middle Eastern history have often focused on the political relationship between the state and its population.8 Many works understand this relationship from the top-down, dividing state and society without considering their overlap, intersections, and co-dependence. They separate the state from its population, and understood the inhabitants of the nation-state in a singular sense, without taking into consideration variances in class, ethnicity, religion, and gender. Consequently, they dedicate less attention to the formation of minority populations, and how they acquire, articulate, and wield forms of agency. They likewise fail to consider adequately how minority populations have used both self and externally rooted identities in internal, domestic, regional, and transnational struggles for power that simultaneously challenge and uphold the authority of the state. Moreover, few studies of minority populations in the Middle East explore the formation of minority groups within the nation-state and their social, political, and economic contributions.9 Instead, they analyze how minorities are victimized by the majority and persecuted by the state, flattening differences within the population and ignoring internal dynamics. These studies, while attempting to center the given population, in fact further marginalize them, reducing them to victims or populations in need of protection.10 In such examinations, the minority population may also be seen as foreign and inauthentic to the nation-state, suggesting that it is their presence within a particular geographic boundary that is the problem. Such studies also maintain the nation-state as a natural political organization and reinforce it as a standardized entity. This is not to deny the very fact of discrimination and persecution of minority groups in contemporary nation-states. Rather, I contend that the scholarship on minorities in the Middle East often mirrors that discrimination in examining the given population through the singular lens of “minority.” For example, the labeling of a population as a minority often precludes their inclusion within national historiographies. Categorizing a population as a minority without analyzing its construction and examining how the state and other communities have deployed the label, and how and why that status has changed over time, ensures their historiographic marginalization.

Double marginalization Middle Eastern historians have neglected Armenians perhaps more than other minority populations. Armenians intersect with the historiography of the region mostly through the genocide. The destruction of the Armenian millet in the Ottoman Empire and the survivors’ dispersal in the Arab Middle East (and the Russian Empire and Western countries) altered the ethnic and religious composition of various Middle Eastern areas including Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Israel/Palestine. Moreover, spaces that were de-Armenianized, as it were, after the genocide have repeatedly resurfaced in sometimes unexpected forms. Take the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul in 2013, during which environmental and social activists opposed the neo-liberal policies of the AK Party and of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and in particular the planned destruction of a green space in central Istanbul and the proposed building of a shopping mall. Many protestors, however, were unfamiliar with the park’s former incarnation: it had been an Armenian cemetery.11 While this unawareness is related to the Turkish state’s denial of the Armenian Genocide, it also manifests a lack of knowledge of the everyday life of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (and beyond, for that matter). However justified, the study of the 273

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Middle Eastern Armenians is too often reduced to the study of the genocide. While disregarding the Armenian Genocide would be both irresponsible and impossible, scholars need to adopt prisms other than violence and ethnic cleansing, examining Armenians’ everyday life and articulations of belonging. To return to the Gezi Park example, a focus on the everyday would have revealed the presence of burial plots to Istanbulis. This engagement – not only a historiographic but also, necessarily, a political one – would link activists, environmentalists, and opponents of the AK Party’s neo-liberal economic policies with Armenians in Turkey and beyond. People’s unawareness of the Gezi graveyard demonstrates a broader unfamiliarity with ­Ottoman Armenians and, in this case, with the power of Istanbul’s Ottoman Armenians, who possessed a graveyard at the center of the imperial capital. In sum, the Gezi protests illustrate the double marginalization of Middle Eastern Armenians. The Armenian ­Genocide acts as a prism of studies of those Armenians and hinders studying the community’s pre-Genocide modern life. In addition, few studies on Lebanon, Syria, and Israel/Palestine consider the articulation of belonging of the Armenian communities outside the psychological legacy of the genocide. This historiographic situation stands in marked contrast with key contemporary events such as the commemoration of the centenary of the Armenian Genocide in 2015, which demonstrated the active presence of Armenians in the Middle East.12 In Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo, demonstrations commemorated the genocide; the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq passed a parliamentary resolution acknowledging the genocide; and the Israeli Knesset discussed such a motion. Moreover, annual commemorative protests had happened in capitals including Beirut, Aleppo, Damascus, Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Amman in earlier years, too. While these demonstrations are a response to the Turkish government’s refusal to acknowledge the genocide, Armenian participation in them – along with their organization and procurement of their permits from the local government – is an articulation of their citizenship and local understandings of belonging. Middle Eastern Armenians’ ability to lobby governments to acknowledge the genocide, along with the spectacle of protests in front of governmental buildings and Turkish embassies, demonstrates their organizational and political prowess. Despite Middle Eastern Armenians’ by now well-established belonging to the region, both Armenian and Middle Eastern historians often associate Middle Eastern Armenians with national spaces outside the region. In parallel, they describe those Armenians as newer arrivals and hence as temporary residents, as people “trapped” in the region having fled from and survived the genocide. These approaches do not simply fail to consider ­A rmenians’ contribution to local Middle Eastern societies. They also suggest congruence between authenticity and the nation-state: some inhabitants of the nation-state “naturally” belong, while others, such as the Armenians, do not.13 This marginalizes Armenians doubly: first, as a minority that is not included within the larger historiography of a given nation-state; and second, when mentioned, as either victims or temporary residents.

Positioning the Armenian Church To better engage with Middle Eastern Armenians’ everyday activities before and after the genocide, we must examine the role and power of the Armenian Orthodox Church. It has two functioning sees. One is located in Lebanon, the other in Armenia. Both trace their very origins back to the apostolic age of St. Thaddeus and St. Bartholomew. Historically, the Armenian Church in Lebanon, also known as the Catholicosate of Cilicia, was located in Sis, in 274

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the present-day Turkish city of Kozan, which was the seat of the Armenian Church during the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia (1198–1375).14 It remained in Sis until the genocide. By 1936, that see had been relocated to Antelias, a northern suburb of Beirut, where it is still today. The other see, the Catholicosate of Echmiadzin, was located in the eponymous village.15 In 1920, Echmiadzin became part of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR), an independent republic since 1991. The Armenian Orthodox Church also has two surviving patriarchates, one in Jerusalem, the other in Istanbul.16 While independent, they recognize the authority of both sees. Generally, neither see nor patriarch claimed jurisdiction over the other’s congregations, each maintaining its own autonomy.

Church and nation Now and in the past, the Armenian Orthodox Church has played both religious and secular roles, a pattern rooted in Ottoman times. As the representative of the Armenian millet, ­A rmenian church officials automatically assumed secular and religious powers. While at times an important buffer between the state and subjects, they also capitalized on the authority bestowed upon them by the Ottoman state, commanding allegiance from Armenians. Because the Ottoman Empire required an intermediary, the church ipso facto represented Armenians, regardless of faith. Given the authority of this categorization system, and the lack of an alternative, it is not surprising that the Armenian Church in the Ottoman Empire capitalized on such authority. The Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul continues to be an adaptive institution in Turkey today. While it no longer acts a representative of the Armenian Turkish citizen to the state, it continues to wield secular power. The acting Patriarch, Aram Ateşian (the official Patriarch has been incapacitated for years due to health issues), often meets with Turkish and foreign politicians and with other religious dignitaries.17 With regards to representation, Ateşian sometimes echoes the actions of the Patriarch in late Ottoman times. For example, when asked about the so-called Islamicized Armenians – Armenians who converted to Islam, sometimes under duress, during the genocide and its aftermath – Ateşian explained that the Patriarchate could not represent them, as they are not Christians.18 He defined Armenians as members of the Patriarchate congregations – and these congregations included only Armenians. This tautological understanding limits the authority of the Armenian Patriarchate. But it also assuages any Turkish governmental or nationalist concerns of an Armenian institution increasing its authority, particularly outside Istanbul. And by engaging with such issues and questions, Ateşian keeps the Armenian Patriarchate relevant. The continued presence and engagement of the Patriarchate allows Armenians to be considered beyond the genocide and firms up their existence in Turkey. In Lebanon, too, the Armenian Church plays both secular and religious roles. In fact, the Catholicosate of Cilicia has only increased its power, domestically, regionally, and internationally. This fact in a way continues a century-old pattern. While the Kingdom of Cilicia ended with the death of its last king in 1393, the Catholicosate continued to function, and fulfilled some political functions vis-à-vis the new, Mamluk state.19 Similarly, a bit earlier, in the fourteenth century, when Armenian notable families dispersed, the Cilician see filled the void they left and used their absence to act as the steadfast protector of the Armenian population.20 The Armenian Church constructed itself of and for the Armenian nation, then, and identified the populace as central to the future of its own survival and of the nation itself. Ironically, this type of nation-building came often in the wake of the destruction of ­A rmenian communities. Such events reinforced the Armenian Church as both a secular and 275

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religious authority, a role that was accepted and used by the church to maintain its relevance and power. Once reestablished in French Mandate Lebanon following World War I, the Cilician See first became the spiritual and secular authority for Armenians in Lebanon and Syria. While economically an underprivileged population, the extension of citizenship to ­A rmenians by 1924 likewise fortified the role of the church within the domestic political affairs of both countries. In Cilicia, the Cilician See had largely enjoyed a regional importance. In ­Lebanon, however, even in the first years after the genocide, it attained a transnational status. And its realm of authority and power only increased – sometimes quite dramatically – in the following years.21 By 1957, some Armenian churches outside Lebanon and Syria, namely, in Greece, ­Cyprus, Iran, and Iraq, chose to switch their spiritual allegiance from the Catholicosate of Echmiadzin to the Catholicosate of Cilicia, in Lebanon. This increased the number of congregations and broadened the Catholicosate of Cilicia’s realm. With adherents in multiple countries, it started to directly challenge the Catholicosate in Echmiadzin, a move that had been unprecedented throughout Armenian history. Moreover, the Catholicosate of Cilicia in Lebanon used its newfound power to accept parishes outside the Middle East and beyond the Mediterranean: parishes around the world that chose to distance themselves from the Catholicosate of Echmiadzin ostensibly for political reasons related to ongoing Cold War rivalries between the Soviet and American spheres of influence. Accepting numerous parishes in the United States and Canada, it indeed became not only a regional power, but also a global one. It supplied those parishes with priests from its monastery, along with its liturgy and Sunday sermons. And in addition to these religious displays of power in North America, it grew much richer, receiving required dues and donations from parishes worldwide. My focus on the power dynamics of the Armenian Church is not meant to remove from view other elites or non-elite Armenians. Rather, I would like to demonstrate that in addition to the continuation of Armenian presence in the region, certain institutions modified and in some cases gained authority in the wake of the community’s destruction. While it is paramount to recognize the ruin and tragedy of the genocide, its survivors used its aftermath to create a space to articulate new sites of power. This can be seen in the actions of the Catholicosate of Cilicia in Lebanon, and within the understandings of belonging employed by Armenian inhabitants of newly created mandates and later citizens of the nation-state, to which I now turn.

Gathering Armenians in the post-genocide Middle East: Anjar, Qamishle, and Kessab As mentioned earlier, the overabundance of works dedicated to studying the genocide is a key explanation for the absence of studies on Middle Eastern Armenians’ everyday experiences. Still, a note on the genocide is necessary, if only to demonstrate that Middle Eastern Armenians’ lives not only changed but also experienced continuities after the genocide. The genocide depopulated the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian provinces, in eastern Anatolia; survivors were either forced south, toward the Arab provinces, or further east into the Russian Empire. In camps in Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, and in Jerusalem’s Armenian quarters, people hailing from myriad villages, towns, and cities – that is people who, though categorized as Armenian by the Ottoman leadership and host states, had never lived in close proximity or even communicated with one another – were brought together. All this prompted new interactions among Armenians and between Armenians and their new compatriots. In the initial years following the genocide, survivors found refuge in 276

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Aleppo and in towns and villages around Raqqa, Der Zor, and the largely Kurdish inhabited towns of Hasaka and Qamishle. While some survivors stayed in French Mandate Syria, many traveled further southwest, to Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. In Lebanon, they were housed in refugee camps mostly along the coast: in the Beiruti areas of Qarantina, Sanjak, Sin al-Fil, and Bourj Hamoud; and, further south, near Sidon and Tyre. Survivors from various towns and villages came together in these quarters, and divided camps according to origin. For example, many survivors, and later their descendants, from Marash lived in a single street in Bourj Hamoud.22 They had never, in Ottoman times, been so close to their new neighbors. Marash intersected with Arax – and both were less than a kilometer away from Hajn, and even closer to Sis, two towns that, back in Turkey, were 85 kilometers apart. Moreover, while survivors originally married within the same “street” (read: village), they also soon intermarried across places of origin. Once localized customs became mixed in entirely novel ways. In consequence, a more inclusive and coherent Armenian identity came into being. Previously distinct patterns of language, history, communal living, food, and religious customs became more homogeneous. For instance, in the Ottoman Empire, Armenian inhabitants had not spoken one common language. Some Armenian-inhabited villages had been monolingual in Turkish, others spoke Armenian village dialects, and yet others – some with a missionary presence – spoke a more standardized Armenian. In Lebanon, however, the gathering of genocide survivors, along with their descendants, weakened localized dialects in favor of a more standardized Armenian. The presence of the Cilician See in Lebanon also played a role in this process. Sermons were given in standardized Armenian, and the church administered death, birth, and marriage rites. Spaces ranging from Armenian schools to cemeteries administered by the Cilician See were from the start never separated by village origin; and eventually the living quarters were just as mixed. While the Armenian camps near Lebanon’s coastal cities encouraged Armenians from different origins to mix and mingle, Armenians in Anjar, a town located in the Biqa ­Valley, between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon Mountains, remained homogenous. ­A lmost all hailed from the mountainous village of Musa Dagh, in southern Turkey. Resettled with help from the French, they arrived in Lebanon under circumstances different from ­A rmenians on the coast. One of the only recorded incidents of resistance to the genocide, the inhabitants of Musa Dagh staved off a better-armed Turkish garrison and were rescued by French boats docked on the coast of the Aegean Sea. They were first interned at a camp in Port Said, in Egypt, for two years. Prevented from leaving the camp by armed guards, they formed a singular community. 23 Subsequently – that is, after the success of the Turkish war of independence in 1922 subverted the creation of a French Mandate State in Cilicia – they were brought to Anjar. France decided on this move because those Armenians helped increase the Christian population in Lebanon and in general supported French interests. Once in Anjar, isolated from the coast by mountains, they preserved some of the customs of Musa Dagh, including its local dialect. At present, there certainly is interaction and intermingling between Anjar residents and the Armenian population located along the coast of Beirut. Anjar’s priests are educated in the monastery connected to Catholicosate of Cilicia in Antelias, and their church and schools are under the auspices of its authority. Still, Anjaris remain fiercely proud of their origins. They built a commemorative monument to the Musa Dagh resistance in the center of the town; and each year, they celebrate that event in a ritual. And yet, even this “local” ritual connects them to other Lebanese Armenians and to Armenians in Syria, for many Armenians, regardless of their ancestral lineage, visit Anjar to take part in that celebration. 277

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Anjar is not the only town in the region whose Armenian inhabitants hail from a single town or village in the Ottoman Empire. Qamishle, a town in the northeast of Syria, has a similar history, albeit with a few notable distinctions. The Armenians of Qamishle hail from the villages surrounding Batman, in the southeast of Turkey. While it was the French who brought the Armenian population of Musa Dagh to Anjar, the establishment of Qamishle was a direct result of the actions of Mehmet Mishte, a leader of the Reshkota Kurds. He refused to carry out the genocidal order of the governor of Diyarbakir, Mehmet Reşid, and arranged for the safe passage of Armenians. In addition, while Armenians form the majority of Anjar’s inhabitants (the rest being Sunni Muslims), Qamishle is divided between three ethnic groups: Armenians, Assyrians, and Kurds, whose religious sects vary between the Catholic, the Orthodox, the Sunni, and the Alevi. Although Qamishle is a site of survival, Armenian residents neither celebrate nor commemorate it as space of national resistance. It does not occupy a particular place in Armenian national historiography either. But this may be changing. While the inhabitants of Batman never resisted the genocidal orders before arriving to Qamishle (they did not need to), the deed of Mehmet Mishte has become more recognized. In 2015, the first official commemoration in his honor took place at his gravesite, attended by an international delegation. It was small, and Qamishle’s Armenians did not participate in the event; still, it emulated the large communal commemorations of the resistance of Musa Dagh in Anjar by Armenians living outside of the town.24 Kessab, a largely Armenian-populated village northwest of Aleppo, in a sense melds the histories and characteristics of both Qamishle and Anjar. Both the inhabitants of Kessab and Armenians from across the region celebrate the actions of Kessab’s population during the Armenian Genocide as a form of national resistance. Like Anjar, Kessab has the characteristics of a closed community: its location is isolated and mountainous, which has historically prevented the development of an extensive network with towns and cities along the coast.25 But unlike Anjar and Qamishle, which were established by Armenian refugees, Kessab’s Armenian population dates back to at least the nineteenth century, according to American evangelical missionaries who established a presence there at that time.26 And while ­Kessab’s Armenian population fluctuated dramatically due to the Genocide in 1915, surviving ­A rmenians returned to the village by 1918, when French troops entered the region.27 Another major difference between Kessab and Qamishle concerns Syria’s very recent history and its prolonged civil war. While Qamishle has largely avoided sustained direct involvement in the Syrian civil war, al-Qaeda’s al-Nusra Front, Sham al-Islam, and Ansar ­a l-Sham forces overran Kessab in 2014.28 The flight of over 2,000 Armenians to Latakia, along with stories and documentation of the destruction of Kessab’s churches, helped galvanize the global Armenian population and brought forth a #savekessab Internet campaign.29 By connecting these recent attacks, and especially the reported support provided by the Turkish military, to the genocide, the #savekessab campaign became a new transnational call to rally Armenians worldwide, and reinforced the significance of Kessab as global site of Armenian struggle.30

Adapting to Mandate and nation-state power Although Armenians were certainly the victims of violence and were forced to relocate, they still adapted to their new environments. Their new articulations of belonging and identity merged with a new legal status, first as residents of European Mandates, later as citizens of nation-states. In 1924, the French conferred citizenship onto the Armenian population in 278

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Lebanon and Syria to buoy the country’s Christian population. 31 This, in turn, augmented Lebanon’s Christian-led government and reinforced the Christian presence in the Syrian government, policies favored by the French state. In British Mandate Palestine, the growth of the Armenian population in Jerusalem did not change the division of that city, whose Armenian quarter was a product of the Byzantine period. Still, it did buffer Armenians’ presence in the city in particular, and in Palestine in general.32 The arrival of more Armenians reinforced their authority over religious spaces, including in contentious holy sites such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Church of Nativity. 33 Nevertheless, the presence and naturalization of Armenians, while used by some populations to claim authority and power, was neither encouraged nor welcomed by all. Tolerated at best, Lebanese newspapers and journals frequently ran cartoons depicting Armenians in an unfavorable light – as uneducated, poor, and squalid.34 Since the mandate period, Armenians also constructed their own representations through the Armenian language press published in Lebanon and distributed throughout the Levant. Each newspaper and journal imagined a particular Armenian community in accordance with the ideology of the political party with which it was connected. Because these parties held rival political positions and differed in how they envisioned the Armenian national struggle, their distribution resulted in the proliferation of different configurations of Armenian belonging, identity, and citizenship.35 The export of the Lebanese Armenian publications to communities in Syria, Palestine, and Jordan (countries that did not have local Armenian publications) privileged the Lebanese Armenian community, making it one of the principal architects of Armenian identity in the Middle East.

(Dis)United in Representation On rare occasions, the Armenian press and associated political parties closed rank. An example was the 1946–49 repatriation movement, the organized population transfer of ­A rmenians from around the world to the ASSR, one of 15 republics of the Soviet Union. Initially, all Armenian newspapers in the Middle East, and specifically in Lebanon, independent of their political persuasion, heralded the announcement as a “final homecoming.”36 Unsurprisingly, the newspaper of the Armenian communist party, Joghovurti Tzayn, was particularly eager and in particular thanked the USSR and its leader, “Father Stalin,” for facilitating this final and long-awaited return.37 The Socialist leaning Ararad of the Hunchak Party was similarly supportive.38 Aztag, the main newspaper of the rightist nationalist Dashnak party, while outlawed in the USSR, and Zartonk, the newspaper of the capitalist Ramgavar party, also strongly backed the project. While this may not be particularly surprising given the repatriation movement’s rhetoric of a final and long-awaited homecoming, it does demonstrate that occasionally Armenian national imagination trumped political ideology.39 Armenian political parties with competing ideologies were not the only ones to support the departure of Armenians to the ASSR. The Cilician See, too, backed the process, although the Soviet Union championed atheism, decried the dominant social system and opulence of the Armenian Orthodox Church, and criticized the faithful as ascribing to irrational beliefs.40 This cooperation was so explicit that the Catholicos, or head of the Cilician See, boarded the first caravan that sailed from the Lebanese port of Qarantina filled with 1,500 repatriates to offer his official religious blessing.41 Further, the Catholicosate of Cilicia was not the only Armenian religious institution that seemed to overlook the inconsistencies between its official dogma and the ideology of the ASSR. The Armenian Protestant Church also supported repatriation.42 279

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By the end of this population movement, in 1949, over 100,000 Armenians had voluntarily renounced their citizenship and elected to become Soviet Armenians.43 Many ­A rmenian populations decreased throughout the world, most notably in South and S­ outheastern ­Europe (Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece) and the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, and Iran).44 Smaller Armenian populations in the Middle East, like the communities of Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq, felt the decrease more than others. Still, even in Syria and Lebanon, where a significant Armenian population remained, repatriation had far-reaching consequences. With the departure of Armenians from Lebanon and Syria, the political configuration of the Armenian community dramatically changed. Although repatriation initially enjoyed nearly universal support, those ideologically supportive of the Soviet Union were the first to depart en masse. Their exodus resulted in the consolidation of the right-wing Dashnak party’s political power in Lebanon and Syria and in the region at large. The Dashnaks categorically assumed a leadership role in the representation of the remaining Armenian population, and perhaps in an effort to distinguish itself from its rivals, intensified its anti-Soviet rhetoric. Previous tensions and rivalries resurfaced and were refashioned by the Dashnak party to express doubt about the success of repatriation. Ramgavar, Hunchak, and A ­ rmenian Communist parties in turn voiced their mistrust of the Dashnak party. Soon, all sides were accusing each other of working against the Armenian nation and thwarting ­n ational aspirations. The press outlets of the Armenian Communist Party and the Socialist ­Hunchak Party accused the Dashnak Party of hindering the repatriation project by publishing inaccurate information on life in the ASSR and accused Dashnak supporters of treason. The D ­ ashnak Party, on the other hand, went from actively supporting and covering the movement to charging its Armenian political party rivals of relinquishing the dream of a Greater A ­ rmenia, one that would include the formerly Armenian-­ inhabited areas of Turkey. By 1949, with repatriation slowing down, Aztag became an ever more vocal opponent of the ASSR. This happened for two reasons. First, as fewer and fewer Armenians were interested in repatriation, Aztag could express its opposition to the ASSR more comfortably, as its readership were no longer engaged with the movement. Second, the most avid supporters of repatriation and Soviet Armenia had already departed Lebanon, allowing Aztag and the Dashnak Party to solidify their power over the remaining Armenian inhabitants of Lebanon and the region. After all, and not surprisingly, most repatriates were members and supporters of the communist, ­Hunchak, and Ramgavar Parties. This allowed the Dashnaks more effectively to “represent” the remaining Armenian inhabitants. Moreover, there was a transnational dimension to this competition over who represents the Armenian community’s interests best, that is, who could claim power and authority over its inhabitants. These Lebanese Armenian political parties, while confronting each other within the Lebanese domestic scene, reached Armenians far outside of the region, in Europe and North America, too. Armenian political parties considered themselves representatives of a larger (trans)national Armenian narrative – and Armenians used Lebanon as a site to define and articulate Armenian identification and belonging.

Post-Consolidation With the end of repatriation, the Middle East became the core site of the articulation of the Dashnak Party’s understandings of Armenianness. And although one should be wary of

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adopting the view that the global Armenian community became divided between supporters of Soviet Armenia and of the Dashnak Party, a few key events do reinforce this perspective, demonstrating the Dashnak Party’s prowess in the Middle East and beyond. When in 1956, some contested the election of the Catholicos of the Cilician See, the result was the appointment of Zareh I, an anti-communist supported by the Dashnak Party. His success demonstrated the failure of the Catholicos of Echmiadzin, who flew to Beirut in an attempt to prevent his selection. Zareh’s consecration, after months of conflict, did not assuage the tension between Armenian political parties and community members. In fact, the rivalry among them only expanded, enveloping locations far outside of the region. In 1957, a group of American-Armenians that had been prevented from attending the Armenian Church in America since 1933, sought assistance from the Armenian Church in Lebanon.45 They thereby rebelled against the authority of the Church in Echmiadzin, which, up to 1957, had been the only official religious authority over Armenian-American Churches. It also marked the arrival of the Cilician See in Lebanon, in the United States and Canada. The Lebanese-based institution utilized the excommunication of that group of U.S. Armenians, some twenty years earlier, to contest the sovereignty of the Armenian Church in Soviet ­A rmenia and to assert its authority over communities in the United States and Canada. Unsurprisingly, transnational spread of Armenian power struggles did not assuage the tension amongst Armenian political parties and their supporters in ­Lebanon. When civil strife broke out in Lebanon in 1958 over the question of a second (non-constitutional) term for then President Camille Chamoun, Armenian political rivals mirrored the conflict between the president’s supporters and opponents. The ensuing intra-­A rmenian fighting was prolonged, continuing even after the main Lebanese belligerents had laid down their arms. It ended only when the Lebanese Minister of Interior, Michel Eddé, intervened directly, successfully negotiating a cease-fire.46 Nevertheless, tension remained. In fact, the rivalry between the Armenian political parties only shifted, in Lebanon and the Middle East, as well as outside the region. The tactics of the Dashnak Party, their supporters, and of other Armenian political parties again changed with the influx of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and with the politicization of the Palestinian struggle in the region after the Six-Day War of 1967.47 Power struggles and the question of support of, or opposition to, Soviet Armenia gave way to far more militarized activities. Targets now included Turkish consulates and diplomats. The activities of the PLO proved to be a new impetus for the articulation of Armenian belonging and identification in the Middle East. As Palestinian militants ramped up their military resistance, many A ­ rmenians pushed for similar action. The formation the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) challenged Dashnak leadership and its rhetoric of armed struggle, pushing it to “respond” against both Turkish interests and ASALA’s challenge. Splinter movements within the Dashnak Party first created the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide, which was later replaced by the Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA). In addition to carrying out violent “missions” against Turkish officials, they published their own set of press journals and enjoyed popularity from supporters of their cause. The Dashnak vs. Ramgavar / Hunchak rivalry started to give way to a competition between ASALA and ARA as the best defenders of the Armenian cause. Simultaneously, articulations of Armenianness in the Middle East continued, with the press remaining a preferred site for developing and testing contrasting Armenian identities. In fact, just like the established political parties, so the revolutionary groups had their own publications, for instance, ASALA’s Hayastan.

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Adaptive Articulation By the mid-1980s, the targeting of Turkish officials and points of interest started to subside. Nevertheless, press outlets from a variety of organizations and political parties based in the Middle East continued to debate and fashion belonging for Armenians, locally, regionally, and transnationally. By 1988, the Kharabagh movement, the organized effort to sever this Armenian-inhabited mountainous region from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic and attach it to the ASSR, provided an additional issue for the press to define one’s Armenian belonging.48 Armenians in the Middle East, most notably from Lebanon, not only went to Kharabagh to fight, but also used the armed struggle to express ideal Armenian behavior and actions.49 In addition, many periodicals combined former Armenian identity articulations and power struggles to link past and present. The press, along with these varies articulations, is ensuring that the Middle East generally, and Lebanon more specifically, continues as a site to form and fashion the meanings and identifications of Armenians locally, regionally, and transnationally.

Conclusion How Armenian belonging is articulated has continued to change, depending on the given political moment. Some articulations, such as the repatriation movement, highlighted ­A rmenians’ minority standing. After all, its popularity must be attributed in some form to a collective sense that Soviet Armenia was indeed a homeland for Armenians worldwide. The decision of over 100,000 Armenians to repatriate also recognized their (former) presence as diasporic Armenians, indicating a minority status and a dependence on a host society. Nevertheless, repatriation simultaneously demonstrated how deeply Armenians are involved in the Middle East. Many stayed and used repatriation to gauge their Armenian rivals’ sense of loyalty not only to the Armenian nation but also to the respective nation-state. In this way, repatriation was but one way for Middle Eastern Armenians to articulate belonging and identity. When Armenians are understood exclusively as minority members, and solely as Armenian Genocide survivors or its remnants, their continued everyday presence and activity go unnoticed, reinforcing their status as a minority. This tautological reasoning limits how we can engage with the Middle East’s varied inhabitants. On a final note, it bears mentioning that some moments and sites articulating ­A rmenian identity that have been mentioned in this chapter have resurfaced in recent years. This demonstrates their adaptability. The Karabagh movement flared up again to express ­A rmenian belonging in the Middle East in 2016. In the Armenian-populated neighborhood of Bourj Hamoud, just north of Beirut, Armenian and English language graffiti in support of Armenian forces in Karabagh have proliferated. There also have been fund-raising rallies/ concerts in Bourj Hamoud in support of Armenian forces in Karabagh.50 The hashtag “#artsakhstrong” has been used to gather Armenians worldwide virtually, too; thus, it was flashed from the monitors at Boston Garden during a Celtics basketball game.51

Notes 1 On the geographic description of Armenia, see, for example, Robert Hewson, Armenia: A Historical Atlas (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Richard G. Hovannisian, The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, Vol. 1 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); and D. M. Lange, Armenia, Cradle of Civilization (London: Allen and Unwin, 1970).

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Armenians in the Middle East 2 Hovannisian, Armenian People, I: 1–17. 3 Lange, Armenia, 37. 4 For a detailed study on how Armenians, Arabs, and Jews engaged with the Ottoman reform period, see Bedross Der Matossian, Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). 5 Der Matossian, Shattered Dreams, 149–172. 6 On the Armenian Genocide, see, for example: Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ: ­Princeton University Press, 2013); Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (­L ondon: I.B. Tauris, 2011); and Ronald Grigor Suny, They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). 7 Iran’s Armenians did not experience the dispersion and violence of Armenians in the urban centers of the Ottoman Empire and in Anatolia. See Houri Berberian, Armenians and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1911: The Love for Freedom Has No Fatherland (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001). 8 On Syria, see, for example: Philip K. Hitti, History of Syria: Including Lebanon and Palestine (New York: Macmillan, 1951) and Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). On Jordan, see Kamal S. Salibi, The Modern History of Jordan (London: I.B. Tauris, 1993) and Joseph A. Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). On Lebanon, see Kamal S. Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (­L ondon: I.B. Tauris, 1988) and Fawwaz Trabulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (London: Pluto, 2007). On Palestine, see Ilan Pappé, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), amongst others. 9 Highly notable exceptions include: Anthony Gorman and Sossie Kasbarian, Diasporas of the Modern Middle East: Contextualising Community (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015); Laura Robson, Minorities and the Modern Arab World: New Perspectives (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2016); and Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan, eds., The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates (London: Routledge, 2015). 10 See, for example, Joshua Castellino and Kathleen A. Cavanaugh, Minority Rights in the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) and Robert K. Hitchcock and Alan J. Osborn, Endangered Peoples of Africa and the Middle East: Struggles to Survive and Thrive (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002). 11 The crucial and daring exception to this amnesia is Ayşe Parla and Ceren Özgül, “Property, Dispossession, and Citizenship in Turkey; or, The History of the Gezi Uprising Starts in the Surp Hagop Armenian Cemetery,” Public Culture 28, no. 3 (2016), 617–653, which explicitly connects the Gezi public protests to state confiscation of Armenian properties. 12 Tens of thousands Armenians marched in Northern Beirut as reported in The Daily Star, the English language Lebanese daily: www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2015/Apr-24/ 295635-lebanese-armenians-mark-genocide-centennial-with-mass-rally.ashx; members of the Armenian community in Egypt commemorated in front of Egypt’s Unknown Solider Memorial in Cairo: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/128556/Egypt/Politics-/­A rmenianGenocide-centennial-commemorated-in-Egypt.aspx. A good aggregate of worldwide A ­ rmenian Genocide commemorations appeared in the Huffington Post; see www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2015/04/24/armenian-genocide-anniversary-world-photos_n_7137936.html. 13 I should note here that I am not advocating that specific populations “belong” to particular nationstates. Rather, I am pointing out that both regional and Armenian historiographies construct an understanding of Armenians as perpetual foreigners, while maintaining that other inhabitants rightfully belong within a given geographic boundary. 14 For the history of the Catholicosate of Cilicia in English, see Seda Parsumean-Tatoyean, The Armenian Catholicosate from Cilicia to Antelias: An Introduction (Antelias, Lebanon: Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia, 2003). 15 For more on the history of the Catholicosate of Echmiadzin in English, see Maghakʻia Ōrmanean, The Church of Armenia: Her History, Doctrine, Rule, Discipline, Liturgy, Literature, and Existing Conditions, second (revised) English edition (London: Mowbray, 1955). 16 For the history of the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul, see Ronald T. Marchese and Marlene R. Breu, Treasures of Faith: Sacred Relics and Artifacts from the Armenian Orthodox Churches of Istanbul

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17

18 19 20 21

22 23

24 25 26 27

28

29

(Eden, South Dakota: Nettleberry Publications, 2015). On the Armenian Jerusalem Patriarchate in English, see Haig A. Krikorian, Lives and Times of the Armenian Patriarchs of Jerusalem: Chronological Succession of Tenures (Sherman Oaks, CA: H.A. Krikorian, 2009) and Roberta R. Ervine, Michael E. Stone and Nira Stone, The Armenians in Jerusalem and the Holy Land (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2002). It should be noted that acting Patriarch Aram Ateşian resigned at the end of February 2016. After months of tension between him and Bishop Shahak Mashalian, the head of the Istanbul Patriarchate’s Religious Council, the Catholicos of Echmiadzin, Karekin II, summoned them both to a meeting along with the Armenian Primate of Germany, Archbishop Karekin Bekdjian. Along with his resignation, it was decided that the Religious Assembly of the Istanbul Patriarchate would elect a new acting-patriarch. http://armenianweekly.com/2017/02/24/ateshian-to-step-down/. Interview held with author and acting-Patriarch Aram Ateşian, Istanbul, March 2014. Razmik Panossian, The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2006), 65. I am alluding to the fall of the Bagratuni Dynasty, which led to the migration and displacement of several noble families and the eventual establishment of the Kingdom of Cilicia. Panossian, Armenians, 63. While I will go into detail about this expansion of power later on in the chapter, I will note here that Armenians in Lebanon and Syria both used and surrendered to the political bifurcations of the Cold War. The Catholicosate of Cilicia also articulated its political inclination by both ensnaring itself and instigating domestic, regional, and international ideological conflict. For a welcome intervention that engages in the everyday in Bourj Hamoud, see Joanne Nucho, Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon: Infrastructures, Public Services, and Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). And yet a small group of Armenians found their way to Cairo and joined the existing Armenian community there, mostly located in and around the neighborhood of Ramsis. It is unclear how they did so, considering the camp was locked and under guard. The descendants of these Armenians are unaware of how their parents and grandparents were able to leave the camp and settled in Cairo. As far as they knew, they did not have any existing networks within the Armenian population in Cairo. Personal interviews were conducted by author with descendants of Iskouhi Boyadjian. The current political situation in Turkey additionally complicates this comparison. While the intention was to commemorate and visit the graveyard of Mehmet Mishte yearly, the tension and sustained violence of the Turkish state in southeastern Turkey has prevented this recurrence. At present, Kessab’s Armenian educational and religious institutions are under the jurisdiction of the Armenian Prelacy of Aleppo, which operates under the auspices of the Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia in Lebanon. Fran Markowitz and Anders H. Stefansson, Homecomings: Unsettling Paths of Return (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 109–110. The Armenian population dropped once more in 1947, as approximately 2,000 of the 5,000 inhabitants participated in the repatriation movement, the global movement organized by the Republic of Armenia’s communist party and supported by the Soviet Union to “gather” the worldwide Armenian population in the Soviet Republic. The repatriation movement will be detailed further in this chapter. Still, Qamishle has suffered during the Syrian War. Two large car bombs in July 2016 resulted in the death of over fifty inhabitants, and over fifteen people died in December 2015 as a result of three bombings: www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/syria-civilwar-50-killed-­isilattack-­qamishli-160727092723452.html and http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-­syriakurds-idUKKBN0UD1WZ20151231. To complicate matters further, Turkish military actions against its Kurdish population in the area around Nusaybin, just across Qamishle’s border in Turkey, have further mired the area in conflict. Turkish shells often end up hitting and damaging Qamishle’s civilian structures: www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/06/turkey-­nusaybinwar-qamishli-syria-war-neighboring-cities.html. For further detail on the assault on Kessab see: www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-idUSBREA2L0G020140323 and http://time.com/40378/ syria-kessab-christians/. See for example, https://twitter.com/trendkessab, www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/31/ kim-kardashian-butts-into-syria-s-online-civil-war-with-savekessab-campaign.html, and https:// anca.org/young-filmmaker-wins-awards-for-save-kessab-documentary/.

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Armenians in the Middle East 30 In addition to news sources such as http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/19173, countless Armenian blogs and news sites maintained a similar connection. See, for example, https://amindinfinite.wordpress. com/2014/04/26/turkey-continues-the-genocide-of-armenians-in-kessab/ and www.facebook. com/1915-Armenian-Genocide-and-Kessab-2014-315808005232950/app/195646697137509. It is likewise interesting to note that as Armenian national historiography maintained an appreciation for the French troops who were seen as protecting the Armenian inhabitants of Kessab in 1915, the institutions of the Armenian Church, news outlets, and organizations similarly acknowledged the relief provided by Syrian government troops that retook the town a few days after the assault. See, for example, www.mirrorspectator.com/2014/06/20/ syrian-forces-retake-armenian-village-of-kessab/. 31 Nicola Migliorino, (Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria Ethno-Cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee Crisis (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 54–55. 32 Adrian J. Boas, Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades: Society, Landscape and Art in the Holy City under Frankish Rule (New York: Routledge, 2001), 88–89. 33 For a greater overview on Armenian of Palestine, see Bedross Der Matossian, “The Armenians of Palestine 1918–48,” Journal of Palestine Studies 39, no. 1 (Autumn 2011), 24–44. 34 See, for example, the weekly satirical magazine, ad-Dabour, 1927. Many thanks to Ghenwa Hayek for bringing these cartoons to my attention. 35 Even though some other communities, such as Egypt’s, had their own Armenian press publications, they did not import their newspapers and journals to surrounding communities. In this way, the Lebanese Armenian community’s representations exhibited transnational elements, extending their realm of authority. 36 See the issues of the daily newspapers of the Armenian Communist Joghovurti Tzayn, the Socialist Hnchak Ararad, the Capitalist Ramgavar Zartonk, and the rightist-nationalist Dashnak affiliated Aztag, 23 November 1945. 37 Joghovurti Tzayn, 23 November 1945, front page. 38 Ararad, 23 November 1945, front page. 39 For example, the Dashnak Party did not address the fact that the party and its associated publications were banned in the USSR. Neither did the capitalist Ramgavar party address the economic futures of its followers. After all, many Ramgavar supporters in Lebanon were business owners, entrepreneurs, and financiers. Would they be able to adjust to the state-run economy of the ASSR. Zartonk never addressed these concerns. Rather, it repeated the need for this economic set to move to the Soviet Republic. 40 Walter Kolarz, Religion in the Soviet Union (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1966), 160–173. 41 Aztag, 26 June 1946, front page. 42 See, for example, its publication Tchanasser 3, no. 9 (March 1946): 67. Avedik, the publication of the Armenian Catholic Church did not use the medium of the magazine to express its thoughts about repatriation or a homeland. 43 Ronald Suny, Looking Towards Ararat (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), 163–169. 4 4 Suny, Ararat, 163–169. 45 On 24 December 1933, Archbishop Leon Tourian was assassinated as he walked down the aisle performing mass in the West 187th Street Armenian Orthodox Church in Washington Heights in New York City. In the days following the murder, 300,000 American-Armenians were “kicked out” of their Armenian churches in America for their alleged opposition to the Soviet status of ­A rmenia. This action, in turn, created a need for this population to seek assistance from the ­Cilician See in Lebanon. See The New York Times, 14 July 1934, front page. 46 “Nergin Nakharari Koch‘ě Libanahayut‘yan” [The Minister of Interior’s Declaration to the ­L ebanese Armenians], Aztag, 12 December 1958. 47 Khachig Tololyan, “Martyrdom as Legitimacy: Terrorism, Religion and Symbolic Appropriation in the Armenian Diaspora,” Paul Wilkinson and Alasdair Stewart, eds., Contemporary Research on Terrorism (Aberdeen University Press, 1987), 89–103. 48 For historical overview, see Khachig Tololyan, “National Self-Determination and the Limits of Sovereignty: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Secession of Nagorno-Karabagh,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 1, no. 1 (Spring 1995), 106–128. Many Armenian outlets use the Armenian term for the enclave, “Artsakh,” rather than Karabagh. 49 Nicola Migliorino, (Re)constructing Armenia, 180–181, and Markar Melkonian and Seta Melkonian, My Brother's Road: An American’s Fateful Journey to Armenia (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005).

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Tsolin Nalbantian 50 https://wn.com/bourj_hammoud_april_2016_artsakh_strong_viken_dishgekenian such actions were not limited to Lebanon. There was a worldwide fund-raising call by the Armenian Relief Society that solicited donations for relief aid for Armenians in Karabagh. See http://ars1910.org/ tag/­a rtsakhstrong/. There were also telethons organized in various countries, including Australia, to solicit relief aid for Armenians www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP9GlU5gbf0. In addition, over 15 ­m illion dollars were raised globally through the Armenia Fund’s annual telethon in 2016 that aided those affected by resuming of violence in Karabagh: http://armenianweekly.com/2016/11/27/15-4million-raised-in-2016-armenia-fund-telethon/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium= feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ArmenianWeekly+(Armenian+Weekly). 51 www.facebook.com/ArmenianWeekly/photos/a.204821052880070.57365.1132435820378 18/1250209388341226/?type=3&theater. It is possible that the inspiration of this hashtag was the result of the success of #savekessab.

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21 The Palestinian minority IN the state of Israel Challenging Jewish hegemony in difficult times Aviad Rubin

The Palestinian citizens of Israel are a unique minority in the Arab World in several respects. To begin with, they are a rare instance of a historical Arab minority among the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region countries, most of which are predominantly Arab. In addition, they constitute only a minor fraction of the entire Palestinian people who spread in several neighboring Arab countries as refugees (in Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt) or as citizens (in Jordan), in the Palestinian Occupied Territories (POT) of the West Bank and Gaza, and in diaspora outside the Middle East. Finally, the Palestinian minority in Israel is unique in that it operates within the democratic system of the state of Israel that, despite its limitations and discrimination toward non-Jews in the Jewish state, facilitates channels of operation and expression that are not enjoyed by other minorities in Arab countries. The goal of this chapter is to explore the contemporary situation of the Palestinian minority in the state of Israel. It begins with a relatively brief account of the foundational circumstances which led to the creation of the Jewish State and the Palestinian minority within it, and the evolving status, identity, and national consciousness of this minority between 1948 and the twenty-first century. The second section explores contemporary trends in the situation of the Palestinian minority in the state of Israel in major fields of life, including an account of its social, legal, and political rights. The third section discusses the current political situation of the Palestinian minority in Israel. Interestingly, the contemporary political situation of Palestinians in Israel is characterized by two contradictory trends. One the one hand, there are alarming signs of rampant de-legitimation of ­Palestinian Israelis by the incumbent right-wing government, which altogether shrinks the democratic and civic spaces offered to the Palestinian minority in the state. On the other hand, there is an emerging effort by the newly founded Joint List, under the charismatic leadership of its Chairperson MK Ayman Odeh, to challenge Jewish hegemony in Israeli politics and find new venues for Jewish-Arab alliance that have a potential to set the foundations for a more egalitarian society in Israel. This chapter will conclude with pointing at a possible direction for Palestinian civic and political empowerment in the state of Israel, which will depend largely on the ability to coalesce with Jewish partners in the political realm for the realization of this vision. 287

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From mandatory Palestine to a national minority in the state of Israel The modern feud between Jews and Palestinians in Palestine/the Land of Israel begins with the emergence of the Zionist movement in the mid-nineteenth century, which sought to establish a national home for Jews in their historical homeland. At that point Jews were scattered for two millennia in diaspora communities throughout the globe, with only a small population of between 7,000 (in 1800) and 43,000 (in 1890) Jews residing mainly in four cities in Palestine – Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias. The majority of the population in that territory comprised between 246,000 (in 1800) and 432,000 (in 1890) Palestinian Arab inhabitants,1 who lived mainly in agricultural settlements and villages throughout the territory. The land of Palestine was governed by the collapsing Ottoman Empire until it was officially transferred in July 1922 to British mandatory rule under the authorization of the newly founded League of Nations. Between 1880 and 1939, the Zionist movement produced several waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, which elevated the level of friction between the Jewish newcomers and the local Palestinian community. In some instances, notably in 1920–21, 1929 and 1936–39, these tensions peaked, causing the outbreak of large-scale violence. In view of the rising tension between the communities, the British authorities established the Peel Commission, which, in 1937, recommended the partition of the land into two political entities based on demographic realities;2 however, its recommendations were neither embraced by the opposing parties nor advanced by the British regime.3 By the end of World War II, Britain requested the United Nations to relieve it from governing the Palestine territory, which resulted in the establishment of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (­U NSCOP). UNSCOP’s majority report resembled the main principle of the Peel Commission in recommending the partition of the land to two political entities based on demographic realities. The recommendation to partition Palestine into two independent nation-states was approved by the United Nations on 29 November 1947, in UNGA Resolution 181. The Jewish leadership accepted the resolution, whereas the Palestinian leadership, with considerable pressure from neighboring Arab countries, opposed it. Immediately after the approval of Resolution 181, the two factions began fighting over the territory. The hostilities involved two stages. The first stage, between November 1947 and May 1948, was a civil war between semi-organized Jewish and Palestinian militias, whereas the second stage, between May 1948 and February 1949, took place mainly between the newly found Israel Defense Force (IDF) and neighboring Arab Armies. Israel had the upper hand at the end of the war, conquering territories beyond the suggested partition lines. During the war between 600,000 and 760,000, Palestinians fled the land due to a mix of violence and intimidation in what is known as the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe).4 The consequences of the Nakba and its role in the formation of Palestinian nationalism are still central to present-day realities. Following the war, the Palestinians became a minority in the Jewish polity, with only approximately 160,000 people, out of over a million Palestinian inhabitants of the land, becoming citizens of the state of Israel.5 Moreover, the intelligentsia and the more affluent strata left the land during the war, leaving behind a weak, poor, and unorganized peasant population.6 The state regulated this population between 1948 and 1966 under military administration and emergency regulations that enabled systematic breach of basic citizenship rights and stood in the way of developing organized political representation or collective identity. Despite the egalitarian and liberal tone of Israel’s Declaration of Independence 288

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regarding the rights of Arabs in the land,7 the state apparatus has traditionally perceived the Palestinian minority as disloyal, a threat to Jewish hegemony and a source of danger. Indeed, “In the context of efforts to provide for the security of Israel against a second invasion by the Arab states, civilian officials as well as the military administration, confronted the Arab minority as a potential fifth column.”8

The development of Palestinian and/or Israeli consciousness Post-independence, the Palestinian minority in Israel developed a complex relationship with the state apparatus that changed over time. For the state, extending citizenship rights to the Palestinian minority constituted an important legitimizing element in the international arena.9 Therefore, the state encouraged the participation of Palestinian citizens in national elections, allowed the election of Palestinian representatives to the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, and recognized the collective identity of its Arab citizens in different ways. Most important among these are the official status granted to the Arabic language, the establishment of a separate division in the ministry of education for Arab schooling (albeit under ­Jewish supervision), and the official recognition of Arab religions (Christian, Druze, Muslim) by the state.10 Of course, this recognition was inferior to that enjoyed by Jewish language, culture, and religion, and played mainly as lip service to equal citizenship. Essentially, the state maintained an ethnocentric system of control over its Arab population and exploited the vast majority of the state’s resources in accordance with the interests of the Jewish majority, thus designing a regime of ethnic democracy.11 Moreover, in view of the huge challenges Israel faced during its first two decades – security, mass immigration, and economic hardships – the issue of the Palestinian minority and developing a comprehensive policy to deal with it in the framework of the state was relegated to lower priority.12 The history of the relationship between the Palestinian minority and the state had been divided, until recently, into three distinct periods. As this work suggests later on, starting in 2015, this relationship may have entered a fourth phase. The first period, between 1948 and the mid-1960s, can be characterized by lack of organization as well as lack of solid collective identity among the Palestinians in Israel. The military administration and cooptation efforts by the Zionist elite, together with divide-and-rule policies from above toward the different sub-identities composing the Palestinian minority,13 resulted in a weak and fragmented population that concentrated in its physical survival. Consequently, it lacked a distinct ­Palestinian identity, operated mainly at the local level, and was unable to mobilize or develop coherent collective standpoint vis-à-vis the state.14 The beginning of the second phase relates to three almost simultaneous developments, taking place in the mid-1960s: (1) the split in 1965 of the Israeli Communist Party into dominantly Jewish (ICP) and dominantly Arab (RAKAH) branches, thus constituting the first authentic Arab political representation at the national level; (2) the end of the military administration in 1966; (3) the Six-Day War of 1967, which resulted in Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories from Jordan (The West Bank) and Egypt (The Gaza Strip). This phase, which lasted until the mid-1980s, witnessed the political empowerment of P ­ alestinians in ­Israel. Nevertheless, Palestinian ethnonational claims for collective recognition, or communal autonomy in the state, did not arise.15 Instead, the new Arab-led communist party advocated universal ideas such as equality and the abolition of class subordination, and paid little attention either to the situation of the Palestinian minority in a Jewish-dominated state or to the rest of the Palestinian nation outside Israel. 289

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The third, most dramatic phase began in the 1980s, with the First Lebanon War against the Palestine Liberation Organization in Southern Lebanon in 1982, and accelerated after the breakout of the first Intifada in the POT in 1987. This phase encompassed three interrelated (and sometimes conflicting) trends: (1) Palestinization – evolving national conscience such that Palestinian citizens of Israel saw themselves as part of the broader Palestinian people, including the Palestinian refugees in Arab countries and the Palestinian population in the POT; (2) Radicalization – challenging the Jewish foundations of the Israeli regime; (3)  Israelization – embracing the “rules of the game” and putting effort in integration and in altering the system from the inside.16 These trends involved growing public assaults against Jewish dominance in the state, against the marginalization of the Palestinian minority by the regime, and explicit identification with the Palestinian struggle for sovereign self-determination in the POT. At the same time, Palestinian citizens began to use democratic channels, such as representation in the Knesset, media outlets, and the judiciary, to challenge Jewish hegemony in the state. The most obvious manifestation of all three trends – Israelization, Palestinization, and ­radicalization – can be found in the formation and activities of the Balad party under the leadership of nationalist philosopher Azmi Bishara. Balad has promoted a militant Arab-­ Palestinian national line that clashed directly with the hegemonic Jewish agenda. From the 1990s, the Central Election Committee disqualified the party and its leaders several times from running in elections on allegations that they violate article 7A of the Basic Law: The Knesset. Article 7A mandates the disqualifying of parties or representatives from running in general elections if they: (1) defy the existence of Israel as a Jewish-democratic state; (2)  p­ romote racism; or (3) join an enemy state or a terrorist organization in support of a violent struggle against the state. Before the elections of 2003, 2009, 2013, and 2015, the ­Central Election Committee disqualified Balad party and another minority party Ra’am Ta’al, as well as Palestinian representatives Azmi Bishara, Hanin Zouabi, and Ahmed Tibi, based on article 7A. The High Court of Justice later reversed all these decisions, but they reveal both the challenge posed by Palestinian leaders against the nature of the state and the constant attempts made by the Jewish-dominated apparatus to eliminate this challenge. Legally, the passage of two basic laws in 1992, Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty17and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation,18 signified a constitutional revolution in Israel and unlocked new channels through which the Palestinian minority was able to demand equal rights and inclusion in the polity.19 Two important judicial achievements in this regard were the decision in the case of Kaa’dan (in 2000), which enabled Palestinian citizens to purchase state-owned land in Jewish settlements,20 and the decision in the case of Adalah vs. the municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa (in 2002), in which municipalities with mixed Jewish-Arab population were ordered to install bilingual public signs. In the latter, the court explicitly acknowledged the unique status of the Palestinian minority in Israel and the normative duty to recognize its language and culture in the public sphere.21 The Israelization trend of the Palestinian minority also took place in the political arena during the mid-1990s, reaching a climax with out-of-coalition support by the Arab parties to the second Rabin government (1992–95). This unprecedented support (which has not been repeated since) facilitated the approval of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and included the allocation, during these years, of significant state resources to better the situation of the Palestinian minority in various dimensions. The partial inclusion of Arab parties in an all-Jewish government for the first time reflected an important step in the normalization of Jewish-Arab relations in the state.22 On the other hand, this radical challenge to Jewish hegemony in the state bred

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fierce opposition and was an important factor in the personal de-legitimation process of Prime Minister Rabin, which led eventually to his assassination in November 1995.23 In socioeconomic terms, the Palestinian population in Israel still lags behind the Jewish sector when it comes to life expectancy, average income, investment in public infrastructure, per capita investment in education, and level of crime.24 Jewish hegemony is also manifested in control over land. Significantly, in sixty-eight years of independence, the government did not establish any new Arab settlement, while planning and inhabiting more than 700 new Jewish settlements during the same period. In addition, demographic segregation persists with more than 90% of Palestinian citizens residing in exclusively Arab settlements.25 A large part of this reality should be blamed on state policies that discriminate systematically against the Palestinian minority in almost every sphere of life.26 Notwithstanding, the Arab population in Israel has grown more prosperous, modern, and educated, and consequently identifies with the state and with the Jewish majority’s ways of life. According to surveys conducted by Smooha, in 1988, 55.5% of Israeli Palestinians said that their lifestyle was more similar to that of Jews in Israel than to that of Palestinians in the POT. Similarly, 64.3% said that they felt more at home in Israel than in any Arab country, and only a small 13.5% rejected Israel’s right to exist.27 In a 2014 poll, the results were even more striking, with 77% of Palestinian respondents stating they prefer to be ruled under an Israeli government, and only 23% preferring to live under a Palestinian government.28 Finally, at the intellectual level, leading Jewish and Palestinian academics and intelligentsias convened in a series of meetings between 1999 and 2001, in a sincere and concerted effort to reach a comprehensive framework for reconciliation between Jews and Arabs in Israel. During the deliberations, the group courageously tackled all the core issues in the ­A rab-Jewish divide, including allocation of resources, public culture and state symbols, confiscation of land, security concerns, and the relationship between the distribution of rights and sharing of duties in the polity. Unfortunately, this attempt failed to reach a pact between the parties, an outcome that led some of the participants to express pessimism about a solution to the ethnonational rift between Jews and Arabs in Israel.29 At the same time when the Israelization trend reached a peak, so did the Palestinization trend, namely, the identification of the Palestinian citizens with their brethren beyond the 1967 Green Line. The most glaring instance of this process was the eruption of popular Arab protests in October 2000, in identification with the second Palestinian Intifada that began that month in the POT. The protests commenced following a visit of the then-­opposition leader and right-wing politician Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount/Haram el-Sharif, after the collapse of the Oslo process and in light of a growing feeling of despair among ­Palestinians from both sides of the Green Line. The Israeli police confronted these protests with brutal force that resulted in the killing of thirteen Palestinian citizens. As Peled notes, “Significantly, no Jewish demonstrator has ever been killed by police in Israel, no matter how violent his or her behavior.”30 Following the events, the government established an official inquiry commission, under the chairmanship of Supreme Court judge Theodore Or, to investigate the reasons for the protest and the state’s reaction to it. The commission’s report came out very critical of the government and its treatment of the Palestinian minority, and suggested a list of state-led actions to better its situation in Israel. Unlike state actions, which sought to erase the difference between Palestinians from both sides of the Green Line, the Or commission tried to reassert the distinction between Palestinian citizens and non-citizens, arguing that such a distinction would strengthen a distinctive identity for Israeli Palestinians and reinforce ethnic democracy in Israel.31

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Among Arab members of the Knesset, those of the Balad party represent the most vocal group in support of Palestine. In recent years, MKs Bishara (until his departure from Israel in 2007, escaping to Qatar due to allegations of espionage), Zahalka, Ghatas, and Zoabi have all been involved in activities signifying identification with the Palestinian people outside Israel. Their actions included participating in flotillas aiming to break the Israeli naval blockade on Gaza in 2010 and 2015, and visiting the families of Palestinians who were killed while assaulting Israelis (soldiers and citizens) in a 2015–16 wave of violence. Those activities and others of the same nature are perceived by the Jewish majority as a proof for the inherent disloyalty of the Palestinian minority. Both Palestinization and Israelization culminated in the years 2006–7 with the publication of a series of four documents by Arab civil society organizations, which are collectively known as the Future Vision documents. Though distinct in scope and differently nuanced, all four documents present a similar agenda. On the one hand, they emphasize that the ­Palestinians in Israel are part and parcel of the Palestinian people, that they are natives of the land, and that they are the victims of a Jewish colonization project that caused the Nakba and formed the state of Israel. On the other hand, they reassert their citizenship in the state, claim equal rights, and wish to alter the Jewish nature of the state into a state of all its citizens (a liberal vision) or a state of both its nations (a binational vision). Consider the opening sentences of the first Future Vision document from the National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities (Issued in December 2006): We are the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, the indigenous peoples, the residents of the State of Israel, and an integral part of the Palestinian People and the Arab and Muslim and human Nation. The war of 1948 resulted in the establishment of the Israeli state on a 78% [sic] of historical Palestine. We found ourselves, those who have remained in their homeland (approximately 160,000) within the borders of the Jewish state. Such reality has isolated us from the rest of the Palestinian People and the Arab world and we were forced to become citizens of Israel. This has transformed us into a minority living in our historic homeland.32 Leading Palestinian intellectuals in Israel hoped that the documents would be perceived as presenting the Palestinian minority’s departure point for negotiations with the Jewish majority about their status and the nature of the regime. Yet, contrary to Palestinian hopes and expectations, the Future Vision documents were encountered by rage and distrust on the Jewish side. Instead of opening a door for historical compromise, they only alienated the Jewish majority, including its Zionist left-wing strands, from wanting to deliberate over the future character of the state with the Palestinian minority. 33 For the Jewish majority, any negotiation should begin by recognizing the Jewish character of the state, something that the Palestinian minority finds impossible to accept. Outright rejection of the Future Vision documents among Jews, despite 80% support in their content among the Palestinians in Israel, only consolidated the latter’s conviction that the Jewish majority is not willing to give up its superior status in the state and negotiate fair reconciliation with the minority.34

Jewish ethnocentric responses to Palestinian empowerment The empowerment of the Palestinian minority, together with its growing national consciousness and demands for inclusion in the polity, has not gone unseen by the Jewish 292

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population and its political elite. Conversely, populist right-wing politicians exploited the rising ­Palestinian presence in the public sphere and the challenge it posed against the Jewish foundations of the regime as effective mobilization tools. Indeed, in recent years, the legislature and the government imposed disturbing restrictions on free and fair contestation for political power, on equal exercise of basic political and civil liberties, and on the civil society activity of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. First among those who have played cynically (yet effectively) on the Palestinian minority ticket in Israeli politics is Avigdor Lieberman – long-time right-wing politician and current Minister of Defense. Lieberman demanded in 2009 that every non-Jewish individual who wishes to become a citizen would have to give an oath of loyalty to the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. As most of those seeking citizenship in Israel other than Jews are Palestinians or other Arabs who marry Palestinian citizens, the law was directed at them. This provocation was approved as an amendment to the citizenship law by the government in October 2010.35 Lieberman has also been advocating for several years now a peace plan with the Palestinians in the POT that includes land and population swap, namely, revoking the Israeli citizenship of Palestinian citizens who inhabit the territory to be exchanged.36 Despite harsh criticism against the plan by both Jewish and Arab politicians, Lieberman remains firm in demanding that any peace agreement should include decreasing the demographic weight of the Palestinian minority in the state.37 In almost every public speech, Lieberman stresses that the Arab minority is a disloyal fifth column and that its representatives should be expelled from the Knesset and put on trial as traitors.38 In order to maintain the hegemonic status of the Zionist narrative and contain the growing affiliation of Palestinian citizens with their brethren in the POT, the state passed in 2011 the much-debated Nakba Law, which prohibits public funding to civil society organizations that use the term Nakba and support the Palestinian narrative of 1948. Despite being an infringement on a constitutional right – freedom of expression – the High Court of Justice rejected in January 2012 an appeal against the law and left it intact.39 In addition, in recent years, the Israeli government has pursued a series of anti-NGO initiatives, including proposed bills that called for rescinding certain organizations’ tax-exempt status, denying NGO registration on political grounds, requiring governmental pre-approval for donations from foreign funders, and labeling certain NGOs funded by foreign money as “foreign agents.”40 All these actions not only restrict basic civil rights, but also portray the Palestinian citizens and those in Israeli society that promote a dialogue and reconciliation with this sector as a peril to the existence of the Jewish state. Another action taken by the government to curtail the equal citizenship of Palestinians in the state was a decision in 2015 to outlaw the militant northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, one of the most popular associations in the Arab sector, even though this would impinge upon freedom of religion, as well as freedom of expression and association.41 In addition, the Knesset recently approved a bill that enables the Knesset, by a three-fourths majority, to indefinitely impeach a serving MK. Even though the law was not worded as a direct attack on Palestinian MKs, it was made obvious by the government that Palestinian representatives are the primary target of this law.42 The year before the general elections to the twentieth Knesset in March 2015 signified another discriminatory and delegitimizing wave against the Palestinian citizens of I­ srael. Toward the March 2015 elections, the Knesset raised the electoral threshold from 2% to 3.25%.43 This change was initiated by Avigdor Lieberman mainly as a barrier against the entrance of the relatively small Arab parties to the Knesset. More importantly, in December 2014, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government proposed the contentious 293

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Basic Law: Israel the Nation State of the Jewish People. The proposed basic law, which carries constitutional weight, breaks the phrase Jewish-Democratic that appears in other basic laws, and establishes Israel primarily as a Jewish state, while relegating democracy to a status of method of governance, rather than a core element of the regime. Other articles in this basic law grant constitutional primacy to Jewish culture, language, and religion, at the expense of other communities in Israel.44 Eventually the proposed basic law did not pass the entire process of legislation in the Knesset and was one of the catalysts in the breakdown of the nineteenth government, after less than two years incumbency. Yet, it exposed once more the negative tide that flows against the Palestinian minority. The most daring manifestation of Arabs’ endangered citizenship status in Israel came from Prime Minister Netanyahu during the final days of the 2015 election campaign. A few days before the election, Netanyahu engaged in a campaign blitz in various Israeli media outlets, and escalated the tone regarding the grave dangers facing Israel. The zenith of this campaign came on Election Day, when Netanyahu sent, in violation of election laws, a mass message of warning and de-legitimation: “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them in buses.”45 While he was later accused by opponents of being a “baldfaced racist,”46 ­Netanyahu’s message proved an effective mobilizer of right-wing voters and ensured him a third consecutive electoral victory.

Unity and integration: a new phase of Palestinian politics amid murky times The dynamics of Palestinian politics in Israel during and after the 2015 election manifest an emerging new outlook of Palestinians toward their internal divisions as well as toward their interaction with the state and the wider society.47 This new approach is characterized by generational change in leadership, by mass behavior and expectations, by the modus operandi of Palestinian politicians, and by their stated goals and accomplishments. The new leadership of the Palestinian minority attempts to depart from the hostility and distrust that characterized Jewish-Palestinian relationships in previous eras and seeks more integration in the state and common ground with the broader society.48 While tensions and disagreements are unavoidable during times of change, evidence suggests that the greater part of the Palestinian minority supports these changes and that they may pose a serious challenge to the existing character of the Israeli regime. Unexpectedly, the recent right-wing attempt to quell the Palestinian parties by elevating the electoral threshold from 2% to 3.25% served as a platform to overcoming long-time internal feuds. Put simply, by threatening the ability of the separate Palestinian factions to send representatives to the Knesset, the new threshold gave Palestinian political leaders a strong incentive to overcome ideological differences and join forces. In addition, the long-standing disappointment of the Palestinian population with the performance of its representatives had led to a steady decline in voter turnout, which in turn created a considerable risk to Palestinian representation in the Knesset, thus compelling the Palestinian parties to reevaluate their strategy. Consequently, in January 2015, the four Arab parties with representatives in the Knesset – Hadash, the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, an Arab/Jewish party; Ra’am, the southern branch of the Islamist movement; Balad, the National Democratic Alliance Party; and Ta’al, the Arab Movement for Change49 – agreed to form the Joint List and run together in the 2015 elections. At the mass level, the agreement among the four parties generated 294

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renewed trust in the capacity of the Palestinian leadership to overcome numerous obstacles and work together for the benefit of the Palestinian citizens of Israel,50 as well as confidence in the ability of the Palestinian minority to have a real influence on Israeli democracy.51 After decades during which the situation of the Palestinian minority in the Jewish state had been characterized by marginalization from above and distrust from below,52 in 2015, Palestinians were motivated by the possibility, as polls suggested, that the newborn alliance was likely to become the third-largest faction in Knesset.53 Indeed, the 2015 election results exceeded the expectations of the Palestinian minority. The Joint List won an unprecedented thirteen seats and became the third biggest faction in the Knesset. Most importantly, the Joint List succeeded in reversing the consecutive decline in turnout rates among Palestinian voters, from an average of 55% in recent elections to 63.5% in 2015.54 In absolute numbers, the achievement appeared even more impressive, with 444,000 votes in 2015, as opposed to 349,000 in 2013 – an increase of almost 100,000 voters and 27.3%. A primary reason for the impressive electoral outcome was the emergence of a new ­Palestinian political leadership. Before the election of 2015, Muhammed Barakeh, who served for almost two decades as Chairman of Hadash, resigned. The party appointed in his place the forty-year-old, relatively unknown politician, Ayman Odeh. Since Hadash is the biggest faction in the Joint List, Odeh was appointed the chairperson of the united party and led it in the 2015 election. Ayman Odeh’s background, and his statements and messages before and after the election, reflect profound belief in the ability to alter the situation in Israeli politics and society for the benefit of all sides. A lawyer and resident of the city of Haifa, Odeh advocates a new kind of win-win strategy vis-à-vis a plethora of issues in Israeli politics. Odeh’s agenda departs significantly from the traditional radical line of Palestinian politics, which was shaped primarily by Balad and identified with the Palestinian struggle in the Occupied Territories at the expense of domestic and sectarian issues. Instead, Odeh advocates a positive approach toward the Jewish majority and its representatives, and seeks reconciliation and mutual interest.55 Without losing focus on the Palestinian identity of Arab citizens and their bond with the Palestinians in the POT, Odeh concentrates on domestic affairs and on building bridges between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Strikingly, Odeh’s inaugural speech in the Knesset following the election illuminated this approach and resembled to some extent the vision of his inspiration, Martin Luther King, as he chose to begin his speech with ML King’s eternal phrase: “I have a dream.”56 Palestinian leadership continued to change and evolve before and after the 2015 elections. The Joint List broke a glass ceiling for women’s representation. For the first time in Arab politics, two Arab women became the Knesset members. One of them, Aida Touma-­ Suliman of Hadash, has followed the moderate line of Odeh in emphasizing class, labor, and gender rights in the legislature,57 while the other, MK Hanin Zoabi of Balad, maintained the faction’s traditional militant views. However, MK Zoabi’s popularity declined in recent primary elections within Balad, thus reducing her chances to remain an MK after the next elections.58 This result reflects Balad’s realization that the Palestinian public does not support the militant line anymore and backs Odeh’s leadership and agenda. Indeed, since the elections, MK Odeh has proven largely successful in orchestrating a moderate and integrative public line for the Joint List, while taming more radical and experienced Palestinian politicians such as Ahmed Tibi, Jamal Zahalka, and representatives from the Islamic faction. In April 2016, Odeh’s approach proved successful with the accomplishment of an unprecedented achievement for the Palestinian minority. After lengthy discussions with multiple 295

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government ministries, the government (Netanyahu’s rightwing government, it is worthy to note) announced a multi-year funding package for the Palestinian population in Israel in the amount of 15 billion ILS (approximately 4 billion USD). The plan aims to alleviate poverty and crime rates, invest in infrastructure and education, and provide solutions to planning and housing in Arab settlements.59

Conclusion: what is next? The Zionist movement founded Israel as a national home for Jews following the Holocaust and in the midst of a lengthy and bitter war with surrounding Arab communities. The weak and fragmented Palestinian minority that remained as citizens in the newborn Jewish state after 1948, had to face and overcome these impossible circumstances in its long march toward equal representation in the state of Israel and the advancement of national consciousness as part of the Palestinian people. As this chapter suggests, after almost seven decades of systematic discrimination, the Palestinian minority has reached a point in which it may have, for the first time in Israel’s history, a real opportunity to challenge Jewish hegemony and claim equal recognition and treatment in the state. The newly formed Joint List under Odeh’s leadership represents a fresh outlook and seeks understandings with the Jewish majority, without compromising its Palestinian identity or its demand to greater equality. The right political constellation may provide it political leverage to influence Israeli society and regime type. Among the areas of contention between Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel, the socioeconomic division seems solvable. A recent opinion poll suggests that majority of Jews (74%) acknowledge the inferior socioeconomic situation of Arabs in the state and believe that remedying it would benefit the country (60%). A significant percentage of Jews (40%) are even willing to compromise their own welfare to achieve this goal. More generally, a convincing Jewish majority supports the economic (70%), political (52%), and social (65%) integration of the Palestinian minority in the state. On the Arab side, support for economic, political, and social integration in the state is sweeping with 88%, 81%, and 78%, respectively.60 Despite cautious optimism, the road to implementing Odeh’s vision is still full of bumps and hurdles, especially in the realms of trust and symbolic content. A December 2014 poll found high levels of distrust among the Palestinian minority toward the Israeli state and Jewish society, and a large majority of Palestinian respondents believe that Jewish society is moderately, or very, racist toward Palestinians (86%), and even more significant numbers (92%) believe that Israeli institutions are fully or partially discriminatory.61 Furthermore, an average of about 70% of the Palestinians are pessimistic about the chances for equality in Israel, even if the government, the majority, and the minority work to promote it.62 These findings suggest that much effort should be placed on confidence-building measures between the communities in order to facilitate genuine deliberation. The most contentious and inflexible dispute between Jews and Palestinians in Israel, however, is found in the realm of public culture and the definition of the state. Surveys suggest that a sheer majority of Palestinians demand full equality, not only in material but also in symbolic and cultural terms, and contends that full equality will require the Jewish majority to give up the Jewish nature of the state. On the other hand, a clear majority of Jews takes the Jewishness of the state as an axiom and expects the Arab minority to accept its minority situation and refrain from challenging the nature of the state. More particularly, Jews are not willing to negotiate the anthem, flag, emblem, official definition of the state of Israel, or 296

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the Jewish identity of the prime minister.63 Overcoming this hurdle will definitely require concerted effort and out-of-the-box thinking. Finally, the Palestinian minority will not be able to pull the wagon uphill by itself without aligning with a Jewish-led political coalition, which is willing to contest Jewish hegemony in the state and seek pathways to collaboration and reconciliation with the Palestinian minority. At the moment, the left-wing opposition to Netanyahu is weak and fragmented, and fails to offer a comprehensive vision to the deadlock in Israeli politics on either domestic and international matters. Hence, despite being faithful and willing, the Palestinian minority’s leadership cannot bring change by itself and is much dependent, once again, on partners within the Jewish side.

Notes 1 Sergio DellaPergola, “Demographic Trends in Israel and Palestine: Prospects and Policy Implications,” The American Jewish Year Book 103 (2003), 11. 2 Earl Peel, “The Report of the Palestine Commission,” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931–1939) 16, no. 5 (1937), 761–779. 3 T. G. Fraser, “A Crisis of Leadership: Weizmann and the Zionist Reactions to the Peel Commission’s Proposals, 1937–8,” Journal of Contemporary History 23, no. 4 (1988), 657–680. 4 Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1. 5 Asad Ghanem, The Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel 1948–2000: A Political Study (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 11. 6 Ian Lustick, “Zionism and the State of Israel: Regime Objectives and the Arab Minority in the First Years of Statehood,” Middle Eastern Studies 16, no. 1 (1980), 132. 7 The declaration says the following: WE APPEAL—in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months—to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions. [emphasis added] The complete Declaration can be found at: www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/ pages/declaration%20of%20establishment%20of%20state%20of%20israel.aspx 8 Lustick, “Zionism and the Arab Minority,” 136. 9 Hassan Jabareen, “Hobbesian Citizenship: How the Palestinians became a Minority in Israel,” Will Kymlicka and Eva Pfostl, eds., Multiculturalism and Minority Rights in the Arab World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 189–218. 10 Amnon Rubinstein, “The Decline, but not Demise, of Multiculturalism,” Israel Law Review 40, no. 3 (2007), 763–810. 11 Sammy Smooha, “The Model of Ethnic Democracy: Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State,” Nations and Nationalism 8, no. 4 (2002), 475–503; As’ad Ghanem, “State and Minority in Israel: The Case of Ethnic State and the Predicament of Its Minority,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, no. 3 (1998), 428–448. 12 Lustick, “Zionism and the Arab Minority,” 127–146. 13 Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman, Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict within (New York: Cambridge ­University Press, 2011), 23. 14 Aziz Haidar, “The Two State Solution and the Realization of the Palestinian National Quest of the Arab-Palestinian Citizens of Israel,” Reuven Pedhazur ed., The Influence of the Establishment of a Palestinian State on Israel’s Arabs (Netanya: S. Daniel Abraham Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2011), 8–25 (Hebrew). 15 Oded Haklai, Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 74–79. 16 Ghanem, The Palestinian-Arab Minority; Haklai, Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israel; Alan Dowty. The Jewish State: A Century Later (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), Ch. 9.

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22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39

For full text see: www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic3_eng.htm. For full text see: www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic4_eng.htm. Jabareen, “Hobbesian Citizenship.” Aadel Kaadan v. Israel Lands Administration, HCJ 6698/95 delivered on 8 March 2000. Full text can be retrieved from: http://web.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/gender-sexuality/ kaadan_v._israel_lands_admin_edited.pdf. HCJ 4112/99 Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel v. Municipality of Tel-Aviv/Jaffa, delivered on 25 July 2002. Full text can be retrieved from: http://international humanrightslaw.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Adala-v-Tel-Aviv-2002-EXCERPT.pdf; see also: Ilan Saban and Muhammad Amara, “The Status of Arabic in Israel: Reflections on the Power of Law to Produce Social Change,” Israel Law Review 36, no. 2 (2002), 5–39. Oded Haklai and Liora Norwich, “Bound by Tradition: The Exclusion of Minority Ethnonational Parties from Coalition Governments—A Comparison of Israel and Canada,” Ethnopolitics 15, no. 3 (2016), 265–284. Aviad Rubin, “Bifurcated Loyalty and Religious Actors’ Behaviour in Democratic Politics: The Case of post-1967 Religious Zionism in Israel,” Religion, State and Society 42, no. 1 (2014), 46–65. Alaa Hamdan and Yaser Awad, The Equality Index of Jewish and Arab Citizens in Israel, no. 4 (December 2010). Available www.sikkuy.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/sikkuy_eng09.pdf (Accessed 16 August 2017); Katie Hesketh, The Inequality Report: The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel, a report by Adalah –- The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (March 2011). Can be retrieved from: www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7404. As’ad Ghanem, “Israel’s Second Class Citizens,” Foreign Affairs, July–August (2016), 38. Yusuf Sarfati and Aviad Rubin, “Introduction: Israel and Turkey in Comparative Perspective,” in Aviad Rubin and Yusuf Sarfati, eds., The Jarring Road to Democratic Inclusion (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016), 1–20, 7–8. In Dowty, The Jewish State, 201–202. Itamar Radai, Meir Elran, Yousef Makladeh, and Maya Kornberg, “The Arab Citizens in Israel: Current Trends According to Recent Opinion Polls,” Strategic Assessment 18, no. 2 (July 2015), 102. Uzzi Benziman, Whose Land Is It?: A Quest for a Jewish Arab Compact in Israel ( Jerusalem: Israel Democracy Institute, 2006); Aviad Rubin, “Language Policy and Inter-group Deliberation in Israel,” Juan E. Ugarriza, and Didier Caluwaerts, eds., Democratic Deliberation in Deeply divided Societies: From Conflict to Common Ground (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 155–156. Yoav Peled, “Restoring Ethnic Democracy: The Or Commission and Palestinian Citizenship in Israel,” Citizenship Studies 9, no. 1 (2005), 89. Peled, “Restoring Ethnic Democracy”; Ilan Saban, “After the Storm? The Israeli Supreme Court and the Arab-Palestinian Minority in the Aftermath of October 2000,” Israel Affairs 14, no. 4 (2008), 623–639. The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, published by The National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel. Can be retrieved from: www.adalah.org/uploads/ oldfiles/newsletter/eng/dec06/tasawor-mostaqbali.pdf. Hassan Jabareen, “Hobbesian Citizenship.” Ghanem, “Israel’s Second Class Citizens.” Isabel Kershner, “Israeli Cabinet Approves Citizenship Amendment,” New York Times, 10 October 2010. Gregg Calstrom, “Expelling Israel’s Arab Population?” Aljazeera, 24 January 2011. Available www. aljazeera.com/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011124105622779946.html (Accessed 16 August 2017). Tovah Lazaroff, “Liberman: Population Swaps Should Be Part of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Deal,” Jerusalem Post, 13 September 2016. Available www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/LibermanPopulation-swaps-should-be-part-of-Israeli-Palestinian-peace-deal-467592 (Accessed). See, for example: Haaretz, “Lieberman: Time to Jail ‘Terrorist’ MK Zoabi,” 20 October 2014. Available www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.621711 (Accessed 16 August 2017); Odeh Bisharat, “Israel’s New Existential Threat Ayman Odeh,” Haaretz, 1 March 2015. Available www.haaretz. com/opinion/.premium-1.644867 (Accessed 16 August 2017). Jack Khouri, “High Court Rejects Petition against Israel’s Controversial ‘Nakba Law,’” Haaretz, 5 January 2012. Available www.haaretz.com/israel-news/high-court-rejects-petition-against-­israel-scontroversial-nakba-law-1.405636 (Accessed 16 August 2017).

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The Palestinian minority in the state of Israel 40 Lihi Ben-Shitrit, “The Israeli Government and Civil Society Organizations: The Banning of the Islamic Movement’s Northern Branch as a Watershed Moment,” Al Jazeera Center for Studies (2016), 2–8. Available http://studies.aljazeera.net/en/reports/2016/02/201621791234701755.html (Accessed 12 January 2016). 41 Jonathan Cook, “Behind the Ban on the Islamic Movement in Israel,” MERIP, 11 January 2016). Available www.merip.org/mero/mero011116 (Accessed 16 August 2017). 42 Lahav Harkov, “MK Impeachment Bill Passes Final Vote,” Jerusalem Post, 20 July 2016. Available www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/MK-impeachment-bill-passes-finalvote-460867 (Accessed 16 August 2017). 43 Jonathan Lis, “Israel Raises Electoral Threshold to 3.25 Percent,” Haaretz, 12 March 2014. Available www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.579289 (Accessed 16 August 2017). 4 4 Hassan Jabareen, “The Real Debate Over Israel’s ‘Jewish Nation-State’ Bill,” The Nation, 29 ­January 2015. Available www.thenation.com/article/real-debate-over-israels-jewish-nation-statebill/ (Accessed 16 August 2017). 45 Mairav Zonszein, “Binyamin Netanyahu: ‘Arab Voters are Heading to the Polling Stations in Droves,’” The Guardian, 17 March 2015. Available www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/17/ binyamin-netanyahu-israel-arab-election. (Accessed 16 August 2017). 46 Isabel Kershner, “Deep Wounds and Lingering Questions after Israel’s Bitter Race,” New York Times, 17 March 2015). Available www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/world/middleeast/netanyahuisrael-elections-arabs.html?_r=0 (Accessed 16 August 2017). 47 Doron Navot, Aviad Rubin and As’ad Ghanem, “The Israeli Elections 2015: The Triumph of Jewish Skepticism, the Emergence of Arab Faith,” Middle East Journal (forthcoming). Available www. researchgate.net/publication/286933061_The_Israeli_Elections_2015_The_Triumph_of_Jewish_ Skepticism_the_Emergence_of_Arab_Faith (Accessed 16 August 2017). 48 Asad Ghanem, “Israel’s Second Class Citizens.” 49 Jack Khoury, “Arab Parties Agree to Run on Joint Knesset Slate for First Time in Israeli History,” Haaretz, 23 January 2015. Available www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/.premium-1.638600 (Accessed 16 August 2017); For a detailed account of Arab parties in Israel, see: As’ad Ghanem and Mohanad Mustafa, The Palestinians in Israel (Ramallah: Madar Center, 2009). 50 Aziz Haidar, “The Joint List in the 2015 Elections: Establishment, Platform and Challenges,” Bayan 5 ( June 2015), 14–17. 51 Naomi Zeveloff, “Can Israel’s New Arab List Make History?” Forward 22 February 2015. Available http://forward.com/news/israel/215112/can-israels-new-arab-list-make-history/#ixzz3rd VEjOd7 (Accessed 16 November 2015). 52 Ghanem, “State and Minority in Israel”; Ghanem, The Palestinian-Arab Minority in Israel; Haklai, Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israel; Yoav Peled, “Ethnic Democracy and the Legal Construction of Citizenship: Arab Citizens of the Jewish State,” American Political Science Review 86, no. 2, 1992, 432–443; Peleg and Waxman, Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within; Smooha, “The Model of Ethnic Democracy”; Itzhak Reiter, National Minority, Regional Majority: Palestinian Arabs versus Jews in Israel (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009). 53 Diaa Hadid, “Arab Alliance Rises as Force in Israeli Elections,” The New York Times, 15 March 2015. Available www.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/world/middleeast/ayman-odeh-arab-alliancerises-as-force-in-israel-vote.html?_r=0 9 (Accessed 15 November 2015). 54 Ariel Ben Solomon, “Arab Sector Turnout for Recent Elections Reached 63.5%, Polling Data Shows,” The Jerusalem Post, 24 March 2015. Available www.jpost.com/Israel-Elections/Arab-­ sector-turnout-for-recent-elections-reached-635-percent-polling-data-shows-394878 (Accessed 10 August 2015). See also: Arik Rudnitzky, “Back to the Knesset? Israeli Arab Vote in the 20th Knesset Elections,” Israel Affairs 22, no. 3–4 (2016), 683–696. 55 Haviv Rettig Gur, “Ayman Ohed wants to be Isreal’s Martin Luther King,” Times of Isreal, 3 May 2015. Available www.timesofisrael.com/israels-top-arab-politician-seeks-a-future-in-the-jewishstate/ (Accessed 10 August 2015). 56 For MK Ayman Odeh’s inaugural speech in the Knesset (in Hebrew), see: http://972mag.com/vid-ihave-a-dream-ayman-odehs-maiden-knesset-speech/106491/. See also: Ben Lynfield, “Israeli Politician ‘Has a Dream’ of Equality between Jews and Arabs,” The Independent, 7 April 2015). Available www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israeli-politician-has-a-dream-of-equalitybetween-jews-and-arabs-10160854.html. (Accessed 16 August 2017).

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Aviad Rubin 57 Simone Wilson, “Israeli-Arab Joint List Candidate Aida Touma-Suliman Is about to Make History,” Jewish Journal, 16 March 2015. Available www.jewishjournal.com/hella_tel_aviv/item/­ israeli_election_ joint_list_aida_touma_suliman (Accessed 16 November 2015). 58 Shlomi Eldar, “Is Arab Knesset Member Zoabi on Her Way Out?” Al-Monitor, 17 July 2016. Available www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/07/israel-arab-knesset-member-zoabi-onher-way-out-new-bill.html#ixzz4L9gpv4YM (Accessed 16 August 2017). 59 Ariel Ben Solomon, “Multi Billion Budget Deal for Arab Sector Aims to Improve Standard of ­Living,” Jerusalem Post, 17 April 2016. Available www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-­Diplomacy/ Multi-billion-budget-deal-for-Arab-sector-aims-to-improve-standard-of-living-451466 (Accessed 16 August 2017). 60 Nohad Ali and Shai Inbar, Who’s in Favor of Equality? (Jerusalem: Sikkuy, 2011). Available www. sikkuy.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/shivion2011_english_abstract.pdf (Accessed 16 ­August 2017). 61 Radai, Elran, Makladeh, and Kornberg, “The Arab Citizens in Israel,” 103. 62 Ali and Inbar, Who’s in Favor of Equality? 4. 63 Ali and Inbar, Who’s in Favor of Equality? 4.

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22 The Bedouin in the Middle East Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder

Most researchers agree that the term Bedouin is derived from the Arabic word badiya (desert) and designates a nomadic or semi-nomadic desert lifestyle. The term Bedouin does not constitute an ethnic, national, or religious group but rather represents a lifestyle that is undergoing change. Some scholars, however, propose a wide range of alternative interpretations of the term Bedouin, referring to spatial/geographic features (nomadism), lifestyle (e.g., pastoral nomads raising livestock on natural grazing land), or culturally linked tribalism.1 Certain behavioral norms and kinship ties have become part of the Bedouin cultural identity, such as dress, dialect, marriage customs, and the like, some of which vary in accordance with time and place. 2 Studies note that even though the appellation Bedouin nominally designates a way of life, it has metamorphosed into a cultural identity. 3 Some researchers claim that contemporary Bedouin identity should be assessed contextually, in keeping with the differential parameters applied in its definition. There are Bedouins whose affiliation is defined according to their nomadic lifestyle, although others emphasize their tribal ties. Some will retain their Bedouin identity even after urbanization through kinship connections with their relatives or identification with Bedouin values.4 Fagan traces the origin of the Bedouins to the inhabitants of the southern edge of the northern Arabian steppe in the sixth millennium BCE. 5 Arab tribes arrived in the Middle East during the initial spread of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries CE (632–732). They settled in various parts of the desert, interacting with colonial authorities, emerging states, and surrounding non-Bedouin communities. The tribes had a set of rules for marking territory, with each residing in its own dira – including common areas and seasonal grazing land.6 The mixture of indigenous and Arab tribal groups established historic Bedouin communities throughout the Middle East, most of whom remained throughout the centuries up to the modern age. During the closing years of the Ottoman Empire, the development of modern state institutions brought conflict between ruling authorities and Bedouin communities, conflict which only intensified throughout the late colonial and early state-building period.

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Sedentarization policies in the Middle East: between alienation and forced integration Relations between Bedouins and European colonial powers – and subsequently the independent Arab states – were characterized largely by polarized, dialectic tension between West and East, between modernization and tradition. Accordingly, the modern Arab states established in the Middle East attempted to resettle the Bedouins within their borders, transforming them into contemporary, progressive citizens engaging in agriculture and industry. Over the years, government efforts at resettling the Bedouins and terminating their nomadic/seminomadic lifestyle constituted the chief source of tension between the Bedouins and the states in which they resided, with certain differences emerging according to the respective policies adopted.7 For the most part, modern Middle Eastern states that imposed an urban lifestyle on the ­Bedouins were not familiar with traditional land boundary demarcation, claiming territory that traditionally belonged to the Bedouins, who defined their attachment to land according to natural features, oral agreements, or documents drafted among themselves.8 Consequently, the Bedouins in these countries became a “problem” that had to be solved, yielding an ethnocentric outlook toward the Bedouin population, lifestyle, pastoral-nomadic economy, and tribal social structure. Nomadism and tribalism were perceived as the antithesis of modernity and nationalism. This attitude also translated into ethnocentric policies proposed by individual organizations (most notably the United Nations and its subsidiary agencies, such as the United Nations Economic, Social, and Cultural Organization – UNESCO, the Food and Agriculture Organization – FAO, and the International Labor Organization – ILO) between 1950 and 1965, as Middle Eastern nations gained their independence. Bocco et al claim that attempts at Western acculturation initiated by Arab governments – that aimed at distancing themselves from tradition, shifting from tribalism to a more individual social structure, invalidating collective authority, modernizing the Bedouin economy, and ensuring educational and medical development – were undertaken to control the Bedouin population and thus help maintain political security.9 The chief agent of change in this respect was the government that was supposed to impose its will from above or achieve enforcement through tactics accepted by the Bedouin community. One major objective was the destruction and defeat of tribalism, an institution perceived as hostile to the contemporary progressive state. Tribalism was considered a primitive and aboriginal conception that rejects the modern state and the notion of a unified people, constituting an oppressive obstacle that precludes civil loyalty to the nation-state among the Bedouins. Sophisticated tactics were applied to impose displacement policies aimed at controlling the Bedouins and transforming them into law-abiding, non-tribalistic citizens. The Bedouins were customarily ruled indirectly. They were permitted to live their lives independently, without government intervention, in a designated area (that they did not always own). Their own leaders, the tribal sheikhs, served as intermediaries between the state and the Bedouin population, primarily keeping their people compliant but marginalized, adhering to their own traditional way of life, and avoiding liberally oriented spaces and markets.10 In some countries, such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the government largely consisted of Bedouin officials.11 In Syria and Lebanon, by contrast, the community was excluded and alienated. Bedouin displacement policies in various countries ranged between alienation and integration.

The Bedouin multi-resource economy An ongoing barrier to the integration of Bedouin groups in Middle Eastern states is the underestimation of their unique economic profile, characterized by pastoral nomadism. 302

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According to Emanuel Marx, pastoral nomadism is a component of the multi-resource economy practiced by nomadic people in the Middle East and North Africa and linked with settled urbanism, market conditions, and other available resources.12 The underlying contention is that political circumstances, a lack of nearby basic infrastructures and services, and a low population density force the Bedouins to “continually adapt to new exigencies and to switch from one livelihood to another.”13 Accordingly, pastoralism is dependent primarily on political, economic, and social conditions and less so on ecological/environmental factors. Its practice by nomads varies according to need, time, and place. A lack of formal skills, a disparaging attitude displayed by the authorities, and the absence of year-round productive natural resources cause extended economic insecurity among the Bedouins, who consequently exploit every natural, human, or political resource to supplement whatever they already possess. As such, the pastoral economy is not dependent on natural and agricultural resources alone, nor is it based exclusively in the desert, as it also draws on settled regions. Pastoral nomads do not produce only for their own subsistence, but also for the consumer market. Consequently, political circumstances and market conditions may exert a powerful effect on milk or meat production. Moreover, pastoral nomads may decide to settle in a given locality because of environmental factors that improve the availability of resources for living.14 The Bedouins occupy broad expanses of land unrestrictedly and are able to move about without adequate supervision. Consequently, they are perceived as unproductive and treated as second-class citizens in a closed, traditional society, with little government interference. Their pastoral contribution to the economy is underestimated and often considered an attempt to evade civic obligations such as taxes and military service. The economic activity of the Sinai Bedouins of Egypt and Israel also manifests certain genealogical aspects. Those who participate in labor migration or urban markets are usually young men. Once they reach the age of fifty and their sons are old enough to take over for them, they return home to their families and relatives and enjoy the social security net provided by those circles. They continue to earn their living primarily in agriculture, maintaining their connection to the market economy through their sons.15 One interesting aspect of Bedouin life is the power of women within the family and the household when their spouses are not present. When the men are away, usually because of labor migration, women assume responsibility for the household, crops, and flocks. They thus gain considerable power mostly through their interaction with members of their own circle and with outsiders, such as tourists, as well as by maintaining control of spending.16

Bedouin in Middle Eastern states Jordan and Saudi Arabia: Bedouin states Between 1926 and 1933, the British Mandatory authorities, together with Emir Abdallah of Transjordan, established a separate Bedouin affairs unit charged with preserving the community’s loyalty. Various means were applied to achieve this objective, such as granting subsidies to Bedouin sheikhs, recruiting Bedouins for the special Desert Patrol Force, involving Bedouins in administration of desert regions, and legislating recognition of Bedouin tribal courts/laws.17 To develop agriculture in the uncultivated desert, Jordan enacted a new land code in 1933, constituting part of the Land Settlement Law that expropriated traditional Bedouin tribal land rights while allowing continued use of the land for summer livestock grazing. Throughout the 1930s, the Bedouins were assigned agricultural plots, surrounding which they had planned to build villages.18 The British authorities then introduced modern 303

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technology and land registration techniques that entailed individual rather than collective plot registration, as well as development plans for the improvement of Bedouin life in the new villages. Between 1960 and 1980, the independent government of Jordan hastened settlement planning and accelerated agricultural technology in areas inhabited by Bedouins.19 Saudi Arabia represents a unique case in which the Bedouins were treated well by the state and constituted a majority of its population. Initially perceived as desert savages to be conquered and controlled, the Bedouin tribes undertook tactical changes over the years, becoming involved in Saudi politics. In 1913, Ibn Saud sought to attract the Bedouins to the Wahhabi Ikhwan (Brethren), applying the concepts of jihad and hijra (migration) to resettle them and recruit them to the Saudi forces. Bedouins who adopted Wahhabism agreed to forgo their nomadic lifestyle and settle in one place, in fulfillment of their conception of Islam. After the Ikhwan era of the 1920s, the Saudi government tried other means of controlling the Bedouins and maintaining their loyalty to the king, particularly following the discovery of oil in the 1950s. At that time, the practice was to co-opt tribal leaders, offering government subsidies and grants in exchange for their loyalty. In time, the Bedouins were integrated into government administration, the police, the army, and the national guard. The subsidy policy engendered class disparities, giving rise to landed and landless groups.20

Lebanon and Syria: denial of citizenship In contrast to the relatively successful cases described earlier, the Bedouins of Lebanon enjoyed no favored status whatsoever. Chatty demonstrates that the Bedouins were present in Lebanon before it achieved independence.21 Once the state was established, however, they were banished to the Beqaa Valley and denied Lebanese citizenship. Research into their everyday life and interaction with public institutions such as social and health services shows that they are perceived as inferior to other citizens. The establishment displays a hostile attitude toward the Bedouins, some of whom are able to survive only because they established informal villages that are not recognized by the authorities and are consequently denied basic services. The Bedouins thus developed a multi-resource agrarian economy but still lack civil status; they suffer exclusion and find themselves situated at the margins of Lebanese society. During the Ottoman Era, the Bedouin elite, together with senior urban residents, were part of the Arab national political movement. They shared the idea of Arab nationalism and supported establishment of an independent Arab state and the Arab Revolt. As such, they opposed the French Mandate through strikes and armed struggle before the division of Syria. To establish their control and impose law and order, especially among the Bedouins, the French Mandate applied the divide and conquer principle, supporting minorities on a divisive religious basis. The Bedouins in Lebanon encouraged establishment of a homeland under the supervision of a special French unit called the Contrôle Bedouin 22 and began to settle in the Beqaa Valley. When the French established an independent Lebanese state, the B ­ edouins were denied citizenship. They thus became stateless and were unable to exercise their educational, employment, or medical rights. Toward the mid-1920s, most Bedouins were at the fringes of Lebanese society, living in agricultural villages and maintaining an agrarian economy without basic services such as roads, education, jobs, or electricity. Their informal villages appeared nowhere on maps of Lebanon. Chatty notes that since the establishment of an independent nation-state in Syria, the government has always considered unification of the people under one citizenship and 304

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identity to be a primary objective.23 Bearing this goal in mind, it adopted an aggressive policy toward the Bedouin tribes, revoking all privileges and authority they had received from previous rulers. The Syrian government insisted on a displacement policy that established the Bedouins as farmers, for which they were entitled to international aid. In 1952, Syria enacted Legislative Decree No. 135, that abolished the mawat (Arabic: dead, i.e., uninhabited, unused) status accorded to the desert by the British and the Ottomans before them, instead declaring it to be state or miri land. This policy and the attendant regulations were rejected by the Bedouins, who perceived them as offensive, leading some to leave Syria altogether. The new government sought to eliminate tribal leadership and adjudication rights. The ruling Ba’ath Party portrayed the Bedouins and their tribalism, economy, and lifestyle as the antithesis of the state. When Hafez al-Asad was in power in the early 1970s, he sought to increase the country’s military strength by recruiting Bedouins to his army, especially in battles against Israel. Asad realized that Bedouin presence could strengthen his armed forces and implored the Bedouins to return to Syria. Asad thereby adopted a pragmatic approach: recognizing the influence of traditional Bedouin institutions, he insisted on preserving tribal interests. More recently, the Syrian government alienated the Bedouin tribes by encouraging their displacement from the desert regions of Syria that they inhabited centuries earlier.

Naqab (Negev) Palestinian Bedouin in Israel under the Zionist state Given how acute are the multiple challenges to the Bedouin in the state of Israel, the rest of the chapter will focus on this case. The Naqab (Hebrew: Negev) Bedouins are Muslims and form part of the Palestinian Arab people who remained in their country after the 1948 War (the Nakba) that created the State of Israel. Today, they constitute part of an indigenous minority within Israel, numbering approximately 200,000 people. The broader political history of the Bedouins is framed within the boundaries of racialized citizenship in the settler Zionist colonial state. Israel practices various forms of exclusion (racist, religious, and belligerent) toward its Arab population by creating definitions and fostering spatial and sequential segregation, thereby retaining Jewish majority control. One such means of control frames the definition of Bedouins within a modernist discourse, categorizing them exclusively as nomads and ignoring their national (Palestinian), religious (Muslims), and political (Arab indigenous minority) identities.24 Bedouins have been treated as oriental “others” within Israeli discourse: until the 1980s, the distinct classification of Arab Bedouins in discourse concerning nomadism and modernity was motivated by the goal of presenting the Negev as a desolate wasteland to which the nomadic Arab Bedouins clung in a state of rootless chaos. The state portrayed the Arab Bedouins as anti-modernity and anti-civilization – according them the role of a primitive, disordered “them,” in contrast to Jewish-Zionist, Western “us.”25 Modernization discourse characterized research concerning the Bedouins, particularly between 1969 and 1993.26 The Israeli establishment continues such discourse to this day: The Bedouins are viewed as backward, as people whose cultural heritage precludes adaptation to the lifestyle proposed by the “modern” Israeli authorities, including schools, institutions of higher education, the job market, and national planning.27 The conflict between the indigenous Naqab Bedouin and Israeli settler colonialism is drawn from the “colonial logic of eliminating” the native that aims to establish Jewish sovereignty and property rights over lands and territory.28 This is achieved through various direct and indirect forms of violence, such as forced removal/displacement of the indigenous people 305

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from their lands, masked by ideologies such as modernization, cultural erasure through biological or cultural assimilation, containment through segregation, and separation in the public space and body politics.29 This colonial logic is manifested through the Zionist movement that aimed to expropriate indigenous lands with the objective of depleting Arab economic assets and accumulating a national-Zionist resource for developing Jewish localities, building the Jewish state and nation and creating cultural capital development opportunities to empower and expand Jewish sovereignty.30 To elucidate the current status of Naqab Bedouins within Israel, it is important to understand the political/historical processes that shaped the Bedouin’s spheres of life: education, employment, and women’s status. Before the establishment of the Israeli state, about 100,000 Bedouins lived in Palestine. Following the nakba and the establishment of Israel, 75,000 ­Bedouins became refugees in nearby Arab countries (Gaza, Jordan, and Egypt). From 1948 to 1967, Israel imposed military rule on Arab Bedouins concentrated in the Siyagh (closed area), enabling control of this population and the lands it vacated. The 1950 Absentee Property Law declared the area outside the Siyagh a closed military zone, preventing Arab Bedouins from working the land and grazing their flocks, blocking access to education, and limiting employment opportunities.31 Halting Bedouin progress in time and space also arrests their development, causing vast disparities between Arab Bedouin and Jewish populations. During the twenty years of military rule, the Bedouins were held back in all spheres of life, while the Jewish population continued to flourish and develop economically, militarily, and spatially. The Bedouin population’s starting point is thus far behind that of the Jewish population, resulting in producing marginal and neglected space.

The struggle over land rights Israel’s current population includes about 100,000 Bedouin citizens residing over an area of 68,000 hectares, constituting some 5.5% of the Naqab Desert that the state refuses to recognize as historically owned by the Bedouins. The Bedouins claim historic and native land ownership by virtue of the Ottoman and British authorities’ recognition of their traditional law, as well as long-term right of possession.32 The Bedouins maintain that the state is unwilling to acknowledge their possession of lands. Archival documents and deeds attesting that most residents indeed own their land are deemed invalid by Israeli law despite their having been accepted previously by the Turks and the British.33 In 1975, following the recommendations of the Albeck Report, Israel classified all Naqab/ Negev lands as mawat, thus declaring them to be state-owned and summarily dispossessing the Bedouins. In 1984, District Judge Avraham Halima ruled that the law applies to duly registered land as well. Another problem is rooted in the failure to register land as mandated by Ottoman regulations dating back to 1858. For various reasons, only 5% of Palestinians – including most Bedouins – registered their land, believing it to be unnecessary because the authorities accepted Bedouin tassaruf rights (to continue tilling miri soil indefinitely)34 and recognized traditional Bedouin institutions as the exclusive authority for administration of their land-related affairs. Over the past few decades, the state has been trying to move Bedouins to permanent localities, but they refuse to forgo their land rights. During that period, they campaigned for their rights through an international lobby of human rights organizations and the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages of the Negev (RCUVN – an advocacy group established in 1997), resulting in the establishment of several committees of inquiry. 306

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First, The Goldberg Commission (2007) recommended recognizing thirteen previously unrecognized villages. Subsequently, however, research showed that even if some of these villages had been “recognized,” the introduction of public services, the paving of roads, and the construction of schools and clinics would have remained contingent on the residents’ forgoing their ownership of the land.35 Consequently, even if such villages do gain official status, they remain unrecognized (“illegal”) de facto and suffer from underdevelopment, neglect, and very low socioeconomic status.36 In 2009, the Israeli government set up a committee headed by Ehud Prawer of the Ministry of the Interior, whose conclusions called for carrying out the Goldberg Commission’s recommendations, even though it would solve less than 27% of all Bedouin claims.37 After a right-wing government rose to power in 2011, the committee recommended dispossessing 30,000 Bedouins and moving them to an existing Bedouin locality. The government is now continuing its displacement policy and uprooting Bedouins from their lands, as in the forced evacuation of Umm Al-Hiran residents, who were moved to that area “temporarily” in the 1950s, and then dispossessed once again in 2016, when the state compelled them to move to a Bedouin town so that a Jewish town could be built on their land. In the meantime, remnants of destroyed homes are evident throughout the area, with no short- or long-term solution in sight. This process of Judaizing the land through the ongoing “Nakba” of the Bedouins persists to this day, affecting overall Arab-Jewish relations in Israel. The Bedouin land struggle is not restricted to Bedouin areas alone but has become a national campaign for land rights conducted by Palestinian organizations in Israel.

Forced displacement Military rule was terminated in 1966, but the state had already taken control of land in 1966 through forced displacement of the Arab Bedouins to seven permanent towns, justified by the discourse of urban modernization.38 Although deemed “modern” by Israel, these towns lacked infrastructure and industrial zones and suffered from poor opportunity structures and resource allocation. They rank at the bottom of the government’s socioeconomic index, rendering them the poorest identifiable group in Israel. Not all Bedouins moved to the new towns; in 1966, it was estimated that only about 56% of the Bedouins lived in the seven urban localities,39 while the remainder stayed on their historical lands, referred to as “unrecognized villages” (not marked on any map) – a measure considered illegal by the Israeli state. The approximately 100,000 residents of these unrecognized localities did not benefit from any basic services, such as running water, electricity, and sewage.40 Several of the villages do maintain local schools, but they were linked to electricity only after the local residents applied to the Supreme Court.41 These localities are not identified on any formal map of Israel, and the illiteracy rate among female residents aged over thirty reaches 80%,42 making it impossible for them to find jobs in the private sector or as professional workers in industry and construction.

Bedouin educational exclusion The British Mandatory authorities established two separate educational systems, one for ­A rabs and one for Jews, in 1917. At that time, about 65,000 semi-nomadic Bedouins lived in the semiarid regions of the Naqab and engaged in simple agriculture. Although they were a very small minority, their unique position accorded them special attention in educational affairs under both Ottoman and British administrations. During the 1920s, the British 307

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maintained schools for Bedouin boys in five tribal areas. At first, teachers moved along with the tribes as the seasons changed, but in time, tribal schools were established and housed in permanent stone structures located within each tribe’s territory.43 In the 1930s, the authorities established a boarding school in Beersheba at which Bedouin children, mostly sons of sheikhs and notables, could continue their high school studies. By 1934, there were two schools, one for boys and one for girls.44 In May 1948, as a result of the Nakba, the school building was taken over by the Israeli Southern Command and turned into a rest and recreation facility for soldiers. When the region became part of the State of Israel,45 most of its schools were closed; Arab education was only available in the north of Israel. Bedouins had to ask for special permission to access educational and employment opportunities. An entire generation of Bedouin tribes, especially women, thus had virtually no access whatsoever to formal education. Bedouin schools were set up during the forced urbanization that took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s, although they were far behind Jewish schools in terms of resources, classes, teachers, and budgets. In unrecognized villages, classes take place in shacks, with no electricity or water. No other educational facilities or equipment, such as libraries, laboratories, and learning aids, are available. Roads to these schools are unpaved, and weather conditions preclude regular attendance. As such, most students do not benefit from optimum learning conditions.46 Educational conditions in the permanent localities are also far from optimal. Although formally constituting part of the recognized educational system, these schools continue to suffer from unequal budgets and meager facilities. It was not until the late 1970s that two high schools were built in two recognized villages. In 1988, the first Bedouin woman was admitted to a university in the Negev Region. By 1998, only twelve Bedouin women had attained their bachelor’s degrees, including the author.47

Bedouin economic exclusion The Bedouin political economy, like that of all Arabs, is affected by state policies regarding land. “[L]and is a condition for its [the state’s] maintenance, reproduction and expansion, while for the indigenous it serves as a source of economic survival and material basis for cultural reproduction.”48 For the Palestinians (including the Bedouins), land is the space from which they produce and reproduce themselves as an agricultural people and a source of their cultural identity.49 For women in particular, land is the center of activity, a source of economic security and their own productive efforts, from which their cultural identity is drawn. Home demolition policy in unrecognized Bedouin villages “violates women’s rights to safety and security and obscures their socio-cultural productivity.”50 Before 1948, the traditional Bedouin economy symbolized the solidarity of the entire household. Division between women’s and men’s tasks did not entail rigid separation of public and private spheres, as is the case in urban areas. Rather, Bedouin women had their traditional public sphere,51 which was lost as a result of forced sedentarization. The livelihood of the Bedouins was rooted in agriculture and livestock rearing. Shared flocks oblige every member of the family – men, women, and children – to cooperate in assuming responsibility for the sheep. Generally, the men watered and fed the flocks, with the help of the children, while the women tended to lambs, collected firewood, milked, maintained the tents, grazed the sheep, prepared food, and spun wool from goat hair. Women and children replaced men when they were absent, performing most of the chores associated with taking care of the flocks. Men often admired their efficiency. Families with large flocks hired shepherds

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whose daily meals were prepared by women and girls, who thus achieved a certain measure of power, including participation in decision-making regarding issues such as relations with neighbors and marriage of their daughters.52 Forced urbanization limited opportunities for livestock rearing53 and compelled B ­ edouin men to seek external sources of income, primarily in the (racialized) Jewish market, while most women became unemployed in their own domestic spheres. This process has led ­Bedouin society to abandon its traditional economic structure. Fragmentation of the B ­ edouin economic structure within the urban labor market engendered dependence on external economic resources that are beyond the control of Bedouin society, especially among women. Consequently, these women are witnessing changes in the family economic structure that entail their own removal from power positions and their growing dependence on men. This process has also led to social constraints as traditional social institutions deteriorate, placing Bedouin women at risk of being left without the internal social support that previously enabled their socialization and well-being and thus contributed to social stability.54 As a result, these “urban” villages suffer from the highest poverty and unemployment rates in Israel.55 Formal safety nets, that is, national policies designed to “protect people from poverty,”56 are usually unavailable in Bedouin villages, recognized or otherwise. Except for some investment in the Bedouin towns of Hura and Rahat, most government efforts at promoting education and employment are concentrated in the Jewish sector. This created two separate and unequal economies: a poor Arab Bedouin economy and a flourishing Jewish economy, resulting in the latter’s dependence on the former and a consequent lack of job security among the Bedouins. The embodied and institutionalized cultural capital of the Arab ­Bedouin minority in Israel has thus been gendered and racialized since it was not accorded equal opportunity to develop in the same manner as the Jewish majority. This process created a gendered and racialized class that is overrepresented in unskilled occupations in industry and services (66%) and exhibits very high unemployment and poverty rates (80% each).57 Although Arab Bedouins succeeded in gaining entry to institutions of higher education, structural barriers such as the psychometric examination still restrict their participation primarily to the humanities, education, and social work. To study “privileged” occupations, such as pharmacy, medicine, and allied professions, to which access is limited by the above-indicated structural barrier, groups of Arab men and women recently began acquiring their professional education outside Israel, primarily in Jordan, the Palestinian territories, and Eastern Europe. These political processes have made women the victims of displacement and marginalization, rendering them the objects of the highest ethno-racial, tribal, religious, and gender discrimination in all aspects of life.58 The state created an abandoned zone in which government institutions do not become involved, thereby intensifying the patriarchal structure and women’s distress. The neglect of Bedouin women’s rights is manifested in the high percentage of women (80%) who are victims of violence, with numerous incidents of murder and high polygamy rates as well (30%–40%), even among highly educated persons.59

Bedouin activism Since the late 1980s, marginalized Bedouin villages have witnessed the formation of an increasing number of NGOs to compensate for the discrimination policies engendered by the Israeli state over the past six decades and to address the Naqab Bedouin community’s inferior position in development, education, and employment. Among the pioneers established in

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1997 is the RCUVN which forms a political advocacy group that aims to promote the rights of unrecognized Bedouin villages, as well as the Arab-Jewish Negev Co-Existence Forum for Civil Equality. Initially, these organizations were established primarily for the political struggle over land rights. In the early 1990s, NGOs founded by women added a feminist agenda to their struggle, although they did not label it as such, referring to their objectives as feminine (­A rabic: nisaeiya) rather than feminist (naswiye). These NGOs (such as SIDREH, The Desert E ­ mbroidery – Association for improvement of Bedouin Women’s status in Lakiya, and Al-Nuhud – The Association for Promoting Bedouin Women’s Education, in addition to others) focused chiefly on projects concerning illiterate women and traditional economic empowerment – issues referred to elsewhere as “reviving tradition.”60 It was only in the past decade that some of these organizations (such as Itach-Maa’ki: Women Lawyers for Social Justice) began considering more taboo issues and organizing conferences concerning them, such as a hotline for women in distress, legal advocacy, and aid, reporting high levels of violence, polygamy, and participation in the political struggle over land rights. The Prawer Plan gave rise to a young leadership, comprising both men and women, whose struggle differs from that of their predecessors because it includes a feminist current, as well as national and international lobbying, challenging not only Israeli institutions but also traditional Bedouin leadership. Bedouin activism succeeded in voicing its views regarding citizenship rights in such international institutions as the UN, CERD, UPR, ESCR, CCPR, the US State department through the US embassy. They have also engaged in some lobbying in the EU parliament and national parliaments in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, and elsewhere.

The future of the Naqab Bedouin The Bedouins of the Naqab will remain prominent actors facing the dual strategy applied by the Israel government. Israel continues forcibly to displace Bedouin villages, offering them no mutually acceptable solution. Despite the educational and economic obstacles facing much of the Naqab’s Bedouin population, this society is witnessing parallel processes that affect its development: On the one hand, more and more men and women are attending institutions of higher learning; those who are not accepted by Israeli colleges and universities apply for admission to similar institutions in nearby Arab countries or Europe. On the other hand, not all graduates succeed in entering the Israeli labor force and finding suitable employment matching their skills due to ongoing racism and discrimination. There is still a long way to go for this community to obtain full citizenship, including battles for gender rights and political rights alike. The future of the Bedouin in the Middle East will be strongly dependent on the state’s policy toward them, indicating the central role that state-building plays in the process of minority inclusion. They may be fully integrated, as in the case of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, denied citizenship, as in the cases of Lebanon and Syria, or hold citizenship but lack citizenship rights, as in the Israeli case. The case of Israel is unique as it is the only settler colonial state in the Middle East. As a settler entity, it practices covert or overt exclusionary mechanisms to keep its indigenous Bedouin citizens on the periphery. The distances produced between Jewish and Arab-Bedouin institutions only serve to legitimize blaming Bedouin culture for gaps in development as well as providing an excuse for forced displacement. As the state continues to negotiate the boundaries between the Jewish majority and the Bedouin (and Arab Palestinian) minority, it will either exacerbate these distances or seek the more just road of transformation that would include all of its minorities. 310

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Notes 1 Dawn Chatty, ed., Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa: Entering the 21st Century (Boston, MA: Brill, 2006), 8. 2 Clinton Bailey, Bedouin Law from Sinai to the Negev (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). 3 Donald Cole, “Where Have All the Bedouin Gone?” Anthropological Quarterly 76 (2003), 235–267. 4 Ugo Fabietti, “Facing Change in Arabia: The Bedouin Community and the Notion of Development,” Dawn Chatty, ed., Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa: Entering the 21st Century (Boston, MA: Brill, 2006), 573–598. 5 Brian M. Fagan and Annete Durrani, People of the Earth: An Introduction to World Prehistory (­Abingdon: Routledge, 1986). 6 Aref Abu-Rabia, The Bedouin and Livestock Rearing (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1994) and Havatzelet Yahel, Ruth Kark and Seth J. Franzman, “Are the Negev Bedouin an Indigenous People?” Middle East Quarterly (Summer 2012), 3–14. 7 Chatty, Nomadic Societies; Ghazi Falah, “Israeli State Policy toward Bedouin Sedentarization in the Negev,” Journal of Palestine Studies 18, no. 2 (1989), 71–91. 8 Chatty, Nomadic Societies, 2. 9 Riccardo Bocco, “The Settlement of Pastoral Nomads in the Arab Middle East: International Organizations and Trends in Development Policies, 1950–1990,” Chatty, ed., Nomadic Societies, 303. 10 Emanuel Marx, Bedouin of Mount Sinai: An Anthropological Study of Their Political Economy (Oxford: Berghahn Press, 2013. 11 Chatty, Nomadic Societies. 12 Marx, Bedouin of Mount Sinai. 13 Marx, Bedouin of Mount Sinai, 10. 14 Emanuel Marx, “The Political Economy of Middle Eastern and North African Pastoral Nomads,” Chatty, ed., Nomadic Societies, 78–97. 15 Emanuel Marx, “The Tribe as a Unit of Subsistence: Nomadic Pastoralism in the Middle East,” American Anthropologist 79, no. 2 (1977), 343–363. 16 See also Avinoam Meir, As Nomadism Ends: The Israeli Bedouins of the Negev (Boulder, CO: ­Westview, 1997). 17 Yoav Alon, The Making of Jordan: Tribes, Colonialism and the Modern State (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009). 18 Donald Cole, “New Homes, New Occupations, New Pastoralism: Al Murrah Bedouin, 1968–2003,” Chatty, ed., Nomadic Societies, 370–392. 19 Bocco, “Settlement of Pastoral Nomads in the Arab Middle East,” 303. 20 Fabietti, “Facing Change in Arabia.” 21 Dawn Chatty, “Bedouin in Lebanon: The Transformation of a Way of Life or an Attitude?” International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care 6, no. 3 (2011), 21–30. 22 Chatty, “Bedouin in Lebanon,” 24. 23 Dawn Chatty, “The Bedouin in Contemporary Syria: The Persistence of Tribal Authority and Control,” Middle East Journal 64, no. 1 (2010), 29–49. 24 Oren Yiftachel, “Ghetto Citizenship: The Palestinian Arabs in Israel,” Nadim Rouhana and Arij Sabbagh, eds., Israel and the Palestinians – Key Terms (Haifa: Mada Center for Applied Research, 2009), 56–61. 25 Safa Abu-Rabia, “Between Memory and Resistance: An Identity Shaped by Space: The Case of the Negev Arab-Bedouins,” HAGAR: Studies in Culture, Polity and Identities 8, no. 2 (2008), 94. 26 Richard Ratcliffe et al., Introduction to Mansur Nsasrah et al., The Naqab Bedouin and Colonialism: New Perspectives (London: Routledge Press, 2015), 1–33. ­ edouin 27 Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder, “Shifting Discourses: Unlocking Representations of Educated B Women’s Identities,” Nsasrah et al., eds., The Naqab Bedouin and Colonialism, 191–210. 28 Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 29 Evelyn Nakano Glenn, “Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of US Race and Gender Formation,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1, no. 1 (2015), 52–72. 30 Patrick Wolfe, “Purchase by Other Means: The Palestine Nakba and Zionism’s Conquest of Economics,” Settler Colonial Studies 2, no. 1 (2012), 133–171. 31 Suleiman Abu-Bader and Daniel Gottlieb, Poverty, Education and Employment in Arab-Bedouin Society: A Comparative View ( Jerusalem: National Insurance Institute, Research and Planning Administration, 2009).

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Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder 32 Oren Yiftachel, “The Unrecognized Bedouin Space: Development of a Strategic Issue,” Reuven Pedazur, ed., The Bedouins in the Negev: A Strategic Challenge to Israel (Netanya: Netanya Academic College, 2013), 8 (Hebrew). 33 Noach Haia, The Villages that Exist and are No Longer There (Tel-Aviv: Pardes Press, 2009) (in Hebrew). 34 Yiftachel, “Unrecognized Bedouin Space,” 11. 35 Abra Berkowitz, “Navigating the Path from Planning Paradigm to Plan Implementation: The Case of a New Bedouin Locality in Israel,” Masters Thesis, Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheba, Israel, 2012. 36 Human Rights Watch, Off the Map: Land and Housing Rights Violations in Israel’s Unrecognized Bedouin Villages (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2008). 37 Mansur Nsasrah, “Bedouin Tribes in the Middle East and the Naqab: Changing Dynamics and the New State,” Nsasrah et al., The Naqab Bedouin, 35–57. 38 Ismael Abu-Saad, “Spatial Transformation and Indigenous Resistance: The Urbanization of the Palestinian Bedouin in Southern Israel,” American Behavioral Scientist 51, no. 12 (2008), 1713–1754. 39 Human Rights Watch, Second Class: Discrimination against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel’s Schools (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2001). 40 Human Rights Watch, Second Class. 41 Abu-Bader and Gottlieb, Poverty, Education and Employment in Arab-Bedouin Society. 42 Hanan El-Sanaa and Atef Abu-Ajaj, Arab-Bedouin Population in the Negev: Women, Economics and Employment: A Report (Beer-Sjeva: Ajeec and Sidreh Association, 2007) (Hebrew). 43 Ahmad Abu-Khusa, Encyclopedia of Beersheba’s Tribes (Amman: Jordanian National Library, 1994), 172 (in Arabic). 4 4 Aref Al-A’raf, The History of Beersheba and Its Tribes ( Jerusalem: 1934) (Arabic). 45 Aref Abu-Rabia, Bedouin Century: Education and Development among the Negev Tribes in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Berghahn, 2001). 46 Meir, As Nomadism Ends. 47 Negev Center for Regional Development, Statistical Yearbook of the Negev Bedouin, 2 (Beersheba: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2004). 48 Nahla Abdo, Women in Israel: Race, Gender and Citizenship (London: Zed Books, 2011), 22. 49 Abdo, Women in Israel, 37. 50 Abdo, Women in Israel, 23. 51 Abdo, Women in Israel, 23. 52 Abu-Rabia, The Bedouin and Livestock Rearing and Meir, As Nomadism Ends. 53 Despite the loss of land and flocks, most urban localities include numerous households that raise livestock in gardens adjoining modern houses as a kind of subsistence security in case the breadwinners lose their jobs in the Jewish market. Abu-Rabia, The Bedouin and Livestock Rearing and Marx, “The Tribe as a Unit of Subsistence: Nomadic Pastoralism in the Middle East.” 54 Julian Lewando-Hundt, “The Exercise of Power by Bedouin Women in the Negev,” Emanuel Marx and Aharon Shmoeli, eds., The Changing Bedouin (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1984), 83–124. 55 Israel National Insurance Institute, Poverty Dimensions and Social Gaps, 2014. Annual Report. (­Jerusalem: Israel National Insurance Institute, 2015). 56 Jenifer C. Olmsted, “Gender, Ageing, and the Evolving Patriarchal Contract,” Feminist Economics 11, no. 2 (2005), 116. 57 Abu-Bader and Gottlieb, Poverty, Education and Employment in Arab-Bedouin Society. 58 See Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder, “The Paradox of Professional Marginality among Arab-­Bedouin Women,” Sociology 25 April 2016. Available http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/00380 38516641621 (Accessed 14 August 2017). ­ olonization, 59 Rawia Abu-Rabia, “Redefining Polygamy among the Palestinian Bedouins in Israel: C Patriarchy, and Resistance,” American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & Law 19, no. 2 (2011), 459–493 and Insaf Abu-Shareb, The Silence Conspiracy: Family Violence Against Arab-Bedouin Women in the Naqb (Tel Aviv: Women Lawyers for Social Justice, 2012) (Hebrew). 60 Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder, “The Activism of Bedouin Women: Social and Political Resistance,” HAGAR: Studies in Culture, Polity and Identities 7, no. 2 (2007), 67–84.

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23 The Berbers (Amazigh) Bruce Maddy-Weitzman

The Berbers are the autochthonous population of North Africa beginning west of the Nile Delta extending westward to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, and bounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the north and the Sahara-Sahel region in the south. Interacting with conquerors throughout recorded history, they “form the basis of the whole North African edifice.”1 Although many Berber activists reject the “minority” label, on both numerical and ideological grounds, there is no doubt that Berber speakers are in a minority in all states where they are found (modern-day Berberists insist, and not without justification, that the majority of Arabic-speakers in North Africa, and especially in Morocco, are Arabized ­Berbers). In fact, the number of Berber speakers has been declining, in percentage terms, for more than a century, owing to a variety of political, social, and economic factors, and particularly over the last half-century as newly independent states vigorously pursued policies of Arabization and national integration. In response, a modern Berber identity movement has arisen in recent decades that challenges dominant national narratives and state-building projects that relegate Berbers to the realm of folklore. In foregrounding Berber language, culture, and history, it seeks to refashion the identity of North African states. As with other minority movements worldwide, the Berber culture movement trumpets the importance of genuine political democracy and cultural pluralism, standing in opposition to combination of what they view as Arab-Islamic and Jacobin-style authoritarianism, manifested in both Islamist and more secular nationalist varieties. With few exceptions, ­modern-day Berberist groups do not challenge the territorial integrity of states, per se. Nor can they be said to constitute a mass movement in the sense of being able to generate largescale and sustained collective action. At the same time, it has placed the issue of Berber identity on the public agenda, even winning constitutional recognition in both Morocco and Algeria of Tamazight as an official state language, and of the Amazigh contribution to the fashioning of their countries’ collective identities. The sweeping changes that have taken place in the region over the past decade – the toppling of long-entrenched authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Libya, upheaval in Mali, and large-scale protests in Morocco and Algeria – have not been Amazigh-centered, per se, but have had, and continue to have, an Amazigh dimension, particularly as politics throughout the region have become newly contentious. While the future of collective Berber identity, and of the variety of Berber

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communities residing in North African states and the Diaspora, is anything but clear, the Berber “genie” is out of the proverbial bottle, compelling regimes and societal forces to reevaluate long-standing policies and attitudes toward their Berber minorities.

Profile “Berber” derives from the Latin and Greek words meaning “barbarian,” and was picked up by Arab conquerors in the seventh century, and revived by French colonialists in the nineteenth century2 (McDougall, 2010). Its derogatory connation has resulted in its increasing replacement by “Amazigh” (“free men”), a term derived from an ancient root word in the Berber language.3 Along with their traditionally tribal social organization and varying forms of praxis of (almost exclusively) Sunni Islam, language has been a defining marker of their collective identity, or identities: Berbers speak a variety of dialects of an overarching language, Tamazight, which belongs to the Afro-Asian (formerly Hamito-Semitic) family of languages. Berbers number approximately 25 million persons. Numerically, their largest concentration is in Morocco, where they are believed to constitute 40%–45% of the country’s 35 million people. In Morocco, they are generally classified according to three main dialects, corresponding to three distinct geographical regions. Speakers of Tachelhit, constituting roughly 8 million persons, are concentrated in the High Atlas and Anti-Atlas mountains and valleys and southeast pre-desert area. Speakers of Tamazight (the same term used to denote the Berber language as a whole), numbering 3 million persons, are centered in the Middle Atlas region. Speakers of Tarifit, also numbering approximately 3 million persons, live primarily in the Rif Mountains of the north. Berbers constitute roughly 20% of Algeria’s population of 39 million. Two-thirds of them (more than 5 million) are Kabyles, originating in the mountainous Kabylie region between Algiers and Constantine, whose dialect is Taqbaylit. Chaouis, from the Aures region southeast of Kabylie, number around 2 million. Smaller groups with their own dialects include 200,000 in the southern Mzab Valley (unlike nearly all the others, they practice the Ibadi creed of Islam); 150,000 in the Touat-Gourara area in the country’s southwest; 100,000 in the ­Chenoua and Zaccar Mountains west of Algiers, and approximately 100,000 traditionally pastoral nomadic Touareg in the far south. Over 1 million Touareg dwell further south, mainly in Niger and Mali, with a much smaller number in Libya. Most of Libya’s half- million Berbers are concentrated in the western Jabal Nafusa highlands and coastal city of Zuwara; Tunisia’s approximately 100,000 Berbers dwell in south-central highland villages and on the island of Djerba (the latter are also Ibadis); approximately 30,000 Egyptian Berbers are concentrated in the Siwa oasis in the country’s Western Desert. Between 1 and 2 million Berbers live in the Diaspora, mostly in Western Europe.

Origins, Islamization, and colonialism Questions surrounding the origins of the Berbers are almost as old as recorded history itself, and the variety of answers tendered have been generally bound up with the agendas of those asking the questions (usually the conquerors of the Berber-speaking lands, known in modern-day Berberist parlance as Tamazgha). This politicized historiography is still relevant today, even as there is now enough evidence available for a more scientific and objective treatment. As far as can be determined, the Berbers’ geographical and anthropological origins are multiple, emanating from the north (Mediterranean), east (Nile valley), and south (the Sahara), resulting in a composite population during Neolithic times.4 314

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Greek and Roman conquerors and chroniclers, who arrived on the North African coastline in the centuries preceding the Common Era, confronted tribal-based communities whose speech was unintelligible to them, and hence lumped them together with other “barbarians” living outside of the realm of Carthaginian/Greco-Roman civilization. Native responses to the conquerors were varied, ranging from unbridled resistance to passive acceptance, partial accommodation and fusion, to full acculturation and assimilation, primarily in urban areas. This pattern had already been witnessed in the Carthage-based Punic Empire, beginning in the eighth century BCE. It would continue into the first century AD, under both Roman and Byzantine Christian rule. Modern-day Amazigh “memory workers” tend to essentialize this complex narrative in emphasizing an underlying continuity of Berber identity, in which the Berbers both interacted with their conquerors and maintained their collective existence. In their “search for a usable past,”5 they point to the reign of Berber kings in the Hellenic period, cultural and religious luminaries of “African” origin in the Roman and Byzantine eras, and further back to the moment when Berbers made their entry onto the pages of history in 950 AD with the establishment an Egyptian pharaonic dynasty under Sheshonk I, of the Libico-Berber Meshwash tribe. The struggles against Roman conquest, particularly the Jugurthine war (112–105 BC), also have had resonance for some North African non-Berber nationalist historians who have sought to “decolonize” history by combating colonialist historians’ presentation of North African history as one in which the “natives” inherently lacked the ability to organize themselves on a large scale.6

Islamization The pattern of variegated native responses to invaders repeated itself with the Arab-Islamic conquests that began in the mid-seventh century AD, ranging from initial resistance to a full embrace of the victors’ new religion. Native Christianity died out in North Africa west of Egypt by the twelfth century, leaving only Jewish communities, some of them integrally enmeshed in Berber milieus. Berbers were now entirely Islamized, while retaining a variety of popular religious practices that clearly had pre-Islamic roots. Successive Berber Islamic dynasties (such as the Almoravid, Almohad, and Marinid) rose from the Berber Atlas and Sahara hinterlands and consolidated their control over wide swathes of North Africa and the Iberian peninsula between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Linguistic Arabization came more slowly and partially, spurred by the institutionalization of Islam, its holy book and rich body of law written in Arabic. This combined with the influx of new waves of Arab tribes from the east, a pattern that was ultimately limited by geographic and other factors. In the fourteenth century, Ibn Khaldun analyzed the uprisings and conquests of the Berbers in his monumental works, characterizing the Berbers as a “great nation.” The consolidation of Ottoman rule in the regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli in the sixteenth and seventh centuries, and the establishment of successive Sharifian dynasties in Morocco during the centuries before European colonization, brought to an end the cycle of warfare.

The Berber origin controversy in Islam Ibn Khaldun’s discussion of Berber origins essentially summed up the dominant thinking of 600 years of Muslim historiography on the subject. At bottom, Berbers were assigned an eastern Arab origin, to promote the narrative that the conquest of North Africa in fact constituted a reunion between long-separated Semitic cousins who were now being brought the enlightenment of Islam, resulting in felicitous cultural symbiosis. This ahistorical narrative 315

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was useful for downplaying the initial resistance of some Berber groups to their conquerors, the periodic bouts of repression, even enslavement by some early Muslim governors, and subsequent inter-ethnic tensions in Andalusia. It would be picked up by Algerian Muslim nationalists in the 1930s, as they sought to make the Berbers a “national signifier” in opposition to France’s equally politicized version of their origins.7

France and the Berbers France’s conquest of Algiers and overthrow of the Ottoman Regency there in July 1830 inaugurated 130 years of (mostly French) colonialism in North Africa, whose impact was in many ways no less profound than the Islamic conquests 1,200 years earlier. In the French colonizers’ struggle to gain knowledge of the native populations so as to better subdue and control them, they rediscovered Ibn Khaldun’s multi-volume masterpiece. Combined with their own observations, they formulated a divide and rule policy underpinned by what came to known as the “Kabyle myth.” This involved the reification of observable material, and sometimes physical differences between Arabs and Kabyle Berbers in a way that placed the Kabyles higher up in the hierarchies of civilization, in line with the prevailing pseudo-scientific notions of the nineteenth century. A European Christian origin myth helped to explain these differences, for it suggested that, over time, Kabyles could be assimilated into Algérie Francaise at least as junior partners.8 As a result, the Kabyles would be allocated a somewhat greater share of the paltry resources directed toward the native Muslim population, giving them a head start in acquiring the French language, and administrative and other professional skills. As it happened, Kabyles would play an integral part in the Algerian independence movement, even while having to tread delicately so as to refute accusations of “separatist,” or even “collaborationist,” tendencies. A similar “divide and rule” policy guided French colonial policy in Protectorate M ­ orocco (1912–56), as colonial administrators sought to “pacify” the countryside (often by military force) and then isolate “good” Berbers from “bad” Arabs, so that the nationalist virus would not spread from urban Arab-Islamic elites to the Berber hinterland. Practical measures included training the sons of Berber rural notables in the basics of French language and administration, while also giving wholehearted backing to Berber “grand caids” who ruled Marrakesh and the High Atlas mountains and southern valleys with an iron fist.9 As in ­A lgeria, Moroccan Berbers would be stigmatized by their alleged collaborationist tendencies, an accusation that would reverberate long after independence was achieved. In any case, as in Algeria, France’s hopes were dashed, as Berbers joined in the struggle for independence under the banner of the revered Sultan Muhammad V.

The challenge of independence and the emergence of a new Berberism Independent Morocco (1956) and Algeria (1962) were born in vastly different circumstances, and their newly empowered leaders proffered starkly opposing ideological and socio-­cultural visions for the future. Accordingly, Berber collective experiences in the two countries differed sharply from one another. Nonetheless, their ruling elites shared a common vision of subsuming Berber particularism into the larger national fabric and reducing it to folklore status. Berbers as individuals could be full participants in the new state, but Berbers as a collective were viewed with great suspicion, even as the Berber communities themselves were far from being a cohesive whole. This common suspicion was given early expression by harsh military repression of revolts in Morocco’s northern Berber Rif region (1958–59), and in Algeria’s Kabylie 316

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(1962–63). Additional smaller revolts occurred during these years in other Moroccan ­Berber regions. The causes of the unrest were multiple, but not bereft of the ethnic factor. The Rif region was historically alienated from the makhzen (Morocco’s ruling regime), and for five years, during the 1920s, had achieved de facto independence from Spanish colonial control under the leadership of the charismatic Muhammad bin Abdelkrim al-­ Khatabbi.10 The 1958–59 revolt stemmed from numerous local grievances centering on the fact that newly appointed state administrators were not of the Rif, but instead were the self-styled bearers of “high” Andalusian culture who patronized and looked down upon Riffian Berbers. Ironically, the units which brutally put down the revolt, while officially commanded by Crown Prince (soon to be King) Hasan, were led by General Mohamed Ouf kir, a Berber from the Middle Atlas-Tafilelt region, pointing to the absence of a wider Berber sense of solidarity at that moment in time. Subsequent decades would leave the Rif neglected and simmering.

The emergence of a modern Kabyle ethnie The revolt in Kabylie was primarily the result of intra-elite struggles for power within the newly independent Algerian state, one which found Kabyles on both sides of the conflict.11 The employment of military force to put down the revolt was traumatic for many Kabyles. Nonetheless, integrating the region and its population into the new state without further upheaval seemed to be achievable, particularly given the centrality that educated Kabyles were already playing in the educational, governmental, and other white collar professions in the new state. However, the Algerian state and nation-building project, mixing Third World revolutionary socialist ideology with the Arabic language and Islamic culture (­Malley, 1996), generated a backlash. The result was new ethno-cultural imaginings that, over time, produced a modern Kabyle ethnie, a category that Anthony Smith characterizes as “a named unit of population with common ancestry myths and historical memories, elements of shared culture, some links with a historic territory and some measure of solidarity at least among [its] elites.”12 Kabyle intellectuals in Paris provided considerable intellectual weight for the project, as did Kabyle artists and scholars within Algeria. The discontent that had been percolating for years burst out in March–April 1980, in a sustained civil strike in the Kabylie region that cut across classes and generations. A forceful crackdown by the security authorities put an end to the first large-scale and lengthy protests against the Algerian state since the early days of independence. The events quickly became known as the “Berber Spring,” evoking the 1968 “Prague Spring” against Soviet domination in Czechoslovakia and the “Springtime of Nations” uprising in Europe more than a century earlier. The Berber Spring would come to occupy an iconic place in modern ­Berber-­A mazigh collective memory and its commemorative calendar.13 The dramatic democratic opening in Algeria (1989–91), followed by the country’s implosion and descent into brutal and bloody conflict between the country’s military rulers and radical Islamist factions, sharpened the parameters of Kabyle collective consciousness. Some of this was given voice by two political parties: the Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS), led by Hocine Ait Ahmed, one of the historic leaders of the Algerian war of independence, had an explicitly “national” and democratic orientation, but its electoral base was overwhelmingly Kabylian. The smaller, and more explicitly secular Rassemblement pour la Culture et la Démocratie (RCD), led by Dr. Said Saadi, drew mainly on people with an affinity to the Berber culture movement that had emerged during the 1980s. The Kabylie region was the only one that did not return sweeping electoral victories to the ascendant Islamic Salvation 317

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Front (FIS) in 1990–91; as the war unfolded, some Kabylie villages organized local militias for self-defense against Islamist forces. The FFS and RCD adopted opposing stands regarding the preferred path to ending the war, with Ait Ahmed favoring a negotiated solution and Saadi advocating the crushing of the Islamists as promoted by the military’s eradicateur faction. But overall, Kabyle militancy was directed as much against the regime as against the Islamists. A seven-month Kabylie school strike in 1994–95, involving 700,000 students, wrested from state authorities a grudging alteration of the Algerian constitution that recognized Amazighité as an integral component of Algerian national identity along with Islam and Arabité, and a pledge to introduce the teaching of Tamazight in schools. But even with this concession, and the successful winding down of the regime’s war against Islamist insurgents, Kabyle militancy continued to build. Notable in this regard was the aftermath of the 1998 assassination of the militant Kabyle singer Lounes M ­ atoub, which sparked a massive outpouring of protests against the authorities, who rightly or wrongly were deemed complicit in the murder. Matoub’s grave is now a shrine, a lieu de memoire for Kabyle militants.14 Kabyle militancy and self-assertion reached an unprecedented peak with the “Black Spring” events of April 2001. The death of a Kabyle teenager after being arrested by police sparked sustained protests, attacks against government offices and other symbols of the state, and clashes with security forces that resulted in more than 120 fatalities among the protestors. A newly formed “Citizens Movement of the Tribes” established extra-­parliamentary coordinating bodies among various Kabyle communities and tendered a series of far-­ reaching demands on the state that were both “national” – favoring real democratization – and “­particularist” – demanding recognition of Tamazight as an official state language.15 The Kabylie region would remain in a state of civil revolt for years afterward, but the state authorities made a number of tactical concessions, including a 2002 modification of the Algerian constitution Tamazight as a “national language,” and ultimately reasserted control.

Moroccan Berbers – quietude, co-option, and reassertion Even as the newly established Moroccan military brutally repressed the revolt in the Rif, the monarchy forged strategic alliances with Berber rural notables from other parts of the country as part of its overall strategy of balancing and co-opting rival societal elements in order to consolidate its hold on the apex of power.16 Rural Berber interests were represented primarily by the royalist Mouvement Populaire, led by Mahjoubi Aherdane, one of the leaders of the ragtag Army of Liberation that had battled the French in the last years before independence. Much of the newly constituted Moroccan armed forces officer corps were also drawn from the Berber populace. Berber officers were prominent in two failed coup attempts in 1971–72, casting aspersions on the community as a whole. And although the state- and ­nation-building projects in Morocco were conservative,17 in contrast to r­ evolutionary-minded Algeria, ­Morocco, too, advocated the Arabization of public life, strengthening the country’s Islamic identity and attendant ties with the Arab and Muslim East. Small groups of Berber intellectuals interested in preserving and promoting Berber culture began to spring up in the late 1960s, although their associations could not even use the name “Berber” in their title. Young Berber activists in leftist opposition groups suffered greatly during the notorious “Years of Lead,” in the 1970s and 1980s, during which the regime brutally cracked down on all suspected political dissidents. Among those that survived, some of them abandoned their previous affiliations with radical leftist groups in favor of Berber-centric activism. As the regime cautiously began liberalizing the public sphere 318

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in the early 1990s, Berber culture associations began to sprout up. One historic marker in the history of modern Berber identity in Morocco was the Agadir Charter for Linguistic and Cultural Rights, a document drawn up in 1991 by six associations, which laid down a series of core demands, all of which focused on the constitutional recognition of T ­ amazight, and fully integrating it into all levels of life in Morocco. A second development was a 1994 speech by King Hassan II, in which he called for the teaching of “dialects” in Moroccan schools, and announced the inauguration of daily television news bulletins in the three main Moroccan Berber dialects. Coming on the heels of a widely publicized trial of B ­ erber activists who had been arrested during a May Day demonstration for their advocacy of ­Berber rights, the speech constituted a major shift in the official Moroccan discourse regarding Amazigh identity, providing the partial stamp of royal legitimacy on the promotion of Berber culture.18 The ascent to the throne of King Mohamed VI in July 1999 inaugurated a new era in Moroccan political life in a number of respects. Seeking to reinforce his legitimacy, the new young king accelerated the tentative process of liberalization and reconciliation with political opponents begun by his father during the 1990s, even while firmly maintaining control of the levers of power.19 Adjusting the regime’s treatment of the Berber issue was an integral part of this new look. The pace of change accelerated, driven both from above (the Palace) and below (Berber activists). One of the king’s very first acts in this regard was a high-profile extended visit to the Rif, a region historically hostile to the central authorities and neglected by his father since the 1958–59 rebellion. Accompanying promises of an end to the decades of neglect was a symbolic reconciliation meeting with the son of the revered bin Abdelkrim al-Khattabi, who came especially from his Cairo domicile to meet the king. The Alouite monarchy had always viewed Abdelkrim’s “Riffian Republic” suspiciously in the 1920s, and its place in the country’s official history had been systematically marginalized. Fashioning a more inclusive, Berber-centered history of Morocco was a central theme of the Berber Manifesto, a lengthy document issued in March 2000, and signed by more than 250 Moroccan Berber intellectuals. Reiterating and expanding on the demands of the ­Agadir Charter, the manifesto protested against what it termed as systematic neglect of the impoverished rural Moroccan Berber world by both French Protectorate authorities and the urban-based elites who had dominated the state since independence. A clear separation was made between these elites and the monarchy, which constitutionally was beyond reproach. The manifesto indicated the Berber movement’s intent to take advantage of the new atmosphere being promoted by Mohamed VI. Indeed, a partial alliance with the palace emerged. One year later, the king issued the Amazigh Dahir (“royal edict”), which embraced the Amazigh factor as an integral component of Moroccan national identity. Dressed in traditional Berber headgear and proclaiming the edict in the traditional Middle Atlas Berber tribal lands from whence his mother hailed, the dahir included the establishment of the Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe (IRCAM), which was charged with protecting, researching, promoting, and disseminating the various manifestations of Amazigh culture. Two years later, the teaching of Tamazight in Moroccan schools was inaugurated; to that end, and amidst considerable controversy, a modified version of the ancient and largely ceremonial Tifinagh script was adopted.20 The declared intent was to expand gradually the teaching of the language to all Moroccan schools and all grades, beginning with first graders. The IRCAM received generous budgeting from the authorities and produced a significant body of research in a variety of fields. In addition, signs written in Tifinagh script began to be incorporated into official institutions. After much delay, an 319

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Amazigh television channel was inaugurated. Amazigh activism spread to campuses and even rural areas, brought back by returning students. Nonetheless, the project of expanding the teaching of Tamazight was fraught with difficulties.21 Moreover, state authorities continued to present obstacles, such as preventing parents from conferring Amazigh names to their newborn children, and illiteracy and poverty remained especially high in the rural Amazigh regions.

The Arab Spring upheavals and the Amazigh-Berber factor Although the Amazigh-Berber issue was not the driving factor behind the dramatic events that roiled the North African region beginning in December 2010, it was very much present, nonetheless, and not just in the traditional centers of Amazigh collective consciousness.

Libya Libya’s Berbers, marginalized both numerically and geographically, were barely noticeable to the outside world before the violent uprising which eventually overthrew Mu`ammar ­Qaddafi after forty-two years of dictatorial rule. For the most part, Qaddafi forcefully repressed any manifestation of Berber language and culture, insisting that Libyan national identity be based on a militant pan-Arab ideology, and that Berber Amazigh identity was a colonialist fabrication designed to sow divisions among the population. A brief charm offensive toward Amazigh activists by Qaddafi and his son Sayf al-Islam in 2005–7, at a time Gaddafi was seeking international legitimacy, came to nothing. Emboldened by the sudden rebellion of 2011, Libyan Berber communities quickly joined the battle, playing an important secondary role in tying down Qaddafi’s forces in the west of the country while the fateful battles took place elsewhere. Freed of Qaddafi’s stifling control, they quickly began displaying Amazigh symbols in public, introduced the teaching of Tamazight into their schools, and broadcast news bulletins from opposition radio stations. As was the case among Berber communities throughout North Africa, their demands for recognition were framed as part of a larger democratic and pluralist vision for the country. Their focus was on the new constitution then tortuously being drafted by rival political groupings jockeying to shape post-Qaddafi Libya.22 Anger over their meager allocation of seats on the council designed to draft the constitution, Berbers boycotted its meetings and periodically held raucous demonstrations demanding their rights. These did have some salutary effect: in June 2013, the Libyan General National Congress passed a law officially recognizing Tamazight (as well as the Touareg and Tebu minority languages) and enabling them to be taught in schools. Media outlets in minority languages were established, and the government even provided official support for Amazigh and Tebu cultural festivals. As of September 2016, a new Libyan constitution had not yet been adopted, although the fierce fighting between rival factions that had raged during the previous years had dissipated and tentative agreement on the outlines of a new united government had been reached. A 2015 draft text of the constitution had some success in acknowledging the rights of minorities, including Berbers: their languages were to be considered “national languages…a part of their cultural and linguistic heritage…and a common property to all Libyans,” with ­A rabic remaining the country’s official language. Moreover, the state would be committed to supporting their usage in media outlets, and to protecting and developing national cultures, heritage, arts, and so forth.23 Implementation would obviously depend on achieving a measure of cohesion and comity in the country as a whole, a tall order indeed. 320

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Tunisia The site of the first permanent Arab-Islamic stronghold in North Africa, Tunisia’s ­Berber-speaking population steadily receded in numbers over the centuries. Topography played no small part in this, as the absence of significant mountain ranges made it easier for rulers to extend their control over peripheral areas, in contrast to the situation further west. Over time, the territory was both incorporated in the Islamic milieu and became a crossroads for the movement of people and goods in the central Mediterranean. The modern state of ­Tunisia is more compact, more cohesive, and more homogeneous than its larger Algerian and Moroccan neighbors to the West, and Libyan to the east. Notwithstanding their minimal numbers, Tunisia’s Berbers acted quickly to enter the suddenly wide-open public sphere after the toppling of the Ben Ali authoritarian regime in January 2011. Cultural associations were established and festivals held. As was the case in Morocco, the liberal current in Tunisia viewed the promotion of Amazigh culture favorably, as part of their efforts to promote a tolerant and democratic vision for society and to counterbalance the country’s newly assertive Islamists. Unlike elsewhere, the new Tunisian constitution contained no reference to the country’s Berber component. At the same time, lively debates over the exact meaning of Tunisia’s constitutionally defined “Arab-Islamic” identity and its possible implications for the country’s Berbers and other minorities suggested that the issue would remain on the country’s agenda in the future.24

The Touareg and Mali Modern-day Berber imagining has reserved a special place for the Touareg, who are deemed to be the purest unadorned link to their ancient forbears, as testified to by their preservation of the ancient Tifinagh script found in rock and tombstone engravings in North Africa. Expressions of solidarity for a lengthy Touareg rebellion against hostile regimes in Niger and Mali were an integral part of the newly established international Berber associations’ agenda, beginning in the early 1990s. The Touareg were thrust into international prominence in 2011–12, in a chain of events. With the breakdown of Qaddafi’s regime in Libya, thousands of Touareg who had been employed in his armed forces fled the country with their weapons and joined up with Malian Touareg, precipitating a military coup there. The central government’s loss of control in the predominantly Touareg north of the country enabled Malian Touareg to proclaim the establishment of the independent state of Azawad. Although heavy in symbolism for modern-day Berber militants, the “state” failed to win recognition or establish governing capacity. Moreover, the region was quickly seized by radical jihadists, some of whom had been among the Touareg leadership during the earlier rebellions against the Malian and Niger governments. In any case, French military intervention pushed the jihadists out of much of the area. 25 Come what may, addressing the Touareg’s concrete political and economic grievances will be a necessary condition for establishing a workable and stable order in Mali. In that regard, then, the Touareg have now become part of the larger story of relations between Berber minorities and governments across North Africa.

Morocco and Algeria The nature of popular protests, regime responses, and the place of the Berber issue in ­Morocco and Algeria since the start of the Arab Spring era contrasted sharply with one 321

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another. In Morocco, the Amazigh issue was explicitly addressed by both the protests and the regime, in Algeria less so. Amazigh activists participated in Morocco’s “Democracy Spring” protests during the initial months of 2011, joining in the general demands for democratization and an end to highlevel corruption as well as tendering specific Amazigh-centered demands. Keenly aware of the upheavals sweeping the region, King Mohamed VI moved swiftly to prevent the demonstrations from sliding out of control, undertaking much ballyhooed constitutional reforms. Although these ultimately proved to be cosmetic, they had the desired effect of bringing an end to the protests. Regarding the Amazigh issue, however, the new constitution did provide substance: it conferred unprecedented official endorsement of long-standing core demands of the Amazigh-Berber movement, including the proclamation of Tamazight as an official state language, alongside of Arabic, and of the centrality of the Amazigh component of Moroccan identity, alongside the Arab-Islamic and Saharan-Hassanian ones. As such, the new constitution was historic, and served as a model of emulation for Amazigh groups throughout North Africa. Implementation remained another story. More than five years passed before a draft of the constitutionally mandated “organic law” that would translate the new official status of Tamazight into reality in education and other spheres of public life was completed (albeit not yet approved, as of September 2016). Similarly, the constitutionally promised enhanced regionalization that would give local communities more direct control over their own affairs had not been enacted, and efforts to establish a specifically Amazigh political party remained legally blocked. Only one of the initial anti-government protests had ended with fatalities, in al-­Hoceima, the coastal city in the country’s northern Rif region. Notwithstanding the king’s symbolic overtures and large-scale development projects, Riffian militancy remained salient and alienation widespread. According to one researcher, regionalist demands were now being articulated by denser and more diverse mobilization structures, which include the large ­R ifian diaspora in Western Europe as well. The prospect of achieving genuine autonomy for the region remained distant; nonetheless, its mere articulation by militants was noteworthy and reminiscent of similar steps taken by Kabyle militants. Even their increasingly confrontational style of protests evoked the Kabyle example (Collado, 2013, 2015).26 Unlike its neighbors, Algeria did not experience sustained and centrally directed protests against the status quo during the Arab Spring upheaval. This is not to say that the atmosphere was one of quietude: in fact, protests and confrontations of one sort or another with the security forces were widespread, fueled by both frustrations over state neglect of basic services and a well-grounded belief in the hollowness of the regime’s proclaimed plans for reform.27 However, they failed to crystallize into a broad-based opposition movement. The lack of sustained protest was particularly noticeable in the Kabylie region, ironically, given the region’s long history as the vanguard of the pan-Amazigh current as well as being the traditional bastion of opposition to the Algerian state. But at least one indication that the perennial “Kabyle question” remained unsolved was the increasingly vocal presence of MAK, the movement for Kabyle autonomy and self-determination.28 The selection of a MAK activist to be president of the pan-Berber World Amazigh Congress, at its July 2015 meeting in Agadir, Morocco, was seen by the Algerian authorities as motivated by ­Morocco’s desire to play the Amazigh card against them. Indeed, just a few months later, speaking at the UN, a Moroccan diplomat expressed support for Kabyle self-determination, a reminder that the Berber issue was not merely a domestic one.

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Meanwhile, 600 kilometers to the south, tensions between Mzabi Berbers, who practice Ibadi Islam, and Chaamba (Sunni) Arabs culminated in violence in the summer of 2015, leaving twenty-five Berbers dead and more than fifty injured, widespread property damage, and an utterly poisoned atmosphere. The causes were multiple. Nonetheless, the ethnic factor now became the central reference point of their differences and decisively contributed to the unprecedented scale of violence. As in 2002, the Algerian state authorities made a tactical concession designed to manage its Berber issue. Following the Moroccan example, albeit nearly five years later, a new constitution was proclaimed in early 2016 that included a symbolic upgrade of Tamazight to official status, alongside of Arabic. As in Morocco as well, the adoption of an “organic law” to concretize this new status was mandated. At the same time, the new Algerian constitution reiterated that Arabic “remained the official language of the State.” Given the absence of even partial support by the state for Amazigh demands over the previous decades, unlike in Morocco, Kabyle activists were understandably cynical about the new constitutional measures.

Conclusion Historical dynamics have ensured that Berber-Arab differences have been socially enduring but nonetheless muted. Not surprisingly, then, on the morrow of the attainment of independence by North African states, most scholars of the region, while recognizing that Berber-Arab differences constituted a meaningful feature of the region over the longue durée, were relatively sanguine about the prospects for successful national integration and state consolidation, and the avoidance of ethnic-based rupture.29 A half-century later, one may argue that they were correct, albeit only partially. Violent ethnic-based rupture had not occurred; at the same time, the state-building and nation-building formulas of Algeria, Morocco, and Libya proved to be inadequate in addressing the specific Berber components of their societies in ways which would promote overall comity. Hence, an explicitly self-conscious Berber-Amazigh identity movement emerged to advocate a renegotiation of the terms of the Berbers’ relationship with their governments and societies. As is true throughout the globe, identity politics has become increasingly salient in North Africa among Berbers and non-Berbers alike. In the absence of legitimate democratic institutions (with Tunisia being a notable, albeit vulnerable exception), the future of Berber-state and Berber-society relations remains clouded. Likewise, the ability of the Berber movement to attain a mass base of support is uncertain. In any case, given the increasingly contested nature of politics in the region, the “Berber question,” in all of its varieties, promises to continue to engage regimes and societies alike.

Notes 1 David M. Hart, “Scratch a Moroccan, Find a Berber,” The Journal of North African Studies 4, no. 2 (1999), 23–26. 2 James McDougall, “Histories of Heresy and Salvation: Arabs, Berbers, Community and the State,” Katherine E. Hoffman and Susan Gilson Miller, eds., Berbers and Others: Beyond Tribe and Nation in the Maghrib (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 15–38. 3 Salem Chaker, “Amaziɣ (le/un Berbère),” Encyclopédie berbère, 4 (1986) [online]. Available http:// encyclopedieberbere.revues.org/2465 (Accessed 5 June 2017). 4 Michael Brett and Elizabeth Fentress, The Berbers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 10–24. 5 Henry Steel Commager, The Search for a Usable Past, and Other Essays in Historiography (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1967), 3–27.

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Bruce Maddy-Weitzman 6 C.R. Pennell, Morocco since 1830: A History (New York: New York University Press, 2000); ­Abdallah Laroui, The History of the Maghrib, An Interpretive Essay (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 55. 7 James McDougall, “Myth and Counter-Myth: ‘The Berber’ as National Signifier in Algerian Historiographies,” Radical History Review 86 (2003), 66–88. 8 Patricia M. E. Lorcin, Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria (London: I.B. Tauris, 1999). 9 Susan Gilson Miller, A History of Modern Morocco (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 10 C.R. Pennell, A Country with a Government and a Flag: The Rif War in Morocco, 1921–1926 (­Wisbech: Menas Press, 1986). 11 William Quandt, “The Berbers in the Algerian Political Elite,” Ernest Gellner and Charles ­M icaud, eds., Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1972), 285–303. 12 Anthony D. Smith, Nations and Nationalism in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 59. 13 Jane Goodman, “Reinterpreting the Berber Spring: From Rite of Reversal to Site of Convergence,” The Journal of North African Studies 9, no. 3 (2004), 60–82; Goodman, Berber Culture on the World Stage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005). 14 Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations no. 26 (Spring 1989), 7–24. 15 International Crisis Group, “Algeria: Unrest and Impasse in Kabylia,” Middle East/North Africa Report N°15, 10 June 2003. Available www.files.ethz.ch/isn/27407/015_algeria_impasse_in_­ kabylia.pdf (Accessed 5 June 2017). 16 John Waterbury, Commander of the Faithful: The Moroccan Political Elite—A Study in Segmented Politics (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1970), Remy Leveau, Le Fellah Marocain, Defenseur Du Trone (Paris: Presses De La Fondation Nationale Des Sciences Politiques, 1985). 17 Senem Aslan, Nation-Building in Turkey and Morocco: Governing Kurdish and Berber Dissent (New York: Cambridge University Press 2014). 18 Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, The Berber Identity Movement and the Challenge to North African States (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 118–122. 19 Abdeslam M. Maghraoui, “Monarchy and Political Reform in Morocco,” Journal of Democracy 12, no. 1 (2001), 73–86; Daniel Zisenwine, “From Hasan II to Muhammad VI: Plus Ça Change?” Bruce Maddy-Weitzman and Daniel Zisenwine, eds., The Maghrib in the New Century: Identity, Religion and Politics (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017), 132–149. 20 Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, “Ethno-Politics and Globalization in North Africa: The Berber Culture Movement,” The Journal of North African Studies 11, no. 1 (2006), 71–83. 21 Mohammed Errihani, “Language Policy in Morocco: Problems and Prospects of Teaching ­Tamazight,” The Journal of North African Studies 11, no. 2 (2006), 143–154; Errihani, “Language Attitudes and Language Use in Morocco: Effects of Attitudes on ‘Berber Language Policy,” The Journal of North African Studies 13, no. 4 (2008), 411–428; Ursula Lindsey, “The Berber Language: Officially Recognized, Unofficially Marginalized?” 27 July 2015. Available www.al-fanarmedia. org/2015/07/the-berber-language-officially-recognized-unofficially-marginalized/ (Accessed 6 June 2017). 22 Youssef Sawani and Jason Pack, “Libyan Constitutionality and Sovereignty Post-Qadhafi: The ­Islamist, Regionalist, and Amazigh Challenges,” The Journal of North African Studies 18, no. 4 (2013), 523–543. 23 International Commission of Jurists, “The Draft Libyan Constitution: Procedural Deficiencies, Substantive Flaws” 2015. Available www.icj.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Libya-Draft-­ Constitution-Flaws-Deficiencies-Publications-Reports-2015-ENG.pdf. (Accessed 6 June 2017). 24 Emily Parker, “Tunisia’s Preamble: Space for Minorities within an ‘Arab-Islamic Identity?’” Fikra Forum, 26 July 2012. 25 Yehudit Ronen, “Libya, the Tuareg and Mali on the Eve of the ‘Arab Spring’ and in its Aftermath: An Anatomy of Changed Relations,” The Journal of North African Studies 18, no. 4 (2013), 544–559. 26 Ángela Suárez Collado, “The Amazigh Movement in Morocco: New Generations, New References of Mobilization and New Forms of Opposition,” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 6 (2013), 55–74; Collado, “Territorial Stress in Morocco: From Democratic to Autonomist Demands in Popular Protests in the Rif,” Mediterranean Politics 20, no. 2 (2015), 1–18.

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The Berbers (Amazigh) 27 Hugh Roberts, “Algeria’s National ‘Protesta.’” Foreign Policy, 10 January 2011. Available http:// foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/10/algerias-national-protesta/ (Accessed 6 June 2017). 28 Hugh Roberts, “Towards an Understanding of the Kabyle Question in Contemporary Algeria,” The Maghreb Review 5, nos. 5–6 (1980), 115–124; Roberts, “The Unforeseen Development of the Kabyle Question in Contemporary Algeria,” Government and Opposition 17, no. 3 (1982), 312–334. 29 Ernest Gellner, “Introduction,” Gellner and Charles Micaud. eds., Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath), 11–21; Quandt, “The Berbers”; Lawrence Rosen, “The Social and Conceptual Framework of Arab-Berber Relations in Central Morocco,” Gellner and Micaud, eds., Arabs and Berbers, 285–303, and Lawrence Rosen, “The Social and Conceptual Framework of Arab-Berber Relations in Central Morocco.”, Gellner and Michaud, eds., Arabs and Berbers, 155–173.

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Section iv

Emerging issues and minorities in the Middle East

24 Sitting at the crossroads Sexual minorities in the Middle East Merouan Mekouar and Jean Zaganiaris

Characterized by a widely shared Islamic heritage, a strong sense of regional identity, and a deeply entrenched authoritarian political culture,1 the countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are some of the most repressive in relation to the rights of sexual minorities. For instance, out of the ten countries where same-sex relations may be punishable by death, seven are located in the MENA region.2 However, while the rejection of homosexuality by the populations and governments of the region seems to be homogenous and deeply entrenched, the twenty-two countries of North Africa and the Middle East are also characterized by the presence of diverse legal codes, diverse interpretations, and diverse experiences, which not only reflect differences in colonial and post-colonial trajectories but also the relatively recent development of anti-LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Queer) sentiment in the region.3 This chapter does not seek to juxtapose the vision of a “sexually tolerant” Western world to an allegedly “sexually intolerant” Islamic world where issues around sexual minorities are systematically censored. While we agree with Joseph Massad in his call to break with neo-colonial conceptions of sexuality in the MENA region, we disagree at times with his excessive reliance on political culture.4 By focusing on religious normativities (which are presented in his work as ontological markers of difference), Massad overlooks the political and social ways of life of sexual minorities which exist in an immanent way outside of ­Western influence.5 As underlined by Judith Butler, the current Islamic normativity against sexual minorities masks the various manners through which Muslims observe these rules or respect the taboos attached to them.6 By showing how the plural “islams” “homosexualities,” and “trans-identities” are experienced and combined in the MENA region, this chapter will seek to present a nuanced overview of some of the challenges faced by sexual minorities in the Arab world.

Taking stock of LGBTQ diverse realities in the MENA region In Lebanon, the first non-governmental organization calling for the defense of sexual minorities was created in 2004 under the acronym HELEM (dream) with the purpose of supporting people with HIV/AIDS but also the LGBTQ community within the country.7 A few

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months after its creation, HELEM launched “Barra,” a local publication which attempted to provide an alternative (and positive) picture of sexual minorities in Islamic countries. In 2005, HELEM celebrated a day against homophobia in Lebanon and diffused videos over the Internet, which showed local members of the LGBTQ community speaking about the discrimination they faced. The organization also rejected Article 543 of the Lebanese Penal Code, first adopted in 1943 under the French Mandate, which condemns “unnatural relations” and sought to raise awareness of the harmful nature of homophobic discourses with Lebanese society.8 In particular, HELEM was able to popularize the slogan “I exist,” with the understanding that sexual minorities exist in Lebanon and must therefore be treated like other citizens, despite their sexual orientation. Since 2006, the organization has taken advantage of governmental support provided through the Ministry of Health for its work on HIV prevention. HELEM was also able to organize public demonstrations in favor of sexual minorities as well as a series of meetings about LGBTQ questions in Lebanese universities. HELEM set an example, encouraging the creation of new pro-LGBTQ organizations such as MEEM (Support Group for Lesbian Women) in August 2007. Other groups and personalities followed suit in the following years. In 2008, for instance, Joumana Haddad, the founder of the Jasad 9 (or body in Arabic), a magazine aimed at examining issues related to sexuality in the Arab world, took an explicit public position in favor of LGBTQ rights in the country by writing in favor of HELEM and MEEM but also through raising awareness of the repression experienced by sexual minorities in the Arab World. In 2009, MEEM published a well-received edited collection titled “Bareed Mista’jil – True stories,” which shared the personal life stories of some lesbian, bisexual women, and transgender people. Despite its relatively small size,10 HELEM advertises issues of relevance to the community through various social platforms, notably the G-AZZI and HOMOS LIBNANI blogs, which examine the history of LGBTQ advocacy in Lebanon or the everyday lives of gay, lesbian, and transgender people. In August 2012, for instance, HELEM activists organized a series of demonstrations in front of the Ministry of Justice in Beirut to denounce anal tests conducted by the police on young men suspected of engaging in homosexual activities. During the protests, hundreds of people took to the streets, brandished LGBTQ signs and flags, and called for the end of these humiliating practices. In neighboring Egypt, local sexual minorities share a number of similarities with their Lebanese counterparts, but there are also crucial differences. Although same-sex practices are not prohibited by law, Egyptian sexual minorities have to contend with conservative values and the often hostile attitude of the general population on the one hand, and seemingly random episodes of state repression on the other. The “Queen boat” case is perhaps the most illustrative example of the seemingly haphazard state attitude vis-à-vis the sexual minorities of the country. In May 2001, dozens of men who were partying on the “Queen Boat,” a cruise boat on the Nile river, were arrested by the local police. Many of those arrested were subject to humiliating medical tests aimed at finding evidence of same-sex practice, tortured while in detention, and later charged with “debauchery.”11 Out of the sixty men arrested in the “Queen Boat” case, twenty-one were sentenced to jail terms, ranging from one to three years.12 The case marked a turning point for sexual minorities in Egypt as it signaled the end of an extended period of relative state tolerance. For Pratt (2007), the repressive turn taken by the Egyptian government is the result of the government’s insecurity vis-à-vis the political challenge caused by competing Islamic parties and the socio-economic challenges caused by a decade of destabilizing neo-liberal reforms.13 This view is shared by Whitaker (2006) who cites an Egyptian Human Rights activist who argues that in order 330

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to counter this ascending [Islamist] power, the state resorts to sensational prosecutions, in which the regime steps in to protect Islam from evil apostates… The regime seems to have realised that suppression and persecution of Islamists will not uproot the Islamist threat unless it’s combined with actions that bolster the state’s religious legitimacy.14 Further West in the region, the experiences of sexual minorities in the Maghreb region vary widely. In Morocco, it is with the Tetouan events of 2004 (during which forty-three people were arrested by the local authorities during a private party and accused of homosexuality) that LGBTQ militants first articulated their demands via social networks by asking for the liberation of the accused. In 2005, Kif Kif, an association created that same year, attempted to initiate a number of actions aimed at forcing the authorities to acknowledge the rights of sexual minorities in Morocco; notably, by asking for the abolition of Article 489 of the penal code which condemns same-sex relations.15 Unable to gather institutional support (notably from local progressive political parties), the association moved its headquarters to Spain where it launched the digital newspaper Mithly, published online but also sold in secret paper format in some Moroccan towns.16 In 2007, the case of the “Gay Marriage of Ksar El Kébir” revived tensions between the government and conservative groups on the one hand, and pro-LGBTQ activists on the other. The case was sparked by rumors of a “Gay wedding” allegedly held in a small town in Northern Morocco. After a video showing two men dancing together surfaced on the Internet, thousands of protesters stormed a local mosque and called for the authorities to crack down on the organizers.17 Following the demonstrations, a local court sentenced six men to short prison sentences for being guilty of a wedding simulation between people of the same sex and alcohol consumption. While the event that sparked popular outrage was largely in line with some local customs built on a careful balancing of sacred and profane expressions,18 local media outlets presented the celebration as a gay marriage and offered a large space for conservative personalities willing to condemn homosexuality publicly and remind the population of Islam’s rejection of same-sex practices.19 In 2009, Betty Lachgar and Zineb El Rhazoui created the Alternative Movement for Individual Freedoms (or MALI) which includes the rights of sexual minorities as one of its main themes. The movement organized a number of highly visible protest actions in the country, such as the 2012 campaign for the decriminalization of homosexuality. Its members have also deployed the rainbow flag during a number of events such as the Human Rights Forum held in the city of Marrakech in November 2014. Shortly after the start of the Arab uprisings of 2011, another group of local LGBTQ activists launched Aswat, an online magazine published in Arabic.20 Aswat helped consolidate the voice of the LGBTQ community in Morocco while mobilizing for the official recognition of the rights of homosexuals and transgender people. In neighboring Algeria and Tunisia, new pro-LGBTQ blogs and online publications were launched at the same time. In this perspective, it is worth noting that although sexual minorities were invisible during the pro-democracy protests that rocked the region in 2011 and 2012, members of local LGBTQ communities compensated for their absence by using the Internet as a major outlet for the expression of their demands. In Algeria, LGBTQ rights are championed by a number of collectives such as Alouen, Trans DZ, and especially by Abounawass which was created in 2006. Some of the main goals of these organizations are the fight against the propagation of AIDS and the abolition of Articles 333 and 338 of the Algerian Penal Code condemning homosexuality. One of their most daring acts took place during the municipal elections of 29 November 2007, when they called on citizens to insert a bulletin in the ballot box stating, “I vote for gay citizens, I vote 331

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for Algeria for all.”21 The collectives also declared 10 October as the day of LGBTQ people in Algeria, during which pictures of candles lit in support of discriminated sexual minorities worldwide were diffused through Facebook and Twitter. The collective also called to light candles in support of sexual minorities. One interesting aspect about Algerian LGBTQ organizations is their strong attachment to their local identity. One member described the significance of 10 October: Why this date? Simply because it is the date of birth of Selim I, ‘first caliph of the ­Ottoman Empire’ who loved young men. It is also in line with the logic of our membership in the Muslim Arab world while being LGBTQ.22 One of the founders of Abounawass is Randa, a MtF trans-Algerian who left Algeria for Lebanon in 2009, where she was welcomed by the association HELEM. She then published her memoirs in a book co-written with journalist Hazem Saghieh while preparing for her MtF transition. In her book, Randa talks about her femininity and her wish to live without being threatened by what she calls “the Islamists” in Algeria. Randa’s discourse is symbolic of these “subalterns” among the “subalterns” often overlooked in the literature on sexual minorities.23 Such individuals are very often left to their own devices in the region, especially if they do not wish to work with the neo-colonial intervention spearheaded by the LGBTQ International, rightly denounced by Joseph Massad and Jasbir Puar.24 Among a number of local personalities who publicly advertise their homosexuality and mobilize against discrimination, one may point to Zoheir Djazairi, Aissa Amazigh, and Ludovic Mohamed Zahed, founder of the including mosque (CALEM) in Paris, whose goal is to offer an inclusive space for Muslim homosexuals. The latter is also the author of several texts explaining the way in which he combines his “islamity” and his religiosity.25 In neighboring Tunisia, members of Shams, a local association fighting against all discrimination, integrate LGBTQ rights in the range of issues they tackle. Shams was officially created in May 2015, and has been recognized by the authorities. For its President Yadh Krandel, the purpose of the organization is to protect minorities in Tunisia and to repeal Article 230 of the Tunisian Penal Code punishing “unnatural” same-sex acts. While members of the association are regularly invited by local media outlets to participate in public debates,26 the association has also received the support of a number of local personalities such as academic Raja Ben Slama, theater comedian Mahmoud Chalbi, and singer Lobna Noomane. Other LGBTQ movements like Majoudin, Chouf, and DAMJ led actions in favor of LGBTQ rights. On 26 March 2015, for instance, a demonstration took place within the framework of the World Social Forum in Tunis, with tens of people brandishing rainbow flags and asking for the decriminalization of homosexuality. Finally, the experiences of sexual minorities in the rest of the Arab World also vary tremendously. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, one of the most repressive countries in the region (along with Sudan and Mauritania where same-sex relations are also punishable by death), the country’s strict gender segregation makes it paradoxically “easier to be gay than straight.”27 As in other parts of the world,28 the enforcement of the harsh provisions of the penal code is spotty because a more proactive strategy would endanger the state’s elite who engage in same-sex practices.29 For one gay Saudi man who was reflecting on the country’s death penalty for same-sex relations, cited by Whitaker, for instance, Americans love those kind of dramatic stories, but they are mostly lore. I mean, it’s well known that there are several members of the royal family who are gay. No one’s chopping their heads off.30 332

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Elsewhere in the Gulf, the provisions of the various legal codes criminalizing same-sex relationships are also strict but vary significantly from country to country (both in relation to the nature of the act and the usual interpretation by local courts). While same-sex relationships can carry the death penalty in Yemen, Qatar, and the UAE,31 jurists in the UAE disagree on the law and no official executions have been carried out in relation to same-sex consensual relations.32 In Iraq and Jordan, the countries’ penal codes do not contain provisions condemning homosexual relations, but members of the Jordanian and Iraqi LGBTQ communities are constrained by deeply rooted cultural values that make them vulnerable to abuse by family members, or religious militias in the case of Iraq. In Iraq, the situation of gay men deteriorated significantly after the 2003 invasion, and particularly after 2005 when Grand Ayatollah Sistani issued a religious decree calling for the killing of homosexuals in the country “in the most severe way.”33 While the decree was revoked shortly afterward, al-Sistani’s call was followed by a series of horrifying murders targeting effeminate-looking or transgendered men.34

Trajectories of change Intermediate actors as agents of change In recent years, Arab countries witnessed a number of attempts by Western advocacy groups aimed at promoting LGBTQ rights in the region. While different in their nature, actions by Western “norm entrepreneurs”35 all led to the same defensive reaction in the countries that they targeted. The high-profile support offered by Western embassies and advocacy groups to the men indicted in the “Queen Boat” in Egypt for instance was perceived as a “security threat” in Egypt.36 Similarly, attempts by the Feminist collective Femen to initiate a national conversation about LGBTQ rights in Morocco through the organization of a gay kiss-in in front of a local mosque in 2015 ended up antagonizing the local population and putting more pressure on the small spaces of freedom that the LGBTQ community enjoyed before Femen’s action.37 However, while international attempts at promoting LGBTQ rights in the Arab World are often counterproductive, actions taken by respected local actors may have a more positive impact on the local LGBTQ communities.38 Given the ambiguous nature of Islam’s condemnation of homosexuality, it is possible to imagine an Islamically driven attempt to address anti-LGBTQ societal violence across the Arab world through opening a discussion on reform of the penal codes that derive their logic from specific readings of religious texts. 39 Recent statements taken by a wide range of locally respected actors seem to indicate some change for sexual minorities in the region. In 2016, Muqtada al-Sadr, an important Iraqi Shi’i leader and the head of one of Iraq’s most influential militias, issued a statement in which he was calling his supporters (some of whom involved in the gruesome killings of suspected members of the local LGBTQ community) to disassociate from them [i.e. local members of the LGBTQ community, but] not attack them, as it increases their aversion and you must guide them using acceptable and rational means. (Human Rights Watch 2016) 40 Al-Sadr’s statement followed others made by respected religious figures elsewhere in the Arab World, including Rached Ghannouchi, head of the Tunisian Islamic Party Ennahda,41 who refused to criminalize same-sex relations and attested that “everyone is free with their 333

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sexual orientation … and that legal provision needs to be adopted to protect [members of the LGBTQ community]”42, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and Salman al-Ouda, a prominent Saudi Cleric who issued a similar statement calling for more tolerance vis-à-vis local sexual minorities, saying that, “Even though homosexuality is considered a sin in all the Semitic holy books, it does not require any punishment in this world.”43 In this perspective, “nudges” by respected religious personalities regarding the rights of sexual minorities may allow for the development of a public conversation within conservative circles in Arab countries whose leaders cannot as easily be accused of being instruments of Western imperialism and dismissed as a consequence. As argued by Mohamed, a young Moroccan gay man in his early twenties from Rabat, sexual minorities need to be able to project the idea that “being an LGBTQ member also means being an ethical person and a good person.”44 In order to do that, for Mohamed, progressive strategies need to target local religious leaders “who need to be educated”45 on issues of relevance to sexual minorities. Thus, the role of local religious personalities, who are especially well-positioned to negotiate the adoption of new norms and adapt them to local cultural realities, seems to be crucial for the development of the rights of sexual minorities in the region.

Arts and literature as a catalyst for change The social upheaval which accompanied the events of the Arab Spring led to some progress in some countries such as Lebanon and Tunisia but also revealed the extent of the challenges still faced by sexual minorities in most of the region. Since 2011, new online publications increased the visibility of gay, lesbian, and transgender presence in everyday life and advertised the importance of full citizenship for sexual minorities. However, strong inhibitions remain present throughout the region. During the demonstrations of February and March 2011 in Morocco for instance, many members of the local LGBTQ community joined the various pro-­democracy protests that were organized all over the country but chose to remain anonymous and did not explicitly raise issues related to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Morocco. Though rare, a number of politicians in the Maghreb region expressed support for the rights of sexual minorities. A case in point is Tunisian Minister of Justice Mohamed Salah Ben Aissa who mentioned the possibility of repealing Article 230 on Tunisian radio in 2015.46 More importantly, it is within the region’s different art scenes that most of the calls for equality for sexuality minorities are articulated. Gay writers such as Rachid O.,47 Abdellah Taïa48 in Morocco, and Eyet-Chékib Djaziri in Tunisia49 openly speak of their feelings and their real-life experience as sexual minorities in the region. In Lebanon, singer Hamed Sinno, of the group of rock-jazz “Leila,” mentions the condition of sexual minorities in Lebanon and his love for men in his songs’ lyrics. Similarly, Lebanese dancer Alexandre Pouliakouvich created a choreography inspired from incidents and verbal attacks that he was a victim of in Beirut.50 In his novel “Garçon manqué,” Nina Bouraoui, an Algerian writer who lives and works in France, examines transgender and bisexuality subjects. It is, however, worth noting that there is still no woman writer in the MENA region who publicly identifies as lesbian.51 Other artists who chose to not advertise their sexual orientation also joined the fight for LGBTQ rights. On 2013, in partnership with the Dutch cultural center NIMAR, the movement MALI organized a photo exhibition in support for sexual minorities in the Arab world. Photographer Fred Leloup crossed the streets of Rabat with members of MALI and took a set of photos showing same-sex couples. These photos were exposed in NIMAR and accompanied with texts sent by other local artists. The actress Fatym el Ayachi sent a brief message written by hand: “to all the homophobes, I wish you a gay child.” Other writers, 334

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such as Lamia Berrada Berca, Hicham Tahir, or Sonia Terrab, put back a paper talking about homosexuality. Hicham Tahir, for instance, wrote a novel intitule “Je suis pédé” (“I am a fag”) talking about society’s homophobic attitude against a young Moroccan homosexual which he published in his blog. This aesthetic production creates what Michel Foucault calls “heterotopies.”52 Some artists thus produce in their artworks a concrete place where the utopian liberalization of LGBTQ people becomes real. As argued by Boltanski, the art world is a world of resistance susceptible to “generalizing” the fight for LGBTQ rights by internationalizing it more.53 A number of literary prizes and cultural festivals funded by Western governments have the potential of nourishing this logic by including local LGBTQ artists. Between 2011 and 2013, the Mamounia Literary Prize awarded Mohamed Leftah for his novel, The Last Fight of ­Captain Ni’Mat, which tells the story of an Egyptian retired serviceman who belatedly discovers his homosexuality, as well as writer Rachid O., known to be the first Moroccan author to have written on his homosexuality. Whereas Joseph Massad might see this kind of support as a neo-colonial intervention producing new forms of orientalism, this chapter argues that, on the contrary, these may be new forms of cosmopolitan subversions of normativity. A case in point is French-Moroccan author Leîla Slimani, winner of the prestigious ­Goncourt Literary Prize in November 2016, who declared on French radio her support for the rights of sexual minorities. Few days after winning the prize, Slimani wrote a column in a popular Moroccan online portal where she strongly condemned the arrest of two teenagers who were caught kissing on a top of a house in the city of Marrakech. Slimani’s public stance is illustrative of a debate in which a number of Moroccan writers are involved.54 Another example is Abdellah Taïa’s latest novel titled A Country to Die In (published in 2015), where he speaks about a Maghrebian transgender person living in Paris who experiences a “double absence,” making him a foreigner in his country of adoption but also in his country of origin.55 While Taïa’s novel examines issues related to sexual minorities, it is not a militant book, but rather the expression of an artistic ambition with its own aesthetic goals.56

Conclusion In conclusion, it is important to re-emphasize the fact that sexual minorities in the Middle East and North Africa are a composite group. Although members of local LGBTQ communities share a number of commonalities (such as the need to address social exclusion and gain equal rights), these communities face radically different legal, social, and political challenges depending on the country and the socio-legal context(s) in which they are embedded. Even within national boundaries, the experiences of sexual minorities vary greatly, with low-income or socially marginalized LGBTQ members far more at risk of discrimination than their wealthier or more socially influential counterparts. As underlined by Mina, a thirty-five-year-old lesbian member of the Moroccan collective Aswat, actions by local elitist organizations, often perceived by poorer members of the LGBTQ community as being Western-influenced and out-of-touch with local realities “may also hurt other gays” unwittingly.57 Elsewhere in the Arab world, most of the associations working to advance the rights of sexual minorities include only a handful of activists, who, although very active (and often overly visible on social media), are largely disconnected from the general LGBTQ community. From this perspective, this chapter also stressed the importance of respected local actors who have the legitimacy necessary to educate the general public about the challenges experienced by sexual minorities and eventually spearhead the adoption of progressive policies. 335

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Religious personalities, respected political figures, and leaders of local workers’ associations can hardly be dismissed as foreign agents and thus have the ability to shape the opinion of the general public. Activist efforts to promote LGBTQ rights in the region should therefore focus on these personalities who have the legitimacy and clout necessary to initiate change in accordance with local realities and sensitivities.

Notes 1 Petra Doan, “Disrupting Gender Normativity in the Middle East: Supporting Gender Transgression as a Development Strategy,” Amy Lind, ed., Development, Sexual Rights, and Global Governance (London: Routledge, 2010), 145. 2 Max Bearak and Darla Cameron, “Here Are the 10 Countries Where Homosexuality May Be Punished by Death,” Washington Post, 16 June 2016. Available www.washingtonpost.com/news/ worldviews/wp/2016/06/13/here-are-the-10-countries-where-homosexuality-may-be-­punishedby-death-2/ (Accessed 17 August 2017). 3 As ’ad AbuKhalil, “A Note on the Study of Homosexuality in the Arab/Islamic Civilization,” The Arab Studies Journal 1, no. 2 (1993), 32–34, 48. 4 Massad, Joseph Andoni, Desiring Arabs (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007). We also build upon a similar critique articulated in Katerina Dalacoura, “Homosexuality as Cultural Battleground in the Middle East: Culture and Postcolonial International Theory,” Third World Quarterly 35, no. 7 (2014), 1290–1306. 5 On the contrary, Afsaneh Najmabadi showed, for instance, that the historic differences between Europe and Iran do not preclude the presence of important parallels that make possible a comparison between the two geographical areas (at least during the nineteenth century) which gave forms to cultural hybridities still present within Iranian society. See Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 6 Judith Butler, Frame of War: When is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009). 7 Sofian Merabat, Queer Beiruth (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014). 8 Marie Bonte, “Gay Paradise – Kind of ” Les Les Espaces de l’homosexualité masculine à B ­ eyrouth,” EchoGéo 25 (2013). Available http://echogeo.revues.org/13498 (Accessed 16 August 2017). 9 In hiatus since 2009. 10 Today, the association has officially twenty-five members. 11 Nicola Pratt, “The Queen Boat Case in Egypt: Sexuality, National Security and State Sovereignty,” Review of International Studies 33, no. 1 (2007), 131. 12 The sentences were later overturned for most prisoners by former president Hosni Mubarak. Pratt, “Queen Boat Case”, 132. 13 Pratt, “Queen Boat Case”, 134–135. 14 Quoted in Brian Whitaker, Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 50. 15 Jean Zaganiaris, Un printemps de désirs, Représentation des genres dans la littérature et le cinéma marocains à l'heure des Printemps arabes (Casablanca: La Croisée des Chemins, 2014). 16 The publication of the magazine has since been discontinued. 17 Tom Pfeiffer and Zakia Abdennebi, “Liberals and Islamists Clash over Morocco ‘gay Wedding,’” Reuters, 13 March 2008. Available www.reuters.com/article/us-rights-morocco-idUSL05814485 20080313 (Accessed 17 August 2017). 18 See Abdellah Hammoudi, La victime et ses masques. Essai sur le sacrifice et la mascarade au Maghreb (Paris: Seuil, 1988) for more on this question. 19 Betty Lachgar, one of the founders of the MALI (or Alternative movement for individual freedoms) movement, notes, for instance, that “after the verdict, homophobic demonstrations were organized in Ksar El-Kébir and included members of all major Islamic parties notably the Movement of Unicity and Reforme (MUR), the Justice and Development Party (PJD) and the non-official Al Adl Wa Ihsane.” (Personal Interview, June 2015). 20 Also discontinued.

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Sitting at the crossroads 21 Personal Interview, September 2016. 22 Abunawas Algérie, “Qui sommes nous! Une rubrique pour nous connetre (sic),” 2 November 2016. Available http://abunawas-algerie.e-monsite.com/pages/qui-sommes-nous-une-rebriquepour-nous-connetre.html (Accessed 17 August 2017). 23 See, for instance, Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subalterns Speak?” Cary Nelson and Lawrence ­Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (London: Macmillan, 1988), 271–314. 24 Massad, Desiring Arabs; Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). 25 Ludovic Mohamed Zahed, Queer Muslim Marriage: Struggle of a gay couple's true life story towards Inclusivity & Tawheed within Islam (Marseille: CALEM, 2013). 26 Mariem Guellouz, “De la vulnérabilité linguistique à la vulnérabilité corporelle,” Karine E ­ spineira, Maud-Yeuse Thomas, Jean Zaganiaris, and Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed, eds., Corps vulnérables, vie dévulnérabilisées (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2016), 17–32. 27 Nadya Labi, “The Kingdom in the Closet,” The Atlantic, May 2017. Available www.theatlantic.com/ magazine/archive/2007/05/the-kingdom-in-the-closet/305774/ (Accessed 16 August 2017). 28 Merouan Mekouar, “International Social Agents and Norm Diffusion: The Case of LGBTQ Rights in Morocco, Project on Middle East Political Science,” Project on Middle East Political Science, July 2016. Available http://pomeps.org/2016/07/20/international-social-agents-and-normdiffusion-the-case-of-lgbtq-rights-in-morocco/ (Accessed 17 August 2017). 29 Labi, “Kingdom in the Closet”. 30 Whitaker, Unspeakable Love, 59. 31 Bearak and Cameron, “Here are the Ten Countries”. 32 Whitaker, Unspeakable Love, 123. 33 Howden, Daniel, “Sistani Renounces Fatwa on Gays,” The Independent, 16 May2006. Available www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/sistani-renounces-fatwa-on-gays-478396. html (Accessed 17 August 2017). 34 Doan, “Disrupting Gender Normativity,” 150. 35 Martha Finnemore and Katherine Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Cultural Change,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (Autumn 1998), 887–917. 36 Pratt, “Queen Boat Case,” 138, 141. 37 Mekouar, “International Social Agents”, 66. Similar defensive reactions occurred in other countries such as Uganda, Senegal and Nigeria. For more on the topic, see Meredith L. Weiss, and Michael J. Bosia, eds. Global Homophobia: States, Movements, and the Politics of Oppression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013) and Michael J. Bosia, “Museveni’s ‘Gay Peril’ in Global Perspective.” CIHA Blog, 29 May 2014. Available www.cihablog.com/musevenis-gay-peril-in-­g lobalperspective/ (Accessed 17 August 2017), for instance. 38 Joseph Massad, “Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World,” Public Culture 14, no. 2 (2002), 361–386; Massad, Desiring Arabs; Mekouar, “International Social Agents”. 39 Farhang Rouhani, “Religion, Identity and Activism: Queer Muslim Diasporic Identities,” Kath Browne, Jason Lim, and Gavin Brown, eds., Geographies of Sexualities: Theory, Practice, and Politics (Farnham: Ashgate, 2007), 173. 40 Human Rights Watch, “Iraq: Cleric’s Call against Anti-LGBT Violence.” Human Rights Watch, 18 August 2016. Available www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/18/iraq-clerics-call-against-anti-lgbt-­ violence (Accessed 17 August 2017). 41 Ghannouchi’s statement is even more surprising given the fact that some members of his party were still accusing former President Ben Ali of having been too accommodating with sexual minorities in the country. However, once the party formed its first government after the revolution, its members seemed to have realized the benefits linked to building a larger support base. In particular, as the party was learning to govern, its leadership was attempting to identify new political strategies that could help the party placate some of its secular opponents while reassuring international partners. In an interview with journalist Olivier Ravanello, Ghannouchi expressed a liberal view in relation to individual freedoms, notably regarding the rights of sexual minorities Olivier Ravanello and Rached Ghannouchi, Au sujet de l’islam (Paris: Plon, 2015). As the Islamic party was attempting to acquire internal and external political support (and also distance itself from the more radical elements in ­Tunisian society), its leaders engaged in a process of “strategic opening” on societal issues as evidenced by the party’s silent acquiescence to the creation of the Shams collective, for instance.

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Merouan Mekouar and Jean Zaganiaris 42 Al Yom Al Jadid, “Ghannouchi: I Reject the Criminalization of Homosexuality: Laws Must Be Enacted to Regulate the Sexual Relations of Homosexuals,” Al Yom Al Jadid, 6 April 2015. Available www.elyomnew.com/news/world/2015/04/06/14538 (Accessed 17 August 2017). 43 Middle East Eye, “Senior Saudi Cleric: Homosexuality Should Not Be Punished,” Middle East Eye, 3 May 2016. Available www.middleeasteye.net/news/senior-saudi-cleric-homosexualityshould-not-be-punished-2030515999 (Accessed 17 August 2017). 4 4 Personal Interview, 26 April 2016. 45 Personal Interview, 26 April 2016. 46 Guellouz, “De la vulnérabilité linguistique”. 47 Bruneau Perreau, “Rachid O.’s Inner Exile. Gay Heterotopia and Postcolonial Textuality”, Eric Vendervoort, ed., Masculinities in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century French and Francophone Literature (Cambridge, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2010), 155–172. 48 Jean Zaganiaris, Queer Maroc, représentations des genres, des sexualités et des transidentités dans la littérature marocaine (Paris: Des Ailes sur un Tracteur, 2014). 49 Gibson Ncube, “Repenser la construction transméditerranéenne de la sexualité «minoritaire»,” DIRE 5 (2014). Available http://epublications.unilim.fr/revues/dire/497 (Accessed 17 August 2017). 50 Guellouz, “De la vulnérabilité linguistique”. 51 Isabelle Charpentier, Le rouge aux joues. Virginité, interdits sexuels et rapports de genre dans la littérature marocaine et algérienne (Saint-Etienne: Presses Universitaires de Saint-Etienne, 2013); Zaganiaris, Un printemps de désirs. 52 Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits (Paris: Gallimard, 1967). 53 Luc Boltanski, L’Amour et la Justice comme compétences. Trois essais de sociologie de l’action (Paris: Métailié, 1990). 54 Notably, Abdellah Baïda, who also came publically in defense of the rights of sexual minorities in the country. 55 Abdessamad Dialmy, Jeunesse, sida et islam au Maroc (Casablanca: Eddif, 1999). 56 Gisèle Sapiro, “Le champ est-il national ? La théorie de la différenciation sociale au prisme de l'histoire globale”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 200, no. 5 (2013), 70–85. 57 Personal Interview, 5 April 2015.

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25 Minorities and armed conflict in the Middle East Paul S. Rowe

Armed conflict in the Middle East arises from some of the most potent identity-based disputes in global politics. Since the gradual collapse of Ottoman rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the legacy of colonization and incomplete state formation have laid the foundations for ongoing disputes throughout the region. The most highly charged of these disputes is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, which arose at the end of the British mandate over Palestine in 1948, when its Jewish and Palestinian Arab inhabitants had not agreed to terms by which the territory would be governed. But a number of other conflicts that persist today also arise out of the arbitrary division of former Ottoman possessions. These conflicts over the status and nature of the state system in the Middle East played a role in founding and shaping the many minority populations of the region. The early construction of the postcolonial state system both benefited and punished minorities, and set the stage for internal competitions between tribal, ethnic, and religious groups that persist to this day. Benjamin Thomas White points out that “an expanding state … may itself spur a sense of minority identity – and also accounts for the range of options that it opens up for the communities that become ‘minorities’.”1 The states that emerged out of the former Ottoman Empire had arbitrary boundaries that enveloped and divided communities, creating new dominant populations and minorities out of formerly subject peoples. As these states sought to create and enforce new forms of national identity and nationalism, they put minority populations in a difficult position. Some faced dispersal and genocide, and later resettlement, as refugees in lands of exile. Others sought to hold on to the privileges of citizenship that had been handed to them under the Tanzimat reforms of the late Ottoman period. Still others sought to shape the new politics of the states in which they found themselves. For many minority populations, the fragile nature of the postcolonial state system set in motion efforts to secure their own community within new borders. As they did so, many minority populations found that the very actions they took to ensure the security of their communities, by controlling or shaping the nature of the state, were threatening to their neighbors. Neighboring communities therefore responded with their own efforts to take power or to influence state institutions. Over time, this competition over the internal resources of the state in the hands of ethnoreligious groups became a self-perpetuating spiral of insecurity, or “ethnic security dilemma.”2 Saideman et al describe the ethnic security dilemma in this way: “the search for security motivates groups in divided societies to seek to 339

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control the state or secede if the state’s neutrality cannot be assured. Obviously these efforts can exacerbate the situation, because one group’s attempts to control the state will reinforce the fears of others, so they respond by competing to influence and even control the government.”3 Ethnic security dilemmas have fueled conflict in states such as Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, and they persist today in the form of competitive forms of sectarianism. The ethnic security dilemma is a powerful influence on the politics of minority communities. The structural constraints faced in divided states may drive minority communities inexorably and tortuously toward conflict. In many cases, there seems little choice but to engage in competitive nationalistic forms of organization, resulting in armed conflicts over territory, the state, or for mere survival. Nonetheless, minority communities can and do resist the structural constraints of divided societies, seeking to transcend the ethnic security dilemma and transform their divided societies to create pluralist forms of social organization. In this chapter, I consider several past and present conflicts that are rooted in an underlying ethnic security dilemma. A multitude of ethnic and ethnoreligious conflicts, dating back at least to the early collapse of the Ottoman Empire and genocidal violence against the Armenians, could be understood through the lens of the ethnic security dilemma. However, I concentrate on the more recent and ongoing ethnic rivalries in the region. In each case, the prevailing logic of insecurity forces members of minority communities into drastic and typically violent actions to maintain their place within the larger society. Within divided societies living in fragile or failing states, the security dilemma is all too powerful a force to be ignored. Longva notes that “In times of conflict, the minorities’ margin of action is severely reduced, and their status as victims overshadows their status as social agents, active devisers and users of strategies of accommodation and self-empowerment.”4 Nevertheless, it is possible for minority communities to shake the sectarian impulse. I conclude by demonstrating that even though the ethnic security dilemma frames the actions of many minority communities, some minority communities have resisted the urge to descend into competitive sectarianism.

Lebanon: confessionalism and security The emergence of modern Lebanon arose within the context of the decline of Ottoman rule in the region. As Ottoman control eroded in the late 1800s, the empowerment of the non-Muslim subjects of the Levant that began with the Tanzimat, and the increasing involvement of European powers in guaranteeing the safety of the Christian community, altered the playing field of Lebanese politics. Christian efforts to expand their authority amid declining Ottoman rule threatened the power of established Druze and Muslim elites, contributing to the outbreak of violence in 1860. Leila Fawaz describes how Christian and Druze rivalry in the later 1850s drove both confessional groups to seek foreign patronage, Maronite Christians looking to the French and the Druze to the British.5 Sectarian violence emerged in 1860 as each community sought to defend its privileges, only to be curtailed by the intervention of Ottoman and European powers. Amid the violence, Christians numbered disproportionately among the victims, a fact that contributed to domestic and foreign fears over the insecurity of the Christian population. Concern over the apparent vulnerability of Christian communities led to the establishment of the mutassarifiyya, a new form of sectarian governance that presaged developments in late twentieth-century Lebanon.6 The foundation of Lebanon under French mandatory authority in 1922 reflected the desires of the ascendant Christian minority to create a “greater Lebanon” out of the former ­Ottoman territories in the Levant. It was thought that such a state would improve the 340

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security of the Christian population and expand their influence over the maximum amount of territory. The Maronite Patriarch Elias Huwayek is widely credited with persuading the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 to reorganize former Ottoman domains in way that maximized the power base of the Christian minority, the heirs of “Phoenician” civilization, as he saw it.7 Kais Firro describes how French organization of colonial Lebanon in the 1920s reflected a desire to entrench the dominance of the Christian elite.8 During the period of the French mandate, Christian dominance was further entrenched by the 1932 census, which demonstrated that Christians constituted a bare majority of the Lebanese population – a census that remains the last definitive assessment of Lebanon’s demographics. While the territorial boundaries of Lebanon entrenched a bare Christian majority, gradual demographic change and the brittle National Pact (al-mithaq al-watani) that ushered in Lebanese independence in 1943 once again contributed to feelings of insecurity among the Christian communities. The National Pact enshrined Christian dominance through allocation of seats in the National Assembly at a ratio of 6 to 5. It guaranteed Christian dominance of the executive through its rule that the president would always be a Christian of the Maronite sect. In order to maintain government stability, Lebanese leaders agreed to maintain the state’s Arab orientation, implying support for pan-Arab initiatives that appealed to the broad majority of the sects in the region. Some Lebanese Christians saw political fusion with Syria as the best way to unite Arabs in the region and promote non-sectarian Lebanese interests.9 But the greater majority resisted Syrian nationalist efforts to unite the Levant. While no government has succeeded in revisiting the 1932 census, relative numbers of the Lebanese confessional groups have changed dramatically over decades after 1943. Among Lebanon’s confessional groups, the population of Christians declined disproportionately. Though Christians in general feared the erosion of their power in post-independence ­Lebanon, the community did not unite around a singular strategy to resist constitutional change until the early 1980s. Even then its unity came through the use of intracommunal violence. This can be explained in part by the diverse sectarian allegiances of Lebanese Christians, which include Maronite, Greek Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox, among others, and by the internal rivalry of the patrimonial leaders (zuama) among Christians. A crisis over the ­Lebanese response to the declaration of the United Arab Republic (of Syria and Egypt), coupled with the controversial effort of President Camille Chamoun to serve a second term, contributed to the brief outbreak of violence between ideologically polarized factions in 1958. Western intervention and the appointment of General Fouad Chehab as a compromise candidate for president prevented the outbreak of all-out civil war. But the crisis demonstrated both the ongoing vulnerability of the Christian population and the existence of divisions among various Christian power brokers.10 By the early 1970s, the influx of Palestinians and the relocation of the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership to Lebanon created a new crisis. To most Lebanese Christians, the Palestinian presence, and the concomitant pressure to make Lebanon the central front for attacks against Israel, represented the foremost challenge to the status quo. The increase in the Arab Muslim population presented an existential threat to the independent greater Lebanon envisioned by its founders. Christian militias formed by the prominent political movements in the early 1970s sought to root out the perceived demographic threat posed by Palestinians. By mid-1975, various militia groups, including the Lebanese Phalange, the Guardians of the Cedars, and the Tigers militia, emerged to target Palestinian refugee camps and eliminate the leadership of the Palestine Liberation ­Organization (PLO) in Lebanon. Though some non-Christians participated in these militias, they were largely composed and led by Maronites. Civil conflict accelerated in summer 341

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1976 when the militias imposed a siege on the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel al-Zataar, ravaging and destroying the camp and causing the deaths of several thousand Palestinians. Over the next few years, the efforts of Christian politicians to secure their own control over Lebanon contributed to the deepening of the civil war. In its first stage, Bashir Gemayal’s Phalangist militia engaged in violent efforts to bring all the Christian militias under his control in a wider Lebanese Front. In its second phase, an alliance between the Front and the Israeli government, which sent its forces to invade south Lebanon in June 1982, led to the subsequent election of Bashir Gemayel as president. The assassination of Bashir in September coincided with the expansion of warfare between the Lebanese Front and Druze, Shi’i, and Sunni militias formed to defend rapidly emerging territorial fiefs or cantons. The descent of Lebanon into protracted civil conflict from the mid-1970s into the 1980s was a clear example of the ethnic security dilemma at work. Lebanese politics had long been based on a compact between various ethnoreligious groups or confessions. Faced with the erosion of their influence over Lebanon’s internal and external affairs, complicated by both internal demographic change and the relocation of the PLO headquarters to Lebanon, popular movements among the Lebanese Christians identified Palestinian refugees as a threat to their own security. Their campaign against the PLO and the subsequent invasion of south Lebanon by their Israeli allies opened up a second front and drew in the Progressive Socialist Party of the Druze, the Sunni-led Mourabitoun, and the Shi’i Amal and Hizballah militias. Each of these organizations engaged in efforts to drive out Israeli forces and to stake out territorial enclaves where their confessional group could be secure. The intervention of Syria and the breakdown of solidarity among the popular movements that represented the Christian confessions led to the consolidation of a new Lebanese government under the Ta’if Agreement of October 1989. It is important to emphasize that while the ethnic security dilemma arises from the insecurities of specific ethnoreligious groups, contradictory social forces may complicate the mobilization of ethnoreligious groups. The maelstrom that engulfed Lebanon during the civil conflict of the 1980s arose both from the insecurities set up under the sectarian system of the national pact and resentments against the traditional leadership that had dominated Lebanese politics for decades. Ussama Makdisi notes that “many of the citizens used sectarianism to express their discontent with the product of elitist compromises.”11 Lebanese politics remains a precarious balancing act. The victory of pro-Syrian forces at the close of the civil war in 1990 upset the traditional dynamics of the Lebanese security dilemma. Since that time, Syrian allies such as Hizballah, Amal, and the Free Patriotic Movement have enjoyed the apex of power while challengers such as Saad al-Hariri’s Future Movement and various political parties among the Christian minority have sought to overturn the pro-Syrian status quo. Today, Lebanese sectarian factions are divided between the pro-Syrian 8 March Alliance and the Western-leaning 14 March Alliance. The dramatic political changes ushered in by the so-called Cedar Revolution of 2005 threatened the pro-Syrian status quo and engendered renewed violence. The violence came in the form of both targeted assassinations of pro-Western politicians and a direct confrontation between Hizballah and the Future Movement in May 2008. Since that time, the 8 March Alliance has been in ascendance, maintaining an uneasy peace with the 14 March Alliance, whose leader Saad al-Hariri has served as prime minister.

Iraq: insecurity in the “Republic of Fear” The legacy of colonization in the case of Iraq contributed to the early manifestation of ethnic insecurity under the Hashemite monarchy, especially after Iraq became nominally 342

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independent in 1932. The peoples of Iraq included Shi’i and Sunni Arabs, Kurds, and several smaller ethnoreligious communities such as Christians, Yezidis, Mandaeans, Shabak, and Turkomen. Today, Shi’i Arabs comprise a majority of the population. Efforts to deepen Hashemite rule over the various regions of Iraq, especially in the north where non-Arab and non-Muslim populations were largest, led to persistent violence. This has included violent and even genocidal actions against the Kurdish and the Assyrian population of the region. Mass population transfer of the Assyrians began during the First World War and persisted as the Treaty of Lausanne redrew the borders of the Turkish republic. The depopulation of the Tur Abdin region brought Assyrians into the new boundaries of Iraq and set the stage for attacks on displaced Assyrians, the worst of which took place at Simele in August 1933 (see Chapter 9). Under successive Iraqi administrations, the insecurity of ethnoreligious groups has led to internal colonization at the hands of the state. For most of the later twentieth century, Sunni Arabs, who were always a minority community, struggled to maintain their power through the imposition of a corporatist form of pan-Arabism – first under Nasserist military regimes and then under the Baath Party. The ideological imposition of Baathism served to marginalize traditional religious leaders among the Arab Shi’i of the south as well as tribal leaders from various ethnoreligious groups in the north. A key factor in maintaining Sunni dominance was state manipulation of fear. Kanan Makiya argues that Baath Party’s use of terror “simultaneously inculcated and kept at bay” the various divisions of Iraqi society, including sectarian and ethnic loyalties.12 In other words, the regime used the spectre of ethnoreligious divisions to threaten the breakdown of Iraqi society even as it ostensibly sought to elide those differences through the imposition of a Sunni version of pan-Arabism. Therefore, a second feature of ethnic dominance in Iraq was enforced Arabization, whereby the Arab communities of the south sought to impose Arabic language and culture on non-Arab communities as well as engage in Arab settlement and displacement of other populations in selected areas. For example, Mohamed Ihsan demonstrates how the Iraqi state promoted Arab employment in Kirkuk, the center of northern Iraq’s oil industry.13 State policies brought gradual change to the ethnic makeup of the state of Kirkuk and eroded Kurdish exclusivist claims to the region, which remains a flashpoint in Iraqi politics to this day. Among the Kurds, the search for autonomy and independence contributed to continuing rebellion and violent ethnic mobilization. But just as in Lebanon, ethnic mobilization was complicated by significant rivalries between the tribal and ideological forces involved. K ­ urdish efforts to win autonomy, if not outright independence, led some of these factions to take advantage of Iranian hostility to the Iraqi government. Their relationship with Iran threatened Iraqi stability, particularly in the context of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Ofra Bengio observes that Kurdish insurgency in Iraq correlated with the progress of Iranian victories during the war: “when the external war escalated, the internal miniwar escalated too.”14 As the Kurds exploited opportunities and coordinated action with the Iranians during the war, the Iraqi government increasingly perceived them as a threat as significant as the foreign enemy. The response of the Baath regime was to engage in deliberate targeting of restive Kurdish regions in the infamous Anfal offensive of 1988. The regime depopulated entire Kurdish villages, destroying them and sending hundreds of thousands into exile in other regions of Iraq. It also engaged in the use of chemical weapons against the Kurdish population. The most egregious crime against the Kurds was the use of chemical weapons on the city of Halabja in which over 3,200 civilians were killed in a single day in March 1988.15 The repression undertaken by the Baath government knew no bounds and contributed to lasting distrust between Iraqi Kurds and the central government in Baghdad. 343

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The dynamics of Baath Party rule shifted during the early 1990s in the wake of the First Gulf War. The introduction of a no-fly zone over areas of northern Iraq provided protection for the creation of a semi-autonomous Kurdish entity in the north. By the late 1990s, “the Kurds had begun to view their autonomy as being a permanent feature on the map of Iraq.”16 Kurdish autonomy was further entrenched after 2003. In the wake of the conflict that engulfed Iraq after the US invasion and deposition of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi governments have become increasingly representative of the dominant Arab Shi’i community. Under Nouri al Maliki, the government saw itself “first and foremost as leading the Shia community, and only secondarily as leading Iraq.”17 The abandonment of the city of Mosul in summer 2014, displayed the Iraqi government’s fading commitment to fair governance in the north. Since that time, the Iraqi government’s increasing reliance on support from the Iranian government and the mobilization of Shi’i popular militias have complicated the relationship between Iraq’s Shi’i and Sunni Arab populations. Shi’i majoritarianism only served to exacerbate the natural tendency of Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority to see Iraqi politics as a zero-sum contest. The defeat of the Baathist regime in 2003 led to the marginalization of Sunni Arabs in successive Iraqi governments. Past supporters of the regime in the “Sunni triangle” of Iraq, concentrated in cities such as Fallujah, Ramadi, and Tikrit, were never fully reconciled to the creation of a multiethnic Iraqi state and formed the core constituency of the insurrection against the US occupation and (later) the new Iraqi state. During the years after the US invasion, the local branch of al-Qaeda in Iraq recruited several members of the former regime’s security services, many of whom took shelter in neighboring Syria.18 This organization mutated over time to become the Islamic State of Iraq, then the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the putative “Islamic State” movement. Isaac Kfir describes how this organization translated Sunni Arab resentments and feelings of existential insecurity into a political program of violence. Its reign of terror in north-central Iraq from 2014 to 2017 was therefore the product of the ethnic security dilemma at work, since “[p]ost-2003 Iraq saw religiously based social identities come to the fore, so that only real or subjective kinship gave individuals security.”19 The Islamic State mobilized global ideological networks, giving it a reach far beyond its local base in Iraq, but its central preoccupation – the defence of a particularist (Salafist) Sunni version of Islam – arose directly from the ethnic security dilemma faced by the Arab Sunni population of Iraq. This later extended to the Sunnis of Syria as well. The Islamic State invasion also bolstered Kurdish aspirations for an independent Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurdish pesh merga mobilized to the defense of Kirkuk and border regions of the Kurdish autonomous region. Though they faced a significant military challenge from the Islamic State, the Kurds benefited by the perception that they were the strongest bulwark against the spread of Islamist radicalism. What is more, Kurdistan became a haven for minority communities targeted by Islamic State. Nevertheless, minority communities remain wary of the growth of Kurdish power, concerned that the further consolidation of Kurdish control over northern regions might merely lead to the enforced Kurdification of minority communities in the same way that Baathist rule implied enforced Arabization.20 In other words, Kurdish efforts to secure their own autonomy might ultimately go on to threaten smaller minority communities. The Islamic State movement was largely defeated in battles in late 2017. But these victories do not conclusively demonstrate the defeat of Sunni Arab organization against Shi’i dominance of the Iraqi government. Persistent ethnoreligious cleavages artificially submerged beneath the Iraqi Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein were unleashed with his overthrow. The consolidation of a truly multiethnic Iraq of all its constituent ethnic and religious groups 344

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continues to elude the government. So long as the Iraqi government remains in the hands of a coalition of parties committed to Shi’i sectarian dominance, it will only contribute to the strengthening of the ethnic security dilemma and the polarization of Iraqi politics.

Syria: sectarianism and security The ethnoreligious construction of Syria lends itself to the perpetual danger of ethnic dominance, given that Sunni Arabs form the majority population in a country with several smaller sectarian groupings. Notwithstanding the severe decimation of the Syrian population amid years of civil war and the attendant refugee crisis, Van Dam estimates that Alawis constitute 11.5% of the population, Christians 14.1%, and Kurds 8.5% – while Sunni Arabs constitute 57.4%.21 Syria arose out of the partition of French mandatory territories in the region, and the creation of greater Lebanon – a sectarian state with a Christian majority – had an influence on the foundations of the Syrian state as well. Colonial authorities pieced out mandate Syria to create sectarian Alawi and Druze enclaves, emphasizing foundational ethnoreligious divisions. Since that time, Syrian political movements and governments have had to counter the sectarian narrative of Syrian identity. Though ethnoreligious divisions laid beneath the surface of Syrian politics, ideological, regional, and Cold War politics had a larger role to play in the early years after Syrian independence. Syrian pan-Arabism flowed out of minority desires to reduce the political significance of ethnoreligious cleavages, and took the form of communist, Nasserist, and Baathist mobilization. However, the rise of the Alawi minority as a dominant force in the military during the 1960s, and the success of Hafez al-Asad in taking over the Syrian government in 1970, sowed the seeds of sectarianism that bore fruit in the twenty-first century. The regime built by Hafez al-Asad upheld the secular pan-Arabism of the Baath Party movement, and both naturally and by design integrated the various minority communities in Syria, including the Alawis, Druze, Christians, Shi’i, and Kurds (one might say, in descending order). Over time, this took the form of ethnoreligious dominance. Arab Sunnis, the majority sectarian community in Syria, increasingly came to see official secularism merely as a means by which the minority communities marginalized the desires of the majority. This was in spite of the deliberate effort on Hafez’s part to try to cultivate Sunni support for his regime, including an amendment to the constitution that required the president to be a Muslim.22 Islamist groups thereby became the dominant conduit of Sunni majoritarianism and opposition to the government of Syria. At times, Islamist mobilization loomed as an existential threat to the Baathist state. In June 1979, opponents of the regime staged an attack at the artillery school in Aleppo, killing at least thirty-two cadets. The majority of the victims were likely Alawis, setting the stage for three years of direct conflict between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood (channeling the resentments of Arab Sunnis), and the Alawi-dominated regime.23 The sectarian conflict came to a head with the decision by Asad’s government to lay siege to the city of Hama in February 1982. The subsequent dragnet operation aimed at rooting out supporters of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood likely claimed the lives of thousands of Syrian citizens. Under Hafez’s son Bashar al-Asad, support for the regime gradually narrowed, excluding many of the Sunni Arabs whose support had been cultivated under his father. Reflecting on the growing erosion of the Asad regime’s control over Syrian society amid the Arab Spring protests of 2011, Raymond Hinnebusch argues that a growing non-sectarian opposition movement challenged Bashar’s control over the secular narrative in Syrian politics. In order to maintain his regime, Bashar’s narrowing locus of control forced him to resort 345

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to hardening resistance to the Sunnis within his Alawi support base.24 As the repression of opposition protests devolved into civil war from 2011 to 2012, several attacks staged by the government and the opposition took the form of sectarian violence. The government targeted Sunni Muslims, and the opposition denigrated Christians and Alawis in its rhetoric.25 At the same time, the Lebanese Hizballah entered into the civil war as the government’s primary client militia. This demonstrated that both Hizballah and the Syrian government had shared existential concerns about an opposition victory. Seven years of war in Syria have confirmed most of the ethnoreligious factors that underpin the regime and the opposition. As the regime was forced to redeploy Syrian forces away from the country’s northeast toward the capital, this created a power vacuum that several organized groups filled. Most of these groups represented key ethnoreligious cleavages. Arab Sunnis naturally formed the majority of the fighters who joined the opposition as Syria fell into civil war in 2011–12. They divided their support among a variety of opposition groups, eventually including the Western-allied Free Syrian Army and the radical Islamist groups such as the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) took a defensive posture in the northeast and its militia, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), became an important fighting force as the Syrian civil war devolved into a war against the Islamic State. Other small sectarian and ethnic militias, such as the Turkish-allied Syrian Turkmen Brigades and the Syriac Military Council, also represent those communities. The Syrian regime of Bashar al-Asad relies on a coalition of Alawi, Druze, Christian, and Arab Muslim citizens of the state who have not taken up arms against it. While economic, ideological, and foreign influences all play a part in the ongoing Syrian conflict, the division of Syria into a set of sectarian enclaves in late 2017 follows a typical pattern whereby the ethnic security dilemma devolves into state collapse amid a cantonal reorganization of authority.

Transcending the ethnic security dilemma As many have argued, the dynamics of ethnic divisions, sectarianism, and the related ethnic security dilemma are somewhat overdetermined.26 Instrumental use of ethnoreligious belonging to capture state institutions or to promote the interests of one group over another is only one form of political mobilization: ideology, class, or other cleavages could serve to unite various groups that might otherwise succumb to the ethnic security dilemma. In other words, conflict in Middle Eastern states might arise from other forms of cleavage, some of which coincide with ethnic and religious cleavages. Ethnic and religious divisions in Middle Eastern states activate amid a wider array of economic and social crises, as well as the influence of external forces that prey on divided societies in this strategic corner of the world. What is more, ethnic and religious minorities are palpably aware of the vulnerability of their societies to ethnic strife. Concerned about the implications of the ethnic security dilemma in divided societies, they frequently work deliberately to subvert and prevent the dominant but suboptimal pursuit of nationalistic sectarianism. Transformative activism is particularly noteworthy among marginal groups where there are significant structural constraints against competitive nationalistic organization due to relative numbers. In contradistinction to the competitive nationalistic mobilization profiled in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria, there are numerous examples of minority efforts to foster multinational and multiconfessional definitions of the nation-state. Minority communities were particularly prominent in the early development of pan-Arabism, a movement to eliminate sectarian differences and unite Arabs in postcolonial societies (see Chapter 3). Minority religious 346

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communities spearheaded a campaign of secularization in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq in an effort to create a non-sectarian definition of the nation. However, the intents of Arab nationalism were imperfect. They served to isolate non-Arab communities, such as the Kurds, Turkomen, and others, in Syria and Iraq. They also concealed deliberate attempts to define Arabism in narrower ways. For example, after the overthrow of the Nasserist Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qasim in 1963, the Iraqi Baath increasingly reflected the Sunni Arab dominance of the party, in spite of its roots in non-confessional pan-Arabism. Nevertheless, pan-Arabism as originally constructed represented an effort to resist the destructive trajectory of the ethnic security dilemma in Middle Eastern societies. Fully aware of the toxic implications of the ethnic security dilemma, minority groups have often been at the forefront of consociational models of government, peace initiatives, or intercommunal dialogue activities. For example, Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty examine the multitude of faith-based and intercommunal initiatives that have sought to counter the sectarian atmosphere in Lebanon.27 Civil organizations in Lebanon have long sought to undermine the elite sectarian politics that serve to polarize the confessions there. In her assessment of Lebanese civil associations seeking to create a deconfessionalized political sphere in Lebanon, Carmen Geha argues that weak state institutions and the prevalence of elite sectarianism have so far prevented major changes promoted by civil organizations. 28 But this is not for lack of effort among the various actors involved in Lebanese civil society, which is active and focused on change. Civil activism has not yet achieved the elimination of Lebanese sectarianism, promised by the 1989 Ta’if Agreement – but deconfessionalization remains a popular goal on the Lebanese street all the same. Elsewhere, sectarian efforts at elite compromise that mirror the official balancing strategy used by the Lebanese state have been used to try to rectify ethnoreligious conflict. Four years after the outbreak of armed insurrection in the wake of the American-led invasion of Iraq, local and tribal leaders among the Sunni Arabs of central Iraq negotiated a rapprochement with the government. An effort led by the US military to build alliances among rivals to the al-Qaeda movement among Arab Sunnis created the so-called Sunni “Awakening,”, or sahwa, beginning in 2007–8. This alliance relied largely upon economic incentives. ­However, its ultimate failure in the years following was due to the insistence of the administration of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Shi’i sectarian dominance of state institutions in Iraq.29 This coincided with his government’s decision to counter the intercommunal compromise that had won the Iraqiya alliance a plurality in the 2010 Iraqi elections. One particularly noteworthy example of a community that has resisted the use of force in response to the ethnic security dilemma is that of Egyptian Christians, or Copts. Copts have studiedly resisted the urge to organize in favor of sectarian rights or territorial autonomy, trusting instead in a narrative of communal solidarity. The fact that the Copts form a marginal community of at most 8%–10% of a population otherwise dominated by a Sunni ­Muslim majority suggests that the they have little security to gain from the narrow promotion of sectarian interests. Nevertheless, Copts have not always eschewed sectarian activism in the representation of their interests. During the late 1970s, President Anwar al-Sadat’s decision to court the Islamist trend by presenting himself as the believer-president and offering to enshrine the Islamic Shari’a as “the” source of Egyptian law in the constitution accelerated insecurities among the Coptic population. Their response was communal organization in the form of mass demonstrations, which ultimately led to intercommunal violence.30 Clashes between national security forces and Coptic activists, as well as violence between Muslim and Christian communities, contributed to the disorder that led to the assassination of President Sadat in October 1981. His successor Hosni Mubarak pursued a policy of courting the 347

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Coptic Patriarch over the next several years as a means of minimizing sectarian conflict. It paid off in delivering what has become a very stable relationship of mutual support between the Coptic Orthodox Church and the military state.31 While the Coptic Orthodox Church has been a consistent supporter of successive military authorities since Sadat’s death, Coptic laypeople contributed to the overthrow of the Mubarak regime in 2011 by joining in the popular Arab Spring protests. Coptic movements have protested limitations on their ability to build churches and efforts to target the ­Christian community, such as in response to the well-publicized al-Kosheh incidents of the late 1990s. Since that time, surges of violence against Copts have included the military repression of a protest led by Copts in October 2011 (the “Maspero Massacre”), the campaign of arson and personal attacks on churches that followed the military overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi in the summer of 2012, and several bombing operations conducted against Christian targets in 2016. These attacks appear intended to aggravate the ethnic security dilemma and spark intercommunal violence. However, Coptic lay initiatives have continued to promote the national unity narrative and promoted a transformational understanding of Egyptian politics. Peter Makari describes the multiple ways in which initiatives of the Coptic Orthodox Church, other churches and parachurch organizations have sought to bring a more inclusive vision of Egyptian citizenship through a non-sectarian frame. He concludes by pointing out that “religion and community defined by religion are not always divisive and need not be, but that they can be catalysts for productive development of interfaith relations and of society.”32 Though there have been multiple attempts to organize a Coptic political party and the external Coptic lobby often strikes a sectarian tone in its agitation, Coptic organizations in Egypt present their efforts in the context of national unity.33 Though the ethnic security dilemma poses something of an existential dilemma for the community, Coptic actors have resisted the urge to engage in competitive forms of nationalism.

Conclusions In this chapter I have considered both structure and agency in explaining the behavior of majority and minority activism within the ethnic security dilemma. The ethnic security dilemma is a dominant explanation for the persistence of competitive and divisive sectarian politics throughout the Middle East. It helps us to understand the way in which fragile postcolonial states descend into violence, in particular involving minority communities that seek to promote their own security in ways that provoke spirals of insecurity throughout the region. Minority communities may respond to the ethnic security dilemma in multiple ways. One response might include signal efforts to reinforce the security dilemma by falling prey to its inexorable demands. Minority groups thereby seek state promotion of their own interests through private interest groups, tribal organizations, or electoral politics, often to the detriment of other groups in society. They may form militias to defend their interests in states where they cannot achieve other forms of security. Political entrepreneurs in minority communities may use these forms of interest representation to promote their own, more narrow, interests, which tear apart the minority community and add a further layer of complexity to the ethnic security dilemma. Ethnoreligious divisions have led to some of the most egregious forms of majoritarianism, human rights violations, and violence in the Middle East. One might also point to places where Islamist violence targets ethnic and religious communities, who respond with defensive reactions of their own, or who adhere to 348

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“upgraded” authoritarian regimes, as examples of the ethnic security dilemma at work. Violence targeted against Berber populations in Algeria, the Kurds in Turkey, Shi’i minorities in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, or Zaidis in Yemen, all provide examples of an ethnic security dilemma in play. This ethnic insecurity complex helps to explain the persistent destabilization of the state in Lebanon. It is clear that the interplay of Christian, Sunni, Shi’i, and Druze parties and movements in alliance with Syrian and Western players reflect their desires to promote sectarian interests. This in turn fuels intrasectarian rivalries, as individual entrepreneurs fight for leadership of each community. Ethnic insecurity explains the descent of Iraq into violence since 2003, even after the departure of the majority of US troops. Kurds respond to a history of repression by defending their own enclave, within or without a confederal Iraq. Sunni dominance under the regime of Saddam Hussein has only been replaced by a majoritarian Shi’i regime that follows the received wisdom of defending its privileges, itself derived from ethnic insecurity. Likewise, the concerns of minority communities that the ethnic security dilemma presents an existential threat fuels the Syrian civil war. Likewise, ethnic insecurity propels numerous other conflicts throughout the Middle East and North Africa. However, minority groups may also respond to the ethnic security dilemma through deliberate attempts to subvert the logic of competitive nationalistic mobilization. Pan-Arab political movements, Lebanese civil activism, or elite compromises to promote a national unity discourse may all appeal to minority communities who seek to live in peace with their neighbors. Among the most marginal groups, the choice to promote a national unity discourse serves as a means of subverting the inevitable divisions that arise from the ethnic security dilemma. I have used Copts as an example of a community that resists the received wisdom of competitive nationalistic demands – but other small minority communities such as Bedouin (see Chapter 22), Amazigh (see Chapter 23), or contemporary Armenians (see Chapter 20) also fall into this category. Though most common among these marginal communities, the decision to escape the vicious cycle of the ethnic security dilemma is a promising option for all Middle Eastern minorities.

Notes 1 Benjamin Thomas White, The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 90. 2 The application of the classic security dilemma to the politics of ethnic groups in divided states was first raised by Barry R. Posen in 1993 and revised by Snyder and Jervis in 1999. Here I follow the revisions made by Saideman et al. in 2002. See Barry R. Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival 35 (1993), 27–47; Jack Snyder and Robert Jervis, “Civil War and the Security Dilemma,” Barbara Walter and Jack Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 15–37; and Stephen Saideman, David J. Lanoue, Michael Campenni, and Samuel Stanton, “Democratization, Political Institutions, and Ethnic Conflict: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis, 1985–1998,” Comparative Political Studies 35, no.1 (2002), 103–129. 3 Saideman et al., “Democratization, Political Institutions, and Ethnic Conflict,” 106–107. 4 Anh Nga Longva, “Introduction: Domination, Self-Emporement, Accommodation,” Longva and Sofie Anne Roald, eds., Religious Minorities in the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 3. 5 Leila Tarazi Fawaz, An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 27–30. 6 William Harris, Faces of Lebanon: Sects, Wars, and Global Extensions (Princeton, NJ: Markus W ­ iener, 1996), 35–36. 7 Robert Rabil, Religion, National Identity, and Confessional Politics in Lebanon: The Challenge of I­ slamism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2011), 11.

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Paul S. Rowe 8 Kais Firro, Inventing Lebanon: Nationalism and the State under the Mandate (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 75. 9 Philip Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 504. 10 Sami E. Baroudi, “Divergent Perspectives among Lebanon’s Maronites during the 1958 Crisis,” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 15, no. 1 (Spring 2006), 5–28. 11 Ussama Makdisi, “Reconstructing the Nation-State: The Modernity of Sectarian Conflict,” Middle East Report July–September 1996, 26. 12 Kanan Makiya, Republic of Fear (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 276. 13 Mohammed Ihsan, “Arabization as Genocide,” Gareth Stansfield and Mohammed Shareef, eds., The Kurdish Question Revisited (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 375–391. 14 Ofra Bengio, The Kurds of Iraq: Building a State within a State (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2012), 172. 15 Bengio, The Kurds of Iraq, 180–181. 16 Gareth Stansfield, “The Kurdish Experience in Post-Saddam Iraq,” Stansfield and Shareef, eds., The Kurdish Question Revisited, 358. 17 Daniel Byman, “Sectarianism Afflicts the New Middle East,” Survival 56, no. 1 (2014), 85. 18 Fawaz Gerges, “ISIS and the Third Wave of Jihadism,” Current History, December 2014, 340. 19 Isaac Kfir, “Social Identity Group and Human (In)Security: The Case of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL),” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 38, no. 4 (2015), 243. 20 Ihsan, “Arabization,” 390. 21 Nikolaos Van Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria, fourth edition (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 1. 22 Christopher Phillips, “Sectarianism and Conflict in Syria,” Third World Quarterly 36, no. 2 (2015), 365–366. 23 Van Dam, Struggle, 91–111. 24 Raymond Hinnebusch, “Syria: From ‘Authoritarian Upgrading’ to Revolution?” International Affairs 88, no. 1 (2012), 110. 25 Phillips, “Sectarianism and Conflict,” 359–360. 26 For example, Aslam Farouk-Alli, “Sectarianism in Alawi Syria: Exploring the Paradoxes of Politics and Religion,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 34, no. 3 (2014), 222. 27 Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Amal I. Khoury, and Emily Welty, Unity in Diversity: Interfaith Dialogue (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007), 95–140. 28 Carmen Geha, Civil Society and Political Reform in Lebanon and Libya (London: Routledge, 2016), 66–171. 29 Myriam Benraad, “Iraq’s Tribal ‘Sahwa’: Its Rise and Fall,” Middle East Policy 18, no. 1 (2011), 124–125. 30 Nadia Ramses Farah, Religious Strife in Egypt (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1986). 31 Fiona McCallum, “Religious Institutions and Authoritarian States: Church-State Relations in the Middle East,” Third World Quarterly 33, no. 1 (2012), 109–124. 32 Peter E. Makari, Conflict and Cooperation: Christian-Muslim Relations in Contemporary Egypt (­Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2007), 207. 33 See Paul S. Rowe, “Four Guys and a Fax Machine? Diasporas, New Information Technologies, and the Internationalization of Religion in Egypt,” Journal of Church and State 43, no. 1 (2001), 81–92 and Rowe, “Neo-Millet Systems and Transnational Religious Movements: The Humayun Decrees and Church Construction in Egypt,” Journal of Church and State 49, no. 2 (2007), 329–350.

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26 Middle Eastern minorities in diaspora Andreas Schmoller

This chapter looks at diasporas of Middle Eastern minorities in two senses that directly correlate with the meaning one can attribute to the concept of diaspora.1 First our interest lies in the different groups that have migrated at some point to settle in one of the four corners of the Earth and therefore can be seen as community by sheer ancestry, whatever might be their degree of assimilation and attachment to the homeland. This means looking at diaspora in “substantialist terms as a bounded entity,” which admittedly is problematic, first, because it confronts us with the whole problematic of homogenizing identities, and second, because it deprives us of diaspora as an analytical category in the study of a defined social and cultural life form.2 Nonetheless, this first use of the concept allows us to collect some valuable historical information about migration movements of most of the Middle Eastern minorities for orientation. Furthermore, we have to acknowledge that the substantialist take on diaspora is also important for those diaspora activists who seek to increase their symbolic capital by emphasizing large membership numbers. Numbers are a political weapon, and we should give a critical thought about them. In addition, we want to know how these groups organize in a post-migration situation, and how they re-define their group, for their own personal and in-group needs, vis-à-vis their host society, and, last but not least, their homeland, often in turmoil. For that purpose it is more appropriate to look at diaspora as a practice. Accordingly, diaspora is “used to make claims, to articulate projects, to formulate expectations, to mobilize energies, to appeal to loyalties.”3 Claims, expectations, and loyalties change and are relational to local and translocal contexts. It goes without saying that most Middle Eastern minorities face particular challenges – but also opportunities – to identify and de-identify in a diaspora situation. Their belonging and positioning often circulates in the ‘dynamic triangle’ of nation, ethnicity and religion.4 Whether or not it is in the attempt to identify or de-identify with the Muslim/ Arab as Us or as the Other, they use this set of categories, amongst others (gender, social class, age, etc.), to construct both difference and sameness. This double ambition, a seeming paradox, is not that different from back in the homeland, even though the references have changed. The first part of this chapter explores the history of migration of Middle Eastern minorities and provides a demographic overview of the minorities worldwide today, although estimating the number of diaspora members is a very doubtful issue, both in practical and theoretical 351

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terms. In the second part, I will discuss the complex issue of transformation of group identity in a post-migration context by distinguishing five factors that very generally define the dynamics diasporas are facing, particularly in the first and second generation of dispersion. My focus is on religious identities and the question how religious and non-­religious group identities relate to each other in different practices of diaspora. I note that the examples are highly selective and by no means cover the full range of minorities discussed in this book.

Migration movements and demography of diasporas Migration of Middle Eastern minorities to places outside the Middle East is a relatively new phenomenon.5 With the exception of few who left the region for reasons of trade or study to Europe, a first wave of migration started after the 1860s and lasted until the 1920s. These migrants mainly came from Lebanon and Syria and were seeking to escape the political and economic difficulties in the era of the late Ottoman Empire.6 Many rural areas of Greater Syria were suffering socioeconomically, whereas port cities with rich agricultural hinterlands expanded and urbanized rapidly as a result of the growing dominance of European powers in the area.7 Cities became the “gathering places for the unemployed and unemployable” that eventually set out to leave their homelands by ship.8 Migrants who left for the ­A mericas, Australia or – to a far lesser extend – to Europe were mostly Christians. It is important to stress that “Ottoman oppression and inter-religious strife appear to have only played a secondary role among the causes leading to emigration” in that first period.9 At some point, however, collective violence against minorities such as the Armenians and other Christians in the Ottoman Empire in the 1890s and then in 1915 caused mass displacement – but foremost within different regions of the Middle East. According to estimates for the United States, 95% of the immigrants from Syria before World War II were Christians who were registered under the appellation “Turk.” This contrasted with their religious identity, as the label was “was equated with being simultaneously Muslim” at that time, which induced the migrants to demand an alternative birthplace/ origin term in the census.10 Syro-Lebanese diasporas increased significantly in number in the post-war period, particularly in the Americas, most notably Brazil, Argentina, and the USA. Honduras is home to a sizeable diaspora community of Palestinian Christians evolving since the 1890s “almost exclusively made up of Christians from Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit sahour.”11 The early Syrian migrants to the Americas were mainly from the lower socioeconomic classes.12 In the USA, they started out in sectors that were searching for a larger labor force: textile factories, steel and automobile industry, and so forth. In general, the first wave of the Syro-Lebanese diaspora is perceived through the lens of successful social, economic, and political integration. Bruckmayr emphasizes the economic and political contribution of the predominantly Christian newcomers from the Middle East to their host societies in Venezuela, Colombia, and the Southern Caribbean Area. After settling in coastal towns and engaging in small-scale peddling, “they [the Syro-Lebanese] often made a fortune becoming whole-sale import-export traders, fabric and plantation owners and the like.”13 Moreover, their success is proved most impressively by their rapid “ascendancy to high levels of politics” in various Latin American states. When Bashar alAsad made the first Syrian presidential visit to Brazil and Venezuela in 2010, the ties between these countries were not only established on the ideological level of shared anti-imperialism but by the contributions the important Syro-Lebanese diaspora had made to their host societies.14 In many countries of the region, such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile, or Guatemala, the social ascension of Middle Eastern immigrants has become part of the official history that, 352

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according to Paulo Pinto, was facilitated by the book of Philip Hitti (professor at the American University of Beirut) Thy Syrians in America, published in 1924.15 The aim of this study that was disseminated among intellectuals was to provide an image of a cohesive community that in fact was divided in terms of politics, geography, and confessions. Religious institutions are commonly the first to follow migrants into new territories. For the first time, Middle Eastern Churches “had to adopt a structural form outside the homeland.”16 In Latin America, the first Maronite parishes were founded around 1890 in São Paulo and in Buenos Aires in 1902. In 1899, the Maronite patriarch sent two priests to assist the evolving community in Australia.17At the eve of World War I, there existed t­ wenty-two ­Maronite churches in the United States. Greek Orthodox churches of the Antiochian ­Patriarchate in Latin America date back to their foundation in São Paulo in 1904, and in Santiago del Este (Argentina) in 1914. Today, the Maronite and the Antiochian Greek Orthodox Christians constitute the largest diasporas of Middle Eastern Minorities, with their oldest and largest concentrations in Latin and North America18 (See Table 26.1). However, it was only since the Maronite Patriarchal Synod (2003–4) that the Maronite Church explicitly began to comprehend itself as a diasporan institution after acting uniquely as an institutional supporter of Lebanese nation-building. As such, from the early period of diaspora settlements, it reached out to the Maronites abroad for “intermittent mobilisation of the latter to financially keep supporting their kin in their homeland and to back up the Church in its role as a political player in Lebanese politics.”19 Migration from Lebanon and Syria has continued but has shifted into a predominantly Muslim phenomenon since the (post-)civil war period. The first Assyro-Chaldeans from their historical settlements in Urmia came to North America at the end of the nineteenth century as American Presbyterian missionaries offered some of their protégées the opportunity to study in the USA.20 Survivors of the Ottoman massacres in 1915 from Hakkari and Urmia became the first permanent settlers. These were followed by more fellow Christians after the creation of Iraq in 1932, as it became increasingly clear that British promises of an Assyrian national home had been broken. Among these migrants was the Assyrian patriarch, Mar Shimun, who left Iraq in 1933, via Cyprus and London, and finally established the patriarchal seat in Chicago (1940). A second wave of migration of Middle Eastern Christians began in the 1950s. For the first time it involved Coptic Christians from Egypt. As a result of Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s nationalization program, Copts left Egypt to create a Coptic diaspora that later became a worldwide phenomenon. Numbers grew in the 1970s and 1980s when Copts were targeted by Muslim fundamentalists and were drawn in inter-communal tensions.21 By 1970, there were four Coptic churches established in Toronto, Montreal, Jersey City, and Los Angeles.22 Forty years later, in 2010, the Coptic Orthodox Church provided 181 churches and 254 priests to serve their North American faith community.23 Though the migration to the Americas continued, the second wave was primarily directed at Europe. Many Syriac Orthodox Christians from the Tur Abdin region in southeast Anatolia took the opportunity to come to Germany under the Turkish-German Gastarbeiter (“guest worker”) system, based on a bilateral treaty of 1961 that was designed to reduce the labor shortage in Germany through the recruitment of Turkish citizens.24 When the recruitment agreement was stopped in 1972 due to economic decline, migration to Germany and other European countries continued under the label of family-reunion and asylum regimes.25 Indeed, the effect of chain-migration as a family strategy to minimize risks connected to migration seems to be a central key to the dynamic by which the Tur Abdin was emptied of its indigenous Syriac Christians. The Cyprus crisis of 1974, the military coup d’état of 1980 in Turkey, and local contexts of the Kurdish-Turkish conflict in the region accelerated these 353

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movements to European countries.26 Sweden became the “last stop” for many of them after Germany adopted a more restrictive asylum and visa policy around 1980.27 Broadly speaking, the economic, social, and political factors underpinning this migration often are not clearly distinguishable. Political and religious motives were mentioned more strongly when Chaldeans from the Hakkari and Bhotan region asked for asylum, especially in France and Belgium.28 Their fellow Chaldeans, as well as Assyrians from Iraq, besides joining their diaspora co-religionists in America, began to settle in Belgium, Holland, and Great Britain (Table 26.1). Non-Christian Middle Eastern minorities show similar dynamics and patterns of migration compared to the various aforementioned Christian groups. For instance, though the first wave of Syro-Lebanese migration to the Americas was primarily Christian, there were also Muslims and Druze among them.30 Today, Latin America is home to the largest Druze diaspora, with around 60,000 members. In 1881, the first known Druze arrived in the United States, Malhim Salloum Aboulhosn, whose family, a century later, counted an estimated 1,200 members spread over nineteen states.31 “Many of the early immigrants traveled across the middle west as peddlers, establishing homes in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, and elsewhere.”32 The first Yezidis to establish diaspora communities were those from Turkey who came to Germany in the 1960s as part of the aforementioned labor migration movements. ­K reyenbroek, one of the few experts on Yezidism, supposes that the “first local Yezidi associations came into being in the late 1970s or early 1980s.”33 Following their relatives, most of today’s estimated 40,000 Yezidis in Germany settled in the course of the 1980s, founding sizeable communities in Berlin, Bielefeld, Bremen, Celle, Cologne, Emmerich, Frankfurt am Main, Göttingen, Hamburg, Hannover, Oldenburg, and Saarbrücken. Iraqi Yezidis who were “regularly persecuted by the Ba’ath regime (as Kurds, as non-Moslems, or both)” found asylum in Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Germany was also the main destination for Yezidis from Syria who migrated in the same period. In the USA, the Yezidi diaspora is centered in Nebraska, Table 26.1  M iddle Eastern Christian diasporas in the world: by religious denominations29 Maronite

Coptic Syriac Orthodox Orthodox

Europe 50,600 1,20,000 2,40,000 Latin 13,69,000 20,000 9,600 America North 1,73,600 5,00,000 50,000 America Australia 0,661 24,693 5,822 Asia w/o n.s. n.s. (not incl. ME 1 Mio indigenous Syriac Christians in India TOTAL 16,23,861 6,64,693 3,05,422

Syriac Assyrian catholic

25,000 20,600

15,800 n.s.

Chaldean Greek Orthodox of Antioch 50,000 n.s.

40,000 20,000 4,50,000 7,81,200

25,000 1,10,000 2,66,372 25,00,000 2,200 n.s.

10,589 14,000

4,972 n.s.

47,800 1,50,389 3,21,344

n.s. (not stated).

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Melkite

8,264 80,000

Armenian TOTAL Apostolic (Holy See of Cilicia) 25,000 5,86,400 10,000 26,60,400

57,841 6,00,000 42,82,813 2,499 n.s.

n.s. n.s.

89,700 94,000

30,78,264 8,61,540 6,35,000 77,13,313

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with the largest concentration in its capital Lincoln. The first families came over in two waves, after the first Gulf War in 1991 and the US invasion in 2003.34 No reliable data are to be found for these movements as is the case with current movements following the genocidal crimes against the Iraqi Yezidis by the so-called Islamic State since 2014. Around 80,000 Yezidis today live in Russia and the Ukraine. They moved from their homelands in Armenia and Georgia because of economic malaise following the downfall of the Soviet Union. Germany is also home to the largest Alevi diaspora besides smaller community concentrations in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and France.35 As other Turkish Muslims and Non-Muslims, they mainly settled in Europe in the course of the 1960s through labor migration, followed by family reunification and asylum migration, with a peak following 1980s military coup. Kurdish Alevis benefited again strongly from asylum regulations and family reunions in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Kurdish-Turkish conflict escalated. For that and other reasons (e.g., labor migration from Turkey was particularly strong from dense Kurdish populated areas in Eastern parts of the country), we might suggest that the Turkish diaspora in Germany or Austria is disproportionately Alevi and/or Kurdish compared to the home country Turkey, where, according to most estimations, Alevi constitute between 15% and 20% of the population.36 Out of 3 million people of Turkish origin in Germany, up to 700,000 (23.3%) are estimated to belong to Alevism.37 For the even smaller minority of Mandaeans (with an estimated 60,000 members worldwide), persecution and discrimination are endangering the survival of the group. ­M igration as rescue strategy bears the risk of losing group identity. During the Saddam Hussein era, around 15,000 Mandeans fled from Iraq to neighboring Jordan, Europe, and America. ­M igration movements of Mandaeans increased strongly after the American invasion of 2003, and the insecurity various religious minorities faced following. According to the Mandaean Human Rights report of 2011, around 85% of Mandaeans were displaced outside Iraq. The diaspora is very dispersed, with Mandeans living in Australia, North America, various ­European countries, and Middle Eastern countries. By numbers of religious followers, the Bahá’í appear to form the largest diaspora of M ­ iddle Eastern minorities. Yet, pro domo figures are disputable, and what is more, the Bahá’í religion has attracted many converts throughout the world.38 This makes it hard to speak of Bahá’í’s as a Middle Christian minority in general, although Bahá’í as a religious minority in Iran suffer extreme discrimination in post-Islamic revolution Iran. Cole reports that the multi-ethnic Bahá’í communities – the religion is said to comprise more than 2,000 different ethnic and minority groups worldwide – are widely divided along ethnic boundaries and among countries of origin.39 Due to early emigration waves in the nineteenth century, the largest concentration of Bahá’í can be found in India, where today there are around 3 million members (Table 26.2). Table 26.2  D  iasporas of non-Christian Middle Eastern minorities40

Europe Latin America North America Australia Asia Africa TOTAL

Yezidis

Druze

Alevis

50,000 n.s. 1,700 n.s. n.s. n.s. 51,700

30,000 65,000 20,000 2,974 15,000 n.s. 1,32,974

10,00,000 n.s. 72,750 25,000 n.s. n.s. 10,97,750

355

Mandeans 13,100 n.s. 6,000 6,500 13,321 n.s. 38,921

Baha’i

TOTAL

1,53,000 8,98,000 5,61,000 13,707 31,90,000 21,43,000 69,58,707

12,46,100 9,63,000 6,61,450 48,181 32,18,321 21,43,000 82,80,052

Andreas Schmoller

Diaspora identity and religious transformation Migration concerns individual and group identities. There is, however, no simple explanation of how migration changes people, if at all, in their fundamental orientations and feelings of belonging. Impulses that contribute to transformation of identity, focusing on religious identity, can be assigned to five different categories, as shall be explained in the second part of this chapter by giving a very limited number of examples.41

Intra-confessional level: new representations and representatives of the group appear The post-migration situation for minorities from the Middle East historically was marked by the need for self-management and self-organization. Even though religious institutions are among the first organizations to be set up in diaspora and they provide social and political leadership, diasporas are often marked by a lack of religious experts and/or their traditional authority. Without generalizing too much, it can be said that in the Middle ­Eastern context, religious identity and religion were deeply imprinted in everyday life, which meant that individuals were automatically integrated in a community and its religious life and norms. Often social pressure made it almost impossible to escape from that. This self-evidence of belonging to a religious community where you live a life according to the rules that seemingly were always there is not easily maintained in Western surroundings. A particular problem concerns social norms, like endogamy, that are part of the religious heritage but are no more followed by large groups of its members in diaspora. Religious traditions and heritage may, however, survive, through active reconstruction, remembrance, and transformation. This process of reconstruction by a group demands rationalizing its religious background in a way that is not appreciated by those who want to conserve as much as possible the old orthodoxy. In this respect, the Alevi diaspora appears to be a remarkable case of religious transformation through self-management and revitalizing Alevism.42 Prior to the migration movements to Germany and other European countries described earlier, internal displacement within Turkey from rural to urban areas such as Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir as well as the widespread anti-religious attitude of Alevi political activists had caused a decline of traditional social structures and religious authorities (Dedes) of the community already. In the diaspora, Alevis for very long did not appear as such: religious activity like the annual Cem ritual directed by a Dede was very small. This has also to do with the fact that Alevi who feared repression practiced the traditional takiye (the principle of dissimulation or denial of religious belief in a hostile surrounding). In the late 1980s, a civil Alevite movement appeared that revitalized rituals and community-related culture by transforming them into de-sacralized practices important for the manifestation of Alevi identity. Challenging the authority of the Dede with regard to the content and procedure of Cem, the emerging civil Alevi movement re-appropriated Alevi heritage by rationalizing the distinction between religion and culture. People could refer to Cem and other rituals as purely cultural phenomena without feeling the need to support a religious meaning. By the late 1990s, the anti-religious position of Alevite cultural centres in Germany was disbanded as more and more, especially young, Alevites rediscovered religion, and rec­ erman legislation for religious ognition of the Alevi was established within the frame of G communities (on this, see further in the chapter). Nonetheless, this case illustrates the struggle for power between traditional authorities and new political authorities in the re-definition of common heritage that would function as symbolic capital of group identity in the diaspora. 356

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This struggle for definition and representation of a diaspora community is often intertwined with the dynamic of secularization, which pushes diaspora communities that were primarily defined through religious affiliation into a trajectory where culture and/or ethnicity begin to form the core of group identity, instead of religion.43 The latter then serves to provide an inventory of practices, symbols, and narratives to support “culturalization” or “ethnicization.”44 This also has been analyzed for diasporas emerging from Middle Eastern minorities that had strong religious authorities in the homeland and hierarchies that managed to follow their faith community rather quickly into the lands of migration. The “name debate” of the Christians of Syriac tradition ( juxtaposing Assyrian, Chaldaean, Aramean, and Syriac labels in multiple combinations), particularly in the Swedish diaspora, may be interpreted to reflect this double process of challenging authorities and transforming the basis of the group.45 Though the trans-denominational Assyrian movement was created by intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the political context of nationalist movements, the group appellation debate only became a fierce intra-communal struggle in Western diaspora. As Atto remarks, it was not only about “relationship between elite groups” adhering to different ideologies, but [i]n addition, such elements as the difference between town and village, the generational gap, the competition between the clergy (as a religious elite group) and secular elites and the competition between lay elites with different ideologies and orientations must also not be overlooked.46 In the diaspora the Assyrian movement organized in parties and organizations. These organizations spread the idea that all Christians living in the realm of ancient Babylonia shared the ancestry of Assyrianism, the “foundations of [their] peoplehood.”47 The religious heritage of all Syriac denominations and the Aramaic language, that some call Assyrian, however, are considered essential to Assyrian identity along with the achievements of the Ancient ­A ssyrian civilization. After a period of “hegemonic use of the designation” Assyrian (Assyrier in Swedish) in the 1960s and 1970s, the Assyrian movement, particularly in the Swedish diaspora, was opposed by, first, the Syriac Orthodox Church arguing against a secular nationalist identity and, second, the emergence of the Aramean (Syrianska in Swedish) movement that according to Makko was closely linked to the anti-Assyrianism of the Syriac Church.48 Ultimately, some clergy used the whole repertoire of authority, which culminated in the threat of ex-communication of the Assyrians following an encyclical in 1981 by Patriarch Zakka I Iwas considering the legitimate names to be used by church members. This proved to be highly controversial among parishioners and the wider community alike, and was later disregarded. This intra-communal conflict cannot be reduced to the logic of religious denominational authority as against the cross-denominational ethno-nationalistic authority of secular elites. The Aramean lay elite gained its hegemony in competition with the Assyrian elite through “co-operation with the church,” but at the same time it boycotted attempts by the Syriac Orthodox Church to reintegrate community members who identified as Assyrians. This was the case particularly since 1987 under Archbishop Gallo Shabo in Sweden. He was refused the opportunity to interfere in the secular affairs of the community (seemingly over financial issues) and was finally dismissed by the Syriac Orthodox National Church Board who “requested the Patriarch to consecrate a new archbishop.”49 This finally resulted in the “new status quo” of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Sweden, with two separate archdioceses split along the secular institutions of the Assyrian and Aramean ideology. One was 357

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represented by the remaining supporters of Gallo Shabo and the other by Benyamin Atas. Today, both ­A ssyrians and Arameans lack a sole secular leader, though the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church is still considered as the leader by some of the elite members and the common community. These processes, manifested in discourses about group naming, unity of the group, and leadership among these diasporas, are expressions of a post-migration context of Middle Eastern minorities and the traditional political leadership of its clergy. In that perspective, they represent the tendency of “slow institutionalization of secular national leadership to represent the different Syriac churches at global level.”50

Inter-confessional/-religious dynamics: redefining us and them A second domain that might provoke transformations in the context of diaspora results from genuine religious contact with the majority religion(s) of the host society and religious pluralism in general. Inter-religious and inter-confessional dialogue demands a new definition of boundaries and transgression of boundaries. Basically, we can discern two different strategies religious groups are applying in these situations: dissimilation, which seeks to avoid any form of syncretistic adaption to the pluralistic West, and inclusion, which integrates religious traditions practically and/or theologically.51 The latter particularly is observed, and already studied, for the Yezidi and Alevi diaspora, where lay elites are the driving forces behind the definition of a new orthodoxy of their religion inspired by universalism and tolerance that the community lacked in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, their countries of origin.52 Middle Eastern minorities of Christian religious affiliation find themselves in a particular situation because they can relate with the majoritarian religion of the Western receiving country, though this depends considerably on the role of religion and degree of secularization in the specific country (see later). Going beyond the political implication of this inclusive strategy of emphasizing Christianness, mostly then equally understood as Westernness, we have to acknowledge that the way religious groups address other religious groups in the host society and interact with them on sporadic or continuous basis is to be analyzed also on the background of theological and ecclesiological scripts.53 How do churches and religious lay groups define the community and its boundaries? Whom do they reach out to specifically and on what basis? Laying aside the specific case of Eastern Catholic churches, it seems that in several ­Western countries, Oriental Orthodox Churches have developed strong ties with the traditional big churches of the host society. In Germany and Austria, for example, we can see that the Syriac Orthodox Church has created more sustainable networks with the Catholic Church than other non-Catholic Christian migrant churches have done. And they have invested in theological explanation of this outreach under the umbrella of ecumenism.54 Otherwise ­inter-religious contacts are minimal with Muslim associations. Intermittent collaboration with the Yezidi diaspora has increased since 2014 on common lobbying for homeland fellows and protected zones in the Middle East.55 The Syriac Orthodox Church also lacks a universalistic vision of their church as being sent to the world (a Church for the people) and therefore does not engage in missionary activity.56 The Syriac Orthodox view reflects the ethno-religious concept of the Church as representing a particular community (the Church as people) and therefore engages in highlighting the historical, cultural, and linguistic heritage of this community. It is noteworthy that the Austrian foundation Pro Oriente, founded by Cardinal Franz König during the Second Vatican Council, took an active part in promoting ecumenical dialogue of the Catholic Church with the Churches of Syriac tradition.57 The progress they achieved resulted in a declaration that Patriarch Ignatius Zakka I Iwas and Pope John Paul II 358

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signed in1984 during a meeting in Rome. The document marks, first, progress in ecumenical relations that the Catholic Church has not achieved with any other Oriental Orthodox Church and, second, relates explicitly to the diaspora situation of the Syriac church. It contains a handful of pastoral decisions that are seen as a logical consequence of the theological unity achieved between these two churches. Steps concerned the core of worship, religious life, and religious education of the church members as point 9 of the declaration highlights: It is not rare, in fact, for our faithful to find access to a priest of their own Church materially or morally impossible. Anxious to meet their needs and with their spiritual benefit in mind, we authorize them in such cases to ask for the sacraments of Penance, Eucharist and Anointing of the Sick from lawful priests of either of our two sister Churches, when they need them. It would be a logical corollary of collaboration in pastoral care to cooperate in priestly formation and theological education. Bishops are encouraged to promote sharing of facilities for theological education where they judge it to be advisable.58 With reference to this document thirty years later, in October 2014, the first professorship on the “History and Theology of Syriac Christianity” was inaugurated at a state university.59 The Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Salzburg is the first of its kind to provide a denominational chair addressed to Syriac Orthodox Christians from around the world. The aim of the professorship was to incorporate a study programme “Master of Arts in Syriac Theology” under the guidance of Patriarch Mor Ignatius Ephrem II within the Faculty of Catholic Theology that started in October 2015. The patriarch allocates funds for the Study Programme and the seminary Beth Suryoye, provided by the Catholic Diocese of Salzburg, in order to finance grants for students from the European diaspora and the Middle East who wish to study in Austria. This institutionalization of religious study and education in a C ­ atholic Faculty embodies the ecumenical spirit of 1984, and reflects strategies of re-­organizing a worldwide dispersed Church. Needless to say, these particular ecumenical inter-confessional relations do matter politically, socially, and, last but not least, economically (not only for the diaspora community but for the hierarchy of the Syriac Orthodox Church as well).

Impulses from the host society Without underestimating the policies of religious organizations, it is probably safe to say that religious transformation in a diaspora setting has to be explained first and foremost in relation to impulses from civil and political actors in the host society.60 There are, for example, conceptions and discourses in the extra-religious sphere of society about religion in general, and Islam in particular. Media and politics have contributed to the public image of Middle Eastern minorities threatened by repressive regimes or Islamists. Similar to state regulations, these discourses and public images do not allow Middle Eastern minorities to define themselves simply as they would have pleased, but put them in a context that they have to react to and act upon in their practices and discourses of identification. These discursive contexts of the host society are constantly changing and depend on space and time. In Australia, the entry of Syro-Lebanese migrants in increasing numbers at the end of the nineteenth century “coincided with a period of evolving Australian nationalism” when the colonies were expected to move “towards becoming one nation populated by community of predominately white, British settlers.”61 Being from geographic Asia, these immigrants were unwelcome and considered an obstacle to creating a “white Australia.” Against the background of this racist discourse, the Syro-Lebanese were either considered to be “visibly 359

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colored-people,” “indolent and dirty,” “unproductive and untrustworthy,” or, in positive descriptions, as “industrious and sober” or “almost white-colored European.”62 This in-­ betweenness, resulting from the racial categories, forced these migrants to position themselves in a kind of self-defence. Being “civilised, white, European and Christian” was the repertoire used to counter this discursive reality.63 On this basis, the Lebanese identity in Australia began to shape the lives of Lebanese Australians. Over a century later, the racial theories that supported similar discourses in host societies are long overcome. Nonetheless, the stigmatization of Arabs and Muslims in public and political discourses and everyday life is even more a reality today. And, of course, not only in Australia – this also arises in Europe and America. Generally, the discourse on immigration and minorities is widely shaped by stereotyping foreigners and seeing them through the lens of social and security problems. The 9/11 is seen as a turning point for Arab American identity by many observers.64 Similarly, the rise of Islamist terrorism in the Middle East since the turmoil in Syria and Iraq, with the self-acclaimed Islamic State as its most notorious offshoot, and related terror attacks in European countries like France and Belgium, have strengthened anti-Muslim prejudices and political discourses throughout Europe. It is worth stating that Middle Eastern minorities (Muslim and non-Muslim) are not equally racialized as Muslims equally throughout the world and not even within one host society. For instance, Antiochian Greek Orthodox Christians in Detroit, although understanding “that things were somehow supposed to be different” after 9/11, did not feel that the event had negative repercussions on how Arab Christians lived in the USA.65 Their churches would not have been recognized as Arabic but as Catholic. Some also believed that, in general, the public would not be able to “distinguish an Orthodox from an Italian,” but identified “a Muslim by his habit.”66 Other studies suggest that Arab Christians in the USA experienced only a slight increase in racial discrimination, whereas the number of Arab Muslims witnessing discrimination doubled or even tripled.67 Apart from that, Middle Eastern minorities have different possibilities to either connect or distance themselves from Arabness, Islam, Sunni Islam, or the Muslim world. Haddad and Smith already reported in the early 1990s that some American Druze felt “that the Druze clearly are not Muslims.”68 It certainly is not only an issue of religious renovation in the diaspora of religious minorities (that Western scholars have classified as offshoots of Sunni or Shi’i Islam at some point) if members of the community attach their religion more to Islam or not. It is a process that is relationally dependent on local and translocal contexts. To “expel the [Arab, Muslim] Other symbolically” is a structure of discourse that Middle Eastern minorities respond to.69 To de-identify with the Muslim Other is one way to reproduce this structure. With regard to the Chaldean diaspora in Michigan and the USA, Yasmeen ­Hanoosh argues that the official community narrative of self-identification seeks to amplify its sense of belonging: Concurrently with Chaldean culture-makers’ attempt to cast their community out of Arab/Muslim context, the rhetoric of religion, professional success, and family values assumes high status in the official narrative in order to profile Chaldean ethnicity as compatible with the projected prerequisites of the “white” American mainstream; i.e., they aspire to stage sameness.70 This quest for sameness appears contradictory to the attempt of most diasporas to maintain a distinctive group identity only at first glance. Chaldaeans and other Christian minorities use their group names such as Chaldaeans, Copts, or Arameans as vehicle to express both 360

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sameness and difference. It relates them to Catholicism or to Christendom, but at the same time it adds the concept of representing one of the “oldest” Christian traditions on Earth, “a unique brand of Christianity that is almost as old as Jesus himself (recall, the Chaldean patriarchs trace their lineage to St. Thomas (c.33–77 AD), a contemporary of Jesus).” 71 My own research on Syriac and Coptic Orthodox diaspora Christians confirms this characterization of establishing Middle Eastern Christian identity in the diaspora through narratives of hardship, success, and moral integrity. Some explicitly culturalize these features by labeling them as Christian virtues in opposition to “lazy” Turks, Arabs, or Muslims that abuse the social welfare system in European countries. Elias, born in Vienna, negotiated his position between Austrian society and other migrants by picking up this widespread hardship narrative. One of many second-generation Copts I interviewed for my study of Middle Eastern Christians in Austria recalls the migration of his parents to Austria as a deliberate choice to enable a more prosperous future for their children based on education and hard work: I know a Turk, I know him from soccer. He once worked 20 hours per week for O. After a while he left. He doesn’t work anything. Like his father who is unemployed since twelve or fifteen years. I asked him if he was happy with his life. He replied that “as long as the state gives us money for doing nothing, it’s okay.” Doing nothing, I don’t know. I know it might sound arrogant but compared to that I feel better, having an education and having a job.72 From the Syro-Lebanese settling in Australia in the 1890s, to the Copts in Western Europe in 2015, migrants build their identity on expectations of the host society, or what they acknowledge as such, and try to define their particular place in relation to a constructed Other.

The structural impact of state regulations Migrant organizations and diaspora communities also look at the state and the possibilities it provides to obtain legal status as a community.73 The form of religious governance might have an impact on groups in their ambitions to define themselves vis-à-vis the legislative authorities. For example, in Germany and Austria, where the state does not practice a strict separation of Church and state, minorities like the Alevi engaged strongly in the recognition of the group as religious community for it was seen as the only possibility to get recognized institutionally and legally as a group.74 Whereas the option for institutional recognition as a “cultural community” would have been limited, these countries are characterized by an inclusive model of religious governance that attributes particular rights, resources, and institutional platform for cooperation with state institutions to all recognized religious communities.75 To that end, communities have to define and reveal their religious doctrine in a way that corresponds to the needs of the Basic Constitutional Law. This demonstrates that the internal revival of Alevi culture is not free from external impacts. The question if culture or religion should form the basis of the community is related not only to an internal religious awakening that challenges anti-religious wings of the group but also to settings in the host society. Furthermore, the state recognition as religious community is more than a symbol. As own research reveals, it is also economically relevant for small religious organizations which struggle to establish their religious hierarchies in the diaspora in cooperation with the homeland.76 The state allows all recognized religions to organize religious instruction for all age groups in state schools. Teachers (who can be instructed for that purpose in state universities) are remunerated by the state. Most of the Coptic clergy in Austria who brought 361

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their families from Egypt are provided salaries in such positions in addition to their priestly office in one of the parishes. These priests make most of their living without relying on the finances of the Coptic Church. Besides the economic and legal benefit of such state regulations, religious minority organizations have gained a stronger political role due to the revival of religion in public and political life: “Such organisations are called upon to participate in political initiatives and debates as well as to mediate conflicts that do not touch upon religion directly, but rather upon the cultural and socio-economic integration of immigrants.” 77 It is of note that due to this awareness about religion and neo-fundamentalism, countries with a different system of religious governance, such as France, seek ways of establishing officially accepted and recognized versions of a national Islam in order to “deal” with a religion, or more with a problem that is connoted with religion, on an institutional level. This cooperative model may have many advantages from the state authority’s perspective but bears risks for intra-communal tensions and struggles of loyalty. One possibility to achieve recognition by the state and its institutions beyond the realm of religious group identity is to assemble the community behind atrocities and/or a genocide against the group in the past and to demand recognition by the receiving country. Such ambitions are often strengthened by the fact that recognition is denied in the homeland. This strategy has been implemented somewhat successfully by the Armenian diasporas, and more recently by the Assyrian/Syriac diasporas in Sweden, Germany, and Austria. Mobilizing the community in advocacy of memory policy and recognition of a past collective crime also relates to the transformations I have identified. The Sayfo (Aramaic for “sword”), as the Christians of Syriac tradition call the genocide undertaken by the Young Turks during the events of World War I in the Ottoman Empire, has become a feature of group activism in the past ten to fifteen years because it creates cohesiveness among a religiously and ideologically splintered community.78 The erection of genocide monuments by Assyrian and Syriac organizations in Sarcelles (Paris), California (Tarzana), Fairfield, Adelaide, Jerewan, Chicago, and so forth, since 2005, arises from this process. It should be noted that genocide remembrance responds to state and inter-state policies. The prototype of this struggle was set by the recognition of the Holocaust and the international Holocaust remembrance culture and policy. Taking the Holocaust as a model, states are more likely to emphasize the plight of different groups based on their history of passive victimhood.79 Holocaust memory has evolved through a shift in memory culture from heroic martyrdom (religious or secular) to the memorialization of de-politicized victims. Aleida Assmann refers to this as an ethical turn in the politics of remembrance, as victims are primarily recognized and remembered because they were victims and not to support nationalist demands.80 This victimology has created a basis for other minorities to demand recognition of their group identity without raising the suspicion of cultural communalism. In reference to the recognition of the Aghet (a designation used by the Armenians for the genocide of 1915) in France, Shmuel Trigano has argued that these groups look for a place in the sun. As the state is the only metaphorical sun in France it is natural that they demand recognition in the framework of a law (the French National Assembly publicly recognized the Armenian genocide in 2001). This would only prove that they all subscribe to the same political order and same system of ethical values, and do not look for separation as often claimed by critics.81 Nonetheless, it has not gone unnoticed to any observer of Middle Eastern Christian diasporas that within this framework, diaspora activist groups and certain community members have adopted a highly problematic victimization discourse that reduces the perspective on the community to a black and white picture of eternal besiegement by hostile powers (most 362

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notably Islam). Some genocide researches argue that this temptation for dichotomous historic narratives is directly related to the use of the genocide discourse in general.82 Therefore, they refuse the category of genocide in the context of historical research for its tendency to reduce the complexity of historical events to the simplistic scheme of perpetrators versus victims. I shall elaborate on this in the following section.

Homeland mobilization – diaspora politics83 The diaspora has been characterized as having an enduring attachment to the homeland. Sheffer has argued that diasporas “invest substantial effort and resources in creating elaborate organizations dedicated to nurturing relationships with their host societies and governments, homelands, global and regional actors, and other groups,” not only to promote their communities in the host societies but also to “increase their ability to extend support to beleaguered homelands and other diaspora communities.”84 This loyalty to the homeland transcends family and other social and economic ties and works in a religious as well as in an ethnonational frame of reference.85 Similar to the argument about genocide remembrance, activism and solidarity with the homeland also provide a glue to unite diaspora members under one banner. Nonetheless, diaspora activism is not always appreciated in the homeland. For example, in the 1970s diaspora, Copts in North America founded associations (American Coptic Association, Canadian Coptic Association) that pushed a discourse about the “millennial persecution of the Copts by Islam that is per se fundamentally and inevitably hostile against Christians (and Jews).”86 The Copts, as other Middle Eastern Christian and non-Christian minorities, have adopted Western methods of lobbying and communication and “present the problems facing Copts in Egypt as a human rights issue.”87 Their methods of “scandalization” with respect to incidents, or unverifiable rumors, in Egypt were not well received by Egyptian states authorities and Coptic religious leadership in Egypt that were, and under as-Sissi again are, committed to maintaining a modus vivendi with the Egyptian state and avoiding the impression of ambiguous loyalties of Egyptian Copts that would question the “national unity narrative” the Coptic Church subscribed to.88 Related to the aforementioned genocide discourse, this militant form of lobbying within the frame of human rights elaborates a victimology that sees the reality de-contextualized in black and white terms and essentializes groups and boundaries between them (Copts and Muslims) as homogenous. Not to be mistaken, human rights violations and genocides, or attempted genocides, are to be called by their name. Consequently, initiatives to raise awareness among Western societies about crimes against Middle Eastern Minorities such as the Yezidi under the “Islamic State” or the Mandaeans during and after the Saddam Hussein’s era are more than a symbolic act of loyalty between diaspora and homeland. However, I suggest that one needs to distinguish thoroughly between genocide as a category of historical and juristic analysis and the use of the power of the “G-word,” using genocide as the crime of crimes, for the purpose of group recognition. To give a recent example of the latter and the tendency toward simplistic assessments, I quote from a release on the website of the Assyrian International News Agency, published on 27 February 2015, on the “Assyrian genocide” the “Islamic State” committed by conquering Mosul in summer 2014, destroying Assyrian cultural heritage in Iraq and capturing the Assyrian villages along the Khabur river in Northern Syria, where 373 hostages were taken: It is ironic that the ISIS attacks on Assyrians in Syria is occurring in 2015, the centennial anniversary of the 1915 Turkish genocide of Assyrians, Greeks and Armenians, in 363

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which 750,000 Assyrians were killed (75%), 500,000 Pontic Greeks and 1.5 million Armenians. This is not a coincidence. ISIS is pretty savvy and is historically informed. When ISIS pushed into the Nineveh Plain in Iraq last year, forcing 200,000 Assyrians to flee their homes, they began their invasion on August 7, which is the official Assyrian Martyrs Day, a day on which each year Assyrians remember their fallen.89 It is of note that some Middle Eastern Church leaders have repeatedly expressed their dislike of the G-word with regard to the fate of Christians in the Middle East, arguing basically that it undermines concurrence of victim groups and distracts from the fact that Sunnis, Shi’i, Yezidi, and so on are victims too. Apart from that, the persecution and genocide discourse resonates most in the ears of right-wing political parties who instrumentalize it for their often Islamophobic agenda of defending the endangered Christian Occident.90 It is a matter of fact that Middle Eastern diaspora Christians have become both victims of Islamophobia in everyday life and agents of its spread.91 Yet, the widespread use of genocide and human rights violation rhetoric by diaspora groups, in order to mobilize the international community and policy makers, does not mean that these same groups always propagate the same strategies about how to solve homeland conflicts. Fiercely opposite positions can be seen currently in the case of Iraqi Christians that have fled to the Kurdish zone. The call for an Assyrian/Chaldean autonomy within the Nineveh Plain is strongly supported by some diaspora organization in Sweden or the USA, and equally refuted by others.92 It is undoubtedly easier to reach group cohesiveness through identification with a shared history of sufferings than through political advocacy.

Conclusion This analysis of factors that transform migrant communities has highlighted the interrelatedness of internal and external, local and transnational contexts that reframe the everlasting question of who I am and who we are in a diaspora context. Diasporas escape the logic of immigration, integration, and assimilation as a rhythmic, teleologized process. Little Eastern minority diasporas may form a social space of refuge for migrants in order to distance themselves from the host society. Generally speaking, we can assume that their strategies of group identity are not so dissimilar to those in the homeland, although the environment may differ drastically with regards to security, legal status, and so forth. Their discourses and practices of identity are engaged in a complex interplay of sameness, with the Western host society, and difference, from the Western host society or the Muslim Other.

Notes 1 For orientation on the debate, I recommend Rogers Brubaker, “The ‘Diaspora’ Diaspora,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 28, no. 1 (2005), 1–19. 2 Brubaker, “The ‘Diaspora’ Diaspora,” 12. 3 Brubaker, “The ‘Diaspora’ Diaspora,” 12. 4 Gerd Baumann, The Multicultural Riddle: Rethinking National, Ethnic, and Religious Identities (New York: Routledge, 1999). 5 From here, I follow Herman G. B. Teule, “Middle Eastern Christians and Migration,” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 54, no. 1 (2002), 2–4. 6 Out of the numerous literature on Lebanese diaspora, I mention Albert Hourani and Nadim ­Shehadi, eds., The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration (London: I.B. Tauris, 1992);

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Middle Eastern minorities in diaspora I­ gnacio Klich and Jeffrey H. Lesser, eds., Arab and Jewish Immigrants in Latin America: Images and Realities (London: Cass, 1998); Andrew Arsan, Interlopers of Empire: The Lebanese Diaspora in Colonial French West Africa (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2014). 7 See Kemal H. Karpat, “The Ottoman Emigration to America, 1860–1914,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 17, no. 2 (1985), 176–180. 8 Karpat, “Ottoman Emigration,” 177. 9 Philipp Bruckmayr, “Syro-Lebanese Migration to Colombia, Venezuela and Curacão: From Mainly Christian to Predominantly Muslim Phenomenon,” European Journal of Economic and Political Studies 3 (2010), 153. 10 See Randa Kayyali, “US Census Classifications and Arab Americans: Contestations and Definitions of Identity Markers,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39, no. 8 (2013), 1304. She further explains that “they chose Syrian (or Shawaami) after the province. Due to the high number of Christians among the immigrants, this label became synonymous with an Eastern Christian identity in the US at the time.” 11 Helena L. Schulz and Juliane Hammer, The Palestinian Diaspora: Formation of Identities and Politics of Homeland (London: Routledge, 2003), 80. Out of the rich literature on Palestinian diaspora Palestinian Christian diasporas are explored in: Nancy L. Gonzalez, Dollar, Dove, and Eagle: One Hundred Years of Palestinian Migration to Honduras (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992); Suha Shakkour, The Christian Palestinians in Britain, PhD Thesis, University of St. Andrews, 2010. 12 See Karpat, “The Ottoman Emigration to America, 1860–1914,” 178. 13 Bruckmayr, “Syro-Lebanese Migration,” 152. 14 For more detail, see Janaina Herrera, “Les Diasporas d’Amérique Latine et la Crise Syrienne,” François Burgat and Bruno Paoli, eds., Pas de printemps pour la Syrie: Les clés pour comprendre les acteurs et les défis de la crise (2011–2013) (Paris: La Découverte, 2013), 323. 15 Lamia Oualalou, “Etre arabe en Amérique latine,” Le Monde diplomatique, Juillet 2017, 11. Also see Paulo Pinto, “The Religious Dynamics of Syrian-Lebanese and Palestinian Communities in Brazil,” Mashriq & Mahjar 3, no. 1 (2015), 30–40. 16 Teule, “Middle Eastern Christians and Migration,” 4. 17 Ray J. Mouawad, Les Maronites, Chrétiens du Liban (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), 192–194. 18 For the Antiochian Greek Orthodox Church in the US see Matthew W. Stiffler, Authentic Arabs, Authentic Christians: Antiochian Orthodox and the Mobilization of Cultural Identity. PhD Thesis, University of Michigan, 2010. 19 Tabar, Paul, “The Maronite Church in Lebanon: From Nation-Building to a Diasporan/­Transnational Institution,” Françoise d. Bel-Air, ed., Migration et politique au Moyen-Orient (­Beyrouth: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2006), 186. 20 Here I follow Hanoosh, Yasmeen, The Politics of Minority: Chaldeans between Iraq and America, PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2008, 4–5 and Herman G. B. Teule, Les Assyro-Chaldéens: Chrétiens d’Irak, d’Iran et de Turquie (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 162–163. 21 See Reiss, Wolfram, “Die Situation der Kopten in der Gegenwart,” Andreas Hölscher, Anja ­M iddelbeck-Varwick and Markus Thurau, eds., Kirche in Welt: Christentum im Zeichen kultureller Vielfalt (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013), 62. 22 Saad M. Saad, “The Contemporary Life of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United States,” Studies in World Christianity 16, no. 3 (2010), 207–225. 23 Saad, “Contemporary Life,” 209. 24 Here I follow Naures Atto, Hostages in the Homeland, Orphans in the Diaspora: Identity Discourses among the Assyrian/Syriac Elites in the European Diaspora (Amsterdam: Leiden University Press, 2011), 166–169. 25 Kai Merten, Die syrisch-orthodoxen Christen in der Türkei und in Deutschland: Untersuchungen zu einer Wanderungsbewegung, second edition (Berlin: Lit, 2013), 95–109. 26 See Merten, Die syrisch-orthodoxen Christen, 136–137. 27 For more details, see Atto, Hostages in the Homeland, 178–196. 28 Here I follow again, Teule, ‘Middle Eastern Christians and Migration,” 6. 29 Sources: Australian Government – Department of Immigration and Border Protection, “The People of Australia: Statistics from the 2011 Census.” Available www.border.gov.au/ReportsandPublications/…/people-australia-2013-statistics (Accessed 24 August 2016) (for all Australian figures), Rev. Ronald G. Roberson, CSP, “Annuario Pontificio,” Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Available www.cnewa.ca/source-images/Roberson-eastcath-statistics/eastcatholic-stat15.pdf (for all

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30 31 32 33 34 35

36

37 38 39

40

41

42

Eastern Catholic denominations: Maronite, Chaldean, Greek Catholic, Syriac Catholic, A ­ rmenian ­Catholic), Teule, Les Assyro-Chaldéens (for Assyrians), Rabo, Gabriel, “Neue Heimat in der ­Diaspora: Die syrisch-orthodoxe Kirche von Antiochien in Europa,” Thomas Sternberg et al., eds., Zwischen Morgenland und Abendland: Der Nahe Osten und die Christen (Münster: Dialog, 2011), 59–73 (for Syriac Orthodox Christians, updated by the author in February 2018 for Europe and the USA with figures provided by Mor Polycarpus Augin Aydin, Metropolitan, and Patriarchal Vicar for the Archdiocese of the Netherlands). The numbers for the Christians of Coptic Orthodox, Antiochian Greek ­Orthodox, and Armenian Apostolic (Holy See of Cilicia) denomination are taken from the website of the World Council of Churches. Available www.oikoumene.org/en/ (Accessed 24 August 2016) Numbers in Italics represent my own calculations on the basis of various information such as number of parishes and priests. It is of note that the Annuario Pontificio gives far higher numbers for the Maronites (150,000), the Greek Catholics (52,900), and ­Chaldeans (35,000) than the Australian Census. The case of the Armenian (Apostolic and Catholic) Christian diasporas in the context of Middle Eastern minorities is particularly difficult. I chose to include those in the table that stand under the Holy See of Cilicia, located in Antelias since 1930. Under its jurisdiction are most of the Middle Eastern Armenian dioceses, except for Damascus and Bagdad, and diaspora dioceses that have resulted from them in Kuwait, Venezuela, New York, Los Angeles, Canada, etc. I also point to the fact that the Armenian diaspora under the jurisdiction of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin is considerably larger, with around 5 million members, and some of its members have indeed Middle Eastern background. See Bruckmayr, “Syro-Lebanese Migration,” 152. See Yvonne Y. Haddad and Jane I. Smith, “The Druze in North America,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 13, no. 1 (1992), 141. Haddad and Smith, “The Druze in North America.” Here and in the following: Philip G. Kreyenbroek, Yezidism in Europe: Different Generations Speak about Their Religion (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), 42. I thank Mija A. Sanders who is currently preparing her PhD thesis on Yezidis in the USA for this information. See Sökefeld, Martin, “Aleviten in Deutschland: Kommentar zu den Daten der Umfrage ‘Muslimische Religiosität in Deutschland,’” n.d. Available www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/fileadmin/system/ flexpaper/rsmbstpublications/download_file/3497/3497_17.pdf (Accessed 1 September 2016), 19–20. See, for example J.M. Brinkerhoff, “Diaspora Philanthropy: Lessons from a Demographic Analysis of the Coptic Diaspora,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 43, no. 6 (2014), 834. For detailed discussion of numbers in the literature see: Hannelore Müller, Türkei, Ägypten, Saudi-Arabien (­Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015), 160. According to Martin Sökefeld, leading scholar on Alevi German diaspora, in “Aleviten in Deutschland.” See Juan R. Cole, Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Bahá’í Faith in the Nineteenth-­ Century Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). See Juan R. Cole, “Race, Immorality and Money in the American Bahá’í Community: Impeaching the Los Angeles Spiritual Assembly,” Religion 30, no. 2 (2011), 110; Todd Lawson, “Bahá’í,” John L. Esposito, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, vol. 1 (New York: ­Oxford University Press, 1995), 181. Sources: Website of the American Druze Heritage. Available www.americandruzehertitage.com (Accessed 24 August 2016), Australian Government – Department of Immigration and Border Protection, “The People of Australia,” Kreyenbroek et al., Yezidism in Europe; The Mandaean Associations Union, and Mandaean Human Rights Group, “Mandaean Human Rights Annual Report.” Available www.mandaeanunion.org/mhrg (Accessed 9 August 2016); Todd M. Johnson and Brian J. Grim, The World’s Religions in Figures: An Introduction to International Religious Demography (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) (for Bahá’í) and own calculations for the Alevi. It was not possible to collect reliable data for the diaspora of Alawis. For the first four categories I follow Alexander-Kenneth Nagel, “Kreisverkehr statt ­Einbahnstraße: Migration und religiöser Wandel in der Diaspora,” Jürgen Manemann and Werner Schreer, eds., Religion und Migration heute: Perspektiven – Positionen – Projekte (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2012), 72–74. For the following, see Martin Sökefeld, “Religion or culture? Concepts of Identity in the Alevi Diaspory,” Waltraud Kokot and Hauke Dorsch, eds., Diaspora: Transnationale Beziehungen

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43 4 4

45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52

53 54

55 56 57

und Identitäten (Hamburg: Periplus, 204), 133–155; Martin Sökefeld, “Einleitung: Aleviten in ­Deutschland – von takiye zur alevitischen Bewegung,” Martin Sökefeld, ed., Aleviten in Deutschland: Identitätsprozesse einer Religionsgemeinschaft in der Diaspora (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2008), 7–36; Martin Sökefeld, Struggling for Recognition: The Alevi Movement in Gemany and in Transnational Space (­Oxford: Bergahn Books, 2008). For a comprehensive overview on this subject, see Steven Vertovec, Transnationalism (London: Routledge, 2009), 143–145. Olivier Roy has argued with regard to Muslim migrants in Europe that “Muslim” has become a cultural, neo-ethnic category based on the Western idea of Islam as a culture that every Muslim regardless of his/her beliefs participates in, resulting in a group identity. Neo-fundamentalist Muslim diasporas in Europe have appropriated this view by adopting a politics of communalism. See Olivier Roy, L’islam mondialisé, second edition (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2004), 72–73. I would suggest that this “neo-ethnicization” is indeed also to be observed within diasporas of Middle Eastern minorities, but I would not go as far as Roy by claiming that this process is primarily triggered by Western categories. From here I follow mainly Atto, Hostages in the Homeland (especially 323–392) and then Heidi Armbruster, Keeping the Faith: Syriac Christian Diasporas (Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston, 2013), 131–156. Atto, Hostages in the Homeland, 323. Armbruster, Keeping the Faith, 139. Aryo Makko, “The Historical Roots of Contemporary Controversies: National Revival and the Assyrian ‘Concept of Unity,’” Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies 24, no. 1 (2010), 1–29. Other important research on the Swedish diaspora comes from: Ulf Björklund, North to Another Country: The Formation of a Suryoyo Community in Sweden (Stockholm: Department of Social Anthropology, University of Stockholm), 1981; Önver A. Cetrez, Meaning-Making Variations in Acculturation and Ritualization: A Multi-Generational Study of Suroyo Migrants in Sweden (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 2005); F. Deniz, En minoritets odyssé: Upprätthallande och transformation av etnisk identitet i förhllande till moderniseringsprocesser – Det assyriska exemplet [An Odyssey of a Minority: Maintenance and Transformation of Ethnic Identity in Relation to Processes of Modernization – The Assyrian Example] (Uppsala: University Press, 1999). Atto, Hostages in the Homeland, 347. Atto, Hostages in the Homeland, 491. See Nagel, “Kreisverkehr statt Einbahnstraße,” 73. For the Yezidi, see Andreas Ackermann, “Yeziden in Deutschland,” Paideuma. Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 49 (2003), 157–177; Kartal Celalettin, “Yeziden in Deutschland: Einwanderungsgeschichte, Veränderungen und Integrationsprobleme,” Kritische Justiz 40, no. 3 (2007), 240–257; Kreyenbroek et al., Yezidism in Europe; Robert Langer, “Yezidism between Scholarly Literature and Actual Practice: From ‘Heterodox’ Islam and ‘Syncretism’ to the Formation of a Transnational Yezidi ‘Orthodoxy,’” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 37, no. 3 (2010), 393–403; Banu S. Yalkut-Breddermann, “Der Wandel der yezidischen Religion in der Diaspora,” Gerdien Jonker, ed. Kern und Rand: Religiöse Minderheiten aus der Türkei in Deutschland (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1999), 51–63; for the Alevis, Martin Sökefeld, ed. Aleviten in Deutschland: Identitätsprozesse einer Religionsgemeinschaft in der Diaspora (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2008). See Alexander-Kenneth Nagel, ed. Religiöse Netzwerke: Die zivilgesellschaftlichen Potentiale religiöser Migrantengemeinden (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015), 28. For Germany, see Ulf Plessentin,“Die zivilgesellschaftlichen Potentiale der Syrisch-Orthodoxen Kirche,” Alexander-Kenneth Nagel, ed., Religiöse Netzwerke: Die zivilgesellschaftlichen Potentiale religiöser Migrantengemeinden (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015), 117–146; for Austria: Schmoller, Andreas, “Structures of Belonging and Relations: The Syriac Orthodox and the Coptic Orthodox Church in Austria,” Fiona McCallum et al., eds., Middle Eastern Christian Identities in Europe (forthcoming 2019). Plessentin, “Die zivilgesellschaftlichen Potentiale,” 140–141. Here I follow Wolfgang Hage, “Die Orientalischen Kirchen in Europa,” Sabine Gralla, ed., Oriens christianus: Geschichte und Gegenwart des nahöstlichen Christentums (Münster: Lit, 2003), 116. For a good overview on this see Sebastian Brock, “The Syriac Churches in Ecumenical Dialogue on Christology,” Anthony O’Mahony, ed., Eastern Christianity: Studies in Modern History, Religion and Politics (London: Melisende, 2004), 44–65 and Dietmar W. Winkler, “Growing Consensus: The Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches,” Ortodoksia 53 (2013), 84–112.

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Andreas Schmoller 58 Jeffrey Gros, Harding Meyer, and William G. Rusch, eds., Growth in Agreement II: Reports and Agreed Statements of Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level (1982–1998) (New York: Paulist Press, 2000). 59 For the following see Schmoller, “Structures of Belonging and Relations.” 60 Here see again Nagel, “Kreisverkehr statt Einbahnstraße,” 73. 61 Anne Monsour, “‘But what are ya?’ Identity, Belonging and In-between-ness in early Lebanese Australian Communities,” Trevor Batrouney et al., eds., Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian Communities in the World: Theoretical Frameworks and Empirical Studies (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2014), 44. 62 Monsour, “But what are ya?” 45–46. 63 Monsour, “But what are ya?” 47. 64 Out of the many studies about the effects of 9/11 on Arab-Americans see e.g., Nabeel Abraham, Sally Howell, and Andrew Shryock, eds., Arab Detroit 9/11: Life in the Terror Decade (Detroit: Great Lakes Books. 2011); Amaney A. Jamal and Nadine Naber, eds., Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008). Both include contributions about Arab Christians in the post-9/11 context. 65 Matthew W. Stiffler, “Orthodox, Arab, American: The Flexibility of Christian Arabness in ­Detroit,” Abraham, Howell, and Shryock, eds., Arab Detroit 9/11, 108. 66 Stiffler, “Orthodox, Arab, American.” 67 See Jen’nan G. Read, “Discrimination and Identity Formation in a post 9/11-era: A Comparison of Muslim and Christian Arab Americans,” Amaney A. Jamal and Nadine Naber, eds., Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 305–317. 68 Haddad and Smith, “The Druze in North America,” 136. 69 This is an expression of Stuart Hall, “Ethnicity: Identity and Difference,” Radical America 23, no. 4 (1991), 9–20. I borrow here from a quotation in Hanoosh, The Politics of Minority, 319. 70 Hanoosh, The Politics of Minority, 319–320. Italics in original. 71 Hanoosh, The Politics of Minority, 320. 72 Central parts of this research are still unpublished. I have analyzed this aspect in an invited talk: Schmoller, Andreas, “‘Discours sur les identités et l’islam. La diaspora autrichienne des “Chrétiens d’Orient,”’ Invited Lecture at Ecoles des Hautes Etudes en sciences sociales, IISMM, Paris, 22 November 2015. 73 Here again I follow Nagel, “Kreisverkehr statt Einbahnstraße,” 74. 74 See Sökefeld, ‘Einleitung’, 30. 75 Julia Mourao Permoser, Sieglinde Rosenberger, and Kristina Stoeckl, “Religious Organisations as Political Actors in the Context of Migration: Islam and Orthodoxy in Austria,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36, no. 9 (2010), 2. 76 See Schmoller, ‘Structures of Belonging and Relations’. 77 Mourao Permoser, Rosenberger, and Stoeckl, “Religious Organisations,” 2. 78 See Bernard Heyberger and Aurélien Girard, “Chrétiens au Proche-Orient: Les Nouvelles Conditions d’une présence,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 60, no. 171 (2015), 27. 79 See Shmuel Trigano, “‘Abus de mémoire’ et ‘concurrence des victimes’: Une dépolitisation des problèmes,” Controverses. Revue d'Idées 1, no. 2 (2006), 39–44. From here I follow the important analysis of Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit: Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik (München: Beck, 2006), 76–81. 80 See Assmann, Der lange Schatten. 81 Trigano, “‘Abus de mémoire’ et ‘concurrence des victimes,’” 41. 82 For a comprehensive analysis of the debate I recommend the German study by Robel, Yvonne, Verhandlungssache Genozid: Zur Dynamik geschichtspolitischer Deutungskämpfe (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2013). 83 For a more systematic and comparative approach to the issue see Bahar Baser, Maykel Verkuyten, and Hugh Miall, Diasporas and Homeland Conflicts: A Comparative Perspective (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). 84 Gavriʾel Shefer, Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 26. 85 For reasons of place, I do not detail the different forms of diaspora activism. An interesting comparison of different strategies is offered by Koinova: Maria Koinova, “Why Do Conflict-Generated

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86 87 88

89

90 91 92

Diasporas Pursue Sovereignty-based Claims through State-Based or Transnational Channels? ­A rmenian, Albanian and Palestinian Diasporas in the UK Compared,” European Journal of International Relations 20, no. 4 (2014), 1043–1071. Laure Guirguis, Les coptes d'Égypte: Violences communautaires et transformations politiques (2005–2012) (Paris: Karthala, 2012), 243 (author’s translation from French). Fiona McCallum, Christian Religious Leadership in the Middle East: The Political Role of the Patriarch (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010), 204. Grégoire Delhaye, “La réponse des États à la dissidence diasporique: Le cas de l’Égypte face au militantisme copte aux États-Unis,” Stéphane Dufoix, Carine Guerassimoff-Pina and Anne de Tinguy, eds., Loin des yeux, près du coeur (Paris : Presses de Science Po, 2010), 323–341. From the same author on the same subject I also recommend Grégoire Delhaye, “Contemporary MuslimChristian Relations in Egypt: Local Dynamics and Foreign Influences,” Anh Nha Lonya and Anne Sofie Roald, eds., Religious Minorities in the Middle East: Domination, Self-Empowerment, Accommodation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 71–96. Peter BetBasoo, “Genocide of Assyrian that Started in Iraq Continues in Syria.” Available www. aina.org/releases/20150227041934.htm (Accessed 21 August 2017). The document later was also published on youtube by adding photo footage. See “Genocide of Assyrian Christians in Iraq Continues in Syria.” Available www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dug3wva7S0Q (Accessed 21 August 2017). Similarly, Yezidi diaspora associations in the USA have come to cooperate with Indian diaspora associations close to the Hindu Nationalist Movement. I am indebted to Mija A. Sanders for this observation. Here I refer to Fiona McCallum and Alistair Hunter, “Translocation of Prejudice: Middle Eastern Christian Islamophobic Discourse in the UK.” Paper presented at the International Islamophobia Conference, Salzburg, 9 October 2014. Similarly Hanoosh has analyzed the opposite support strategies of US Chaldeans with regard to the Nineveh Plains settlement project in the post-Saddam era which was one project where the Chaldeans diaspora tried to be “seriously involved in directing the political affairs of the Chaldean community in the homeland.” Yasmeen Hanoosh, “Fighting Our Own Battles: Iraqi Chaldeans and the War on Terror,” Abraham, Howell, and Shryock, eds., Arab Detroit 9/11, 141.

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27 Middle Eastern minorities and the media Elizabeth Monier

Media has become an increasingly popular field of study as communications technology develops and our world becomes more interconnected. Its application to the study of minority politics is a useful addition because it both demonstrates the potential social, political, and cultural applications of media as technology develops and offers insights into how a minority community behaves and evolves as it experiences processes of minoritization. It thereby provides one framework for the investigation of the construction of collective identities by providing a source of visual and cultural artefacts for analysis. This chapter will provide some general background on the relationship between minorities and media in the Middle East in order to put the discussion of the goals and practices of minority media into context. It will then illustrate the ways in which media is used and discuss whether common aims can be identified. The term minority is used here to mean a national group whose identity, whether in part or as a whole, is marginalized in the public sphere. As a result, the group is defined as, in some way, different from the dominant conception of national identity and culture. Such groups are often, though not always, numerical minorities but are minoritized through various social, economic, and political processes. It should be noted that not all groups that could be described as a minority according to this definition accept this label for themselves. Therefore, where the term is used here, it is meant to describe groups that are somehow marginalized, non-dominant, or “other” as compared to the Arab/Islamic culture that dominates a large proportion of the region, without making a judgement about the extent of a group’s “minority-ness.” The term minority media is used here to mean particularistic media that runs separate to mainstream national media channels and is largely produced for an audience other than the general public. However, the study of minority media should not be limited to particularistic media but should also encompass the study of minority access to and representation in mainstream media if a full picture of the status of the non-dominant group in society is to be obtained.1 Therefore, there are two aspects to consider in seeking to understand the relationship between minorities and media in the Middle East. First is how and why minorities establish and use particularistic media. Second is to determine the position minorities hold in national mainstream media. Using Riggins’2 work on ethnic minority media as a starting point, the chapter will investigate the dilemma of using minority media. As Riggins argued, 3 in many cases, minority 370

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media empowers and strengthens a community, enabling it to integrate into mainstream society. But it is this very integration that can put the minority heritage at risk through assimilation. Iskander’s research on Copts in Egypt has demonstrated a further complication to using particularistic media, which is that minority media can have an isolating effect by reducing knowledge about the minority community available in the public sphere by limiting it to a particularistic one.4 This suggests that a marginalized group must strive for a balance in its media strategy in order to preserve heritage while supporting the ability of its members to play a role as active citizens. The diversity of ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups complicates efforts to draw conclusions that apply across the whole Middle East. Furthermore, the political and historical context plays a role in the priorities of each group and its relationship to the media, and therefore specific case studies will be used to illustrate the characteristics and purposes of minority media.

Minorities and the emergence of the press This section will give an overview of the participation of minority group members in mainstream media to show that particularistic media has not been the only type of media activity produced by non-dominant groups. It also demonstrates the point that the local socio-­ political climate impacts on engagement in mainstream media versus particularistic media. Among the most prominent contributors are the Arabic-speaking Christians: in fact they played a pivotal role in the emergence of the press from the early nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century. The two main centres for publishing were initially Cairo and Beirut but eventually Cairo emerged as the front-runner as many of the prominent publishers and writers from Lebanon and Syria migrated to Egypt to enjoy the greater freedom of expression there in the late nineteenth century. The developing printing industry was both a result of and a contributor to the wave of modernization and reform that was sweeping the Middle East as Arab intellectuals, writers, and leaders sought to redefine society in response to the challenge of modernity. Publishing books and periodicals was seen as crucial in addressing the question of Eastern identity and how to preserve local cultures while adapting ideas and technologies emerging from Europe in order to reverse the decline of the region relative to the West. A renaissance or Nahda emerged that prioritized the revitalization of Arabic culture and language. The Christians of the Middle East were in a strong position to contribute. As part of the Tanzimat reforms instigated by the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century, minorities had, in theory if not necessarily in practice, equal status as subjects. From this hopes were kindled that minorities could have a stronger voice and impact in public life. Many minority groups had also benefited from wider exposure to foreign cultures and languages through education provided by foreign missionaries and through ties with foreign merchants. They were then well-equipped to transmit and translate the writings of European philosophers and scientists. The first printing press arrived in Egypt in 1821, leading to the first official publication, alWaqa’i al-Misriyyah, in 1828. The second printing press was brought to Egypt by Pope Kyrilos IV around 1859,5 and it became known as the Coptic Community Press. The publications produced by this press were church-focused (i.e., particularistic),6 whereas lay Copts from the elite sought to play a role in the national press rather than the Coptic publications scene at this time. Atta indicates that the media was a significant vehicle for Coptic participation in public life.7 Not only did it allow Copts to participate in public discourse, but Copts were able to support Coptic identity and Christian faith. Challenges faced by the Copts were addressed in public as concerns for Egypt, not in separate Coptic spaces as concerns only for the Church. 371

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While Egyptian Christians were certainly prominent during this period, the Christian migrants from Syria and Lebanon had a disproportionately high level of participation and were more dominant than the indigenous Christians. In 1876, it was Syrian Greek C ­ atholics Salim and Bishara Takla who founded al-Ahram, which is still published today. The first Coptic-owned newspaper, al-Watan, was founded a year later by Mikhail Abd al-Sayid. The most important newspapers of the time included two others owned by Syrian and Lebanese C ­ hristians: al-Hilal owned by Jurji Zaidan and al-Muqtataf owned by Faris Nimr and Yaqub Sarruf. In fact, according to Ayalon, the newspaper al-Mu’ayyad was established by Ali Yusuf (a Muslim Egyptian) in 1889, in order to counter the dominance of Syrian Christians in the press.8 Jews in the Arab world also saw the emerging press as an opportunity to become involved in public life and to define their role in society for themselves. In Egypt, two notable figures were Murad Farag and James Sanua, both of whom wrote extensively in the press and gave lectures and wrote books that supported Egyptian patriotism.9 Farag was concerned with establishing the historical links between Judaism and Islam and Arabic and Hebrew and was an advocate of equality between citizens without discrimination. Sanua, known popularly as Abu Naddara Zarqa, after his satirical cartoon character, established Egypt’s first theatre company and published numerous writings, many in colloquial Egyptian. He advocated for equality and against authoritarianism in the figure of the Khedive Ismail and was consequently exiled to France.10 The Jews of Iraq also saw the media as a means to participate and to represent themselves both in Iraq and throughout the Arab world.11 Jews, particularly in Baghdad, set up newspapers and wrote for others owned by Muslims starting from the late nineteenth century in response to efforts in the Ottoman Empire to promote tolerance and equality among the different religious communities or millets. But it was post World War I and the accession of ­Faysal I that Jewish participation really began to accelerate.12 One of the most evident concerns was to work out their identity vis-à-vis emerging Arab and Iraqi nationalisms, especially in light of the Zionist movement.13 The Nahda was adopted by Jewish intellectuals, especially in Baghdad, as a cultural revival that enabled them to weave Jewish and Arab history into a unifying narrative of belonging.14 The press was a central mechanism in this process of constructing an “Arab Jewishness.”15 In Egypt too, Murad Farag was using the vocabulary of Arab Jewishness “in order to emphasize that Jews were historically and currently part of the Arab collective” and therefore could be a part of the Arab nations.16 In both these examples, minorities saw the importance of their involvement in media to increase their visibility as active citizens and to construct and affirm their belonging.

The decline of minorities in mainstream media The Jewish Iraqi voice soon had to contend with the growing Zionist movement, but their publications played a role in enabling Jews to continue to declare their loyalty to Iraq and work out their relationship to Zionism and, after 1948, the state of Israel.17 As the Arab-Israeli conflict and migration to Israel gathered pace, the Jewish voices in the Arab world began to lose influence and Jewish media started to decline. Jews and other minorities had already begun to struggle against a rising tide of radical Arab nationalism that was in ascendance in Iraq in the 1930s, and began to exclude diverse voices among all groups in society.18 In Egypt too, minorities began to lose their prominence in national media. Under the new political regimes that emerged in the post-colonial Middle East after World War II, heterogeneity in all its forms tended to be squeezed out as authoritarianism and radical Arab nationalism led to a contraction of the public space. The coups and revolutions that characterized the 372

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political scene in many of the new Arab states also disrupted the operation of media and relations between minorities and the state, for example, in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. In Egypt, Gamal Abdul Nasser even went so far as to nationalize the press in 1960. ­Al-­Ahram then became the mouthpiece of the state, and today remains a government newspaper.19 The Wafd, the main political party which had been the mechanism that had ­enabled Copts to participate prominently in Egyptian political life, also declined, and Copts looked instead towards the Church as an alternative space for social life and media production. ­A lthough Copts continued to contribute to mainstream press, it was usually in smaller roles rather than as owners and editors, and so particularistic media flourished in parallel. One newspaper that has continued to try to bridge the divide is Watani, edited by Yusef S­ ­idhom. For Sidhom, Copts should not aim to produce media exclusively for Copts because of the risk of isolation. This does not mean ignoring issues that face Copts specifically but that maintaining a presence in mainstream media, much as in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, better serves to construct Coptic concerns as national concerns and to avoid diminished mutual understanding that results from the lack of knowledge about the “other.”20 This points to the main dilemma regarding particularistic media, which is how to empower a marginalized group to ensure its survival without leading to the entrenchment of isolationist practices and constructions of collective communal identity or to an assimilation process that requires the disappearance of the minority’s heritage. One way to do that is to develop a media strategy that develops specialist media to support the community while also developing access to mainstream media that contributes to correcting stereotypes and keeps knowledge about the minority circulating in the national media that is accessed by the general public. According to Cottle, minority groups are often dissatisfied with the way they are portrayed in mainstream media and often feel their ability to access this media is restricted. 21 Therefore, while the ability to achieve a presence in mainstream media that represents a community’s identity or concerns is not strictly speaking minority media, it does represent a crucial minority media strategy and a central aspect in understanding the relationship between minorities and the media. By undertaking to increase positive visibility of a marginalized group in mainstream media, members of the group will seek to take control of their representation, correct misrepresentation, and define relationship to majority culture as constructed in the media. This is clearly imperative for a community that perceives itself as excluded or misrepresented. Caspi and Elias’s studies support the argument that “majority media discrimination against the minority is manifested primarily as underrepresentation and stereotyping.”22 Moreover, since the media’s reach is increasing, its ability to create and disseminate stereotypes is accentuated.23 While exclusion or underrepresentation contributes to the lack of general awareness about social diversity, misrepresentation can be more detrimental to a group than exclusion in that it reinforces stereotypes and takes away the ability of a community to define itself and its identity vis-à-vis the majority. 24 In some cases, it can also exacerbate or prolong conflict between national groups. 25 Consequently, due to the importance of maintaining some visibility and making a contribution to constructing representation in mainstream media, minorities still have a presence in mainstream media as individuals or institutions, but they may not always have control of the quantity or quality of what they publish. This results from access issues and a lack of resources since the decline of minority ownership in mainstream press, the national political climate, and also intra-community relations of power.26 373

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Particularistic media: strategies and goals In the context of the decline of minority voices in mainstream media in the Middle East through the latter part of the twentieth century due to socio-political transformations and the problem of restricted or uneven access, particularistic media has often grown to compensate. Riggins asks: “What better strategy could there be for ensuring minority survival than the development by minorities of their own media conveying their own point of view in their own language?”27 This “media imperative” described by Riggins, ascribes a vast amount of power to the media, so this section will look at the main characteristics and purposes of particularistic minority media in the Middle East in today’s socio-political climate. Several case studies, including Coptic Christians in Egypt, the Yezidis of Iraq and the Amazigh of North Africa, will be used to illustrate the experience of different marginalized groups and if and how they use media to ensure their survival.

Copts The vast majority of Egypt’s indigenous Christians belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church, an ancient church, which is believed to have been founded by St Mark (see Chapter 6). Accurate population figures are difficult to establish. Estimates of the proportion of the population of Egyptians that are Christian range from less than 6% up to 20%. 28 Copts are spread throughout Egypt, and while there are clusters of Christians, especially in Upper Egyptian Governorates such as Minya, in general, Muslims and Christians can be found living side by side throughout the country. Copts have no claims to specific areas of territory and have no aspirations for the establishment of an autonomous area. In fact, Coptic heritage and identity is tied to the territory of Egypt in its entirety, and contributions of Coptic history and culture are found in national Egyptian traditions and language. For these reasons, Coptic Christians often object to the label minority, at least publicly. However, there is acknowledgment that Christians in Egypt experience various forms of discrimination as a result of their religious identity that undermines their citizenship status.29 The rhetoric of the state media too is that there is no minority in Egypt, and that suggesting that Copts are a minority is historically and factually incorrect and damaging to the nation. “Minority-ness” has long been constructed as something negative which has had the effect of leaving inequalities arising from minoritization unaddressed.30 While Copts and Coptic affairs are not excluded from mainstream media, Copts no longer have the strength of influence they had in the early twentieth century. At the same time, since the 1950s, the church has increased its creation and command of Coptic spaces. For Copts, serving the church subsequently became increasingly important as both a spiritual and a social activity, as it confirms one’s place in these newly important Coptic spaces. This Coptic renewal included a significant focus on media. Under Shenouda III, patriarch from 1971 until 2012, there was a centralization and expansion of church authority, as well as an enthusiastic adoption of media technologies producing audio and visual cultural artefacts. 31 Shenouda was himself the editor-in-chief of El-Keraza Magazine, the official publication of the Coptic Orthodox Church, from 1962. During his tenure, Shenouda also oversaw the expansion of electronic media activity and the establishment of Coptic satellite stations. The first two major channels were Coptic TV (CTV) and Aghapy TV, but the number of channels have increased and now also include Coptic Sat TV, Logos, ME Sat, and Alhorreya Coptic TV.32 Through using Coptic media, Coptic stories and traditions were printed in books and made into films, religious texts and music were made available, as were materials 374

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for learning the Coptic language. However, it should be noted that the language used in this media is Arabic – or European languages for the diaspora – and not Coptic, which no longer exists as a living spoken language. This expansion of Coptic media spaces was not an attempt to seek isolation but was at least partially in reaction to a national trend, which saw the public spaces become more Islamized, and spaces for Copts to engage in national political and social life reduce. One negative result of such retreat has been the reduction among the general public of knowledge of the “other” as social spaces become more particularistic based on religious affiliation. However, the particularistic spaces enable Copts to express aspects of their cultural and religious heritage that do not find space in national life. While there are inequalities, Copts remain a visible part of the national social fabric, and so Coptic media is supplementary or complementary. It is there to perform functions that national media cannot, and to create material that is irrelevant to a broader national audience but that supports Coptic collective identity. Coptic media in its current form is largely overseen by church authorities and Coptic community leaders. While online media, and particularly social media, is broadening access to Copts because less resources are now needed to create content, Coptic media remains largely under the auspices of the church leaders and acts to enhance the church’s ability to reach Copts regardless of physical location. This is reflected in the stated aims of CopticWorld, an online platform established in 2007. According to the site, CopticWorld.org has the three missions: first, to provide every single church in the world with its own website; second, to allow integration of these individual websites into bigger websites at the level of cities, states, the country, and the whole world; and finally, it is designed to provide a rigorous dissemination of information system for the clergy.33

The Amazigh The Amazighs, also known as Berbers or Imazighen, are a native North African ethnic group (see Chapter 23). According to Maddy-Weitzman, they number around 20 million, located primarily in Morocco where they comprise an estimated 40% of the population.34 Accurate figures are difficult to obtain due to a lack of census data, and others suggest higher numbers. For example, Minority Rights Group International put the number of Amazigh in Morocco alone at 20 million (more than half the population of Morocco), with a further 6.6–9.9 million in Algeria (estimated in 2004). 35 In addition to Morocco and Algeria, there are also significant Amazigh numbers in Libya, Tunisia, and Siwa Oasis in Egypt, as well as among the nomadic Tuareg tribes. Despite this significant population, Amazigh culture and identity has been marginalized and undermined vis-à-vis Arabic culture. It has also been constructed as a threat to national cohesion. As a result, until the twenty-first century, there was self-censorship in both media and scholarship in Morocco due to fears that supporting Amazigh identity could be construed as disloyalty to the nation.36 This was entrenched to the extent that giving children Amazigh names was forbidden in Morocco for decades. Since Amazigh activism began to grow in the 1970s, media has been both a site for struggle and a tool for negotiating between Arabic and Amazigh identities. Silverstein and Crawford note how “In every case, association leaders used the Amazigh press and the virtual organization of Amazigh militancy on e-mail list-serves and websites” in order to call attention to their confrontations with the state and to galvanize support.37 In the 1990s, changes in policy slowly started to be discussed, and when the Moroccan government promised reforms, this included opening channels for programming in Tamazight, the Amazigh language, in the national broadcast media. Stemming from this opening there was a growth 375

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in Amazigh newspapers, and media became an important tool in supporting the central goal of integrating Amazigh identity into national life. While the Amazighs speak various dialects of Tamazight, it is only in recent years that the prohibition on teaching Tamazight in schools was lifted. In Morocco, Tamazight has been taught in schools since the early 2000s as part of a campaign to overcome prejudice against Amazigh culture and identity. Amazigh media has played a pivotal role in changing attitudes toward Amazigh culture and to promoting the acceptance of Tamazight as an official language and as integral to the history and culture of North Africa.38 So the use of media to promote the Amazigh language was not only about preserving the language but also about recognizing that the language is the heritage of North African society as a whole and promoting a case for making it a national or even official language and increasing awareness of Amazigh heritage.39 Tamazight eventually became a national language in Algeria in 2002, and was recognized as an official language in 2015. It was officially recognized in the Moroccan constitution in 2011. According to Berbère TV, which was founded in 2001, this objective of raising the profile of Amazigh culture in the states of North Africa so that it can take its place as an ancestral culture and language of the region is their main purpose. In addition, they are concerned with supporting the cohesion of all the Amazigh peoples and campaigning for Tamazight to be taught in all schools in North Africa as an official language.40 Indeed, the developments in communications technology have been embraced by the Amazigh and have had an impact on the ability of the Amazigh to make their voices heard and to connect people within Morocco and in the diaspora, to Amazigh identity. Cassette tapes were the first form of technology that enabled Amazigh communities to record and share their language and culture, for example, through music. This has improved connections between the different Amazigh communities. The advent of the Internet has enhanced this process.41 While Amazigh activism, including media, has been successful in many ways in bringing marginalized Amazigh identity into the public sphere and national life, the Amazigh minority still face challenges, including urbanization and globalization. In terms of A ­ mazigh media, there is the need to maintain control over particularistic Amazigh media and A ­ mazigh representation in mainstream media in order to avoid assimilation or being co-opted by the state, as some Amazigh activists fear.42 There is also a concern to ensure dynamic interaction between the region’s cultural and linguistic influences. Amazigh media, especially online, often operates in several languages, including various Tamazight dialects, Arabic, French, and sometimes other European languages as well.43 This linguistic interaction is necessary in terms of group cohesion because of the different languages and dialects spoken in the Amazigh communities in North Africa and also in the diaspora, which is heavily concentrated in France. However, it also raises the problem of assimilation and dilution of the Amazigh identity which could challenge the Amazigh community through the over-internationalization of its media.

Yezidis The Yezidis (also Ezidi or Yazidi) are a small minority in the Middle East, mainly based in Iraq and in diaspora communities around the world, perhaps most notably in Germany. They are thought to number around 700,000 to 1 million (see Chapter 11).44 Yezidis have been subject to violent attacks and political agendas throughout their history but have come to the world’s attention since the Islamic State (IS) began to target them, particularly from 2014, forcing them to flee their traditional territories in Northern Iraq.45 Large numbers of Yezidis were killed or taken into slavery by IS, and in response to this desperate situation Yezidi 376

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media has begun to evolve in two ways. The first way is to act as a resource to connect with international media and highlight and disseminate news about what is happening to Yezidis in Iraq. The second is the recognition of the role of media, particularly electronic media, in preserving the Yezidi community, both in physical numbers and in its cultural practices, as it undergoes ethnic cleansing, displacement, and dispersal. The goals are to survive the conflict in Iraq and to support and restore connections between members of the community so that its traditions, which are largely preserved and transmitted orally, can be passed on.46 Prior to the emergence of the threat to the Yezidis posed by IS, media strategies were not a significant focus for Yezidis. Being a small group, mainly based in one territorial region, a large media arm was not seen as a crucial mechanism for group cohesion. In the past, Yezidis have tended to be a closed community that did not seek to draw attention to itself in order to escape persecution.47 They did have newspapers, books, online media, and television channels, and the Yezidi faith was taught in schools, but all this was overseen by the Kurdish authorities or the Iraqi government. Yezidi media was often a political tool used by different factions within the Yezidi community and by the Kurdish leadership who sought to construct a particular understanding of Yezidi identity as linked to Kurdish identity.48 Likewise, under the government of Saddam Hussein, Yezidis were subject to the campaign to impose Arab ethnic identity on all Iraqis. Consequently, independent Yezidi media without a political agenda did not really exist. One example is Merkez Lalish, which produced broadcast and print media and had twenty-eight offices in Yezidi towns. It is seen as closely linked to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and its head, Sheikh Shamo, is a KDP deputy in the Kurdish parliament. Thus, despite the existence of media, the Ezidi Religious Council has repeatedly stated that it lacks the space for voicing criticism in Iraq or under the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG).49 This lack of independent local media has led to a rise of diaspora-based media. Events since 2013 have also forced Yezidis to adopt a more robust media strategy in order to safeguard the survival of the group in the face of the threat of genocide and of political agendas that seek to co-opt Yezidi identity or alter their religious traditions.50 According to Yezidi NGO Yezidi International, media can play a big role in the preservation of Yezidi religion and heritage and also help to prevent the eradication of Yezidis and their faith. They believe that even if Yezidis can survive the physical threat of IS, they are still at risk. In fact, it might be their global dispersal as they flee conflict and persecution that eventually leads to the disappearance of the Yezidis. Because of the need to highlight to the outside world what is happening and also as a means of preserving bonds between members of a community that has been dispersed within Iraq and globally due to the conflict, Yezidis had to find ways to establish contacts with international media and have done so through creating their own media networks. Establishing electronic media has been a major response to this. According to Hayri Demir, Chief-Editor at EzidiPress, “The need for fast communication is increasing and will be ultimately necessary for the survival of the Ezidis.” EzidiPress was originally founded in 2013 as a blog in Germany to be a self-financing, non-partisan news site. A few months later, Yezidis from various countries including Turkey, Syria, Russia, Georgia and Armenia joined forces to establish a multilingual news site in order to reach the various Ezidi diaspora groups. They now publish articles in six languages: German, English, Kurmanji, Russian, French, and Arabic, and have ambitions to add a TV channel. Their goal is to build a network between the various diaspora groups. This involves using the Internet as a communication tool to combat the growing gap between the diaspora communities. Their particular target audience is Yezidi youth in order to empower them with a sense of confidence in their history and identity.51 377

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The shared characteristics of minority media in the Middle East In all of the case studies explored, online media has begun to form a central aspect of community life and minority media practices. Online media is different from traditional mass media in that it has the potential to be reflexive. Social media and forums in particular are more about having a conversation, whereas mass media is a unidirectional model in which the audience are consumers with limited opportunities for interaction. For minorities then, online media is not only about disseminating information among the community or inserting it into the mainstream, but it can also provide a space for shaping minority identity. As Crawford and Hoffman explain in their study on Amazigh-net: “While Amazigh-ness is expressed in the postings as something identifiable something that existed prior to its expression, we might argue that the act of writing is itself deeply involved with, if not constitutive of, this sense of identity.”52 Mills’s research has also demonstrated that the Internet has played a pivotal role in assisting indigenous minorities, such as the Kurds, to overturn restrictions in order to express and perform their community identity and heritage.53 Riggins points to the strategic use of new media to revitalize a minority community.54 He found that the Inuit of North America used satellite television to revitalize their communities and to preserve culture as a form of political mobilization. These are just some examples of the appropriation of new telecommunications by minorities to reimagine social identity and to take control of their politics of representation and cultural authenticity. New media also has the ability to maintain and enhance connections between the diaspora and the homeland, thereby extending imagined communities beyond national borders, in the hands of the minority group. As well as the shared focus on developing online media spaces, the cases outlined also share a number of common goals despite their different backgrounds, locations, and circumstances. The first common aim is the physical survival of the group and the preservation of its identity and traditions. In the two non-Muslim groups studied, maintaining religious identity and emphasising the rootedness of their religious tradition in the locale are the central themes of the media content and strategy. Language is especially important for the Amazigh people because while they largely share Muslim faith with non-Berber Arabs in North ­A frica, Tamazight is symbolic of ethnic heritage and their indigenous roots in North Africa. All three groups face the challenge of migration and have come to rely heavily on online media to restore and strengthen links between diaspora communities as part of preserving the group’s heritage. The second shared theme was that of correcting or improving the portrayal of the marginalized group in mainstream media. For Copts and Amazigh, it is a central aspect that their specific heritage should be acknowledged and incorporated into national consciousness as part of the national heritage. They seek the normalization of their identity in national life. The Yezidis also now seek to raise their profile in the media, but this is new and for different reasons and with different aims. They are using their own media mainly to inform international media to advocate for policies to protect them amidst the attacks by ISIS in Iraq, as well as raise general awareness about their community, its heritage, and the challenges it is facing as part of an advocacy strategy. In each of the cases it is also possible to identify shared challenges to their media strategies. According to Riggins, focusing on incorporating the minority into the majority culture leads to the risk of assimilation and loss of aspects of the minority culture.55 To identify the extent of this risk in the case of Middle East minorities requires further detailed study. On the other hand, relying too much on separate particularistic media leads to potential isolation 378

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and a decline in the knowledge about the marginalized group that is in circulation in the public sphere. This fear was expressed by a number of respondents to surveys I conducted among Copts using online media. In one example, a respondent wrote: “Copts should not live in a Coptic ‘bubble’ or isolate themselves. They should be fully integrated into the society which they exist.” This indicates that the way minorities and marginalized groups use media needs to be part of a continuous conversation about how to empower a community without isolating it and how to integrate it in the public sphere without losing its heritage.

Conclusion Studying the media of minority and marginalized groups has the potential to provide us with insights into how these groups “imagine” themselves both vis-à-vis their co-members and the majority and the national context.56 With the continued growth and development of media technology, we are perhaps more connected than ever before with media communications having growing influence on the way we interact with the world around us. This includes the way in which different groups manage their in-group relations and also how they negotiate their place in the wider society. Migration patterns are also affecting the way media is used, and this is giving particular emphasis to online media as the means through which to keep a group in contact with its heritage and with other members of the in-group, regardless of location. This increased use of online media is also one way to resolve the dilemma of particularistic media decreasing knowledge in the public sphere. Online media is often accessible to anyone and offers space for interaction, unlike the local church newspaper, for example, which has an audience limited to the members of that church only. Finally, the growth of online media is likely to lead to changes in minority media because it allows for a greater diversity of voices to be heard and to take control of content. Fewer resources are required to create online media than traditional media, so younger voices, and those without traditional authority roles within the community, are also contributing. This is likely to influence the form and content of minority media and how it is used to construct collective identity, as well as to negotiate minority interests and relations vis-à-vis the dominant national group. Minority media therefore has the potential to become more impactful on minority politics and both intra-groups and inter-group relations of the Middle East in the future.

Notes 1 Elizabeth Iskander, Sectarian Conflict in Egypt: Coptic Media, Identity, and Representation (London: Routledge, 2012), 60; Teun Van Dijk, News Analysis: Case Studies of International and National News in the Press (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988). 2 Stephen Riggins, Ethnic Minority Media: An International Perspective (London: Sage, 1992). 3 Riggins, Ethnic Minority Media, 276. 4 Iskander, Sectarian Conflict. 5 Vivian Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt: The Challenges of Modernization and Identity (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 23. 6 Ibrahim, Copts of Egypt, 51, 58. 7 Ramy Atta, Thakirat al Aqbat fi al Sahafa al Misriya (Cairo: Maktabat Osqofiya li Shabab, 2007). 8 Ami Ayalon The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 36. 9 Irene Gendzier, The Practical Vision of Ya’qub Sanu’, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Middle East Monograph Series, 1966). 10 Moshe Behar and Ben-Dor Benite, eds., Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought: Writings on Identity, Politics, and Culture 1893–1958 (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2013), 48, 10.

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Elizabeth Monier 11 Orit Bashkin, New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 24. 12 Reuven Snir, “‘Mosaic Arabs’ between Total and Conditioned Arabization: The Participation of Jews in Arabic Press and Journalism in Muslim Societies during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 27, no. 2 (2007), 266; Guy Bracha, “Letter from Iraq: The Writing of Iraqi Correspondents in al-ʿAlam al-ʾIsraʾili and Israʾil,” Middle Eastern Studies 52, no.1 (2016), 102. 13 Aline Schlaepfer, “Between Cultural and National Nahda: Jewish Intellectuals in Baghdad and the Nation-Building Process in Iraq (1921–1932),” Journal of Levantine Studies 1, no. 2 (Winter 2011), 60. 14 Bashkin, New Babylonians, 27–28. 15 Bashkin, New Babylonians, 37. 16 Lital Levy, “Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the “Mashriq,”” The Jewish Quarterly Review 98, no. 4 (Fall 2008), 462. 17 Bracha, “Letter from Iraq,” 103. 18 Schlaepfer, “Between Cultural and National Nahda,” 69. 19 Elizabeth Iskander, “The ‘Mediation’ of Muslim–Christian Relations in Egypt: The Strategies and Discourses of the Official Egyptian Press during Mubarak’s Presidency,” Islam and Christian– Muslim Relations 23, no.1 (2012), 31. 20 Author interview, Yusef Sidhom, 21 December 2007, Cairo. 21 Simon Cottle, ed., Ethnic Minorities and the Media: Changing Cultural Boundaries (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000), 24–25. 22 Dan Caspi and Nelly Elias, Media and Ethnic Minorities in the Holy Land (London: Vallentine ­M itchell, 2014) 11. 23 Nelly Elias, “Media Use as Integration Strategy: Returning Diasporas from the Former Soviet Union in Israel and Germany,” Dan Caspi and Nelly Elias, eds., Media and Ethnic Minorities in the Holy Land (London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2014), 220. 24 Iskander, Sectarian Conflict in Egypt, 42–44. 25 Monroe Edwin Price and Mark Thompson, eds., Forging Peace: Intervention, Human Rights, and the Management of Media Space (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), 201. 26 For a detailed examination of the process of authority and dissent within a community and the way media is employed in this see Iskander, Sectarian Conflict, Chapter 6 “Resisting Church Leadership through Media,” 125–151. 27 Riggins, Ethnic Minority Media, 3. 28 For a detailed discussion, see Mariz Tadros, Copts at the Crossroads (Cairo: AUC Press, 2013), 30–35. 29 Tadros, Copts at the Crossroads, 35–38; Hany Labib, Azmat al-himaya al-diniyya: al-din wa'l-dawla fi misr (Cairo: Dar al-Shouruq, 2000), 104–105. 30 Iskander, “The ‘Mediation’ of Muslim–Christian Relations,” 34–36; Elizabeth Monier “The Arab Spring and Coptic-Muslim Relations: From Mubarak to the Muslim Brotherhood,” European Yearbook of Minority Issues 11 (2012), 169–186. 31 Nelly Van Doorn-Harder, “Coptic Visual Culture: Gendered Re-creations of Traditional Themes,” Mariam Ayad, ed., Coptic Culture Past Present and Future (Stevenage: Coptic Orthodox Church Centre, 2012), 201–214. 32 In addition to these specifically Coptic channels, there are numerous Arabic language Christian channels, many of which broadcast from Egypt or include programming in Egyptian Arabic. For example, Alkarma TV and Sat7. 33 “About Coptic World.” Available www.copticworld.org/about/ (Accessed 15 September 2016). 34 Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, “Arabization and Its Discontents: The Rise of the Amazigh Movement in North Africa,” The Journal of the Middle East and Africa 3, no. 2 (2012), 109–135. 35 World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, Minority Rights Group International, Available http://minorityrights.org/minorities/berbers/ (Accessed 15 September 2016). 36 Katherine Hoffman, “Berber Language Ideologies, Maintenance, and Contraction: Gendered Variation in the Indigenous Margins of Morocco,” Language & Communication 26 (2006), 146. 37 David L. Crawford and Paul Silverstein, “Amazigh Activism and the Moroccan State,” The Middle East Report 233 (2004), 47. 38 Zahir Ihaddaden, “The Postcolonial Policy of Algerian Broadcasting in Kabyle,” Stephen ­R iggins, ed., Ethnic Minority Media: An International Perspective (London: Sage, 1992), 254.

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Middle Eastern minorities and the media 39 Abderrahman El Aissati, “Ethnic Identity, Language Shift, and The Amazigh Voice in Morocco and Algeria,” Race, Gender & Class 8, no. 3 (2001), 57, 63. 40 Author interview, Berbere TV, 6 September 2016. 41 Mena Laf kioui, “Reconstructing Orality on Amazigh Websites,” Mena Laf kioui and Daniela Merolla, eds., Oralite et nouvelles dimensions de l'oralite: Intersections theoriques et comparaisons des materiaux dans les etudes africaines (Paris: Publications Langues’O, 2008), 111. 42 Crawford and Silverstein, “Amazigh Activism and the Moroccan State,” 44; Maddy-Weiztman, “Arabization and Its Discontents,” 126. 43 Daniela Merolla, “Digital Imagination and the Landscapes of Group Identities: The Flourishing of Theatre, Video and Amazigh Net in the Maghrib and Berber Diaspora,” The Journal of North African Studies 7, no. 4 (2002), 129–130. 4 4 Author interview with the NGO Yezidis International 6 August 2016. 45 Nelida Fuccaro, The Other Kurds: Yezidis in Colonial Iraq (London: I.B. Tauris, 1999), 9. 46 Author interview with the NGO Yezidis International 6 August 2016. 47 Author interview with the NGO Yezidis International 6 August 2016. 48 Author interview with the NGO Yezidis International 6 August 2016. 49 Author interview EzidiPress 26 July 2016. 50 Author interview with the NGO Yezidis International 6 August 2016. 51 Author interview EzidiPress 26 July 2016. 52 David Crawford and Katherine Hoffman, “Essentially Amazigh: Urban Berbers and the Global Village,” Kevin Lacey and Ralph Coury, eds., The Arab-African and Islamic World: Interdisciplinary Studies, (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 121. 53 Kurt Mills, “Cybernations: Identity, Self-Determination, Democracy and the ‘Internet Effect’ in the Emerging Information Order,” Global Society 16, no. 1 (2002), 69–88. 54 Riggins, Ethnic Minority Media, 102–126. 55 Riggins, Ethnic Minority Media, 102–126. 56 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991).

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28 Western advocacy on behalf of religious minorities Practical reflections Chris Seiple and Andrew Doran

We are all “minorities” somewhere. Such a thought begs both humility and self-interest. When we consider that the statistically least among us – somewhere else – is us, a thoughtful pause should follow. How and why do I treat those who are not of the ethnic and/or religious majority in my own context? How and why are people of my race and/or religion treated in other places where they are not the majority?1 What does it mean to be a state of many nations and groups, and how do I advocate on behalf of mutual respect and mutual reliance among the groups? We will return to such questions at the end of this chapter, but we articulate them first, as they point to a deeper, global, question that defines our times. What does it mean for a country to be great (again)? Or, put differently, what does it mean to live with our deepest, most irreconcilable, differences? Civilization depends on the answer. We write as people who have felt called to help those non-majority groups in the Middle East—especially amidst the “mega-crisis” that has beset Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, as well as Egypt—as best we can. In our respective and partnered response to the ISIS crisis in the Middle East, we have sought to provide a full spectrum of support to non-majority groups (which can include Sunni or Shi’i Muslims, depending on the particular context). Our efforts have included everything from thought leadership and policy recommendations to our government (and those in the region), to practical help and programs that serve those suffering at the grassroots. We write as Christians, who happen to be American. We write because we care about the continued presence of the Church in the land where the faith was born, believing it is not only good for Christians, but for all of society. And we write as practitioners, who, many times, were making things up and writing reflections (referenced below) as we went, unaware of any supporting scholarship for what we were trying to do – all the while knowing that our progress to date, while arguably significant, is nonetheless limited amidst the scope of ongoing interrelated challenges. We write to share our perspective on why people should care for non-majority groups, how to think about engaging a multi-dimensional context as we build strategies and programs to match, the principles we have learned and tried to practice in our own efforts, and we offer some thoughts on what yet needs to be done. 382

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Why care about Christians, Yezidis, Turkmen, Ka’kai (and other groups) in the Middle East? For centuries, minority communities from Egypt to Mesopotamia to Persia to Anatolia have often played crucial functions in their societies—as leaders, scholars, and servants.2 Across the Middle East and throughout the ages, Christians and other minorities, such as Jews and Persians, served as administrators in the imperial structures of Caliphates that stretched from South Asia to Southwestern Europe. They have been the businessman and doctors and lawyers, the upper crust of society. They have been the lowly garbage collectors and downcast. They survived in caves during periods of persecution and thrived as academics and scholars in the courts of sultans. It was Christian scholars who translated Greek texts into Arabic, and Arabs who, in turn, transmitted these lost works back to Europe, sparking an era of new learning. Throughout every epoch, minorities have been exalted or exploited by imperial and colonial powers, both Muslim and Christian. Like many minority communities, they have been a contingent people – existing at the sufferance of, and subject to the whim of, the sovereign. In other words, the poor treatment and persecution of those not belonging to the majority is nothing new. So why care at all, now? In our experience, there are two convincing reasons why people should care: (1) it is the right thing to do, and (2) it is in one’s (meaning everyone’s) self-interest. The “right thing to do,” we should note, is not a “western construct,” but instead comes out of the culture of the Middle East itself. As Christians, we believe that every human is created by God, who gives His image to each member of humanity. Christians believe that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, has commanded us to love our neighbors, even if they don’t believe as we do, or are, in fact, our enemies. Of course, Christians are not alone in their desire to take care of their fellow humans. Other faiths and moral frameworks teach and command the same thing. Similarly, other traditions teach with Christianity some form of the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have done unto you. We are all minorities somewhere, which brings us to the second reason: it’s in everyone’s self-interest to do so. Indeed, a plurality of faith traditions enhances human flourishing, which is in everyone’s self-interest. Voltaire observed the following in his 1764 Philosophical Dictionary: Enter into the Royal Exchange of London, a place more respectable than many courts, in which deputies from all nations assemble for the advantage of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian bargain with one another as if they were of the same religion, and bestow the name of infidel on bankrupts only… Was there in London but one religion, despotism might be apprehended; if two only, they would seek to cut each other’s throats; but as there are at least thirty, they live together in peace and happiness.3 [italics added] Paradoxically, the more faith traditions competing in the marketplace of ideas, the more stable the society, and the more likely economic prosperity.4 It has been our experience that the same is true in the Middle East, especially in the role that our coreligionists have played, and can play. As Chris noted in October 2014: In general, [the Christians’] millennia presence, through their example of loving all neighbors, contributes to the spiritual and social well-being of societies across the 383

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Middle East (not least through well-educated leaders in government and the academy, serving all citizens). As such, they are a bridge between and among different faiths, and traditions within those faiths. Such action, if allowed to flourish, strengthens society by preventing stereotypes that might be manipulated by terrorists; indeed, loving neighbor enhances the stability of the state. Equally important, though, Christians in the Middle East serve as a bridge back to Christian-majority countries, helping people like me to better understand their region, and how best to come alongside the people who live there, in support of their solutions. To lose the presence of Christians in the birthplace of Christianity is to accelerate instability, while losing precious insight about how best to work in the region. With the region on the brink, a strategy to rescue, restore, and return fleeing Christians is not only the right thing to do, it is in everyone’s interest to do so.5 [italics added] Doing the right thing is not only in everyone’s self-interest – it is a Middle Eastern value. But that can be a difficult thing if most in the Middle East seemingly do not appreciate or remember the best of their past, pluralistic societies, or if, in our case, Americans view the Middle East as hopelessly sectarian. As we, with Robert Nicholson, reminded readers in September 2016: It is imperative, and practical, to note that much of what we suggest here is rooted in indigenous Middle Eastern values. King Cyrus, for example, gave us the “Cyrene ­Cylinder,” which accommodated religious freedom as the most practical precept for social harmony and governance in a multi-ethnic and multi-faith empire. It was Cyrus, after all, who allowed the Jews to return to their land under Nehemiah’s leadership, and it is the Jews who in turn shaped the values (including the rule of law) of the other descendants of Abraham, both Christian and Muslim. For example, God told the Jews through His prophet Jeremiah—whom all three faiths revere—that they should seek the good of the city ( Jeremiah 29:7). God did not differentiate which part of the city, or which nation of people, or that only those who believed in Him should benefit. God commanded those who believed in Him to seek the good of the whole city, just as he earlier sent Jonah to preach repentance to the nonJews of Nineveh! A shared concept of and commitment to the common good is the glue that binds complex, pluralistic societies together—without need for coercion, the preferred means of achieving unity for many regimes. But sadly and ironically, a shared concept of the common good simply does not exist across much of the Middle East at present.6 And thus the crux of the present issue, and this chapter: how to advocate on behalf of Middle Eastern groups in the context of a society that seems to have no experience or memory of the common good. Or, in our case, how to advocate to Americans who tend to think these days that little good can come out of the Middle East? This dilemma grows more complex when considering the multidimensional context of the Middle East, what it is needed as a result, and how best to implement.

Who is working in this “field” and how did we get involved? If modernity brought new constructs of human rights, it also brought new ideologies of ethno-nationalism that combined with ancient patterns of authoritarianism that contributed 384

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to the drastic diminution of minority communities across the Middle East. In just over a century, millions of Christians have been victims of genocide, slaughter, displacement, and trauma, driven mercilessly from their ancestral homes. Such an experience, obviously, touches every facet of existence and society. And therefore this question of who is working in this “field,” on these issues, is a tricky one for two basic reasons. First, the challenge, and hence the field of operations, is vast. The Middle East is a region where revolutionary fervor, absolutism, and corruption have hindered successful governance since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire—a model that itself visited genocide on Christians in the Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syriac communities. It is hard to envision having an impact among failing and failed states and societies with decades of experience in the matter. Second, while we respect the disaggregation of knowledge into different “fields,” each with its own discrete units of analysis and expertise, in situations like the mega-crisis of Iraq and Syria, experts in those fields sometimes fail to relate to, let alone seek out, those in other fields. (The same is true for policy-makers, incidentally, who tend to focus on the military defeat of terrorists, with less time and money devoted to the aftermath, the things that make for peace.) So, what is the “field” we are discussing? Is it “minorities”? Is it human rights? Is it relief and development? Is it gender-based violence? Is it trauma care? Is it good governance? Is it job creation? Is it refugee resettlement? Is it theology? Is it waging war pursuant the peace you seek? Yes. It is all these things; and more. But most of all, it is the reconciliation of these fields in a manner that embodies reconciliation. For the greatest threat to the majority and non-majority groups in the Middle East is not the deficit of trust among groups, but the destruction of trust among them. As Chris wrote for the World Economic Forum in May 2016: if the world is experiencing the most forcibly displaced people since World War II; if the source of that displacement is usually conflict; if the overwhelming majority of those living in extreme poverty by 2030 will live in fragile and/or failing states where conflict is endemic; and, if the humanitarian system is not working properly, in part, because it remains unreformed, unable to address root causes; then, shouldn’t we begin to expect policies, programmes, and above all, practitioners with a mindset and method who have been trained to put out fires, build affordable housing, while working in both phases [relief & development] to build sufficient capacity to live side-by-side? Such thinking requires not only a conceptual reconciliation between relief and development (while respecting the discrete functions of each), but the education, training and resulting capacity to explicitly and implicitly integrate reconciliation into every element of relief and development. In today’s broken world, every relief decision is a development decision is a reconciliation decision.7 So there are many people and organizations working in many fields, but few working in the combination of these fields. The downstream effect – especially among NGOs who are instinctively shy about anything “political” – is that it is difficult for many organizations, at least in our opinion, to advocate, let alone raise money, effectively for new approaches and policies for fear of being called “political.” Certainly, groups are capable of raising money for refugees – in place, and/or evacuation from the war zone – which is always easier when the overwhelming human need can be presented in the face of a starving child, absent the complexities of the conflict. But who is trying to change the policy of governments to end the conflict, anticipating and preparing 385

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for a future that must include reconciliation, if the future is not to be worse? In short, it is a time of new wineskins for new wine. It is this recognition that has informed our approach to the new mega-crisis of Iraq and Syria, each in our own limited way. We have been trying to create a new paradigm for new times, something that was, perhaps, easier for us to consider as neither of our organizations was working in the Middle East prior to the ISIS crisis. Indeed, In Defense of Christians (IDC) was created in response to the crisis, as was the Institute for Global Engagement’s (IGE) program, “The Cradle Fund.” IDC began its work in response to pleas from Middle East Christians to help their beleaguered communities, particularly those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant. IDC was created to raise awareness of and advocate for Christian and other vulnerable communities in the Middle East.8 The work began by going to the region, encountering Christians, Muslims, and other communities, seeking to understand, and advocating for policies that were consistent with the need as told by those who live there, as well as America’s values and interests. From the outset, this work faced significant challenges (as detailed in the next section). In addressing these challenges, IDC has tried to be mindful of the relationship between ­ uslims, institutional Christianity and authoritarian regimes. We have spoken of Christians, M and peoples of all faiths and none, as being possessed of equal dignity, worthy of protection and preservation so as to promote common dignity and humanity. We have sought to shun the temptations of sectarian approaches, to caution sensitivity rather than sensationalism, to foster encounters between Middle East and American Christians, and to advocate for government policies that protect and preserve minority communities in the Middle East. In the case of IGE, there was significant experience in East Asia, along with a theory of change, to enable peoples of all faiths and none to contribute to the well-being of society and the good governance/stability of the state over the long-term.9 But IGE had never done anything in immediate response to a crisis. Soon, however, IGE developed a strategy to serve the suffering organized around three “R’s”: Rescue, Restore, and Return Christians and other ethnic and/or religious groups to their homes where they could live and practice their faith freely. The Rescue phase was about classic relief work through local partners, while also establishing trust. “Restore” built on the trust created while focusing on education and trauma. And “Return” provided the thought leadership necessary to create a new policy that would help people return to their homes.10 We called our effort “The Cradle Fund” as it was seeking to help all those who lived in the “Cradle of Christianity,” that geographic space where our faith had started and once flourished, which was also now home to a Muslim-majority culture and many other traditions and beliefs.11 To be clear, we do not mean to say that IDC and IGE are the only organizations taking this approach, or that we have all the answers (as the lessons in th following section will demonstrate). The aforementioned description is simply our experience in trying to help the most marginalized communities in the Middle East – holistically, and effectively, as a function of an interrelated reality that cannot be broken down into the old “fields.”

What lessons have we learned in naming and navigating this complex context? Amidst such complexity that challenges one’s soul, as well as one’s conception of society and state, we had to revisit what we believed before we learned (anew, sometimes) what it 386

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took to engage with any chance of success. We have learned much, and continue to learn, especially from those who have suffered most. We present these lessons as, we hope, practical principles: interim reflections that may serve those who find themselves in similar situations. 1 Know your own faith at its richest and deepest best, and enough about your neighbor’s to respect it. Situations like the ISIS crisis are among the most traumatic one might experience. It is critical to your own well-being – and thus those whom you serve – that you know what you believe. These types of events can and will shake your soul. How you deliver service/aid is just as important as what you deliver. So take the time to wrestle with what you believe. And if answers do not come readily, be upfront about that as you engage/ experience the suffering of others. As Christians we believe that each human has dignity, according to the image of God that she/he bears. We believe that we become more like Christ the more we serve those made in His image (no matter what they believe). We also realize and appreciate that there are other points of moral departure to understand/explain the inherent dignity of every human being. We have always welcomed those conversations, which we have found to build mutual respect across irreconcilable theological/moral differences. That’s OK. And, paradoxically, such conversations actually enable and accelerate practical collaboration. 2 Work for all faiths and none, to include your own! Given the first principle, it is imperative to live out your faith by working on behalf of people of all faiths, and none at all. That might mean that a Christian serves a Sunni Arab or Shi’i Turkmen family that has been persecuted by ISIS. Both are “minorities” in the context of the ISIS majority of the moment. Or it might mean helping a faith you never knew existed, like the Ka’kai, as they balance their religious and Kurdish identities amidst the Arab majority of the Mosul area (in the overall Shi’i-majority context of Iraq and many government officials). It is complicated: love everyone. It also means this: do not be afraid to work for those of your own faith. As Christians who happen to be American, we are acutely aware of two different, and sometimes difficult, dynamics. First, given America’s reputation as a “Christian-majority” country that has supported authoritarianism in the Muslim-majority Middle East, it can be hard to work on behalf of Christians in Muslim-majority contexts. Indeed, per the next principle, Middle Eastern Christians may not welcome our engagement (as our methods might insult and/or endanger them merely by affiliation with America). We have encountered courageous Christians serving the common good, providing services ranging from education to medical care. The Sisters of Maadi in Cairo, for example, provide medical treatment to roughly 100,000 people every year, 90% of whom are Muslim.12 Their love is reciprocated by the community in which they live. When Egypt descended into chaos in recent years, the Muslims of Maadi stood watch in the night outside the convent, safeguarding the nuns inside. This is the very communal bond, forged in love, respect, and a sense of the common good, that will disappear if Christians and other minorities across the Middle East are driven out by violent extremism. The identification of these nuns with Christianity contradicts extremist narratives in the region that seek to define America and the West at once as Christian and as the purveyors of violence and a permissive, corrosive morality that undermines traditional Muslim values. Many of these values are, in fact, common to Christians and Muslims worldwide. As a missionary priest in Cairo observed of the children who received medical services or education from the Maadi Sisters, “Not one of them will become a terrorist.” 387

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Meanwhile, it is also true that there are some in America who are comfortable with helping everyone but Christians, even as there are those who seek to help Christians only. Obviously, both perspectives are problematic, creating a domestic tension that makes partnership and fund-raising difficult, even as either or both perspectives can influence how you help in the region. We have both heard, more than once, both perspectives: (1) “You don’t care enough about Christians!” or, (2) “All you do is care about Christians and not the majority of people.” It can be tricky, so be careful! 3 Intra-Faith conversation is imperative, and difficult, and ongoing…in the region, and in the United States, and between the region and the U.S. Chris recalls sitting down with the King of Jordan, who had convened the Patriarchs of the ancient churches (i.e., those established by Christ’s disciples). One Patriarch, knowing that Chris was Protestant of the evangelical strain, said for all to hear: “You are not here to proselytize us, are you? You know we’ve had the Bible for some time.” The comment spoke as much to the theological schisms of 1054 and 1517, as it did to the (perceived) cultural differences between Western Christianity and its eastern, and older, sibling. Eastern churches sometimes receive Western Protestants as always ­proselytizing – with money but without nuance – “stealing” eastern believers into a new worship style. Westerners sometimes perceive eastern churches as too dogmatic, fighting over petty differences, with a religious identity that is sometimes subordinate to ethnic identity. This “divide” can sometimes deepen in the context of Americans coming to the region, especially in Iraq. However one understands the 2003 invasion, there can be no doubt that it catalyzed great suffering and the death and departure of most of Iraq’s Christian population, even as the 2011 departure of America ushered in more suffering as ISIS filled the vacuum. Many believe America to be responsible, particularly for abandoning them to ISIS as it conquered Mosul and the Nineveh Plain, the historic homeland of Christians in Iraq, in 2014. In America, there is the challenge of organizing cohesive, effective advocacy among diaspora Christian communities. Too often these communities bring with them petty, local, internecine squabbles from the Middle East to America. And too often, these squabbles bring with them disunity, resulting in contradictory messaging, despite sharing the same values and goals! The trauma that these communities have endured across generations (as discussed later) further compounds this challenge. Besides the issues among Christian communities in the Middle East, which are often reflected in their respective diasporas, there is the final intra-faith challenge of bridging ­ hristianity the profound culture gap that existed between Christianity in America, and C in the Middle East. As Andrew described in June of 2016: Byzantinologist Steven Runciman, writing about the essential distinction between Greek and Latin Christians, observed that the two simply “felt differently about religion; it is difficult to have a debate about feelings.” The same might be said of the encounter between American and Middle East Christians today. It is not, after all, merely theology that accounts for the cultural gap. There are fundamentally different attitudes and experiences regarding the role of institutional Christianity vis-à-vis the state, the news media, and civil society, and different perspectives on war and peace—all of which have evolved quite separately in the East and West for the better part of two millennia. Despite a sincere desire to help, American Christians are often separated from those of the Middle East not only by language but by politics, ethnicity, 388

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heritage, and perhaps most significantly, culture. There is an inclination to regard “the other” as precisely that. Middle East Christians are often mistaken by ­A mericans for Muslims because of their Middle Eastern appearance, names, and use of Arabic, bringing to mind the Medieval Latin Christian tendency to refer to the Greeks of Byzantium as “pale-faced Turks.” Mark Movsesian noted that “Mideast Christians have the misfortune to be too foreign for the Right and too ­Christian for the Left.” Middle East Christians, for their part, are often befuddled by ­Evangelical theology, much of it shaped by an eschatology with immediate geopolitical implications. There are certain fundamentally different attitudes toward war and peace. Whereas American Christians, Catholic or Protestant, have comparatively little hesitation about military service or killing in combat, Middle East Christians have views more in the tradition of the Eastern Church Fathers, many of whom believed that war was essentially sanctioned murder.13 Such distinctions, across time and space, can be overwhelming. Don’t let it stop you from loving by serving. But also be aware that these issues are always present, and that you can respect them by building trust and asking about them, when appropriate. 4 Recognize that you are engaging traumatized communities. It is often easy for an outsider – who can visit and leave with relative ease – to forget that the people who live there have experienced great trauma. And that trauma is not just at the hands of ISIS, but in the context of other groups, and across history. For example, the Christians—Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syriac—fled their Nineveh Plains home on 7 August 2014. They feel, as do the Yezidis, that they were abandoned by the (Muslim) Kurds. It so happens, however, that 7 August marked the 81st anniversary of the Simele massacre. On 7 August 1933, Arab and Kurdish Muslims gathered and murdered 5,000 Christians, many of whom had fled the 1915 genocide against Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Christians by Turkish Muslims. Christians have lived with the constant presence of genocide for over 100 years…as the outside world, including other Christians, watched. 5 Let your yes be yes, and your no be no. This saying is actually a command from Jesus (Matthew 5:37). It means that integrity should define your every action. It might seem philosophical, but nothing is more practical in the Middle East – where trust has been destroyed – than to act with integrity. Every group, majority or minority, has every reason not to trust each other, let alone someone from the outside, especially Americans. So be ready to be a punching bag. Traumatized peoples are going to express their grievances to you—implicitly and explicitly—as it might be a release of anger, and/or politically necessary (depending on the audience), to speak to you about such things. Take it. It is a privilege to serve them. And all the more reason why your presence must be practical, and principled. Your presence builds trust; your subsequent actions deepen and expand it. 6 Everything in the Middle East is interrelated. While we in the “West” might have to work at the reconciling of “fields” and ideas, Middle Easterners do not. We have never met anyone – from cab drivers to priests – who didn’t understand the complex interplay of all issues. Indeed, they have taught us. Put another way: know geo-politics – by which we mean the self-interest of all actors, locally and regionally, and how those interests interact – but do not become jaded by them. It is possible to be a realist without being a pessimist, to be practical without being delusional. But you have to understand the 389

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regional and local geo-politics in order to understand emerging opportunities, as well as points of leverage. Remember, most people do not initially partner with you because they trust you (even if they want to believe in you), but because it is in their interest to do so. And if you accept that everything is interrelated, then you will need people who are hard-headed and soft-hearted, as comfortable in a conversation about geo-politics as the design of a trauma workshop for gender-based violence. 7 Work through local partners who share common values. Americans are famous for arriving with a three-year plan and supporting metrics, happy to partner with anyone who “fits” in their box. While the intentions might be good, plans that do not account for and work through local, informed partners – to include the development of qualitative and quantitative metrics, together – are plans that will fail (not to mention waste money). Invest time in mutual-vetting and trust-building. The right partners not only enhance efficiency, but also prevent huge headaches later. The Middle East has a long memory – indeed, there is often a sense of timelessness there. This is new for Americans, who come from a young nation without so tortured a history, brimming with ideas and optimism about how to right that which ails the ­M iddle East. Middle Easterners have seen many such Americans come and go. However, there is a place for new ideas in the Middle East, but they must be conveyed in humility and with respect for custom, tradition, culture, heritage – and, for Christians, Jews, and Muslims, at least – with a sense of awe for the region from which their own faith arose. 8 Understand your own context, particularly the media’s shaping of it. There is much in the American context that makes it difficult to advocate on behalf of those suffering in the Middle East. Foremost there is fatigue. Whatever one thinks about American involvement in the Middle East these past fifteen years, Americans largely feel tired of the region, particularly because they are tired of seeing their men and women killed for a purpose not often articulated by the leaders of their country, and which thus remains unclear. Related, we encountered the general perception that most Muslims were a part of the problem, if not violent extremists and terrorists themselves. We worked hard to share that it has been ordinary Muslims who have suffered the most at the hands of ISIS. Meanwhile, many Americans, it seemed, were not aware that there were Christians in the Middle East (which always baffles Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle East), let alone Yezidis, Ka’kai, and so forth. And for those who knew about the Christians, especially elites, there was a tendency to identify the entire group with the oppressive regime. Instead of simply realizing that all groups are de facto associated with an authoritarian regime that will kill them if they do not comply, irrespective of the fact that, in the case of the Christians, many were and are servants of the community, integral to the social and cultural fabric and thus the potential for pluralism. Most of these perceptions, of course, are shaped by the media in America, most of whom have no direct experience with the Middle East, let alone non-Muslim groups. Consider the tragic case of the twenty-one Coptic Christians beheaded on a Libyan beach in February 2015, and the constant replay of the violence that further deepened the savage stereotype of the Middle East. We understand that violence sells, but there is also a responsibility to research and tell the positive stories. For example, IGE worked with local partners to restore the houses of the family members and neighbors of those slain. Such stories put a human face on the suffering, reminding all of us that there are good people in bad places, trying to make a difference. Such stories also prevent the rise of Islamophobia, which feeds the cycle of violence. As Bishop Angaelos of the Coptic 390

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Orthodox Church told Andrew in the aftermath of the Libyan beheadings, we need “sensitivity rather than sensationalism.” We cannot shy away from the facts, but we must also be ready to name and understand the suffering of those who live there, and not just focus on the terror of a few while stereotyping all with their violence. 9 Resist the temptation to “dumb down” the story in order to raise money. Fund-raising has conditioned Americans to understand the world in black-and-white terms. Educate donors to understand how their money is being used, and why. Otherwise, shallow work will cease due to shallow pockets. The story can be made simple without sacrificing substance. We have encountered proposals that sought to capitalize on fears of Muslims to raise funds. Some organizations have done this to great effect, feeding on fear. Given the current context in America, this temptation is all the more alluring. But this temptation must be resisted, for such an approach ultimately undermines the values and interests of America, and all efforts to serve the very minorities whom such advocacy is intended to help. Put simply, if money is raised to help all “good” minorities who suffer at the hand of all “bad” Muslims, then the terrorists are further antagonized to kill, even as we insult the majority of Muslims who want to help. Meanwhile, minority communities identified with such fund-raising can be singled out for violence, thus creating a desire to leave…which defeats the overall purpose in the first place: we want them to stay in their homes, in their ancestral lands, because it is good for them, and good for stability. We in America should not further exacerbate tensions and the potential for violence. 10 Live and embed reconciliation in every action. Given all of these lessons, this goal is very difficult. It is all too easy to succumb to the numbness that comes with overexposure to the suffering, and the guilt that you are not doing enough. It is too easy to be overwhelmed and, ironically, as a result, become complacent. It is too easy to focus just on ­Washington, DC, and not seek out diaspora communities and donors around the country, while telling the positive stories. It is too easy to absorb the anger and anguish of traumatized communities, in America and in the Middle East, becoming angry with yourself and with your fellow Americans. And so, per the first lesson, you have to know what you believe, that is, what sustains you. Which is also to say, in the case of advocating for long-term, positive, and sustainable change on behalf of those in the Middle East, you have to understand what your moral imperative is pursuant to reconciliation. For reconciliation is the only way that the cycle of violence ends. It is also the only way the possibility of a flourishing society can take root. And it is the only way that you can continue on without becoming a part of the problem. What does that mean practically? It means treating all those you engage, beginning with your family and staff, with a humility and decency that they deserve. If you can’t treat them right, what right do you have to work on behalf of those who suffer from not being treated right? It means that you create and/or find programs that bring people of different backgrounds together, practically. Importantly, such programs do: not bring people together to “do” reconciliation. They would bring them together according to the self-interest of each. For example, whether individuals were participating in a trauma care programme or learning a new job—two things high on everyone’s list—there would be an opportunity for them to be in contact with someone who would not normally be part of their group. 391

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Such contact, over time and facilitated properly, would provide the previously non-existent possibility of dialogue; and therefore for relationships and trust. Reconciliation must be sewn into the fabrics of society and state—now—if there is to be any chance of enduring peace after the defeat of ISIS.14 At IGE, for example, we tried to incorporate reconciliation into every element of our strategy: from encouraging joint applications for funding – between, for example, a global, Protestant, NGO, and a local NGO that worked with and through the ancient churches – to partnering with the Kurdistan Regional Government and Microsoft to bring together multiple stakeholders in Washington, DC, to discuss co-existence, stability, and reconciliation. If you do not practice what you preach, you are a part of the problem.

What results have we achieved? Not enough, and not by our hand. As people of faith, we have constantly wondered how it came to be that we would be doing this, fully aware that whatever positive results we were blessed with, the opportunity to participate in those results could not have happened acting alone. At the same time, in parts of the Middle East, entire minority communities have endured terrorism, crimes against humanity, and even genocide. Some with whom we’ve met have voiced skepticism of success, based both on the fractious nature of some diaspora communities and seemingly impossible odds in the face of extremism and tyranny in the region. To heighten awareness among the general public and conduct policy advocacy in W ­ ashington are related objectives. The rise of ISIS did much to raise awareness of the existence of the millions of Christians of the Middle East. However, the effects of Western military intervention also did substantial harm to Christian and other minority communities in Iraq, though the mainstream media did little to inform the public. Needless to say, the work continues. In the case of IGE, it was blessed to work through thirteen different partners in five ­countries – across the “rescue, restore, return” continuum of our strategy – directly impacting over 125,000 lives. IGE, which has served minority communities globally for nearly two decades, continues its work with IDC, Philos, and others to be a voice for vulnerable ethnic and religious groups. IGE holds conferences and symposia worldwide, catalyzing thought and action, to promote a practical and sustainable religious freedom that serves state and society, with a focus on Central, South, and East Asia, as well as Africa and the Middle East. Since 2014, IDC has organized an annual conference on Capitol Hill to call attention to this issue, supported by more than a dozen local chapters around the country. The result of this previously non-existent and initial groundswell of engagement enabled IDC to bring the Patriarchs of the Ancient Churches from the Middle East for an unprecedented 2014 meeting with political and religious leaders in the USA. This conference created a process through which IDC worked with the Knights of Columbus, IGE, and others to make significant contributions to a 17 March 2016, unanimous House of Representatives resolution calling for recognition of genocide against Yezidis, Christians, and others. Tragically, it was only the second time in history that an ongoing genocide has been recognized by the US government. And on 9 September 2016, as a function of IDC’s annual conference (co-sponsored by IGE and the Philos Project), another Congressional resolution was introduced calling for a Nineveh Plain Province in Northern Iraq that would foster pluralism, restoration, and reconciliation among the genocide survivors and preserve the indigenous communities of 392

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the region (similar to what the USA did for the Kurds following the first Gulf War in April 1991). This resolution came within hours of an article that we wrote together, with Robert Nicholson of the Philos Project, explaining why such a province was a good idea.15 Such efforts, while helpful, are still nothing compared to the need at hand. But compared to where we were when ISIS conquered much of Iraq and Syria, we feel that these efforts do represent progress. We also think that they – when combined with other efforts that we are becoming aware of, just as we became aware of each other – are contributing to a paradigm shift. This shift is toward a more holistic and interrelated approach that seeks an intentional peace based on the war that we have been forced to fight against ISIS. Of course, one ought not to approach the work of service and advocacy with any sense that the Middle East – nor indeed any region or people or person – may be perfected. It is more often aggravating than rewarding; often the only consolation is the knowledge that one has done the right thing, and even that certitude can be elusive. For you will make mistakes. Again, humility will be required.

How should we move forward? The encounter between Middle East and American Christians, particularly Evangelicals, will likely determine the fate of Christians in the Middle East, and likely other minority communities. As Andrew wrote in 2016: Middle East Christians have much to learn from American Christians about engagement in their country’s public life. Whereas American Christians have highly developed notions of liberty and little patience for being exiled to the margins of the public square, Eastern Christianity never had its Canossa—that moment of emerging from the state as a rival, independent institutional power. In consequence, an essentially Caesaropapist tradition continues in variations across the Middle East to this day, sometimes leading to lurid political bedfellows. Deference to those in power is alien to Anglo-Protestant political culture, which is far more likely to push back against the encroachments of the state—a luxury, Middle East Christians will argue, that they do not possess. Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention proudly noted at Georgetown University earlier last year that Baptists “have a history of being irritants.” As Middle East Christians in America attempt to organize into a more cohesive advocacy group, they may learn from American Protestants that they will get further as irritants than as supplicants. For Greek and Latin Christians in the 15th century, cultural attitudes proved more difficult to reconcile than theological differences. To succeed where their spiritual forefathers failed, Middle East Christians living in America today must work to overcome cultural barriers by reaching out to Evangelicals in their own communities, from whom they can learn to be successful advocates for their brother and sister Christians who wish to continue living in the Middle East. Evangelicals, in turn, must come to understand the complexity and richness of Middle East Christianity, whose faith and practices have been handed down largely undiluted over two millennia from the earliest origins of the Christian faith—a vital cultural source for American Christians, akin to the classical learning that the Byzantines brought to the West at [the Council of ] Florence.16 Encounters with diaspora minority communities are essential not only to advancing policies that reflect American interests and values but also to healing and reconciliation. 393

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It should be remembered that, unlike virtually all immigrant communities in America, some minority diaspora communities are watching the virtual extinction of their entire heritage through genocide and other crimes. This is a trauma, akin to that of a displaced orphan, who has no ancestral homeland. The prominence of “homeland” has figured prominently in the psyche of other American immigrant communities, such as the Irish, Italian, and Polish communities. Even in these immigrant communities, where the idea of the homeland or nation was so vital, separation was accompanied by a sense of guilt or longing. How much more terrible then is the pain of separation from a community that is being extinguished? In the future, we seek to promote still more substantial encounters between American and Middle East Christians, between various leaders and organizations, to find areas of common values and interests, and to work toward the survival of pluralism in the Middle East. Ironically, the self-interested, multi-faith pluralism Voltaire observed in eighteenth-century London has been undermined by the very spirit of secularism he and his like-minded descendants have advanced. It is here that Christians in the West have a role in identifying common values with Muslims and making them part of the complex dynamic of our public culture, where believers and non-believers dispute the contours of faith and the public square.

Conclusion In al-Qosh, at the northern limit of the Nineveh Plain, just twenty miles from Mosul, stands an abandoned synagogue. There used to be a thriving Jewish population in Iraq, but most fled in 1948. Today, that synagogue is under the care of the local church. They remember the Jews, realizing that they are so close to having the same experience. We American Christians tend to have overly optimistic views of advocacy, particularly outside the West. This is, we think, because we have a kind of youthful confidence about our capacity to improve conditions for humans, which often errs by trying to perfect the human condition—something very different. The work itself often leaves one frustrated with those we intend to serve (e.g., Mideast Christians), and humbled by virtues of those commonly identified with the oppressors (Muslims). And then we are confronted with the past errors of Christians, clerics, Western colonial impulses (whether economic, political, or cultural), and other factors. Niebuhr wrote well of this in “The Irony of American History,” critiquing the paradoxical strains of ruthless realpolitik and naive idealism.17 Christian realism remains the most sensible approach to policy – and it is this realism, rooted in faith, that we have tried to embody in this work. Simone Weil’s thought on “affliction” and “attention” may be instructive to those entering this work. She wrote of attention as a kind of prayer: listening, seeking to understand, above all loving.18 This was her proposed response to serving the afflicted. We must bring this same approach to the service of Christians and other vulnerable groups across the Middle East whom we intend to serve. We are all, as noted in the introduction, minorities somewhere. This knowledge, and the encounter with others of a different complexion or tongue or faith, engenders humility. The opportunity to learn, as Weil suggests, may be an opportunity also to serve. The work of advocacy and engagement should first consist of listening and learning, of seeking to understand before praying with specificity, and thus engaging with intentionality. This is also the last step. And every step in between. For the understand-pray-engage cycle can never cease, as it will always yield new information, which must be integrated into the complex mosaic of policy advocacy – that is, to the work of comprehensive service that does not tolerate but celebrates minorities, as well as the majority, because they are each and all 394

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equally created in the image of God, deserving of the freedom to choose a mutual respect that breeds mutual reliance, resulting in the resiliency that Voltaire described in London’s Royal Exchange.

Notes 1 We are intentionally refraining from the use of the word “minorities” – a term that we do not like, as its contemporary use increasingly tends toward a pejorative even inferior connotation. 2 Sidney H. Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 3 Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, trans. William F. Fleming (Adelaide: University of ­Adelaide, 2014 [1764]), Chapter 380. Available https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/v/voltaire/dictionary/­chapter 380.html. 4 As Brian Grim’s work has demonstrated: if there is opportunity for mutual respect and mutual reliance, rooted in mutual prosperity, then peace is more available. Brian Grim, “The Link between Economic and Religious Freedoms,” World Economic Forum Agenda, 18 December 2014. Available www.weforum.org/agenda/2014/12/the-link-between-economic-and-religious-freedoms/ (­Accessed 28 July 2017). 5 Jeremy Weber, “Winter Is Coming,” Christianity Today, 24 October 2014. Available www.christianity today.com/gleanings/2014/october/winter-is-coming-mark-burnett-roma-downey-iraq-syriaige.html?paging=off (Accessed 28 July 2017). 6 Andrew Doran, Robert Nicholson and Chris Seiple, “A Plan for Protecting Iraq’s Minority Communities,” The American Interest, 9 September 2016. Available www.the-american-interest. com/2016/09/09/a-plan-for-protecting-iraqs-minority-communities/ (Accessed 28 July 2017). 7 Chris Seiple, “The Humanitarian System is Not Working—How Can We Fix It?” World Economic Forum Agenda, 19 May 2016. Available www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/the-humanitariansystem-is-not-working-so-how-can-we-fix-it (Accessed 28 July 2017). 8 See https://indefenseofchristians.org/. 9 For more on this theory of change, please see Chris Seiple, “From Paradox to Possibility: Practicing the Golden Rule in a Global World,” The Review of Faith & International Affairs 12, no. 3 (Summer 2014), 55–62. 10 For more information on these strategies, please see, Chris Seiple, “A Strategy to Serve the Suffering in the Middle East,” Christianity Today, 5 February 2016. Available www.christianitytoday. com/edstetzer/2016/february/strategy-to-serve-suffering-in-middle-east.html (Accessed 28 July 2017) and Chris Seiple, “The Last Gasp of the Cradle Christians,” Christianity Today, 8 June 2015. Available www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/june-web-only/last-gasp-of-cradle-christian.html (Accessed 28 July 2017). 11 See https://globalengage.org/support-ccf. 12 Andrew Doran, “The Sisters of Maadi,” National Review 6 July 2013. Available www.national review.com/article/352776/sisters-maadi-andrew-g-doran (Accessed 28 July 2017). 13 Andrew Doran, “When Christianities Collide,” The American Conservative, 9 June 2016. 14 Seiple, “The Humanitarian System is Not Working.” 15 Doran, Nicholson, and Seiple, “A Plan for Protecting Iraq’s Minority Communities.” 16 Doran, “When Christianities Collide.” 17 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008 [1952]). 18 Simone Weil, Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper, 2009 [1973]).

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Index

Abdelkrim al-Khattabi 317, 319 Abduh, Mu ḥ ammad 28 Abdul-Aziz, Sultan 171 Abdullah, Abdul Jabbar 161 ABF see Alevi-Bektashi Federation (ABF) Abraham, F. Murray 128 Abrahamic faiths 115 Abu Daoud 106 Abu-Rabia-Queder, Sarab 14, 301 Abu Waqqas, Saad ibn 164 Açıkyıldız-Şengül, Birgül 9, 146 Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) 212, 263; and Alevism 216–21 Adiabene, kingdoms of 118 agency 5–7, 46, 56, 62, 65, 79, 121, 123, 127–8, 137, 182, 273, 348; of minorities 5–7; of citizens 46, 56; of civil society 62, 65, of communities 79, 121, 128 Aherdane, Mahjoubi 318 A ḥk ām ahl al-dhimma 24 ahl al-kit āb 4, 8, 19, 22–4, 27, 29–30, 148 Ait Ahmed, Hocine 317 Ajam (Ijmi) 242, 243 Akbulut, Yusuf 124 Akef, Mahdi 50 AKP see Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) Al-Ahram 372, 373 Al Arsuzi, Zaki 189 al-Asad (Assad), Bashar 186, 189, 191, 192, 207, 345–6, 352 al-Asad (Assad), Hafez 186, 188, 190, 204, 305, 345 al-Atrash, Sultan 203 Alawi religious community (see also Alawites) Alawis 2, 6, 12, 49, 185–193, 202, 204, 207, 248, 251, 267, 345–6

Alawites, Syria: Alawi status, majoritarian views 187–8; challenges facing 190–2; communal violence 186; definition of 188; integration efforts 188–90; minorities, problem of 185–7; Shi’ization of 248–50 Al-Azhar University 57–8 al-Baghd ād ī, Abū Bakr 29 al-Batiniyya 199 al-Darazi, Nashtakin 198 al-Da’wa al-Islamiyya (Islamic Call) 245 al-dhimma 4, 22–30, 53 Alevi(s) 7, 8, 12–13, 67–9, 75n38; and AKP period 218–21; belief system 212, 213; civil society 68, 69; complaints and discrimination 216–18; conservative ideology 219; historical background 214–16; Sunnis and 215; as Turks 214 Alevi-Bektashi Federation (ABF) 219 Alevi diaspora 356 “Alevi revival” 212 Alevi Kurds 256, 261 Alevi religious community 12–13 al Ghazali, Mohammed 51 al-Hakim Bi-Amr Allah 198 al-Haraka al-Risaliyya 245 al-Hariri, Rafiq 246 al-Hariri, Saad 342 al-Hilal 372 al-Houthi, Hussein 249 al-Husayni, Hajj Amin 39 al-Huwayyik, Elias 93, 94 Ali ibn Abi Talib 240 al-Jāḥ i ẓ 25–6 Al-Karmil 105 al-Maliki, Nouri 347 al-Māward ī, Abū al-Ḥasan 26 al-Mu’ayyad 372

427

Index al-Muqtataf 372 al-Mutawakkil 26 Al-Qadissayin Church violent attacks 82 Al Qaeda-affiliated groups 190 al Qaradawy, Youssef 53 al-radd ʿal ā al-dhimma 26 Al-Sabah-Shi’i nexus 246 al-Sadr, Muqtada 241–2, 333–4 al-Shishikli, Adib 204 al-Sisi, Abd al-Fattah 83, 86 al-Sitt Nayfeh Junblat 200 al-Sitt Nazirah Junblat 200 al-Sitt Sarrah 200 al-Waqa’i al-Misriyyah 371 al-Watan 372 al-Zawya al-Hamra violent attacks 82 Amal 242, 245 Amazigh (Berbers) 14, 136, 197, 313–315 Amazigh-Berber movement 322 Amazigh media 375–6 American intervention 154 Amin al-Husseini, Muhammad 189 Amr Ibn al-’As 80 Ancient Mesopotamian religion 118 Angra Mainya 8 an-Naʿim, Abdullahi 28 Anosh bin Dinqa 164 ANSA see Assyrian National School Association (ANSA) anti-Arab policy 90 Anti-Assyrianist policies 121 anti-colonial political force 105 anti-Syrian ‘March 14’ Coalition 97 anti-Zionist activities 39, 43, 105–6 Aoun, Michel 96–7 Arab Bedouins 305–7, 309 Arabic-speaking Christians 107 Arab Jews 42–3 Arab Middle East 197 Arab Muslims 22, 25, 26, 117, 159, 205, 234–5, 341, 346 Arab nationalism 35–8; Arab Jews 42–3; Kurds 40–1; Palestinian Christians 38–40 Arab Orthodox 39, 103 Arab Spring 60, 65, 79, 83, 132, 182, 207, 208, 248–50, 255, 268, 320–2, 334, 345, 348 Arab Sunnis 345–347 Ararad 279 Arida, Antoine 94 Armenian(s) 3, 6, 7,13, 63, 64, 104, 118, 119, 124, 132, 149, 214, 217, 256, 257, 268, 272–82, 349, 352, 362–4; of Anjar 277–8; articulation 282; Church 274–6; Gezi Park protests 273–4; of Kessab 278; mandate and nation-state power 278–9; minority population 273; post-consolidation 280–1; of Qamishle 278; representation 279–80

Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA) 281 Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) 281 Arnold, T. W. 23 Arrapḫ a 117 Ashurian, Homer 122 Assembly Movement of 1938 242 Assyrian-Aramaic 117 Assyrian community, Assyrians 1, 5 9, 10, 19, 106, 115–129, 132, 149, 152, 230, 260, 278, 343, 353–4, 357–8, 362–364, 385, 389; Da’esh, threat of 126; historical background 117–18; internal division contributes 123–5; recent predicament 125–8; theories and definitions 115–17 Assyrian Democratic Movement (1979) 123, 124, 127 Assyrian Democratic Organization (1957) 122 Assyrian National School Association (ANSA) 120 Assyrian Patriotic Party 127 Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA) 122 Assyrian Youth Cultural Society 122 Aswat 331 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 36, 40, 256–7, 260 Ateek, Naim 108 Atto, Naures 357 AUA see Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA) audio-visual media 135 Ayyad, Rami 107 Aztag 279, 280 Ba’ath Party, Ba’athists 12, 38, 179–80, 185, 187, 189, 190, 202–4, 248, 266, 267, 305, 343–5 Ba’ath regime 147, 148, 165–6, 204, 207, 208, 249, 354 Babylonian calendar 163 Baghdad General Conference 123 Bahá’í Faith 170–2; in Bahrain 180–1; in Egypt 177–9; in Iran 173–7; Iraq 179–80; in Jordan 181; “minority,” definition of 172; Muslim-majority states 173; religious community 13, 173 Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) 176 Baharna (Bahrani) 242, 243 Bahraini Shi’i 250 Bajjaly, Joanna 126 Bani Utub 242 Baradaeus, Jacob 118 Barakeh, Mohammed 295 Barzani, Mustafa 264, 266 Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation 290 Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty 290 Basic Law: Israel the Nation State of the Jewish People 294 Batatu, Hanna 202 Bayat, Asef 70, 74n25

428

Index Bedouin 14, 301–10; activism 309–10; alienation and integration 302; educational systems 307–9; Jordan and Saudi Arabia 303–4; Lebanon and Syria 304–5; multi-resource economy 302–3; Naqab 305–7, 310 Behzane-Bashiqa 149 Benyamin, Mar Shimun XXI 119 Berber (Amazigh) 313–23; France and 316; independence and emergence 316–17; islamization 315; Kabyle, emergence of 317–18; Libya 320; Moroccan 318–20; Morocco and Algeria 321–3; origin 314–16; profile 314; Rif region 316–17; Touareg and Mali 321; Tunisia 321 Berbere TV 376 Berber Spring 317 Bet-Abram, Freydun 122 Bethlehem 39, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 140, 352 Betkolia, Yonathan 123 B ēṯ Z ālin 119 BIHE see Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) Bilgili, Cagin 68 bin Bayyah, Abdullah 29 Bishara, Azmi 290, 292 Bremer, Paul 124 British mandatory authority 101, 104, 120 Bryer, David 199, 200 Buhturid Emirate 201 Butler, Judith 329 Cairo Agreement (1969) 94 Cairo Conference Iraq (1921) 120 Calder, Mark Daniel 10, 100 Cameron, Geoffrey 6, 13, 170 Camuroğ lu, Reha 214, 219 Çarkoğ lu, Ali 6, 13, 68, 212 cemevis 216–19 Cem Foundation 216, 219 cem, Melikoff’s depiction of 213 Central Bureau of Statistics 107 Chaldean Catholic Church, Chaldeans 19, 27, 118, 191, 121, 354, 360–1, 364, 385, 389 Chaldo-Assyrians 124, 149, 152 Chamoun, Camille 93, 281, 341 Chatty, Dawn 304–5 Chehab, Fouad 93, 341 Chikko Hurmiz Malik 123 CHP see Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) Christian inheritance 108–9 Christian-Muslim: animosities 127; division of 105; relations of 106 Christians from a Muslim background (CMBs): celebrity converts 142; by challenges faced 138–42; christian community 141–2; community, growth of 134–5; conversion,

reasons for 135–7; C-scale 142–3; local evangelical church 142; religious identity 137–8; state and family 138–41; young communities of 137; young women 140 Church of the East 9–10, 117–119 Circassians 14 civil society: 5, 6, 7, 56, 60–3, 67–72, 150, 174, 180, 181, 182, 292, 293, 347, 388; Alevi 68, 69; implications for 67–72; Lebanese 72; in Middle East 61– 63 Civil War in Lebanon 1975–1990 90 Coffey, Quinn 4 Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) 214 consociational system, in Lebanon 68, 71, 72, 241 “constructive communalism” 105–6 contextualization 134 Coptic community, Copts 70–1, 79, 81–6, 85, 347, 363; exclusion of 81; inclusion of 81; population of 80; role of 80; trends in 80–4; as true Egyptians 80 Coptic media 374–5 Coptic Orthodox Church 4, 10, 11, 19, 70, 80, 82, 84, 85, 179, 348, 353, 362, 363, 374 “Coptic Question” 80 CopticWorld.org 375 Corm, Charles 91 A Country to Die In (Taia) 335 Covenant of Umar 23–4 “The Cradle Fund” 386 Crawford, David 378 Cumberland, Roger 126 Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) 212, 215 CUP see Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) Dabiq 54 Da’esh (see Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) Dakheel Qassem Hassoon 151 Dalrymple, William 7 Dashnak party 279, 280, 281 Dawisha, Adeed 37 dedes 213, 356 de Gaulle, Charles 186 Demir, Hayri 377 Democratic Left Party see Demokratik Sol Parti (DSP) Democratic Union Party (PYD) 127, 268 Demokratik Sol Parti (DSP) 215 “denominations” 104 Der Matossian, Bedross 64 Dersim Rebellion 214–15, 221 de Sacy, Silvestre 198, 209n3 dhimmitude 4, 20, 24, 50, 51, 52, 57, 142 diasporas 351–2; Germany 353–5; and homeland 363–4; host society 359–61; inter-confessional/-religious dynamics 358–9; migration and demography 352–5;

429

Index representations and representatives 356–8; state regulations 361–3 DIB seee Diyanet İşleri Ba şkanlığ ı (DIB) “dirty laundry” 82 discrimination 79, 80, 82 Diyanet İşleri Ba şkanlığ ı (DIB) 215–17, 219–20 Diyarbakır community 120 Doi, Abdur Rahman I. 28 “dominant minority” 186 Donabed, Sargon 5, 10, 115 Doran, Andrew 8, 388, 393 Dressler, Markus 213 Droeber, Julia 113n59 Druze 7, 12, 22, 93, 101, 187, 197–209, clanism 200; doctrine 198; in Israel 204–7; in Lebanon 200–1; in Middle East 199; political history 200; religious community 12; in Syria 201–2; Syrian uprising, shadow of 207–8 Druze Initiative Committee 206 Dwekh Nawshe 127 Eadie, J.I. 120 Eastern Christian communities 11, 92, 393 Eastern Orthodox Churches 10, 341 Ebrahimi, Rabi William 122 ECHR see European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Ecumenical Council of Constantinople 92 Edde, Michel 281 educational systems, Bedouin 307–9 Egypt: 3, 4, 9, 10, 19, 25, 26, 27, 30, 36, 37, 40, 41, 42, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 63, 64, 67, 68, 70–1, 79–88, 89, 132, 133, 139, 141, 170, 172, 177–179, 189, 198, 207, 259, 272, 276, 277, 280, 287, 289, 303, 306, 314, 315, 330, 333, 341, 348, 353, 362, 371–4, 382, 383, 386, 387; Coptic Christian minority 89; Coptic community in 70–1; independence 80, 81; public sphere 71 “Egyptian Question” 80, 81 Ehl-i Beyt Association 219 Elҫi, Ezgi 7, 13, 212 el Fadl, Khaled Abou 24 el-Khoury, Bechara 90 el-Mehdi, Rabab 83The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East (White) 66 Encyclopédie Maronite 92 Epic of Gilgamesh (poem) 115 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip 220, 221, 263 Esman, Milton J. 79, 86n5 “Eternal Living” 161 ethnic-cultural groups 135 ethnic minorities 13–15 ethnic security dilemma 339–40, 342, 344–5, 346–48 ethnographic vignette 111n29 ethno-religious group 117, 148

ethnoreligious narrative 107 Eurocentric social and political discourse 103 Europe: colonising coreligionists in 92; Mandaean community in 160 European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) 217 exhilic public spheres 64 ex-Muslim Christians 133 EzidiPress 377 Falsafi, Sheikh Muhammad Taqi 175 Farag, Murad 372 Fata ḥ movement 234 Fawaz, Leila 340 Feldman, Jackie 110n18 Filastin 105 Firro, Kais 341 Foucault, Michel 335 France: 27, 40, 92, 94, 122, 124, 152, 256, 277, 334, 354, 355, 360, 362, 372, 376; and Berbers 316 Frangieh, Suleiman 97 Frazee, Charles A. 111n25 Free Patriotic Movement 97, 342 Freidenreich, David 23 French Mandate 3, 66, 93, 200, 241, 267, 277, 304, 330, 341 From the Holy Mountain: a journey among the Christians of the Middle East (Dalrymple) 7 Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS) 317–18 Gastarbeiter 353 Gaudeul, Jean-Marie 135 “Gay Marriage of Ksar El Kebir” case 331 Gaza’s Christian population 101 Geagea, Samir 96–7 Geha, Carmen 347 Gemayel, Bashir 342 Gemayel, Pierre 94 General Agha Petros Military Academy 127 Genocide Convention (1948) 121 Georgia, Assyrian born in 121 Gerges, Fawaz 54, 57 Gezi Park protests 212, 220, 273–4 Ghali, Boutros 3 Ghanea, Nazila 6, 13, 170 Goldberg Commission 307 Goldsmith, Leon 6, 12, 185 goodness of Islam 135 Gorani Kurds 256 Gormez, Mehmet 217 Gozarto Protection Forces (GPF) 127 Grand Liban 93 “Great Old Living” 162 Great Syrian Revolt 203 Greek Catholic Church, Greek Catholics 11, 27, 104, 372 Guirgus, Laurie 85

430

Index Gül, Abdullah 220 Gunter, Michael 256 Gusfield, Joseph 200 Hacı Bekta ş -ı Veli 213, 221 Haddad, Joumana 330 Haddad, Wadi 26 Haiduc-Dale, Noah 6, 35 halakhah 230 Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP) 221 Hamza 198 Hanna, Milad 80, 87n13 Hanish, Shak 9, 159 Hasawiyyin 242 Hassan II of Morocco 319 Hassan wa Morcos (film) 82 Hazran, Yusri 12, 197 HDP see Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP) Heerasat 127 Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms (Russell) 7 HELEM 329–30, 332 Henley, Alexander 6, 11, 89 Heraclius, Roman Emperor 92 Hertog, Steffen 69 High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 165 High Priest (Koh ēn G ādōl) 227, 227 Hikma 198 Hinnebusch, Raymond 60, 345 Hitti, Philip 353 Hizballah 97, 207–8, 245–6, 249, 342, 346 Hoffman, Katherine 378 The Holocaust 362 Holon Samaritans 233–5 “Holy City” 102 homeland and diaspora 363–4 Hourani, Albert 185 Houthis 182, 249–50 Hürriyet 124 Hussein, Saddam 146, 147, 149, 151, 165, 247 Ibadhi religious community 11–12 ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, Mohammed 244 ibn al-Wal īd, Khā lid 29 Ibn Khaldun 315, 316 Ibn Saud 304 ibn Taymiyya, Ahmed 188, 190, 192 Ibrahim, Saad Eddin 84Ibrahim, Vivian 10, 79’ideology of coherence’ 67, 68 IDF see Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) IDPs see Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) iftars, in Alevism 220 In Defense of Christians (IDC) 386, 392 Institute for Global Engagement (IGE) 386, 392 Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe (IRCAM) 319–20 inter-communal violence 149 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) 126

International Religious Freedom Report 216–17 “Intifada of Muharram 1400” 247 Iran: 5, 8, 9, 13, 14, 40, 41, 48, 49, 55, 69, 117, 119, 122, 123, 133, 136, 148, 154, 159, 160, 164, 165, 170–177, 179, 182, 192, 213, 240–3, 248–50, 255–261, 266–68, 272, 276, 280, 343, 344, 345; Babi religion in 173; Human Rights Documentation Center 175; Kurdistan 263–5; political system 122; revolution 245–7 Iranian Revolution (1979) 241 Iraq: 1–2, 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 19, 20, 29, 30, 36, 37, 38, 40–3, 46–50, 52, 54, 55–57, 64, 67, 71, 73, 117, 119–129, 132, 133, 146–55, 159–167, 177, 179–80, 191, 202, 205, 207, 240, 242–3, 245–50, 255–61, 264–8, 274, 276, 280, 333, 342–7, 349, 354, 355, 358, 360, 363, 364, 372, 373, 374, 376, 377, 378, 385–387, 392–94; American invasion of 165; constitution, Article 2 of 151; insecurity 342–5; Kurdistan 117, 259, 265–8; regime change 247–8 Iraqi Governing Council 124 Iraq National Museum 128 ISIL (Da’esh) 2 ISIS see Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) Iskander, Elizabeth 84, 371 Islamic Call see al-Da’wa al-Islamiyya islamic citizenship: fragmented sources 47–8; identity and political community 50–2; negation of minority rights 53–5; reflections and implications 55–8; religious minorities 49; rights and duties 52–3 Islamic conservatism 94 Islamicized Armenians 275 Islamic Law, Reformist views of 28–9 Islamic National Alliance 246–7 Islamic Revolution (1979) 122 Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS, Da’esh) 2, 19, 21, 24, 28–30, 117, 148, 151, 190, 344 Islamist groups, Islamic state 95 islamization, Berbers 315 Islam’s Prophet 135 Ismailis 12 Israel: 9, 12, 13, 14, 38, 43, 73, 94, 95, 100–8, 132, 133, 136, 139, 141, 172, 188, 197, 199, 204, 225, 229–31, 233, 234, 235, 237, 245, 246, 248, 259, 273, 274, 303, 305, 341, 342, 372; Druze in 204–9; Palestinians in 287–97; Bedouin in 305–310 Israeli Bureau of Statistics 104, 110n7 Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) 205 Israeli Samaritans 233, 234 Israelization 290–2 Issawi, Charles 63 Izzettin Doğan v. Turkey 217

431

Index Jabal Abu Ghneim 103 Jacobite Church 118, 122 Jadid, Salah 186 Jerusalem, Old City of 101–3 Jewish Israelis 106 Jews 9, 113n47; and Arabs 42–3; Samaritans and 233–5, and Palestinians 292–294 Jindo, David 127 jizya 52 Joghovurti Tzayn 279 John’s flag 163 Johnstone, Patrick 132 The Joint List 295 Joseph, Suad 103, 111n20 Judaism 81 Junblat, Walid 203 jurists, medieval 25–6 Justice and Development Party see Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP)

Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) 122, 126, 151, 153–154 261–3, 267–268 Kurds 13, 35, 35, 37, 38, 40–2, 48, 63, 67, 117, 119, 120–4, 127,189, 197, 214, 215, 220, 255–69, 278, 343–7, 350, 354, 378, 389, 393; Iran 263–5; Iraq 265–8; minority 257–9; sub-nationalism 40–1; Syria 267; Turkey 260–3; Yezidis and 146–154 Kurmanji Kurds 256 Kutschera, Chris 259 Kuwait, Shi’i minorities in 242–3, 246 Kymlicka, Will 5, 83

Kabyle Berbers 316–18 Kaka’i Kurds 256 Kaka’i religion 8 Kamus-ı Turki 213 Kanna, Yonadam 123 Kark ā d-Beth Slōkh 117 Kartveit, Bard 111n21 Kasaba, Resat 63, 74n12 kashrut 229 Kaslik group 95 KDP see Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) Khaddar, Moncef 86, 88n43 Khanka violent attacks 82 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah 175, 245 264 Khuri, Fuad 199 Khuri-Makdisi, Ilham 63 Kif Kif 331 Kildani, Hanna 111n24 King Abdallah II of Jordan 247 Kingston, Paul 5, 60 Kizilbash 12–13 Kılıcdaroğ lu, Kemal 220 Klein, Janet 81 Knesset 274, 289–90, 292, 293, 294, 295 Konig, Franz 358 Kosheh violent attacks 82 Kraft, Kathryn 141 KRG see Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Kurdish community 147 The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) 127, 268, 346 Kurdish-nationalist sentiment 127 Kurdish Peoples Protection Units 127 Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) 126, 127, 150, 151, 264, 266, 377 Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) 126, 127, 147, 148, 149, 151–154, 377

Lachgar, Betty 331 “Land of Israel” 102 land rights struggle 306–7 Latin American liberation theology 136 Lawatiyya 243 Lebanese Armenian community 279, 280 Lebanese Maronite Order 95 Lebanese Maronite politics 93 Lebanese Research Committee 95 Lebanon: 3, 6, 10, 12, 20, 35, 37, 39, 61–2, 68, 71–3, 120, 133, 141, 160, 188, 191, 197, 199, 200–1, 202–203, 204, 205, 207–8, 209, 241–242, 245, 246, 250, 272, 273, 274–277, 279, 280, 281, 282, 287, 290, 302, 304, 310, 329–330, 332, 334, 340–3, 345, 346–7, 349, 352–3, 371–2, 382; civil society 72; confessionalism and security 340–2; consensual democracy 73; consociational system 71–2; culture 94; Druze in 200–1; executive power in 71; 1926 constitution 71; Maronites in 89–91; sectarianism 61–2; Shi’i minorities in 241–2, 245 Lemkin, Raphael 124 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Queer (LGBTQ) 329–35 Levantine Christians 92 Levinson, Chaim 110n17 Levin, Yariv 106 Libyan Berbers 320 Lieberman, Avigdor 293 Longva, Anh Nga 4, 340 The Lost History of Christianity ( Jenkins) 7 Louër, Laurence 5, 12, 240 Lukasik, Candace 83 Lyon, Wallace 40 Maan Emirate 201 MacGahern, Una 107 Maddy-Weitzman, Bruce 14, 313, 375 Madımak Hotel 219 Mahmood, Saba 4, 66–7, 72, 84 Mahmoud Barzinji 265 Makari, Peter 348 Makdisi, Osama (Ussama) 61, 342

432

Index Makiya, Kanan 343 Malian Touareg 321 Mamluks 104, 231, 232 Mandaean religion 9 Mandaean Sabeans: 1, 2, 7, 9, 149, 159–167, 343, 355, 363; current persecution 165; education, carriers, and existence 160–1; festivals 163; future of 166–7; language and religious teachings 161–3; Mandaean logo 163; migration of 165–6; original language of 161; persecution, history of 164–5; religion, basics of 163–4; statistical information 160; Western Christian missionaries 165 Mann, Michael 65 Mansour, Adly 83 Marada Movement 91 Marada Party 97 Mardam Bey, Jamil 189 marja’iyya 245, 251n15 Maronite Church, Maronites 3, 6, 10, 11, 20, 27, 71, 89–97, 104, 119, 141, 201, 241–2, 340–1; community crisis 96–7; dwindling population and political divisions 96–7; ethnic and religious narratives 90–2; hegemony, end of 94–6; in Lebanon and Middle East 89–90; by Marada Movement 91; Sunni Muslim majority 93–4; Western civilisation 92 Maronite Synod 96 Marshall, T. H. 47 Martyr, Justin 118 Marx, Emanuel 302–3 Massad, Joseph 329, 332 Matiate, ancient city 117 Mazza, Roberto 112n37 media 370–1; Amazigh 375–6; characteristics of 378–9; Copts 374–5; decline of minority 372–3; press, emergence of 371–2; Yezidis 376–7 Mediterranean trade relations 92 MEEM (Support Group for Lesbian Women) 330 Mekouar, Merouan Melek Taus 8 Melikoff, Irene 213 Member of the Knesset (MK) 206 Mesopotamia 117 Message Movement see al-Haraka al-Risaliyya Middle East 60–1, 72–3, 79, 83, 84, 88n34; Assyrians in 117, 118; Bahá’ís minorities 172–3; Christian community in 89, 95; civil society 62, 63; countries, culture 94; Druze in (see Druze community); ethno-religious minority group 147; in Maronite Church 92; minoritarian political incorporation in 67–72; minority communities 63–5, 79, 81; Mount Lebanon region 90; sectarianism 61–2; socioeconomic transformations 63; state- and nation-building 65–7

Middle East and North Africa (MENA) 1–2, 49, 287, 329, 334 Míirzá Abu’l-Fadl Gulpáygání 177 Mikhail Abd al-Sayid 372 Miller, Duane Alexander 6, 11, 108, 132 millet (Ottoman Empire) 26–8 Millet system 26, 27, 30, 84, 118, 185 Mills, Kurt 378 ‘mini-public spheres’ 62 “Minorities in the Arab World” (international conference 1994) 84minority status, critiques 3–5 minority communities 2–5, 7 minority political incorporation, in Middle East 67–72 Minority Rights Group International 218 Mishte, Mehmet 278 Mohamed Salah Ben Aissa 334 Mohamed VI of Morocco 319, 322 Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi 175, 264Monothelite Christology 92 Moroccan Berbers 316, 318–20 Morris, Benny 111n19 Morsi, Mohamed 82, 348 Mosque, Al-Azhar 80 Mount Gerizim (Hargrizīm) 227, 228, 230, 233 Mount Lebanon, Druze in 201 Mount Lebanon region 90; autonomous rule in 201; dominant role in 201; Druzes community 93, 199; historical overview 200–2; Maronites community 93; refuge isolation of 91; semi-autonomous status for 93; Shi’i demographic expansion 208; widespread literacy, achievement of 92 Movement for Individual Freedoms (MALI) 331 Movsesian, Mark 389 Mubarak, Hosni 82, 347–8 Mughniyya, Imad 246 Muhammad Hassanien Heikal 84 Muhammad, Qazi 264 mujtahid 251n15 multi-confessional entity 94 multi-resource economy 302–3 Muslim-Christian Associations 105 Muslim-dominated societies 116 “Muslim followers of Jesus” 133 Muslim-Leftist ‘Lebanese National Movement 95 Muslim opposition forces 93 “Mutawali” 241 Muwahhidun 198 Nablus Samaritans 232–5 Nag Hammadi violent attacks 82 Nahda 372 Nakba Law 110n11, 293 Nalbantian, Tsolin 3, 6, 13, 272 Napoleon III 93

433

Index Naqab Bedouin 305–7, 310 Nassar, Najib 64, 70, 105 Nasser, Gamal Abdul 353, 373 National Baha’i Centre in Tehran 175 National Pact 94, 241, 341 National Spiritual Assembly of Iraq 179 nation-state system, religious minorities 29–30 Nativity story 102 Neo-Assyrian Empire 117 neo-millet system 79, 84 Netanyahu, Benjamin 293–4 new Bible translations 135 Nicholson, Robert 384 niddah 229 Niebuhr, Reinhold 394 Nimr, Faris 372 Nineveh Plains Protection Units (NPU) 127 Nineveh Province 151, 154 non-Muslims 116 Non-Sunni Arabs 147 Norris, Jacob 102 NPU see Nineveh Plains Protection Units (NPU) Nusayris see Alawites, Syria Odeh, Ayman 287, 295–6 Oman: 11–12, 133, 242–243; Shi’i minorities in 243 The Oriental Orthodox Churches 10 Orthodox Palestinian population 104 orthodox shari’a 140 Oslo II Accord (1995) 102 Ottomanism 67 Ottoman Millet system 118 Ottoman period 60, 63, 64 Ouf kir, Mohamed 317 “Our Lord Jesus Christ” 109 Özkul, Derya 219 Pacini, Andrea 79, 86n5 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) 94, 341–2 Palestinian Christians 4, 38–40, 42, 100–110, 352; anti-colonial modernity 105; Christian inheritance 108–9; communalism, centrifugal force 104–5; constructive communalism 105; contrasting publics 108; de jure civil and security control 102; denominations 103–4; disconnection 102–3; forced displacement 307; Gaza and West Bank 107–8; intra-Christian relationship 104; Islamic versions of 105; Jews and Muslims 106; landscapes and jurisdictions 101–2; national project 105; national sentiment 101; palestinian nationalism 105; places and displacement 100–1; total population of 101

Palestinian minority in Israel 14, 287; and development 289–92; Jewish ethnocentric response 292–4; to national minority 288–9; politics 294–6 Palestinian Samaritans 233–4 Palestinization 290 pan-Arab movement, pan-Arabism 37–8, 43, 202, 203, 258, 320, 343, 345–7, 349 Paris Peace Conference (1919) 93 Parti Populaire Syrien (PPS) 202 pastoral nomadism 302–3 “patriarchal connectivity” 103 Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) 126, 150, 151, 153, 266 Pax Syriana 96 PDS see Public Distribution System (PDS) Peled, Yoav 291 Pelham, Nicholas 74n27, 107 Peoples’ Democratic Party see Halkların Demokratik Partisi (HDP) Peoples Protection Units (YPG) 268, 346 Perley, David Barsum 117 persecution 79, 80, 81 Persian language Assyrian periodicals 123 pesa ḥ 228, 232 Pföstl, Eva 5, 83 Phalange Party 43, 94, 96, 97, 341 Phoenician heritage 90 Picard, Elizabeth 74n26 Pir Sultan Abdal (Alevi poet) 216 Pir Sultan Abdal Cultural Association see Pir Sultan Abdal Kultur Derneğ i (PSAKD) Pir Sultan Abdal Kultur Derneğ i (PSAKD) 216, 219 PKK see Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) political incorporation of religious minorities 67–72 politics of recognition 79 “polluting” presence 140 Pope Clement XII 92 Pope John Paul II 89 Pope Kyrillos VI 81 Pope Kyrilos IV 371 Pope Shenouda III 82, 84, 374 post-Muslim minorities 11–13 post-Ottoman period 65, 67 Pouliakouvich, Alexandre 334 PPS see Parti Populaire Syrien (PPS) Pratt, Nicola 330 Prawer, Ehud 307 Prawer Plan 310 pre-Islamic Gnostic traditions 187 pre-Muslim minorities 8–11 press, emergence of 371–2 Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) 203 pro-Syrian ‘March 8’ Coalition 97 “protecting minorities” 127

434

Index Protestant Churches, Protestants 11, 27, 38, 103, 108, 118, 142, 279, 388, 389, 393 pseudo-religious doctrine 205 PSP see Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) Puar, Jasbir 332 Public Distribution System (PDS) 151 PUK see Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) PYD see Democratic Union Party (PYD) Qaddafi, Mu`ammar 320 Qajar, Nasiru’d-Din Shah 171 Qajar-ruled territories 119 Qamishli 119–20, 126, 127 Qasim, Abdul Karim 266, 347 Qatar:133, 292, 333; Shi’i minorities in 248 “Queen boat” case 330, 333 Qur’ā n 20, 21, 22, 24,28, 29, 30, 132, 136, 142, 162, 164, 175, 213, 240, 249 Qutb, Sayed 54, 57 Rabinovich, Itamar 79, 86n5 radicalization 290 Raheb, Mitri 108, 109 Rassam, Hormuzd 115, 128–129 Rassemblement pour la Culture et la Démocratie (RCD) 317–18 Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages of the Negev (RCUVN) 306 religio-communal groups 106 religious belief 8, 81, 148, 151, 161, 165, 200, 356 Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Mahmood) 66 religious minority 8, 12, 19, 25, 35, 59n27, 81, 116, 128, 132, 167, 187, 188, 205, 221, 355, 382; Christians 383–4; IDC and IGE 386; in nation-state system 29–30; reflections 387–92 religious symbolism 95 Republican People’s Party see Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East 37 Rhzaoui, Zineb El 331 Riggins, Stephen 370–1, 374, 378–9 right to difference 79 Robson, Laura 104, 105 Roman Catholic (Latin) Church 10, 38, 92, 104, 142 Romano, David 4, 13, 255 Rose, Arnold 257 Rubin, Aviad 14, 287 r ūm (Byzantine) Orthodox 103 Runciman, Steven 388 Russell, Gerard 7 Saadi, Said 317 Sabeans (Sabians) see Mandaean Sabeans Sadat, Anwar 81, 347 Sa’d Zaghlul 80

Saghieh, Hazem 332 Said, Sheikh 260, 263 Sakakini, Khalil 38–9 Saleh al-Ali, Shaikh 186, 189 Saleh, Ali Abdallah 250 Salih, Molla 242–3 Samaritan community, Samaritans 7, 9, 225–237, –; calendrical festivals 227, 228; demographic development 236–7; diaspora 232; gender ratio 236; under Islamic dominion 230–2; and Jews 233–5; as l ā-misāsīyyah 231; lifecycle rituals 228; liturgical languages of 228; marriage rules 235–6; origins and early history 230; Palestinian relations 234; purity and impurity 229, 231; religious authority 227; Right of Return 233; social relations 234; social structure 229–30; twentieth and twenty-first centuries 232–6 Sanua, James 372 Sarmas, Pera 122 Sarruf, Yaqub 372 Saudi Shi’i 69–70, 244, 247–8 Schmoller, Andreas 7, 351 Scholars of Middle East Studies 116 Schreiber, Monika 9, 225 Scott, Rachel 5 “second class citizen” 20–2 secularism 4, 79, 83–84, 120, 202, 216, 345, 394 sedentarization policies 302 Sedra, Paul 40 ‘segmented clientelism’ 69, 73 Seiple, Chris 8, 382, 383–5 Sergius, Qommus 80 sexual minorities 15, 55, 108, 329–336; arts and literature 334–5; development of rights 333–4; Iraq and Jordan 333; LGBTQ diverse realities 329–33; in Saudi Arabia 332–3 Sfeir, Nasrallah 97 Shabak religious community 13 Shari’a (Islamic law) 46, 50, 51, 53, 54, 81–2, 137, 139–40, 143, 199, 347 Sharkey, Karen 63 Shaykh Al-Azhar 82 Sheikh ‘Adi’s diplomatic approach 150 Sheikh Izz al Din 264–5 Shenouda, Anthony 374 Shi’i Arabs 343–5 Shi’i religious community 12 Shi’is/Shiism: 1, 2, 5, 11, 12, 13, 20, 36, 41, 49, 63, 68–71, 73, 89, 94, 96, 97, 146, 147, 148, 149, 154, 159, 165, 171, 174, 186, 187, 189, 198, 199, 200, 202, 208, 212, 213, 240–51, 256, 257, 264, 265, 266, 268, 342–5, 347, 349, 360, 363, 382, 387; of Alawites 248–50; as geopolitical factor 244–5; Iranian revolution 245–7; Iraqi regime change 247–8; in Kuwait 242–3; in Lebanon 241–2, 245;

435

Index in Oman 243; in Saudi Arabia 69–70, 244, 247–8; of Zaydis 248–50 Sidhom, Yusef 373 Simele Massacre 123, 124, 126, 343, 389 Simonshon, Sholomo 24 Sinjar Alliance 147 Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ) 152 Sinno, Hamed 334 Slimani, Leila 335 Social Democratic Populist Party 215 socio-economic development, in Middle East 63–4 socio-political climate 79 Solomon’s Pools 103 Sootoro 127 Sorani Kurds 256 SSNP see Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) Stacher, Joshua 83 “status quo” 104 Stillman, Norman 42 Sufi Islamic teaching, Sheikh ‘Adi’s 148 Sunnah of Muhammad 30 Sunni Future Movement 97 Sunni Kurds 256, 261 Sunni Muslim majority 93 Sunnis, Sunnism: 1, 2, 12, 20, 24, 35, 38, 41, 49, 54, 55, 57, 67, 68, 70, 71, 89, 93, 94, 96, 97, 120, 124, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 153, 154, 155, 159, 165, 173, 181, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 197, 198, 199, 204, 207, 208, 212–4, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 256, 257, 261, 263, 264, 265, 267, 268, 278, 314, 323, 342, 343, 344, 345–346, 347, 349, 360, 364, 382, 387; and Alevis 215; and Diyanet İşleri Ba şkanlı ğ ı 215, 216 S ūrayt/S ūreth 117 Syed Ahmed Khan 28 Syria: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 20, 25, 29, 30, 35, 37–40, 46, 47, 48, 49,50, 51, 52, 55, 57, 64, 67, 71, 89, 90, 93, 117, 120, 121, 124, 126, 127, 132, 133, 135, 146, 148, 152, 153–4, 159, 160, 185–193, 197, 199, 201– 204, 205, 207–209, 219–221, 246, 247, 248, 249–251, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 267–8, 272–4, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 302, 304–5, 310, 340–344, 345–346, 347, 349, 352, 353, 354, 358, 360, 363, 371–3, 377, 382, 385, 386, 393; Alawite minority 190, 248–50; Civil War 212, 220; crisis 2011– 2017 185; Druze in Lebanon and 202; in French colonial power 186; in Kurdish 267; “majority”/”minority” in 187; in Maronite Christianity 89; nation-building project 185; sectarianism and security 345–6; Urfa, Refugees from 120

Syriac Orthodox Church, Syriacs 10, 25, 104, 106, 108, 111n29, 117, 118, 122, 353, 354, 357–9, 361, 362, 385, 389 Syrian Muslim Brotherhood 186, 188 Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) 189 The Syrians in America (Hitti) 353 Syro-Lebanese: diaspora 352–3; migrants 359–60 Tadros, Mariz 46, 74 Taha, Mahmoud Mohamed 28 Taia, Abdellah 335 Ta’if Accord (1989) 94, 97, 246 Tamazight 14, 313, 314, 318, 319, 320, 322, 323, 375–376, 378 Tambar, Kabir 68, 86n6 Tanzimat reforms 3, 27–8, 63, 232, 272, 339–40, 371 taqiyya 198, 206–7 Taw Mim Semkath 120 Tennent, Timothy 142 “The Great Living” 161, 162 Tibi, Ahmed 295 Touareg Berbers 321 Treaty of Lausanne (1923) 40, 214, 217, 257, 343 Tritton, A. S. 23 Tunisian Berbers 321 Turkey: 7, 8, 9,12, 13, 27, 36, 40, 41, 48, 66, 67–9, 73, 89, 106, 117, 119–20, 122, 124, 126, 134, 139, 148, 152, 153, 154, 159, 160, 188, 212–22, 255–63, 264, 267, 268, 272–4, 275, 277, 278, 349, 353, 354, 355, 356, 358, 377; Alevis in (see Alevis); EU membership 212; in Kurdistan 260–3; religious courses in 217–18 Turkmen, Turkomen 1, 13–14, 120, 213, 343, 347 Turkyilmaz, Zeynep 199 Twelver Shiism 248–51 UNHCR see High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Union of Arab Orthodox Clubs (UAOC) 39–40 Union of Mandaean Associations 160 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) 288 United States Commission on International Religious Freedom 180 Universal House of Justice 172 U.S. Census Bureau survey 126 US-led coalition force 149 Van Dam, Nikolaos 345 violent assimilation policies 147 Wafd 373 Wahhabism 244 Weil, Simone 394

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Index Weiss, Max 61–2 Weizman, Eyal 102 West Bank 103 Western civilisation 92 Whitaker, Brian 330, 332 White, Benjamin Thomas 3, 36, 65–7, 72, 104, 339 wilaya 52–3, 56 William of Tyre 92 wisdom theology 136 World Religion Database 171 World War I 116, 126, 172

The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion 146YMCA see Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) Youkhanna, Donny George 128 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) 101 Young Turk Revolution 172 Yousif, Ashur 119 YPMRP see Yezidi Political Movement for Reform and Progress (YPMRP) Yusuf, Ali 372 Yusuf, Yusuf Salman 121

Yazdegard I 25 YBŞ see Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ) Yemeni Christians 137 Yemeni civil war 249 Yemeni Zaydis 248–50 Yezidi Political Movement for Reform and Progress (YPMRP) 150 Yezidis 1, 6, 8–9, 19, 24, 49, 54, 57, 120, 125, 146–55, 167, 256, 268, 343, 354–5, 358, 363–4, 374, 376–8, 383, 389, 390, 392; diaspora 354–5; genocide, current situation 152–4; Kurdish population 148; Kurds 256; meaning of 148; media 376–7; politics of modern Iraq 147–9; post-2003 Iraq 149–52; reformer of 150

Zahalka, Jamal 295 Zahrirē d-Bahra 119 Zaidan, Jurji 372 Zana, Leyla 262 Zareh I 281 Zartonk 279 Zaydis 12; Shi’ization of 248–50 Zazaki Kurds 256 Zengin v. Turkey (2007) 218 Zionism 42–3 Zionism ( Jewish people) 106 Zionist movement 288, 296 Zoroastrian Kurds 256 Zoroastrian religion 8

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