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 l