The ‘formal’ Marjaʿ: Shiʿi clerical authority and the state in post-2003 Iraq

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the name of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Grand Shi?i cleric, has come to prominence. Sistani emerged as a key player in the processes that constituted and sustained the post-2003 Iraqi political order, as manifested in key events such as the writing of constitution or the mobilization against the Islamic State (I.S.). Nevertheless, Sistani did not have an official position in Iraq. Unlike the Iranian experience after the 1979 revolution which institutionalized the leading position of faqih (jurist), the Iraqi constitution set Iraq as a democratic, parliamentary state whose religious leaders held no formal offices. Indeed, Sistani rejected the Iranian model as unfit for Iraq’s conditions and societal fabric. Thus, given the absence of a constitutional status for Sistani, how do we understand his authority in Iraq? This article argues that although Sistani’s authority has not been constitutionalized, it was indirectly and roughly ‘formalized’ through practices and laws adopted after 2003. This formalization established a unique and unprecedented relationship between the state and the Shi?i religious authority in the form of arrangements that, to a degree, blurred the lines between formality and informality and created a shared space of governance.     

Lion in the Sand: British Policy in the Middle East, 1945–67

The crisis that unfolded after Iran's June 2009 presidential election exposed the absolutist nature of the state's highest religious authority (wali-ye faqih), Ayatullah ‘Ali Khamena'i. It also revealed the urgent need to critically interrogate Ayatullah Khomeini's doctrinal justifications for the governance of the jurist (wilayat al-faqih) in light of how ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Shi‘i Imam, assumed the caliphate: divine bestowal (nass) combined with public investiture that took the form of bay‘a (oath of allegiance). Ayatullahs Husayn ‘Ali Montazeri, Mohsen Kadivar, Yousef Saanei, Bayat Zanjani and Mehdi Karrubi have attempted to devise a model in which sovereignty belongs to the public and limits the clergy's role in daily matters of the state to oversight and guidance. In contrast, Ayatullahs Kazemeyni Boroujerdi and Mojteba Shabestari argue for a clear-cut separation between the church and the state so that the public can choose its form of government since no specific form is prescribed in Islam. On the other hand, Ayatullah Mesbah Yazdi, a member of the Assembly of Experts, has consistently been a passionate advocate of the absolute authority of the jurist in its most comprehensive form and a vehement opponent of any dissenting discourse on this subject.     

From Indifference to Obsession: The Role of National State Celebrations in Iraq, 1921–2003

Rulers and elites have invented rituals and commemorations in order to serve their interests—to legitimize their hegemony as well as to maintain the existing social and political order. This process is most salient in the new modern states, whose national identity and collective memory are at an early stage of construction. This article analyses Iraq's state celebrations in the context of its state formation and nation-building processes. Before the US occupation in April 2003, Iraq had been governed by four regimes: the monarchy (1921–1958), ‘Abd al-Karim Qassem (1958–1963), the ‘Arif Brothers (1963–1968), and the Ba‘th (1968–2003). This article shows how successive Iraqi regimes moved from indifference to obsession with regard to celebrating national holidays. It advances three major arguments. First, each regime attempted to de-legitimize its predecessor by erasing or significantly changing its national calendar of holidays. These changes adversely affected the ability of the Iraqi polity to establish a shared historical memory serving as a basis for its national identity. Second, though a modern invention of British colonialism, Iraq's cultural artefacts of celebrations were taken from a mixed reservoir: foreign—both Western European and Eastern European—and local or ‘traditional’, either Islamic or pre-Islamic. The end result of the use of this wide symbolic market was a calendar reflecting a hybrid political culture. Third, the Iraqi case study shows that an inverse correlation exists between the calendar's density and the regime's perceived legitimacy. It seems that a ‘thick’ calendar reflects a shortage of legitimacy while a ‘thin’ calendar reflects a more secure and legitimized regime.     

Shi’i division over the Iraqi state: decentralization and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq

ABSTRACT

This article traces the evolving political platform of one of Iraq’s oldest and most powerful Shi’i political parties, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). Drawing on an analysis of 15 years of primary materials produced by ISCI, it focuses principally on their promotion of decentralization as a path towards peace and stability in Iraq. However, the article also traces the origins of a deep schism that emerged within ISCI between the movement’s old guard who were beholden to the Iranian regime and their model of vilāyat-i faqīh, and the youth-led Iraqi nationalist faction who wanted to see the instalment of a civil government without religious oversight. The article demonstrates that this division is indicative of a theological debate between Shi’i religious scholars over differing interpretations of the role of Shi’ism in politics. The article concludes by arguing that understanding the extent to which such esoteric religious debates manifest themselves politically is crucial to interpreting divisions within Shi’ism not just in Iraq, but across the broader Middle East.     

Taqrib al-Madhahib – Qaradawi's Declaration of Principles Regarding Sunni–Shi‛i Ecumenism

This article discusses the Centrist (Wassatiyya) position regarding Sunni–Shi?a relations, as articulated by the head of this stream, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Because Centrists deem themselves the ideological heirs of Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, analysis of their position is also instructive of the Brotherhood's view on this important issue. The discussion is founded on al-Qaradawi's ‘Principles for Sunni–Shi?i Dialogue’, which derive historically from the Society for Reconciliation (Jama?at al-Taqrib) that was active in Egypt during the late 1940s. Centrists hold Shi?ites to be religious innovators (mubtadi?un), but not infidels, from which it follows in their view that Sunna and Shi?a divide over ‘branches of religion’, but not over ‘roots of faith’. In this the Centrists are completely opposed by the Salafi Jihadi ideology, the ideological underpinning of the modern Global Jihad. With the desire to reconcile Sunna and Shi?a and unite them against a common global enemy, the Centrists must resolve the inevitable sectarian tensions as they crop up, e.g. the Sunni accusation that the Shi?a seek to actively proselytize the Sunni faithful in Sunni majority countries. In the Centrist view, Sunni–Shi?i reconciliation and dialogue are of practical necessity as regional politics diverge dangerously into a definite Shi?a bloc led by Iran, and a clear-cut Sunni bloc led by Saudi Arabia.     

Lands,Hands and Socio-cultural Boundaries: A Reading of Dhu Nun Ayyub's The Hand,the Land and the Water (1948)

This article offers a literary analysis of the novel The Hand, the Land and the Water (Al-Yad wa'l ard aa'l ma'), written by communist intellectual Dhu Nun Ayyub (b.1908). I read this novel in an attempt to analyze the boundaries between Baghdad and countryside (al-rif), as understood by the novel's protagonists, and to underscore the ways in which such boundaries were not only constructed, but also crossed and challenged. The novel conveys many themes that occupied the Iraqi leftist intelligentsia at the time, such as the abuse of peasants by their sheikhs and by the state. It was one of the first fictional representations of the Wathba, and thus can be seen as an endeavour to understand the meanings of this very important moment in Iraqi history.     

Intellectuals and Political Power in Social Movements: The Parallel Paths of Fadlallah and Hizbullah

This article examines the intellectual impact of Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) on Hizbullah's political behaviour. Many depicted Fadlallah as the ‘spiritual guide’ and ‘oracle’ of Hizbullah, while others accentuated his socio-political independence and the potential he represented as an ‘alternative’ to Hizbullah and Iran. This study argues that Fadlallah directly influenced Hizbullah's political worldviews, but the Islamic movement's socialisation in Lebanon, its dependence on Iran and its war with Israel have led it to pursue a separate path from Fadlallah. But despite the separation, the Ayatollah shared a common world vision with Hizbullah and the Islamic Republic, and would not have formed an alternative. The article is divided into two sections. The first examines the socio-political origins of Fadlallah and Hizbullah as an intellectual and a political movement, respectively, and conceptualises the discursive and political fields that motivate the behaviour of the two actors. The second section assesses the impact of Fadlallah's ideas on Hizbullah by focusing on three main themes: (1) Islamic liberation and resistance against injustice; (2) the Islamic state and Lebanon; and (3) Wilayat al-Faqih and Islamic Iran.     

‘The Children of the State’? How Palestinians from the Seven Villages Negotiate Sect,Party and State in Lebanon

In Lebanon, the fear of taw?īn makes nationalization of Palestinian refugees an anathema. Yet several groups of Palestinians have received Lebanese citizenship since 1948, most (in)famously those from the ‘seven villages’, a chain of Shi‘i villages on Lebanon's southern border that was incorporated into Palestine in 1923. The trajectory of their nationalization is usually presented as a straightforward consequence of top-down Lebanese electoral politics. This article augments this dominant perspective through a case study of the community from the village of Salha, now in Israel, that currently lives in Shabriha, a small town near the city of Tyre in South Lebanon. Adopting the ‘negotiated statehood’ framework, the article offers an agency-oriented, bottom-up perspective on the community's gaining of citizenship and shows how the people from Salha have acquired citizenship not merely to gain access to, but also to ensure a degree of independence from, the Lebanese state and political parties.     

History,Memory and Commemoration: The Iraqi Revolution of 1920 and the Process of Nation Building in Iraq

The Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920 was actually a series of local, mostly Shi‘ite, uprisings against the British forces which had occupied Iraq during the First World War. Even though it was squashed by the British, it has been established since then in the Iraqi collective memory as a war of independence and a formative event of Iraqi nationalism, symbolizing the unity of the Iraqi people, their solidarity and patriotic spirit. This article tries to show how the Great Iraqi Revolution was commemorated and remembered through time in order to provide better understanding about how Iraqis see themselves and their past.     

Lebanese Shi‵ites and The Marja‵iyya: Polemic in the Late Twentieth Century

The marja‵iyya (rank of legal exemplar among Twelver Shi‵ites) is part of a complex system of legal guidance, socio-religious management, economic administration and political negotiation at the seminaries, and in local, regional, and international settings. In Lebanon, the crisis of the modern state, the Shi‵ites' ambiguous national position, deterioration of their rural regions, struggle with Israel, and the Civil War (1975–1990), valorized political Shi'ism, and its spokesmen. Common Shi‵ites searched for new readings of spiritual and temporal leadership in modern society. Yet, neither proposals for a hierarchical structuring of the marja‵iyya, nor for its systematization under Iran's vali-ye faqīh (deputy of the jurist), succeeded in gaining majority support in Lebanon. Meanwhile, the muqallidūn (emulators of a marja‵) benefited from the non-institutional base and non-hierarchical character of Shi‵ite legal-spiritual authority of the marja‵iyya to achieve a measure of control over the ‘post’ through the dynamics of civil society. Facing a large number of competing marāji‵(pl. of marja‵), the laity felt empowered to give or withdraw critical support from a potential marja‵ and to defy formal designations of marāji‵ by Najaf and Qum within their locales in Jabal ‵Amil (south Lebanon), the Biqa‵ and Beirut.     

To loosen and bind: Khomeini,Rafsanjani, and supplementary governance in the Islamic Republic

ABSTRACT

Despite attention to Khomeini’s Guardianship of the Jurist (1970) and to Sunni iterations of ma?la?a, there is a dearth of Western scholarship on what Iranian scholars and journalists recognize as indispensable to governance in the Islamic Republic. With a comparative approach to modern perceptions of ma?la?a from inside and outside Iran, this article reveals a new perspective on how the outcome of debates in the earliest years of the Islamic Republic between the parliament and the Guardian Council went against the grain of traditional discussions on reconciling new laws with the shari‘a’s principles. Using academic literature, Sunni and Shi‘i jurisprudence, and, most significantly, one of Ayatullah Hashemi Rafsanjani’s (d. 2017) final interviews, this article shows that in these debates, Rafsanjani invoked the welfare of the state and national interest using the traditionally legal and limited concept of ma?la?a to justify new laws. Khomeini, on the other hand, re-imagined ma?la?a as necessary for Islamic Republic’s existence. Curiously, Khomeini’s re-imagining bears unexpected parallels with Jacques Derrida’s ‘supplement’, which, unlike ma?la?a, maintained human existence while the latter maintained political existence. Both ma?la?a and the supplement, however, provide a means and explanation for the defence of political and human existence during a real or perceived crisis.     

How to build a better future? Kyrgyzstani development workers and the ‘knowledge transfer’ strategy

The development industry has moved from concepts of aid and technical assistance to the idea that closing ‘gaps’ in people's knowledge is the most effective way of alleviating poverty and injustice. My data show the means through which this ‘knowledge transfer’ is actually supposed to happen. I examine the micro-politics of development: the role and agency of development workers, who are so frequently employed to conduct ‘training’ on a wide range of topics affecting citizens' well-being, such as conflict prevention or sustainable agricultural practices. This paper draws on ethnographic research between 2010 and 2012 with Kyrgyzstani NGO workers to analyse the ‘side-effects’ of development, such as the creation of a new social class and softening age hierarchies. I examine the widespread conviction among trainers that education can solve most social ills, and their concepts of how knowledge, sometimes in the guise of ideologiya, shapes people. I argue that this faith in knowledge reflects both the life course of NGO workers themselves and what they can offer from within the ‘knowledge transfer’ paradigm. An understanding of the friction between different expectations of knowledge content, teaching relationships and aims in creating well-being is not only essential to a critical reflection on these development efforts but also illuminates wider political and social processes and relationships, such as expectations of the state and international community.     

RETHINKING AFRICAN SEXUALITIES IN THE CONTEXT OF HIV AND AIDS: THE LIFE AND DEATH DISCOURSE OF ‘MODERNISED POLYGAMY’ IN SUE NYATHI'S THE POLYGAMIST

ABSTRACT

This article is a study of Sue Nyathi's novel The Polygamist as a cultural production dealing with African modern polygamy1 in the context of HIV and AIDS. What is termed ‘modern polygamy’ in this article is a practice where men have several ‘wives’ but not in the African traditional sense, especially within the Shona culture, but in the sense of what is popularised as a ‘small house’ phenomenon. Nyathi's novel is discussed within the following frameworks corresponding to the three distinct parts of the article. In the first part of the discussion, the dichotomy between economic/ social status and ‘modern polygamy’ is explored. The second part of the discussion is a gendered perspective of ‘modern’ polygamy and particularly highlights gender constructions in Nyathi's representation of ‘modern’ polygamy. In the last section, multiple sexual relations and HIV and AIDS are discussed. Significantly, the article demonstrates that imaginative literature is a cultural site that can help us understand human behaviour and HIV and AIDS; particularly in what in religious terms would be referred to as ‘old testament’ polygamy that poses a danger to health and the social fabric in its new form in modern Zimbabwean society.     

Imagining a dialectical African modernity: Achebe's ontological hopes,Sembene's machines,Mda's epistemological redness

In Chinua Achebe's book of essays Hopes and Impediments, he asserts that Nigeria's failure to ‘develop’ and ‘modernise’ like Japan is because of a ‘failure of imagination’. Yet for many Africans, modernity is a tainted ‘gift’ because it was introduced into the African continent along with European colonial capitalism which simultaneously caused an ontological crisis of self. Although many Africans want to ‘catch up’ with the West, how is it possible when Western technological superiority was equated with white racial superiority? Achebe declares that, as Africans ‘begin their journey into the strange, revolutionary world of modernization’, literature should function as guide. Hence, I examine Ousmane Sembene's novel God's Bits of Wood which depicts Africans laying claim to ‘race-less’, ‘language-less’ ‘machines’. But does (Western) technology change culture? Can African culture appropriate technology to form a dialectical African modernity? If so, what role does ‘tradition’ play? In Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness, we witness the emergence of a traditional modernity made possible by a dialectical epistemology.     

Echoes from below? Talking democracy in Baʿthist Iraq

Drawing on Iraqi print media published during the late 1980s and 1990s, this study contributes to the historiography of Ba?thist Iraq by offering a fresh reading into open sources that have long been used by scholars. It focuses on issues like democratization, freedom and the rule of law and how they were articulated in Iraqi print media. This discourse functioned as a strategic tool of communication to reproduce and stabilize the existing order. By moving beyond mechanisms of bureaucratic control, repression or cooptation, the study highlights a neglected element of the former regime's techniques of governance. The evidence presented in this study suggests that the Iraqi Ba'thist regime aimed to demobilize a target audience it suspected of harbouring oppositional feelings and pro-democracy ideas that went beyond what Saddam Hussein was willing to consider. It did so by installing, simulating or tolerating spaces of contestation that helped to ease the ‘cognitive dissonance’ Iraqis sensed between an official discourse of a people united in love for its leader, and the daily experience of brutal repression and deteriorating living conditions.     

‘Raising a moral generation’: the Republican People's Party and religious instruction in Turkey, 1946–1949

When Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, as the Prime Minister of the Turkish Republic, declared his government's intention to raise a ‘religious generation’, his proposition drew harsh criticisms from Turkey's secularists, who argued that doing so would clearly challenge the secular nature of the Turkish state. Yet it may come as a surprise to many that it was not a conservative party with Islamist leanings that first experimented with the idea of relying on religious education as an antidote to the perceived moral decadence of the society. Rather, it was the secularist party, the Republican People's Party, which attempted to use religious instruction for the same purpose during the heyday of Kemalism in the 1940s. Against this backdrop, providing an analysis of how the Republican People's Party had come to the point of offering religious education to school children and how it justified this policy can shed light on today's debate on secularism and the secular character of the Turkish state.     

Islam in post-Soviet Georgia1

This paper explores Islam in Georgia and analyses empirical results from preliminary field research in Tbilisi, more particularly in Kvemo-Kartli, whose inhabitants are predominantly Shi'ites and ethnic Azeris, as well as in Adjaria, where Sunni Adjars are resisting attempts at (re)-Christianization. Moreover, field inquiries were carried out in the Pankisi Valley, where approximately 6000 Kists live. Most publications dealing with Georgia's history neglect the role of Islam in the process of nation and state building and tend to forget that it was at some point in time one of the constituent components of the country's consolidation as a state. Most scholars insist on recalling that, right after Armenia, Georgia was one of the first nations to adopt Christianity as state religion. Therefore, when referring to Islam, the latter is often presented as an alien, extraneous and aggressive element. After 70 years of Soviet atheism, the newly independent state ideologically and strategically promotes Orthodox Christianity as central element of Georgian identity. All Islamic communities and institutions in Georgia, be they Sunni or Shi'ite, are theoretically under the central authority of the imam of Tbilisi's central mosque, Akhund Hadji Ali, himself dependant on the Baku-based Administration of the Muslims of the Caucasus. The reality shows, however, that there are two major separate Muslim communities living in Georgia: the Shi'ite Azeris and the Sunni Adjars, who scarcely co-operate. The place of Christianity in the national ideology and the promotion of Christian values tendentiously lead to the marginalization or exclusion of Muslims from the national community. However, in their day-to-day life, Muslims are not discriminated against, and most of the time all religious communities live together in good harmony. In general, Islam is considered as a ‘traditional’ religion, and as such is tolerated by the Georgian authorities, which differs very much from the way they reject ‘non-traditional’ religions.     

A letter from Iraq: the writing of Iraqi correspondents in al-ʿAlam al-ʾIsraʾili and Israʾil

The most extensive participation of Jews in the literary Arabic revival (The Nahda) was in monarchial Iraq. Jewish Intellectuals had contributed to the development of national Iraqi culture. These intellectuals have been studied in the context of the non-Jewish Iraqi intellectuals, focusing on their national and cultural integration in the new Iraqi state. This article observes the participation of those intellectuals in two non-Iraqi Jewish journals which were published in literary Arabic, Isra?il, published in Cairo, and al-?Alam al-Isra?ili, published in Beirut. By changing the point of view from Iraqi Jews in the non-Jewish Iraqi cultural sphere to Iraqi Jews in a non-Iraqi Jewish cultural sphere, the article examines their relation between Iraqi identity and the national Jewish identity.     

Inscriptions of Violence in Northern Yemen: Haunting Histories,Unstable Moral Spaces

The article investigates the so-called ‘Huthi crisis’ in northern Yemen, centering on the recent confrontation between Zaydi Shi‘is and the government. The crisis is analysed in the context of local contestations over moral authority and regional developments since the late 1970s. The article shows how regional and global dynamics, notably Cold War strategic alliances, Saudi Arabia's aspirations to contain Shi‘ism on the Arabian Peninsula and American security concerns since 2001, have impacted local politics and configurations of power. The article argues that anxieties over the past remain, against the backdrop of the politicisation and repression of the Zaydi revivalist movement, depicted by the government as aiming to restore the imamate. The government was open to accusations of ambivalence towards Sunni militants, by using them alongside the army and giving them positions of power while at the same time claiming to counter their influence. Action against the Zaydis established its credentials in the ‘war on terror.’