Identity and Legitimacy in Iraqi Political Discourse

Identity and Legitimacy in Iraqi Political Discourse PDF Author: Ariel Ira Ahram
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description

Identity and Legitimacy in Iraqi Political Discourse

Identity and Legitimacy in Iraqi Political Discourse PDF Author: Ariel Ira Ahram
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description


Imagining the Nation

Imagining the Nation PDF Author: Harith Al-Qarawee
Publisher: Harith Alqarawee
ISBN: 1906801770
Category : Ethnic conflict
Languages : en
Pages : 26

Get Book Here

Book Description


Reading Iraq

Reading Iraq PDF Author: Muhsin Al-Musawi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780755609437
Category : Iraq
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
"What exactly is Iraq? As a dramatic new era of Iraqi politics unfolds, Muhsin Al-Musawi seeks to understand it by dissecting the country's cultural anatomy. The first major work of its kind, "Reading Iraq" explores the profound connection between identity and power in Iraq's history, and in doing so provides a context for understanding today's complicated struggles. Drawing on a mixture of 'high' and popular forms of expression, Al-Musawi identifies the prevalent tropes of Iraqi culture, such as symbols of redemptive suffering amongst the Shi'ites, or courage amongst the Bedouins. He examines these symbols in historical and political context, arguing that establishing legitimacy in Iraq is a question of being able to read and respond to a wide variety of cultural signals. Al-Musawi begins by looking at the British attempt to establish constitutional monarchy in the first half of the 20th century. Whilst the British and their allies talked of parliament and flags, they failed to notice that sites of social power and authority had moved away from them towards the mosques and the tribal assemblies. His focus then moves to the Saddam Hussein's self-styled Baathist secular nationalism. Al-Musawi explains how, although expressions of sectarian and religious identity were initially subsumed into a pan-national dialogue on the future of Iraq, these cultural modes resurfaced as the gulf widened between the leadership and the people. Despite this differentiation of cultural and political identities, Al-Musawi discerns a genuine collective consciousness in Iraq. This is not the nationalist discourse artificially constructed by Saddam Hussein, but a common sense of heritage and of oppression, forged and re-forged with each historical moment. Whilst the political history of modern Iraq is characterised by occupation and dictatorship, in its cultural history Al-Musawi traces independence, pride and resistance. It is this dialectic of power and cultural memory which will shape the future of the country, and "Reading Iraq" offers new ways of understanding."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

The Conflict for Power in the Iraqi Political Discourse Across Mainstream Media and Social Media

The Conflict for Power in the Iraqi Political Discourse Across Mainstream Media and Social Media PDF Author: Al-Tahmazi Thulfiqar Hussein Muhi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


Identity and Nation in Iraq

Identity and Nation in Iraq PDF Author: Sherko Kirmanj
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Pub
ISBN: 9781588268853
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sherko Kirmanj offers a balanced, critical analysis of the evolution of Iraqi national identity and the process of national integration, tracing a history of antagonisms and violence from the creation of the state in 1921 to mid-2012. Challenging approaches that variously blame the legacy of the Baathist regime or the US invasion for the sectarian violence that plagues Iraq, Kirmanj delves into the political and social dynamics involved across the decades. His focus is on the enduring conflicts between Iraq s Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds and on the challenges of forging a nation when the groups involved share no collective identity or attachment to a single homeland. His work, comprehensive in scope and rich with new insights, is a vital contribution to ongoing debates about the future of the Iraqi state.

Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East

Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East PDF Author: Shibley Telhami
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801439407
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book Here

Book Description
Shibley Telhami and Michael Barnett, together with experts on Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Syria, explore how the formation and transformation of national and state identities affect the foreign policy behavior of Middle Eastern states.

Sectarianism in Iraq

Sectarianism in Iraq PDF Author: Fanar Haddad
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019023797X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book Here

Book Description
Viewing Iraq from the outside is made easier by compartmentalising its people (at least the Arabs among them) into Shi'as and Sunnis. But can such broad terms, inherently resistant to accurate quantification, description and definition, ever be a useful reflection of any society? If not, are we to discard the terms 'Shi'a' and 'Sunni' in seeking to understand Iraq? Or are we to deny their relevance and ignore them when considering Iraqi society? How are we to view the common Iraqi injunction that 'we are all brothers' or that 'we have no Shi'as and Sunnis' against the fact of sectarian civil war in 2006? Are they friends or enemies? Are they united or divided; indeed, are they Iraqis or are they Shi'as and Sunnis? Fanar Haddad provides the first comprehensive examination of sectarian relations and sectarian identities in Iraq. Rather than treating the subject by recourse to broad-based categorisation, his analysis recognises the inherent ambiguity of group identity. The salience of sectarian identity and views towards self and other are neither fixed nor constant; rather, they are part of a continuously fluctuating dynamic that sees the relevance of sectarian identity advancing and receding according to context and to wider socioeconomic and political conditions. What drives the salience of sectarian identity? How are sectarian identities negotiated in relation to Iraqi national identity and what role do sectarian identities play in the social and political lives of Iraqi Sunnis and Shi'as? These are some of the questions explored in this book with a particular focus on the two most significant turning points in modern Iraqi sectarian relations: the uprisings of March 1991 and the fall of the Ba'ath in 2003. Haddad explores how sectarian identities are negotiated and seeks finally to put to rest the alarmist and reductionist accounts that seek either to portray all things Iraqi in sectarian terms or to reduce sectarian identity to irrelevance.

Patriotic Ayatollahs

Patriotic Ayatollahs PDF Author: Caroleen Marji Sayej
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501714767
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
Patriotic Ayatollahs explores the contributions of senior clerics in state and nation-building after the 2003 Iraq war. Caroleen Sayej suggests that the four so-called Grand Ayatollahs, the highest-ranking clerics of Iraqi Shiism, took on a new and unexpected political role after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Drawing on previously unexamined Arabic-language fatwas, speeches, and communiqués of Iraq’s four grand ayatollahs, this book analyzes how their new pronouncements and narratives shaped public debates after 2003. Sayej argues that, contrary to standard narratives about religious actors, the Grand Ayatollahs were among the most progressive voices in the new Iraqi nation. She traces the transformative position of Ayatollah Sistani as the "guardian of democracy" after 2003. Sistani was, in particular, instrumental in derailing American plans that would have excluded Iraqis from the state-building process—a remarkable story in which an octogenarian cleric takes on the United States over the meaning of democracy. Patriotic Ayatollahs’ counter-conventional argument about the ayatollahs’ vision of a nonsectarian nation is neatly realized. Through her deep knowledge and long-term engagement with Iraqi politics, Sayej advances our understanding of how the post-Saddam Iraqi nation was built.

The Iraq Study Group Report

The Iraq Study Group Report PDF Author: Iraq Study Group (U.S.)
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Get Book Here

Book Description
Presents the findings of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which was formed in 2006 to examine the situation in Iraq and offer suggestions for the American military's future involvement in the region.

Constitution Making Under Occupation

Constitution Making Under Occupation PDF Author: Andrew Arato
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231143028
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
The attempt in 2004 to draft an interim constitution in Iraq and the effort to enact a permanent one in 2005 were unintended outcomes of the American occupation, which first sought to impose a constitution by its agents. This two-stage constitution-making paradigm, implemented in a wholly unplanned move by the Iraqis and their American sponsors, formed a kind of compromise between the populist-democratic project of Shi'ite clerics and America's external interference. As long as it was used in a coherent and legitimate way, the method held promise. Unfortunately, the logic of external imposition and political exclusion compromised the negotiations. Andrew Arato is the first person to record this historic process and analyze its special problems. He compares the drafting of the Iraqi constitution to similar, externally imposed constitutional revolutions by the United States, especially in Japan and Germany, and identifies the political missteps that contributed to problems of learning and legitimacy. Instead of claiming that the right model of constitution making would have maintained stability in Iraq, Arato focuses on the fragile opportunity for democratization that was strengthened only slightly by the methods used to draft a constitution. Arato contends that this event would have benefited greatly from an overall framework of internationalization, and he argues that a better set of guidelines (rather than the obsolete Hague and Geneva regulations) should be followed in the future. With access to an extensive body of literature, Arato highlights the difficulty of exporting democracy to a country that opposes all such foreign designs and fundamentally disagrees on matters of political identity.