Sectarianism Without Sects
Sectarianism Without Sects

Author: Azmi Bishara

Publisher: Hurst Publishers

Published: 2021-11-26

Total Pages: 549

ISBN-13: 178738750X

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This volume analyses the transformation of social sectarianism into political sectarianism across the Arab world. Using a framework of social theories and socio-historical analysis, the book distinguishes between ta’ifa, or ‘sect’, and modern ta’ifiyya, ‘sectarianism’, arguing that sectarianism itself produces ‘imaginary sects’. It charts and explains the evolution of these phenomena and their development in Arab and Islamic history, as distinct from other concepts used to study religious groups within Western contexts. Bishara documents the role played by internal and external factors and rivalries among political elites in the formulation of sectarian identity, citing both historical and contemporary models. He contends that sectarianism does not derive from sect, but rather that sectarianism resurrects the sect in the collective consciousness and reproduces it as an imagined community under modern political and historical conditions. Sectarianism Without Sects is a vital resource for engaging with the sectarian crisis in the Arab world. It provides a detailed historical background to the emergence of sect in the region, as well as a complex theoretical exploration of how social identities have assumed political significance in the struggle for power over the state.

Sects and Sectarianism in Jewish History
Sects and Sectarianism in Jewish History

Author: Sacha Stern

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2011-04-21

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9004206493

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Sects and sectarianism are popular themes in Jewish history, but the meaning of these terms is elusive, often raising more problems than solutions. This volume, drawing on the expertise of a wide range of scholars, examines several Jewish groups from Antiquity to the present day that have been traditionally identified as ‘sects’ or as ‘sectarian’, including most famously the Qumran community and the Qaraites. It questions whether ‘sect’ and ‘sectarianism’ are appropriate or effective as historical categories for the interpretation of social and religious movements in Jewish history.

Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon
Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon

Author: Joanne Randa Nucho

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2016-11-22

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1400883008

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What causes violent conflicts around the Middle East? All too often, the answer is sectarianism—popularly viewed as a timeless and intractable force that leads religious groups to conflict. In Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon, Joanne Nucho shows how wrong this perspective can be. Through in-depth research with local governments, NGOs, and political parties in Beirut, she demonstrates how sectarianism is actually recalibrated on a daily basis through the provision of essential services and infrastructures, such as electricity, medical care, credit, and the planning of bridges and roads. Taking readers to a working-class, predominantly Armenian suburb in northeast Beirut called Bourj Hammoud, Nucho conducts extensive interviews and observations in medical clinics, social service centers, shops, banking coops, and municipal offices. She explores how group and individual access to services depends on making claims to membership in the dominant sectarian community, and she examines how sectarianism is not just tied to ethnoreligious identity, but also class, gender, and geography. Life in Bourj Hammoud makes visible a broader pattern in which the relationships that develop while procuring basic needs become a way for people to see themselves as part of the greater public. Illustrating how sectarianism in Lebanon is not simply about religious identity, as is commonly thought, Everyday Sectarianism in Urban Lebanon offers a new look at how everyday social exchanges define and redefine communities and conflicts.

Sectarianization
Sectarianization

Author: Nader Hashemi

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-03-15

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0190862661

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As the Middle East descends ever deeper into violence and chaos, 'sectarianism' has become a catch-all explanation for the region's troubles. The turmoil is attributed to 'ancient sectarian differences', putatively primordial forces that make violent conflict intractable. In media and policy discussions, sectarianism has come to possess trans-historical causal power. This book trenchantly challenges the lazy use of 'sectarianism' as a magic-bullet explanation for the region's ills, focusing on how various conflicts in the Middle East have morphed from non-sectarian (or cross-sectarian) and nonviolent movements into sectarian wars. Through multiple case studies -- including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and Kuwait -- this book maps the dynamics of sectarianisation, exploring not only how but also why it has taken hold. The contributors examine the constellation of forces -- from those within societies to external factors such as the Saudi-Iran rivalry -- that drive the sectarianisation process and explore how the region's politics can be de-sectarianised. Featuring leading scholars -- and including historians, anthropologists, political scientists and international relations theorists -- this book will redefine the terms of debate on one of the most critical issues in international affairs today.

The New Sectarianism
The New Sectarianism

Author: Geneive Abdo

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0190233141

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The ensuing clash--between Islamism and Nationalism, Shi'a and Sunni, and other factions within these communities--

Sectarianism in Iraq
Sectarianism in Iraq

Author: Fanar Haddad

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-05-03

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 019023797X

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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.

Understanding 'Sectarianism'
Understanding 'Sectarianism'

Author: Fanar Haddad

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-02-15

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 0197536042

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"Sectarianism" is one of the most over-discussed yet under-analyzed concepts in debates about the Middle East. Despite the deluge of commentary, there is no agreement on what "sectarianism" is. Is it a social issue, one of dogmatic incompatibility, a historic one or one purely related to modern power politics? Is it something innately felt or politically imposed? Is it a product of modernity or its antithesis? Is it a function of the nation-state or its negation? This book seeks to move the study of modern sectarian dynamics beyond these analytically paralyzing dichotomies by shifting the focus away from the meaningless '-ism' towards the root: sectarian identity. How are Sunni and Shi'a identities imagined, experienced and negotiated and how do they relate to and interact with other identities? Looking at the modern history of the Arab world, Haddad seeks to understand sectarian identity not as a monochrome frame of identification but as a multi-layered concept that operates on several dimensions: religious, subnational, national and transnational. Far from a uniquely Middle Eastern, Arab, or Islamic phenomenon, a better understanding of sectarian identity reveals that the many facets of sectarian relations that are misleadingly labelled "sectarianism" are echoed in intergroup relations worldwide.

Age of Coexistence
Age of Coexistence

Author: Ussama Makdisi

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2021-09-21

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0520385764

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"Flawless . . . [Makdisi] reminds us of the critical declarations of secularism which existed in the history of the Middle East."—Robert Fisk, The Independent Today's headlines paint the Middle East as a collection of war-torn countries and extremist groups consumed by sectarian rage. Ussama Makdisi's Age of Coexistence reveals a hidden and hopeful story that counters this clichéd portrayal. It shows how a region rich with ethnic and religious diversity created a modern culture of coexistence amid Ottoman reformation, European colonialism, and the emergence of nationalism. Moving from the nineteenth century to the present, this groundbreaking book explores, without denial or equivocation, the politics of pluralism during the Ottoman Empire and in the post-Ottoman Arab world. Rather than judging the Arab world as a place of age-old sectarian animosities, Age of Coexistence describes the forging of a complex system of coexistence, what Makdisi calls the "ecumenical frame." He argues that new forms of antisectarian politics, and some of the most important examples of Muslim-Christian political collaboration, crystallized to make and define the modern Arab world. Despite massive challenges and setbacks, and despite the persistence of colonialism and authoritarianism, this framework for coexistence has endured for nearly a century. It is a reminder that religious diversity does not automatically lead to sectarianism. Instead, as Makdisi demonstrates, people of different faiths, but not necessarily of different political outlooks, have consistently tried to build modern societies that transcend religious and sectarian differences.

Compassionate Communalism
Compassionate Communalism

Author: Melani Cammett

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0801478936

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On the basis of years of research into the varying welfare distribution strategies of Christian, Shia Muslim, and Sunni Muslim political parties in Lebanon, Cammett shows how and why sectarian groups deploy welfare benefits.

Islam and Sectarian Violence in Pakistan
Islam and Sectarian Violence in Pakistan

Author: Eamon Murphy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-23

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1351709615

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This book analyses the growth of sectarian-based terrorist violence in Pakistan, one of the Muslim majority states most affected by sectarian violence, ever since it was established in 1947. Sectarian violence among Muslims has emerged as a major global security problem in recent years. The author argues that the upsurge in sectarian violence in Pakistan, particularly since the late 1970s, has had less to do with theological differences between the various sects of Islam, but is a consequence of the specific political, social, economic, demographic and cultural changes that have taken place in Pakistan since it was established as an independent state. A major theme of the book is the increasing violence, extent and expressions of sectarian conflict which have emerged as new forms of sectarian terrorism. The volume provides an in-depth empirical case study which addresses some major theoretical questions raised by Critical Terrorism Studies researchers in respect of the links between religion and sectarian terrorism in Pakistan and more widely. This book will be of much interest to students of critical terrorism studies, Asian politics and history, religious studies and International Relations in general.