The toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, orchestrated by the American government and the Iraqi opposition abroad, transformed Iraq’s political and social landscapes through the unprecedented institutionalization of a sectarian quota system. The sectarian violence that followed led to a re-reading of Iraqi history. The concept of sectarianism became an overarching framework to understand Iraq’s past and politics. Most of the literature evokes Orientalist discourses on Iraq, and perceived post-2003 sectarianism as the resilience of primordial loyalties. A more nuanced literature has emphasized that sectarianism throughout the history of the Iraqi nation-state has been a modern phenomenon that needs to be examined in a political and historical context. However, the concept of sectarianism remains under-developed. Diverse episodes – such as King Faysal’s memorandum on the lack of national feelings among the fragmented Iraqi society, under-representation of Iraqi Shia under the monarchy, Saddam Hussein’s oppression of Iraqi Shia and Kurds – are interpreted as indications of the sectarian nature of the Iraqi state and society. Such an approach tends to reproduce the very concept it attempts to criticize by reading sectarianism retrospectively throughout the history of Iraq. The notion of sectarianism emerges as historically unchanging and as self-evident. In this paper, I will historicize and conceptualize the concept of sectarianism through examining the often-quoted King Faysal’s memorandum of 1932. Faysal’s description of the “ailments” inflicting the Iraqi society is advanced as attestation of the deeply rooted sectarianism in the country. What is fascinating about this document is that King Faysal does not use the word sectarianism. Rather, he speaks of “(religious and sectarian) narrow-mindedness,” “religious differences” and “ignorance” as undermining national sentiments. These terms raise the question: can we speak of sectarianism in this case? Are “narrow-mindedness” (ta‘asub) and “sectarianism” (ta’ifiyya) indistinguishable, especially in light of Faysal’s divisions of Iraqis into: modern young men, the narrow-minded (muta‘asbun), the Sunnis, the Shia, the Kurds, the non-Muslim minorities, the tribes, the religious clerics, and the ignorant majority? In this paper, I will analyze the implication of King Faysal’s terminology. I will argue that this document focuses on a specific state of affairs in the history of the nascent Iraqi state (established in 1921), and that to treat it as a chronicle of sectarianism is to project a contemporary reading of it. I contend that a historicized notion of sectarianism calls for its conceptualization as a recent and distinctive phenomenon in Iraq.