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Creating the “Shi’i Crescent” via Media
Abstract
Ayatollah Khomeini’s incitements to create Islamic Republics across the Muslim world followed his triumph in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and shortly thereafter, Hezbollah was created in both Iran and Lebanon. Since then, Iran’s close ties to the post-2003 Iraqi political elite have created the rise and threat of the so-called “Shi’i Crescent,” with much policy talk in Washington, D.C. about the direct and perceived threats to American. Missing from these alarmist accounts however, are grounded studies of how political Shi’i groups in Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, and Bahrain actually produce and circulate media, in their efforts to expand their reach through the creation of an “imagined community” despite differences in language. Through an ethnographic account of media producers in Iran’s Hezbollah, I focus on the creation and distribution of a new mini-series of Musa Sadr’s life aimed at both Iranian and Lebanese audiences. Produced by Hezbollah in Iran, with financial backing from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia, I examine the social practices of media production in Iran directed at retaining support of a revolutionary regime at home, as well as across Shi’i communities in Arab countries. This research looks at how the popular figure of Musa Sadr is repurposed during the Arab Spring and how the notion of a Shi’i “Islamic Revolution” is restaged in a variety of cultural domains.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Arab States
Iran
Islamic World
Lebanon
Sub Area
None