This project resides at the intersection of social epistemology and Islamic history. The epistemic conditions that make statements like ‘Group A believes p’ true are central to social epistemology. Current literature, however, does not adequately consider the epistemic significance of reasonable peer disagreement on belief attributions to religious communities. This paper defends an account of sustained reasonable peer disagreement, shows its epistemic significance for belief states of collective agents, and makes a strong claim concerning how we should understand the doctrinal boundaries of religions. To begin, I ask you to consider that evidence and reasoning are not synonymous in the way that internalist views of justification claim, nor are externalist views wholly adequate. I suggest that the internalist-externalist problem resides in an equivocation between justification and reasonableness. When we separate these, reasonable disagreement appears epistemically permissible, because attributions of reasonableness track the fittingness of beliefs to internal mental states (memories, perception, background belief); whereas justification tracks truth – fittingness of beliefs to subjective, individual epistemic criteria and objective, shared epistemic criteria. Given this distinction between justified and reasonable beliefs, it is at least plausible that I could reasonably (and justifiably) believe p and simultaneously believe that you, my epistemic peer with respect to p, reasonably believe ~p. Given a plausible theory of reasonable peer disagreement and that belief attributions to religious groups are often grounds for political or civil strife, an adequate epistemology of intra-religious disagreement can motivate epistemic humility and fend off conflict. Also, figuring out what groups actually believe seems an essential and prior question to meaningful religious discourse. Consider the implication of intra-religious peer disagreement on the truth value of belief attributions to propositions of the kind ‘Islam believes (or disbelieves) x’ where ‘x’ represents any statement that Muslims purportedly collectively believe (or disbelieve). Many religious tenets, including the one exhorting Muslim women to cover their hair, are based on scriptural inferences and are informed by subjective background information without shared or objective epistemic principles to determine which reasoning is stronger. Thus, employing exegetical and hermeneutical methodologies to determine the truth of such claims is not adequate to the task because of the sheer volume and diversity of sources and conflicting authorities. Thus, in the absence of objective epistemic principles, parties to the peer disagreement should reasonably disagree and the belief attribution to the group remains undefined – neither true nor false.

This paper traces the discursive re-articulation of the Syrian opposition’s militarized and sectarian narratives, as part of the meaning-making processes in the context of the Syrian-uprising-cum-civil war, and its effects on the trajectories of the uprising during the transformative period 2011-2013. I argue that sectarianization and militarization processes were mutually-reinforcing dynamics and that the militarized narrative, which gained popularity among dominant groups in the Syrian opposition following the NATO's intervention in Libya, exacerbated the sectarianization process leading to the instrumentalization of banal sectarian identification and the intensified salience of militant sectarian identification (Brubaker and Cooper 2000; Dixon 2017; Haddad 2017; Hashimi & Poster 2017; Hinnebusch 2016; Makdisi 2017; Pinto 2017; Wedeen 2019). With the transformation of the Syrian uprising into a proxy war, the use of sect-centric symbols and rhetoric has become increasingly prevalent among armed groups, both pro-regime and pro-opposition, and activists. This state of affairs contrasts sharply with the kinds of symbols and rhetoric used by protesters who took to the streets in Syria on March 2011, in the midst of the “Arab Spring.” How has the social movement in Syria come to be so dramatically and quickly transformed from, first, peaceful protests centered around popular demands for political reforms, to the broadly national movement calling for “Revolution for all Syrians,” and then to the ongoing civil war with an increasing visibility of sectarian and militarized discourses? How did regional policies shape the dominant narratives about the Syrian uprising? What are the dynamics that facilitated the confluence of bottom-up and top-down sectarian narrative and violence? Methodologically, this article uses an interpretivist approach; it is based on discourse and content analysis of 146, slogans, videos and images disseminated and promoted by both mainstream media (Al-Jazeera) and social media between 2011-2013. The analysis is also informed by ethnographic observations, fieldnotes, and weekly meetings with activists in Damascus during the uprising until August 2012. The data was further supported by 22 in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in August 2014 with Syrian activists who participated in the uprising but are currently residing in Washington D.C. I conclude with a discussion of how the conjuncture of four dynamics (grassroots organizations; sectarian entrepreneurs; regional actors; and Arab satellite outlets, and social media) contributed to the militarization and sectarianization of the public sphere and laid the necessary conditions for constructing militant sectarian identification that combined a particularistic identification within the state with the supra/or trans-state level.

This paper attempts to answer the question of why ethnic identity rather than national identity is more likely to be salient after an ethnic majority overcomes a dominant minority rule? Will an ethnic majority succeeding a dominant minority pursue an authentic representative government or will it reinvigorate its own ethnic identity through the pursuit of ethnic politics? Ethnic minority governance inevitably raises questions of legitimacy and inclusivity. Even in secular democracies, where courts protect citizen rights, democracy is far from perfect, but in countries that divide along ethnicity, religion, sector, or tribal loyalty, the history of all-inclusive governance is not encouraging. Typically, minority rule in nondemocratic countries tends to despotism and autocracy. Even when the policies of dominant minority regimes scarcely differ from those of majoritarian governments, outcomes can vary dramatically. The paper utilizes a comparative historical analysis in combination with survey data, to compare dominant minority rule in three cases from the Middle East: Iraq, Syria, and Bahrain. It analyzes how ethnic conflict is prevalent and prolonged in countries where ethnic minorities rule and how the outcome ultimately impacts state national identity. The paper maintains that ethnic identity issues and ethnic conflict do not resolve with majoritarian rule. In fact, if a majoritarian party assumes power after a dominant minority government, it will likely consolidate its own identity and pursue ethnic politics by way of an ethnocultural form of self-determination. Indirectly, this paper contributes to the debate on the incompatibility of ethnicity and nationalism, on the one hand, and with nation and state-building, on the other.

This paper examines the geographical and historical patterns of access to state power and their political implications in Turkey. It focuses on the Turkish armed forces as a long-standing dominant political institution, and the Kurds, the largest and only ethno-mobilized ethnic minority group in Turkey. Drawing on original historical demographic data, my research investigates the representation of the Kurds in the security forces and its implications on the relations between the Turkish state and Kurds from 1923 until 2015 and particularly on the Kurdish insurgency since 1984. I preliminarily find that the Kurds have long been excluded from the positions of power in the Turkish military and their persistent exclusion has contributed to both onset and durability of the Kurdish ethno-mobilization and the conflict between the PKK and the Turkish army. The paper seeks to understand and explain first what accounts for the persistent Kurdish underrepresentation in Turkish security forces, and second how Kurds’ exclusion from state power affected their relations with the central government and the Kurdish insurgency. A spatial and temporal analysis of military recruitment patterns compared to rebel recruitment patterns in the Kurdish-majority provinces between 1984 and 2015 suggests a strong relationship between ethnic exclusion from state power and Kurdish ethnic mobilization. I suggest that exclusion from state power has been indeed an important factor that has contributed to both the outbreak and resilience of the PKK-led armed rebellion of Kurds. In investigating the social representation in the armed forces, I primarily draw on original historical demographic data on 9,850 general staff officers and 2,500 flag officers across the three major services of the Turkish armed forces—the army, the navy, and the air force—from 1923 until 2015. The data was collected from the military archives and libraries, as well as from national newspapers and court-martial records in Turkey. 2-year ethnographic research between 2016 and 2019 in Ankara and Istanbul including 50 in-depth interviews with active duty and retired officers accompany the archival work.

Evliya Çelebi’s Seyahatname, or Book of Travels, which consists of 10 volumes, is a distinctive account that provides substantial information and details related to almost the entire territory of the Ottoman Empire, including people, architectural structures, literature and languages, religions, history, customs and traditions, geography, food, and the relationships between the Ottoman Empire and other powers. Çelebi wrote Seyahatname in the later years of his life, in 17th century Cairo. Çelebi was raised and received his education at the Ottoman Palace in Istanbul. He had close connections with the Palace through his kinsman, Melek Ahmed Pasha. Çelebi was an Istanbuli gentlemen who spent a lot of time in one of the great centers of the world, Istanbul. The historically-rooted assumption that Yezidis are followers of the second Umayyad Caliph who ordered the killing of Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in Karbala in 680 shaped how Ottomans treated Yezidis. This perception played an important role in Çelebi’s understanding and representation of the Yezidi community in his writing. Çelebi attempts to show the Yezidi community as one of the main players at the Battle of Karbala through providing different stories about the role of the Yezidi community at the battle. Çelebi formulates his narration in such a way as to make sure that Yezidis were cast as the main perpetrators of the battle who had to be penalized. Çelebi’s account is one of the few sources that offers substantial information on Yezidis from the 17th century. One of the aims of my paper is to investigate the perception of Evliya Çelebi toward one of the lesser-known, non-Muslim Ottoman communities, Yezidis, and to examine what kind of tools and narratives he utilized to justify his hostility against them. I will also explore how we can better understand Yezidis through an examination of Çelebi’s accounts of Yezidis in Seyahatname.

Muhammad Surur Zayn al-?Abidin, a noted Syrian ideologue and founder of an eponymous Islamist movement, distinguished himself through extensive anti-Shi?a views from the 1980s through the 2000s. Through a close reading of Surur’s influential work Wa ja?a dawr al-Majus [Then Came the Turn of Majus (Zoroastrians)], this paper will help illuminate the intersection of theological polemics, ethnic chauvinism, and state competition driving sectarian conflict across then the Middle East. While anti-Shi’i rhetoric was certainly not unique to Surur, his specific emphasis on ethnic and political dimensions of the sectarian divide played a significant role in modernizing and popularizing such sentiments. He was one of the early polemicists who criticized the Iranian Revolution and warned against the threat of Shi?a domination of the Middle East. Years before the Iranian Revolution, Surur developed firm anti-Shi?a convictions that would provide the basis for his 1981 book Wa ja?a dawr al-Majus. This work epitomized Surur’s synthesis of theological and ethnic denunciations, particularly with its discussion of how Persians betrayed the Islamic state from the early period of Islam to the modern day and provided the impetus for many uprisings and heretical groups. Along with the Wahhabi and Salafi anti-Shi?a sentiments, Surur also condemned the alliance of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the Alawi Syrian regime and thus articulated a more political version of anti-Shi?ism. The repression of the Muslim Brotherhood by the government in his homeland of Syria clearly informed this anti-Shi?a treatise and contributed to special criticism of Syria’s Nusayris (?Alawis). Geopolitics and great power competition continually appear in the text, as Surur argued that the Iranians, like their Persian ancestors, had national ambitions in the neighboring Arab countries and sought to control the region with the help of the Arab Shi?a, who were seen by Surur as a “fifth column.” Moreover, Surur understood Khomeini’s desire to export the Islamic Revolution through this political and ethnic lens as an attempt by Persian rafidas’ to overthrow political regimes on the other side of the Gulf and create Shi?i-dominated states.