Over the past decade, scholarly attention has turned with great interest to the status of minority populations in the Middle East. At the same time, the term "minority" has come under question. While some communities embrace the use of the term minority to describe their status, many view the term to be artificial and misleading. During the colonial era, imperial powers used the term to prey on internal divisions in order to "divide and rule". These tactics allowed foreign powers to use so-called minorities as wedges to manipulate colonized societies. B.T. White goes so far as to argue that the early state system invented the notion of minority, based on the artificiality of colonial borders and the expedient identification of local communities along familiar and convenient lines. Contemporary non-Muslim and Muslim communities, as well as non-Arab ethnic groups, often eschew the use of the term, suspecting it to be a means of reducing their status as citizens or promoting narrow interpretations of Islamic law about non-Muslims. Saba Mahmood has recently argued that the combination of religious minority rights with the language of secularism threatens both, since the state presumes a stance that elides religious differences even as it seeks to define citizens by their minority identities.
This panel unites a group of scholar contributors to an edited research project, The Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East, which aims at reclaiming the notion of "minorities". Accepting the limitations of the term, these scholars seek to make better use of a contested term. One of the greatest threats to subaltern ethnic, religious, and gendered groups (among others) is the denial of their agency or significance amid concerns for the wider phenomena of Middle Eastern politics and society. Accepting that the contours of Arab societies may be artificially constructed, these papers nonetheless do not shy away from identifying the ways in which minorities operate within majority societies. At the same time, they seek to expand the notion of what a "minority" is, opening up space to discuss newly mobilized minority groups, internal diversity within and among minority communities, and the ways in which minority communities break free of internally and externally imposed demands. As such, the effort to reclaim the category of minority relies equally on the need to reclaim and redefine agency among these communities.
Armed conflict in the Middle East arises from some of the most potent identity-based disputes in global politics. These conflicts over the status and nature of the state system in the Middle East played a role in founding and shaping the many minority populations of the region. The early construction of the post-colonial state system both benefited and punished minorities, and set the stage for internal competitions between tribal, ethnic, and religious groups that persist to this day.
For many minority populations, the fragile nature of the postcolonial state system set in motion efforts to secure their own community within new borders. Many minority populations found that the very actions they took to ensure the security of their communities, by controlling or shaping the nature of the state, were threatening to their neighbors. Neighboring communities therefore responded with their own efforts to take power or to influence state institutions. Over time, this competition over the internal resources of the state in the hands of ethnoreligious groups became a self-perpetuating spiral of insecurity, or “ethnic security dilemma”. Ethnic security dilemmas have fueled ongoing conflict in states such as Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, and they persist today in the form of competitive forms of sectarianism.
The structural constraints of the ethnic security dilemma often drive minority communities inexorably toward conflict. In many cases, there seems little choice but to engage in competitive nationalistic forms of organization, resulting in armed conflicts over territory, the state, or for mere survival. Even so, minority communities can and do resist the structural constraints of divided societies, seeking to transcend the ethnic security dilemma and transform their divided societies to create pluralist forms of social organization.
In this paper, I consider several past and ongoing conflicts that are rooted in an underlying ethnic security dilemma, using both primary and secondary sources from documentary and interview research over several years. In each case, the prevailing logic of insecurity forces members of minority communities into drastic and typically violent actions to maintain their place within the larger society. Nevertheless, it is possible for minority communities to shake the sectarian impulse. I conclude by demonstrating that though the ethnic security dilemma frames the actions of many minority communities, some minority communities have resisted the urge to descend into competitive sectarianism.
A minority’s relationship with nationalism depends on two very important variables: the first is the defining features of the particular nation. Equally important are the elements of the minority group’s self-identification. This paper examines the variety of ways that different minorities’ identification was shaped by Arab nation.
The category ‘minority’ can be deceiving because each group is a minority in different ways. At times religion, ethnicity, and language each played a role in determining who belonged, and who did not. Minority categories also shift depending on the perceived characteristics of the majority’s identification. This was particularly true in the transition from Ottoman to nation-state structures in the Middle East when traditional forms of belonging were no longer applicable to many in the Middle East.
My paper examines three case studies to highlight the divergent experiences and efforts of politically active minority groups as they sought to make their case for greater respect in their respective nations. The first is Palestinian Christians who supported secular Arab nationalism with in the Palestinian nationalist movement and focused on shared linguistic and ethnic categorizations. The second group is the Iraqi Kurds who, as an ethnic/linguistic minority, were excluded by definition from ‘Arab Nationalism’ so they sought greater independence with the new state structure. Third, I explore the changing identification of Arab Jews who, due to the political situation caused by Zionism and the Palestine Mandate, were compelled to reimagine their collective identity.
While these three examples are not exhaustive of minority relationships to Arab nationalism, they do provide enough breadth to suggest the wide range of variables and responses. Kurds, Copts, and others continue to negotiate space within the Arab context, and an understanding of this past can help provide context and depth to contemporary tensions.
In 1853, while excavating near the northern city of Mosul, a young archaeologist named Hormuzd Rassam unearthed clay tablets containing the oldest known written narrative poem – the Epic of Gilgamesh. Over the years Rassam revealed thousands of artefacts from the ancient world; many which painted a more robust and vibrant ancient Near East. It is in that kiln that fashioned some of the earliest human societies, witnessed the rise of all three Abrahamic faiths, and the transition of hundreds of political systems, where Assyria and its progeny find, both literally and figuratively, their beginning, and for some, their future.
This presentation is largely a linear trajectory of the Assyrian predicament in the Middle East, as a case in point, a litmus test for threatened communities, illuminating patterns of hostility, dispossession, and displacement, but also perseverance, strength, and hope amidst peril. It approaches Assyrians as an indigenous and transnational society with the promise of creating a model that can be used for analyses of similar communities around the globe. This approach undoes forms of violence against the community by making its history larger than the nation-state and dominant narrative. This is accomplished by demonstrating the importance of minoritized groups to generally accepted ‘major’ events, creating a paradigm where the community and its individual experiences are ‘vital to and exist in symbiosis with all others in order to illuminate’ the historical record. This paradigm shift creates a new reality that can be termed panenhistoricism, which at its core observes the minority (in this case Assyrian) history/existence transcendent of politically-charged nation-states and majoritarian perspectives, all the while remaining immanent within majoritarian and/or state narratives that retain the major focus, force, and funding.
Finally, in the words of Aleksandr Pushkin from the work Poltava, “the same hammer that shatters glass forges steel,” this presentation will reach beyond a victimized guise and illustrate a community shattered yet emboldened as active and integral participants in history, and the ways in which they can and do participate.
