Minorities and Formations of the Modern Arab State
Panel 004, 2014 Annual Meeting
On Saturday, November 22 at 5:30 pm
Panel Description
Increasingly historians and social scientists have revisited the question of religious minorities in order to understand their disenfranchisement in the modern Middle Eastern state, a question that has gained more traction since the so-called "Arab Spring". Historians in particular, have focused on examining the reasons behind the emergence of a 'minority discourse' and the political mobilization of various ethnic and religious communities. In doing so, the vast majority of scholarship promoted two main conclusions; the first, that minorities were victims of communal and sectarian clashes that marginalized and kept them from entering the political and social spheres during the years of the colonial and immediate post-colonial state(s). Second, and conversely, other minorities enjoyed considerable privileges that allowed them to become increasingly powerful in the early formations of the modern Middle Eastern state.
Although both perspectives have significantly contributed to our understanding of the role and place of minorities in the modern Middle East, the focus of our analysis needs refinement in order to examine why, in some cases, minorities were politically disenfranchised and in others they were socially and politically engaged with broader society. This panel seeks to comparatively understand the role of minorities in Egypt (the Copts), Iraq (the Assyrians), and Palestine (the Melkites) promoting a dialogue for the reasons and variations that exist.
The key questions that this panel seeks to analyze are: what were the political conditions that facilitated the inclusion of some communities in the early state building process of various Arab statesb What political ideas allowed for the inclusion of these communities in the formations of post-colonial statesl At the same time what political or social ideas deterred minorities from participating fully in the political and social makings of the modern Middle Eastern stater How did these communities navigate violent and hostilities during times of political and social uncertaintye In examining these questions this panel will contribute to re-conceptualizing the questions and issues that concern the study of minority communities from comparative perspective.
On January 21st, 2014 the Iraqi government announced a plan to create three new self-governing provinces. The result of the announcement was celebrations led by Assyrians in Iraq and the west for the success of a century old campaign to create a province in the plains of Nineveh. Assyrian political and social organizations declared the plans to be a step towards a future where the community could administer its internal affairs and live in safety without the interference of central government officials in Baghdad. The plans for an Assyrian controlled territory or a state in northern Iraq was rooted in Agha Petros’ campaign to the British administration and the League of Nations in 1921-32. Petros was a military leader that led the Assyrian troops during the First World War.
Petros and other Assyrian leaders contended that as a nation, the Assyrians were entitled to receive special consideration in the context of the nascent Iraqi state. They argued that in order to protect the Assyrian population from violence and absorption into the Arab centric state in Iraq, the League of Nations and the British colonial government were obliged to create a special administrative unit for the Assyrians and Yazidies in Iraq. Assyrian leaders asked the British government to grant the community a region in the Mosul province. This paper will argue that the plan for the creation of an independent Assyrian state or semi independent authority in northern Iraq contributed to a discourse that hindered the inclusion of the refugee population into the social and political makeup of the Iraqi state. The paper will also argue that the discourse for independence from the central government in Baghdad drove Iraqi officials to see the Assyrians as foreign invaders who were planning the destruction of the nascent Iraqi state. The proposal for an independent state also fed into an emerging Assyrian nationalist discourse that eventually led to a number of violent conflicts between Assyrians and Iraqis in 1923, 1924, and culminating in the Simile massacre of 1933. This paper will explore the reasons for the subsequent exclusion of Assyrians from the process of state building in the modern Iraqi state. The paper will also fit into the panel objectives by better understanding how the Assyrian minority dealt with violence and hostility perpetuated by the modern Iraqi state.
In recent publications on Christian communities in British mandate Palestine, the category of the Palestinian Christian Orthodoxy has been the focus of social scientists and historians. The Palestinian Catholic community, though fundamental during the growth of international institutions in Palestine, have been largely ignored. The Catholic community had also played a role during the establishment of political Zionism, assisted by France in so called preserving her Protectorate on the Christians of the Holy Land during the years of the British mandate.
Catholic Palestinians were trapped between different trends that influenced their political opinions and mobilization, ideologies and practises (by centralizing Catholic interests of Rome; the national interests of Catholic European powers present in the Holy Land; the British colonial pollicisation of the Arab identities). Contrarily to other minorities, the Catholic minority in Palestine benefited from the influence of historical transnational organizations that preceded political Zionism and, to a certain extent, played the role of a political (and cultural) alternative power in the Palestinian scene. The two main groups of the Catholic minority, the Melkite and the Latin indigenous communities, reacted differently to their instrumentalisation by the British and the French and experienced a different political mobilization from the Mandate period that explained the active, internationally grounded and recognized Melkite political mobilization.
This paper will address the relationship between local and transnational religious identity, political mobilization and colonial powers in the context of the Catholic communities of mandate Palestine. It will analyse the extent of Catholic transnational heritage and the way these pressures influenced the political opinion and mobilization of the community during the period of the mandate, and immediately following the birth of the Israeli state. The paper will shed a light upon the visible and invisible contracts between France, Great Britain, Rome, the United States and the Catholic communities in Palestine. It will address the role of the Vatican in fostering divisions/reconciliations inside the Palestinian Catholic community, the role of France in marginalizing the community in the larger political context of state and nation building, the evolution of the transnational political and cultural power of the community and the evolution of the Catholics’ conception of their church community in political terms. By addressing these issues, this paper will contribute the larger debate surrounding the inclusion and exclusion of minorities into the national and state building apparatus that the panel will address.
