Workshop 02: Religion, Ethnic Identities and State Formation in the MENA Region
Abstract
A distinctive feature of modern political history and the rise of nationalism and nation-states in the MENA region has been the continuing overlap and tension between religious and ethnic identities and state formation. One of the earliest states that arose under the shadow of British control, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was a tribal theocracy, where Islam, a very conservative version of it as expressed in the Wahhabi ideology, served as a binding identity for a coalition of tribes who also shared Arab ethnicity. Half a century later, across the Gulf from Saudi Arabia, an Islamic revolution toppled the autocratic and secular regime of the Pahlavis and helped reshaped Iran as a Shi’a state ruled by absolute religious authority. Lebanon, both secular and strongly sectarian, was granted independence as a state based on a constitutionally confessional balance of power between different Muslim and Christian denominations; a condition that persists to this day and is typically blamed for the country’s fragility and incessant internal conflicts. It is also noteworthy that large sections of Lebanese Christians don’t see themselves as Arabs and prefer to subscribe to a Phoenician or even European ethnicity. Other countries’ experiences in the region with the convergence of ethnic, religious and national identities varied considerably. The state of Israel was founded as a Jewish state, with religion and ethnicity serving as two faces of the same coin, and where other religions and ethnicities, including a large minority of Arabs, against whom the state fought a war that led to its establishment. Egypt, one of the most distinctive and ancient geo-political entities, created a state that emphasized and championed Arab identity rather than an Egyptian or Islamic one. Egypt is also the home of the most influential Islamic! political party, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the target of terrorist attacks by extreme Islamists and increasingly violent protests by its Christian Coptic population, who are unhappy with what they see as religious discrimination against them by the state, despite the promise of equal citizenship. And of course, there is Turkey, the most secular state in the MENA, with a strong national state based on the national identity, but still fighting a conflict of attrition against Kurdish national forces who seek to be recognized as a separate group, ideally in a state of their own, or at least within an autonomous region like the one that now exists in Northern Iraq. Finally, and most recently, the referendum in Sudan favoring the separation of the South will see soon the birth of a new state that regards itself as both ethnically and religiously distinct from the Arab Muslim majority population of the north.
Paradoxically, and despite the rich and diverse experience of the MENA region in how religion and ethnic identities play themselves out in state formation, these relationships have been often poorly diagnosed and understood. While there is some research on the role of religion in some state’s and religious ideology as a rising factor in MENA national and international politics, there is little consideration of how these factors have and continue to impact the process of nation building. As Lisa Anderson remarks, there is little interest in theorizing and analyzing “the state” in Middle Eastern studies; in contrast to the revival of this interest in European and Latin American studies (Anderson, 1987). Theorizing society and is classes and, to some extent, the state as a client or a tool of a social group or groups, seems to occupy center stage in the scholarly discussion on the nation-state in the MENA. There is a clear gap in the study of the state in its association with more dynamic notions of identity such as religious and ethnic identities.
Meanwhile, the dynamics of more discreet and subtle engagements between the state, in its various institutions and powers, and the everyday manifestations of religion and religious identity, have largely gone unstudied. In fact, and with few exceptions (for example the sectarian nature of the Lebanese state), scholars have rarely considered these two concepts in tandem, or examined carefully their interrelations and how and why religious identity has informed the formation of national (and religious) states within the MENA region.
The political appropriation of highlighted ethnic and religious symbolism has been an integral part of nationalist aspirations and state construction in the MENA region, both during the colonial and post-colonial eras. Today, political and social conflicts informed by ethnic or religious grievances seem to be on the rise. Strong and fragile sates alike expose their inability to overcome such inherent factional identities to form overarching sense of nationalism that submerges religious and ethnic loyalties.
How ethnic and religious identities are shaped in the context of nationalist struggle and separatist aspirations and their impact on the process of state formation and the nature of the emerging state itself will be a key focus of this workshop.
Description
The panel will be organized around three central themes:
1- The ways in which religious and ethnic identities informed the rise of nationalism and formation of states in the MENA. How did these ideas or identities compete and complement each other? Is it possible to theorize this experience or experiences and locate patterns and relationships and concepts that explain such dynamics in the context of different societies and states that came to be the legacy of the MENA since after WWI and till today? And how useful would it be to analyze this question (as a general trend or trends or as specific ca! se-studies) comparatively (within or without the MENA)?
2- The approach or approaches of national states, both as reflections of identities and as independent actors, to dealing with religions, ethnicities and the identities associated with them. For example, what specific roles the states in the MENA have played in resolving ethnic and religious differences, or in exacerbating and fomenting conflicts arising from the persistence of these identities? In other words, to what extent these states can be seen as neutral forces, rising above the divisions and identities of their societies? One can argue that the failure to do so is a failure of the modern state in its ability to coalesce multiple identities into an effective national identity and accommodate meaningful notions of citizenship and civil society. Can this failure explain the failed state syndrome, in such cases as Somalia? This clearly has serious implications to the nature of national states in the MENA and their rhetoric as to what and who they represent, as well as to the forces that still seek representation or separation.
3- The complex relationship between the state, the regime, the army and the competing religious and ethnic identities in the MENA. Is it possible to characterize the dismissed Egyptian regime (if that turns out to be the case) as an entity that hijacked the state and created its own convenient set of priorities and interests, including its model of manipulation of ethnic and religious affiliations that are not necessarily consistent with the state’s constitution and ideology? How does the army, being the most powerful institution, reflect the religious and ethnic pressures of it’s population? Can we see that representation as a feature of a modern army, one that stays outside the political arena and acts as a guarantor of stability and protector of the nation-state as defined in that country’s constitution (such as the case with the Turkish army, and to some extent, the role of the Tunisian and Egyptian armies during the latest revolutions)?
The workshop will invite papers from individuals, scholars and practitioners who would like to examine the interrelations between religious and ethnic identities and state formation in the MENA region, whether theoretically, historically or from other relevant perspectives and disciplines. Political scientists, historians, anthropologists, cultural critics, sociologists, and other scholars interested in one the issues raised by this workshop, are invited to participate.
The ultimate goal is to offer a forum for fresh perspectives on this crucial and timely question, especially in light of the recent changes in the MENA region, including the social-political upheavals in some countries and the formation of the youngest African country in the South of Sudan. The new perspectives can help bring “the state” to the center of debate and reexamine the nature and function of religious and ethnic identities in the construction of nationalisms and states and vice versa. We hope the workshop will advance our understanding of the contemporary MENA and the historical legacy, while simultaneously offering important theoretical insights into the formation of states of one of the most crucial and troubled regions in the world.
Page last updated on 04 September 2018