Religious Minorities in the Middle East: Domination, Self-Empowerment, Accommodation

380 Pages·2011·1.24 MB·English

by  Anh Nga Longva

Religious Minorities in the Middle East
Social, Economic and
Political Studies of the
Middle East and Asia
(S.E.P.S.M.E.A.)
(Founding editor: C. A. O. van Nieuwenhuijze)
Editor
Dale F. Eickelman
Advisory Board
Fariba Adelkhah
(SciencesPo/CERI, Paris)
Roger Owen
(Harvard University)
Armando Salvatore
(University of Naples “L’Orientale” – Humboldt University, Berlin)
VOLUME 108
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/seps
Religious Minorities
in the Middle East
Domination, Self-Empowerment,
Accommodation
Edited by
Anh Nga Longva
Anne Sofijie Roald
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2012
Cover illustrations:
The Mohammed al Amin Mosque and the Greek Orthodox Saint George Cathedral, Beirut, Lebanon.
Photographs: Hala Abou-Zaki.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Religious minorities in the Middle East : domination, self-empowerment, accommodation /
edited by Anh Nga Longva, Anne Sofijie Roald.
  p. cm. — (Social, economic, and political studies of the Middle East and Asia, ISSN 1385-
3376 ; v. 108)
 The result of a workshop held in 2008 in Bergen, Norway and in 2009 in Aix-en-Provence,
France.
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-20742-4 (hardback : alk. paper)
 1. Religious minorities—Middle East—Congresses. 2. Middle East—Religion—Congresses. I.
Longva, Anh Nga. II. Roald, Anne Sofijie. III. Title.
 BL1060.R448 2012
 305.60956—dc23
2011036463
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters
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ISSN 1385-3376
ISBN 978 90 04 20742 4 (hardback)
ISBN 978 90 04 21684 6 (e-book)
Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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CONTENTS
List of Contributors  ....................................................................................... vii
Preface  ............................................................................................................... ix
Introduction Domination, Self-empowerment,
Accommodation  ........................................................................................ 1
 Anh Nga Longva
PART I: NON-MUSLIM MINORITIES
1. Millets: Past and Present  ........................................................................ 27
Maurits H. van den Boogert
2. From the Dhimma to the Capitulations: Memory and
Experience of Protection in Lebanon  ................................................ 47
Anh Nga Longva
3. Contemporary Muslim-Christian Relations in Egypt:
Local Dynamics and Foreign Influences  ........................................... 71
Grégoire Delhaye
4. Land, Law, and Family Protection in the West Bank  ................... 97
Bård Kårtveit
5. Conviviality and Conflict in Contemporary Aleppo  ..................... 123
Annika Rabo
6. Freedom of Religion in Sudan .............................................................. 149
Anne Sofijie Roald
7. From Power to Powerlessness: Zoroastrianism in
Iranian History  .......................................................................................... 171
Michael Stausberg
8. Bahaʾis of Iran: Power, Prejudices and Persecutions  .................... 195
Margit Warburg
vi contents
PART II: MUSLIM MINORITIES
9. Shiʿi Identity Politics in Saudi Arabia  ............................................... 221
Laurence Louër
10. Nationalism and Confessionalism: Shiʿis, Druzes and
Alawis in Syria and Lebanon  ............................................................... 245
Kais M. Firro
11. Education and Minority Empowerment in the Middle East  ..... 267
Catherine Le Thomas
12. Alevis in Turkish Politics  ...................................................................... 289
Ali Çarkoğlu and Nazlı Çağın Bilgili
13. Nationalism and Religion in Contemporary Iran  ......................... 309
Eliz Sanasarian
Conclusion Nation-Building and Minority Rights in the
Middle East  ............................................................................................... 325
Elizabeth Picard
Index  .................................................................................................................. 351
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Maurits H. van den Boogert is afffijiliated with Leiden University’s Centre
for the Study of Islam and Society and its School for History, and works
for Brill. His research focuses mainly on the Ottoman period. He is also
the Managing Editor of the Journal of the Economic and Social History of
the Orient.
Nazlı Çağın Bilgili holds a Ph.D. in political science from Sabanci University,
Istanbul. Her research is in the fijields of political sociology, political culture,
Islam in social and political life, and Middle Eastern politics.
Ali Çarkoğlu is professor in the Department of International Relations at Koç
University, Istanbul. His research interest lies in comparative politics, voting
behavior, public opinion, and party politics in Turkey.
Grégoire Delhaye is doctoral student in political science at the IEP Aix-en-
Provence, and Adjunct Professor in Comparative Politics at the American
University in Washington DC. His work focuses on transnational identity
politics, particularly in the Egyptian Coptic community.
Kais M. Firro is professor in Middle Eastern History at the University
of Haifa. He has published widely on economic history, ethnicity, and
nationalism.
Bård Kårtveit holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University
of Bergen. He is currently Senior Lecturer in the Department of Culture
Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo. His research areas are
nationalism, sectarianism, minority-majority relations and migration in
the Middle East.
Catherine Le Thomas holds a PhD in political science from Sciences Po
(Paris). She is currently associate researcher at the French Institute of the
Near East (IFPO) in Beirut. Her research focuses on religion and education
in Lebanon and the Near East.
Anh Nga Longva is professor in Social Anthropology at the University of
Bergen. She has conducted extensive fijieldwork in Kuwait, Bahrain, and
viii list of contributors
Lebanon. Among her topics of research are migration, ethnic relations,
tribalism, sectarianism, citizenship and education.
Laurence Louër is research fellow at Sciences Po, the Centre for International
Studies and Research (CERI) in Paris, France. She specializes on issues of
minorities in the Arab Middle East.
Elizabeth Picard is senior researcher at the Institut de Recherches et
d’Études sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (IREMAM), Centre National
de la Recherche Scientifijique, in Aix-en-Provence, France. She has written
extensively about security and identity politics in the Middle East.
Annika Rabo is professor in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University.
She has conducted fijieldwork in the Middle East, mainly in Syria, since
the late 1970s focusing on a variety of topics related to state-citizens
relationships.
Anne Sofijie Roald is Professor in Religious Studies at Malmö University
College, Sweden, and Senior Researcher and former head of the research
program Politics of Faith at Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen, Norway. Her
publications deal mainly with gender issues, religious conversion, multi-
culturalism, Islamism, and Arab media.
Eliz Sanasarian is Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern
California. She is the author of The Religious Minorities in Iran (Cambridge,
2006) and has also written on gender issues in Iran.
Michael Stausberg is Professor of Religion at the University of Bergen. He
has published widely about Zoroastrianism and theories of religion. He
serves as the European editor of the international journal Religion.
Margit Warburg is Professor in Sociology of Religion at the University of
Copenhagen. She has published widely on the Bahaʾi religion and has also
authored works on East European Jewry and civil religion.
PREFACE
This volume is the result of a workshop which was held twice, the fijirst time
in 2008 in Bergen (Norway) then a year later in Aix-en-Provence (France).
The papers presented in Bergen were discussed by the participants among
themselves. We then decided to meet again in Aix, this time with other
Middle East scholars as discussants of our works.
We extend our thanks to the University of Bergen and the Christian
Michelsen Institute for funding and organizing the workshop in Norway.
Alongside the Research Council of Norway both institutions have also
given generous support for the publication of this volume. We also wish
to thank the Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et
musulman (IREMAM). The IREMAM generously funded and hosted our
second meeting in Aix-en-Provence in 2009. We are grateful to the discus-
sants in Aix, Bernard Botiveau, Hamit Bozarslan, Christian Bromberger,
and Lucette Valensi, for their inspiring comments and expert insights.
Our special thanks go to Hamit Bozarslan for the continued interest he
showed for our project.
The problem of transliteration, well-known to authors writing on the
Middle East in Western languages, is made more acute in the case of edited
volumes which deal not only with the Arab world but also with Turkish and
Persian-speaking societies. The editors have solved the problem by letting
each author use his or her preferred transliteration style.