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Between the Ideal and the Real describes why Iraq state-building and democratic transformation failed by offering a very new, and unusual, perspective, away from the usual blame assigned to the US that has become part of the “conventional wisdom” about Iraq and the Middle East. Although the book acknowledges US failings in Iraq, the main argument it presents is that the main causes of failure lie in a problematic alliance between Iraqi Shiite Islamist parties and the clerical establishment in Najaf, led by Ayatollah Sistani. To appreciate this new perspective, the book takes you into the history of Iraqi Shiism both as a set of doctrinal and theological beliefs about the world and a lived experience by ordinary Iraqi Shias. The book argues that this understanding hindered Shias from embracing many products of modernity such as nationalism, individualism, humanism, and democratic rule, by consolidating a primordial group identity that ties people to the past, a particular kind of past based on doctrinal supremacy and historical victimhood. Combined, the two have the negative effect of depriving ordinary Iraqi Shias of a personal sense of agency and contributing to a general spirit skeptical of difference. The book also documents people's push back against this restrictive approach to reality in a variety of contexts. Based on extensive historical and doctrinal research into the distant past of Shiism, the book links the past to the present by examining the unfortunate consequences that grow out of the insistence to allow pre-modern values determine the modern experience of life.

How did ordinary Iraqis survive the occupation of their communities by the Islamic State? How did they decide whether to stay or flee, to cooperate or resist? Based on an original survey from Baghdad alongside key interviews in the field, this book offers an insightful account of how Iraqis in different areas of the country responded to the rise and fall of the Islamic State.Austin J. Knuppe argues that people adopt survival repertoires—a variety of social practices, tools, organized routines, symbols, and rhetorical strategies—to navigate wartime violence and detect threats. He traces how repertoires varied among different communities over the course of the conflict. In areas insulated from insurgent control, such as cosmopolitan Baghdad, local residents had the flexibility to support coalition forces while also voicing opposition to government policies. For Iraqis in rural communities confronting insurgent control, collaboration and resistance entailed significant risks. In Sunni-majority communities in the western desert, passive acquiescence and active cooperation temporarily insulated Iraqis from insurgent victimization. For ethnic and religious minorities in the north, however, flight or resistance proved the only viable options. In many communities, local residents mobilized neighborhood self-defense groups and militias loosely aligned with coalition forces once the tides turned against the Islamic State.Beyond contributing to academic and policy debates about civilian protection during wartime, Surviving the Islamic State foregrounds everyday people's experiences while modeling an ethical approach for conducting field research in conflict-affected communities.

The Shi'i clergy are amongst the most influential political players in the Middle East. For decades, scholars and observers have tried to understand the balance of power between, Shi'i'quietism'and'activism'.The book is based on exclusive interviews with high-profile Shi'i clerics in order to reveal how the Shi'i clerical elite perceives its role and engages in politics today. The book focuses on three ground-breaking events in the modern Middle East: the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the 2003 Iraq War, and the 2006 July war in Lebanon. By examining the nature and evolution of a Shi'i clerical network the book finds that, far from there being strategic differences between'quitest'and'activist'clerics, Shi'i mujtahid statesmen matured, from 1979 in Iran to 2003 Iraq, by way of a pragmatism which led to a strong form of transnational and associated whole in Lebanon in 2006. In doing so, the book breaks down the established, and misleading, dichotomisation of the Shi'i clergy into'quietists'and'activists'and discovers that the decision of Shi'i clerical elites to become politically active or to stay out of politics are attributable to their ability to adapt to their political environments.

State and Sufism in Iraq is the first comprehensive study of the Iraqi Baʿth regime's (r. 1968–2003) entanglement with Sufis and of Sunnī Sufi Islam in Iraq from the late Ottoman period until 2003 and beyond.For far too long, the secular and authoritarian Baʿth regime has been reduced to the dictator Saddam Husayn and portrayed as antireligious. Its growing political employment of Islam during the 1990s, in turn, has been interpreted either as an abstract Baʿthist-nationalist Islam or as an ideological U-turn from secularism to a form of Islamism that ultimately contributed to the spread of Islamist terrorism after 2003. Broadening the narrow focus on Saddam Husayn, this book analyses other leading regime figures, their close entanglement with Sufis, and Baʿth religious politics of a state-sponsored revival of Sufi Islam and Iraq's broad and distinct Sufi culture. It is the story of a secular regime's search for'moderate'Islam in order to overcome the challenges of radical Islamism and sectarianism in Iraq.The book's two-pronged interdisciplinary approach that deals equally with politics and Sufi Islam in Iraq makes it a valuable contribution to scholars and students in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Religious Anthropology and Sociology, Political Science, and International Relations.

The Failure of Democracy in Iraq studies democratization in post-2003 Iraq, which has so far failed, due mainly to cultural and religious reasons. There are other factors, such as the legacy of the dictatorial regime, exclusionary policies, the problem of stateness, interference by regional powers, the rentier economy and sectarianism, that have impeded democracy and contributed to its failure, but the employment of religion in politics was the most to blame. The establishment of stable democratic institutions continues to elude Iraq, 15 years after toppling the dictatorship. The post-2003 Iraq could not completely eradicate the long historical tradition of despotic governance due to deep-seated religious beliefs and tribal values, along with widening societal ethno-sectarian rifts which precluded the negotiation of firm and stable elite settlements and pacts across communal lines. The book examines how the fear in neighbouring countries of a region-wide domino effect of the Iraq democratization process caused them to adopt interventionist policies towards Iraq that helped to stunt the development of democracy. The lack of commitment by the initiator of the democratic process, the United States, undermined the prospects of democratic consolidation. This is compounded by serious mistakes such as de-Ba'athification and the disbanding of the Iraqi army and security apparatuses which caused a security vacuum the US forces were not able to fill. The Failure of Democracy in Iraq is a key resource for all students and academics interested in democracy, Islam and Middle East Studies.

'The Legacy of Iraq'critically reflects on the abject failure of the 2003 intervention to turn Iraq into a liberal democracy, underpinned by free-market capitalism, its citizens free to live in peace and prosperity. It argues that mistakes made by the coalition and the Iraqi political elite set a sequence of events in motion that have had devastating consequences for Iraq, the Middle East and for the rest of the world. Today, as the nation faces perhaps its greatest challenge in the wake of the devastating advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and another US-led coalition undertakes renewed military action in Iraq, understanding the complex and difficult legacies of the 2003 war could not be more urgent. Ignoring the legacies of the Iraq war and denying their connection to contemporary events could means that vital lessons are ignored and the same mistakes made again.

The battles within Islam are not rooted in theology, but in timeless geopolitical struggles

يصدر هذا الكتاب في جزأين: الأول باسم الإسلام السِّياسي الشِّيعي، والثاني باسم الإسلام السِّياسي السُّنَّي، ومع عدم رغبتنا في تكريس الانقسام الطائفي، حتى وإن كان عبر أجزاء كتاب، إلا أن واقع حال الإسلام السِّياسي بالعراق، على وجه الخصوص، لا يكون، مثلما سبقت الإشارة، إلا طائفيًّا، فإسلام واحد هو تعبير عن مسمى فحسب، وهي مفردة تحمل الكثير من الرِّياء، والحقيقة أنه لا بد للمسلم مِن مذهب يمارس إسلامه عبره، وهذا حال الأحزاب الدِّينية كافة. والكتاب بجزأيه رصد للإسلام السِّياسي العراقي على مدَى قرن مِن الزَّمن، وعبر عدة عهود مِن تاريخ الدَّولة العراقية، لا أعتبره كاملًا منجزًا للمهمة؛ لأنه يتصدى لظاهرة مستمرة الانشطار ومتبدلة المواقف، وأول ما تواجه الباحث فيه هي شحة المصادر العدول، مع كثرة تناقضات روايات المؤلفين وأغراضهم الفئوية والحزبية، ومنهم شهود عِيان، وما نجده مِنِ اضطراب في معلومات المواقع الإلكترونية، حيث تم اللجوء إليها حين خالجنا اليأس من المصدر الورقي أو الشَّفاهي في أمر قضية مِن القضايا!. ومن هنا فهو رصد لظاهرة الإسلام العراقي بلونيه الشيعي والسني، حاول فيه المؤلف الإلمام بأهم وأبرز الأحزاب والمنظمات والجماعات. ولا يخلو الكتاب على عادة مؤلفه من رفده بأثر تاريخي وشاهد تراثي. وهو بجزأيه جاء مانعًا جامعًا موثقًا لتفاصيل قرن من تاريخ وحاضر العراق، مع عدم رغبته في هذا التقسيم الطائفي، لكن واقع الحال فرض أن يكون للشيعة جزء وللسنة جزء آخر.

Iraq, democracy and Islam are powerful global forces which shape not only many aspects of the lives of Muslims, but the lives of other citizens of the world as well. This book explores many of the challenging questions posed by the interconnections between these three forces, concentrating on issues which have global significance and which have been less studied up until now. It contains contributions from many of the leading thinkers and academics from this subject area, including the former President of Iran, Seyyed Mohammad Khatami.Topics such as the compatibility of Islam and democracy, and the question of whether democracy can be encouraged in the Middle East are looked at carefully. Contributors evaluate the circumstances under which democracy can be imposed by outside force, and asks what forces are driving the confrontation between the West and Islam, before looking at how this confrontation is likely to develop. This book presents a comprehensive picture of dynamic change in the geopolitics of our time, and offers a timely contribution to research on Middle East Politics and Islamic Studies.

From a Western perspective, the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991 largely fulfilled the first President Bush's objective:'In, out, do it, do it right, get gone. That's the message.'But in the Arab world, the causes and consequences of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and his subsequent defeat by a U.S.-led coalition were never so clear-cut. The potent blend of Islam and Arab nationalism that Saddam forged to justify the unjustifiable—his invasion of a Muslim state—gained remarkable support among both Muslims and Arabs and continued to resonate in the Middle East long after the fighting ended. Indeed, as this study argues in passing, it became a significant strand in the tangled web of ideologies and actions that led to the attacks of 9/11. This landmark book offers the first in-depth investigation of how Saddam Hussein used Islam and Arab nationalism to legitimate his invasion of Kuwait in the eyes of fellow Muslims and Arabs, while delegitimating the actions of the U.S.-led coalition and its Arab members. Jerry M. Long addresses three fundamental issues: how extensively and in what specific ways Iraq appealed to Islam during the Kuwait crisis; how elites, Islamists, and the elusive Arab'street,'both in and out of the coalition, responded to that appeal and why they responded as they did; and the longer-term effects that resulted from Saddam's strategy.