None but the hopelessly naïve or the woefully ill-informed can deny the relevance of sectarian (here meaning Sunni and Shiʿi) identities in the contemporary Middle East, particularly in the Mashriq. Equally self-evident is the centrality…
The study of what has ostensibly come to be known as “sectarianism” owes its epistemological underpinnings to power-laden discourses implicit within Orientalism. While the concept’s dubious origins come as little surprise to us as post-Saidian…
In the summer of 2016, Yemen’s national poet, Abd al-Aziz Maqalih, wrote to the warring Yemeni leaders gathered for talks in Kuwait, “there are no Rafidis in Yemen, nor are there Nasibis, but the lust…
Animosity between Sunnis and Shi‘a is sometimes perceived as dating back centuries in such a way that both branches of Islam are almost destined to be at loggerheads with one another. Although it would be…
Whereas media and policy circles have (over?)emphasized growing sectarianism in the Middle East, this essay describes the absence of sectarianism in Senegal. Ussama Makdisi defines sectarianism as “a process through which a kind of religious…
Viewed from afar, typically the West, sectarianism in the Middle East symbolizes the age-old struggle among Muslims, and within Islam, to modernize. Lingering atavistic hatreds, so this narrative goes, prevents equal recognition and treatment of…