Understanding 'Sectarianism' by Haddad Fanar;

Author:Haddad, Fanar;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2019-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sunni Muslim, Normal Muslim?

Though not absolute, the centrality of Sunnism (in its vastly differing orientations) in the way Islam and the Arab world are imagined, while perfectly understandable given demographic, historical and cultural realities, has proven problematic where sectarian plurality is concerned. For one thing, it has imposed a trans-Arab or trans-Islamic lens that assumes the centrality of Sunnism and sect-codes, minoritizes and often securitizes other identities regardless of local or national variations, such as where Sunnis or Arabs may be in a minority. This has reinforced the normative role of Sunni identity and Sunni Islam in the way notions of community, majority and minority are constructed, with profound consequences for how sectarian relations are imagined and practised. This is as relevant to the transnational and doctrinal dimensions as it is to the national and subnational dimensions in that it has engendered a problematic awkwardness in how plurality within Islam is viewed in some circles: as deviant and threatening – something that has been mirrored in the securitization of plurality within the nation-state in the case of the Arab world. One is reminded of British historian Conrad Russell’s quip: “It can be said of the English in Britain, as wags say of the Catholics in Heaven, that they think they are the only ones here.”60 A similar logic can be extended to Sunni Arabs in the Arab world. Indeed, as will be argued in the following chapter, the manner in which 2003 disturbed that sense of identity security and challenged the dominance of Sunni identity in Arab national and transnational public spheres is an important factor in the regional sectarianization that followed. The normativity of Sunni Islam and the demographic weight of Sunni Muslims in the Arab and Islamic worlds have meant that Sunnis have traditionally not thought of themselves as a sect, and there remains considerable resistance to applying the language of sects to Sunnis – a language often reserved for minorities and outgroups. For example, Azmi Bishara rejects the idea that Sunnis can form a sect at all, let alone a minority sect, cautioning that “the sectarian mentality turns the majority into a minority.”61 Such a view obviously becomes problematic in national contexts where Sunni Muslims are numerical minorities. Furthermore, exempting Sunnis from the vocabulary of sect may not be so problematic were it not for the fact that it is an often securitized vocabulary that has been used by authoritarian regimes for purposes of regime maintenance, social engineering, inclusion and exclusion (see chapter 1).

Bishara’s resistance to the sect-coding of Sunnis is far from unusual;62 rather, its prevalence reflects demographic realities and the reification of a concomitant set of hierarchies that centre Sunni and Arab identities at the heart of national, religious and transnational abstractions of self and other in the Arab Middle East. It also reflects historical and political legacies predating the modern Arab nation-state. From the outset, post-Ottoman national regimes were resistant to granting non-Sunni Muslims recognition as communal groups. There are several reasons for this:

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