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Abstract
Since the 1979 Revolution, the Iranian state has adopted a sophisticated set of policies to assimilate the Eastern Kurds. The Kurds are often the main target of the Iranian state’s military operations, its assimilatory strategies, and its regime of surveillance. After the ‘conquest’ (fath) of Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhelat) in 1979, the state tried to retain control over the region through systemic militarisation, the establishment of ‘revolutionary institutions’, and new religious and cultural centres, to transform the demographic, religious and cultural profile of Kurdistan. This paper is an attempt to illuminate the state’s religious nationalism and various forms of assimilatory strategies that the Islamic Republic of Iran has employed to transform Kurdish regions.
Acknowledgements
We are indebted to Ares Zarei and Arsalan Yarahmadi for providing us invaluable information and to Alexander Ganote, Metin Atmaca, Werner Hertzog, Owen R. Miller and Anthony K. Shin for reading our papers and offering their invaluable insights.
Notes
1 http://rouhani.ir/event.php?event_id=63. Accessed 16 July 2018.
2 http://rouhani.ir/event.php?event_id=63. Accessed 16 July 2018.
4 See Billig (Citation1995)and Matin (Citation2019).
5 For more on religious nationalism see Peter van der Veer (Citation1994); Roger Friedland (Citation2001); Barbara-Ann Rieffer (Citation2003); Genevieve Zubrzycki (Citation2016); Kamal Soleimani (Citation2016), and Mark Juergensmeyer (Citation2017).
6 The 48th chapter in the Qur’an is named al- Fath., which contextualises the conquest of Mecca in 629. The first verse of that chapter reads, ‘Indeed, we have given you [O Muhammad], a clear conquest’ (the Qur’an, 48: 1).
7 Jash etymologically means a little donkey or mule. Since WWII, Kurds have used the term to refer to any Kurds who collaborate with the state. Jash, in this context, means a little mule since mules are the product of a mare mating with a male donkey. Such a name connotes unfaithfulness since a mare would need to have mated with a donkey, implying that she preferred him over a horse. In Kurdish culture, a male horse symbolises beauty, rebelliousness and nobility, all at once. Conversely, a donkey symbolises stupidity, docility and ugliness. Yet to produce a mule, a mare has to mate with a donkey. From the perspective of such logic, the product cannot be virtuous.
8 http://archive.fo/pLzJ2. Accessed 10 March 2019.
9 See, http://archive.fo/IQmCh. Last visited 12 July 2019.
10 See, http://archive.fo/IQmCh. Last visited 12 July 2019.
11 Fitna is a Qur’anic term which is ‘much worse than human slaughter’ (2: 191).
12 For Bollinger’s remarks: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/07/09/lcbopeningremarks.html. Accessed 16 May 2018.
13 http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/archive/2007/866/focus.htm. Accessed 16 May 2018.
14 Ibid.
15 http://archive.fo/0uEgE. Last visited 14 July 2019.
16 https://www.radiozamaneh.com/94492. Last visited 14 July 2019.
17 Appendix of Komala Report, 13 November 1979.
18 http://www.bbc.com/persian/iran/2013/09/130912_25_anniversary_kurds_executed_nm. Accessed 1 July 2018.
19 Communities located in southwestern and eastern and northeastern Iran.
20 http://www.imam-khomeini.ir/fa/c207_51244/. Accessed 4 July 2018.
21 See numerus related articles by Persian academics on Parsi Anjuman. https://parsianjoman.org/. Last visited 10 March 2019.
22 See Ibid.
23 https://www.isna.ir/news/. Last visited 9 July 2018.
24 http://archive.fo/x4eZn. Accessed 6 June 2018.
25 Article 115 of the constitution: https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/4205c7/pdf/. Accessed 9 July 2018.
26 https://www.isna.ir/news/92112215541. Accessed 9 July 2018.
27 https://kayhan.london/fa/1397/04/09/. Accessed 9 July 2018 (emphasis added).
28 Ibid.
29 See http://archive.fo/AryZm. Last visited 2 October 2018.
30 https://iranintl.com/. Accessed 9 July 2018.
31 http://archive.fo/Tm8j9. Accessed 3 July 2019.
32 See note 29.
33 After the election of Khatami in 1997, the state began to appoint pro-state Kurdish clergymen in some Kurdish cities.
34 http://kurdistan.isna.ir/default.aspx?NSID=5&SSLID=46&NID=26582. Last visited 2 October 2018.
35 https://dlp.msrt.ir/file/download/regulation/1497687031-.pdf. Last visited 4 December 2018.
36 See http://old.ido.ir//n.aspx?n=13910209014. Accessed 16 July 2018.
37 http://kurd.ismc.ir/. Accessed 16 July 2018.
38 49 http://archive.fo/Hnp8H. Accessed 29 November 2018.
39 http://www.digarban.com/node/7230.html. Accessed 29 November 2018.
40 This is based on the fieldwork conducted by Ahmad Mohammadpour in the summer of 2006.
41 See Afshin Asgari’s talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hiAflZOjrI. Last visited 4 October 2018.
42 https://www.farsnews.com/amp/13970423000749. Accessed 16 July 2018.
43 The column showcases the sharp contrast between official statistics provided by the central and provincial governments.
44 https://www.tasnimnews.com/fa/news/1397/05/16/1796165/. Accessed 31 March 2019.
45 http://kordestan.isna.ir/Default.aspx?NSID=5&SSLID=46&NID=23756. Accessed 31 March 2019.
46 http://nullwww.magiran.com/npview.asp?ID=3589382. Accessed 31 March 2019.
47 https://www.yjc.ir/fa/news/6312072. Accessed 31 March 2019.
48 http://kurdpress.com/details.aspx?id=6511. Accessed 31 March 2019.
49 https://www.tasnimnews.com/fa/news/1395/07/08/1200079/. Accessed 31 March 2019.
50 http://keyhanenovin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/m.jpg. Accessed 29 November 2018.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Kamal Soleimani
Kamal Soleimani specialises in Islamic and Middle Eastern history and politics. Soleimani received his PhD (2014) in Islamic and Middle Eastern history from Columbia University in New York, and has taught in various universities around the world. Soleimani is the author of various scholarly articles which have appeared in major academic journals such as The British Journal of Sociology, Ethnicities, Middle Eastern Studies and The Muslim World. Soleimani’s works have been translated into Kurdish (Kurmanji and Sorani), Persian and Turkish. In his book Islam and Competing Nationalisms in the Middle East (Palgrave, 2016), Soleimani questions the foundational epistemologies of the nation-state by focusing on the pivotal and intimate role that Islam played in the nation-state’s emergence. He shows how the entanglements and reciprocities of nationalism and religious thought played out in the modern history of the Middle East.
Ahmad Mohammadpour
Ahmad Mohammadpour is a socio-anthropologist. He received his PhD in sociology from Shiraz University – Iran. He is also a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst where he teaches courses on nationalism, and ethno-religious conflicts in the Contemporary Middle East. Mohammadpour has written eight monographs and (co)authored over 50 academic articles in English, Kurdish and Persian. His works on Kurdistan are widely considered models for ethnographic and grounded theory-based research in Iran. Mohammadpour’s works have appeared in various international peer-reviewed journals such as the British Journal of Sociology, Ethnicities, Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and the International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, among others.