Ethnicities

The Kurdish right to self-determination within Iraq has consistently been framed as a security issue by successive Iraqi governments. This paper applies securitization theory to analyze the Iraqi Government’s response to the Kurdistan Region’s unilateral independence referendum held on September 25, 2017. The referendum, which resulted in a strong vote in favor of independence, was viewed as a serious threat to Iraq’s unity by Iraqi Arab political and military forces, as well as Turkmen groups. In response, the Iraqi Government chose to take military action. On October 16, 2017, the Iraqi military, along with Popular Mobilization Forces (PM), launched an attack on Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the disputed territories, taking control of them. While many studies have explored various aspects of the Kurdistan referendum, including its timing, motivations, and consequences, there has been limited focus on how the Iraqi federal government’s securitization of the referendum facilitated military interventions in the contested territories. This article explores how Iraqi leaders’ rhetoric and securitizing language framed the referendum as an existential threat.

This article critically explores the intersection of colonial narratives and religious necropolitics in the systematic oppression of the Kurdish nation across the Middle East. From the latter half of the 20th century, governments representing Iranian, Turkish, and Arab nationalisms, alongside non-state actors like ISIS and the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army, have employed demagogic religious policies to legitimize the persecution and mass killings of the Kurds. These regimes and groups brand the Kurds as infidels, subjecting them to a continuous state of war and dehumanization, while positioning themselves as defenders of Islam to quash Kurdish demands for national rights and autonomy. The article explores how these religious necropolitics policies have fuelled genocidal massacres, such as Khomeini’s fatwas in Iran, Erdoğan’s rhetoric in Turkey, the Anfal genocide in Iraq, Yazidi genocide by ISIS, and the dehumanization of Yarsans by Islamic Shia authorities in Iran. The systematic de-Kurdification of regions like Afrin in Syria further exemplifies the lethal consequences of conflating religious ideology with noo-state sovereignty. Through this analysis, the article underscores the profound impact of religious necropolitics on the Kurdish struggle, revealing how these policies have not only dehumanized the Kurds but also framed their aspirations for freedom as existential threats. The article concludes by highlighting how the interplay of colonial sovereignty and religious necropolitics has perpetuated the sacred victimization of Kurds in the Middle East, framing them as infidels to justify their ongoing oppression and marginalization. Through this lens, the study reveals the deep-seated mechanisms of control and violence that have been used to maintain power over the Kurdish nation, emphasizing the critical need to understand these dynamics within the broader context of Middle Eastern geopolitics.

While racializing political language about Muslims has been prevalent in Western Europe throughout modern history, the events of 9/11 and the bombings in Madrid further elevated political suspicion towards Islam, ultimately making Muslims a suspect community. Western European political discourses have framed acts of terrorism and radicalization as inherent to the Islamic tradition, resulting in problematic notions such as ‘Islamic terrorism. This article examines the evolving narratives on Islam and the intricate interplay between religion, language and political discourses in Belgium. The research is based on a Critical Discourse Analysis of debates held in the Belgian First Chamber of Representatives over a 21-year span. It focusses on how political language is used to talk about Muslims in Belgium and how radicalization and terrorism are intertwined with Islam. This research concludes that over time, Belgian political narratives have intertwined ‘radicalization’ and ‘terrorism’ to the religion of Islam, contributing to the racialization of these concepts. While 9/11 is viewed as a pivotal moment in the racialization discourse towards Muslims, this research identifies the Madrid bombings as a more significant catalyst for racializing political discourses. Both in terms of language and policies, the conflation of Islam with terrorism and radicalization became deeply embedded in political discourses and responses shaped by events such as the departure of Belgian nationals to Syria, the attacks in Paris and Brussels. A shift in narrative appears in 2017 with political discourses incorporating other ideologies, predominantly the extreme-right, into discussions on radicalization. The association of extreme right with the concept of terrorism however is less reoccurring and continues to revolve around the religion of Islam.

This article examines the encounters of Generation 1.5 Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) with the Orthodox establishment within the framework of weddings and burials in Israel. These Orthodox Jewish weddings and burials are referred to here as rituals of nonbelonging and provide a lens for understanding the role of rituals in the marginalisation and exclusion of immigrants and ethnic minorities from religious and national collectives. The article argues that rituals of nonbelonging originate in the more extensive politics of nonbelonging and reflect an exclusion that provokes negative emotions among marginalised minorities due to the perceived threats to social bonds.

The state of ethnic self-perception amongst Lezgins, one of Azerbaijan’s largest ethnic minorities, has been in constant realignment in the post-Soviet period, as borders both physical and cultural have been built up or brought down, facilitating a multifaceted perspective of members of the same ethnic community. In the contemporary context, relative ethnic isolation of portions of the Lezgin population has resulted in perceived characteristics becoming the focal point for individuals’ ethnic identities, with theories such as primordialism, perennialism, ethno-symbolism and modernism becoming the primary explanatory features for where these hypothetical lines may be drawn. The research on this case study has sought to see what differences in perceptions between Lezgin communities from different districts of Azerbaijan there are and to what degree it affects their ethno-political identity. Research through ethnographic narrative interviews has analyzed ethnic self-narratives of individuals from Azerbaijani regions of Qusar, Quba, Gabala, Ismayilli, Sheki and other districts. Findings have considered the main camps of ethno-nationalist identity and how it may affect the political dynamics of the broader Azerbaijani Lezgin community. On the basis of these findings, we have also sought to identify the theoretical void that renders the failure to inform different ethnic self-perceptions.

This article engages critically with Modood and Sealy’s typology of the governance of religious diversity. While welcoming their redefinition of secularism(s) as a means of governing religious diversity, we argue that it is also important to differentiate types of majoritarian nationalism. Focusing on the way that non-core groups are treated, we develop a fourfold typology of religious majoritarianism: hierarchical, assimilationist, dominant, and eliminationist. Focusing on the examples of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, we argue that majoritarian nationalism is not monolithic but contextually differentiated, shaped by institutional legacies, political strategies, and socio-religious hierarchies. Our analysis contributes to broader debates on nationalism and ethnic politics by mapping the dynamic interplay between state-led nationalism, religious identity, and the governance of diversity. We call for greater attention to the lived costs of majoritarianism and the contextual limits of multicultural remedies in the absence of broader structural and geopolitical changes.