The Politics of Monumentalizing Trauma: Visual Use of Martyrdom in the Memorialization of the Iraq-Iran War

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-132
Author(s):  
Nina Zietlow
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Collective Trauma ◽  
Islamic Republic ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
National Trauma ◽  
Self Image

This poster focuses on three mediums of commemoration: the monument, the memorial, and the museum as tools of state-sanctioned memory creation, and thereby spaces for politicized rituals of memory which further state-building projects. Specifically, during and after The Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) the al-Shaheed Monument (1983), and the Victory Arch (1989) in Baghdad and the Martyrs’ Museum (1996) in Tehran functioned as politically strategic representations of collective trauma. Both the Ba'ath party in Iraq and the emerging Islamic Republic in Iran used these sites to render and politicize memories of violence and loss. Despite obvious differences, the projects in Baghdad and Tehran appealed to a need to address national trauma while bolstering idealized images of statehood. The Ba'athist party under Saddam Hussein capitalized on the collective trauma of the Iraq-Iran war to further a hegemonic Sunni identity, which was both religious and political. The use of immense scale, vulgar displays of power, and Islamic imagery in both the al-Shaheed Monument and Victory Arch linked Sunni and Ba'athist causes and allowed Hussein to characterize the Iran-Iraq War as a sacred project of national and religious vindication. Similarly, the Martyrs’ Museum in Tehran constructs a specific version of history using motifs of the Battle of Karbala, Imam Husayn, martyr and civilian deaths, and blood to tie Iranian national identity to ritualized Shia martyrdom. The Martyrs’ Museum parallels the religification of national identity as seen in Iraq, and configures death as a public, religiopolitical act. Despite Ba'athist Iraq's secular self-image, the strategic harnessing of trauma both Iraq and Iran demonstrates a constructed connection between political state hegemony, religious practice, and rituals of grief. In these ways, state propagated imagery through physical commemorations of the Iran-Iraq War furthered the political – and resulting religious – sectarian divide in the official positions of the two nations.

Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations in Comparison

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Nader Sohrabi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Development ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
Constitutional Revolution

The history of both modern Turkey and modern Iran have often been told through their founding figures, Atatürk and Reza Shah, whose state-building projects are often assumed to have been similar. This chapter compares the Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire of 1908 with the Constitutional Revolution in Iran in 1906 to point to both similarities and differences in the trajectories of these two countries in the early twentieth century. Both revolutions, it is argued, were foundational moments for the political development and processes of each country and are key to understanding the context in which Atatürk and Reza Shah emerged.

Church, State, and Hellenism

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-100
Author(s):  
Paschalis M. Kitromilides
Keyword(s):  
Canon Law ◽  
State Building ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Of Greece

The chapter examines the formation of a Greek national Church and its role in the political life of the country. The emergence of an independent (autocephalous) Orthodox Church in the kingdom of Greece is considered in connection with the issue of autocephaly in canon law and the debates it provoked. It is pointed out that Greek autocephaly set a precedent for the subsequent emergence of other autocephalous churches in the Orthodox communion as part of the nation- and state-building projects of the respective national societies. The multiplicity of ecclesiastical jurisdictions in the Greek state are discussed as a record bearing the traces of the unification and national integration of Greece. Penultimately, the role of the Orthodox Church of Greece as national Church and the interplay of ecclesiastical and secular politics is examined. The close connection of Church and politics in Greek society is illustrated by pointing out that periods of political instability and subversion of constitutional government in twentieth-century Greece have provoked ‘archiepiscopal questions’ in ecclesiastical life. Lastly, the main issues in Church–State relations in post-1974 Greece are surveyed and appraised.

Maps and Spaces

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-145
Author(s):  
Christine Noelle-Karimi
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Middle East ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
The Past

Students of Afghan history come up against two sets of academic demarcations and appropriations. First, as Nile Green points out in his introduction to this roundtable, Afghanistan as a field of study tends to fall off the edge of the scholarly traditions associated with the regional denominations of the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia. Second, the tendency to view history through the lens of present-day national entities presents an impediment to historical inquiry and not only in Afghanistan. The attempt to streamline the past to fit a consistent narrative of state-building may serve to foster a national identity, yet it is of little use in gaining a deeper understanding of the political, social, and economic processes at work in a given period.

The Yemeni Uprising of 2011

2015 ◽  
pp. 608-624
Author(s):  
Atiaf Alwazir
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Development ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
Constitutional Revolution

The history of both modern Turkey and modern Iran have often been told through their founding figures, Atatürk and Reza Shah, whose state-building projects are often assumed to have been similar. This chapter compares the Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire of 1908 with the Constitutional Revolution in Iran in 1906 to point to both similarities and differences in the trajectories of these two countries in the early twentieth century. Both revolutions, it is argued, were foundational moments for the political development and processes of each country and are key to understanding the context in which Atatürk and Reza Shah emerged.

scholarly journals Use of Religious Doctrine and Symbolism in the Iran-Iraq War

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-107
Author(s):  
Ardalan Rezamand
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic Republic ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Economic Warfare

The political and economic isolation of the Islamic Republic, brought on by its ideological rejection of Western and Soviet influences, gave greater weight to the use of religion in a pragmatic, compensatory fashion. In particular, political leaders of Iran used Islamic doctrines, symbolism, and language to legitimize their wartime policy. I argue that Iran’s political leaders specifically reconstructed certain Islamic tenets, both via the ahadith and juristic precedence, in order to justify military actions such as retaliation against non-combatants, human wave attacks, and economic warfare.

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