The Shi’is of Iraq

"That is a very interesting demographic and sociological development. It is the reason why today we find tribes in Iraq that have both Shi’i members and Sunni members and it shows you the very close organic link between these two communities which are so often portrayed as so different and supposedly so hostile to one another. Yes absolutely. One of the key things of the book is to show how unique Iraqi Shi’ites are. They retain so many of their Arab tribal characteristics and in this they differ very much from their Iranian Shi’ite counterparts. In fact, the identity of Iraqi Shi’ites is formed in close proximity to their Sunni Arab counterparts. Above all they are, and feel they are, Arabs, and we saw this side of their identity become paramount during the Iraq-Iran war between 1980 and 1988. Having said that, it is important not to forget there always was a Shi’ite tradition in Iraq – it was born in Iraq. But the importance of Nakash’s book is he is telling us that in the 20th century they began to come into their own, and also from his book we learn how resistant the community’s own clerics were as regards any involvement with the new Iraqi state established by the British in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire."