The uses of historical memory

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 16, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 54-68

  Davis, Eric ^a,b  

^a Department of Political Science ^*

^b Rutgers University   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 23744466260     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.2005.0042     Document Type: Review

References (21)

1. A recent Iraqi Prospect Organization poll of eight hundred university students in Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul typifies this problem. Support for democracy was overwhelming, but the students seemed at a loss as to how democracy might be achieved. See, "Iraqi Youth Desire Democracy, but Do Not Know How to Achieve It," al-Hayat (London), 22 March 2005.
2. Eric Davis, Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 4.
3. Eric Davis, Memories of State, 29-108;
4. for more on Iraqi nationalist activism and peaceful civic protest under the Hashemite monarchy, see Adeed Dawisha, "Democratic Attitudes and Practices in Iraq," Middle East Journal 59 (Winter 2005): 11-30.
5. Disproportionately Sunni Arab, pan-Arab nationalists dominated the army's officer corps, the police forces, and the security services. One of the most prominent, Colonel Salah al-Din al-Sabbagh, led the pro-Axis May 1941 uprising against British forces in Iraq. His memoirs, The Knights of Arabism in Iraq (in Arabic), were published in Damascus in 1956.
6. For examples of pan-Arabist thinking, see al-Sabbagh's memoirs and also the reminiscences of King Faisal I's director-general of education, Khaldun Satic al-Husari, My Memoirs in Iraq, 1920-1941 (in Arabic, 2 vols., Beirut: Dar al-Talica, 1967).
7. For example, the Baath Party leader in the Shi'ite shrine city of Karbala told me in May 1980 that the city's youth were sent to summer camps in the Kurdish north. His account of camp activities made it clear that their goal was to strip campers of their sense of Shi'ite identity.
8. Sami Zubaida, "The Fragments Imagine the Nation: The Case of Iraq," International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 34 (May 2002): 207, 211.
9. For a discussion of the activity of Shi'ite clerics at this early stage of modern Iraq's political development, see Abd al-Halim al-Rahimi, The History of the Islamic Movement in Iraq, 1900-1924 (Beirut: al-Dar al-Alamiya li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi, 1985) (Arabic).
10. Falih Abd al-Jabbar, "Iraq: A Religious or Secular State?" al-Hayat (London), 20 February 2005.
11. For a discussion of the Sunni Arab insurgency, see Eric Davis, "Iraq's Sunni Clergy Enter the Fray," Religion in the News, Winter 2005, 9-11, 24.
12. "An Association of Muslim Scholars' Spokesperson: Suicide Bombers Will Suffer the Fate of Going to Hell Because Their Resistance Is Directed Against the Iraqi People and Not the Occupation," al-Ahali (Baghdad), 6 October 2004.
13. As an example, see "Political, Religious Parties Seek to Create an Alliance," al-Nahda (Baghdad), 22 March 2004, which reported that the Association of Muslim Scholars held meetings with Ayatollah Sistani and other Hawza members.
14. For a discussion of the Iraqi working class, see Eric Davis, "History for the Many or History for the Few? The Historiography of the Iraqi Working Class," in Zachary Lockman, ed., Workers and Working Classes in the Middle East: Struggles, Histories, Historiographies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 271-301.
15. See, for example, the memoirs of the 1991 anti-Saddam uprising written by a former Republican Guard major-general, Najib al-Salihi, The Earthquake: What Happened in Iraq After the Withdrawal of Forces From Kuwait? (London: al-Rafid, 1998), esp. 28-32 (in Arabic).
16. For other Iraqi expatriate writings in response to the Baathist regime's suppression of the uprising, and their efforts to highlight a more politically and culturally tolerant past, see, Davis, Memories of State, esp. notes 98-99, 113, 115, 117, and 119-21 on pp. 347-49.
17. For a discussion of the resistance by intellectuals to Baathist rule, see Eric Davis, Memories of State, especially ch. 8, "Memories of State and the Arts of Resistance," 200-26.
18. These were among the themes of a recent conference, "The Civic Mission of the Iraqi University," that the U.S. Institute of Peace sponsored in Dokan, Iraq, 13-14 March 2005, and which the author attended.
19. "Internet Cafes Spread Widely in Iraq," BBC Arabic News, 7 July 2003.
20. "Koranic Duel Eases Terror," Christian Science Monitor, 5 February 2005.
21. "85 percent of Iraqi Youth are Against Violence, While News and Music Represent Their Most Prominent Interests," al-Hayat, 22 February 2005.