Exploring a new political phenomenon in the Middle East, this book studies the reconciliation of nationalism and Islamism by Islamic political parties in the context of nation states. Islamism in Kurdistan has become significantly framed by the politics of nationalism. Although the concept of religious nationalism has been discussed substantially before, this work highlights a new brand of religious nationalism that has emerged as a result of intertwining nationalism and Islamism. The focus of this study is on the development of religious nationalism in the continuously tumultuous region of the Middle East. The volume investigates whether Islamism in Kurdistan is limited by the politics of nationalism – which is an accentuated example for the whole Middle East region. By looking at the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), the research studies Islamism in the Kurdistan Region to elaborate on this new type of politics. This is essentially due to the absence of a politically recognised nation state, which renders Kurds to be particularly susceptible to various manifestations of nationalism. Offering an account on the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Kurdistan Region, this original research on Kurdish nationalism will be a key text for students and researchers interested in nationalism, Islamism and Middle East politics.

"Over ninety years since their absorption into the modern Iraqi state, the Kurdish people of Iraq still remain an apparent anomaly in the modern world - a nation without a state. In 'The Kurds of Iraq', Mahir Aziz explores this incongruity, and asks the pertinent questions, who are the Kurds today? What is their relationship to the Iraqi state? How do they perceive themselves and their prospective political future? And in what way are they crucial for the stability of the Iraqi state? In the wake of the Gulf War of 1991 in the face of the Iraqi state, the Kurds endeavoured to create a de facto state and to concretise and stabilise the institutions that would enable this. 'The Kurds of Iraq' thus examines the creation, evolution and development of Kurdish nationalism despite the suppression of its political and cultural manifestations. Through extensive interviews in the field, Aziz assesses the impact of recent history on the complex process of identity formation amongst Kurdish students at three of the nation's leading universities. He provides an in depth examination of students' socio-economic backgrounds, and their thoughts on and experiences of what it means to be Kurdish in the modern Iraqi state, and the impact this has on their perception of their language, culture and religion. Aziz's invaluable and extensive field research furthermore serves as a point of departure for an investigation into the relationship between national identity and historical memory in Iraqi Kurdistan and beyond. He thus analyses wider issues of the intersection and interdependency of national, regional, ethnic, tribal and local identities. He thus constructs an intimate portrait of the Kurds of Iraq, which will provide an important insight for students and researchers of the Middle East and for those interested the important issues of nationalism and ethnic identity in the modern nation state, and the impact these issues have on the stability of Iraq itself."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Highlighting Iraqi women's voices, this is an examination of women, gender and feminisms in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion.

Amidst changing notions of religion and identity in the modern Middle East, this book uncovers the hidden story of Ahmad Moftizadeh, the nonviolent religious leader of Iran’s Kurds during the Iranian Revolution. The characters of Ayatollah Khomeini and a number of other prominent revolutionaries surface through never before heard first-hand accounts of that era’s events. The author further surveys the underlying causes of conflict and extremism today by placing this dramatic biography in the context of a rapidly-evolving region after the First World War. The author’s coverage of some of the twentieth century Middle East’s most defining events leads him to powerful policy arguments for a region in turmoil.

In tracing the evolution of Kurdish nationalism, Denise Natali shows that, contrary to popular theories, there is nothing natural or fixed about Kurdish identity or the configuration that Kurdish nationalism assumes. Rather, Kurdish nationalism has been shaped by the development of nation-states in the region. Although Kurdish communities have maintained some shared sense of Kurdishness, Kurdayeti (the mobilization of Kurdish identity) is interwoven with a much larger series of identities within the "political space" of each Kurdish group. Different notions of inclusion and exclusion have modified the political and cultural opportunities of Kurds to express their ethnic identities, and opening the possibility of assuming alternative identities over time. With this book Natali makes a significant contribution to theoretical, empirical, and policy-based scholarship on the Middle East, the plight of the Kurds, ethnonationalism, and ethnopolitical conflict. Hers is the first comparative work to examine Kurdish nationalism as a function of diverse political spaces. As a vital addition to the literature in the field, this book will supplant a number of standard texts on the Kurds.

The Cambridge History of the Kurds is an authoritative and comprehensive volume exploring the social, political and economic features, forces and evolution amongst the Kurds, and in the region known as Kurdistan, from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. Written in a clear and accessible style by leading scholars in the field, the chapters survey key issues and themes vital to any understanding of the Kurds and Kurdistan including Kurdish language; Kurdish art, culture and literature; Kurdistan in the age of empires; political, social and religious movements in Kurdistan; and domestic political developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Other chapters on gender, diaspora, political economy, tribes, cinema and folklore offer fresh perspectives on the Kurds and Kurdistan as well as neatly meeting an exigent need in Middle Eastern studies. Situating contemporary developments taking place in Kurdish-majority regions within broader histories of the region, it forms a definitive survey of the history of the Kurds and Kurdistan.

Under the Ottoman Empire, Kurdistan was the name given to the province in which the Kurds, a nomadic non-Arab ethnic group, formed the largest population. This work features the history of Kurdistan, its people, history and culture. It considers the plight of the oppressed Kurdish minority in the modern nations of Iraq, Iran and Turkey.

Since the early twentieth-century, Kurds have challenged the borders and national identities of the states they inhabit. Nowhere is this more evident than in their promotion of the 'Map of Greater Kurdistan', an ideal of a unified Kurdish homeland in an ethnically and geographically complex region. This powerful image is embedded in the consciousness of the Kurdish people, both within the region and, perhaps even more strongly, in the diaspora. Addressing the lack of rigorous research and analysis of Kurdish politics from an international perspective, Zeynep Kaya focuses on self-determination, territorial identity and international norms to suggest how these imaginations of homelands have been socially, politically and historically constructed (much like the state territories the Kurds inhabit), as opposed to their perception of being natural, perennial or intrinsic. Adopting a non-political approach to notions of nationhood and territoriality, Mapping Kurdistan is a systematic examination of the international processes that have enabled a wide range of actors to imagine and create the cartographic image of greater Kurdistan that is in use today.

This powerful argument reassess radical Islam and the set of ideas and assumptions at its core. Olivier Roy offers a challenging and highly original view that no-one trying to understand Islamic fundamentalism can afford to overlook.