State and Religion in Iraq: The Sufi Insurgency of the Former Baʿth Regime in Historical Context

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, Iraqi society has experienced profound crises in its transition from a strong centralized state under secular Baʿth Party authoritarianism to a new weak but still authoritarian federal state that is dominated by Shiʿi Islamist parties and plagued by factionalism, open sectarian competition, and conflict. A comprehensive scrutiny of the country's recent historical ruptures and continuities that pertain to the relations between the state and religion in particular is still a desideratum in contemporary Iraq studies. The extent to which thirty-five years of Baʿthi dictatorship transformed and lastingly shaped Iraq's diverse religious landscape is still not yet fully understood. Following the US-led invasion, the former regime was well-remembered for its repression and atrocities against almost all segments of society, but its image and the long-held notion and memory of it as “atheist” and “antireligious” are increasingly being challenged. Moreover, sectarian conflicts and violence since 2005 reveal an ongoing conflict over the interpretive sovereignty and ownership of famous religious sites of memory, such as shrines and mosques, between the various factions in Iraq. Beginning with the Iran–Iraq War in 1980, the Baʿth regime lavishly sponsored Sunni and Shiʿi shrines and advertised them in its religious war propaganda all over the country as sites of memory for the Iraqi and Arab nation. Many of these religious sites were surrounded by a certain confessional ambiguity and constitute memorials and meeting places for Sunnis and Shiʿis equally. After the fall of the regime, this ambiguity sparked sectarian competition over these sites since both communities often associated with one and the same shrine quite different memories of the same saintly figure, or they disagreed about who was buried there. Radical jihadist Salafis, in turn, generally rejected them as un-Islamic and even associated them with the old regime from 2014 onward.