All politics is local. It may seem quaint in an age of social media. A study co-led by an MIT political scientist found that it may describe Middle East politics more accurately than people think.
Scrutiny of sectarian identity in the Muslim world, especially the split between the Shia and Sunni sects of Islam, is often described as a large divide between the Middle East and North Africa regions.
Sectarian identity is often intertwined with domestic politics and shaped in connection with local social interactions, according to an on-the-ground survey of Shiite Muslims.
Professor Fotini Christia, who directed the study, said that there was a different type of sectarian identity that wasn't focused on the international aspect.
The sectarian identity of participants in the study is not a matter of doctrine. It seems that men and women have different sectarian identities.
Christia says that it seems that local politics is seeping into an interpretation of the faith or of sectarian identity rather than the other way around. The gender aspect of this has been overlooked.
The paper "Evidence on the Nature of Sectarian Animosity: The Shia Case" is in Nature Human Behavior. Christia is the director of the MIT Sociotechnical Systems Research Center and is one of the authors.
There is research going on on the road to Karbala.
To conduct the study, the scholars designed a survey of Shiite pilgrims walking to Karbala for a collective mourning ritual at the shrine of the prophet Muhammad's grandson. The annual pilgrimage, banned under Saddam Hussein, is now one of the largest pilgrimages in the world.
The structure of the pilgrimage aided in the study. The most heavily traveled part of the pilgrimage is the 50-mile stretch from Najaf to Karbala. Christia was able to work on the ground in Iraq with a local research team to develop a survey of over 4,000 people in the Shia sect. Sixty percent of the participants were from Iraq, and 40 percent were from Iran.
In Iran, the Shia are the majority of Muslims, but a minority in almost every other mostly Muslim country and have received less attention from social scientists and other scholars.
There is more focus on the Sunni side of the Muslim world. It felt like a missing piece to not engage the Shia population in this type of research.
She says, "This is a chance to engage a religious population from Iran that we could never get in Iran."
The survey results show that sectarian animosity is linked to economic deprivation, political disillusionment, lack of out-group contact, and a sect-based view of domestic politics. sectarianism seems to operate more like ethno-nationalism, derived from local experiences and bringing itself to bear on national political issues, rather than a pan- Muslim view of social solidarity.
According to the survey data, an increase in household wealth leads to a decline in sectarian animosity, while a decrease in democratic government leads to an increase in sectarian animosity. Women in Shia dominated areas have more sectarian animosity. Domestic economic and political factors are more likely to affect sectarianism.
It's difficult to study the origins and correlation of animosity because the concepts are hard to measure. We take these issues very seriously and do a lot of research on them. We measure out-group contact with everything from self- reported information to smartphone-based location tracking and we quantify animosity through multiple approaches. We can use a variety of data sources to test theories about how and why people hold animosity.
The genders split and lived together.
The survey results show some gender differences. People who are more religious tend to be more sectarian than people who are less religious. What's the reason? The social activities of religious practice abet sectarianism by bringing people from only one sect together according to the scholars. This may have little impact on the world views of men who already work outside the home and have other ways of socializing. Women who practice religion more actively can increase their sectarian views.
In contrast to the public image of young Muslim men driving sectarian conflict, the link between democratic disillusion and sectarianism is driven by women. The researchers theorize that this is due to the greater opportunities for men to absorb differing views in the public sphere, while the more limited opportunities for women reinforce sectarian views.
Dekeyser says that providing a full, nuanced analysis of how men and women understand sectarianism is important. Ignoring the entirely different lived experiences across genders can both fail to examine critical variation in beliefs, and lead to incorrect social and political conclusions.
Most people's views are grounded in those concerns because lived experience is largely local. Christia thinks that people engaged in the Karbala pilgrimage organize themselves according to their place of origin.
Christia says that the event is a celebration of local identity for Shias from all over the place.
The study of sectarian animosity is necessary in order to fully understand the views of people in the Muslim world.
"So many other places where politics are problematic and we have been engaged in the Middle East, like Iraq or Syria or Lebanon or Yemen, have this sectarian aspect." There is a political aspect to religion and politics that is important.
More information: Fotini Christia et al, Evidence on the nature of sectarian animosity from a geographically representative survey of Iraqi and Iranian Shia pilgrims, Nature Human Behavior (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01358-y Journal information: Nature Human BehaviourMIT News ( web.mit.edu/newsoffice/) is a popular site that covers news about MIT.
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