Pilgrimaging with Pope Francis in Iraq

By Sardar Aziz 

For the first time in history, a Vatican pope, Pope Francis arrived in Baghdad on 5 March. The trip lasted four eventful days. He was welcomed by the Iraqi PM, government, members of Christian communities and members of the diplomatic corps.
This was the third time lucky as two previous plans for visiting Iraq by the Pope were cancelled for obvious security reasons.  Officials in the Iraqi government aimed at turning the trip into a political event. “A political event,” according to Iain MacKenzie (2008: 28), “ is a counter-actualisation of a turning point in the virtual but nonetheless real domain of intensive political relations; a domain which political theorists usually refer to as 'the political’”. 
 
The governing elites hoped to turn the visit into a rupture with the status quo and send a positive image of the country to the world. The visit was significant in many ways, hence, worthy of reflections. 

The current government is a caretaker one and under pressure both internally and externally. The demonstrations that started in October 2019, dubbed locally as the October revolution, demand the end of the current political elite’s power. The Iraqi state is conceptualised by these demonstrators as the non-state, or ladaula (Aziz, 2020). There is widespread disenchantment with the government and the elites. The main slogan of the youths has been “we want a homeland”,  “we want a country” (Ali & Khalaf, 2019).
 
The slogans are a cry for a lost country, a country that has been divided between a regional power (Iran) and a global power (US) (Al-marashi, 2021). After the official reception on Friday, the Pope met with bishops, priests, religious, consecrated persons, seminarians and catechists at the Syro-Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad. He visited the church that was bombed by the terrorists in the past. This was a calculated spatial exercise.  He called “God to bring peace” as he tweeted on March 7, “to this [Iraqi] land”. In a terrorised space he cried, “we say ‘no’ to terrorism and the manipulation of religion”. 

Christians in Iraq and in the wider Middle East are facing a difficult time. Iraq has been home to many religions, faiths, ethnicities and nationalities throughout a long history. But the “invention” (Dodge, 2005) of the Iraqi state by the British in the 1920s was the beginning of a tragedy for the people in the country. Iraq started with a war against minorities, as Kanan Makiya (1998) shows in the Republic of Fear. Such an act is no stranger to the nation-state. The nation state does not begin with the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, as Mahmood Mamdani convincingly argues.  In his book Neither Settler nor Native (2020), he “traces the founding moment of the modern state instead to 1492. That year marked the beginning of the nation-state, the endurance of which was later secured by Westphalian tolerance. The nation-state was born of two developments in Iberia. One was ethnic cleansing, whereby the Castilian monarchy sought to create a homogeneous national homeland for Christian Spaniards by ejecting and converting those among them who were strangers to the nation—Moors and Jews. The other development was the taking of overseas colonies in the Americas by the same Castilian monarchy that spearheaded ethnic cleansing” (2020: 2). According to Mamdani (2020: 3) “The birth of the modern state amid ethnic cleansing and overseas domination teaches us a different lesson about what political modernity is: less an engine of tolerance than of conquest”. 

The Iraqi state throughout its emergence harmed every community in the country, albeit differently. Since the 2003 US invasion more than a million Christians have been displaced to Kurdistan or forced to leave the country. This resulted in the situation that some call ‘close to extinction’ or being ‘decimated’. Some people hope that the Pope’s visit would become a healing mission for ‘Post-Genocide’ Iraq (White, 2021).

After Baghdad the Pope travelled to Najaf: the holy city of the Shia Muslims. Currently, Najaf is the most important political centre in Iraq. It is a city where sacred and secular are intermingled. The city not only shapes Iraqi politics, it plays a pivotal role in the Shia regional ambition. But above all the city is the centre for a branch of Shia that counters Iranian Wilayat al-Faqih, a doctrine authored by Ayatollah Khomeini during his exile in the city. Competition between the two sides is a low-level civil war within the Shia community in the region.  
When it comes to Catholicism and Shia there are numerous overlapping structures between the two sides. Bill & Williams (2002: 143) enumerate eight significant areas “the significance of the passion of innocent victims, the belief that God’s grace and gifts are mediated through sacred personages, the centrality of a sorrowful mother figure at the heart of a holy family that represents the social foundation of the faith system, the influence of Platonic and Aristotelian thought on theologians, importance of mystical movements, the role of martyrdom and redemptive suffering, the recognition of legal systems based on the premise that all power derives from God and finally, drive for the establishment of social and political systems that will provide justice, liberty, and security. This makes Shia and Roman Catholicism have several striking structural similarities.“
The Iranian born Ali Sistani regularly intervenes in private and public affairs. He is seen as detached from the political process, and supportive of a civil, democratic, and non-theocratic state. Despite all this, he is a figure above the state and puts Iraqi state sovereignty in question. It is hard to imagine any Iraqi state act without taking into consideration his possible reactions. The unprecedented Pope’s visit was marked as the National Day of Tolerance and Coexistence" in Iraq (Vatican News, 2021).

In fact, Iraq requires tolerance more than anything else, but tolerance is a complex concept and the situation requires a long walk and many changes. From the stares there is a conceptual issue when it comes to tolerance, both the Kurdish and the Arabic translation is at best a mistranslation. The Arabic translation of tolerance is  التسامح  (permission) and the Kurdish translation is لێبوردن (forgiving). According to Adonis, the Arabic translation of the current concept of “tolerance” is a disguise. It contributes to creating a false impression. For tolerance to become reality it is not enough that Islam and Christianity tolerate each other. Tolerance is essentially a secular concept. Both Christians and Muslims have to be regarded as citizens, as the Abu Dhabi document stresses: “The concept of citizenship is based on the equality of rights and duties, under which all enjoy justice. It is therefore crucial to establish in our societies the concept of full citizenship and reject the discriminatory use of the term minorities which engenders feelings of isolation and inferiority” (Abu Dhabi Document, 2019). 
 
The visit to al-Najaf was not without criticism. The Iraqi Sunnis complained of their being sidelined; however, from the Vatican’s perspective the meeting with Sunnis occurred in 2019 in UAE, when the Pope met with the Sunni Muslim leaders in order to share a document, entitled “A Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together.” The meeting was also not received well by the other competitive pole of the two Shia groups, namely the Qom seminary.  

Following the Najaf's visit, the Pope flew to Nassirya for an interreligious meeting at the Plain of Ur. Ur is a Sumerian city. Most biblical commentators assume that Abraham was born in Ur and that his family later migrated northwards to Haran. The Bible (Gen. 11: 28; 11: 31; 15: 7; Neh. 9: 7) refers to the place of Abraham’s birth as Ur Kasdim, literally “Ur of the Chaldeans.” (Yeshiva, 2016)
 
It is worth mentioning that Abraham has emerged as a unifier among the three religions in the last decade. There is a “shift in nomenclature from ‘monotheistic’ to ‘Abrahamic’ as a “desire for greater cooperation among faith communities” (Bakhos, 2014: 4). Building commonalities among these religions is a project of the Harvard Divinity School. From the political and diplomatic perspective of the latest peace efforts between the Sunni Arab Gulf states and Israel this aspect was not missed. “We encourage efforts to promote interfaith and intercultural dialogue to advance a culture of peace among the three Abrahamic religions and all humanity”, stated the Abraham Accords Declaration, (US department of State, 2020)
 
Today the city of Nassirya is one of the poorest provinces of Iraq and demonstrations have shaken the city. The locals hoped the visit would bring the plight of their city to the attention of the outside world and later on attract tourists to the numerous ancient sites in the province.       

On Sunday morning, Pope Francis departed for Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government. Before visiting Erbil city, the pope flew by helicopter to Mosul: the city that was chosen by ISIS to be its capital. Today Mosul is in complete ruin. Most of its population is categorised as internally displaced peoples, IDPs. Mosul is located on the plain of Naenava where many Christians were living prior to the emergence of ISIS. The Pope prayed for the victims of war at Hosh al-Bieaa (Church Square). Then he visited the Qaraqosh community at the Church of the Immaculate Conception.

On his return to Erbil, the Pope celebrated Holy Mass at the “Franso Hariri” stadium. The relationship between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Vatican is strong. A few years ago, as part of a delegation from the regional parliament, I visited the Vatican where we were received by the Vatican Secretary of State. Kurdistan is the only place in Iraq where Christians can live freely and conduct their daily lives in peace. They are represented in the local parliament and government. 

The motto of the trip was “You are all brothers,” taken from Matthew 23: 8 and written in Arabic, Chaldean, and Kurdish
 
You are all brothers is a wish. But brotherhood does not indicate peace, either. Brotherhood is a desire. The latter is nothing but a lack, a lack of the real object. The trip was successful and impressive. Will it change anything in future yet to be seen. The political elites consumed it at its most, Catholic News Agency (2021).

---------------------------------
Sardar Aziz is a senior adviser in the Kurdish parliament as well as a researcher and writer. His areas of interest include Middle East regional politics, Kurdish local and international politics, civil-military relations, and governing. He holds a Ph.D. in Government from the University College Cork. He writes in English and Kurdish. He advises governments, organizations and companies. He lives between Ireland and the Middle East. His works have been translated into Italian and Arabic. 




Bibliography 


Al-Marashi, Ibrahim (2021), Baghdad in the Middle: Iraq’s Negotiation of its Constrained Sovereignty during the Trump Presidency, journal od South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2 Winter. 

Ali, Zahra and  Khalaf, Safaa (2019)  In Iraq, demonstrators demand change — and the government fights back, Washington Post, Monkey Cage, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/10/iraq-protestors-demand-change-government-is-fighting-back/

Bakhos, Carol (2014) The Family of Abraham, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Interpretations, Harvard University Press 

Bill, James & Williams, John (2002) Roman Catholics and Shi'i Muslims: Prayer, Passion, and Politics, North Carolina UP

Catholic News Agency (2021) Iraq: Papal visit logo unveiled amid uncertainty over Pope Francis’ March trip, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/iraq-papal-visit-logo-unveiled-amid-uncertainty-over-pope-francis-march-trip 

Dodge, Toby (2005) Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied,

MacKenzie, Iain (2008) What is a Political Event? Theory and Event, 11 (3).

Makiya Kanan (1998) Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq, University of California Press.  
Mamdani, Mahmood (2020) Neither Settler nor Native, Harvard University Press 

Reuters (2010) ادونيس.. عن التكفير والتفكير والتسامح وأمور اخرى, https://www.reuters.com/article/oegen-book-tolerance-ah2-idARACAE61R06Y20100228

US department of State, (2020) The Abraham Accords, https://www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords/ Vatican news, (2021), Iraq declares 6 March "National Day of Tolerance and Coexistence, https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2021-03/ayuso-joy-over-meeting-with-grand-ayatollah-al-sistani.html

White, Christopher, (2021) The Pope Is on a Mission to Heal Post-Genocide Iraq, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/24/pope-francis-is-on-a-mission-to-heal-post-genocide-iraq/

Yeshiva, Mir (2016) Nahmanides' Understanding of Abraham's Mesopotamian Origins, Jewish Bible Quarterly



Popular posts from this blog

Suicide bombing as a method of political violence in the MENA region: A new research perspective

Image
  An Afghan police officer receives treatment for wounds sustained in a suicide bombing. Source: Wiki commons. By Sean McCafferty Introduction The prevalence of suicide Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attacks in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has drawn significant attention from academia. Although over the past 10 years the number of suicide bombings have proliferated, becoming a consistent feature of intra-state conflicts (AOAV, 2019), existing approaches to understanding political violence in the MENA region have not done enough to offer meaningful and non-Orientalist analysis. As a result, this piece argues that there is a pressing need to move in a new direction.   In the aftermath of 9/11 and the ensuing ‘War on Terror,’ academia became focused on the psychology of suicide bombers (Ward, 2018: 88), often concluding that this form of political violence is driven by cultural or religious factors indigenous to the MENA region. This overwhelming focus on individual psycholo
Read more

Rape, colonialism and the ongoing after effects of trauma

Image
  Adania Shibli by Ronit Lentin Review of Adania Shibli (2020) Minor Detail, London: Fitzcaraldo Editions (translated by Elisabeth Jaquette), 112 pp, £12.99 On 12 August 1949 the atmosphere at the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) outpost in Nirim in the Naqab desert near the Gaza Strip was particularly festive. It was the end of an arduous week of dusty chases in the western Naqab sand dunes after Palestinian ‘infiltrators,’ refugees attempting to get back to the homes they had been expelled from by the colonizing Zionist forces. The platoon commander, lieutenant ‘Moshe,’ told his soldiers to get the dining tent ready for a party. Tables were set with sweets and wine and at eight o’clock, he gave his soldiers a pep talk about Zionism and the important contribution they were making to the newly established State of Israel. Towards the end of the party ‘Moshe’ reminded his soldiers of the 12 year old Bedouin girl they had captured earlier that day, now locked up in one of the huts.  He gave t
Read more

The Impact of the Arab Spring on Palestine

Image
By Yaser Alashqar As outlined in this commentary, my research has been concerned with the continuing impact of the Arab Spring uprisings on the question of Palestine. Erupting in December 2010 in Tunisia, the movements of popular protests swept through other key states in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region and included Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and Libya in 2011. The collective protests focused on challenging similar grievances such as authoritarianism, political mismanagement, oppressive security regimes, the lack of economic opportunities and freedom. Although previous scholarly work has demonstrated that the Palestinian experience of the Intifada (popular uprising) and the Palestinian cause held an important place in the consciousness of Arab Spring protesters , the sudden wave of protests across the Arab world has posed a difficult challenge to the centrality of the Palestinian question in Middle Eastern affairs. Arab states and peoples became extremely preoccupied
Read more