Table of contents

Beginning in the 1950s with a clandestine call to Islam and continuing today with a more revolutionary approach, Iraq's Islamic reformers are altering what used to be the traditional Shi'i position of noninvolvement in politics. This work details the contemporary Islamic movement that has united Iraqi Shi'as and Sunnis alike and describes the philosophy of governing through Islamic law, a philosophy aimed largely at eliminating corruption and Western influence. In the process, the author sheds light on the social bases for the activists' reforms, their political ideology and the strategies of the movement.

Religion and Politics in Iraq features four chapters that outline the major political developments faced by Iraq's Muslim clerics from the end of the 19th century, under the ailing Ottoman empire, to the 1980s. This crucial period saw fierce internal struggles, foreign intervention and bloody persecution of the political opposition, as well as the emergence of a totalitarian one-party system with absolute control over all sectors of social and religious life. During this period, Baathist Iraq attacked its Muslim neighbours Kuwait and Iran and used poison gas in its "ethnic cleansing" campaign against the Kurds. This book focuses on the dilemma of Iraq's clerics within this setting, caught between political activism and quietism. It addresses also major developments in neighbouring Iran insofar as they had a bearing on Iraq.

"The Shii's of Iraq" provides a comprehensive history of Iraq's majority group and its turbulent relations with the ruling Sunni minority. Yitzhak Nakash challenges the widely held belief that Shi'i society and politics in Iraq are a reflection of Iranian Shi'ism, pointing to the strong Arab attributes of Iraqi Shi'ism. A new introduction brings this book into the new century and illuminates the role that Shi'is could play in a future Iraq after Saddam Hussein.

This book is the first comprehensive study of Islam and Islamism in Iraq. It begins by presenting the multitude of forms and structures of religion present there: from organized religion to the myriad patterns of popular religion, as well as the various Islamist social movements and organizations in existence. All serving social, political and economic functions that are complex and intricate. It also attempts to avoid the oversimplified current views on the nature of Islam and its roles within Iraq, especially with regard to the interplay between ethnicity and religion: the trilogy of Kurds, Shi'is and Sunnis, who presumably lead a strained, antagonistic relationship. While focusing on the unique nature of religion and state-religion tensions in Iraq, the book includes detailed comparisons with other Middle Eastern countries, mainly Iran.

The invasion of Iraq by American, British and other coalition forces has indeed transformed the Middle East, but not as the Bush and Blair administrations had imagined. It is Iran, not Western-style democracy, that has emerged as the big winner, creating a Tehran-Baghdad axis that would have been unthinkable before the war. THE END OF IRAQ is the definitive account of the US and UK's catastrophic involvement in Iraq, as told by America's leading independent expert on the country. Peter Galbraith reveals in exquisite detail how US policies -- some going back to the Reagan administration -- have now produced a nearly independent Kurdistan in the north, an Islamic state in the south, and uncontrollable insurgency in the centre, and an incipient Sunni-Shiite civil war that has Baghdad as its central front. Iraq, Galbraith argues, cannot be reconstructed as a single state. Instead, a sensible strategy must accept that it has already broken up and focus instead on stopping an escalating civil war. Unflinching, accessible and powerful, THE END OF IRAQ explores and explains the myriad mistakes and false assumptions that have brought the country to its current pass, and what must be done to prevent further bloodshed.