The Iraqi ID through the Iraqi HIST - Part. 1

v The Monarchy:

Although the Iraqi historians confess that the English colonizer had offered a lot of positive things for the Iraqi society starting from theatre and cinema and ending up with the trains but that wasn’t enough for the Iraqis at that time because the English colonizer chose to keep the good things he brought to his ‘mollycoddle colony’ for just specific people; the non Iraqi king, Sunnis, Jews, soldiers and officers. All the English tries to develop Iraq was mainly focused on the oil regions; that’s why we see theatres and cinemas in areas like Baghdad as the capital and the city of the highest percentage of Jewish population in Iraq and Basra as one of the very wealthy areas of oil in Iraq. And that’s why we see these two cities more modernized and developed than the other ones. Which means that the English colonizer wasn’t really better than the Ottoman one (Maybe he was more peaceful or more diplomatic) and he wasn’t really looking after the comfort of its ‘mollycoddle colony’!
That’s why Shi’ites in Iraq were one of the main reasons of the success of Iraqi revolution (The 20’s revolution as Iraqis called it). They have been discriminated by the English colonizer and the monarchy even though King Faisal once mentioned in his diaries that it annoys him when he hears people saying: “the death for Shi’ites, the hunger for Shi’ites, but the jobs for Sunnis” and he tried as much as he can to make Shi’ites have a good life in Iraq when he was ruling Iraq but that was out of his hand because as long as most of Shi’ites are poor, Britain will never find an importance for those people.
Afterward, the history changed and the Shi’ites had the chance to be part of the Iraqi society and its different classes not only as a bunch of poor farmers but also as an economic and political power.
Among the first thirty years of the last century, Jews were the highest population in Baghdad and they were the ones who took control over the Iraqi market. Also, they established a new Iraqi music at that time after they kept the secrets of Iraqi Maqams for a long time without teaching them to any not trusted person. They established all the show places for music and dancing. They moved many western ideas or styles to the streets of Baghdad and broke the red lines of not allowing women to sing at night clubs for example or the bad look toward those who want to play music all the time and work in it professionally which is not an acceptable thing in the Iraqi society back then; they just think that a Musician doesn’t really know how to make money by a ‘noble’ job, that’s why he chose to sing! But that wasn’t the case after what the Iraqi Jews did; they formatted the whole Iraqi mentality in several years with the help of their money and the English colonizer. Then, Baghdad started having most of its women wearing short skirts without being criticized, finishing their higher studies abroad, and participating in the whole social and political life.
It doesn’t really matter if the Jews were doing that just for their own benefit but what all Iraqis believe in is that Iraqi Jewish community has been always a quite one which didn’t have that much of political power because that was for the Sunnis more than anyone else. It’s a local community that has its finger stamps on the Iraqi history and the process of the Human development even if Iraq lost most of them after they immigrated to Israel or forced to (That’s still debatable).
Then, the immigration of Iraqi Jews gave the chance for the Shi’ites to take control over trading and they proved their goodness in that. For sure, that was annoying Sunnis at the beginning but afterward the unity of Sunnis and Shi’ites to fight against the English enemy made them focus on one aim.
Hanna Batatu talked in his book “Shi’ites of Iraq” about that in details and he explained how the Shi’ites weren’t really trying to identify themselves as Shi’ites even though they have been discriminated because of their sect, but they just didn’t have this actual conscious of the religious identity. At that time, they didn’t have any type of organized religious movements which aim to educate people and conscript them for specific reasons. The domination of Mullahs was serving the seigneurs who were serving the monarchy and it’s colonizer. And after all that was just a try to classify the Iraqi society and take it apart: “Traders were being classified not only ethnically (Arabs, Kurds, Turkmans, Aramaeans, and Armenians) but also according to their classes and their fortune” (Batatu 11)
“The monarchy tried to classify the Iraqi society in the following way: Religiously, Muslims over Christians, Jews, and Sabians. Sectarialy, Sunnis over Shi’ites. Ethnically, gorgonians and Turks over Arabs, Kurds, and Persians. And socially, pashas first, head officers, Sufi and Sunni leaders, then traders”. (18)
Politically, the Shi’ites never had any effect on the power itself, they had some times were they were able to express their voices but the actual presidential power has never been Shi’ite among the last century. Maybe Qasem was their favorite one because his mother was a Shi’ite Kurdish (Akrad Filia – which means a Shi’ite Kurd who immigrated to the south or the capital because of their sect and they can speak Arabic but many of them can speak none of the four Kurdish main languages because they are more ‘Arabized’).
Moreover, we need to have a look at the social classes during the time of monarchy away from Baghdad. We will see that the other parts of Iraq were under the domination of tribes and Mullahs. During the monarchy time, Belonging to Arabic roots especially in the country-sides was a very important thing and many of the tribes were using it to get power and fortune. Actually, tribes (as a very Arab thing that the Arab history was built on) were used in a way that kept the Iraqi farmers and tribes’ individuals away from civilization and close to the abuse of colonizer, monarchy, seigneurs, Mullahs, traders and Sheikhs of tribes.
Arab Nationalism reached Iraq at that time especially during and after the second world war and the Iraqi Arab Nationalists were supporting Germany because they had the same hate for U.K and its supporting for Israel. Those Arab nationalists encouraged Germany to kill the Jews and they asked all Iraqis to kill the Iraqi Jews. One of them was called Rashed Ali Al- Kilani who made a revolution that lasted for months and then failed against the English. And he cooperated in making holocausts against Kurds, Assyrians, Communists, and Jews. He was one of those Arab extremists who wanted to keep just the Arabs and Sunnis in Iraq.
At the time of Iraqi monarchy, you can conclude that the Iraqi identity seems confused. It suffer from discrimination according to the sects, religions, ethnicities, and classes. People were having many inside wars with the other Iraqi on a side and with the colonizer and its presenter (The king) on the other side..