The politics of religion and the Persian Gulf War, 1990--1991

Edward Gibbon observed of the various Roman divinities that the people believed them all, the philosophers disbelieved them all, and the politicians found them all equally useful. Such was the case in the Gulf War when Iraq turned to religion as weapon, seeking to delegitimate the coalition, while appealing to others to join its jihad.; The dissertation first charts the historical context of the Gulf War and advances specific political reasons why Iraq invaded Kuwait. It also examines the "slow baptism" of the Iraqi Ba'th party prior to the invasion, suggesting reasons the regime modified its secular ideology to include an instrumental use of Islam. With that background, the dissertation then poses and seeks to answer three questions. How extensively and in what specific ways did Iraq appeal to Islam during the Kuwait Crisis? How did elites, Islamists, and the elusive Arab "street" respond to that appeal, both in and out of the coalition, and why did they respond as they did? What longer-term effects resulted from that appeal?; This dissertation argues that Iraq's calculated appeal to Islam was extraordinarily pervasive. It argues further Saddam proved effective in his fusing of two parallel global narrations (Arabism and Islam), eliciting broad popular response. The dissertation finds the coalition was compelled to mount a broad counter campaign, focused especially on defending the religious legitimacy of employing non-Islamic forces against an Islamic regime. The result was a "war of fatwas," with a contending use of texts and traditions and counter calls to jihad. The war's end, however, saw a re-affirmation of the Arab inter-state system, yet not in such way that the ideas of an Islamic umma or a nation min al-haleej ila al-muheet (from the Gulf to the Ocean) cease to carry cognitive and emotive importance. Moreover, the dissertation argues that neither side in the war constituted a monolithic force. Finally, it finds the employment of Islamic discourse on all sides to be, not simply an argument for or against Saddam, but a powerful and nuanced deliberation on regional and international issues.