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Ta'ifah, Sect and Sectarianism: from the Word and its Changing Implications to the Analytical Sociological Term

Volume 01|Issue 2| Aug 2018 |Articles

Abstract

This article, a chapter from the author's recently published book (March 2018) titled, Ta'ifah, Sectarianism and Imagined Sects, attempts to build fundamental conceptual idiomatic distinctions between community according to religious or confessional affiliation (at-tai'fah), sectarianism (at-ta'ifiyyah) and confessionalism (al-madhabiyyah) – concepts and phenomena that are deeply intertwined. The author also explores related concepts such as identity, religious affiliation, sect, difference, fanaticism (taasub), and others. Bishara analyzes the linguistic and semantic conceptual evolution of the term sectarianism, as well as the evolution of the term through the concepts of confession/group (firqa), sect (tai'fa), and craft (hirfa) - concepts that reflect on the ways (turuq), the occupational and professional congregations as well as the Sufi orders, within Islamic society. All of these developments are examined to reach an understanding of the widespread modern Arabic term sectarianism - sectarianism being a modern term, and sect an old one. Through a critical debate with the modern Western sociological concepts of sectarianism (al-ta'ifiyyah or al-firqiyyah), the study attempts to develop the term “sect” as an analytical sociological term that can be used to analyze the formation, evolution, and characteristics of new contemporary imagined communities, according to religious communities that the author calls imagined sects in his book. One of the major theses in this work is that modern religious communities (tawa'if: plural of tai'fah) do not produce sectarianism; rather, it is sectarianism which breeds the imagined communities that the author calls imagined sects.

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General Director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI). Bishara is a leading Arab researcher and intellectual with numerous books and academic publications on political thought, social theory and philosophy. He was named by Le Nouveau Magazine Littéraire as one of the world's most influential thinkers. His publications in Arabic, some of which have become key references within their respective field, include Civil Society: A Critical Study (1996); From the Jewishness of the State to Sharon (2004); On The Arab Question: An Introduction to an Arab Democratic Manifesto (2007); To Be an Arab in Our Times (2009); On Revolution and Susceptibility to Revolution (2012); Religion and Secularism in Historical Context (in 3 vols., 2013, 2015); The Army and Political Power in the Arab Context: Theoretical Problems (2017); The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Daesh): A General Framework and Critical Contribution to Understanding the Phenomenon (2018); What is Populism? (2019); Democratic Transition and its Problems: Theoretical Lessons from Arab Experiences (2020); and The Question of the State: Philosophy, Theory, and Context (2023) with a second volume titled The Arab State: Beginnings and Evolution (2024).

His latest publication in Arabic titled Palestine: Matters of Truth and Justice (2024), is translated from English, originally published in 2022 by Hurst Publishers in London. Bishara's English publications also include On Salafism: Concepts and Contexts (Stanford University Press, 2022); Sectarianism without Sects (Oxford University Press, 2021); and his trilogy on the Arab revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria, published by I.B. Tauris, Understanding Revolutions: Opening Acts in Tunisia (2021); Egypt: Revolution, Failed Transition and Counter-Revolution (2022); and Syria 2011-2013: Revolution and Tyranny before the Mayhem (2023), in which he provides a rich theoretical analysis in addition to a comprehensive and lucid assessment of the revolutions in three Arab countries.

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