ABSTRACT

Sectarian polemic directed at Sunni Muslims in Iran and elsewhere in the Shi’ite world has traditionally foregrounded the historic conflict over and fallout from the Prophetic succession as one of the primary markers of Sunni difference. In contrast to this precedent, I argue that we are witnessing the emergence of a newly formulated parallel discourse in the trajectory of sectarian polemic that is rooted less in such age old concerns and instead couches difference more as a matter of the supposedly problematic contemporary social behaviours of the maligned community. In demonstrating this, I focus on two elements—efforts to associate the Sunni populations at large with fanaticism and violence, and the construction of Sunni Muslims in Iran as hyper-fertile. Drawing on a mixed methodology of media analysis and anthropologically informed ethnographic fieldwork in Mashhad, Iran’s second largest city, this paper concludes by pointing to the origins of this rhetoric in a confluence of the weakening of traditional mythopoetic discourse among the youthful middle-class, their replacement by a new ‘nationalist Shi’ism’, and its subsequent receptivity to a globally circulating anti-migrant and nativist ideology.

摘要

针对伊朗和什叶派世界其他地方的逊尼派穆斯林的宗派争论传统上将先知继承的历史冲突和后果作为逊尼派差异的主要标志之一。与这个先例相反，我认为我们正在目睹宗派争论轨迹中新形成的平行话语的出现，这种话语较少植根于这种古老的担忧，而是更多地作为所谓的有问题的当代社会行为的问题来表达差异被诽谤的社区。在证明这一点时，我着重于两个要素——努力将逊尼派人口与狂热和暴力联系起来，以及将伊朗的逊尼派穆斯林建设为超级肥沃的。