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The Armenian Community and Changing Iranian Perceptions of Minority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2024

James Barry Open the ORCID record for James Barry [Opens in a new window]
James Barry*
Affiliation:
Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, Australia
*
Email: james.barry.cullen@gmail.com
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Extract

Until a decade ago, it was unusual for officials in the Islamic Republic to use the word aqaliat (minority) to refer to ethno-linguistic minorities or Muslim sect minorities. Efforts to cast Sunni Muslims as a minority, or Azeri speakers, were treated with hostility, as the state, following a specific proclamation on ethnicity and sectarianism by Ayatollah Khomeini, viewed these concepts as divisive to the ummah and ultimately a threat to national security. Aqaliat was instead reserved for non-Muslims, specifically those recognized as minorities in the constitution: Assyrian, Chaldean and Armenian Christians, and Zoroastrian and Jewish Iranians. It is therefore worthwhile to examine how one such minority community, Iranian Armenians, has reacted to these changes.

Type
Round Table
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , April 2024 , pp. 341 - 345
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Association for Iranian Studies

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References

1 Aslanian, Sebouh, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Ghougassian, Vazken, The Emergence of the Armenian Diocese of New Julfa in the Seventeenth Century (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

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3 For Armenian contributions to the Constitutional Movement, see Manukian, Arpi, Hezb-e dashnak va jaryan-e nehzat-e mashruteh [The Dashnak Party and the Course of the Constitutional Revolution] (Tehran: R&R, 2004)Google Scholar.

4 Sanasarian, Eliz, Religious Minorities in Iran (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Safarian, Robert, Sāken-e do farhang: Diāspurā-ye armani dar irān [An Inhabitant of Two Cultures: Armenian Diaspora in Iran] (Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 2020)Google Scholar; Yaghoobi, Claudia, Transnational Culture in the Iranian Armenian Diaspora (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023)Google Scholar; Barry, James, Armenian Christians in Iran: Ethnicity, Religion and Identity in the Islamic Republic (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019)Google Scholar.

5 Malesevic, Sinisa, Grounded Nationalisms (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019)Google Scholar.

6 Yaghoobi, Transnational Cultures.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid., 9.

9 Barry, James, “Sectarianism and National Cohesion: Sunni Political Activism in Iran,” in Ethnic Religious Minorities in Iran, ed. Hosseini, Behnaz (Singapore: Springer Nature, 2023)Google Scholar.

10 Barry, Armenian Christians in Iran.