Sectarian discourse in the Iraqi media)

تاريخ الاستلام:27/04/2020 تاريخ القبول:15/07/2020

Abstract

After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the American occupation of Iraq, the sectarian conflict between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds broke out, thus every sectarian front tried to use various possible tools to raise and reinforce its sect and its religious authority to clarify its sectarian and ethnic superiority in Iraq and extend its ideological influence. Both ancient and modern sides of the media are parts in a scenic synthesis of the sectarian violence raging in Iraq, becoming more extended in real and virtual media space  which shows at the same time the fragility of the social and moral system environment of such a type of conflicts. The speech on the media is regarded as specific based on the fanatic dogmatic principle, the idea of self-sufficiency and the exclusion of internal or external others through  using the religious memory. Therefore, this study came to try to provide a critical reading of the media landscape in Iraq by analysing the structure of the sectarian discourse, clarifying its boundaries and components, trying to clarify its  religious identity, monitoring its implications and determining the reflection of the current social and political context and looking for its cultural, sectarian and geo-political references that were reflected in the process of making the content of discourse Sectarianism.