The Druze and the Kurds: Two Complex Minority Models in a Complex Region

On July 19 and 20, 2022, the African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) hosted a symposium, “Religious Practices, Transmission, and Literacies in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.” The symposium featured the presentations of seven scholars who conducted two-week research residencies in the AMED Reading Room between June 1 and July 15, 2022. The residencies and symposium are part of the Exploring Challenging Conversations project generously funded by a planning grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc. The purpose of the initiative was to enhance public awareness of cross-regional and intercultural religious understanding in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and their global diaspora. Ori Z. Soltes teaches in Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization across disciplines, from art history and theology to philosophy and political history. He is the former Director and Curator of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum, and has curated more than 90 exhibitions there and in other venues across the country and overseas. He is also the author of over 300 books, articles, exhibition catalogues, and essays on diverse topics. Among his recent books are Our Sacred Signs: How Jewish, Christian and Muslim Art Draw from the Same Source; Searching for Oneness: Mysticism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam; Untangling the Web: Why the Middle East is a Mess and Always Has Been; Growing Up Jewish in India: Synagogues, Customs, and Communities from the Bene Israel to the Art of Siona Benjamin; God and the Goalposts: A Brief History of Sports, Religion, Politics, War, and Art, and Identity, Art, and Migration. Abstract: The most salient truth regarding the Middle East is that it is a complex tapestry woven of religion, politics, ethnicity, nationalism, and economics criss-crossed with confusing definitions, conflicting aspirations, and constant interferences. Moreover, each of these threads is itself complicated and intensely nuanced. And this has been so for several thousand years; specific terms and specific modes of identity shift at times, but the overall reality remains unchanged. Among these, the Druze and the Kurds are often noted but rarely considered in depth. The one primarily offers a religious self-definition, the other an ethnic one. Both groups, however, share the condition of being minorities embedded in and othered by the majority populations among whom they dwell—their populations extending across various boundaries (the Druze mainly in Israel, Lebanon, and Syria; the Kurds mainly in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey) that have been shaped in the last century. My intention is to use my two weeks of research at LOC to begin (it will constitute only a beginning) an in-depth study of these two populations to produce a document, ultimately, that will reflect on the Druze and the Kurds as two important and different—both exceedingly complex—populations. ¶ The purpose of this study is threefold: to offer a sense of their respective self-definition complexities; to use that sense to underscore how unfathomably complex the region is, overall; to ask whether the specific and varied ways in which these two groups have functioned within the region and its majority groups can offer further insights into the problems and solutions endemic to the Middle East. For transcript and more information, visit https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-10458