Ignorance is essential to life as we know it. Foreknowledge of the future would preclude choice, responsibility, individuality—even history. True knowledge of the past would obviate historiography. Without human ignorance of God's larger plan, His omnipotence and benevolence would not make sense, given the evils of the world. Full knowledge is the enemy of both intimate and impersonal relationships; for that matter, even less important personal decisions are made in ignorance. Military strategy and natural science both depend on ignorance, as (...) do the law and politics—especially inasmuch as the latter requires myths that divide the world into good and evil forces. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Nationalism developed in Iraq before the creation of the modern state. As elsewhere, the basic European idea of modern nationalism took root quickly and widely, but it took the form of Arab/iraqi nationalism and Kurdish proto‐nationalism in the first decade of state formation. Shi‘i, Sunni, and leftist/liberal variants of nationalism evolved in the decades that followed—but all were forms of Iraqi nationalism, in which the legitimacy of the Iraqi state was taken for granted. Those who assumed that religious differences (...) would be fatal to the viability of the Iraqi state have overlooked the evolution of Iraqis’ senses of identity, and the power of nationalist identification. (shrink)