Order Out of Chaos: Islam, Information, and the Rise and Fall of Social Orders in Iraq

The increasing number of states whose governments have splintered, dissolved, or simply disappeared in the twenty-first-century Middle East raises questions about how people organize themselves when centralized authority vanishes. In this examination of social and political organization in Basra in the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion and the subsequent collapse of the Iraqi government, Patel provides a subtle, persuasive answer in documenting the rise of Shiite political leaders and movements in the city. By assessing the results of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2003–4 and subsequent visits in 2011, as well as geospatial analysis and electoral data, he shows that the introduction of Friday sermons in Shiite mosques after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government allowed congregants to cooperate in addressing both local concerns such as trash collection and national issues such as elections. The novelty of these sermons, the physical distance of the mosques, and the hierarchical structure of Shiite practice all helped mobilize residents in a way that the bonds of tribe, ideology, and Sunni practice could not.