The memory of ordinary, everyday intercultural or interreligious relationships, in brief
This small city of c. 25,000 inhabitants has a long history of Jewish-Christian-Muslim cohabitation, which has meant the community has also seen many friendships across the three faiths. The city is well known for a shrine which has for centuries brought together Christians and Muslims – and for many years Jews prayed there, too. Muslims call the shrine Sheikh Wsu Rahman; Christians call it Raban Boya, or Rabban Beri. The site, in a cave, is the subject of many shared stories and beliefs. In front of the cave is a sloping stone, touched many times over the centuries by women who wish to conceive. According to Shaqlawa’s historian, Shamasha Michael Kusa, there are dozens of other shrines around Shaqlawa where Christians and Muslims pray alongside. Violence and hostility has affect the communities over the years, too, though families speak of memories of their friendships, and of young people sharing social time and space.
The context in which these relationships made a difference at the time
Shaqlawa’s population historically embraced Kurdish-speaking Muslims, Aramaic or Syriac speaking Chaldean Christians (also often speaking Kurdish), and a Jewish population which spoke both Aramaic and Kurdish before they moved to Israel and elsewhere. In recent years, Christians and Muslims have described having friendships across faith communities from their youth onwards, and also in different historical periods having bad experiences of Muslim residents with more intolerant views. The shrine has been a shared point which created solidarity at a communal level, for women in the community in particular. As violence and intolerance has repeatedly struck, residents and the town’s diaspora may also see a different social mores which helps to define the shared meaning of Shaqlawa as a place defined by mutual acceptance.
What has happened since, which makes the memory valuable
The violence of the Daesh regime reduced the Christian population here to approximately 200 members, though there are efforts to support more Christians to return. The Jewish population left in the 1950s, at the time of the creation of the State of Israel. Reflecting on longer historical upheavals, Iraq has witnessed repeated changes of political regime which have weighed heavily on the scope for communities in Shaqlawa, to freely share their religious life, their identities and historical narratives with each other. Shaqlawa is now situated in Erbil Governate, part of the Kurdish Regional Government. Memories of the community history can make a valuable contribution to Shaqlawa’s development of renewed habits of solidarity, not least since the area has drawn displaced families from other cities affected by Daesh. The value of this history is described by Kusa in this way. Shaqlawa’s history has made it “a centre for many faiths”: “Having three different religions but common traditions made us closer”.
As can be seen from the responses of members of the Diaspora of Shaqlawa families spread across Iraq and across the world, friendships struck up here in childhood are very much cherished, in spite of the intolerance which has marked the city’s recent history.
How might the memory be used in bringing people together in practice now?
The Memory Bank team will be very glad to receive ideas about how these memories can be used in bringing people together – in the context of community-building, or peace-building; in developing social, cultural and economic projects; or in developing better understanding about the place of everyday intercultural relationships in the life of communities similar to Shaqlawa.
Additional context/Some additional reading