Afro-Iraqi Rituals: Between Preserving Identity and Resisting Oppression

Talk explores the significance of Afro-Iraqi rituals within a problematic oppressive context. Afro-Iraqi rituals play two important roles within Afro-Iraqi culture: assert and sustain communal identity and resist hegemony and discrimination. Talk touches on slavery in pre-Islam Arabia and islam, history of Afro-Iraqis, types of discrimination/challenges they have been facing, their rituals and the roles of those rituals.