The Fatwa as Sovereign Instrument: Political Theology and Kurdish Ethnic Erasure in Iran

Abstract

TThis article examines how Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979 pronouncements on Kurdistan transformed the fatwa from a juristic form within the Islamic legal tradition into an instrument of sovereign command in the modern nation-state. Through contextualized discursive and textual analysis, it examines Khomeini's statements alongside constitutional provisions, writings on velāyat-e faqīh, revolutionary judicial practices, Kurdish responses, and human rights documentation. It argues that Khomeini's combined authority as jurist, revolutionary leader, and emerging sovereign collapsed the practical distinction between religious opinion and governmental decree. Kurdish demands for political recognition were recoded through categories of unbelief, hypocrisy, rebellion, and apostasy, lending theological legitimacy to military and revolutionary judicial coercion. Drawing on scholarship on Islamic law as well as Benjamin's mythic violence, Foucault's state racism, and Butler's grievability, the article shows how the fatwa functioned as a mediating form between religious classification and state violence. The case illuminates the dangers of joining sacralized nationalism to the coercive authority of the modern nation-state.