Kamal Soleimani
Biographic Data
| ID | 115109 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kamal Soleimani |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kamal |
| FAMILY NAME | Soleimani |
| SIGNATURE | SOLEIMANI K |
| AFFILIATIONS | El Colegio de México |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0370-5930 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 140 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Kurdayetî and the Politics of Language: Kurdish Students at the Kurdistan University of Sine
Subjugated lexicons: Kurdish lexicography and the epistemic violence of the state
This study examines the oppressive conditions under which Kurdish lexicographical efforts have emerged - particularly in Iran, and to a lesser extent in Turkey - and their significance as forms of resistance. It draws on examples from across Kurdistan, analyzing how Kurdish intellectuals and lexicographers confront state-imposed marginalization that reduces Kurdish to a dialect or local patois. Despite these constraints, the past three decades ha…
Eco-nationalism in the East Kurdistan, the case of Sharif Bajwar
This article examines everyday nationalism in East Kurdistan (also known as Rojhelat) and its resilience within the framework of Kurdish ecological activism. Centering on Sharif Bajwar, the leading eco-nationalist figure in the region, it explores the literary expressions and narratives that emerged from the commemorations and rituals following his tragic death in a wildfire on August 25, 2018. Through the analysis of speeches, slogans, and inter…
The Racial Policies of De-development in the Middle East: A Comparative Study of Palestine and Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan)
This paper examines the relationship of sovereignty with development and national identity in the violently hierarchized multinational, multireligious, and multilingual Iran. Drawing on the scholarship on Palestine studies and particularly Sara Roy’s theory of “de-development,” in this paper, we study how the sovereign ethnonation in Iran instrumentalizes and distorts development to subjugate the minoritized Kurdish nation. Along with contextuali…
The immemorial Iranian nation? SchoolColonialism, nationalism, and modern islamic thought
The everydayness of spectacle violence under the Islamic Republic: ‘Fire at will’
On 17 June 2017, Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, called on pro-regime vigilantes to ‘fire at will’ or to act on their own discretion in putting the state’s Islamic teaching into practice without the need to consult either their superiors or the relevant authorities. Our article argues that, since 1979, the policy of ‘firing at will’ has been the defining feature of the Islamic Republic’s model of governance and c…
Sovereignty and Developmental Policies in Palestine and Eastern Kurdistan
Inspired by the scholarship on Palestine studies and particularly by Sara Roy’s “de-development” theory, this paper investigates how the sovereign ethno-nation in Iran instrumentalizes and distorts development to subjugate the minoritized Kurdish nation. Along with contextualizing de-development theory within the broader discipline of developmental studies and outlining how de-development works in practice, we compare the political-economic condi…
Textualising the ethno‐religious sovereign, history, ethnicity and nationalism in the Perso‐Islamic textbooks
This paper is a study of the Islamic Republic of Iran's 1st‐ to 12th‐grade textbooks. This paper examines issues of language, race, ethnicity and religious nationalism in textbooks to cast light on how the state in Iran has striven to Perso‐Shi'ify the polity through its education system. The official textbooks depict the sovereign community (Persians) as the sole agent of history. The state considers alternative (unofficial) narratives treasonou…
Silencing the Past: Persian Archaeology, Race, Ethnicity, and Language
This paper investigates the ways in which the nationalist narrative of the statist archaeology in Iran has contributed to the dominant nationalist discourse in systematic attempts to erase any evidence of the existence of a "non-Aryan" past in the Iranian plateau. Sponsored by the state, ethnoracial archaeological studies in Iran have functioned as a powerful instrument for constructing a desired past, one that is informed by Persianist primordia…
Minoritisation' of the other: The Iranian ethno-theocratic state's assimilatory strategies
Since the establishment of the modern nation-state in Iran in the early twentieth century, the state has viewed Kurds and their political struggle for survival as an existential threat to its integrity. The Islamic Republic’s coming to power – after the 1979 Revolution – gravely intensified the state’s securitisation policies in the Eastern Kurdistan (also known as Rojhelat). This article, thus, investigates the Islamic Republic’s anti-Kurdish st…
The securitisation of life: Eastern Kurdistan under the rule of a Perso-Shi'i state
Since the 1979 Revolution, the Iranian state has adopted a sophisticated set of policies to assimilate the Eastern Kurds. The Kurds are often the main target of the Iranian state’s military operations, its assimilatory strategies, and its regime of surveillance. After the ‘conquest’ (fath) of Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhelat) in 1979, the state tried to retain control over the region through systemic militarisation, the establishment of ‘revolutionary…
Life and labor on the internal colonial edge: Political economy of kolberi in Rojhelat
Through the investigation of kolberi (cross-border labor), this paper sheds light on the state's policy of de-development (or internal colonialization) of the Kurdish region (known as Rojhelat) in Iran. While the most dangerous form of labor, kolberi has become a dominant employment opportunity for Rojhelat Kurds in the last decade. There are no Iranian state laws criminalizing kolberi, and yet those laborers die on a regular basis-being shot or …
The Sheikh and the Missionary: Notes on a Conversation on Christianity, Islam and Kurdish Nationalism
The Sheikh and The MiSSionary
Can non-Persians speak? The sovereign’s narration of “Iranian identity
Since the late 19th century, despite multi-cultural and multilingual composition of Iranian population, Persian nationalism has functioned as the ideology of the state. Persian intelligentsia have formulated a set of historical and cultural referents that enabled them to present the Persian language and identity as primordial and all-inclusive of all Iranians. By the advent of the modern nation-state, during Pahlavi dynasty, the non-Persian ident…
Interrogating the tribal: The aporia of 'tribalism' in the sociological study of the Middle East
In this paper, we intend to deconstruct the term 'tribalism' as a colonial category, which figures as a prominent concept in social studies on Kurds as well as the Middle East at large. Blithely used, tribalism has occupied a central place, especially in the existing scholarship on Kurdistan. Some earlier anthropological works have gone so far as to regard tribalism as the 'DNA' of Middle Eastern people. Drawing on recent studies on Latin America…
A Kurdish Sufi Master and His Christian Neighbors
This paper examines the religio-political views of sheikh Ubeydullah of Nehri, the leader of 1880 Kurdish uprising. The paper uses new primary sources, which allow for a more coherent picture of the scopes and limits of sheikh Ubeydullah's views on a number of key issues, especially on topics of religious universalism and tolerance, Kurdish education, and Kurdish nationalism. The paper uses archival research and primary sources to challenge an ex…
I Speak, Therefore I am Adam: The Question of Language and Becoming Human in the Qur'ān
This article investigates the centrality of language in the Qur'ānic story of Adam as a human being or insān. Based on the Qur'ān's view of human creation, Adam emerges as a creature who is uniquely capable of naming things. Analyzing the semantic difference between the two key concepts of insān and bashar, I argue that the human being as khalīfa is the "successor" to non-speaking creatures rather than a successor to God, as is commonly understoo…
The Kurdish image in statist historiography: The case of Simko
This article focuses on the uprising in 1918–1922 of Ismail Agha of Shikak (a.k.a. Simko) in Iranian Kurdistan and how he has been portrayed in Persian historiography. Painting Simko simply as another Kurdish rebellious chief with no nationalist aspirations leaves important questions unanswered. Simko introduced a number of firsts in Kurdish political history to Iranian Kurdistan, yet his innovations have generally been overlooked. Simko was cons…
Islam and Competing Nationalisms in the Middle East, 1876-1926
Opposing a binary perspective that consolidates ethnicity, religion, and nationalism into separate spheres, this book demonstrates that neither nationalism nor religion can be studied in isolation in
Islamic revivalism and Kurdish nationalism in Sheikh Ubeydullah’s poetic oeuvre
This article investigates Sheikh Ubeydullah of Nehri’s Kurdish-Islamic revivalist project based on a close reading of his Mesnewi. This article primarily focuses on the fusion of the Sheikh’s Islamic revivalism with his Kurdish nationalism in his poetic work. A close reading of the Mesnewi leaves no doubt that in the mind of his author both the future of Kurds and that of his revivalist project depended on the creation of an independent state.ABS…
Can non-Persians speak? The sovereign’s narration of “Iranian identity
Since the late 19th century, despite multi-cultural and multilingual composition of Iranian population, Persian nationalism has functioned as the ideology of the state. Persian intelligentsia have formulated a set of historical and cultural referents that enabled them to present the Persian language and identity as primordial and all-inclusive of all Iranians. By the advent of the modern nation-state, during Pahlavi dynasty, the non-Persian ident…
Life and labor on the internal colonial edge: Political economy of kolberi in Rojhelat
Through the investigation of kolberi (cross-border labor), this paper sheds light on the state's policy of de-development (or internal colonialization) of the Kurdish region (known as Rojhelat) in Iran. While the most dangerous form of labor, kolberi has become a dominant employment opportunity for Rojhelat Kurds in the last decade. There are no Iranian state laws criminalizing kolberi, and yet those laborers die on a regular basis-being shot or …
Interrogating the tribal: The aporia of 'tribalism' in the sociological study of the Middle East
In this paper, we intend to deconstruct the term 'tribalism' as a colonial category, which figures as a prominent concept in social studies on Kurds as well as the Middle East at large. Blithely used, tribalism has occupied a central place, especially in the existing scholarship on Kurdistan. Some earlier anthropological works have gone so far as to regard tribalism as the 'DNA' of Middle Eastern people. Drawing on recent studies on Latin America…
Silencing the Past: Persian Archaeology, Race, Ethnicity, and Language
This paper investigates the ways in which the nationalist narrative of the statist archaeology in Iran has contributed to the dominant nationalist discourse in systematic attempts to erase any evidence of the existence of a "non-Aryan" past in the Iranian plateau. Sponsored by the state, ethnoracial archaeological studies in Iran have functioned as a powerful instrument for constructing a desired past, one that is informed by Persianist primordia…
The securitisation of life: Eastern Kurdistan under the rule of a Perso-Shi'i state
Since the 1979 Revolution, the Iranian state has adopted a sophisticated set of policies to assimilate the Eastern Kurds. The Kurds are often the main target of the Iranian state’s military operations, its assimilatory strategies, and its regime of surveillance. After the ‘conquest’ (fath) of Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhelat) in 1979, the state tried to retain control over the region through systemic militarisation, the establishment of ‘revolutionary…
The Kurdish image in statist historiography: The case of Simko
This article focuses on the uprising in 1918–1922 of Ismail Agha of Shikak (a.k.a. Simko) in Iranian Kurdistan and how he has been portrayed in Persian historiography. Painting Simko simply as another Kurdish rebellious chief with no nationalist aspirations leaves important questions unanswered. Simko introduced a number of firsts in Kurdish political history to Iranian Kurdistan, yet his innovations have generally been overlooked. Simko was cons…
Minoritisation' of the other: The Iranian ethno-theocratic state's assimilatory strategies
Since the establishment of the modern nation-state in Iran in the early twentieth century, the state has viewed Kurds and their political struggle for survival as an existential threat to its integrity. The Islamic Republic’s coming to power – after the 1979 Revolution – gravely intensified the state’s securitisation policies in the Eastern Kurdistan (also known as Rojhelat). This article, thus, investigates the Islamic Republic’s anti-Kurdish st…
Textualising the ethno‐religious sovereign, history, ethnicity and nationalism in the Perso‐Islamic textbooks
This paper is a study of the Islamic Republic of Iran's 1st‐ to 12th‐grade textbooks. This paper examines issues of language, race, ethnicity and religious nationalism in textbooks to cast light on how the state in Iran has striven to Perso‐Shi'ify the polity through its education system. The official textbooks depict the sovereign community (Persians) as the sole agent of history. The state considers alternative (unofficial) narratives treasonou…
The everydayness of spectacle violence under the Islamic Republic: ‘Fire at will’
On 17 June 2017, Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, called on pro-regime vigilantes to ‘fire at will’ or to act on their own discretion in putting the state’s Islamic teaching into practice without the need to consult either their superiors or the relevant authorities. Our article argues that, since 1979, the policy of ‘firing at will’ has been the defining feature of the Islamic Republic’s model of governance and c…
Sovereignty and Developmental Policies in Palestine and Eastern Kurdistan
Inspired by the scholarship on Palestine studies and particularly by Sara Roy’s “de-development” theory, this paper investigates how the sovereign ethno-nation in Iran instrumentalizes and distorts development to subjugate the minoritized Kurdish nation. Along with contextualizing de-development theory within the broader discipline of developmental studies and outlining how de-development works in practice, we compare the political-economic condi…
The Racial Policies of De-development in the Middle East: A Comparative Study of Palestine and Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan)
This paper examines the relationship of sovereignty with development and national identity in the violently hierarchized multinational, multireligious, and multilingual Iran. Drawing on the scholarship on Palestine studies and particularly Sara Roy’s theory of “de-development,” in this paper, we study how the sovereign ethnonation in Iran instrumentalizes and distorts development to subjugate the minoritized Kurdish nation. Along with contextuali…
The immemorial Iranian nation? SchoolColonialism, nationalism, and modern islamic thought
The Sheikh and the Missionary: Notes on a Conversation on Christianity, Islam and Kurdish Nationalism
The Sheikh and The MiSSionary
Islamic revivalism and Kurdish nationalism in Sheikh Ubeydullah’s poetic oeuvre
This article investigates Sheikh Ubeydullah of Nehri’s Kurdish-Islamic revivalist project based on a close reading of his Mesnewi. This article primarily focuses on the fusion of the Sheikh’s Islamic revivalism with his Kurdish nationalism in his poetic work. A close reading of the Mesnewi leaves no doubt that in the mind of his author both the future of Kurds and that of his revivalist project depended on the creation of an independent state.ABS…
Islam and Competing Nationalisms in the Middle East, 1876-1926
Opposing a binary perspective that consolidates ethnicity, religion, and nationalism into separate spheres, this book demonstrates that neither nationalism nor religion can be studied in isolation in
The Kurdish image in statist historiography: The case of Simko
This article focuses on the uprising in 1918–1922 of Ismail Agha of Shikak (a.k.a. Simko) in Iranian Kurdistan and how he has been portrayed in Persian historiography. Painting Simko simply as another Kurdish rebellious chief with no nationalist aspirations leaves important questions unanswered. Simko introduced a number of firsts in Kurdish political history to Iranian Kurdistan, yet his innovations have generally been overlooked. Simko was cons…
A Kurdish Sufi Master and His Christian Neighbors
This paper examines the religio-political views of sheikh Ubeydullah of Nehri, the leader of 1880 Kurdish uprising. The paper uses new primary sources, which allow for a more coherent picture of the scopes and limits of sheikh Ubeydullah's views on a number of key issues, especially on topics of religious universalism and tolerance, Kurdish education, and Kurdish nationalism. The paper uses archival research and primary sources to challenge an ex…
I Speak, Therefore I am Adam: The Question of Language and Becoming Human in the Qur'ān
This article investigates the centrality of language in the Qur'ānic story of Adam as a human being or insān. Based on the Qur'ān's view of human creation, Adam emerges as a creature who is uniquely capable of naming things. Analyzing the semantic difference between the two key concepts of insān and bashar, I argue that the human being as khalīfa is the "successor" to non-speaking creatures rather than a successor to God, as is commonly understoo…
The Sheikh and the Missionary: Notes on a Conversation on Christianity, Islam and Kurdish Nationalism
The Sheikh and The MiSSionary
Can non-Persians speak? The sovereign’s narration of “Iranian identity
Since the late 19th century, despite multi-cultural and multilingual composition of Iranian population, Persian nationalism has functioned as the ideology of the state. Persian intelligentsia have formulated a set of historical and cultural referents that enabled them to present the Persian language and identity as primordial and all-inclusive of all Iranians. By the advent of the modern nation-state, during Pahlavi dynasty, the non-Persian ident…
Interrogating the tribal: The aporia of 'tribalism' in the sociological study of the Middle East
In this paper, we intend to deconstruct the term 'tribalism' as a colonial category, which figures as a prominent concept in social studies on Kurds as well as the Middle East at large. Blithely used, tribalism has occupied a central place, especially in the existing scholarship on Kurdistan. Some earlier anthropological works have gone so far as to regard tribalism as the 'DNA' of Middle Eastern people. Drawing on recent studies on Latin America…
The securitisation of life: Eastern Kurdistan under the rule of a Perso-Shi'i state
Since the 1979 Revolution, the Iranian state has adopted a sophisticated set of policies to assimilate the Eastern Kurds. The Kurds are often the main target of the Iranian state’s military operations, its assimilatory strategies, and its regime of surveillance. After the ‘conquest’ (fath) of Eastern Kurdistan (Rojhelat) in 1979, the state tried to retain control over the region through systemic militarisation, the establishment of ‘revolutionary…
Life and labor on the internal colonial edge: Political economy of kolberi in Rojhelat
Through the investigation of kolberi (cross-border labor), this paper sheds light on the state's policy of de-development (or internal colonialization) of the Kurdish region (known as Rojhelat) in Iran. While the most dangerous form of labor, kolberi has become a dominant employment opportunity for Rojhelat Kurds in the last decade. There are no Iranian state laws criminalizing kolberi, and yet those laborers die on a regular basis-being shot or …
Minoritisation' of the other: The Iranian ethno-theocratic state's assimilatory strategies
Since the establishment of the modern nation-state in Iran in the early twentieth century, the state has viewed Kurds and their political struggle for survival as an existential threat to its integrity. The Islamic Republic’s coming to power – after the 1979 Revolution – gravely intensified the state’s securitisation policies in the Eastern Kurdistan (also known as Rojhelat). This article, thus, investigates the Islamic Republic’s anti-Kurdish st…
Sovereignty and Developmental Policies in Palestine and Eastern Kurdistan
Inspired by the scholarship on Palestine studies and particularly by Sara Roy’s “de-development” theory, this paper investigates how the sovereign ethno-nation in Iran instrumentalizes and distorts development to subjugate the minoritized Kurdish nation. Along with contextualizing de-development theory within the broader discipline of developmental studies and outlining how de-development works in practice, we compare the political-economic condi…
Textualising the ethno‐religious sovereign, history, ethnicity and nationalism in the Perso‐Islamic textbooks
This paper is a study of the Islamic Republic of Iran's 1st‐ to 12th‐grade textbooks. This paper examines issues of language, race, ethnicity and religious nationalism in textbooks to cast light on how the state in Iran has striven to Perso‐Shi'ify the polity through its education system. The official textbooks depict the sovereign community (Persians) as the sole agent of history. The state considers alternative (unofficial) narratives treasonou…
Silencing the Past: Persian Archaeology, Race, Ethnicity, and Language
This paper investigates the ways in which the nationalist narrative of the statist archaeology in Iran has contributed to the dominant nationalist discourse in systematic attempts to erase any evidence of the existence of a "non-Aryan" past in the Iranian plateau. Sponsored by the state, ethnoracial archaeological studies in Iran have functioned as a powerful instrument for constructing a desired past, one that is informed by Persianist primordia…
The immemorial Iranian nation? SchoolColonialism, nationalism, and modern islamic thought
The everydayness of spectacle violence under the Islamic Republic: ‘Fire at will’
On 17 June 2017, Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, called on pro-regime vigilantes to ‘fire at will’ or to act on their own discretion in putting the state’s Islamic teaching into practice without the need to consult either their superiors or the relevant authorities. Our article argues that, since 1979, the policy of ‘firing at will’ has been the defining feature of the Islamic Republic’s model of governance and c…
The Racial Policies of De-development in the Middle East: A Comparative Study of Palestine and Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan)
This paper examines the relationship of sovereignty with development and national identity in the violently hierarchized multinational, multireligious, and multilingual Iran. Drawing on the scholarship on Palestine studies and particularly Sara Roy’s theory of “de-development,” in this paper, we study how the sovereign ethnonation in Iran instrumentalizes and distorts development to subjugate the minoritized Kurdish nation. Along with contextuali…
Kurdayetî and the Politics of Language: Kurdish Students at the Kurdistan University of Sine
Subjugated lexicons: Kurdish lexicography and the epistemic violence of the state
This study examines the oppressive conditions under which Kurdish lexicographical efforts have emerged - particularly in Iran, and to a lesser extent in Turkey - and their significance as forms of resistance. It draws on examples from across Kurdistan, analyzing how Kurdish intellectuals and lexicographers confront state-imposed marginalization that reduces Kurdish to a dialect or local patois. Despite these constraints, the past three decades ha…
Eco-nationalism in the East Kurdistan, the case of Sharif Bajwar
This article examines everyday nationalism in East Kurdistan (also known as Rojhelat) and its resilience within the framework of Kurdish ecological activism. Centering on Sharif Bajwar, the leading eco-nationalist figure in the region, it explores the literary expressions and narratives that emerged from the commemorations and rituals following his tragic death in a wildfire on August 25, 2018. Through the analysis of speeches, slogans, and inter…
Political science (18 works) · Law (17 works) · Politics (15 works) · Turkey's Politics and Society (14 works) · Islamic Studies and History (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Law (12 works) · History (11 works) · Nationalism (11 works) · Philosophy (9 works)