The Lamp, Qasim Amin, Jewish Women and Baghdadi Men

This chapter provides a detailed reading of al-Misbah , a Jewish Iraqi publication which appeared in Baghdad between the years 1924 and 1929 and has been characterised both as a Zionist mouthpiece and a testimony to the success of Arab nationalism. In addressing this apparent contradiction, the chapter examines the issues which dominated its pages in order to highlight the identity of the paper and to enrich our understanding of the Iraqi press under the British Mandate. The chapter addresses two discursive circles – the Iraqi and the Jewish – and proposes that al-Misbah conveyed an unmistakable Iraqi and Arab identity. Despite the editor’s Zionist inclinations, the conversations between readers and writers acquired a life of their own and the paper, in fact, promoted a new Arab Jewish identity and illustrated how Jews sought to use state institutions as venues for the cultivation of non-sectarian and democratic citizenship.

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