Essentialist assumptions that sectarian identities are fixed and primordial—and thus the primary drivers of conflict in the Middle East—have been widely critiqued. Scholarship increasingly shows that divisions between Sunni and Shiʿa Muslims are socially and historically produced. While the role of state actors and geopolitical forces in processes of "sectarianization" has received considerable attention, less explored are the everyday, embodied, and material practices through which sectarian boundaries are enacted and contested. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey, this article examines how food practices on the Day of Ashura—an important day for both Sunnis and Shiʿa—serve as a site of gastro-political negotiation. For Shiʿa communities, Ashura commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Husayn through mourning rituals, including the preparation of halva, a flour-based sweet symbolizing loss. Sunni interpretations, by contrast, frame Ashura as a day linked to multiple prophetic events, marked by the preparation of ashure, a pudding made with grains, fruits, and nuts. In Eastern Anatolia, where Sunni and Shiʿa communities live in close proximity, the sharing of these foods constitutes not only an act of religious devotion but also a medium through which intra-Muslim relationships are shaped, strained, and reimagined. This study foregrounds the material and sensory dimensions of religious practice as critical to understanding sectarian dynamics in everyday life.
Stefan Williamson Fa (Tue,) studied this question.