Kurdish Studies

ISSN: 2051-4883 | e-ISSN: 2051-4891
Email: editor@kurdishstudies.net

Intersectionality of Gender, Ethnicity, and Religion Against Political Prisoners the Last Days of Hannah Senesh and Laila Qasim

Shajwan Nariman Fatah
Language Center, Charmo Center for Research, Training, and Consultancy, Charmo University, 46023 Chamchamal/ Sulaimani, Kurdistan region- Iraq
Ala Beshank Ahmed
Department of English Language, College of Education and Languages, Lebanese French University, Erbil, Iraq
Atta Abdalwahid Ahmed
Department of English Language Teaching, Tishk International University- Sulaimani, Sulaymaniyah,46001, Iraq
Keywords: Senesh; Qasim; political feminism; subaltern; identity.

Abstract

Hannah Senesh and Laila Qasim were two political activists, one Jewish and the other Kurdish, whose identities were manipulated by previous regimes in the early and late twentieth centuries: the Nazi and the Iraqi governments. As a result, the narratives of these women have been recounted in terms of historical incidents. In this article, however, we seek to examine the factors behind Senesh and Qasim’s imprisonment and death sentences through philosophical lenses and literary theories – intersectionality (Kimberlé Crenshaw), women’s identity (Simone de Beauvoir), sexual politics (Kate Millett) and subaltern discourse (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak). We also highlight the theoretical aspects and present the manufactured political ideologies from different ethnic and religious backgrounds that constructed gender identities in the context of these women. Our close reading of these issues shows the existential aspect and also the constructed ideologies that discriminated against women and led to these women being placed behind bars.

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Keywords

Kurdish StudiesKurdsmigrationTurkeyKurdishKurdistangenderSyriaimmigrationIraqIraqi KurdistanrefugeesmediadiasporaMigrationfamilyAlevismRojavaYezidisautonomyUnited StatesKurdish studiestransnational migrationIranstereotypesminoritiesAlevisactivismEuropesovereigntyareal linguisticsPKKIndiaBalkans