Nationalism developed in Iraq before the creation of the modern state. As elsewhere, the basic European idea of modern nationalism took root quickly and widely, but it took the form of Arab/Iraqi nationalism and Kurdish proto-nationalism in the first decade of state formation. Shi'i, Sunni, and leftist/liberal variants of nationalism evolved in the decades that followed—but all were forms of Iraqi nationalism, in which the legitimacy of the Iraqi state was taken for granted. Those who assumed that religious differences would be fatal to the viability of the Iraqi state have overlooked the evolution of Iraqis' senses of identity, and the power of nationalist identification.
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