Boycott as a Sectarian Action: A Reading of Meanings and Practices

The idea of boycott, in its terminological and procedural definition, refers to a peaceful, multi-purpose collective protest tool that carries political, social, economic, and sectarian dimensions. It is used to clearly and thoughtfully express rejection towards a specific entity, whether it be a government, institution, or group of people, by means of organized abstention from dealings with it in order to pressure for changes in its policies or practices, thereby subjugating it.

From a legal perspective, we can distinguish between primary boycotts, which are directly imposed by governments against target groups, such as boycotting political parties; and secondary boycotts, which involve third parties including individuals, unions, and civil society against the target groups. The act of boycotting, in its populist sense, is a commercial-economic act aimed at reducing the gap between producers and consumers, or pressuring capital to improve workers' wages. This act has evolved to include social and elite political levels, as it has been effective in rights movements (such as the Civil Rights Movement in the United States) and more recently in solidarity campaigns with Gaza by boycotting companies that deal with Israel, and widely spread digital boycott campaigns against companies that violate the values of social justice. On an international level, it has been employed by states and organizations for political pressure, such as the calls for the boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 or severing ties with Rhodesia and South Africa during apartheid. However, this tool, which is supposed to embody rationality, civility, and humanity, can justify and impose a sectarian character in divided communities, being exploited by groups against others as a tool of exclusion and an identity approach that entrench division rather than constructive civil change.

Collective Direction Against a Sect
Sectarian boycotting begins when an entire religious or sectarian group is targeted, not for its political behavior, but solely for its sectarian identity. When individuals, institutions, or groups are boycotted because they belong to a certain sect, regardless of their individual positions, the boycott has moved from a realm of political or moral critique into the realm of identity sorting. In April 1933, the Nazi regime organized a boycott campaign against shops and offices owned by Jews in Germany, justifying it by claiming they posed a danger to the German nation.

The aim of the boycott was not just political or economic; it was an initial step to isolate Jews from the public sphere in preparation for their extermination. The economy was used as a field for sectarian discrimination cloaked in nationalist slogans. The German boycott did not stem from "Nazi victimization", but from excessive use of power and mobilization against Jews aimed at excluding them and removing them from the German public space.

In other cases, the act may seem rooted in specific sectarian victimization, and the feeling of the necessity to construct this victimization to confront other sects can drive boycotts against other sects. Now, when boycotting is used as a means to reinforce sectarian self-identity and display sectarian dominance, not to build a rational collective stance, but to incite solidarity feelings against a presumed and imagined "sectarian enemy", it transforms into an exclusionary tool. Hence, it can be said that here the boycott is not exercised as a protest against government policies but as a form of social and political sorting and collective positioning in a battle of identities, loyalties, and affiliations.

After the famous Samarra bombings, which ignited sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, calls spread in some Sunni areas to boycott shops run by Shiites, and vice versa. This boycott was not a stance against a specific policy but a reflection of a bloody identity division and its manifestation in daily economics. Instead of working to mend social fabric, the economy became a means to reproduce strife and widen the sectarian divide.

Associated Sectarian Discourse

Any boycott accompanied by sectarian discourse that invokes religious or sectarian historical symbols or uses exclusionary discriminatory language can only be understood within a sectarian framework. The means (boycott) cannot be separated from the language used to promote it, according to Michel Foucault’s definition of language and discourse based on the system within which this means is used according to rules of power and control.

In some contexts, boycotting has transformed from merely being a political or economic protest stance into a symbolic tool of sectarian identity, reflecting deep divides that can only be understood within their rooted identity contexts. In Northern Ireland, during the last decades of the twentieth century, mutual boycotts between Catholics and Protestants were not confined to the economic domain but were linked to ritual elements and symbolic meanings reflecting identity struggles between the two groups. Stores, occasions, and even daily relationships carried stark and distinctive religious codes, thus becoming a tool to affirm religious belonging rather than an expression of a moral stance on a political or rights issue. In this sense, boycott there was not a means of change as much as it was a means to entrench division.

A similar model manifested clearly in Syria, during the bloody battles in Sweida in July 2025, when traders, industrialists, and owners of institutions and commercial activities issued statements calling for the boycott of Druze of Sweida following accusations of them being separatists, despite no similar statements being issued against other sects during the years of revolution.

The same situation occurred in Lebanon, especially in the periods following the civil war, where miniature economies centered around sects emerged, and some neighborhoods transformed into closed markets serving only their own sect members. This was not a result of an official decision, but rather due to sectarian accumulations that found in boycotting a mechanism to exclude the "other" and create a parallel reality to the national public space.

Economic support became sectarian directed, and in this context, boycotting was not used to hold corrupt policies or oppressive authorities accountable but to reproduce the sect as an independent economic and social entity, separate from the encompassing state and contradictory to it; it can be described as a boycott that shapes reality not to amend it but to divide it.

From Surveillance to Betrayal

The most dangerous aspect of boycotting as a sectarian act is not just its direction towards the "other", but when it turns into a disciplinary tool within the state itself.

When boycotts are imposed not as a free stance but as a sectarian obligation monitored and accountable on individuals in the community against others, we are not witnessing a protest action, but a mechanism of social control based on coercion, curtailing freedoms, and exclusion. During the Bahraini uprising in 2011, such practices were evident, with calls spreading within sects (both Shiite and Sunni) to boycott shops and institutions owned by individuals suspected of collaborating with the authority. The boycott quickly left the civil political sphere to enter the realm of internal surveillance; betrayal lists emerged, and the community transitioned from a political actor to a punitive authority. What is concerning here is that the boycott, which is supposed to be a tool for liberating people from tyranny, turns into a means of reproducing tyranny within the sect itself, in the name of identity or sectarian stability; individuals are forced to conform, and the boycott loses its moral dimension, becoming a tool for closure and fortification, not for accountability or demanding rights.

Thus, the ethical and political dilemma associated with boycott as a sectarian act becomes clear. When boycotting is used to entrench division rather than resist it, it becomes part of the hegemony system, not a tool to undermine it. Boycotting, like any protest tool, requires awareness, context, and inclusive discourse, not sectarian. In diverse societies, the danger does not lie in using civil tools like boycotting, but in their slip into identity agendas that entrench fragmentation. What may appear outwardly as a resistance act could, at its core, be an act of division, and what is presented under the banner of justice and allegiance to the homeland may turn into a stage for betrayal and the reproduction of sect as a symbolic and social prison.