This April, Oxford University Press published Minority Rights in the Middle East by Joshua Castellino (Middlesex University) and Kathleen A. Cavanaugh (National Univ. of Ireland, Galway). The publisher’s description follows.
Within the Middle East there are a wide range of minority groups outside the mainstream religious and ethnic culture. This book provides a detailed examination of their rights as minorities within this region, and their changing status throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The rights of minorities in the Middle East are subject to a range of legal frameworks, having developed in part from Islamic law, and in recent years subject to international human rights law and institutional frameworks. The book examines the context in which minority rights operate within this conflicted region, investigating how minorities engage with (or are excluded from) various sites of power and how state practice in dealing with minorities (often ostensibly based on Islamic authority) intersects with and informs modern constitutionalism and international law.
The book identifies who exactly can be classed as a minority group, analyzing in detail the different religious and ethnic minorities across the region. The book also pays special attention to the plight of minorities who are spread between various states, often as the result of conflict. It assesses the applicable domestic legislative instruments within the three countries investigated as case studies: Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, and highlights key domestic remedies that could serve as models for ensuring greater social cohesion and greater inclusion of minorities in the political life of these countries.
USCIRF Report on Religious Freedom in Syria
Exploiting religious tensions in Syria is not too difficult. Although Sunni Muslims, Christians, and Alawites historically have lived in peace under Ba’ath rule, tensions always have existed beneath the surface. The Assads, who are Alawites, have kept the country’s Sunni majority in check, and Sunnis deeply resent it. I remember a Christian friend who grew up in Syria once telling me that his Sunni classmates had a slogan, which apparently rhymes in Arabic, about their proposal for Syria’s future: ”The Christians to Beirut and the Alawites to the grave.” The report says that the regime is now paying people to pose as opposition figures and chant that slogan at pr0tests, in order to frighten minority communities into supporting Assad.
The regime probably doesn’t have to work too hard to get that support. Just looking at the numbers, and knowing the fault lines in Syrian society, it’s obvious that minority groups like Christians have much to lose if Assad falls. The report suggests as much:
Many minority religious communities have tried to stay neutral in the
conflict, but opposition forces increasingly see their non-alignment, or perceived non-alignment, as support for the al-Assad regime. Minority religious communities thus have been forced by circumstances to take a position either in favor of the al-Assad regime, which historically
provided them some religious freedom protections, or in favor of the uncertainties of the opposition. As these sectarian fissures deepen, it is increasingly likely that religious communities will be targeted not for their political allegiances, but solely for their religious affiliation. . . .
[I]t is clear that sectarianism is increasing and religiously-motivated attacks are being perpetrated by the al-Assad regime and its proxies, as well as at times by opposition forces seeking his overthrow, resulting in severe violations of religious freedom. These violations also threaten Syria’s religious diversity by increasing the likelihood of religiously-motivated violence and retaliation continuing in a post-al-Assad Syria, where religious minorities will be particularly vulnerable.
Three commissioners dissented from the report, arguing that its policy recommendations go beyond the commission’s mandate. In other Syria news, the two Orthodox bishops kidnapped at gunpoint last week, presumably by opposition forces, remain missing.
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Posted in Commentary, Mark L. Movsesian
Tagged Arab Spring, Comparative Law and Religion, Religion in the Middle East, Religious Minorities, Syria