Minorities And State Building In The Middle East

This book offers fresh insights to enhance and diversify our understanding of the modern history of the state and societies in today’s Jordan, while also providing examples of why and how scholars can challenge the static and discursively government-minded approaches to minorities and minoritisation – especially the traditional emphasis on demographic balances. Despite its small size and initial appearance of homogeneity, Jordan provides an excellent case of a dynamic, relational, historically contingent and fluid approach to ethnic, political and religious minorities in the context of the imposition of a modern state system on complex and varied traditional societies. The editors and contributors present dynamic and relational perspectives on the status of and historical processes involved in the creation and absorption of minority groups within Jordan.

This text offers a comprehensive discussion of minorities and ethnic politics in eight Arab countries. Focusing on the strategic political chaos made by minorities, majorities and regimes in power, the authors point to probable future developments in majority-minority relations in the region.

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, analysing 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.

Shows which historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as 'minorities'Through close attention to what changed in French-mandate Syria, and what those changes entailed, Benjamin White argues for a careful reappraisal of the term 'minority'. Within a few years of World War I, the term had become fundamental to public understandings of national and international politics, law and society. Minorities (and majorities) were taken to be an objective reality, both in the present and the past. In Syria, the mandate period saw the consolidation of the nation-state form, despite French attempts to create territorial, political and legal divisions. There was a trend towards a coherent national territory with fixed borders and uniform state authority within them, while the struggle to control the state was played out in the language of nationalism - developments in the post-Ottoman Levant that closely paralleled events in Europe at the same time, following the demise of the Austro-Hungarian and tsarist empires. Through close attention to what changed in French mandate Syria, and what those changes meant, the book argues for a careful rethinking of a term too often used as an objective description of reality.

Focusing on the situation of both Muslim and non-Muslim religious minorities in the Middle East, this volume offers an analysis of various strategies of resilience and accommodation from a historical as well a contemporary perspective.

The author explores the process and outcome of ethnic identity on nation-building and ethnic conflict. It sheds light on the question of how minorities position and represent themselves during and after regime transitions and the dilemmas that minorities present for regime change and how social cleavages shape their preferences and identities.

The struggle for independence by minorities in the Middle East (those people who are non-Arab or non-Muslim) is affecting the political climate around the world. War and terrorism are threatening the safety of many minority communities and repression of minorities still remains standard state policy in some countries. This updated and revised edition of the 1991 original provides a wealth of historical and political detail for all the indigenous peoples of the Middle East. Pressed to persist in a threatening environment, these minorities (Kurds, Berbers, Baluchi, Druzes, 'Alawites, Armenians, Assyrians, Maronites, Sudanese Christians, Jews, Egyptian Copts, and others) share similar experiences and have been known to cooperate for shared goals. Important events and new trends regarding the welfare of these groups are covered, and numerous oral histories add to the new edition. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.