Islam and Minorities: Need for a Liberal Framework

All major religions classify people into two distinct categories: believers and nonbelievers. In the name of universality, they normally give a distinct, often pejorative nomenclature to the latter; goyim in Judaism, infidel in Christianity and Islam, and melacha in Hinduism. In each case, the believer is held spiritually higher and morally superior to the nonbeliever and hence is bestowed with social ascendancy, better status, and higher treatment. Islam is no exception to this segregation. In terms of religious belief it classifies humanity into two distinct categories: Muslims and non-Muslims. This us-versus-them paradigm is neither new nor unique but is as old as religion itself.

Over the centuries a number of sociopolitical developments have gradually eroded the barriers. Modernization, social progress, the expansion of liberal values, the communications revolution, and above all individual mobility have undermined religion-centric discriminations. Despite the inbuilt resistance to change, religions like individuals are gradually finding it difficult to justify faith-based exclusions, at least in the public domain. They are not only frowned upon but also are increasingly becoming controversial, untenable, and often illegal. As more and more countries are embracing universal values of nondiscriminatory social life, religious dogmas toward the nonbeliever are becoming problematic. Because the other is always smaller than us, the whole issue revolves around the treatment of minorities.

While others have somehow managed to move away from religion-based treatment of their minority population, Middle Eastern countries where Islam is the official or preeminent religion come into a different category. Most strikingly, in these countries the discourse concerning minorities, whether religious, national, ethnic, or linguistic, continued to be dominated by the traditional religious framework, namely, us versus them. Despite prolonged disagreement, disapproval, and rejection by the non-Muslim subjects, the believer-nonbeliever framework continues to be the preeminent and, at times, the only framework available to the minorities living in the Islamic countries of the Middle East.

The fifty-seven-member Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) reflects the prevailing dilemma. Its desire to safeguard the interests and well-being of Muslim minorities in nonmember states led to the formation of the Department of Muslim Minority Affairs in 1978.¹ This however, was not complemented by the OIC initiating a similar move toward the welfare of the non-Muslim minorities living in the Islamic states.

A modest attempt is made in this essay to highlight some of the inherent shortcomings of this traditional frame of reference and the need for a more comprehensive approach toward the Middle Eastern minorities.

Who's a Dhimmi?

From the very beginning, Islam encountered and cohabited with non-Islamic subjects who were not willing to discover, convert to, and adopt the new religion. For doctrinal as well as historic reasons, Islam evolved a framework to deal with the problem posed by the presence of sizable nonbelievers. According to Islam, there are two distinct categories of nonbelievers, namely, ahl al-kitab ("possessors of the scripture," or "people of the book"),² who are endowed with revealed sacred texts, and other non-Islamic people. These two groups are popularly referred to as dhimmi and kafir, respectively.³ Since the days of the Prophet Mohammed, this two-tier religion-based categorization has defined, governed, and dominated the lives of the non-Muslims living under the ever-expanding Islamic rule in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Islam accepts the Old and New Testaments as revelations and recognizes them as sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity, respectively. Consequently, it recognizes the followers of these two religions, who had inhabited the Arabian Peninsula at the time of the Prophet Mohammed, as people of the book. In the case of Persia, dhimmi also included the followers of pre-Islamic Prophet Zoroaster or the Zoroastrians. The status of the Hindus is rather unclear. They technically do not have a revealed text like the Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians. Moreover, they are also "idol worshipers," anathema to Islam. However, when much of northern India was under Islamic rule during the Middle Ages, those areas were considered a part of dar al-Islam (House of Islam...