Muslims Behind Memory (2)
Analytical Reading on Present and Future of Muslim Minorities Worldwide
“...Researchers have differed among themselves in distinguishing between the concepts of minority and Islamic state. Some believe that if the percentage of Muslims in a state exceeds 50%, the state becomes Islamic. Others believe that if Muslims are the majority compared to followers of other religions, even if they do not exceed 50%, the state becomes Islamic. A third group of researchers sees that the criterion in determining the Islamic nature of the state is the constitutional text, or the religion of the president of the republic, or the composition of the ruling system..” (Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia).
In general, a minority: “is a group
that lives among a larger group, forming a community distinguished by features
that set it apart from the surrounding social environment. It may be considered
a community suffering from the domination of a group enjoying a higher social
status and greater privileges, aiming to deprive the minority of full practice
of various activities: social, economic, or political, and limiting their role
in the majority society. Minorities differ in number, social status, and
their influence in the majority society. Whatever this status, the majority
society views them as (strangers) to it..”
The Ordeal of Muslim Minorities and Alliances Against Islam
The conditions and affairs of Muslim
minorities around the world receive the attention of scholars of the Ummah, its
thinkers, media professionals, and active Islamic movements. Conferences and
seminars have been held for their sake, studies and research have been issued,
and journalists and researchers have flocked to where these minorities exist to
study their conditions on the ground. This resulted in diverse studies
introducing the conditions of these minorities, their areas of spread,
institutions, and the history of Islam in the countries where they live.
Books and research have also been
published addressing different aspects of minority conditions—political,
jurisprudential, social, and cultural. Yet this great interest has weakened in
recent times, until the issues of these minorities almost faded into oblivion.
Some have even begun to vanish under the blows of hateful racism, hostility,
and religious fanaticism from the majority, reaching the level of ethnic
cleansing and expelling Muslims from their homes under fabricated and false
pretexts, as the Orthodox Serbs and Catholics did with Muslims in Bosnia
and Herzegovina in the late 1990s, as the fire-worshippers in Burma did
and still do with the Rohingya Muslims, and as the Chinese communist regime
does with the Muslims of East Turkestan and others, amid the silence of the
world.
Notice with me that the aforementioned
examples involve three different religions or beliefs: Orthodox and Catholic
(Christians), fire-worshippers (Buddhists), and communists. Yet they unite in
hostility to Islam, even launching campaigns and wars to eliminate Muslims or
exterminate them. Therefore, we can say: the ordeal of Muslim minoritiesarose within the framework of the comprehensive war against Islam by adherents
of religions or beliefs hostile to Islam.
It is a war in which the Western
Crusader camp allies with the Eastern communist camp, as well as the
irreligious Buddhist camp (if the term may be used), along with and among them
some Islamic and Arab states invaded by atheist communist thought or
Western Crusader thought—or both together—ruled by regimes hostile to Islam,
working to limit the spread of Islam that threatens their rule, or even to
eradicate it if possible.
For the First Time… A Triple Alliance Against Islam
For the first time in the history of
global conflicts, the Eastern bloc or communist camp unites with the WesternCrusader camp, along with Buddhism and followers of other sects, against
one enemy: “Islam,” in one war—or two successive wars or campaigns that
complement each other.
“And nearly one-third of Muslims live
as numerical minorities around the world, with a large number of them subjected
to various forms of political and social marginalization, persecution, and
torture, while others enjoy greater opportunities for peaceful coexistence and
integration into their societies of different religions.
In both cases, issues and questions
arise concerning how to understand the conditions and policies that led Muslims
to persecution or coexistence, how Muslims dealt with societies different from
them culturally and religiously, what political, social, and economic roles
they play, what are the most important challenges imposed on them by their
reality, and how they deal with them through institutional and political
mechanisms..” (From the introduction to the Encyclopedia of Muslim Minorities
in the World).
The Spread of Muslim Minorities Around the World
Out of 232 countries and regions in
the world (196 states and 36 regions), there are 50 countries with a Muslim
majority, while more than 300 million Muslims—less than one-sixth of the
total Muslims—live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion.
China, for example, has more Muslims than Syria, and Germany more than Lebanon.
Muslim minorities cover a vast
geographical area, spread across most countries of the world. They suffer from
one common factor: exposure to challenges or threats, whose main source is the
non-Muslim societies in which they live. Yet the severity of these problems and
the size of the threats naturally differ from one region to another and from
one country to another (Arabi Post).
My Visits and Meetings with Muslim Minorities
Throughout my journalistic career
spanning more than thirty years, I have visited a number of these minorities in
their homelands, met many of them in their diaspora around the world, and
followed—like other interested parties—their conditions closely. I testify that
the attachment of these minorities to their homelands where they were born, to
their lands where they grew up, and their adherence to their faith and defense
of their rights at all levels and in all forums, embodied their causes,
entrenched them, and made them present and pressing on the international stage.
The sons of these minorities have
offered—and still offer—great sacrifices under the blows of the fierce war
waged against them. By God’s grace, then by their firm belief in the justice of
their cause and their adherence to their rights, they have managed to secure a
significant position on the world’s map of attention, after becoming in many
countries a recognized force, enjoying political, union, and economic
representation, achieving respectable integration into society and harmony with
it to some extent, until they became welcomed in many societies.
Meanwhile, some still face persecution
and expulsion from countries, as happens in Burma, or identity erasure and
pressures to abandon Islam, as happens in East Turkestan at the hands of the
atheist Chinese communist regime. The world now stands as a mere observer of
these minorities, without sufficient attention to their rights. It remains
required of the Islamic and Arab world—peoples and governments—to stand
strongly by them to obtain these rights. I say peoples before governments, for
there are governments—unfortunately—that place their own interests above the
rights of their brothers in Islam.
What increases the challenge in this
issue is that the conflicts, wars, and difficult challenges in the Islamic
world have driven new waves of these minorities—and Muslims in general—into
successive migrations to different countries of the world, fleeing with their
religion to calm regions such as Europe. Yet the rise of the far right across
Europe, the United States, and other countries in Latin America, and the
increasing spread of Islamophobia, with its manifestations of violence and
harassment against Muslims, has become a major dilemma for these minorities.
This requires a serious stance from the peoples and governments of the Islamic
world to support the rights of these minorities and to introduce the world to
these rights and the dangers surrounding them and threatening their
existence—especially as the machine of extremism and the guillotine of racism
are increasing without pause, targeting their silent eradication little by
little, day by day. Yet they remain steadfast in their faith and their land,
presenting an exemplary model. And we, as Muslims, if we cannot provide them
with sufficient support, must at least—out of moral support—be proud of that
great epic they are waging throughout history.
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Writer's Mail: shaban2012 @gmail.com
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