The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

minorities

This entry treats both Muslim minorities under non-Muslim rule and non-Muslim minorities under Muslim rule. Due to the limitations of space, it includes only the most significant minorities.

Muslim Minorities under Non-Muslim Rule

The question of the majority-minority relationship has been relevant to Muslims since the emergence of Islam. Muslims began their history in Mecca as a minority persecuted by the polytheistic establishment of the city (610–30). This situation, however, did not last long. Following the conquests of the seventh century, the Muslims became an elite ruling over non-Muslim majorities in the vast expanses of the emerging empire. The process of conversion to Islam was much slower than the conquests themselves; scholars disagree on when Muslims became a majority in the Middle East and North Africa. It is clear that this transformation did not take place before the 11th century, but some argue that it did not occur until the beginning of the Mamluk period in the 13th century. In the Indian subcontinent, the Muslims never exceeded a quarter of the population, although various Muslim dynasties ruled substantial parts of India from the 13th to the 19th century. Historians of Indonesia—where Islam spread by slow penetration of traders and divines rather than by conquest—have not been able to chart demographic developments with great confidence, but Islamization apparently started there (probably in the 15th century) with the ruling elite so that Muslim rulers initially controlled a mainly non-Muslim population. It is not possible to say when exactly Muslims became a majority in Indonesia, which at the time of writing is the state with the largest Muslim population. Similar difficulties face the historians of sub-Saharan Africa. The coastal region of East Africa became a Muslim majority area between 1200 and 1500, while comparable development in West Africa differed from region to region. The Chinese Muslim minority developed during the Tang dynasty (618–907); its growth accelerated during the period of the Mongol invasions, and in 2006 it numbered 20 million, according to government estimates.

In the formative centuries of Islamic history, when Islam was constantly expanding, Muslims who lived as minorities under non-Muslim rule were rare. Early tradition (hadith) considered living under such conditions undesirable, and a tradition makes the Prophet denounce Muslims who live among polytheists. Later jurists do not distinguish between situations in which the Muslims formed a majority or a minority of the population: what matters is the religious affiliation of the ruler.

When the Muslims were forced for the first time to abandon significant areas previously under their control, the legal thinking on the permissibility of living under non-Muslim rule began to change. While some schools of law continued to reject the legality of living under non-Muslim rule, others weighed such issues as the ability to practice Islam freely in a non-Muslim area and the possibility that Muslims living there would bring about the conversion of the non-Muslims to Islam. In Spain, the process started with the fall of Toledo into Christian hands in 1085. Further Christian advances in the 12th and 13th centuries left substantial numbers of Muslims, known as Mudejars (those who were allowed to stay), under Christian rule, but the Muslim population eventually would vanish from Spain completely. In Syria and Palestine, on the other hand, the Crusaders’ takeover at the end of the 11th century was followed by a Muslim restoration at the end of the 13th century. Nevertheless, for almost two centuries, the Muslims of Syria and Palestine lived under Frankish-Christian rule. In some areas they were a subjugated majority, while in others they were reduced to minority status. In the 12th century, the non-Muslim Central Asian empire of the Qara Khitay treated the Muslim population with tolerance and won the general appreciation of their subjects. The 13th century, on the other hand, saw the destructive Mongol invasion of Persia and Central Asia, although this episode of non-Muslim rule over a Muslim population came to an end with the conversion of the Mongol Ghazan Khan to Islam in 1295.

During the era of the three great Muslim empires—the Ottoman, the Safavid, and the Mughal—barely any Muslim minorities lived under non-Muslim rule. This situation began to change in 1774 when the Ottomans were forced to surrender Crimea and its Muslim population to Russia in the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. A substantial Muslim minority came into being when the Ottomans ceded Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Habsburg Empire in 1878. The Muslims of India were a minority, but since the government of most areas of the Indian subcontinent was in their hands, they experienced few problems until 1858, when the gradual takeover of India by the British was formalized. India was incorporated into the British Empire, and the Muslims of India were transformed from a ruling elite to a subjected minority. After the partition of the Indian subcontinent and the establishment of Pakistan in 1947, a substantial Muslim minority came into being in the newly established independent and professedly secular Republic of India. The difficulties initially experienced by this minority because of its connections with the rival and professedly Islamic state of Pakistan were brilliantly analyzed by W. C. Smith in his Islam in Modern History (chapter 6). The question of living Islamically in a non-Muslim environment has long been the subject of public debate among Indian Muslims in terms of Islamic law: is India the abode of Islam (dār al-islām) or the abode of war (dār al-ḥarb)? How should this question be answered in a region that had been under Muslim rule in the past and in a situation in which the sovereign is non-Muslim but where Muslims enjoy unrestricted freedom of worship? A comparable analysis could be attempted concerning the Muslim minority in Israel.

The 20th century—and especially the years after World War II—saw the development of significant Muslim minorities in Europe and the Americas. In the medieval period, very few Muslims were ruled by others or lived in a non-Muslim environment, but in contemporary times millions of Muslims find themselves under non-Muslim rule. This has become a significant issue of debate among Muslims themselves and in the scholarly literature. The Muslim minorities that emerged in the West are diverse. They differ in their countries of origin, their mode of integration into the local society, and their vision of life in their adoptive countries. In England, most Muslim immigrants originated from Pakistan and Bangladesh, in France from North Africa, and in Germany from Turkey. The Russian Muslim minority has been estimated at 15 to 20 million. The Muslim minority in the United States, now estimated at about 4 million, is also of diverse origins. The first substantial number of Muslims entered the United States as slaves brought from Africa between the 17th and 19th centuries. In late 19th century, Muslims started immigrating to the United States from the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Beginning in the 1970s, the number of North American Muslim institutions and organizations increased dramatically. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an umbrella association of a few hundred mosques and Islamic centers; the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) brought the problems of the American Muslims to the attention of the government and into public awareness. The debate concerning the Muslim minority in the United States grew in intensity and gained importance in the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, perpetrated by radical Muslims on September 11, 2001.

Among the most important issues in the relationship between these minorities and their adopted countries are their involvement in politics, their economic integration, their mosques, their educational institutions, and their relations with the other religions. As of 2003, there were Muslim members of Parliament in England, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden. All were elected in the framework of existing political parties; attempts to organize specifically Muslim parties in Belgium, England, France, and Germany were not successful. Muslim participation in local governing bodies was substantially greater than on the national level. Organizations that claimed to represent the generality of Muslims in various countries were established; prominent among them were the Muslim Council of Britain, Union des Organizations Islamiques de France, and Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland. Radical Muslim organizations with small memberships but considerable visibility also developed: among them, the Jama‘at-i Islami (The Islamic Group) was active among Muslims of Indian and Pakistani extraction and the Hizb al-Tahrir (The Party of Liberation) promoted a radical Muslim agenda in several European countries.

In the early 21st century most Muslim children in Europe and America studied in state schools; additional instruction in Islam frequently was given in mosques or prayer rooms after school or on weekends. In recent years, Western Europe experienced a remarkable increase in the construction of mosques, estimated at 212 in 2003, and prayer rooms, of which several thousand were in operation. Countries with the largest number of mosques were England (80), Germany (66), and France (8). Hundreds of mosques from the Ottoman period survived in Bulgaria, Western Thrace, and Romania.

Since the 1990s, the emergence of significant Muslim minorities in non-Muslim countries provided the impetus for the development of a new branch in Islamic thinking called “legal theory for Muslim minorities” (fiqh al-aqalliyyāt). Fiqh al-aqalliyyāt addresses the problems encountered by Muslims who want to live according to Islamic precepts in a non-Muslim environment. The most prominent figures in the development of this branch of Muslim thought are Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Taha Jabir al-Alwani. Alwani was born in Iraq, studied at Azhar, taught in Saudi Arabia, and then became the president of the School of Islamic Social Sciences in Ashburn, Virginia. Qaradawi, a prominent public figure in contemporary Muslim thought, was born in Egypt, also studied at Azhar, and moved to the emirate of Qatar in 1961. Among the matters discussed in the framework of this legal theory are the nature of the Western countries when analyzed according to the classical division of the world into dār al-islām (abode of Islam), dār al-ḥarb (abode of war), and dār al-‘ahd (abode of covenant); the question of jihad; economic questions such as the permissibility of trading in stocks and bonds (i.e., if doing so violates the Muslim law that prohibits paying or receiving interest); the problems of child adoption (which is prohibited in classical Muslim law); and, in general, the permissibility of deriving new rulings from the sacred sources of the shari‘a (ijtihād). Qaradawi maintains that since Muslims are a community with a global mission, they must have a presence in the West since the West is a leading force in the world and they must influence its policies. He devotes considerable attention to the question of marriages between Muslim men and non-Muslim women. Classical Muslim law allowed Muslim men to wed Jewish or Christian women, though many jurisprudents expressed reservations concerning this practice. The Qur’an permits marriage to scriptuary women, and while, in principle, Qaradawi accepts this rule, he considerably restricts its applicability. The Christian woman must be a real believer (being born of Christian parents is not sufficient proof of this—she herself must not be an atheist, an apostate, a communist, or a member of the Baha’i faith), and it is forbidden to marry a Jewish woman as long as there is war between the Muslims and Israel. Another interesting ruling by Qaradawi concerns what happens when a non-Muslim woman married to a non-Muslim man embraces Islam while her husband retains his original religion. After surveying the views of classical jurists—most of whom believed the woman must leave her husband—Qaradawi rules that in the West such a woman should stay with her husband. The purpose of this rule is to encourage married women to embrace Islam, to spare them the hardships facing women without husbands, and to give the husband an incentive to follow his wife into Islam.

The growing importance of Muslim minorities in Europe and America in the second half of the 20th century gave rise to a growing interest in public debate, academic study of interfaith relations, and interfaith dialogue. Numerous conferences, along with journals dedicated to this field (Islamo-Christiana; Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations; Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations; Journal of the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs; Encounters: A Journal of Intercultural Perspectives), have served as significant venues for adherents of diverse faiths to share their sensibilities and points of view.

Non-Muslims under Muslim Rule

This section focuses on non-Muslims living under Muslim rule, whether the non-Muslims constitute a majority or a minority in a given area. Medieval Muslim law initially distinguished among Jews and Christians (“People of the Book” or scriptuaries [ahl al-kitāb]), Zoroastrians, and polytheists. According to the Qur’an, the Muslims are obliged to fight the scriptuaries “until they pay the poll tax (jizya) out of hand while being humbled” (9:29). This has been taken to mean that the purpose of the war against the scriptuaries is not their conversion to Islam but rather their submission to Islamic rule. The scriptuaries who submitted to Islamic rule were described as “protected communities” (ahl al-dhimma, dhimmīs). Their rights and obligations were defined in a series of documents referred to as the Treaty of ‘Umar (al-shurūṭ al-‘umariyya), which probably date from the eighth century, despite being attributed to ‘Umar b. al-Khattab, the second caliph (r. 634–44). These “conditions” promised the dhimmīs the right to retain their religion and perform their rituals, though various restrictions were placed on religious observance in public. The granting of this right was conditioned on the payment of the poll tax (jizya) and on the acceptance of a lowly status reflected in numerous rules relating to the construction and maintenance of places of worship and behavior in the public sphere.

The dhimma concept, which initially included only Jews and Christians, was broadened as a result of the huge expansion of the areas under Muslim control. The first religious group to be added to the dhimma category was the Zoroastrians, adherents of a dualistic religion that had been dominant in Iran before the Muslim conquest. Though the Zoroastrians are not mentioned in Qur’an 9:29, and though most schools of law do not consider them scriptuaries, they were included in the dhimmī category on the basis of a Prophetic tradition. As for polytheists, two of the four schools of law (the Hanafi and the Maliki) were willing to bestow dhimmī status on non-Arab polytheists. Only Arab polytheists were excluded from this category and therefore forced to choose between conversion to Islam and the sword; however, according to the perception of most jurists, all Arabs embraced Islam during the Prophet’s lifetime. The exclusion of Arab polytheists from the dhimmī status therefore had little practical significance after the Prophet’s death in 632. Hence, according to the Hanafi and Maliki schools of law, all non-Muslims living under Muslim rule—except for the apparently nonexistent Arab polytheists—are eligible for the dhimmī status; whereas, according to the Shafi‘is and the Hanbalis, only Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians are eligible.

The question of the relationship between Islam and the non-Muslims under its rule developed in the earliest period of Muslim history as a result of the major conquests in the first century. The non-Muslim communities of the Middle East, which was the first area conquered by Muslims, included Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Manicheans (the latter were persecuted and never attained the status of ahl al-dhimma). In some regions of the Indian subcontinent, adherents of Indian religions lived under Muslim rule from the eighth century; this phenomenon grew dramatically in the 12th century and lasted until the 19th. Since the Hanafi school of law was predominant in India, the Hindus of the subcontinent were treated in most periods as dhimmīs; the few attempts to change their status and consider them unprotected polytheists came to naught. The Ottoman Empire had substantial Christian and Jewish minorities and developed the millet (from Arabic milla or “community”) system for their governance. This system brought the non-Muslim communities (mainly the Greeks, the Armenians, and the Jews) into the framework of Ottoman law while giving them a substantial measure of religious and cultural freedom. The Iranian Safavid Empire had Armenian, Zoroastrian, and Jewish minorities whose situation was, in general terms, worse than that of the minorities of the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, the Babi and Baha’i religions came into being in Iran; as religions founded after the revelation of the Qur’an, their adherents never received the dhimmī status and have been persecuted by successive Iranian governments. In Egypt, muftis have repeatedly declared the tiny Baha’i minority as apostates who are not entitled to the free exercise of their religion.

During the medieval period, several groups that began as Muslim sects developed beliefs so remote from Islam as to constitute distinct religions and therefore are considered minorities. The Druze community originated in the 11th century, developing out of the Isma‘ili movement and named for Muhammad b. Isma‘il al-Darazi, one of the early supporters of the Fatimid caliph Hakim (r. 996–1021) in his quest for recognition of his supernatural status. After Darazi’s death in 1019, the leadership of these supporters passed to Hamza b. ‘Ali, who is considered the founder of the Druze faith. The Druze call their faith “the Unitarian Way” (madhhab al-tawḥīd) and call themselves the “Unitarians” (muwaḥḥidūn). God is one, incomprehensible and undefinable by humans. The intricate cosmogony of the Druze faith cannot be discussed here. The faith has major ethical components, including truthfulness and solidarity within the community. The community is divided into the “learned,” initiated into the secrets of the religion (‘uqqāl) and the “ignorant” (juhhāl), who are not initiated but are nevertheless members of the faith. Of the principal commandments of Islam, only the Feast of Sacrifice (‘Id al-Adha) is observed. Polygamy as well as divorce against the wife’s will are forbidden. The Druze live in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. Their number is estimated at slightly above one million.

The Nusayris (or ‘Alawis), whose main concentrations are in Syria and Turkey, are a syncretistic group that originated in ninth-century Syria among radical Shi‘is. They are named after Muhammad b. Nusayr, who proclaimed the divine nature of the Shi‘i imams and supported the transmigration of souls and antinomianism. They believe in the divine nature of ‘Ali b. Abi Talib, as well as in the trinity of ‘Ali, Muhammad, and Salman al-Farisi. They celebrate some Muslim and some Christian festivals, but the way in which these festivals are performed and the meaning given to them by the Nusayris are not the same as in Christianity and in Islam. It is noteworthy that despite their minority status, the Nusayris have held power in Syria since the early 1970s.

Mention should also be made of the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking group. They believe in one God who created the world and entrusted it to seven archangels, whose leader is the Peacock Angel (Ṭāwūs-i malak). This angel has been identified by outside observers with the devil; this identification has not yet been satisfactorily explained, but it resulted in the description of the Yazidis as “devil worshipers” and has increased the scholarly interest in their history and system of belief. The Yazidis were not considered as dhimmīs and their religion was not protected in any way until the period of the Tanzimat (Reforms) in the Ottoman Empire. Their origins can be traced to the activities of ‘Adi b. Musafir, a Sufi shaykh who was born in Biqa‘ (now in Lebanon) in 1073 or 1078 and moved to Kurdistan at the beginning of the 11th century, where he established the ‘Adawi order and acquired a considerable following. According to Maqrizi’s (1364–1442) account, the order was transformed after ‘Adi’s death: his followers engaged in excessive veneration of their founder, claimed that he sits together with God, refused to accept any livelihood that is not from him, disregarded sexual taboos, and abolished the ritual prayers, saying that ‘Adi prayed on their behalf. Consequently, ‘Adi’s tomb was destroyed in 1414–15; his bones were exhumed and burned. Since the 17th century, the Yazidis have experienced several waves of persecution and were even forced to convert to Islam. At the present time, most Yazidis (estimated by Kreyenbroek at about 120,000) live in Northern Iraq; in Syria they number about 15,000. In the 1980s, most Yazidis who lived in Turkey found refuge from religious persecution in Germany, where they number between 20,000 and 40,000. Modern Yazidis deny any relationship with Islam, but their religious vocabulary is still influenced by Sufism.

An important minority in the Indian subcontinent are the Sikhs. Their religion was founded in the Punjab province by Nanak (1469–1539). His creed centered on a preference for devotion as opposed to ritual and on a fierce criticism of the Hindu caste system. His followers in the leadership of the community were known as gurus, or teachers. They affirmed the existence of one God and rejected both Hindu and Muslim rituals. The Sikhs started as a peaceful religious group bent on bridging the gap between Hinduism and Islam but transformed themselves, since the 17th century, into a militant movement. This development was caused mainly by the change in the policies of the Mughal Empire from toleration during the reign of Akbar (r. 1556–1605) to persecution, which started during the reign of Jahangir (r. 1605–27), who executed Arjun, the third Sikh guru, in 1606. In the modern period, the number of Sikhs is estimated at 23 million, of whom more than 19 million live in India (according to the census of 2001).

In the medieval period, the dhimma system was the legal framework for the treatment of non-Muslims by the various Muslim governments. It seems to have been changed for a limited period only by the Mughal emperor Akbar, who abolished the jizya in 1581; the tax was restored in the framework of orthodox measures carried out by Emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1659–1707) in 1679. Though the exact nature of the jizya in India is open to debate, the symbolic significance of both its abolition and its restoration is not in any doubt. A much more significant change that heralded the end of the dhimma system took place during the Tanzimat period in the Ottoman Empire. The Hatt-ı Sherif of Gülhane (1839) proclaimed the equality of all Ottoman subjects, regardless of religion. In 1855 the jizya was abolished and the principle of equality of all subjects reaffirmed.

The question of non-Muslim minorities in Muslim majority countries entered a new phase in the 20th century with the emergence of numerous new states in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. There are Hindu and Sikh minorities in Pakistan and a Hindu minority in Bangladesh. The Jewish minorities in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and North Africa practically disappeared when most of the Jews emigrated to the newly established state of Israel and elsewhere. Significant Christian minorities exist in Egypt (the Copts), Syria, Iraq, and Jordan.

The Shi‘is

The minority with the most ancient roots in Islam are the Shi‘is. In general, Shi‘is have not been denounced as non-Muslims by mainstream Islam, and they are therefore different from the other minorities discussed in this entry. The term “Shi‘i” is derived from the expression “Shi‘at ‘Ali,” the party of ‘Ali. Shi‘is support the principle that the leadership of the Muslim community after Muhammad’s death must be retained by the Prophet’s descendants (ahl al-bayt) and that religious authority must be derived from the same source. Several attempts to implement these principles and place the Shi‘is in positions of leadership were foiled during the Umayyad period. There is no way to estimate the size of the Shi‘i community during this period, but its minority status does not seem to be in doubt. Similarly, in the premodern period it is not possible to estimate the size of the Shi‘i population in any given region.

Despite being a minority, Shi‘is succeeded in establishing major political units in the medieval period. The Buyid dynasty, which ruled from Baghdad between 945 and 1055, was significant for the development of the Twelver Shi‘a. During Buyid rule, important developments took place in the development of Shi‘i thought and ritual. Shi‘i luminaries such as Ibn Babuya (d. 991), Mufid (d. 1022), Murtada (d. 1044), and Muhammad al-Tusi (d. 1067) flourished during the Buyid period. The lamentations of the Day of Ashura on Muharram 10 (the first month of the Islamic calendar), commemorating the killing of Muhammad’s grandson Husayn and his supporters in Karbala on October 10, 680, as well as the festival of Ghadir Khumm, commemorating the alleged appointment of ‘Ali b. Abi Talib as the Prophet’s successor, were granted recognition during this period.

The main political achievement of the Isma‘ili branch of Shi‘is in the medieval period is the Fatimid state. Established by ‘Ubaydallah al-Mahdi in the early tenth century, it progressively extended its power throughout North Africa; during the reign of Mu‘izz it conquered Fustat in 969 and established the city of Cairo in 970. Thus began two centuries of Shi‘i domination in Egypt, ending with the Ayyubid takeover in 1171 and the restoration of Sunnism. It is noteworthy that the Fatimid period does not seem to have brought about a substantial increase in the number of Shi‘is in Egypt.

The political achievement of Shi‘is that had the most durable results is the establishment of the Safavid state in Iran in the 16th century. In contrast to the Fatimid case, the establishment in Iran of the Twelver Shi‘a as the official religion of the Safavid state by Shah Isma‘il in 1501 launched the process by which Iran became, in the modern period, the most important concentration of Shi‘i population.

Reliable statistics on the size of the Shi‘i community are hard to come by, but it is estimated to constitute 10–15 percent of Muslims. Despite their minority status in the Muslim world in general, the Shi‘is constitute a majority in Iran, Iraq, and Bahrain. In Iraq until 2003, the Shi‘is were dominated by the Sunni minority. Since the establishment of the Iraqi monarchy in 1921, the government strove to marginalize the Shi‘i majority. This was done by using citizenship criteria, such as holding Ottoman citizenship before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, to restrict the civil rights of the Shi‘is. In the late 1960s, the Ba‘th government used the nationality law, first introduced in 1924 and amended several times in the 1970s, in order to deny the Iraqi nationality to a large number of Shi‘is. During the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–88, according to Yitzhak Nakash’s Reaching for Power, about 300,000 Iraqi Shi‘is were forced to leave the country.

The Shi‘is are the largest community in Lebanon. Substantial Shi‘i minorities exist in Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Gulf states, Afghanistan, Syria, and Turkey.

The Shi‘is are not proponents of a single political attitude. In contradistinction to the idea propagated by Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors in Iran, according to whom scholars of religious law should rule (wilāyat al-faqīh), Ayatollah ‘Ali Sistani, the most prominent religious leader of Iraqi Shi‘is, has been reluctant to be drawn directly into worldly affairs.

Other Minorities under Muslim Rule

Minorities that adhere to religions known to the classical Muslim tradition (Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, polytheism) have their place in the scheme developed by Muslim jurisprudents. However, other types of minorities also developed during Muslim history. The Ahmadi movement emerged in the last decade of the 19th century in British India. The Ahmadis maintain that they are Muslims in the fullest sense of the word but are not recognized as such by many mainstream Muslim organizations and were declared a non-Muslim minority by the Pakistani parliament in 1974. This happened because their prophetology can be interpreted as contradicting the doctrine claiming Muhammad as the last prophet (khatm al-nubuwwa). Since then, and especially since the introduction of the Islamization policy of the Pakistani president Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s, the Ahmadis suffered serious persecution in Pakistan, and the headquarters of their movement was relocated to London in 1984.

On the other hand, there are groups whose status as Muslims is not disputed but who are considered minorities because of their ethnic affiliation. A prominent example is the Kurds. The Kurds are a people who speak various Iranian languages and whose territory is divided between Turkey and Iraq; significant Kurdish minorities live also in Syria and Iran. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims of the Shafi‘i madhhab. In modern times, the Kurdish minority of Turkey rebelled several times in order to achieve the independence that was envisaged in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) but abandoned in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). The Turkish government suppressed these rebellions and went as far as denying the very existence of a Kurdish people, officially calling the Kurds “mountainous Turks.” As recently as 1967, a presidential decree prohibited the import into Turkey of any written or recorded material in Kurdish. In northern Iraq, the secessionist tendency was also in evidence in the wake of World War I, and several Kurdish revolts were suppressed both during the monarchy and after its fall in 1958. The most brutal suppression of the Iraqi Kurdish minority was committed during the so-called Anfal (“spoils,” after the name of sura 8 in the Qur’an) campaign in 1987–88 when the Iraqi army massacred tens of thousands of civilians. In Iran, the most important event for the Iranian Kurds in the 20th century was the establishment of the ephemeral Kurdish republic of Mahabad (January to November 1946).

Concluding Observations

The issue of minorities in the Islamic world is complex. The minorities are not restricted to Jews and Christians, who are frequently given exclusive attention when the issue is addressed. Some minorities belong to religious communities that existed before the emergence of Islam (Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists); among these can be included the Manicheans, who were not tolerated and are now extinct. Others were related to Islam when they came into being but developed into distinct religions (Yazidis, Nusayris, Druzes, Babis, and Baha’is). Another group considers itself Muslim but has been placed beyond the pale of Islam by the Muslim mainstream (Ahmadis). It is important to note that whatever tolerance was practiced in most historical periods in relation to the Jews, the Christians, the Zoroastrians, and even the non-Arab polytheists was not accorded to adherents of religions that came into being after the emergence of Islam. The prime examples of such minorities are the Baha’is in Iran and the Ahmadis in Pakistan. There are also minorities that are not religious but ethnic, such as the Kurds in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq and the Arabs in the Iranian province of Khuzistan.

The Muslims were a ruling minority for at least four centuries in the Middle East and for more than six centuries in various parts of India. The Arabian Peninsula, the birthplace of Islam, is an area with special rules: it was declared a region in which there would be no two religions, though there is evidence that Christians lived in Najran for some period after the Prophet’s death. There was also a substantial Jewish community in Yemen, an area that was considered distinct from the rest of the peninsula according to most early jurists. The Yemeni Jews fared reasonably well until the 17th century, which brought a series of intermittent persecutions and oppressive policies. After 1948, most Yemeni Jews emigrated to the newly established state of Israel. In modern times, a considerable number of foreigners work in Saudi Arabia, but citizenship is conferred on Muslims alone: according to the “Saudi Arabian Citizenship System” (para 14.1), applications for citizenship must include “a certificate signed by the imam of the mosque at the applicant’s area.” This seems to preclude any non-Muslim from submitting an application.

In practical terms, the fortunes of the non-Muslims living under medieval Muslim rulers varied. Modern historians generally agree that non-Muslims under medieval Muslim rule fared better than non-Christians or heretical Christians under medieval Christendom. The prominent historian Bernard Lewis aptly observed that “there is nothing in Islamic history to compare with the massacres and expulsions, the inquisitions and persecutions that Christians habitually inflicted on non-Christians and still more on each other. In the lands of Islam, persecution was the exception; in Christendom, sadly, it was the norm.” This must not be taken to mean that freedom of religion was unrestricted in the Islamic world or that the non-Muslims minorities also enjoyed equality. Nor was the relationship between the Muslims and their non-Muslim subjects as idyllic as it is sometimes described. Various disabilities were imposed on the non-Muslims and they were at times persecuted. The Abbasid caliph Mutawakkil (r. 847–61), for example, ordered his officials to destroy newly built churches, to confiscate parts of non-Muslim homes, to prevent the public performance of some Christian and Jewish rituals, and to impose distinctive clothing on the non-Muslims. It is not clear to what extent these instructions were carried out. The Fatimid caliph Hakim (996–1021) ordered the demolition of churches, the dismissal of non-Muslim officials, and the prohibition of various non-Muslim religious rituals, though he reversed this policy toward the end of his reign. The Almohad dynasty of North Africa and Spain (12th century) denied any tolerance to the Christian and Jewish communities and even engaged in forced conversions. This was also the policy of some Safavid rulers in 17th century Iran. Nevertheless, it seems that the treatment of non-Muslims under various Muslim governments in the Middle Ages was, overall, better than that of non-Christians or “deviant” Christians under medieval Christian rule. Modern Muslims frequently take pride in this comparison and draw from it conclusions concerning the tolerance inherent in the Islamic civilization.

In the modern period, the above-mentioned comparison is no longer tenable. Since the Enlightenment, there has been a marked increase in religious tolerance in the West. With the glaring exceptions of Nazi Germany and some communist regimes, countries whose population is predominantly Christian generally have shown more tolerance than countries whose population is predominantly Muslim. Massacres of Assyrians and Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire and the massacre of the Assyrians in Iraq in 1933 are significant examples of the harsh treatment of minorities in the modern Muslim world. Likewise, the growing strength of radical Islam in recent decades and the persecution of minorities such as the Baha’is in Iran and the Ahmadis in Pakistan and elsewhere go a long way to undermine the argument for the inherent toleration of religious minorities in Islam.