Joshua Castellino and Kathleen A. Cavanaugh. Minority Rights in the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 456 pages. ISBN 9780199679492 £70.
One can scarcely imagine a more acute test of democratic governance today—in the Middle East or beyond, including Europe—than the issue of minority citizenship. Indeed, this volume is part of a series of works from Oxford University Press on the legal and political aspects of minority rights at large. Over a decade ago, Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman noted a stubborn general tendency to separate matters of democratic citizenship from minority equity, despite the resurgence of interest in both.Footnote1 This is all the more vexing given the shared challenges: the public role of religion, globalized mobility, and the growing demands for communal autonomy, among others. In the Middle East, as elsewhere, these trends and their implications need to be understood in their unfolding historical context; the alternative is to reduce complexity to slogans such as ‘the clash of civilizations’ and ‘Islam is the problem’. It is salutary that the authors of Minority Rights in the Middle East are alert not only to Orientalist pitfalls but also to the need for a wider ethical critique of the normative frameworks at hand, regional and global alike.
Joshua Castellino and Kathleen Cavanaugh draw on their expertise as law professors to first sketch the construction of minority status in modern international legal instruments, notably with regard to human rights norms pertaining to such themes as religion, gender, migrants, and territorial minorities. The standard definition of a minority as a ‘numerically inferior’ and ‘non-dominant’ group, based on a landmark 1977 UN study,Footnote2 is rightly found to be inadequate amidst the diverse political and social realities in which communities may find themselves (48–54). This analysis is briskly situated in the context of Middle East states as they emerged from colonial rule in the 19th–20th centuries with a vast array of ethnocultural and religious minorities. Some like the Berbers, Copts, and Palestinians were ‘ancient’ in their presence; others such as Circassians and European Jews had migrated more recently. We are reminded just how thoroughly this landscape came to be shaped by overarching Anglo-French as well as Ottoman manipulation to serve imperial interests. Divide-and-rule policies privileged some Christian, Jewish and, occasionally, Muslim minorities, while splitting kin groups such as the Kurds across arbitrary borders. These practices trumped any impulse to extend to the colonies Europe's new libertarian and secularist trends, wherein minorities were beginning to find their footing.
Ottoman rule with its millet (confessional-communal) system as ‘possibly the first manifestation of what could be deemed “minority rights law”’ (268), earns more sympathetic consideration here, especially as developed in Syria from the mid-16th century onward. It certainly allowed genuine autonomy for assorted Christian and Jewish communities, an idea with strong resonance in pluralist Islamic principles that undergirded Ottoman law from the outset. In practice, however, millet communities did not necessarily enjoy full equality with the dominant Sunni Muslim group, and minority Muslims such as the Shi'a rarely enjoyed either autonomy or equality. Still, European powers exerted sufficient influence on behalf of their chosen beneficiary groups by the 19th century to create visibly privileged treatment for them in Ottoman lands—from Egypt to Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Syria—and for such minorities to be seen thereafter as client elites in the economic as well as political spheres.
The politics of human rights as played out after independence has hardly been favorable to establishing robust norms of equality, accountability, and liberty for minorities or majorities. It is here that the discourses of citizenship and minority equity noted earlier converge: constitutions and longstanding emergency decrees that curtail civil liberties and democratic accountability hardly allow space for minority groups, whether ethnocultural or religious. Castellino and Cavanaugh cite the example of Saudi Arabia, where a mild liberalization program in 2005 was launched in the areas of judicial fairness, expressive freedom, the status of women, and religious tolerance. Yet discrimination against Shi'a Muslims who make up a significant minority ‘remains embedded in society’ (139), from employment to governance, as these indigenous citizens are cast as threats to national and regional security. When the events of the ‘Arab spring’ roused demands for democratic change in neighboring Bahrain, where a Shi'a majority is ruled by a Sunni monarch (179–81), Saudi Arabia was quick to crush the uprising, blaming Iran (with its Shi'a majority) for instigating the unrest.Footnote3 It is also true, as the authors note, that the Wahhabi version of Islam espoused by the Saudi establishment has no room for any other community of interpretation, and that the Shi'a have long been subject to vituperative edicts from official religious bodies. But the ‘strategic equilibrium’ in political relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran is an integral part of the picture (177), and deeply informs any sensible reading of the fate of local minorities. This includes Iran's treatment of its Sunni Arab minority.
Time and again, Minority Rights in the Middle East effectively chronicles the interplay of religious, political, and historical forces that have framed contemporary settings, including the Palestinian situation which has pervasively influenced the politics of the region as a whole. The authors lament the post-September 11 use of globalized rhetoric to characterize local situations involving ‘trapped minorities’—such as the bid ‘to re-narrate the Israeli-Palestinian internal armed conflict by grafting it on to the global war on terror discourse’ (29). Much the same is true, they note, of the use of ‘clash of civilizations’ talk in accounting for the failure of state-building in Afghanistan. But it is in the detailed case studies on Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon that this volume comes into its own. In each instance, there is a patient recounting of key facets of the country's history, the ‘identification’ of minority groups, the actual rights enjoyed by minorities, and finally and unusually, of the authors’ view of prospective ‘remedies’ in public policy.
In the aftermath of the Arab spring, the Syrian uprising exemplifies the multifaceted nature of minority issues across the region. Alevi separatism and the vulnerability of Christian and other non-Sunni minorities—factors that contributed heavily to the civil conflict—are as much the legacy of French and Ottoman colonial policies as of the Assad regime's machinations. Meanwhile, the sponsorship of jihadi opposition groups by neighboring states with their own sectarian axes to grind is a reminder of how readily ‘Islam’ is a legitimating tool for local power-plays. For Castellino and Cavanaugh, it is inclusive citizenship that is the vital antidote to ‘fragmented identities’ (381–2). They recognize that Islam must play a critical role in this regard and that a purely secular approach based on Western models has no traction in the region. Recent legislative efforts in Lebanon to introduce a uniform civil code on marriage for Christian and Muslim communities alike, for instance, ran against familiar barriers of sectarian mistrust (373–4), leading one scholar to observe that
Women's recent and quite modest political gains have been achieved primarily through identification with the sectarian system … [W]here religious rules have acquired strong legal, civic, and political meaning, legal reform efforts have interesting implications. This disconnection between the processes of power based on gender and those based on religious affiliation tends to reinforce the tactical appeal of incremental initiatives … Finally, we may admit that legal reform in a multi-religious society may be more complex than like efforts in more homogenous societies …. (374)
Aside from the claim about ‘homogenous’ societies, of which there are hardly any in existence today, traditional assumptions about secularization as the answer to communalism have patently turned out to be naïve, even in consolidated liberal democracies. Castellino and Cavanaugh note that while the proposed legislation may have leveled the field for all communities, it ‘was never likely to remedy the discrimination and inequalities between men and women within the sects’ (374). In other words, for the reach of progressive law-making to be effective, it simply cannot avoid dealing with the substance of religio-cultural difference, beyond the forms of inclusive citizenship. The authors’ call for the building of ‘robust national institutions’ in Lebanon must be squared with their recognition that religious pluralism needs to be addressed on its own terms, there as elsewhere in the Middle East.
Yet critiques of the interface between the shari'a (the corpus of ethics, law, and tradition) and citizenship/minority equity are only dealt with here at the normative level. There are brief references to key voices such as Abdullahi An-Na'im, Khaled al-Fadl, Kamran Hashemi, and Tariq Ramadan (35–47)—but not an incisive engagement with how the growing demand for shari'a-related governance might deal with the challenge of minorities. Recent attempts at this by Mashood Baderin and Anver Emon, among others, are worthy of note.Footnote4 But they remain anchored in the understanding of law as a normative body of rules, no matter how suffused with aspects of religious tradition. What is needed, as some of the figures cited here have acknowledged, is for the ethical thrust of the shari'a to be taken no less seriously than the juridical. In part, this is about language itself in seeking to capture the fluid thought-processes behind civic–political action, with all the ‘code switching’ that is entailed in such an exercise.Footnote5 Strident proclamations about ‘shari'a as the answer’ in Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, as in Afghanistan, Pakistan and even the Muslim diaspora in the West, carry layers of meaning. The diversity of local sociopolitical contexts, coupled with identity politics in our globalized age, assures a spectrum of practical implications.Footnote6 Nor is this confined to Muslim societies; Judaic norms (including on gender segregation) are increasingly part of the public domain, with ramifications for all and sundry.Footnote7 If the cosmopolitan elements of citizenship and identity are to become part of the conversation, as surely they must, there is no escaping the ethical dimension.Footnote8
Such an engagement may well sit outside the scope of the substantial expertise that Castellino and Cavanaugh bring to this generally outstanding contribution to the hard task of framing minority issues in the Middle East. There are, however, more mundane criticisms too. Serious lapses in syntax and spelling, including of the names of prominent authors, are rife. No less annoying is the awkward organization of this volume. The opening chapter on the ‘Contemporary Middle East’ offers sections not only on the ‘territorial ambit of the Middle East, and Peace and Security Questions’ but also on ‘Islam, the Middle East and Human Rights Law’ (why not Christian and Jewish stances?), on ‘Constructing Minorities’, and on the ‘Approach to Human Rights’. Lumping together analytically disparate categories in this fashion makes little sense. This is followed by two chapters that separately treat ‘religious’ and ‘ethno-national and other’ minorities—with predictably substantial overlap between the two, giving it an extremely mechanical feel. Only when the case studies are launched in the final three chapters does the layout regain a proper flow. The authors and publishers would do well to reorganize and closely edit the text before releasing a paperback edition, one that will deservedly widen access to this ambitious work.
Notes
1 W. Kymlicka and W. Norman, eds., Citizenship in Diverse Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1–11.
2 F. Capotorti, Study on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, UN Doc E/CN.4/Sub2/384/Rev.1 (1977).
3 A claim refuted by the international inquiry into the events commissioned by the Bahrain regime itself: Report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), Manama, Bahrain, December 2011, http://files.bici.org.bh/BICIreportEN.pdf
4 A. Emon, Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law: Dhimmis and Others in the Empire of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); and M. Baderin, ‘Islamic Law and International Protection of Minority Rights in Context’, in Islam and International Law, eds. M. Frick and A. Th. Müller (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 309–48. On the wider frame of moral reference of the shari'a, see particularly N. Feldman, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
5 A. Filali-Ansary, ‘The Languages of the Arab Revolutions’, Journal of Democracy 23, no. 2 (2012): 5–18.
6 R. Hefner, ed., Shari'a Politics: Islamic Law and Society in the Modern World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).
7 This is not only true of Israel with its Christian and Muslim minorities, but also of the US diaspora: J. Berger, ‘Out of Enclaves, a Pressure to Accommodate Traditions’, New York Times, Aug 21, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/nyregion/hasidic-jews-turn-up-pressure-on-city-to-accommodate-their-traditions.html?src=recg
8 F. Dallmayr, ‘Cosmopolitanism: In Search of Cosmos’, Ethics and Global Politics 5, no. 3 (2012): 171–86.