human rights issue

Submitted by Kepha Hor (United States), Mar 10, 2012 at 20:17

It's high time the matter of Islam's laws of dhimmi status, which still seem to trump modern ideals of human rights across the Islamic world, need to be made into an international issue. The Christians and Jews of northern Africa and the Middle East did not enjoy anything near fair treatment until the much-maligned colonial powers took over.

The current squeezing of the Coptic minority in Egypt, the small remnant of Tunisian Jewry, and the Christians of Iraq (as close as anyone can come to the truly indigenous population of the norther Fertile Crescent), as well as rising pressures on Syria's once-larger Christian community should be noticed and discussed openly in the Western media and policy circles. The virtual extinction of the Jewish communities of the Middle East--considering that Iraq was Jewry's second homeland since the days of the Prophet Jeremiah--also needs to be repeated to a willfully ignorant world. It should be a matter of international scandal that in Pakistan, it is considered "normal" behavior for Hindu and Christian girls to be abducted, raped, converted to Islam, and married to their violators--although I doubt that modern feminists would ever touch such an issue.

And, while people are being so rough on Israel these days, could it be that one reason that the Israeli right has eclipsed the European social democracy of modern Israel's Ashkenazi founders is that the majority Mizrahiyim know things about the less pleasant aspects of Dhimmi status and fear a return to such a status?

The Islamic "tolerance" of which people like Goldziher and Weil spoke so long ago is a myth, and it is being popped right before our eyes by newly confident Muslim peoples themselves.

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