Chronicle of the Middle East and North Africa
Minorities are a group of people belonging to a civilization that differs from what prevails within the state. Minorities are diverse, ranging from religious, ethnic, linguistic to cultural such as the Baha’is, the Beja tribes in Egypt, the Sabean Mandaeans, the Turkmen in Iraq, the Armenians and Jews in Turkey, the Druze in Syria and Lebanon, the Berbers in Morocco and Algeria and so forth.
Due to the lack of accurate information and statistics on the ethnic, religious, sectarian, and linguistic composition of the social structure of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa, researchers are helpless in their attempts towards studying the affairs and rights of minorities in those countries. However, what is happening on the ground, cannot be denied.
Minorities have a long history of existence in these countries. It is illogical to think of obliterating their identities or attempting to uproot them from where they have lived for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Throughout history, tireless attempts have been made to dissolve them or forcibly integrate them into the dominant, ruling majorities, who control public conventions and enact laws and legislation. However, this mentality has been imprinted in the minds of successive generations of the dominant majority, especially in non-democratic societies; therefore, most minorities continue to struggle to preserve their cultural, religious, and linguistic identity.
Of course, minorities do not share the same principles, values, goals, or ambitions; each population of minorities has its history, diversity within its homeland, sufferings, contradictions, and even divisions. In some societies, minorities live within the framework of larger minorities and have conflicting religious ideological views within their single minority structure.
