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Minorities exist in all settings. And, when they seemingly do not, the majority carves a piece of its own social flesh and transforms it into a minority. The theocracies of Pakistan and Israel, founded on the notion of brotherhood among coreligionists, illustrate this phenomenon quite well. What this suggests, if not proves, is that the majority needs a minority. This need relates to the distressing, albeit unconscious, attribute of the majority itself that demands a receptacle for their projection. This is the basis of all prejudice.
Once such groundwork has been laid, stereotyping, negative portrayal in media, caustic devaluation, dehumanization, and violence tend to follow. Degradation of this sort is directed subtly or not so subtly at all minorities be they ethnic, racial, linguistic, gender-based, or sexual orientation related. Things can get really bad. The story is repeated over and over again from Hitler's Germany to the Rwandan genocide to the pillage of Native peoples in the United States. Slavery and the associated civil rights violations of African Americans is yet another local example of this sort; matters have improved, to be sure, but the current resurgence of racism within our nation gives one a pause.
In this issue of the Journal, we offer a set of book reviews dealing with one particular slice of man's hatred of his fellow man, and this pertains to the global mistreatment of ethnoreligious minorities. Our astute reviewers are Drs. Fayez El-Gabalawi, Daniel Moadel, Matthew Murphy, and Dilip Ramchandani. The books they review, respectively, deal with Christians in Egypt, Bahai's in Iran, Ethiopians in Israel, and Hindus in Pakistan. These examples might have come from distant lands and alien settings, but their instructive value is universal, given the terrifying rise in politicoreligious fundamentalism across the world. Read these reviews, learn, think, and do your best to improve the treatment of all minorities by others and, above all, by yourself