Minorities in the Middle East

Minority policies are sensitive issues in contemporary politics of nation-building. It involves not only national political identity building, but also affects international relations. Minority policies and politics include sensitivities to sub-national ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural and human rights that are universally recognized through various international conventions. Therefore, various connotations about minorities have significance in legal, economic, social, and cultural interpretations.However, minority groups in different states are subject to a plethora of societal, political, and economic factors that prevent their inherent rights leading to voicing out their grievances in organised and occasionally in violent manners. The modern concept of nation-state has augmented the issue of minority rights. Therefore, serious intellectual endeavors have been made to theorize minority issues and rights, while in practice states have followed different patterns of political responses to the issue. The political, religious, cultural and economic equalities and freedoms of minorities in the world constitute the core analytical elements in serious scholarship of the day.