“Sectarianism is a form of bigotry, discrimination, or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion, nationalism, class, regional or factions of a political movement.”1
The conceptual reinforcements of insolences and actions considered as sectarian are extremely diverse. The followers of a spiritual, state or party-political assembly may have confidence in that their own redemption, or the accomplishment of their specific purposes, necessitates belligerently looking for adapts from other assemblies; moreover, the supporters of this particular group may have confidence in that for the accomplishment of their own party-political or spiritual mission their interior adversaries have to be rehabilitated or eliminated.
Sectarianism may not have been the state-policy of the Ottomans; however, they sought to keep a large empire unified and by doing that they suppressed non-Sunni Muslim minorities in the region they ruled. Sectarianism was thus only a byproduct of a more finance-oriented policy that Ottomans followed. The main objective of this essay is to observe and reflect the evidence towards or against the policy of sectarianism during the reign of the Ottoman Empire on the territories under its commandment; moreover, the research conducted while writing this essay will determine whether the sectarianism under Ottoman rule was or was not a state policy.
From time to time, an assembly that is below financial or party-political compression will execute or try to attack the associates of other groups that it concerns as accountable for its own deterioration. It can more severely describe the description of conventional faith in its certain assembly or society, and eject or exclude those who fail to sustain this fresh originate elucidated description of the party-political or religious convention. In other instances, dissidents from this convention will separate from the conventional organization and announce themselves as experts of a rehabilitated faith scheme, or containers of an apparent former convention. In other cases, sectarianism can be the appearance of an assembly’s chauvinistic or national determinations, or subjugated by agitators.
The situation of Jewish and Christian minorities among the population in the Ottoman Empire is a subject matter that endures to be in doubt and widely discussed up to this day, just about a hundred years after the formal termination of the Ottoman Empire itself. Spiritual connotation characteristically resulted in obtaining the rank in the Muslim Ottoman Empire for the most part. As Moshe Ma’oz mentioned in the study, Christians and Jews has been always observed as substandard matters or as unlawful quantities2.
As a consequence, these social groups were frequently distinguished in contradiction of the state entity. On the other hand, other academics would contend that the place of social, religious, and ethnical subgroups under the Ottoman Rule was compassionate in comparison to the behavior towards the minorities elsewhere around the globe, such as in particular areas of Europe. According to Edward Said, “abuses of Orientalism, that is a Western way of ‘dominating’ or ‘restructuring’ the history of the Middle East because of prejudice against Arab-Islamic peoples, has caused a misconstruction of the historical narrative.”3
According to Bruce Masters, Westerners were classically predisposed against the representatives Muslims; moreover, they frequently biased veracities in the relations among Christians, Muslims and Jews under the rule of the Ottoman Empire4. In isolation, it has to be distinguished that historic explanations, or misapprehensions, must be forcefully inspected while deliberating the situation of Jews and Arabs under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.
In order to evaluate the place of Jews and Christians for the duration of the era of the Ottoman Rule and determine whether there was a state policy of sectarianism, the official statuses of the Jews and Christian minorities have to be designated. They were deliberated as ‘Ahl al-Kitab’, or ‘people of the book’ (this term means that there were people that apprehended monotheistic principles). As a result, their handling by the government of the Empire could have been a lot different from that of the supporters of the polytheistic beliefs under Ottoman regulation, from the time when the Muslims acknowledged the diviners of Christianity and Judaism.
As a consequence, they were provided by the defense of the government, or Ahl al-Dhimma. The following custom of defense for social, cultural, and ethnical subgroups still are able to be observed in the present-day Tehran. A lot of groups of people that follow Christianity still continue to exist in Iran. From the time when it has been with authorization documented that the religions still revel in dhimma, the groups of people that follow Christianity are assured to receive defense from the government. A vivid instance of this defense is the representative image of a stern viewing Ayatollah Khomeini on the external side of an Armenian minister in Tehran.
The image signifies the Ayatollah’s defense over the minister, as a result, that he implies that he will provide their safety by himself. They delighted in independence in spiritual matters and, furthermore, several areas including schooling. From this point of view, Jews and Christians relished particular civil liberties under the regulation of the Ottoman Empire that was not settled to the ethnical, cultural, and social subgroups in Europe, on which territory Jews and Muslims were frequently mistreated or were in an inferior position because of the religious preconception.
It has to be said, on the other hand, that Jews and Christians experienced comprehensive liberty and even autonomy under Islamic regulation of the Ottoman Empire. These minorities were observed as mediocre by not only the administration of the Empire but by a lot of its citizens. If observed in simpleminded expressions, the dominance complex established by Muslims in the Ottoman Empire could most expected to be accredited to their recognition of the Prophet Muhammad in the role of the concluding prescient, a part of the faith that Christians and Jews failed to follow in their beliefs.
Their failure follows the path of the Muslims in so many ways has resulted in the Muslim monarchs to observe the Jews and Christians in deficient dimensions. Moreover, as a consequence, they were obligatory to provide a fee in a distinctive election tariff, also called jiyzya. While the Jews and Christians were permitted to obtain definite senior-level ranks, for example, financial consultants or general practitioners, they were at all times obligatory to obtain only those ranks subsidiary to their Muslim corresponding positions. They were even from time to time exposed to limitations in clothing or were beleaguered by definite bureaucrats and fellow citizen.
These facts of history represent that in spite of the conceding of dhimma to the non-Sunni Muslims and non-Muslims, unsanctioned performances of preconception were from time to time overlooked. There was an assured sagacity of communal separation between Muslims and non-Muslims. Typecasts classifying Christians and Jews were frequently exploited in multiplying the break among them. Even in zones of adjacent immediacy in the middle of these groups, where they existed and functioned as fellow citizens, they were infrequently comprised in the common being of the environs.
Jews and Christians, as well as the non-Sunni Muslims and non-Muslims, were rather infrequently apportioned with on a discrete foundation; as an alternative, they were stomped into a millet organization that dispensed with them as a municipality. For instance, “the Rabbi, in a millet-bashi, acted as the administrative officer responsible for acting as the representative of his community to the state. Rather than collecting the jiyzya individually, they paid the state collectively, with a Chief Rabbi administrating. This was the case for all recognized Christian and Jewish communities.”5 The millet scheme permitted the corresponding societies to appreciate a particular rank of managerial independence under their legislator. The millet forerunner could possess the ability to hold particular controls in order to implement and establish regulations. Moreover, he also helped to implore the origins of his municipality to the administrations of the Ottoman Empire as well.
According to Roderic H. Davison, millets assisted to some point as the negotiators of transformation and progress, they facilitated in implementing assured reconstruction and renovation in the Ottoman Empire. Roderic H. Davison, along with many other researchers, connects the fact of the existence of millets to the connection characters in the framework of the relations that the non-Muslim millets possessed with Europe. Armenians, Greeks, and Jews assisted in importing the letterpress media inside the Ottoman Empire.6
Furthermore, the administration also required alterations with the intention of reviving the Ottoman Empire, as well as refining the armed forces and founding delegations in Europe. An announcement by the Sultan Abdülmecid that was made in 1953 recognized collective independence on the foundation of equivalence; however, it abandoned the managerial features of an individual position, such as weddings and schooling, to the millets. This announcement correspondingly applied a scheme of tariff collection to all inhabitants, not just Christians and Jews and non-Sunni Muslims and non-Muslims, along with an obligatory armed forces provision for every citizen belonging to any social or ethnical group.
On the other hand, the history that occurred in practice was fairly not the same; most Christians and Jews answer to defense force restructurings was to recompense a particular tariff excusing them from armed forces obligation, instead of achieving the obligatory provision. As a consequence, in several circumstances, the millets appeared to be the managers of transformation in modernizing the Ottoman Empire; they implemented the role as the conduits or strainers of adjustment. In other cases, they were represented as the adversaries to improvement to defend their own welfares, for example, as in the situation of martial provision. According to Davison, “acceptance of certain modernization by non-Muslim millets also caused non-acceptance by Muslims on religious and anti-Western grounds. Although, it is important to remember Said’s Orientalist reconstructing of history on the basis of anti-Muslim prejudice when considering Davison’s claim.”7
The place of Christians and Jews and the non-Sunni Muslims and non-Muslims under Ottoman regulation could be disputed in the framework of the chronological concepts. As the spiritual connotation frequently established the communal position of inhabitants, spiritual subgroups were typically preserved with a rank of acceptance, which was not habitually appreciated by the subgroups under Christian regulation. On the other hand, it is imperative to summon up that the researchers may on no occasion accurately apprehend the place of components under the Muslim regulation in the Ottoman Empire as the historic clarifications repeatedly lead academics off course.
The current Western learning on the Ottoman historical events has not been supportive in explaining the uncertainties adjacent to the historic involvement of the empire’s cultural and spiritual subgroups. The historic researchers possess the knowledge in usually evaded themes, which assist in segregating the populaces of the Ottoman Empire into uniform, vertically created, denominational societies. The instinct originates in incomplete reply to the party-political handling of dutiful individualities by the Western authorities in the Ottoman early command, also called the Eastern Question, throughout the nineteenth century.
Marxian simulations, which provide chief to session over substitute community characteristics, have enthused additional reassessment. More lately, the sermon of post-colonialism and the cutting assessment flattened by Edward Said in contradiction of the conventions and outline of the recognized Western studentship on the Middle East, also known as Orientalism, have denounced the inscription of Ottoman past with what is supposed to be an unjustified importance of spiritual alterations.
The disparagement of the misappropriations of the Orientalism in the role of an educational discipline, and those concepts prejudiced by it, has been both considerate and functional. Even though Westerners were not completely accountable for the upsurge of sectarian hostilities in the Middle East, the Western spectators confined plentiful of the initial nonfiction on sectarian dealings and the reasons for it in the Ottoman Empire. They were naturally prejudiced in contradiction of Muslims and their images and questions repeatedly changed the veracity of the complication of the relations that connected Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the dusk of the domain.
As a result, the established Western past history on the circumstances under which the spiritual subgroups in the Ottoman Empire existed is contaminated and necessitates maintenance while referred. In addition, some of the people who have conducted the research on the subject more lately have completed it in order to improve the party-political rights of one cultural municipality over another. “In response to the political manipulation of research agenda surrounding the Ottoman Empire’s religious minorities, many of those who would deconstruct the Orient avoid religion as a category of identity in their historical analyses altogether. To write or not to write about the history of non-Muslims living in Muslim states has become, and perhaps always was, all too often a political act.”8
The majority of the European and North American academics that research Ottoman Imperia have selected not to set apart the Christians for singular consideration if deliberately ensuing the Arab separatist archetype or not. The similar fact could be stated for the researchers who are investigating the past of Egypt and Iraq. There are several prominent exclusions; however, these examples assist in reminding the researchers how much exploration needs to be done on the subject of non-Sunni Muslims and non-Muslims in the Ottoman outlying areas and their connection to the sectarianism.
Bibliography
Braude, Benjamin. Foundation Myths of the Millet System. Teaneck: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982.
Davison, Roderic. The Millets as Agents of Change in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire. Teaneck: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982.
Ma’oz, Moshe. Middle Eastern Minorities: Between Integration and Conflict. Washington: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001.
Masters, Bruce. Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Rogan, Eugene. The Arabs: A History. New York: Basic Books, 2009.
Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Tsimhoni, Daphne. The Tanzimat: Ottoman Reforms and the Millets. New York: Basic Books, 2002.
Wikipedia. “Sectarianism.” Web.
Footnotes
- “Sectarianism.” Web.
- Ma’oz, Moshe. Middle Eastern Minorities: Between Integration and Conflict (Washington: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001), 5-9.
- Said, Edward. Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 17.
- Masters, Bruce. Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 31.
- Benjamin Braude. Foundation Myths of the Millet System (Teaneck: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982), 69.
- Davison, Roderic. The Millets as Agents of Change in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire (Teaneck: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982), 319.
- Tsimhoni, Daphne. The Tanzimat: Ottoman Reforms and the Millets (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 99.
- Rogan, Eugene. The Arabs: A History (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 411.