How Does the Arab World Perceive Multiculturalism and Treat its Minorities? The Assyro-Chaldeans of Iraq as a Case Study
How Does the Arab World Perceive Multiculturalism and Treat its Minorities? The Assyro-Chaldeans of Iraq as a Case Study
This chapter examines the Assyrian-Chaldeans in Iraq as a case study for changing ideas about minorities in the Arab world. Although united by many social and historical factors, the Arab world is composed of a plurality of ethnic, national, cultural, linguistic, and confessional affiliations of long-standing origins and complex entanglements. Achieving multicultural recognition of this plurality has proved difficult, not least within Iraq. However, there has been a change in Arab perceptions of multiculturalism and minorities, reflected in recent revisions to the Arab Charter on Human Rights. Despite its theoretical inadequacies and practical deficiencies, the revised Charter may prove to be a useful starting point for filling this gap. It contains several provisions regarding cultural pluralism and the rights of minorities that could guide the Arab Spring in a more diversity-friendly direction. These ideas are then applied to the case of the Assyrian-Chaldean minority in Iraq.
Keywords: Arab Charter on Human Rights, Iraq, multiculturalism and minorities, Assyrians, Chaldeans
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