THIS is why we should, and should not, have a bias towards Christians in our intake of refugees from Syria. The argument turns in a circle. You have to start by asking why is there a refugee crisis in the Middle East.
Much of the root cause is the way the colonial powers divided the area up after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I.
At its largest in the mid-19th century, the Ottomans, or Turks, ruled over vast areas stretching from what is now Hungary and Austria in the north, Algeria in the west, Yemen and Egypt in the south, and Kuwait in the east.
By World War I it had contracted from the north and west, but still held the bulk of the Middle East. After the war, Turkey was created with its present boundaries and the rest was carved up and handed out as mandates under the League of Nations to Britain (Iraq, Kuwait and Palestine – which included Jordan) and France (Syria and Lebanon).
Virtually no account was given to the ethnic, linguistic and religious characteristics of the population. The ethnically and religiously unified Kurds, for example, should have had their own state. Instead they were divided among several of the mandates which later became independent states.
Iraq’s artificial boundaries lumped Sunni and Shiite Muslims under one jurisdiction.
Similar things happened in Africa after World war II when the African colonies became independent inheriting the colonial borders which were completely unrelated to the tribal and ethnic make-up of the people within them.
When you get people of one ethnicity or religion making up 40 plus percent of the population and another making 30 plus, you are asking for trouble. The incessant quest for political and economic power often breaks into violence.
For a long time Lebanon had power-sharing arrangements, but they ultimately broke out into civil war.
In other places one or other of the two largest groups would get political and economic power and hang on to it at all costs – through dictatorship and repression if necessary.
Iraq is a good example.
This stuff is human nature. It is in our genes. We have survived as a species because groups of us have got together and looked after our own. Outsiders were driven off or killed.
In most places, we are no longer in the state of nature where life is nasty, brutish and short – expect in those places where there are significant minorities. Smaller minorities (say, under 5 per cent) can be accommodated, but larger ones pose a threat.
Once a country gets a minority approaching 20 per cent, it is often in trouble. At that level people can get away with dealing only with their own. They can shop, engage trades and professions and generally deal almost exclusively with their own ethnic, linguistic or religious group.
They also move close to each other geographically.
They do so for comfort and for the power of numbers. But ironically, these moves make it easier for the group with economic and political power to discriminate against them. No jobs are available in the administration or big industries controlled or owned by the group in power. Northern Ireland 1950-1999 is a good example.
Municipal services – garbage collection, schools, water, power and hospitals – are usually much worse in the areas occupied by the minority. East Jerusalem is a good example.
So the minorities feel discriminated against and powerless.
Meanwhile, those with the political and economic power under these conditions do not mix with the minority. Importantly, they lose whatever empathy they may have had for them. That in turn makes it easier to discriminate more viciously against them.
Democracy is viewed with deep suspicion because it might empower a significant minority in possible coalitions with other lesser minorities or in their own right if the demographics line up. Fiji is a good example.
The minority is forced to turn to occupations that no-one else will do – lowly paid and dangerous jobs — or professions and occupations which are judged on merit alone. This is why Indians flock to the law and medicine in Malaysia and Fiji, for example.
Nations with significant minorities face a constant risk of outbreaks of violence or even civil war. Most Middle Eastern countries are like this. Many African ones are. And Northern Ireland and Fiji are also good examples.
Humans have xenophobia in their genes. We wouldn’t be here if it were otherwise. Anyone with a different language or religion is seen as a threat.
They are seen as a much greater threat if they are a significant minority and even bigger threat still if they are a repressed majority. Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa are good examples of the last.
And so is Syria where the Alawite Muslims, who are just 12 per cent of the population, run the show with a visceral determination to hang on to power.
The majority Sunni Muslims have tolerated this as a least-worst position, at least until very recently.
And overlaying all this is the propensity for groups in power and/or majority in neighbouring countries to support their cousins across the border. Iran’s support for Shiites in Iraq is a good example.
Given these accidents of colonial history that have thrown up significant minorities in many countries, what is to be done?
Well, any change of those borders is unlikely because it would require the consent on those in power in those countries – a power hard won and unlikely to be relinquished.
So, the smart thing might be to avoid the possibility of the build up of a significant minority. To that end you might argue that the smart thing would be not to take Muslims from Syria, or at least bias the intake to Christians so we do not get a significant minority of Muslims in Australia.
But there are a stronger countervailing arguments.
Ultimately, the only way to end the descent into violence in places which have significant minorities, is to ensure that the minorities do not feel discriminated against and that they can pursue life, liberty, happiness and economic fortune equally with everyone else.
For that you must have the rule of law and a spirit that does not permit discrimination. That is why we must have a non-discriminatory refugee policy.
And on a practical level, Australia has been blessed with such a diverse refugee and immigration intake that no individual significant majority seems ever likely to arise.
The only time Australia came close was with the nasty, unjustified sectarian anti-Catholicism of the 1950s and 1960s.
Mercifully, we are over that. But we must never forget the genetic strength of tribalism and we must ensure that our laws and practices have no place for intolerance and discrimination. Right now, with this refugee intake.
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and Fairfax media on 12 September 2015.
While not disagreeing with your basic thesis, I must point out that the Ottoman Empire was breaking up long before WWI. Our 1950s school histories of the 19th century called Turkey “the sick man of Europe”. And, of course, the Empire was created by conquest of local ethnic groups by the Ottoman Turks in the first place. One interpretation of the phenomenon of IS is that they are aiming to re-establish that “Caliphate”. So, although the European Powers didn’t help the situation with the post-colonial borders, I suspect that religious, dynastic and tribal wars in the region were inevitable (indeed in WWI the British had some trouble keeping the Arab tribes from fighting one another rather than the Turkish enemy).