One of our members is interested in studying the status of minority religious and ethnic groups in Muslim majority countries. I've pasted the proposal below and if you're interested in helping out, simply email me at [email protected] and I'll put you in touch.
The work can be done by anyone with an internet connection and there's no requirement that you be a professional academic. The goal is to get this information out there so we can have more informed discussions.
The proposal
Religious and ethnic minorities are at risk of going extinct or decreasing significantly in number all over the world. There are patterns of severe attacks on minorities in some religious conservative countries. For instance: Baha’i or Zoroastrians persecution in Iran; Christian or Hindu persecution in Pakistan and in Bangladesh. Some sectarian minorities have been forced to leave their homeland and are being murdered, such as Ahmadiyya Muslim community in Pakistan, and the Yazidi’s in Syria and Iraq. Atheists are probably the most oppressed groups in world, especially in Muslim majority countries. So, we want to conduct an investigative study to find out few questions that will be an eye opener for all of us. The sets of questions we want to explore are:
- What is the minority (religious and ethnic) group's status in Muslim majority countries?
- What is the Muslim minority group's (such as Ahmadiyya, Shi'a or Ismaili) status in Muslim majority countries?
- What is the condition of non-religious and LGBT rights?
- What is the status of female population in Muslim majority countries? If there is oppression, what attitudes or reasons for the oppression are common?
- What is the status of music, science and arts in Muslim majority countries?
- What is the status of paedophilia or sexual torture in Madrasa's or Islamic schools?
- What is the percentage of hate crime happening in Muslim majority countries?
There might be few more added interests of question we want to explore. But the study primarily would circle around such major human right issues. There are a lot of issues that we do not hear in the West, such as the fact that Brunei is oppressing its minority population or that one cannot be a citizen of Maldives if they are not a Muslim. It will be interesting to know if other countries are doing better or not in terms of minority issues. Minorities are probably the most helpless voice in the world, but their situation needs to be heard. There seems to be no single attempt to find the answers to such questions in Muslim majority countries of the world. All we hear is very generalized theories; the truth might deviate from it. But we need to find that out and let the truth prevail and stand beside our fellow oppressed human beings.