Ignoring Massive Apartheid in the Muslim World

Efraim Karsh delineates how Israel Apartheid Day covers up the multiple crimes of Apartheid throughout the Muslim Middle East:

If apartheid is indeed a crime against humanity, Israel actually is the only apartheid-free state in the Middle East – a state whose Arab population enjoys full equality before the law and more prerogatives than most ethnic minorities in the free world, from the designation of Arabic as an official language to the recognition of non-Jewish religious holidays as legal days of rest. By contrast, apartheid has been an integral part of the Middle East for over a millennium, and its Arab and Muslim nations continue to legally, politically and socially enforce this discriminatory practice against their hapless minorities.

Read the whole thing.

So, how does the Muslim world manifest Apartheid?

Karsh counts the ways:

• Religious intolerance
• Ethnic inequality
• Racism
• Gender discrimination
• Denial of citizenship
• Labor inequality
• Slavery
• Political Oppression

This is more than a name and shame game, as Karsh concludes in his article:

Only when Arab and Muslim societies treat the “other” as equal will the Middle East, and the rest of the Islamic world, be able to transcend its malaise and look forward to a real political and social spring.