By Stephen Zunes June 5, 2001, SelfDetermine.irc
[source is no longer available]
As in much of the third world, many of the national boundaries of the Middle East and North Africa are artificial creations of the colonial era. Because most of the region’s inhabitants are Muslim Arabs and thanks to relatively high tolerance levels for minorities in traditional Islamic societies, the denial of self-determination has not been as widespread as in many parts of the world. Still, disputes in the Middle East involving people struggling for the right of self-determination remain some of the most dangerous and intractable conflicts in the world today. The Ottoman Empire ruled most of the Middle East for nearly five centuries. Religious minorities were granted a high level of self-governance, including their own court systems…
http://selfdetermine.irc-online.org/regions/mideast.html