From NEWSMAX:
….“Virtually the entire region now experiencing the convulsion of the Arab Spring lived inside the very large tent of the Ottoman Empire until World War I,” James Traub wrote in Foreign Policy. “Ottoman rulers welcomed the Jews who fled the Inquisition. In great Ottoman capitals like Aleppo, in modern Syria, Jews, Christians, Kurds, and Sunni Muslims lived in the same neighborhoods.”
However, the fellow of the Center for International Cooperation and contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine noted that the pluralism once found in the region was destroyed by those stoking nationalism to consolidate power…
“Egypt’s new military rulers, like the military ruler they replaced, have proved all too willing to exploit street-level resentment. Power-sharing cannot wait until a new president is elected in mid-2013 or so. Egypt’s democratic forces say that they are determined not to allow themselves to be divided against one another. Let’s hope so. In Egypt, and all across the former Ottoman outposts of the southern Mediterranean — Tunisia, Libya, Syria — it is not just democracy but also pluralism that is at stake. It would be a terrible thing, and a deeply unnecessary one, if the rise of the former meant the end of the latter.”
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