Middle East Forum

Dhimmitude Project

The near-destruction of non-Muslim communities in the Anatolian peninsula, which accelerated in the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, drew on practices long established under Islamic rule: enslavement, deportation, the forced levy of Christian children, and, in some instances, the castration of captives. Above, Armenian orphans being deported, ca. 1920.
Dhimmitude Project
The Sword and the Tongue: Jihad’s Long Shadow over Christians in Turkey
How Jizya and Jihad Paved the Way for Genocide in the Anatolian Peninsula
October 6, 2026
 · 
Jalal Tagreeb
The Hagia Sophia, built as a Byzantine cathedral in the 6th century. After the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453, it became a mosque. Mustafa Kemal, the founder of the Turkish Republic, turned it into an interfaith museum in 1934 to highlight his country's status as a secular and pluralistic nation. Eighty-six years later, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan turned it back into a mosque. The building now stands as a stark symbol of the neo-dhimmitude that has hollowed out the pluralist promise Turkey showed soon after its founding.
Dhimmitude Project
The Betrayal of Lausanne in the ‘Forgotten Holy Land’
Jews and Christians Treated as Conquered Remnants in Modern Turkey
September 19, 2026
 · 
Craig Considine
Ruins of Tilla Jogian, an ancient Hindu monastery in Jhelum District that served Nath Jogi ascetics for nearly 2,000 years before being abandoned during Partition in 1947. Today it stands in disrepair, a symbol of Pakistan's fading Hindu heritage.
Dhimmitude Project
Citizens in Name Only: Pakistan’s Vanishing Hindu Minority
Neo-Dhimmitude Prompts Eight Decades of Erasure
September 18, 2026
 · 
Imran Khurshid
Anti-Israel hostility stoked by the Islamic Republic of Iran has rendered Jews, who play a significant role in Persian and Iranian history, vulnerable to oppression and violence.
Dhimmitude Project
Recognized, Yet Suspected: Iranian Jews and the Paradox of Citizenship under the Islamic Republic
From Dhimmitude and Pahlavi-Era Citizenship to the Politics of Loyalty after 1979
September 10, 2026
 · 
Erfan Fard
Turkish soldiers stationed in Northern Cyprus celebrate Armed Forces Day, a Turkish holiday. Ankara has used religious institutions to alter the cultural identity and practices of the secularized Muslim community that inhabited Cypruse prior to Turkey's 1974 invasion of the island. The methods used by Turkey to impose its will on secularized Muslims on Cyprus are similar to the methods Islamic rulers have used to control and transform non-Muslim communities in the Middle East and elsewhere throughout the world.
Dhimmitude Project
The Transformation of Turkish Cypriot Identity: State-Sponsored Islam, Human Rights, and Dhimmitude
As Ankara Expands the Role of Islam in Northern Cyprus, Turkish Cypriots Fight to Preserve a Secular Identity Forged over Generations.
August 28, 2026
 · 
Nicoletta Kouroushi
The Islamic Republic of Iran, established by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, imposes different systems of oppression on adherents of the Baha’i and Zoroastrian faiths. Under the 1979 constitution, Zoroastrians are a recognized minority granted limited ritual freedoms and a reserved parliamentary seat, while Baha’is—the country’s largest unrecognized religious community—are denied legal existence and subjected to systematic exclusion from education, employment, and property.
Dhimmitude Project
Neo-Dhimmitude in Iran: Religious Hierarchy and Minority Life Under the Islamic Republic
A Comparative Study of the Baha’i and Zoroastrian Communities
August 22, 2026
 · 
Erfan Fard
Christians from the United States admire anti-Israel propaganda displayed at the Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem as part of a "peacemaking" conference organized by Bethlehem Bible College in 2018. The Kairos II document is targeted at Christians like these and the churches to which they belong.
Dhimmitude Project
The Captured Testimony of Kairos Palestine II
“Peacemaking” Document Invites Western Churches to Abet the Restoration of Dhimmitude in the Levant.
August 14, 2026
 · 
Mark Durie
The Dome of the Rock stands at the center of a modern system of intimidation and religious subordination rooted in the classical Islamic institution of the dhimmah.
Dhimmitude Project
Neo-Dhimmitude on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount—A Case Study
The Paradox of a Secular Jewish State as the De Facto Enforcer of Islamic Supremacism
July 29, 2026
 · 
Tom Nisani
For thirteen centuries, the jizya stood as a religiously mandated instrument of subjugation—rooted in explicit Qur’anic command and elaborated across classical jurisprudence—not a reciprocal protection fee. Its graduated payments, humiliating collection rituals, and surrounding architecture of legal disabilities extracted wealth while enforcing abasement, driving the demographic collapse of once-thriving Christian and Jewish communities across the Levant, North Africa, and beyond. The jizya's enduring legacy of humiliation and contempt requires honest reckoning today: formal acknowledgment, restitution where possible, and reparative justice for the descendant communities who paid for the right to remain what they already were.
Dhimmitude Project
Confronting the Legacy of Jizya as an Instrument of Subjugation
Modern Muslim States Must Abandon the Mythology Surrounding the Jizya and Confront its Damage to Religious Minorities
July 15, 2026
 · 
Jalal Tagreeb
Protesters gathered outside Pakistan's Supreme Court in 2018 to demand the execution of Asia Bibi, a Christian farmworker accused of insulting Islam. Bibi's status as a Christian, coupled with Pakistan's blasphemy laws, rendered her vulnerable to the “hanging sword” of neo-dhimmitude in Pakistan, where mere allegations can lead to prolonged detention, social ostracism, and in some instances, violence. After the Pakistani Supreme Court overturned her conviction, Bibi fled the country in 2019.
Dhimmitude Project
Neo-Dhimmitude in the Land of the Pure: Pakistan’s Native Christians and the Betrayal of Jinnah’s Pluralism
April 20, 2026
 · 
Craig Considine
More from MEF
Large columns of smoke billow above residential neighborhoods following U.S. and Israeli airstrikes in Tehran, Iran, on March 12, 2026.
Press Releases
New MEF Report: Bombs Have Weakened the Iranian Regime, but Only Politics Can Replace It
Seth D. Kaplan Maps a Path to Replacing the Islamic Republic with a Stable, Democratic, and Internationally Integrated Iranian State.
October 28, 2026
Reports
Fracturing the Iranian Regime
From Pressure to Transition: An Integrated Strategy for Political Change in Iran
October 28, 2026
 · 
Seth D. Kaplan
Burning cars, barricades, and fires in streets of Paris at night during rioting by adherents of the red-green alliance; October 17, 2026.
Middle East Forum Online
Paris Calls, Jerusalem Responds. The Head of Israeli Intelligence Is in Paris to Lend a Hand
France Is Currently One of the Nations Most Critical of Israel
October 28, 2026
 · 
Giulio Meotti