Non-Muslims in the First Parliaments of Tunisia, the Ottoman Empire and Iran, 1861-1911

What is it about?

The presence of non-Muslims in the first parliamentary-type assemblies in Tunisia, the Ottoman Empire and Iran gave rise to fierce debates with arguments that were not only religious, but also legal, ideological and political, and encompassed other major issues, such as eligibility for army service. Even non-Muslims were not united in their approach to the question. At the level of principle, the issue at stake was that of equality between the state’s inhabitants, regardless of their religion. The quotas in the Ottoman Electoral Law of 1876 and the reserved seats for legally recognised non-Muslim communities in Iran were intended to make this equality effective and to facilitate the election of non-Muslims. However, these measures posed a number of problems for contemporaries. To be sure, they contradicted the principle of equality before the law. They also created competition not only between non-Muslim communities (Greeks and Armenians in Istanbul, in particular) but within communities. At last, even though they were taken as part of a logic of emancipation of non-Muslims, they locked them into a status, no longer of protected peoples, but of minorities, and reinforced their difference with Muslims.

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