The term Apartheid was first used in 1948 in South Africa to describe a separate, if not equal, segregation of the races, including these four categories: Whites, Bantu (black African), Mixed races and Asian.  The term was a new compound of words from different languages.  The first segment of the word (“apart”) is clear enough in its meaning.  It refers to some sort of collection “by itself, away from others.”  From the word “hood” which refers to “head,” “manner,” “state” or “condition,” we get the “heid.” The Whites in South Africa did not intend this to be a pejorative term, but well before half a century had passed, it was seen as such a term, describing something inherently evil.  In it’s original context, it referred to racial separation only.  The International Criminal Court (ICC) wasted little time after the ICC was formed to make apartheid a crime against humanity. However, the word is sometimes bandied about carelessly, misappropriating it’s meaning. And during the last half century, it has been broadened to describe other situations as discussed in this post.

IS ISRAEL AN APARTHEID STATE?

Today, people of various nations (particularly Arab states which enforce some sort of apartheid, themselves) are painting the government of Israel as an apartheid government, based on its policies towards Palestinians, including the security fencing that keeps Palestinians from free from access to Israel.  This fencing was erected as a last resort to deal with the countless number of attacks on Israeli citizens and settlers from Palestinians.

However, it is not easy to show that Israeli Jews and Palestinians Arabs are members of distinctly different races.  Vigorous studies have shown this is simply not true, although these studies have been censored by activists because they do not provide the desired conclusions.  In fact, most studies show that Jews born in Israel are genetically closer to Palestinians than they are to Jews in other countries around the world who have migrated to Israel.  The Bible makes this point very plainly in Genesis, chapter sixteen, where a Jew named Abraham (also revered in Islam) becomes the father of the contemporary Arab nation through a, Egyptian woman named Hagar. In short, whatever you want to call Israel’s policies towards those Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank, you cannot with any accuracy call it apartheid. The term “racial apartheid” just does not appear to fit in this case.

Yet, there are other types of apartheid that sociologists and ethnologists have named, and I want to touch on these as well.

RELIGIOUS APARTHEID

There is religious apartheid, which is a forced separation of people according to religion.  For example, only Muslims can enter the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and access to Medina is, with minor exception, likewise controlled.  There are severe punishments for offenders.  Nor are Jews officially permitted in the country, and this occasionally causes problems for the U.S. Department of Defense when U.S. soldiers are deployed to the Kingdom.  While on active duty, I received an official DOD message about an upcoming deployment to Saudi Arabia.  The message stated in no uncertain terms that U.S. military personnel were prohibited from bringing a personal Bible into the country, as well as alcohol, drugs and other contraband.  Islamic clerics often state that they respect all religions, especially Judaism and Christianity, because we are all “People of the Book.”  In reality, however, they do not. During the nineteen years that the Kingdom of Jordan controlled the Temple Mount in Jerusalem prior to the 1967 Six-Day War, Muslims, of course, could worship at their Holy places on the Mount such as the al-Aqsa Mosque and visit the Dome of the Rock. Jews, however, were forbidden from worshipping at the Western (Wailing Wall), in violation of the Armistice and pledges from Muslim authorities that they could.

GLOBAL APARTHEID

Using the apartheid framework, some political, social or economic theorists see apartheid not just dividing two races (black and white) or two religions (Muslims and non-Muslims), but dividing two hemispheres on the planet as well; North and South.  This de facto separation has been termed Global Apartheid, and it may explain anti-immigrant hostilities in Europe and America.  The North is predominantly white, powerful, and wealthy while the Southern Hemisphere is mostly nonwhite, powerless and poor. Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and several other countries are notable exceptions, of course. The northern countries have permanent veto power in the Security Council of the United Nations. Using this veto, they can marginalize the influence of countries in the southern hemisphere, while these developing countries in the South require access to capital from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (also controlled by northern countries) to provide their people with basic needs. While countries in (for example, South America or South Africa) have never waged war or launched a coup against a northern hemispheric country, the reverse scenario has occurred repeatedly. According to a study cited by Harvard University:

In the slightly less than a hundred years from 1898 to 1994, the U.S. government has intervened successfully to change governments in Latin America a total of at least 41 times.”

Third world countries make up most of the countries south of the equator, and these countries believe that they have been victimized by colonial powers (the UK, France, Spain, Holland, Germany and the U.S.) at the expense of the southern countries. Much as some members of the black communities in the U.S. might say that they cannot be truly equal with other ethnic groups in America because the deck is stacked (i.e., rules are written) against them, these former colonies make the same claim, but on a global scale.

GENDER APARTHEID

Another sort of apartheid is gender apartheid, based on the sex assigned at birth (male or female.) In some countries of the world (e.g., Muslim countries), women are at a distinct disadvantage vis-à-vis men.  In some cases, this is based on the Quran, the Hadith, various fatwahs or even the culture of the country, itself (religion aside.)  Generally, Muslim women are required to cover themselves (more as in the case of Afghanistan) or less (as in the case of Islamic women in western countries.)  Muslims will say that the chador or hajib, burqa, etc. are voluntary choices that a woman makes, but you can imagine the peer pressure a young woman faces from her friends, relatives and the religious authorities in her country if she chooses to not dress as customary. For example:

In Iran, a twenty-two-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested by the Gasht-e Ershad (aka Guidance Patrol or religious police) on September 21, 2022 around 6:00 p.m. She was snatched off the street in the presence of her brother in Tehran, the capital of Iran. She had a reputation of not wearing her hijab faithfully as required. According to witnesses, she was repeatedly beaten in the police car and at the police station. Later that day while in police custody, she was transferred to a nearby hospital where she died three days later. The security forces of Iran buried her without letting her family see her, which only confirmed the suspicions that her body was bruised, since she had no major health issues prior to her arrest.

Her death sparked world wide demonstrations against the treatment of women in Iran. Outrages such as this continue to this day. The UN refers to this as gender apartheid¹. As I write this a month from the second anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death, another young Iranian woman and mother of two lies in an Iranian hospital, unable to walk after being shot by police. According to the Washington Post:

Arezou Badri — a mother of two — is the latest casualty of Iran’s renewed crackdown over headscarves, or hijabs. . .Iranian police officers opened fire last month on a 31-year-old woman who had tried to speed away likely knowing they wanted to seize her vehicle.

Police had been ordered to impound her car, activists say, because of an earlier violation of Iran’s headscarf law for showing her hair in public while driving.“

Generally, a Muslim woman cannot go out in public without a male relative accompanying her.

When I was the advisor for the Phi Theta Kappa (PTK) International Honor Society chapter at my college, I would occasionally have Muslim women who met the criteria for membership.  We would have a candlelight induction ceremony twice a year and most inductees looked forward to this.  However, unless a Muslim woman could talk her husband or brother into taking her to the ceremony, she could not attend.  I’ve seen the heartbroken look in the eyes of a Muslim student who could not participate in an induction because she could not convince her husband that it was worthwhile. Interestingly enough, on the other hand, the faculty member who replaced me as the PTK advisor took half a dozen of her students to Washington DC for a visit once. One of the students was a Muslim woman wearing a Hijab. Whether she was accompanied on the trip by a male relative is unknown to me. The group stopped by the office of our Congressman, which was not in the Capitol building, itself., but in one of the surrounding buildings. The window of his office had a spectacular view of the Capitol Building, however. He invited each of the students to sit behind his desk for a moment and have their photo taken. I stared with amazement at the photo of a twenty-something young Muslim woman wearing a Hijab sitting behind a desk in Washington, with the rotunda of the Capitol looming immediately behind her. How inspiring, how empowering would that image be to the women in her home country where she is otherwise marginalized?! Here she is, in the belly of the “Great Satan,” treated with the dignity, kindness and respect she doesn’t even receive in her own country because of her sex!

This past Summer, Afghanistan passed draconian measures of conduct for and punishment of women. Read them (download them) here.

SOCIAL APARTHEID

Social Apartheid is the practice or consequence of people being separated for economic or other social values, Usually, the underclass winds up in a ghetto while the more prosperous, professional class enjoys all the resources, mobility and freedom that the country can offer.

Examples of Social Apartheid might include the Dalits (Untouchables) in India; the Koreans in Tokyo; Paris, France and elsewhere where de facto apartheid can be found between the European French and those people from former French colonies (such as Algeria.) This Social Apartheid, according to some also existed in Northern Ireland which separated Protestants who are Loyalists to the Crown and Catholic Republicans desiring unity with Dublin into separate enclaves. The enclaves were bounded by so-called “peace walls,” twenty miles of which remain in the country decades after the Easter Accords were signed ending the sectarian strife in Northern Ireland (though the Catholic Republicans, incidentally, prefer to call the tiny territory “The North of Ireland.”

AFTERWORD

Isaac Newton (1643-1727), not to be confused with Brian May of Queen who closely resembles him, was reputed to have said: “We build too many walls and not enough bridges.” However, that may be a spurious association with Sir Isaac since it has not been proved with any degree of confidence. But it does seem to jibe well in a discussion of separation. In the late Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century, the U.S. experimented with segregation, a form of apartheid. which was codified in the U.S. Supreme Court case known as Plessy v. Ferguson (1896.) Yet, that did not work well for us anymore than racial apartheid did for South Africa, or social apartheid did for Northern Ireland and as gender apartheid does for Iran, Afghanistan and other countries does today.

Regardless of who coined the phrase, we do need more bridges and less walls.

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FOOTNOTE

¹“The draft law could be described as a form of gender apartheid, as authorities appear to be governing through systemic discrimination with the intention of suppressing women and girls into total submission” according to United Nations authorities.