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Millet (stress on the ''e'') is an Ottoman Turkish term for a legally protected ethnic and religious Minority Group , i.e. other then the ruling Sunni. It comes from the Arabic word ''milla'' (ملة) for confessional community. CONCEPT The millet was an alternative to Autonomous Territories that has long been the European norm for dealing with minority groups. The millet system has a long history in the Middle East, and is closely linked to Islamic rules on the treatment of non-Muslim minorities ( Dhimmi ). The Ottoman term specifically refers to the separate legal courts pertaining to personal law under which minorities were allowed to rule themselves with fairly little interference from the Ottoman Government . Each millet was under the supervision of an Ethnarch ('national' leader), most often a religious hierarch such as the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Of Constantinople , who reported directly to the Ottoman Sultan . The millets had a great deal of power - they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. All that was insisted was loyalty to the Empire. When a member of one millet committed a crime against a member of another, the law of the injured party applied, but the - ruling - Islamic majority being paramount, any dispute involving a Muslim fell under their Sharia -based law. MILLETS The main millets were the Greek Orthodox , Jew ish and Armenian ones. A wide array of other groups such as Catholics , Karaites , and Samaritan s were also represented, whereas others, which were seen as deviant forms of Islam, such as Shi'as , Druzes , Alawis , Alevis , and Yezidis , had no official status, even though the Druzes of the Djebel Druze and the Mount Lebanon enjoyed a rather feudal-type autonomy, like the Assyrian Christian villages under Mar Shimun in the Hakkari mountains. These groups were spread across the empire with significant minorities in most of the major cities. Autonomy for these groups was thus impossible to base on a territorial region. Phanariot Greeks From an early date, Greek citizens of Constantinople were able to achieve high positions in the fields of commerce, politics, religion, and the military. The Patriarch Of Constantinople , for example, developed a great degree of power, both religious and political, but was still very tightly controlled by the state. The Phanariot Greeks worked as the sultan's statesmen in Western Europe and as local rulers in the Balkans; and Aegean Greeks were granted wide commercial rights and also developed a fleet that quickly became the empire's maritime weapon. In fact, some Greek citizens prospered to such a degree that they eventually opposed the Greek War Of Independence of 1821–1831, afraid to lose their privileged position in the imperial capital. On the other hand, the Christian population in the Balkans was practically devoid of any rights preventng it for centuries to develop above the level of peasantry. Any signs of dissent were harshly suppressed (e.g. see April Uprising ). Jews The Ottoman Jews enjoyed similar privileges to those of the Phanariot Greeks, and indeed came to enjoy some of the most extensive freedoms in Jewish history. The city of Thessaloniki , for instance, received a great influx of Jews in the 15th century and soon flourished economically to such an extent that, during the 18th century, it was the largest and possibly the most prosperous Jewish city in the world. By the early 20th century, Ottoman Jews—together with Armenian and Greeks—dominated commerce within the Empire. DECLINE OF THE MILLET SYSTEM The millet system was altered by the increasing influence of European powers in the Middle East. The various European powers declared themselves Protectors of their religious cohorts in the Empire. Thus the Russians became guardians of the Eastern Orthodox groups, the French of the Catholics, and the British of the Jews and other groups. New millets were created in the 19th century for several Uniate and Protestant Christian communities, then for the separate national Eastern Orthodox Bulgarian Church , recognized as a millet by an Ottoman '' Firman '' in 1870 and excommunicated two years later by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate as adherents of Phyletism (national or ethnic principle in church organization). This altered the balance of power as the millet became wealthy and outside Ottoman law. IMITATION Today the millet system is still used at varying degrees in some post-Ottoman countries like Jordan , Lebanon , Israel , the Palestinian Authority and Egypt , but also in non-post-Ottoman states like Iran , Pakistan and Bangladesh which kept the principle of separate personal status courts and/or laws for every recognized religious community and, for most of them, reserved seats in the parliament. In Egypt for instance, according to a 1995 law, the application of . Christian families are subject to Canon Law , and Jewish families are subject to Jewish Law . In cases of family law disputes involving a marriage between a Christian woman and a Muslim man, the courts apply the Personal Status Law (see: Egypt - International Religious Freedom Report Released by the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2001 ). Some observers deem that Multiculturalism , as practiced in states like Canada and Australia , also has some similarities to the millet system. The national-cultural autonomy principle of the Austromarxists , Bundist and Folkist thinkers also bears some similarity with the millet system. SEE ALSO
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