Second Thoughts on Ethnicity and Separatism.

We can spend all our valuable, useful efforts imagining  a separate  state or enclave,  where we'll achieve our fantasies of a just society, away from perceived and actual  oppression; or  we can, right now, get off our individual and collective behinds, and do precisely what we hope to be be doing when we  achieve our much desired  ethnic and religious Shangri-las. We'll do nothing different in our separate states, if we can't do or don't do  anything  now! 
The fight for justice and the attainment of  the same,  begins, proceeds,  and ends within a purely human context, not an ethnic or religious one. The agitation for separate nations or states, however justified, does not rise up to that real human context, and can only succeed in creating societies where the idea of justice is hedged around by ethnic and religious considerations. The exclusivist nature of religion and ethnicity  always assumes justice and fairness to be the sole entitlement of adherents  of the religion or members of the tribe, thus violating the very idea of justice ab initio. The fight for separate societies cannot succeed without it being framed by a desire to achieve justice and equity that transcends tribal and religious considerations. In other words, religion and ethnicity cannot deliver  true justice until they project universal human brotherhood as their primary focus and objective.  That fight for justice begins in the moment of  the  appearance of injustices, and does not require the facility of a tribal enclave to proceed or succeed. Such a struggle is in fact more likely to fail when couched in ethnic or religious garb.