[sofixa]

> Most people in Asia and the Middle East take it as a given.

It's funny that you give Asia and the Middle East as examples, because many of the countries and borders there are the result of European colonialism and not "natural" borders between ethnocultural groups. Take India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Iraq , Syria, Afghanistan, China as examples - they're either with significant ethnic or religious minorities (often multiple of them, like Syria and Iraq, China, Myanmar) or straight up with hundreds or thousands of different ethnic groups (India, Indonesia).

[rayiner]

Right, and folks in these countries are constantly cursing the British for that. Few people are happy that they have to share a body politic with different groups. The Hindu population in Bangladesh has dropped by half since independence. India is moving towards integrating its disparate groups along the lines of Hindu identity, marginalizing it’s substantial Muslim minority. And the Chinese have decided that nearly its whole population is “Han” and nearly all speak “dialects” of Chinese in order to erase these internal divisions. In Syria, the Alawite minority has gained power during the Assad dynasty and is taking it out on the majority for past oppression. In Iraq, voting in Parliamentary elections falls largely along ethnic lines.