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What is the Middle East?

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in the Middle East, both geography and time has been defined by outsiders

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geography

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if you look at cities from the perspective of Istanbul, Cairo or Tel Aviv, it's not apparent that they are in the middle or at the east of anything

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the term Middle East makes sense if you are looking at this area of the world from Paris, London or Washington

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the Middle East is on the way to the Far East

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even though this term was created by foreigners, the people in the Middle East use this term to describe the region in which they live

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Arabic: Al-Sharq al-Awsat

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Turkish: Ortadoğu

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Persian: Khavar-e Miyaneh

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Hebrew: HaMizrach HaTichon

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the term Middle East was actually created by an American naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan

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used the term in an article in 1902

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the fact that the people of this area of the world use a geological term created by foreigners to describe where they live is an indication of the influence that foreign powers have had on this area of the world

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time

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time is defined in this region according to the Gregorian, Western calendar

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there are also Muslim and Jewish calendars

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but day to day life is not governed by these calendars but by the Gregorian, Western Christian calendars

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Middle Eastern countries

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all the Arab countries in the Gulf such as Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia

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plus the three non-Arab countries: Turkey, Iran, and Israel

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the countries in the Middle East is the "patchwork of foreigners", where imperial power sat and created states where states had not existed before

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countries were created with new identities which did not yet actually exist

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in the Middle East it is more appropriate to speak of state-nations rather than nation-states

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countries in Europe were more often defined by national, linguistic and territorial identity

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in the Middle East, countries were created before these demarcations existed

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e.g. Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Lebanese, and Iraq did not have one group of people who belonged to these countries when they were created

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however, with the existence of these states, a kind of nation emerged, hence "state-nations"

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one historical difference between Europe and the Middle East is that whereas in Europe throughout the centuries people tended to define themselves in terms of language and territory, people in the Middle East tended to define themselves in terms of religious belief. Collective identity was about religion, and not about territory and language. It was only after the long-standing impact of the West that identities began to shift and emerge towards a more European style territorial linguistic identity.

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during the 19th century, the Middle East went through very important periods of reform

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Ottoman reform

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Tanzimat: reorganization of the Ottoman Empire between 1839 and 1876

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Islamic reform

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nationalism 19th an

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speaks about sovereignty of man rather than the sovereignty of god

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end of WWI

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Ottoman Empire, which ruled the Arab countries for 400 years, came to an end

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but it was not seen by the Arabs as an imperial conqueror and but as a legitimate Arab authority

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the fact the the Ottomans were Turks was not held against them

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it was not seen as a Turkish occupation against nations

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Turkish Muslims ruling over Arab Muslims, what was important was not the Turkishness or the Arabness of the peoples but their Islamic religious belief

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The Ottoman Empire was not called into question until very late in its history

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called into question with the emergence of Arab nationalism

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with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of new states on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire

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these new states served Western imperial interests, those of France and Britain above all else

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these states divided the Arabs into zones which did not necessarily have to do with how they wanted to be groups according to the Arab nationalism movement

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therefore the Arab state order did not enjoy much legitimacy in the eyes of the Arabs themselves

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Arab nationalism throughout 20th century

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a mixture between pure secular national ideas and Islamic identity

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but as popular as it was in the 20th century, it was a dismal failure in political practice

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most notably in the conflict with Israel

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defeated the Arabs twice: in 1948 and 1967

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these wars with Israel serve as a monument to Arab failure to effectively meet the Western challenge

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as it is this kind of monument to Arab failure, Israel find it difficult to be accepted by the Arab world

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in the aftermath of the 1967 war, politics in the Middle East was dominated by two trends

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1. acquiescence in the colonial state order, it was now more legitimate to speak of the Egyptian, Jordan, and Syrian states

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more was said about these states interests than Arab nationalism

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2. radical Islamic revival

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filled the vacuum which had been left by the failure of Arab nationalism

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is looking at the last 150-200 years in an effort to promote an alternative route to modernity without a framework of an Islamic cultural and legal framework