Three Main Problems in the Middle East Essay Example for Free

Three Main Problems in the Middle East Essay The Middle East, as the West calls the Islamic region in Southwestern Asian continent, had been the focus of many recent studies. The region’s key role in shaping global economy and politics could be the main reasons why the Middle East became so intriguing within the circles of academic debates, political policies and other similar venues. News from this region usually carries banner stories of suicide bombings, wars, terrorism and similarly outrageous reportage.   Thus, Middle East was portrayed to the public as land or chaos, tyranny and intricate conspiracies and violence. Although the Middle East has a rich history of its people, culture and political sovereignty, it had long been disregarded especially that the focus of most historiography and social sciences are on the Western civilizations. . Throughout the course of societal evolutions, the Middle East had always been portrayed as the villain and the West so often portrayed as the arbiter and the good guys in wars and other social turmoil that happened in the region for the past centuries. Despite numerous attempts to deeply probe into the secrets of the region, the Islamic world had always been subjected to the probing eyes of the global community. It had long been misunderstood, maybe because of ignorance to the real situation in the Middle East that, that this part of the world is ‘no man’s land’ because of terrorism and tyrants which the Western powers so despise.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Hence, the dilemma that world faces regarding the situation in the Middle East is a problem caused by ignorance of the historical background which had molded the region’s economic, political and cultural dynamism. On the outside it could be viewed as a static block of nation-states, firmly anchored on Islamist fanaticism but much like any other country, the people are waging a struggle in various ways possible to change the existing order. This paper aims to break the notion that the Islamic Middle East is a rigid desert of ideological uniformity (Beinin Stork 7). Often that terrorism was linked to Islamic doctrines since the United States waged its global war on terror. Arbitrarily, the policies that sought to counter terrorism were not really directed to the ultimate cessation     of terrorism as a tool for anarchic ends but were effectively used to control the economic and political life of the countries in this region. It was effectively manipulated that from the true circumspection of terrorist movements the attention was diverted to superficial issues that were less likely to resolve the conflict, both external and internal.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The lack of unity of the Middle Eastern nations can be viewed as one of the reasons why this region is continually deprived of West-defined peace and stability. One possible answer is that Western powers have greatly profited from the absence of a uniting factor among Muslim neighbors. Though almost all of these Muslim nations had laws and forms of government highly adhesive to religious thought, there were still varied interpretations in the context of ‘religious’ approaches to state affairs, not to   mention the sectarian divisions within Islam. Take Iran and Iraq for example. Although there were reasons for the war between these two nations in 1980’s, the sectarian differences of the two nations have greatly affected the course of the war for domination of the Persian Gulf (Moghadam 136-138). The Islamic nations were divided by certain issues that had created a vast misunderstanding among themselves. The dilemma brought by secularist ideas caused the rifts between and among governments to worsen. Islam was at the very first of this dilemma. Its nature had long been argued, whether it is a religion or a civilization. The answer to this question however is not on the religious aspect itself but on the political side of the. Islam’s definition is a matter of political refinement that was effectively sown to disarray the focus of scholars in finding the answer to the question of why Islamic militancy, radicalism and fundamentalism (Filali-Ansary 196-197).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In the centuries that have passed, nationalism was developed in the Middle East due to external threats, especially those that was posed by Western colonial powers. Nationalism in other nations such as Turkey and Iran went far beyond the limits of nationhood. At some point during Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Shah Pahlavi’s reign, touched even the religious aspect of the nation such that they even used military force to impose a â€Å"Western† concept of nationhood, one which is secular (Hashemi 168). However, through the decades, Islamic modernism had been witnessed which broadened the spectrum for political commonality. These types of deviation from the Islamic codification and norms among Islamic societies were the start of a somewhat â€Å"betrayal† of the Islamic chord.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Those countries that have embraced westernization were isolated from the Islamic fundamentalist section of the Muslim nations. Such embrace of the infidel’s culture was to them a desecration of the Islamic customs. If history will be reviewed this divisions were more of cultural in essence. For hundreds of years, the Islamic states turn against each other for subjugation. The Ottomans annexed Egypt and many other nations in the Mediterranean belt. This display of hostility towards each other became vital in the ferment of suspicion between each nation (Moaddel 128-129). The dilemma of the forming a single political force cannot be only be blamed on the religious aspects of the society but also of foreign control and domination. The vast oilfields of the region had been enticing for Western powers so that they supported some regimes and made use of tactical alliances during the Soviet annexation of Afghanistan in the 80’s. The House of Saud of Saudi Arabia for example had strong ties to European regimes since many of these regimes have economic interests in the region (Beinin Stork 4).   This had been aggravated by the current developments in world politics directly concerning the region. The terror hysteria and the subsequent wars thereafter grappled Afghanistan and Iraq further divided the Islamic world. Regimes friendly to the United States were caught in the middle of the squabble. George W. Bush’s pronouncements in the onset of the war on terror forced these regimes to support the anti-terror war lest they would be ‘with the terrorists.’ Such actions were explicitly influential in the polarization of the Middle East. Samuel Huntington was quoted on the exact description of the implications of this event: â€Å"On the other hand, the â€Å"clash of civilizations† thesis resurfaces and reverberates. Even though many refused Samuel Huntington’s thesis for its simplistic and essentialist depiction of cultures and cultural interaction, his conceptual framework proved its resilience, particularly with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Islam quickly became the inscrutable, violent, and intractable Other, a threat to liberal democratic values† (Arat 2). The rationale of the war on terror, as claimed by US propagandists, is aimed at the Islamic regimes was to promote democracy in the backward governments that are hospitable to or actually promotes terrorist organization. In countries wherein the regimes are somewhat committed to the liberal democratic ideology: â€Å"†¦some 250 million USD that USAID alone spent in the Arab world on projects and programs related to DP () certainly seems more than the negligible amount of money, this must be contrasted with the roughly one billion USD the United States appends each year in Egypt alone – on military aid for the Mubarak regime. Some observers have recently depicted the â€Å"forward strategy for freedom† in the Middle East announced by the Bush administration as a major shift from former US policies toward the region, emphasizing today the importance of democratic rule as opposed to†¦strategies based on the primacy of stability over democracy† (Schlumberger 37-38). The Middle East was an easy prey for US military campaigns primarily because of the forms of government that these nations have adopted. It was easy to claim in totalitarian regimes that these nations must be introduced to democracy and liberate the people from the clutches of Islamic dictatorships. Such was being used today in Iran in the face of nuclear weapons issue, Syria on its human rights records, and Libya on its anti-imperialist stance, while others have remained to be isolated from their people because of their failure to address the concerns of the citizens. A post- invasion Iraq have had experienced the resurgence of Islamic militancy and fundamentalism in the outset of a US-backed puppet regime. Such events even drove the conflict outside the borders of Iraq and spilled through Syria, Iran, and Egypt, only to name a few, in the name of aiding their Muslim brothers (Beinin Stork 7). It should be understood though that this politicization of Islam did not occur overnight. This could again be traced from the past centuries and decades of Western domination. The Crusades in the middle ages could even be the source of this politicization. But most notably, this politicization was most effectively utilized by the US against the Soviet Union in the 80’s during the Afghan war. After the Afghan war these radicalized freedom fighters were transformed into terrorist groups and from then on political Islam has been interchanged with fundamentalism, militant Islamic movements and the like to directly associate genuine liberation movements to terrorism and downplay the legitimate issues raised by these groups (Beinin Stork 5). Both served the US in ridding it of its enemies and protecting its allied regimes against internal liberation movements. The question now arises whether democracy would be possible in Islamic societies. Some do believe. It is said that these societies were torn into two governing laws. One of those is Islamic or the shari’a and the other, secular. There had been stressed points that states that these governments, though harboring the Islamic hierarchy of powers still consider a ‘consultative’ form of governing, thus a democratic interaction among the ruler and ruled (Filali-Ansary 200).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   What is unique in the Middle East is that in order to reinstate the Islamic laws as the supreme judicial system is through revolution which has happened in Iran. Such was the perceptions in the Middle East that women, as a part of the revolutionary process, were restricted. However: â€Å"In Iran as of 1994, 30 percent of government employees were women, and 40 percent of university students were women, up from 12 percent in 1978. In the past few decades, women have thus made significant, but uneven, strides in the labor force†¦Hassan al-Turabi claims that women in Sudan â€Å"have played a more important role in the National Islamic Front than men recently† in all aspects of party, in Parliament, and as ministers and judges. Segregation is definitely not a part of Islam.[though his claims in Sudan are disputed]†¦it is clear that women elsewhere in the Muslim World –Morocco, Jordan, Egypt†¦Turkey – do hold political office† (Eickelmann and Piscatori 95) Within this basis one could assert initially that women are not bound to the patriarchal society, but in order to truly say that women have had complete freedom, would rest on the cultural and religious aspects of the society. But along with these concerns the forces of democratization have failed to touch the issues on gender. This issue in the Middle Eastern nations had been raising a movement by women who had, despite the conflicts that the patriarchal regimes fight, lack in total consideration of the women (Moghadam 139). Regimes may be considered as progressives in terms of political and economic stance but there is a difficulty in assessing whether theses same governments would consider the question on gender. Proving this may be difficult because of the religious aspect of the concern which all regimes, pro or anti-US, share. These seemingly centuries old threats to the Islamic societies from the outside caused by rifts within the regimes themselves had also been supplemented by internal difficulties which these regimes face (Dris-Ait-Hamadouche 117). Even though the states were divided by the political tensions developed by the combination of historical and contemporary Western influences, women in the Middle East are somewhat united in their fight for women’s right in the predominantly patriarchal culture of the Islamic nation. The issue of gender is completely intertwined with the issue of secularization (Nanes 113-115). Different governments were torn between allowing certain liberal manifestations of secular authority in public places and religious considerations (Najmabadi 240-241).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Seemingly, the problems of the Middle East with regards to the political and cultural aspects are not to be considered as solitary and independent of the economy. The reason that Western powers are interested in the liberal democratic conception of regimes is because of the economic interests that US has with the resource rich desserts. The only conclusive message that these events relay to us is that these were all concocted in order to divide the Islamic world and extinguish its formidable force against foreign interests especially that of US. Islamic Middle East had long been captured in that policy cage and until the resources are there, the clutches of US hegemony in the Islamic world will never loosen. Works Cited Arat, Yesim. Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy: Islamist Women in Turkish Politics. New York: State University of New York Press, 2005. Beinin, Joel, and Joe Stork. On the Modernity, Historical Specificity, and International Context of Political Islam.   Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report. Eds. Joel Beinin and Joe Stork. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997. Dris-Ait-Hamadouche, Louisa. Women in the Maghreb: Civil Societys Actors or Political Instruments? Middle East Policy 14.4 (2007). Eickelman, Dale F., and James Piscatori. The Firmest Ties and the Ties That Bind: The Politics of Family and Ethnicity.   Muslim Politics. New Jersey Filali-Ansary, Abdou. Muslims and Democracy.   Islam and Democracy in the Middle East. Eds. Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner and Daniel Brumberg. London: The John Hopkins University Press, 2003. Hashemi, Nader A. Islamic Fundamentalism and the Trauma of Modernization: Reflections on Religion and Radical Politics.   An Islamic Reformation? Eds. Michaelle Browers and Charles Kurzman. New York: Lexington Books. Moaddel, Mansoor. Islamic Modernism, Nationalism, and Fundamentalism: Episode and Discourse. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Moghadam, Valentine. A Tale of Two Countries: State, Society, and Gender Politics in Iran and Afghanistan. The Muslim World 94.October 2004 (2004). Moghadam, Valentine. Patriarchy in Transition: Women and the Changing Family in the Middle East. Journal of Comparative Family Studies 35.2 (2004): 137. Najmabadi, Afsaneh. Gender and Secularismhow Can a Muslim Woman Be French? Feminist Studies 32.2 (2006): 239. Nanes, Stefanie Eileen. Fighting Honor Crimes: Evidence of Civil Society in Jordan. The Middle East Journal 57.1 (2003). Schlumberger, Oliver. Dancing with Wolves: Dillemas of Democracy Promotion in Authoritarian Context.   Democratization and Development: New Political Strategies for the Middle East. Ed. Dietrich Jung. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Princeton University Press, 1996.