Palestinian think Mitri Raheb wrestles with questions about the Israeli-Palestinian tensions. Those tensions, he argues, are set in the larger context of the world-historical relations between the Middle East and the rest of the earth.
The western end of the Mediterranean has been the object of tug-of-war struggles between major world powers for millennia. Egypt and Babylon, Persia and Greece, Rome and its successors, and the Ottoman Empire, to name only a few, have successively desired, fought over, or occupied this region.
The small and diverse ethnic groups who have been the successive native inhabitants of the region feel themselves to be pawns in struggles between bigger players. The ethical challenges posed by the situations there, by the area’s history, and by competing theological interpretations of the region’s events are complex.
From which perspectives can or should this part of the world be considered? To the Europeans it’s east; to the Asians it’s west. Mitri Raheb reminds us that we should be aware of our perspective - that we will not achieve a perfectly neutral “objective” assessment of the region. Everyone is somewhere, and from that point, he sees the world. If we cannot achieve the ideal neutrality, then at least we should be conscious of that circumstance as we proceed with our considerations. Raheb writes:
I’m often invited to speak about issues related to the so-called Middle East. I like to commence these occasions by stating that this is terminology that sounds obvious, as if everyone knows what we are talking about, and yet it is a misleading. The question to pose is: middle of where and east of what? Once this question is asked, people realize that that we are dealing with a Eurocentric view of the world. Only by looking at our region of the planet from Europe does one see it as east / southeast. To distinguish it from the Far East, Europeans first called it the Near East and later the Middle East.
Imperialism has shaped the region. From Persians to Alexander the Great, from Mohammed’s first conquests to the Ottomans, the Levant has been the object of imperial ambition. The Seljuk Turks fought viciously in 1098 A.D. against Egypt’s Fatimid caliphate to conquer and occupy Israel: that would not be the only time that Muslims killed Muslims in a power struggle over this coveted bit a real estate.
The terminology, Mitri Raheb asserts, used to discuss the region has been shaped by these centuries of imperial ambition:
It is noteworthy that the term was coined in the mid-nineteenth century when Europe was at the height of its power. The region’s name is thus closely related to imperial power. The use of the term because widespread only after the collapse of a vast Ottoman Empire that had held the region together for hundreds of years. The designation of the Middle East is therefore part and parcel of the colonial history of the region.
While many empires - both those arising in the Middle East, and those from outside it - have sought to control or occupy Canaan, it has been the European interests which have been blamed the most. Perhaps because their presence in the region has not been one of merely military occupation, but one of cultural and economic influence. Such influence may be, in some ways, more bitterly resented than the stationing of soldiers in the region.
While Europe developed a growing artistic and scientific culture, the formerly thriving civilizations of the Middle East became less creative under the influence of Islam: the burst of intellectual activity which energized chemistry, mathematics, physics, architecture, and music had its roots in Europe and blossomed there, while Muslim lands produced ever fewer inventions and discoveries.
Aware of their decline and nostalgic for the former cultural glories which surrounded lands like Babylon, Persia, and Egypt, residents of the Middle East resented being named by Europe. Scholar Marc Van De Mieroop writes:
Reconceptualizing the Orient as the Near / Middle East and Far East vis-a-vis Europe reaffirmed the central position of Europe in this imagery and further peripheralized the East, Europe being the Metropolis.
The powerful resentment, arising from the knowledge that Middle East had once been a center of civilization and was now on the margins of it, and from the palpable sense of decline among those who lived there, was directed toward Europe, a latecomer to civilization, which was now surpassing it Ancient Near Eastern cultural parents.
This sense of humiliation needed a scapegoat: Europe would be blamed by Islam for the damage which had been inflicted upon the region. Salim Tamari writes:
The idea of the Middle East cannot be separated from the power to create and impose categories of knowledge on the rest of the world. The Middle East exists because the West has possessed sufficient power to give the idea substance. In this regard the colonial past and the imperial present are parts of the equation that make the Middle East real.
Yet Europe is not guiltless. It could have intervened to rescue the endangered cultural energy and creativity of the Middle East. It could have presented a more humane face at certain key points in the convoluted narrative of the Crusades. Mitri Raheb notes also that the region is ill-defined: the terminology is not a precise name.
But behind this name is not just a colonial perspective but an intrinsic identity question. The Middle East is not easy to pinpoint, because it has no definition or boundaries. While to some and in certain contexts it once meant the whole of the area from India to in the east to Morocco in the west, and from Turkey in the north to Sudan in the south, it is understood today more or less as the area covering the Arabian Gulf to the east, and Syria and Iraq to the north, encompassing Egypt in the west, and as far south as the Sudan.The diversity within the Middle East makes it difficult to define: not only a spectrum of quarreling Islamic sects, but Jews outside of Israel and Christians scattered across the region form a religious smorgasbord. The Iranians are ethnically Persians, not Arabs. The Turks and Kurds likewise have a unique non-Arab heritage.
One important feature of the Middle East is that it has no “middle” or center. Rather, it has different centers of power separated by deserts and/or mountain chains.
Yet by forming narratives about empires and imperialism, we risk losing sight of humanity. All the parties in the Middle East, and all the parties outside of it, share the common human condition: they are tragically flawed yet contain traces of an original divine image. The commit moral evils, yet are deeply loved by a generous God.
Geographically speaking, part of the Middle East is located in Asia, but part is also found in North Africa. In fact, the bulk of the Middle East could be called West Asia. This is the term used, for example, at the United Nations. The other portion is still referred to as North Africa.
If all the people in and around the Middle East share the same human nature, then they share the same needs, and the same inability to provide for them. It doesn’t matter whom we blame for a long history of injustice. What matters is obtaining justice, and that’s the one thing that humans can’t do. We dare not rely on our efforts to put things right: the only possible outcome of such attempts will be even more injustice.
Justice is divine, and peace is a fruit of God’s intervention, not humanity’s efforts.
Historically speaking, and for over a millennium, from Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC to Charlemagne in the eighth century AD, the nexus of the region was located in the west, where the Mediterranean was the center and the region became part of “Europe.” The rise of Islam and its spread throughout the Middle East pulled the region away from Europe’s sphere of influence, making it part of the Arab-Islamic world.
It is no mere coincidence that Jesus did His major work in this region of the world. He chose it as the proper stage for His mission to help humanity.
Religiously speaking, the region changed religion at least four times, from “paganism” to Judaism, to Christianity, to Islam. Because of these not inconsiderable realities, the region was incapable of self-definition and thus the prevailing empires imposed their weltpolitik.
Geopolitical considerations lead ultimately to a thousand dead ends. Hope is divinely dispensed, and humans can only respond with gratitude. There are possibilities for good things to happen in the Middle East - justice and peace and reconciliation - but they will not be brought about by human effort.
