Three Main Problems in the Middle East Essay Example for Free

Three Main Problems in the ticker easterly EssayThe Middle East, as the West calls the Islamic realm in Southwestern Asian continent, had been the focus of realityy recent studies. The regions key role in shaping global preservation 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. freshlys 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 conglomerate 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 be on the Western civilizations. . Throughout the course of societal evolutions, the Middle East had always been portrayed as the villain and the Wes t 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 area 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 mans land because of terrorism and tyrants which the Western powers so despise. Hence, the dilemma that world faces regarding the situation in the Middle East is a problem caused by ignorance of the historic background which had molded the regions 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 variety show the existing order. This paper aims to break t he notion that the Islamic Middle East is a rigid desert of ideological uniformity (Beinin Stork 7).Often that terrorism was united 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 assistance was diverted to superficial outlets that were less likely to resolve the conflict, both external and internal. The lack of unity of the Middle Eastern nations can be viewed as matchless of the reasons why this region is continually deprived of West-defined peace and stability. One possible answer is that Western powers provoke 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 ghostly 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 1980s, the sectarian differences of the two nations stick out greatly affected the course of the war for domination of the Persian Gulf (Moghadam 136-138).The Islamic nations were landmarkd 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. Islams definition is a matter of political refinement t hat was effectively sown to distract the focus of scholars in finding the answer to the question of why Islamic militance, radicalism and fundamentalism (Filali-Ansary 196-197). In the centuries that have passed, nationalism was developed in the Middle East collect 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 Pahlavis reign, touched even the religious aspect of the nation such that they even used military force to impose a 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 about betrayal of the Islamic chord. Those countries that have embraced westernizatio n were isolated from the Islamic fundamentalist section of the Muslim nations. Such embrace of the infidels culture was to them a profanation 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 besides of foreign control and domination. The vast oilfields of the region had been stimulate for Western powers so that they supported some regimes and made use of tactical alliances during the Soviet annexation of Afghaniistan in the 80s. The House of Saud of Saudi Arabia for example had loaded 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 delirium 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. Bushs 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 causaOn the other hand, the clash of civilizations thesis resurfaces and reverberates. Even though many refused Samuel Huntingtons thesis for its simplistic and essentialist depiction of cultures and cultural interaction, his conceptual framework proven its resilience, particularly with the September 11, 2 001 terrorist attacks. Islam quickly became the inscrutable, violent, and intractable Other, a threat to spareist 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 land 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 ideologysome 250 million USD that USAID alone spent in the Arab world on projects and programs related to DP () certainly seems more than the negligible marrow 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 forward strategy for freedom in the Middle East announced by the Bush administration as a major(ip) shift from former US policies toward the region, emphasizing today the importance of democrat ic rule as opposed tostrategies 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 tender-hearted 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 call off 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 microbe of this politicization. But most notably, this politicization was most effectively utilized by the US against the Soviet Union in the 80s 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 derogate 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 sharia 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). 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. HoweverIn 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 forceHassan al-Turabi claims that women in Sudan have played a more important role in the National Islamic Fro nt 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 disputedit is clear that women elsewhere in the Muslim World Morocco, Jordan, EgyptTurkey do lead 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 real 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 government s 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 womens 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). Seemingly, the problems of the Middle East with regards to th e 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 CitedArat, Yesim. Rethinking Islam and Liberal country Islamist Women in Turkish governance. 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. 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