ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST

CONVENIENT as it is to describe the 22 countries (including the representatives of Palestine) that belong to the Arab League as “the Arab World,” this neat phrase can be deceptive. The Arab World is a heterogeneous agglomeration of some 350m people of diverse nationalities, ethnic backgrounds and religious beliefs—Maronites, Muslims, Copts, Berbers, Kurds, Africans as well as Arabs—inhabiting a miscellany of lands from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and from the Sahara to the foothills of Anatolia. So all generalisations about the Arab World should be taken lightly as their experiences, instincts and styles of faith or politics in the region are extremely diverse.

One element that helps us to define the Arab World is Arabic, the lingua franca of the region.  Though Arabic is a tie that binds, it must be understood that the language reflects the diversity of the region as there are several dialects and accents as diverse as the people:   it may require an effort for someone from Syria to understand someone from Morocco.  Conversely, greetings are widely understood in a variety of dialects.  Vernacular differences also demonstrate the issues of defining identity in the Arab World.

Identities can be put on and taken off according to taste and circumstance (see chart 3). There are many black African Christians living in the south of Sudan, a country which is a member of the Arab League. So, despite being Muslim, an Iraqi Kurd is not inherently an Arab, though a Lebanese or Palestinian Christian would be.   Since most of the borders of the Arab world owe more to the dispositions of European colonialists than to authentic national groupings, some in the region may define themselves by their ethnicity first, such as Arab, then by nationality, such as Jordanian or Libyan second, though this is not always the case.

Islam is the dominant religion of the Arab world which gives the region a strong sense of fellowship, though a large part of the world’s Muslims are not located in the region. This sizeable adherence to the religion too demonstrates a confessional diversity, i.e. Sunni and Shia.

Also, the Arab world has seen several attempts at transnational integration promoting regional consensus and representation, demonstrating a history of correlating and conflicting values:  Pan-Arabism, the United Arab Republic (UAR), the ACC (the Arab Co-operation Council of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and North Yemen), the Arab Maghreb Union, the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), consisting of Saudi Arabia and five Gulf satellites. The Arab League, as many contemporary nascent regional organizations, is still working on effectively defining values, building a consensus and effectively promoting interests of the Arab World.

It is to say that the Arab World, with its shared histories, language and cultures is bound together in its regional diversity.