The Middle East: A Diversely Different Way of Life

Our view of the Middle East as a whole has been truncated to include little, if anything, outside of our alleged wars on terrorism. The Middle East is a loosely defined geographic region with most of its countries in Asia, with the exception of Egypt, a part of Africa, and the northwestern area of Turkey, which is of the European landmass. In total, the Middle East covers twenty million square miles and is home to 230 million people, according to the Population Resource Center, at www.prcdc.org. A common misconstruction is that the Middle East, being an Islamic group of countries, discriminates openly and fiercely against women. While ninety percent of the Middle Eastern population is Muslim, not all states are Islamic theocracies. Muslims practice the Islamic religion. Even Iraq is, and was under Saddam Hussein, a secular state. This said, Islam is not in and of itself anti-female. The Islamic states in the Middle East increased their enrollment of girls in public schools by two percent in the early nineties- four times the overall rate for developing countries, reports the Higher Pedagogical Institute. While the female literacy rate in Arabic countries is only forty-four percent, compared to sixty-eight percent of males, the gender gap is closing more quickly than in South Asian and Sub-Saharan African countries. The Arabian literacy rate is expected to reach gender equality at seventy percent in 2010. According to Islamic law, men and women are equals. Women are free to obtain an education and work to provide for their families. Many of the barbarous stereotypes we hold for the Middle East in regards to woman are actually held over from pre-Islamic times. Mohammad spoke specifically of the heinous acts being committed against woman, condemning them as “outside the will of Allah”.Our country’s concept of the buzz word “Jihad” is tenuous at best. Often it is used as a synonym for “holy war” or “crusade”, but the Islamic population claims it goes deeper than that. According to www.straightdope.com, the term literally translates into striving or struggling. The loose translation of holy war is misleading, and sells short a concept that encompasses a much broader swath of life to a devout Muslim. Contemporary Muslims will argue that Jihad doesn’t necessarily include a military operation, but rather a constant effort to better the self and society at large. Some extremists have interpreted this to mean doing away with evil at any cost, and unfortunately these are the individuals that make the evening news, but it would be unfair to discount such an integral part of Islamic culture as savagery.The Israeli and Palestinian conflict is a continuing major news event in the Middle East that we seldom hear of over here in the US. The implications of the conflict are far-reaching, with allies on both sides. The contention is over borders, settlements, Palestinian refugees and East Jerusalem. It’s a commonly held belief that Israel and the United States are both manifestations of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy to subvert Islam. The Palestinians will argue that the Israelis are an insidious, colonial force, snatching up valuable land and booting out the Palestinians that have enjoyed success there for centuries. The Israelis will claim that the land they’ve settled was of no value before they brought it up from the ashes, and that the Palestinians have no right to take it back now that they’ve made it thrive. The Zionist movement has been working over the past century to gather and claim an independent Jewish state in Jerusalem, and its less-than-amiable treatment of the indigenous Palestinians has escalated to the current disagreement. Either way, the conflict runs hot, and Middle Eastern papers follow every death. Recently, there have been concerns of Iran stepping up to the plate as it targets pockets of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation with suicide bombings and continued terrorist attacks.It is widely speculated that the United States will not halt its search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Foreign Policy in Focus website (www.fpif.org) has a lot to say on this topic. A likely candidate for our next stop is Iran’s neighbor, Syria. While it was mandated that Iraq be de-clawed after its failed occupation of Kuwait, it is not officially illegal to possess weapons of mass destruction. There are conventions against biological and chemical weapons, but the U.S. itself “unsigned” the Treaty of Rome, which would set up an international criminal court that could potentially try individuals who commit acts of terror abroad yet maintain their innocence in their own country. We also revoked the Anti- Ballistic Missile Pact with Moscow. No country is forced to sign these treaties, and even if they do, they could follow our lead and “unsign” them. There has been an ongoing volley of complaints against Syria and Iran regarding their sponsorship of elusive terrorist groups. Donald Rumsfeld has openly stated we should punish Syria for exporting weaponry to Iraq. This potential breach of international etiquette could proliferate more resistance than we are ready to deal with. Iran has been making frightening leaps with its weaponry technology as of late, and some fear they may be developing weapons with nuclear capability. Iran has recently suspended enrichment of uranium, which is a necessary process when developing nuclear arms, but maintains that it could continue at any point.The Middle East is a proud, culturally diverse section of the world that has recently fallen victim to negative stereotyping. Most of these concepts have trickled down from by-gone times and fundamentalist groups that kill for air time on American televisions. Sometimes it may be hard to see past the stigma and into the humanity, but doing so opens the door to a completely different way of life.