Religion, Culture, and History’s Impact on the Personal

Sylvia Rust

POL 499

4/30/2020

Arab Identities:

Religion, Culture, and History’s Impact on the Personal

Identity politics have become a very divisive part of the world as we know it today. In the United States, it seems everything is split among political, religious, gender, and racial divides. In recent years, the United States has gone so far as to elect a president that thrives on the negative stereotypes that he ascribes to the people in America and around the world. During the 2016 election, Donald Trump used the “Muslim Ban” to rally his supporters around Islamophobic and xenophobic rhetoric towards Muslims and Arabs in particular. This has caused Trump to be perceived badly in most of the free world and even in “shithole countries”, as he would say. As Donald Trump leaned into this closed-off identity, many on the left started saying “refugees welcome” and having protests in favor of immigrants. Identity in the United States has become a divisive topic. Even mentioning race, sexuality or gender online can start an argument. Of course, it’s not exactly like that across the world. The Western mindset in the United States is not universal. In the Middle East and North Africa, identity is divided similarly, across ethnicity, gender, religion, etc, except it has a much richer past and a much more complex present and future. The Middle East is divided into different parts -- North Africa, the Levant/Fertile Crescent, the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. Each part of the Middle East has separate histories, as well as each country. Identity in the Middle East and North Africa is divided mostly across kinship, religion, secularism, and gender. Some identities hold less political power than they once had, but each impacts the climate and region just the same. 

In North Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and the sub-Saharan states: Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Mauritania, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, the Fertile Crescent: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, non-Arab Turkey, and the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula: Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, Yemen and non-Arab Persian state of Iran, trade routes connected the Middle East to the rest of the World. Stereotypes of the Middle East include; Camels in the desert, oil derricks pumping thick black crude, rows of men kneeling praying, bearded protesters shouting slogans. People know about the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Some know about Cairo’s Tehran Square protests, in the space that was built as a square to be modern/Western, where protesters of many creeds: women, tradesmen, students, and street vendors. There is more to the Middle East than this. The Middle East has many diverse climates, languages: arabic, turkish, persian, Berber in Morocco and Algeria, Baluchi in southeastern Iran, Kurdish, the fourth most spoken language in the region, and Hebrew. 

There’s an idea in the West that the Middle East is full of a homogenous group of people that are religious, oppressive, and conservative. Although there are many states that are based on Islamic principles, to conflate an entire region of the world (25 countries if you include all of the Arabic speaking countries) into this superimposed, problematic breeding ground for extremism is not only incorrect, but it’s dangerous. Many forget that often extremist groups are targeting fellow Arabs and those that live in the Middle East. The most casualties from extremism do not come from days like 9/11, they come from everyday bombings, shootings, etc. The uprisings in countries like Syria aren’t always based in extremism, but in response to problematic political principles.

Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the Comoros Islands, Iraq, Djibouti, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Turkey, and Israel are states in the Middle East and North African region that all individually have their own histories and identities. There could be hundreds of books about each state because of the complex history of them all. 

It is important to remember that the Middle East was first joined under the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth century. During the Ottoman Empire rule, Palestine was separated into peasants, who were illiterate, living in poverty, and ignorant. They played the roles of eyes; to help the Shaykhs. The landowners and wealthy in Jerusalem were families; al-Husayni, al-Khalidi, and al-Nashahibi as well as Christian Arabs. Jews from Russia were allowed into the Empire, but not allowed to settle in Palestine; this caused a huge rift among Jewish settlers/colonizers and the Ottoman Empire.

Because of this, the Zionist Movement was formed in 1897 under the direction of Herzl. In 1992, 24,000 Jews in the Palestinian territory and in 1914, 85,000 had moved in. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 (Zionist Movement) was created to fight for the landownership of Jews. The Young Turks were not opposed to bribery, buying land in Arab names, coming into Palestine from Egypt to get to the land.  In response, from 1876-1908,  Pan-Islamist Abdulhamid opposed Zionism in Palestine, fighting for the Palestinians that have lived in the region for years. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire affected Arab identities and Turks because many Arab countries became colonies and Turkey became a member of the Balkan states.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Russian domination took over the Tartar and Turkish regions. The Balkans had nationalist aspirations because of their closeness to Austria and allies. North Africa came under colonial authority; the French ruled Algeria (1830) and Tunisia (1881) and Italy ruled Libya (1911). Independent rulers of Egypt and Lebanon came into power at about the same time. 

Mandates for the Middle East were adopted by the Allied powers at the San Remo Conference in 1920 and were confirmed by the League of Nation in 1922. The French received Mandate for Syria; approving Lebanon a distinct entity and assured political dominance of (Maronite) Christian majority. The British took a dominant position in Palestine -- tutelage for independent statehood, couldn’t just be a colony while the Balfour Declaration gave the Jewish the notion of a national home in Palestine. After Palestine was no longer a part of Ottoman Syria, Palestine was under British Mandate from 1922-1948. Two social systems were created under this British rule; Jews and Arabs. The Zionist movement was all about immigration and land acquisition. The Arab population grew by more than half (700,000) to 1,800,000 over the 20 years of the British Mandate, while Jewish immigrants came tenfold. Over the 1920s and 1930s, fights broke out between Arabs and Jews that caused the death of hundreds, but the Riots at the Wailing Wall started a shift in the way Arabs and Jews interacted in Palestine. 

The Wailing Wall Riots of 1929 changed the ways Arabs viewed all Jews; they no longer differentiated between the Jews of Arab origin and Eastern European Jews, making all Jews into one category for them focused on nationalism. The riot made Jews even more insistent on the creation of a Jewish state. 

After WWII, the problems in Israel/Palestine became more of a concrete issue. In 1947, the UN recognized both the rights of the Jewish and Arab nationalist communities in Palestine; however, in 1948 Israel declared Independence and this was challenged by the Arab states. The War of Independence of 1948-1949 left 700,000 Palestinian refugees, and they were denied the right to return to their homes in the aftermath of the 1948-1949 war. 

The League of Arab states started in 1945 with Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon as the first countries to join. In 1953, Abdel Nasser overthrew the king of Egypt who had held the monarchy since 1919. There were other events happening in the middle east as well, including the increase in the idea of Pan-Arabism, based around the belief and teachings of  the Ba’ath Party and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. There was a push in the 1950s-1960s for Arab unification under a single political structure; based on common history, language, culture. The Six Day War resulted in Israel capturing the Arab Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, Egypt’s Sinai and Syria’s Golan Heights. The UN Resolution 242 was adopted in November of 1967 in hopes that it would lessen tensions in the Middle East. Because of the Six Day War, Pan-Arabism was no longer an ideology that many wanted to be a part of anymore. There was a strong increase in violent jihad behind the Muslim Brotherhood and Sayyid Qutb. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran increased the Islamism of the Middle East and wanted other countries to get rid of the White Revolution of the likes of the Shah. 

There are collective identities based on sectarian identities in Israel, Iran, TurkeyLebanon and Israel have living remnants of the Ottoman millet system; juridical category, social institutions, bundles of rights and duties and lived practices are based in ethno confessional sects: Jews in Israel and Maronite, Sunni, Shi’a, Druze or any of the other 18 sects in Lebanon — composed solely of minorities. Civil marriages across ethno confessional communities is not permitted. Marriage to a father's brother's daughter is still preferable (first cousins). Pastoral nomadism now rare in the Middle East: difficult to move around in a nation state, but they were all once kinship groups; Saudi Arabia is literally named the House of Saud. Syria’s uprising can be seen as people against a repressive government and a majority Sunni group against a minority Alawite group (that Bashir is a part of).  

Patrilineal kinship system has been flexible and effective over centuries under variety of social, economic, and political conditions in the Middle East; it began as an adaptive response to ecological and social limitations gradually became a valued institution embodying a rich cultural complex of expectations, values, rituals and beliefs (328). Feminist anthropologists have done gender-oriented kinship studies (329) based around ethnicity. Anthropologists view ethnic groups as subcultures. In Israel, Ashkenazi Jews minority but lead in wealth and control the state's decision making bodies over Arab Jews or non-Jews.

Ottoman identities are not Ottomans, Arabs, Turks or Kurds but based on religious ideation: Muslims, Christians, Druze, Jews. Islam considers Jews and Christians “people of the book”. In Ottoman times, as long as non-Muslims paid their taxes and obeyed laws, they were to be left alone; they even had rulings and guidance from their own religious hierarchies. Social class, economic and political differences and hierarchy arrangement all depend on each other. 

Until 150 years ago, the Middle East had a simple social class structure until capitalism came to the Middle East. Muslims and non-Muslim elites benefited from these reforms giving them cash crops like tobacco while merchants (Christians and Jews) began making money as middlemen for European goods and Middle Eastern consumers. 

Today there are groups like Hezbollah, HAMAS, US-led wars in the Middle East (Afghanistan, Iraq) and these all have impacts on Islamism. The Arab uprisings of 2010 lead to the democratization of Tunisia where corruption, lack of political representation, transparency and accountability, lack of political opportunities, and repression were all hyper analyzed and dealt with (Baxter, 165). There are many historical movements that have happened and continue to impact the Arab World. Jihadists groups are often picking up, governments continue to be oppressive or restrictive, but the people continue to be diverse individuals with centuries of religious, cultural, and political history in their genetics. 

Bardají writes that “In the Middle East, Western writers frequently, and inaccurately, character- ized Sunnis as "orthodox" Muslims and the Shi'is as "heterodox." Both Sunnis, who make up about 90% of the world's Muslims, and Shi'is, at about 10%, are large groups with innumerable sub- group.” p. 30 Although this is important and useful information, we see that religion and secular differences are becoming less valid in the discourse of the Middle East. 

The Sunni-Shi’i divide is often argued to be irreversible however Ben-Ami writes about this and argues that religion is becoming less important and divisive in the Middle East and North Africa. He argues that strategic interests and imperial ambitions play a stronger role in regional relations. The two large opposing political systems of Iran and Saudi Arabia are used as this notion of the Sunni-Shi’i divide. Iran is seen as a revolutionary regime dedicated to changing regional balance of power while Saudi Arabia is a conservative monarchy that depends on holding regional power. When we think about Iran as a revolutionary regime, their support of the Arab Spring uprisings comes to no surprise. As an Muslim country, Iran could be a good leading country but because of their non-Arab identity, they are seen as an enemy of the other Middle Eastern and North African countries. Saudi Arabia did not support the uprisings because it depends on its power as a regional and global leader. It did not matter to Saudi Arabia if Bahrain, a Shi’i country, or Egypt, a Sunni country, were uprising, the problem was the uprising in general, not based on religion. 

Besides the Arab Spring, alliances in the Middle East no longer fit within Sunni and Shi’i divide. Iran, a Shi’i majority country, financially supports Hamas and has close relationship with Oman because of their proximity to the Strait of Hormuz. The Iran’s Houthi rebels in Yemen have even been rumored to be armed by the Oman government to fight Saudi Arabia in the Iran-Saudi Arabian proxy war. Qatar has a relationship with Iran as well because of their shared gas fields. 

Saudi Arabia’s coalition with Arab countries, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain to impose sanctions on Qatar because of their relationship with Iran and their continued streaming of Al-Jazeera. Turkey continues to hold  a military base in Qatar. Turkey and Saudi Arabia also disagree about the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey considers the Brotherhood to be a model of Islamic politics while Saudi Arabia views them as a threat. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi views the Muslim Brotherhood as his nemesis. Turkey appears to be directly challenging Egypt’s vital interests.

The use of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) including the Internet and the introduction of satellite TVs in MENA has allowed for marginalized communities to be connected across states and outside of state limits. 

Pamela Abbot writes in Understanding Gender Inequality in the MENA Region about the “patriarchal belt” --  male-dominated kinship/property system, Islam’s patriarchal values in the religion (and the other Abrahamic religions as well), as well as the lack of women’s economic bargaining power. Abbott researches gender In Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. 

Human development and education, economic empowerment, political empowerment and legal empowerment keep the divide between women and men in these Middle Eastern countries. Many women do not have the legal knowledge to be able to advance in many of these fields, even following the Arab Spring.

Internally displaced persons (IDPs)in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq now make up around one million from Iraq and other places as well as hosting almost 250,000 Syrian refugees. The Kurdistan Region already has housing and job insecurity but with the IDPs in the area, these issues can cause havoc in the region, especially because since this was written in 2015, the issues in the Kurdistan Region have continued to be complicated, especially during the Trump presidency. 

What makes an Arab? Who is an Arab? Some Arabs believe that Arab identity, and Arab regional identity are enough to be Arab but others have more complicated relationships with Arab identities. Some say Arab identity is based on having Arab parents or Arab grandparents, some they are Arab because they speak Arabic and are Muslim. While others say they may speak Arabic but are not Arab (Somali), while others say there is no such thing as Arab politics at all. 

Language is defining part of the “Arabness of the Arabs” (Halliday).If you speak Arabic, you are Arab. Unless your parents are not Arabs. There are others; however, who believe their Arab identity should not be dependent on their language use. Leila Ahmed, an Egyptian, could not speak Arabic well but restated that she is still Arab. Many Arabs have complicated relationships with their identities as they often are afraid to express pride in their nationality/race especially post 9/11, but anti-Arab racism and violence was present even in the 1980s and during the Reagan administration. Arab people have had a hard time fitting into Arab and American culture, especially because of racist and Islamophobic stereotypes that are present in American culture. 

Not only do Arab Americans struggle with their identity, but the people in the Middle East also have a hard time fitting in/identifying themselves. There has been a big push for Pan-Arabism in the 1970s into today which some people have embraced, but others, like the Lebanese and Tunisians, have national pride and identities that often supersede Arab pride. Another problem with Pan-Arabism is that the Middle East, despite stereotypes and opinions, is not a monolith. There are of course Arabs in the region, but there are also Turks, Kurds, Persians, Baluchis, Pashtuns, Berber, and indigenous groups as well. Many of the smaller groups were once able to move around the region but because of nationstates and borders are now landlocked and stuck in one place, ruining and erasing much of their history. One group that has difficulties with the landlocked boundaries are the Kurds. Kurds are in both Turkey and Iraq and hope to one day create a place for them that they’d run called Kurdistan. It’s unlikely that they will get anywhere with this as there is always infighting, Turkey supports Iran and does not want to lose their land. Kurdistan is used as a place for IDPs which is helping so many people.  

Identity in the Arab World/Middle East/Middle East and North Africa is complicated and hard to define. There is obviously religious distinctions that keep people apart - Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Coptic Christians and Druze religions all wanting their religions represented and respected, while the rest of the world is ignorant to the differences among people in the Middle East. The history and the strides that the Middle East has gone through to make it to where they are today is not something to take lightly. The racism that Arabs and Muslims receive around the world no doubt affects how they see themselves. Many struggle with the internal dilemma of being proud to be Arab or Muslim and being afraid of xenophobic comments when they move outside of the Middle East. Even within the Middle East, there are issues for withouts and problems for minorities and working class persons that don’t belong to kinship groups or wealthy families in many nation states. 

With the history of being one large group, to colonialism, to nationstates and to the creation of concrete borders (often by mountains or rivers), the Middle East has a complicated history that continues to complicate international and regional relations. It is difficult to simplify Arab/MENA identities down because each of the twenty-five countries have books worth of history in them. Religion, patrilineal kinships, gender, and political aspirations all impact the way the world responds and reacts to the Middle East. The protests and uprisings in the Middle East have impacted the world and allowed people to realize that they can make change. The use of the internet during the Arab Spring has helped during Occupy Wall Street, Ferguson, and today during the George Floyd protests. The way the Arab people were able to use the internet to communicate despite the censorship in the media is and was beautiful and it continues to help the way we, as a world, communicate globally.

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I have never struggled with writing a paper so much. With having my baby, the coronavirus, the BLM protests, having my gallbladder out unexpectedly, I have not put as much time in this paper admittedly. I’m sure you’ll be able to tell. I am very sorry for my lack of concentration. This last year of undergrad was crazy for me. Thank you for your patience. I understand if I need to retake this class next semester. I had way too much on my plate this past year.