Is There a Middle East?
Page 12
With de Blij and Muller in mind, let me propose why this realm—this region—makes sense as a cultural region of the “Middle East” (with some small adjustments). There are a number of environmental and cultural characteristics that give this region some coherence, although, again I do not claim exclusivity to any of these specific characteristics. Environmentally, the region, indeed, is characterized mainly as an arid and semi-arid climatic regime—by far the largest such dryland region in the world—from the Sahara and its margins to the deserts of Arabia, Iran, and Central Asia. Certainly, there are exceptions in the region to this dry climate: mainly, the eastern Levantine coast, the coasts of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, and certain highland areas that garner greater precipitation. Nevertheless, because of this arid environment, throughout much of this region traditional irrigation agriculture and nomadic pastoralism have been significant livelihoods.
However, the Middle East also is a region of cities and urban societies. Whereas some of the world’s earliest cities were from “ancient” Mesopotamia, Egypt and Anatolia, later urban conglomerations such as Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Tunis, Rabat, Mecca, and numerous others remained significant during much of the Islamic period. The urban was part of an integral interrelationship of the city, agriculture, and nomadism, and this nexus has been noted by Nikki Keddie, who states that after the eleventh century there were “various permutations and combinations of a nomadic-agricultural-urban synthesis.”84 As mentioned above, Paul English also characterized this synthesis of the nomad, villager, and urbanite as the “ecological trilogy.”85
Figure 3.18. The Middle East and Central Asia as defined by Eickelman, The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach, 1998. By kind permission of the publisher.
The Middle East is sometimes identified with Islam, although most Muslims of the world now live outside the Middle East and North Africa (however defined). Nevertheless, this region can be considered not only as the historic core of Islam (and the early Islamic empires) but also as an area in which Islam predominates (knowing, of course, that Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, and many other nation-states outside our region also have a majority of Muslims). Another issue is oil: certainly some states have it and others do not, but as a region it has over two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves and most of its natural gas reserves. From Algeria and Libya to the Sinai and the Persian Gulf and the Caspian region, no other area of the world even comes close to possessing as much of this most valuable, strategic resource.
Finally, in terms of ethnolinguistic groups, the region principally is home to Arab/Semitic, Iranic, and Turkic peoples, although as we merge into the transition zones these designations become less meaningful and useful. There is also the problem of significant minorities within our Middle East, even though most of the languages—and hence the ethnolinguistic groups—are members of one of the principal language families of the peoples of the region: Semitic, Indo-European, or Finno-Ugric languages.
To de Blij and Muller’s “North Africa / Southwest Asia,” I would add the western part of Pakistan (Baluchistan) and parts of (traditionally) Muslim (and arid) western China (Xinjiang), which often was part of the “Turkestan” of the early European travelers and authors. Hence, in my region—my realm—I place particular emphasis on the combination of climatic characteristics (but not determinism) and language and religious affiliations. Yet, the events of geopolitics often overtake any attempt to freeze in time any regional scheme. The Chinese nation-state, for instance, is very consciously incorporating Xinjiang, and considerable numbers of Han Chinese are being resettled in the region. Southern (Muslim) Spain in the past would have fit into our scheme, but the historical changes in the population and the predominance of a Christian Europe or “Western Europe” has incorporated Spain into another world cultural region. The fact that Central Asia (Turkestan) now can be considered part of a wider Southwest Asia or Middle East is due, of course, mainly to the demise of the Soviet Union, which effectively incorporated those states for decades (and did try to annex Afghanistan into that wider union as well).
Therefore, the point needs to be emphasized that any large world cultural region is constantly undergoing change, and defining specific “boundaries” often only inhibits attempts to understand that region—and its peoples. We must always be aware that our classification schemes and various categories not only help inform but also homogenize and limit our understanding of peoples and the various regions that are devised to define them.
Nevertheless, I maintain that there is indeed a North Africa / Southwest Asia cultural region or realm. Rather, it might—or should be—referred to as the Middle East or perhaps the Middle East and North Africa (and include Central Asia) or Southwest Asia and North Africa, but certainly there is no consensus. However, the various characteristics that in combination define this cultural region lend validity to the notion that, in contrast to its neighbors and other cultural areas or realms, the region possesses sufficient commonality and similar traits to give it enough coherence and uniqueness to affirm that there is indeed a “Middle East”—or perhaps a more accurate designation is “Middle East and North Africa.” Even though “Southwest Asia and North Africa” might be the best terminology (incorporating Central Asia into Southwest Asia), the “Middle East” has now become such a significant geopolitical and accepted regional concept that any regional terminology that omits the “Middle East” ends up ignoring the realities of the modern twentieth-first century. Hence, I propose that the most appropriate geographer’s region is one that has been used by a number of scholars and writers: the “Middle East and North Africa.” Yet, even if we agree on that terminology, the exact delimitation of this region continues to be ambiguous and contentious.
4
WHY ARE THERE NO MIDDLE EASTERNERS IN THE MAGHRIB?
Ramzi Rouighi
WHAT IS THE MIDDLE EAST, who is a Middle Easterner, and what does it mean to think of a Middle East and Middle Easterners? This volume offers a number of ways to answer these questions. In this chapter, I propose to look at these categories as products whose social life involves the activities of particular groups that specialize in their production and dissemination. This perspective is attractive because it does not require that those involved fully master or understand the process in which they play an active role. Another aspect of this perspective is that it assumes that without the active production, maintenance, and reproduction of these categories, they would lose the sense that they refer to something in actuality and join the ranks of ideas that have become the hollow reminders of their former social existence. In other words, much as there are particular social sites that confer attributes on the tooth fairy, extraterrestrials, and race, there are particular social sites that specialize in conferring upon the Middle East and Middle Easterners an objective character.
In the Maghrib, it is possible to find the categories and terms “Middle East” and “Middle Easterner.”1 However, Maghribis tend not to use the category “Middle East” very often and use the term “Middle Easterner” even less frequently. When they do employ these categories, however, they do not believe that they refer to themselves. Instead, they believe that the Middle East is to the east and that, although they have ties to Middle Easterners, they consider themselves distinct and separate from them. In other words, as far as Maghribis are concerned, there are no Middle Easterners in the Maghrib. This chapter seeks to explain this peculiar situation by examining the conditions of the emergence of the category “Middle East,” the terms of its introduction to the Maghrib, and its subsequent use.2 Rather than provide a full account of these processes, this chapter limits itself to identifying some of the sites of production, dissemination, and consumption of these two categories.3
Although it should be evident to most, it may still be prudent to mention that the Middle East is a category expressed in the English language and that English is not widely used in the Maghrib. Consequently, “Middle East”
and “Middle Easterners” rarely appear in English in the Maghrib because few Maghribis speak English; instead, they use the Arabic al-sharq al-awsat (the Middle East) and sharq awsatiyūn (Middle Easterners) and the French Moyen-Orient (Middle East) and moyen-orientaux (Middle Easterners) equivalents of these categories. Although the difference between the Arabic, French, and English categories raises a number of potentially interesting questions, there is not sufficient space in this text to delve into this aspect. My intention here is to merely explain why the terms sharq awsatiyūn and moyen-orientaux rarely occur in the Maghrib and why, when Maghribis use them, they do not mean to refer to other Maghribis.
GRAND BEGINNINGS
As Roger Adelson indicated (Chapter 2), the American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan is commonly held to be the first to use the term the “Middle East,” although the term had predecessors in the language of the British India Office,4 and earlier other languages used it as well, as shown by Huseyin Yilmaz (Chapter 1). However, it was not until the 1940s that the term gained currency when policy makers and advisers began to use it to organize the actions of the U.S. government during the Second World War.
Illustrating the institutional support given this term in the United States, in 1946, Christian Herter cofounded the Middle East Institute, a policy center whose mission was to “promote knowledge of the Middle East in America and strengthen understanding of the United States by the people and governments of the region.”5 Such initiatives helped solidify the Middle East into a region in the minds of government officials, journalists, businessmen, and academics. The category “Middle Easterner” was, however, slower to emerge. In fact, it was not until the 1950s that Middle Easterners began to be regularly imagined as populating a region called the Middle East.6
Leading the so-called Herter Committee, Herter contributed to the formulation of what became the Marshall Plan, the U.S. government’s plan to consolidate and safeguard its influence in Western Europe. As an official regional category of the U.S. government, the “Middle East” was introduced into use in the newly founded United Nations and became even more widely disseminated and translated. French officials and intellectuals added the term Moyen-Orient to preexisting terms such as the Proche-Orient (Near East) and began to use the two interchangeably. Regarding the Maghrib, which was still under French rule, they employed the term Afrique du Nord (North Africa). The French “Middle East” echoed the original British and American terms, but it was adapted to colonial realities and discourse. However, as far as the inclusion of the Maghrib in the Middle East, there was no doubt that neither Mahan nor those who used the term after him thought that it included the Maghrib. A fortiori, they did not think that “Middle Easterners” included Maghribis.
The integration of the Middle East into the public discourse in France gained momentum after the end of World War II. In 1949, the prominent French sociologist Robert Montagne (1893–1954) used the term “Middle East” in relation to a possible rapprochement between the French and the British.7 Although foreign policy was not his academic specialty, in his essay Montagne offered advice and council to policy makers based on his expertise. As a noted intellectual, he used references familiar to his target audience. “Why should we not think of settling our differences in the Middle East, in those regions where for exactly a hundred and fifty years since Bonaparte’s landing in Egypt, and fifty years after Fashoda, France and Britain have been continually in opposition?”8 Montagne believed that the French and British should work together to achieve a peace in the Middle East that served their economic and strategic interests, which were being threatened by Arab nationalism. Oil was foremost among these interests. As far as the relation between the Middle East and the Maghrib, Montagne thought that Israel’s establishment and victory in 1948 was a positive development that showed Maghribis who had been excited by Arab nationalism that it was the wrong path to follow.9 And he added: “And why should not this Jewish-Arab conflict continue to be of equally good service to us? As long as conflict goes on in the Middle East, calm will reign in the Maghrib.”10
Montagne’s conception of the Middle East and the Maghrib was not unique. In his memoir published in 1954, and thus before the independence of Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria from France, Charles de Gaulle defined the Moyen-Orient as “the set of countries which stretch from Turkey to India.”11 For de Gaulle, Afrique du nord (or Afrique du nord française) belonged with France. It was an integral part of the French colonies and provinces (départements). This does not mean that he, and many people in France at the time, did not recognize that North Africa had historical ties with Arabs and Muslims. They most certainly did. However, the idea that those ties could be expressed as one region and through the category “Middle East” was alien to them.
Although de Gaulle clearly excluded the Maghrib from the Moyen-Orient and Proche-Orient, it is not immediately clear that he was wrong to do so. After all, French colonialism was not the same everywhere. Colonial laws, institutions, and policies differed greatly, owing, in part, to differences in the native customs of rule in those societies prior to French domination and to the manner in which the French imposed their rule. However, scholars and intellectuals did not explain the difference between French North Africa and the Levant in these terms. Settler colonialism in North Africa became a factor only in relation to the degree of modernization or “Frenchification.” In other words, the discourse on the difference between North Africa and the Middle East involved a shift away from prevailing local or regional socioeconomic, political, and cultural conditions into idealized, and ideological, conceptions of essential characteristics or historic differences. Examining and comparing the degree of economic development, civilizational attainment, and racial mix were more pertinent than the processes that led to the establishment of these differences.12
Under these conditions, the difference between the Middle East and North Africa became an undeniable fact. Maghribis were different from Arab Middle Easterners because they had distinct institutions, customs, practices, dialects, and ultimately, a different past. For men such as Montagne, this irresolvable difference made Arab nationalism an unrealistic dream. Interestingly, Arab nationalists shared this basic vision, even if they expressed it differently. Using premodern conceptions, which distinguished between the Maghrib (West) and the Mashriq (East), they articulated the vision of a unified Arab world.13 Their imaginary geography conceived of the Maghrib as remote and away from the cultural center. Unlike the secular Arab nationalists, reform-minded religious thinkers saw the Maghrib as an important historical center of Muslim culture. Naturally, when they argued for pan-Islamic revival, they did not insist on long-standing regional differentiation but focused instead on developing a collective response to Western influence.14
Another aspect of the discourse on the Maghrib (or North Africa) and the Middle East was that it lumped together Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia whose national independence was still believed to be preventable. The premodern Maghrib, because it was also prenational, offered the perfect “argument” against nationalists. Maghribi intellectuals found in the Islamic past a way to rally supporters against the French. However, they could find no Morocco, Algeria, or Tunisia in the medieval period. Colonialists used this fact to undermine them, arguing that the idea of an Algerian or Tunisian nation was illegitimate. This phenomenon alone illustrates the importance of regional categories such as “Maghrib” and “Middle East” to the articulation of politics in the modern period. It also demonstrates that the process of political struggle shaped their meanings, connotations, and implications.
In his 1962 Le Maghreb entre deux guerres (The Maghrib Between the Two World Wars), Jacques Berque informed his readers that the book was meant to remedy the absence of the Maghrib from his previous study titled Arabes d’hier à demain (The Arabs from Yesterday to Tomorrow).15 Clearly, Berque had thought about including the Maghrib in the history of the Arabs, even though, in fact, he did not. Whereas “Arab” is not the same as
“Middle Eastern,” for Berque the “Maghrib” is still distinguishable from both. In general, Berque’s work highlighted the distinctiveness of North African institutions and insisted on historical specificity. Nonetheless, including the Maghrib in the history of the Arabs would also have preserved them as a distinct entity.16 The question here is not whether the Arab Maghrib (al-maghrib al-‘arabī) truly belonged with the Arabs, and thus with the Middle East, but rather why intellectuals failed to explain the distinctiveness of the Maghrib by analyzing the workings of colonialism.
An analysis of French dissertations on Algeria (both in France and Algeria) from 1870 to 1962 shows that the terms Afrique du nord, Arabe, and Islam were the only umbrella categories used that included Algeria.17 No dissertation about that country conceived of it in terms of the Moyen-Orient. Moreover, and although I have not checked every single thesis completed since the independence of Maghribi countries, I have yet to come across a single study that conceives of the Moyen-Orient in a way that includes the Maghrib as an integral component and not as an appendix to the Middle East.