Hello and welcome to other Monak. The Oxford Middle East podcast, Home Builders Focus.
And today I am joined by Lily Sullivan and Hajim Earth to discuss language of the Middle East.
We covered the region itself,
the problems with the current discourse about the Middle East and the coverage of people within it and our own experiences studying it and travelling.
Those representations of the Orient had very little to do with what I knew about my own background in life.
And this writing was an organised form, writing like an organised science, what I've called Orientalism.
My fellow citizens at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq,
to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger to all the men and women of the United States armed forces.
Now in the Middle East, the peace of a troubled world and the hopes of an oppressed people now depend on you.
The events of 9/11 really convinced many Europeans and Americans that the greatest threat to their way of life,
to the peace, their security lay in the Arab world, in particular in the Muslim world more generally.
So the first thing I think is important to mention with this episode is that the podcast is called the Middle East Podcast,
and we all do Middle Eastern studies in Oxford, but we don't actually know.
We'll have a strict definition of what the Middle East is. It is a very new term.
But how would you like to introduce the history of the modern Middle East and its political system?
I think we can very comfortably track the foundations of the concept of the modern Middle
East to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire around the ending of World War One.
They were in debt to multiple European powers.
They had been left behind during the industrial revolution. Agricultural progress very, very limited.
And the power of the empire was very much centralised in Anatolia, leaving these peripheral territories very much their own devices.
And as a result of that, the Ottoman Empire, especially in the early nineteen hundreds, was, I say, plagued by socialists and independent movements.
What fundamentally chiselled out the modern Middle East as we know it?
Were these three agreements, declarations, treaties? You have the six Pekoe on May 16 that was signed on May 16th, 1916,
which was an agreement between Mark Sykes, a British diplomat, a French diplomat, Friendswood Picco.
And essentially they sat down, looked at a map of that region, identified the pre-existing Ottoman administrative unit,
and drew up borders that would essentially placate the imperial ambitions of both Britain and France.
Britain got southern Iraq, Jordan, Palestine and France were given large chunks of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon.
Bearing in mind this, the Ottoman Empire had not yet formally dissolved.
You then have the Balfour Declaration in 1917,
which is a statement declaring British support for the establishment of a national home for Jewish communities in Ottoman under Palestine.
And then the cherry on top of the cake is the Treaty of Self in 1920,
which is right after World War One, which formally portioned up the Ottoman Empire amongst allies.
And the Ottomans themselves were only given a very small region in Anatolia, which would eventually become Turkey.
And fundamentally, what the Ottomans left behind was a bunch of territories that had been neglected for a very long period of time.
They've been stripped of their administrative capacities that had suffered and not been able to.
Progressing the way that, for example, Europe was progressing during the industrial revolution.
And so the region was very, very vulnerable and very open to just being taken by these imperial powers,
essentially making it very, very easy colonial land.
It's very cliche, but the classic term for the Ottoman Empire in time was the sick man of Europe.
So it was kind of bizarre. I don't know if you would agree with this chapter, that sort kind of opportunistic grab.
And then a sensible argument is this. You know, it was sort of based on Ottoman territories, but it was, you know,
the main motivation in their divvying up was kind of allocating resources between Britain and France.
There is no consideration for the history or culture of the way the lines were being placed on this map.
I think if you place it into a broader context as well, there was wasn't like the height of the colonial era for Europe,
like they were doing the same they had the same policies in Africa as well, the way they were drawing lines, which barely made any sense.
When you consider the ethnicities of the people who lived or their religions,
many of the problems you see now in the Middle East, like Israel Palestine,
it all comes from this very cardless way of dividing the Middle East into countries
with no consideration for what had happened before or what was going to happen.
But it's simply another region where colonial history has had very severe consequences.
Even today, I would say it's a very much a de facto colonisation.
It's not like the British and French mobilised their troops and invade these regions.
It was by pure virtue of the Ottoman Empire being a crumbling entity.
And they were seeing this as an opportunity for imperialist expansion.
It's really important to identify how much the Ottoman Empire had destabilised the Middle East in an administrative and a cultural and a social sense.
And that's what allowed these treaties to go ahead. I think also something which is relevant here, and we'll discuss this more later.
But it's about stereotyping of the Middle East because the purpose of the mandates officially
was to develop vagina's institutions so that these people could eventually rule themselves.
But obviously, the Europeans saw it as their responsibility in this time to do that because they felt Arabs were incapable of ruling themselves.
And it's a very ironic situation where they are incapable of ruling themselves because you've never given them the opportunity to do so.
But we'll get back to that.
And the consequences of stereotyping the Middle East later, but it shows there's a long and very clear line from then to even what's happening now.
The Middle East, though, as a term itself, also has a very clear colonial history,
because if you think of it as the Middle East but East relative to what?
And that's Europe, India's first prime minister.
Maybe he observed that it should be called West Asia because where it was situated and I think that is something that.
Is recurring in modern discussions of the names we give to these regions and how we end up upholding a very specific world order.
If people at the time. Not necessarily directly at the time, but quite soon after, we're noticing that that time was an issue.
I think it's quite interesting to see that still in modern news today.
In addition to that, I mean, I have a similar anecdote with that.
Didn't know my Middle East studies programme from China.
And using the first time that you heard the phrase Middle East didn't make sense to her because she saying it because the Middle West.
So it's very rooted as very as you know, it's obviously a very it's a very Eurocentric idea for like a specific history of it.
It was the term Middle East was first used in Montesano two, and it's covered all the area between Egypt and Burma,
which meant that India was at that point part of the Middle East as well, which it isn't anymore.
And then the Middle East became more official during World War Two, when the British military established the specific Middle East command.
And that's also involved North Africa. So the guy who coined the term Middle East was an American naval strategy strategist.
The region, it became, I think, a greater point or location of interest as tensions between Russia and Britain increased.
It's like speculated that the reason why it was so important was it because it kind of stood in the way of India.
And it kind of protected India.
However, what was interesting to note about the term Middle East, that is that is actually being used by the people within the region as well.
For example, in Arabic, it's a shot of close ups.
And in Hebrew, if I recall correctly, it's something very similar, which I find quite interesting just because they have clearly, like,
you know, taken a term and taken their meaning out of it as well, even if it makes no sense considering where they are geographically.
But I guess that's that's how history goes. I think it's also quite a common fallacy that the term itself is broadly used in the Middle East.
So we were doing a lesson today. And you're speaking about the language people use in the Middle East.
And actually, there's no collectivist identity of like Middle Eastern.
It's very much understood. So, for example, if you're from North Africa and Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, sometimes Libya.
That's like a lot of a lot of B, which is the Arab West.
And then I think people are very keen to maintain the concept of the sham a sham.
She's eleven. And then you have Al College, which is the Gulf.
And I think those are the identities that steak, not the sort of over arching Middle Eastern identity.
I don't think people actually feel. Middle Easterners themselves.
I don't think they actually feel intimate,
personal connexion with the concept of Middle East because the internal factions and divisions are really prominent.
And I think that's correct. By using the sermon in the Western media and basically everything we do, you do create this subconscious assumption that,
you know, the Middle East is one place and that everybody is very similar.
There's probably been enough conversations we've all had when we travelled to the region where somebody asked, oh, you're going to the Middle East.
Isn't it dangerous with the assumption that, you know, Syria is the same as Jordan is the same as Egypt, you know?
Absolutely.
As in the case that it always gets discussed in in a context together, like it's a Middle Eastern country first before it's its own country.
I think it's also really interesting that you mentioned our degrees of Middle Eastern studies.
And I think area studies is something worth discussing. Yeah.
Oh, we can do that. And I hear your guests perspective on this.
But I feel like if you're going in two area studies, you need to be aware of really the origins of your field,
because in its original incarnation, area studies served a very cornu purpose.
It was ethnocentric, essentialist imperialist. Yeah.
Like our faculty. So as the Orient, Oxford, all of them.
Yeah. If it's wriggling permeation, they're serving this colonial purpose and its origins are found in this kind of ethno
centrist essentialist view of the region that's going to trickle down into the modern day.
It's very important to be aware of that because as an area scholar,
basically you define how another culture is translated into your society oriented argument
in the 19th century was made for audiences that weren't able to see the Middle East.
I just worry. But then quickly, for listeners who might not know what's Orientalist means specifically.
But basically from a book written by Edward Sade's deal and continue explaining it clearly.
You go ahead. OK. Ninety seven say to recall correctly, a man called Edward Sayd from Columbia University in the U.S. wrote a book called Orientalism,
where he basically challenges that knowledge basis of what the three of us study like about how we look at the Middle East.
His argument is basically that the Orient is always the opposite of the West.
So if the West is more than the Orient is outdated, if Western Europeans are intelligent and enlightened, you know, the other with a capital.
No, I know what he does is look at our look at texts which are written and how they all
encourage and perpetuate this assumption of a very strong distinction between East and West.
And that's what really refers to when she means or influenced. And I think it's a very pervasive.
Oh, it's a very present approach to criticism and theory, because I think the term orientation can be applied to so much,
such as art, such as political approaches, foreign policy in some capacity.
There's a lot of flexibility with the term Orientalist.
And I think Orientalists ah is probably the most tangible reality of Orientalism and the most easily identified.
Yeah, and it's I mean, like areas that he's kind of it's Orientalist perspective is in was disseminated by Western artists for Western audiences,
and it was popular Orientalist art was very popular during a time when travel to the quote unquote, Orient was impossible for most.
So these depictions on with tribal narratives became the basis for people's understanding of the region.
The issue is, is that these paintings were again made for Western audiences that wanted to see new places to which artists responded with
a sort of sensationalist exoticism that then fit into this Western Essentialists view of the Middle East as backward.
The paintings were set in Hem's and Sooks, filled with images of women that are either sexualised or repressed and men who are either lazy or violent.
A classic example of this where you can look up is the snake charmer,
which shows a naked snake charmer playing a flute in front of a group of men lazily smoking hookah.
And what I think is interesting is that the British Museum had this exhibition last year called Inspired by the East, Heidi.
The Islamic world influenced Western art. And its whole goal was to was to strip away this negative reputation.
And Orientalist art has, rather than Orientalist art, being this negative stereotyping of the region.
They wanted to show that Orientalist art was rooted in intentions to understand
other cultures when trouble wasn't really available to the wider population.
But looking at the exhibit, it might have art.
That lens is slightly more respectful in some respects than, say, a naked snake charmer.
It's it's it's ironic, though,
because there's the exhibit also includes a collection of contemporary Orientalist art made by artists from the Middle East.
And so and the idea is to split Oriental's art on its head by painting stereotypical images, but then blending in subversive topics.
The curator kind of unintentionally contributes to this notion, these modern essentialist notions of the region,
because all of the subversive content that's been curated is centred around hot topics such as the burqa, female agency and religious violence.
So this 19th century view of the Middle East as being exotic, violent, lazy has been passed down to the modern day.
So because the west western understanding of the region is kind of centred around this religious fanaticism, violence and repression of women.
So we did and also say that the target audience for that exposition, you know, probably wasn't Middle Eastern people.
It was very much Western people. Yes. Again, it's kind of a cool circle.
You've gone full circle with the. Yeah.
Middle Eastern art made for Western audiences.
I was just going to quickly add on to the discussion of the exhibition is that I remember at the time there was a sort of review,
kind of like a long read, personal long grece addressing by Soumaya person for Lucy Writers platform.
And in it, she was just discussing how throughout that exhibition she didn't feel like it was for her.
She didn't feel like it adequately tore away this fantasy of the Orient of these Orientalist realities.
And I think I remember just being quite moved by what she said.
I hadn't attended the exhibit, but I just found the way she spoke about the exhibit really powerful,
because at the end of the day, she, as a Muslim woman, walked in and didn't feel like it was for her.
And the whole point of that is if it was to move away from these really exclusive
Orientalist realities that we see in the British resume every other day.
And I think that just really hammers home your point, really, that this art isn't for people from these communities.
It isn't from people from these regions. It's just for sort of middle class, white art consuming elite.
Being an area scholar, you need to be aware of these origins.
You need to be aware of the impact that you can actually have because you are translating, quote unquote, this culture into your own society.
This can have a negative or positive impact. Bernard Lewis is a really good example of this.
For those who don't know, Bernard Lewis was one of the most influential scholars of the Middle East in the United States.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties sought advice on policy issues, and he was going to the go to man for the Bush administration.
What is what he is most famous for is something that he published immediately after 9/11.
It was called What Went Wrong? And it was essentially explaining to American audience or Western audiences why 9/11 happened.
But his his view is very a historical it's very essentialist.
It's honestly it's quite racist.
And I feel comfortable saying not just looking at it can look, comparing something that is comparing a sentence from what went wrong.
Can you read an excerpt? OK. So this is this is I think this is a good example.
So this is an article this is from what went wrong in 2003, actually,
to say in 2003 when our lowest rate children are likely to grow up either arrogant or submissive and unfit for a free, open society.
And that mirrors imperialist origins of area studies, says disseminated down,
because you compare that to something written one hundred and twenty years earlier by the French orientalist,
Ernest Saarinen,
who said that Muhammad and child becomes a fanatic full of a stupid pride in the possession of what he believes to be the absolute truth.
Hoppy, as with the privilege, with what makes his inferiority, that's quite grim.
There's a lot more quote I would love to put on with Bernard Lewis,
but I think my point being that Lewis is completely a historical and his understanding of the region.
He interprets the grievances that the region has with the West and stemming from a cultural and ideological intolerance to Western values,
because he was this a major adviser to the Bush administration.
He informed the US administration that conducted the Iraq invasion.
It was was one of the biggest failures of U.S. foreign policy. I think that's very fair to say.
Related to that. There was also there's this guy who spoke in Oxford in early twenty twenty.
And he is the minister of defence, Middle East adviser. And this is a guy who wrote a book.
I'm not going to mention his name, but he wrote a book called Soldier in the Sand.
And on the cover of this book, he has Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, the Shah of Iran and Lawrence of Arabia wars.
And it is like a very clear example of like the stereotyping, which goes on when people discuss the Middle East.
That I should also mention on the cover. There's also pictures of tanks, too.
So then and, you know, it's basically playing into the stereotypes people have of the Middle East, that it's, you know,
a guy that says it's a bunch of autocrats and terrorists and it's not you know, there's there's a lot more to the Middle East than that, obviously.
But the problem is that when people like Bernard Lewis are when people like this man, you know,
express their opinions in very respected contexts, in very respected forums, they get taken very seriously.
And when they are being by reductionist about the perspective of the region, it has very serious consequences.
Yes. And actually, a really important thing about Bernard Lewis and about what went wrong.
Quote unquote, is that he threw out that throughout his writing.
There is this kind of rationalisation of the Middle East needs guidance.
It needs intervention. It needs to be shaped in the right way and that it rationalises Western intervention in the region.
Yeah, that that's something I wanted to get to anyway with. It goes into politics with the Iraq invasion, with the invasion in Afghanistan.
But it also on a much more micro level.
It happens with individual people as well, with, for example, the invasion in Afghanistan just said Nixon justified by how the Taliban treated women.
So I often see is that the stereotype is of Middle Eastern will miss is that she is oppressed, that she's helpless in any way.
I think I do find it really patronising the way people become overly involved in the issue of gender rights or women's rights.
LGBTQ community is right in the Middle East. I marry because a lot of the time.
These issues are very, very present in the countries of this individual.
That is no screaming about their disgust at how things are working, how things are operating in the Middle East.
They really like a few weeks ago,
I was having a conversation about honour killings in the Middle East and how they were so common and they were happening so often.
And that's not to say honour killings don't occur.
But the suggestion was it was a very much it was very much an unchallenged aspect of Middle Eastern culture.
And also, there was a massive unwillingness to actually specify which countries in which countries these honour killings were occurring.
But I think primarily it was cases of honour killings in the past year in Jordan and how the Jordanian communities themselves had gone out protested.
And this person was so shocked. This just wasn't a thing for them. They didn't realise that, you know, the Middle East.
There were people who didn't agree with these practises who wanted them abolished.
I just think it is very patronising the way people do speak about women's rights
and the LGBTQ community is right in the Middle East without first comprehending
that actually their environments on as progressive as they think they are and
actually they're just not as informed about these regions as they think they are.
And I think people are very willing to pass commentary because as a region,
the Middle East does seem to be stripped of its autonomy and people very
unwilling to comprehend it as a very diverse and multiplicities multitudinous,
whatever word you want to use area that houses an infinitely, ethnically, religiously, racially diverse community of people.
And I think there's always this assumption of very strict cultural headingley that exists in the Middle East.
And there's no diversity of opinion like we have over here in the West.
And that is something I find that pops up again and again and again in discussion.
And it's just so patronising because I have opinions. Do you think something similar applies to the hijab where it's seen as enduringly negative?
While my friends, when I lived in Egypt, a number of them would hejab and we're very proud of wearing it.
But because of how it's been characterised both by the right wing in the West but also even by the left wing as this symbol of oppression,
it removes all the nuance from the discussion, although in the saying that some people see it as an expression of their individuality, for example.
And I think it totally erases the reality of a very cultural acceptance of hijab.
Not to say I don't think the hijab is up for debate in terms of, you know, in home France,
they've banned the hijab in places of work and how they just make life really hard for women who wear the hijab.
I think at the end of the day, when Muslim women have a very personal relationship with the hijab and for each was a woman, it is different.
For some it is purely religious. For some, it can be aesthetic. For some it is cultural.
I've worn it sort of on and off when I was younger and I just remember the one.
Like honour and question I always got was, did your parents force you to wear it?
And this is a very basic. I can guarantee every hedge I'd be, you know, has had this exact question.
And it just goes to show how patronising the comprehension of my personal and bodily autonomy is,
but also their entitlement to the inner mechanics of my religious identity.
And I think for me, I find very, very audacious.
You can go around interrogating other people's religious realities.
So then what makes you feel so comfortable interrogating like a 14 year old girls?
I think that's great people for some reason that the stereotypes people have
of Middle Easterners often seems like it should allow them to ask questions,
which, if you ask the other way, would be entirely unacceptable, wholly inappropriate.
And there's just as there's this assumption that Muslim women need saving, that they don't have any sort of agency or decision in their own lives.
That's something if people have listened to the third episode of the podcast.
Thank you. But if they haven't.
It's also mentioned by all three of the woman, which Fredricka spoke to in this episode, that what they want is to be supported.
But what they don't want is to be seen as oppressed because then they have to fight to narratives.
That just perpetuates the whole problematic structure we have of of of, you know, the white saviour complex, which hasn't gone far enough.
And I think it is so common and so invasive way Muslim women are portrayed.
I don't know if you've heard of the. But do Muslim women need saving by Leila?
Alone is a very popular piece of political writing,
but not just very much addressing a Real-Life consequences of portraying Muslim women as these helpless damsels in distress, essentially.
I think it's just such a dehumanising approach to Muslim women as a community and also
so disrespectful because why aren't we allowed the duality of other communities?
Why can't we have both the struggles with personal autonomy and religion and identity,
creativity, just the personal struggles that are afforded to so many other communities?
It just feels that the portrayal of Muslim women, especially even in the case of Orientalists art, is so two dimensional, is so reductive.
And I think it is something that is interrogated a lot amongst Muslim women, but nothing's actually changed.
I would say the same discourse that exists about 10 years ago about the hijab is still very prominent now, which is very, very disappointing.
I wouldn't say the material reality of Muslim women has improved.
Would either of you then also agree with the statement that things only become popular in the West if they fit our stereotypes of the Middle East?
Because one of you mentioned Homeland, for example, early on, this is very famous scene, which, you know,
raised some eyebrows in the Middle East where they are riding in an armoured car through Comisar in Beirut,
which for anyone who's been there, is probably one of the richest areas in the city.
It's very it's absolutely beautiful.
But if people don't see the Middle East in a way where it is dusty, where there's rubble, where it seems unstable for them,
it doesn't fit with the Middle East and for example, in me that they might be less willing to consume it.
Do you think that is still very much the case also beyond movies, for example?
When I went to the Middle East, I was like, why is that yellow? I got off, got off that and was like, I was expecting this to be yellow.
Why is it not yellow? Why is the sky not yellow? That's all homeland's fault.
I've never watched it, but it's her lens.
I have to say, you know, I was studying I was studying at the American University of Beirut and I was all prepped.
I was very embarrassed when I got there because because of what I had packed for clothing,
I was before I was dressed like a Sunday school teacher, I had a skirt that went to my ankle.
And these like very loose love, ugly button up shirts.
And then I go there and everyone looks like it's just like like a model.
Everyone looks like a model. Everyone. The slogans I can tell everyone spent like two hours getting ready.
I feel like I'm in like a Milan fashion show and I just look like a frumpy kindergarten teacher because.
Yeah. I guess because of my assumptions about the Middle East, you know, back when I had been studying the Gulf War,
I'd been studying the region for, you know, five years, four years.
You'd think I know better. But I think I'm sorry for for fear of this becoming like panic, though I can see it's full of panic.
Does I think I have one which says so many. There's one which I think is very typifying for speaking about.
Because when I flew to Egypt in January twenty nineteen and I said,
next an American and as Americans, do they always start chatting with you on the plane?
And he because I'd been there before. Yeah, he had a lot of questions.
He was like always it safe. I was like karez that probably the safest place I've been in my life.
And he wondered, though, is not it gonna be a problem if I'm an American? So, like, first of all, how would they know you're an American?
And second of all, no.
Like, you know, they are very good as having the nuance to understand the difference between the government and the people in the country.
And it's just it was just so clear that some people are afraid of going to the Middle East because of the stereotypes,
but because they never go that they also these stereotypes also don't get challenged.
It's interesting, actually, because there was also a thing with, like Orientalists scholarship.
You had these people writing these books about the region and they literally have never been there writing.
And like, it's kind of like a photocopy photocopier making.
It's like a, you know, a copy and a copy of a copy of these people that haven't been to the region informing us about the region.
It reminds me of what certain Middle Eastern countries do very effectively.
There's examples of Jews to follow Toby, the Emirati ambassador to the US,
who would often argue with American policymakers that they didn't understand the Middle East and
they didn't understand the nuances of what was happening during the Arab uprisings in 2011,
2012. And because of that, he would use his or their assumption of his knowledge to create a narrative which benefited DeLay,
which was very much a counter-revolutionary narrative and led to a lot of American support for the Sisi government,
despite many of the human rights infringements.
I think it's really interesting how we're discussing individuals who have never been to the Middle East
or North Africa or the Orient and don't understand the intricacies and the realities of this region,
but also very comfortable in producing policy, because this was really, I think really you were saying Saudi.
This is really common in the initial colonial period where artists would paint Middle
Eastern or North African Hiram's that had never visited North Africa nor seen the Haram.
There was also a painter who was in the employ of Napoleon who had never travelled to the Middle East, but painted multiple paintings of Yaffa.
And I think Tomago model city. So I think it's really interesting that there's a very longstanding tradition
of feeling very comfortable to produce like a piece of art or in this case,
a piece of policy on a region that you don't understand or have never witnessed in person.
But then I guess raises the question, what do we have then, a responsibility?
I wouldn't call us experts just yet, but as people with a slightly more knowledge of the region to call it out when we see things like this.
Yes, obviously. Definitely. I think. We're fortunate enough to be studying this very intimately.
University, but I think also there has been a very long standing tradition of like left leaning liberals,
like left wingers just over emphasising their role in the salvation of a region.
So I would say is essentially the white saviour complex. Like Western saviour complex.
In my case. But in a more theoretical manner, I think obviously we have to cool out all of these ridiculous stereotypes that we hear.
But at the same time, the salvation of the Middle East is not it's not invested in us.
I am not personally going to single handedly save the Middle East.
And I very much understand that Rome very happy with that. But there's a lot of responsibility. I don't want it.
But, yeah, I just think it is very important to strike a balance between, you know, standing up for what you know is right.
Correcting these stereotypes. Both are ensuring that the voices of people from Middle East and communities, North African communities,
are given the freedom to discuss the intricacies of their realities in a way that doesn't immediately lead to some sort of aggressive backlash.
And I think that's what I know people struggle with, is you may want to, for example, discuss the struggles that you have within your community,
but it's so hard to find a way to discuss it without propagating a really racist, Islamophobic stereotype.
We just have so much to say about regions that obviously Westerners have messed up quite royally, but it's not like we're doing any better.
And I think there might be a case of having to get our own house in order, because when you look at countries like America,
which has had very Guantanamo Bay debacle, or the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal in Iraq, it reduces the moral standing completely.
And it just gives everybody this very strong sense of hypocrisy when one country's moralising about human rights and development and progress,
while at the same time striking people in Afghanistan, torturing people in Iraq and are doing extraordinary renditions to Cuba.
It makes very little sense when printed like that is telling someone else how to behave.
Did you guys get a chance to watch Once Upon a Time in Iraq?
So it's essentially five part series interrogate, open interviewing so people on both sides of the Iraq war.
So there's like Iraqis who are processed, dumb Iraqis who are anti Saddam.
They also interview American soldiers and the families of American soldiers and American generals.
The thing that really, really stood out to me was that they kind of just blindly went in.
I always thought Iraq wasn't very malicious and very intentional and very well for out in terms of like destroying Iraq.
Then I watched this documentary. And I was just so shocked at how little these like generals knew about the region.
That's, I think, kind of going back to what you originally asked.
I think that the Iraq invasion is a great example of why there needs to be a correction of what we know of the Middle East,
because the Iraq invasion, or rather the Iraq reconstruction was just really mishandled.
You have these people that have no clue of how it works.
Yeah. You ban anyone that was a member of the Baath Party from being an administration,
not realising that you had to be a member of the Baath Party to be in government.
And so then you have people that have no you have the only option is that there are people in government that have no experience in government.
And you and your viewers, I think, spent 60 billion.
Trying to rebuild Iraq. 15 million dollars a day. And her what I did read the biography of one of the generals in Iraq across the summer,
so I have a bit more sympathy with them than I ever thought I would have.
But it's basically what I just said, that we often see it as something malicious, but it was woefully underprepared.
And even the generals are saying, we don't want to do this. We don't think it's going to be successful.
And that is almost more scary than if it was malicious because it was malicious, at least purpose behind it.
This just seems so disorganised. Yeah, like hair brained.
And they still went for it. And that's, I think,
implicitly shows how little faith they have in the Middle East is that even a very poorly thought out plan would still be better than the status quo.
There's a centralising of the region.
Those, you know, painting it with a wide brush, thinking that you understand the entire, you know, the culture and the history.
Well, I wouldn't say we're using we understand in such a liberal way,
because the reality is what ends up happening when people do areas studies is weak.
We're definitely giving, I wouldn't say, a superficial comprehension of the region,
but a comprehension of the region that very much fits the narrative that we're seeking to develop about the Middle East.
And I think I find it really interesting that this entire episode is about moving away from language about the Middle East.
And I'm falling right into that trap again and again. But I think the reality is what does it?
It's a very different thing to understand the Middle East from an outsider's point of view and to spend time learning or absorbing the history.
But it's, again, so different to if you grew up there. And I think it's just very much knowing where your involvement in the region stops.
And I think for us, it's a lot earlier than sometimes we're willing to identify.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, I think, you know, I don't think it's possible to move away from a language completely because of, you know, how language works.
But I do think the most important thing is to have an awareness of it.
It's not that you need specialised knowledge to study the Middle East, but you have to go through a process of unlearning what you were taught.
And that includes popular culture and academia.
This is true for area scholars as well as the general population.
I definitely do agree. I think there is a lot of unlearning required because you don't realise how much
internalised Islamophobia internalised or orientalism internalised racism.
You are holding in your analysis of this region until you.
You're appropriately interrogated and your ideas are properly challenged.
And I think it is so easy when the status quo very comfortably reinforces these Orientalist realities to carry on
with these ideas and into positions of power very easily without realising that actually they are very harmful,
very detrimental. Related to that as well.
People shouldn't be afraid of admitting that they sometimes don't know things like they get asked a question about something intricate and important,
especially considering how nuanced area studies in general is.
No, it should be entirely acceptable for even someone who is considered an expert to say,
I cannot answer that question because by answering the question are wrong, they might do more damage than by not answering at all.
And I think it's very important to understand that there is no solution to the issues in the Middle East.
There is no. No one's going to sit down and turn around. Yes, I know exactly what we should do.
And there's no harm in admitting that because it is a complex region, complex community that has complex issues.
Do you then think, like the whole idea of an American peace plan, for example, like the Trump peace plan?
That, yeah, it's a terrible plan anyway, producing I mean, boys, on a more conceptual level, that the idea of a peace fund is.
Silly, I think it's ridiculous because I think there are so many factors that require a very serious and I would say intervention,
but require very serious addressing.
But crucially, the people who harbour these opinions, these Orientalist and dehumanising opinions, are the ones making policy.
So we have so much influence over the situations in the Middle East as a region who never know the reality.
Thank you for listening to this episode of this podcast.
Join us next week to discuss the history of the culture and the questions raised by Bunchy Pozzi, Dancing Boys of Afghanistan.
Almanack is a student for the initiative sent in the university.
The opinions expressed in the podcast are not in any way represent the official opinions of the University of the Middle East.
It is editors of those. So you'll just focus with Lily.
Felix Walker. Michael Memory. Max Randall.
Frederica Brookover, man. Farrah Rhodes Johnson.