BL-24 - Flipbook - Page 139
A TIME TO REMEMBER
The “new” Middle East no longer had any imperial or
religious “organising principle”, just an array of new
political entities, including the new British Mandate
territory of Palestine, with its commitment to providing a
national home for the Jewish people, albeit with the caveat
“that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil
and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine”.
It is easy to be critical of the Allied Powers for the nature
of their approach to the region in the early 1920s, but
the “original sin” lay with the Ottoman decision to back
the Central Powers. Britain and France, wrestling with
the tragedy of their own 2 million dead, were left with
the consequences of Ottoman failure and collapse, not
to mention that of the German, Austro-Hungarian and
Russian Empires.
create national mythologies, based on the selective use of
entitlement, inspiration and grievance, as Putin has done in
Russia.
In this context, a good way to approach an understanding
of the Middle East is to adopt the model of the Olympic
Rings. In such a model it is helpful to put the 昀椀rst ring
around the Arabian Peninsula, which was the birthplace of
the Prophet Mohammed, and the origin of Islam, its Five
Pillars, the Koran, and the Two Holy Cities.
The second ring goes around Egypt, possibly the 昀椀rst
“nation state”, with its memories of pre-Islamic, Pharaonic
greatness, and its more modern consciousness of Nasser
and pan-Arab leadership.
Needless to say, the reassuringly straight lines on the new
maps of the Middle East, and those of Central and Eastern
Europe, disguised the reality of the complex ethnic and
religious mosaic that lay underneath, including all the
frictions, fractures, and 昀椀ssures.
A region whose multiple identities had, for more than
a millennium, been rooted in family, clan, tribe and
city, with religious loyalty owed to a distant Caliph,
was now confronted with western concepts and models
of nation, state, liberalism, democracy and secularism.
In the intervening century this has, predictably and
understandably, proved to be a very dif昀椀cult and uneasy 昀椀t.
A region whose multiple identities had, for more than
a millennium, been rooted in family, clan, tribe and
city, with religious loyalty owed to a distant Caliph,
was now confronted with western concepts and models
of nation, state, liberalism, democracy and secularism.
In the intervening century this has, predictably and
understandably, proved to be a very dif昀椀cult and uneasy 昀椀t.
The establishment of the State of Israel after World War
Two added further religious and political complexity
to the equation for, like the Crusader Kingdoms of an
earlier time, its existence was deemed an affront to the
establishment of Islam as the dominant ideological force
across the region. Hence the routine use, by Al Qaeda and
Islamic State, of the pejorative expression “Zionists and
Crusaders”.
Given the complexity of the region, when people now
talk in general terms of the Middle East, they need to be
challenged as to which Middle East they mean. Countries
and regions may have very obvious geographical and
physical length and breadth, but they also have very
important historical and religious depth. Such cultural
depth gives people, and peoples, the opportunity to
The third ring goes around the modern Republic of Turkey,
where the example and memories of Ottoman dominance
are never far from the surface, even with its modern
Islamist alignment.
The fourth ring 昀椀ts over Iran, whose Persian imperial past
continues to in昀氀uence its attitude and approach to the
region, and the world, and whose Islamic Revolutionary
identity and championing of the Shia communities of the
Muslim world has been so problematic in the last halfcentury.
The last ring, positioned in the centre of this geo-political
Venn diagram, rests across the area of the “Sykes-Picot
Agreement”, and contains the modern states of Iraq, Syria,
Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories,
none of whose actions can be examined or understood
without recourse to assessing the impact on, and the
attitudes and reactions of, the other four rings. Only in this
context can the Israeli – Hamas/Palestine/Gaza con昀氀ict be
understood.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia,
President Sisi of Egypt, President Erdogan of Turkey
and the Grand Ayatollah of Iran are all conscious of the
continuing in昀氀uence and responsibility that the cultural
depth of their inheritances place upon them.
In 2016, the third bridge over the Bosphorus, named
after the Ottoman Sultan Selim the Grim, was opened.
It was Sultan Selim who had expanded the Ottoman
Empire into the Middle East and North Africa in the 16th
century, defeating the Mamluks and conducting a 昀椀erce
and relentless campaign against the Shias and the Iranian
Safavids. The symbolism was not lost on other countries in
the region.
Truly, if you want to understand any issue in this
fascinating, frustrating and fractious region, you will have
to get yourself a bigger map.
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