Question of ethnicity in the Middle East

There is a glaring discrepancy in Western sources when identifying various ethnic groups in the Middle East. The lingering and often imperceptible, Orientalist ideas have further discouraged new thinking even when the old ideas have been manifestly and visibly wrong. This is exacerbated by the confusion by which the local states identify the ethnicity of their own citizens, which is often marred by political motivation and expediency. In the meantime, the Western sources–media and in fact, academia–have enthusiastically supported this idealistic simplification and now find it perplexing why there are so many civil wars and discord between the supposedly same ethnic group, e.g., the Arabs, from Basra to Banias, from Manama to Morocco.

Ethnicity refers to group identity, and group identity is a product of history. In the Middle East, ethnicity/group identity can be based on language (Turkomans), religion (Alawites/Alaouites, Levantine Christians, Iraqi or Lebanese Shias, the Armenians), life style (Kurds), common history of suffering and persecution (Jews, Circassians), integrated economy, or a combination of two or more of these or other factors (Arabs) or some other unique criterion (Druze). To assume that language is the sole or the primary source of ethnicity–a fashion popularized by the French Revolution–is to assume that a Jamaican, an Irishman, an American, a New Zealander or a Bahamian are all Englishmen in their ethnicity. Or, that a Croat, a Bosniac or a Montenegrin are all Serbs.

{mosads}To identify any Arabic speaker as ethnic Arab is as ludicrous as to identify all speakers of English language as ethnic English, or those of Spanish, Hindi, or Portuguese as ethnic Spaniards, Hindus or Portuguese. As such, not all Persian speakers are Persians nor all Arab speakers Arab in their ethnicity/group identity. The current identification of the diverse ethnic groups of the Middle East by the element of language alone is faulty and indeed misleading. The civil strife in Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, among others, would be puzzling if one were to assume that the multitude of ethnic groups in these states are all Arab and share a common ethnicity/group identity. They clearly are not.

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, the Arabs have not spoken Arabic for at least a millennium (they are exclusively Persian speaking), and have lived among others who share their language (Persian) and religion (Sunni Islam) for centuries, yet they strongly celebrate their Arab (tribal) identity. By the element of language, these are not Arabs at all, while the Copts in Egypt or Shia in Iraq who speak Arabic would be forced to assume Arab ethnic identity.

By the same fact that not all Persian-speakers are ethnic Persian, neither are all Arabic-speaking people ethnic Arabs. Thanks to the pervasive “Arabist” trend of the past one hundred years, many well-developed ethnic identities in the Middle East have been glossed over by the new and largely utopian “Arab” ethnic stamp. Only the Copts in Egypt have vehemently refused this identity; others have just kept quiet. But there was and is more.

Many Arabists were in fact trying to quell ethnic and religious strife in the region by just joining everyone under one single pervasive identity, namely, Arab. The champions of the best known ideology that was developed for the purpose, namely, the Arab Renaissance (“Ba’ath”) Movement were an Alawite (Zaki Arsuzi), a Levantine Christian (Michel Aflaq) and an Arab Sunni (Salah al-Baitar). This new identity has caught on with some, while rejected by others. The Palestinian Christians largely associate themselves with the Arab (Muslim) Palestinians, unless they live in Israel, where their Levantine identity has largely survived. In fact, Levantines from Palestinian territories have produced some of the best-known champions of Pan-Arabism since 1948 and the advent of Israel.

The recent events in the Middle East have blown away the smoke screen from this artificial designation. The Iraqi civil war between “fellow Arabs”, i.e., Sunni and Shia, clearly showed the ethnic fissures between them, based on religion not language, as their group identifiers. This is now plainly apparent also in Bahrain, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Egypt itself–the champion of Arabism. The Alaouites/Alawites and the Levantines (Christians), have like the Druze and the Copts rejected this forced Arab identity.  The Shias of Iraq, or the Iraqis proper, are the most numerous of these “Arab” inductees, and form the biggest “enigma” in the mind of the Arabists and Orientalists since 2003 when following their liberation, they suddenly emerged with their old identity intact as the Iraqiun and not Arabs.

These divergent ethnic identities are not necessarily all a product of religious differences. The Zaidi Shia Yemenites have always considered themselves Arabs and have worked to cement a single identity with the Sunni Arabs in that area. The Baharna Shias (of Bahrain and coastal Saudi Arabia), although Arabic speakers, have a different identity from the Iraqi Shias who likewise are conversant in Arabic (and certainly different from the Persian speaking Shias in Iran and Afghanistan, etc.)

Clearly, a more accurate ethnic map is needed to help the Obama administration and members of Congress better understand the ethnic sources of much unrest that has afflicted the new Middle East.

Izady is a professor of Middle Eastern and Western history at Pace University in New York. He helps train and brief Special Forces troops and others in the U.S. military here and overseas on ethnic and social issues.