Just What is The Middle East Anymore?
Robert Kaplan, writing in the NYT today, proposes that what is understood by the term “Middle East” needs revision. What recently happened in the terrorist attack on Mumbai requires recognition that South Asia cannot be left out of the ME definition. Students of the region know that it often also includes North Africa, due no doubt to the gradual spread of Islam beginning in the 7th century and in part to the creation of the 22-member Arab League in the 20th. But Islam also spread north, east and then south. In his analysis, Kaplan makes clear that his elongated Greater Near East is, in fact, dependent on an old alignment when Kabul and Delhi were ruled by a single Muslim power, the Mughal dynasty, in the 16-18th centuries. Anticipating Kaplan’s point, it’s interesting that India has had observer status in the Arab League since 2007.
David Hulme
