Why do we call the region as Middle East? Eurocentrism (locating Europe, or more broadly West, at the center of world history and assuming that historical developments in the West have been the motor force of most, if not all human progress) “middle” and “eastern” only in relation to western Europe

History of the Term Orient: Asian lands to the southeast of Europe, stretching all the way to China In the nineteenth century, many Europeans and Americans had come to regard the “Orient” as too broad a category and began to break it down into a “Near East” and a “Far East.” The term Middle East was coined in 1902 by the noted American military historian Alfred Thayer Mahan. Over time, however, Near East and Middle East came to be used more or less interchangeably to refer to the same geographical space

Geographical Space the present-day states of Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories it occupies, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the smaller Arab principalities along the Persian Gulf, and Egypt, though the vast majority of this country is actually located on the continent of Africa. Sometimes the predominantly Arab countries of North Africa west of Egypt, and even Sudan to its South, are also loosely included in the Middle East.

Orientalism Static and unitary “Islamic Civilization” Bernard Lewis: In 1972, he published an article titled “Islamic Concepts of Revolution.” Islam fosters subservience to authority, while the sprit of resistance to tyranny and misrule is inherent in the core values of Western civilization.

Critiques Sharp diction between “us” (Westerners living as modern people in modern societies) and “them” (non-Westerners, especially Muslims) Relying on concepts such as Muslim mind and treating of Islam as a unitary entity, Orientalist scholars have made no attempt to analyze or explain the cultural phenomenon associated with Islam in time of historical occurrence let alone to specify its social context.

The Rise of Area Studies As the Cold War got under way, government officials and academic leaders became ever more concerned about the shortage of people who were trained in foreign languages and had some expertise on parts of the world which were now regarded as key fronts in the Cold War. From the 1950s onward concern in elite circles about the dearth of expertise necessary to maintain US global power and the resulting flood of new funding, both from the government and private foundations, got Middle East Studies up and running in the United States.

Modernization Theory the process of transition from a traditional society to a modern society universal and unilinear process Adherents of modernization theory tended to see traditional societies as essentially static. These traditional societies were said to lack institutions and internal dynamics that might led to social transformation from within. As a result change had to come from outside