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FIRST EDITION THE MODERN MIDDLE EAST: PEOPLES, CULTURES, AND EVERYDAY LIFE Edited by Ozan Say Bridgewater State University Bassim Hamadeh, CEO and Publisher Michael Simpson, Vice President of Acquisitions Jamie Giganti, Senior Managing Editor Miguel Macias, Graphic Designer John Remington, Senior Field Acquisitions Editor Monika Dziamka, Project Editor Brian Fahey, Licensing Specialist Claire Yee, Interior Designer Copyright © 2016 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any informa- tion retrieval system without the written permission of Cognella, Inc. First published in the United States of America in 2016 by Cognella, Inc. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Cover image copyright © 2013 by Depositphotos / mrfiza Printed in the United States of America ISBN:978-1-62661-802-2 (pbk) / 978-1-62661-803-9 (br) Contents SECTION 1 MIDDLE EAST: HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, AND PERCEPTIONS A Brief Introduction to the Middle East 1 by Ozan Say Orientalism 25 by Bill Ashcroft and Pal Ahulwalia Speaking Back to Orientalist Discourse 61 by Zeynep Çelik SECTION 2 PEOPLE AND PLACES Agency and Adaptation: Pastoralists of Iran 87 by Philip Carl Salzman Identity in Relationship 113 by Lila Abu-Lughod Where Have the Bedouin Gone? The American University in Cairo 155 by Donald P. Cole Urban Policy: Fez and the Muslim City 193 by Edmund Burke SECTION 3 FAMILY, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY Tamkin: Stories from a Family Court in Iran 219 by Ziba Mir-Hosseini Reconstructing the Transgendered Self as a Muslim, Nationalist, Upper-Class Woman: The Case of Bulent Ersoy 237 by Rüstem Ertu ˇg Altınay On the Road: Travels with My Hijab 257 by Maliha Masood SECTION 4 EVERYDAY LIFE AND POPULAR CULTURE Performing National Identity 273 by miriam cooke Table Manners in Yemen: Eat! Do not Talk! 287 by Fuad Khuri Against Hybridity: The Case of Enrico Macias/Gaston Ghrenassia 299 by Ted Swedenburg SECTION 5 RELIGION The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam 329 by Talal Asad The Private Performance of Salat Prayers: Repetition, Time, and Meaning 355 by Niloofar Haeri Reforming Religious Identity in Post-Khatami Iran 389 by Roxanne Varzi SECTION 6 POLITICS AND PROTEST Weapons, Passports, and News: Palestinian Perceptions of U.S. Power as a Mediator of War 407 by Amahl Bishara Evading State Control: Political Protest and Technology in Saudi Arabia 423 by Madawi Al-Rasheed The Fall of the Pharaoh: How Hosni Mubarak’s Reign Came to an End 441 by Dina Shehata MIDDLE EAST: HISTORY, GEOGRAPHY, AND PERCEPTIONS A Brief Introduction to the Middle East 1 by Ozan Say Orientalism 25 by Bill Ashcroft and Pal Ahulwalia Speaking Back to Orientalist Discourse 61 by Zeynep Çelik section One A Brief Introduction to the Middle East by OZAN SAY WHAT’S IN A NAME? IN THE AGE OF THE INTERNET AND RAPID TECHNOLOGICAL development in which we live now, we usually have a vague sense of the rela- tive novelty of things that are taken for granted. For instance, although Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing electronic mail in 1972, the widespread and commercial use of e-mail started only in the mid-1990s. E-mail “remains the most important application of the Internet and the most widely used facil- ity it has” (Peter 2004), yet it is already being overshadowed by social media as a form of communication. Even though we are aware that it is a fairly new invention, to realize that e-mail has been a part of our lives for only two de- cades can still be quite surprising to us. Associating novelty and invention with technology is perhaps not a chal- lenging thought, but how about the geopolitical and cultural concepts and entities that we use today? Phenomena such as the “nation,” “nation-state,” and “nationalism,” for instance, are novel creations of the last two centuries, but for many it might be difficult to conceive a world system without them, 1 2 MIDDLE EAST TODAY: PEOPLES, CULTURES, AND EVERYDAY LIFE even though most of human history unfolded in the absence of these concepts. Of course, there are certain processes that help conceal the fact. For instance, when we think of particular nation-states that are recently established, we usually assume them to be more ancient in origin. This is the exact process that British historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger elaborated upon in their 1983 book, The Invention of Tradition, in which they analyzed how and why different traditions are invented and what purposes these traditions have and continue to serve. Hobsbawm suggested that “‘Traditions’ which appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented” (Hobsbawm 2012: 1). His assertion was that invented tradi- tions were particularly relevant to the discussion of the recent historical innovation called the “nation,” as well as to its associated phenomena, such as nationalism, the nation-state, national symbols, and histories: All these rest on exercises in social engineering which are often delib- erate and always innovative, if only because historical novelty implies innovation. Israeli and Palestinian nationalism or nations must be novel, whatever the historic continuities of Jews or Middle Eastern Muslims, since the very concept of territorial states of the currently standard type in their region was barely thought of a century ago, and hardly became a serious prospect before the end of World War I. … We should not be misled by a curious, but understandable, paradox: modern nations and all their impedimenta generally claim to be the opposite of novel, namely rooted in the remotest antiquity, and the opposite of constructed, namely human communities so “natural” as to require no definition other than self-assertion (ibid.: 13–14). Because of the territorial nature of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Hobsbawm singles out these nations and nationalisms to highlight his point about the paradox between apparent novelty and dubious claims of antiquity, and discusses how constructed historical narratives are utilized to strengthen the legitimacy of a claim to a geographical region, self-autonomy, or even to solidify a sense of group identity to serve a nationalist agenda. Of course, much like the concept of territorial states, the geopolitical and cultural term “Middle East” is relatively new, considering the actual history of the region. Although the Middle East is not an invented tradition itself, Hobsbawm’s constructivist framework can help us to understand that the term “Middle East” was invented and has a particular A BRIEF Introduction to THE MIDDLE East 3 history. Acknowledging the constructed nature of this term would mean that we need to see it as a product of a certain socio-historical moment in time that is im- bued with political, social, and cultural meanings and symbolism. Furthermore, the naming of an object, concept, place, or a whole region—as is the case here—is a cultural practice, and, as Lévi-Strauss has pointed out, it is also a mode of classifica- tion (Lévi-Strauss 1966). The question, then, is when, and in what context, was the term “Middle East” invented? In the 1960s and ‘70s, there was an intensive discussion among American his- torians about the origins of the term “Middle East” (Davison 1960; Lewis and Holt 1962; Keddie 1973; Carleton 1975; Koppes 1976). One of the things about which all scholars agree regarding the origin of the term is that it is decisively Eurocentric and was not coined by the native inhabitants of the region. The first usage of the term is usually attributed to an American naval officer, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, who had been writing articles on naval affairs and strategy at the turn of the twentieth century. In a piece he authored for the September 1902 issue of the London-based magazine National Review, titled “The Persian Gulf and International Relations”, he wrote: “The Middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will someday need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar” (Koppes 1976: 95). However, it was not Mahan, but Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol, the director of the foreign department of the British daily newspaper The Times, who popularized the term when he began publishing a series of articles titled “The Middle Eastern Question,” beginning on October 14, 1902 (only two months after Mahan’s publication), in which he also credited Mahan with having “aptly christened ‘the Middle East’ ” (Davison 1960: 667). Although historian Clayton Koppes gives the same account as Roderic Davison (as well as Bernard Lewis and Peter Holt) regarding the coinage of the term by Mahan and its popularization by Chirol, he also reveals an earlier use of the term by a British officer, General Sir Thomas Edward Gordon, in 1900, and suggests that there is evidence to infer that the term “Middle East” may have already gained broader currency by that time (Koppes 1976). First of all, the term appears in the title of Gordon’s article, “The Problem of the Middle East”, which was published two and a half years before Mahan’s piece. The first sentence of Gordon’s article, quoted by Koppes, reads: “It may be assumed that the most sensitive part of our external policy in the Middle East is the preservation of the independence and integrity of Persia and Afghanistan.” Accordingly, Koppes suggests: 4 MIDDLE EAST TODAY: PEOPLES, CULTURES, AND EVERYDAY LIFE The title and first sentence of the general’s article, the only times he designated the area as the “Middle East” in the essay, contain the earliest uses of the term to come to light.

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