East’. The English language term ‘Middle East’ has its origins in the British
colonial period. It emerged as a geographical category between World War I
and World War II to distinguish between the older English concept of the ‘Near
East’, which referred to the lands of the Balkans, Anatolia, and the regions
bordering the eastern part of the Mediterranean, and the ‘Far East’, which
referred to the lands from Burma to Japan. After World War II, the term
‘Middle East’ gradually came to replace ‘Near East’, especially in international
political circles, to include the lands between Egypt and Afghanistan. The use
of the term ‘Middle East’ in American foreign policy over the last half century
has gradually made it ubiquitous in the international community dominated
by the English language, especially since the end of the Cold War in 1989.
This weight is reinforced today by its use in many international circles, such
as the International Air Transport Association, which includes in its definition
the following countries: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan,
Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestinian Territories (West Bank and Gaza strip), Oman,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Many
other organizations also add Turkey and Somalia to this list. There are thus
narrower and broader definitions of the term ‘Middle East’.
Both ‘Near East’ and ‘Middle East’ have literal equivalents in French,
German, Russian, and other European languages. ‘Near East’ is still found as
a category of academic studies, especially in German and Russian universities.
In most other Western countries, the term ‘Middle East’ is the normative
terminology. However, the more recent official designation of this region by
the United Nations is ‘Southwest Asia’. In June 2006, a large number of scholars
of the International Association for Middle Eastern Studies, gathered in
Amman, Jordan, discussed the use of the broader term ‘West Asia’, part of
which was named ‘Southwest Asia’ to designate the region of the Arabian
Peninsula and the Sinai in particular.
In this chapter I therefore speak of ‘North Africa and West Asia’, NAWA
in short, because I agree with a growing scholarly recognition that using
continental nouns (e.g. Africa and Asia) with directional adjectives (e.g. North
and West) is a less ideological choice for the building of nomenclatures. This
approach avoids using terminology that reflects only one particular geographical
perspective—‘East’ from the perspective of Western Europeans, whether ‘Near’,
‘Middle’, or ‘Far’—that is itself the heritage of a colonial history which
contemporary scholarly categories need not reinforce.
This chapter is therefore intended to cover the geographical spread of
countries from Morocco to Afghanistan, including Turkey to the north and
Somalia to the south. I will not attempt to provide a complete description of
the historical development of the study of religions in all of these different
countries. In addition, the present state of affairs in NAWA, as in all parts of
the world, is changing rapidly under new technological conditions and growth
1111
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1011
1
2
3111
4 5 6 7 8 9
20111
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
42222
3
411
NORTH AFRICA AND WEST ASIA
77
