Distrust Towards the West in the Middle East Term Paper

Distrust Towards the West in the Middle East - Term Paper Example The only thing that joins them and serves as a binding force is there negative perception and distrust towards the West in general and the US in particular. The perception of the Western and American people is not very positive as well, they consider most of the Middle Eastern population and countries as uncivilized and uncultured with prevailing tribal traditions. They are considered as the originators and masterminds of the post 9/11 terrorism. The only civilized people are the ones who have benefited from the discovery of oil and this perception is legitimate up to some extent because the perception is based upon what is shown on the media. There is a remarkable difference between people living in the same countries, with urbanization on western patterns in some cities and old tribal traditions and ways of living prevalent in the rural areas of the same country. Religion is the most important binding force but there are two major divisions Shiites and Sunnis which are further divi ded into various different factions. But when it comes to hatred toward the Israeli state or the Jews, the whole Middle Eastern world is united under the same flag and leads the whole Islamic world against Jews and Israel because of the beliefs that they are the eternal enemies of the Muslims. There are several reasons behind this distrust and hatred towards the west the most important of which is the Palestine-Israel issue in which the west have always supported Israel. In the First World War, the Ottoman Empire which consisted mostly of the current Middle Eastern states sided with the German forces and the British and French considered the Ottoman Empire as the weak link in the enemy alliance. With the help of people like Sharif Hussein who sided with the British against the wishes of the Ottoman Empire and Arabian people on condition that the Arabs will be given independence after the end of the war, but the British did not fulfill their promise and when the Ottoman Empire was fi nally defeated in 1918, the British and the French disbanded the Empire and demarcated the boundaries between various regions of the Empire which were formally the provinces of Ottoman Empire and made them into separate states under the French or the British rule. The present picture of the map of the Middle Eastern states though seems very natural but was actually carved out by the French and the British after the First World War to fulfill their own interests. The distrust towards the West was seeded after the First World War and the Middle Eastern states never considered the Western World as its allies because of the treatment they received after the end of the war. United States was not directly involved in the affairs of the Middle East after the First World War but always supported the British decisions and division of the Middle Eastern regions into various states. The majority of the people of the Middle are Muslims and it is a religious belief of the Muslims that wherever t hey live in this whole world, they form one nation and the Muslim majority regions of the world should form one state. Therefore the division of the Ottoman by the British was considered as an effort to weaken the Muslims globally. During the war, the British double crossed for their own interests, they promised the Jews that they will be given a separate state in the Biblical