> Middle East 101

What Is the Middle East?
Can the Middle East be precisely defined? Not quite. The term can be as contention as the region, but between convention and history, a fair definition is possible.

What Is the Arab World?
An explanation of the Arab world, its part in the Middle East and the Middle East's non-Arab differences.

Middle East Basics: Roadmap to Basic Facts and Issues in the Middle East
A guide to Middle East basics - The basic facts about the Middle East, the best books, country profiles and briefings on US-Middle East relations

Review: "Storms from the East," by Milton Viorst
You’d be hard pressed to find a 178-page book that so accessibly summarizes the main currents of Arab history—religious communalism, nationalism, religious fundamentalism—while intelligently analyzing those currents’ origins in their Arab context or, since the 19th century, as reactions to western designs on the region.

Glossary: Mujahidin, Mujahid
Definition of the Arabic word for "one who engages in jihad," or "warrior of God."

Five Myths About the Middle East
The greatest struggle for Middle Easterners isn't the battle against terrorism, or the battle within Islam, or the problem of authoritarianism in most Middle East countries. It's a problem of perception--the many and varied ways westerners misinterpret, mis-characterize, stereotype and flatly misrepresent various people and issues across the greater Middle East. It's important to face the myths h…

Review: "The Arabs: Journeys Beyond the Mirage"
Two decades after David Lamb's book was originally published (by Random House in 1987, revised in 2002), it remains a lucid introduction to the main themes of Middle Eastern politics, history and social issues that most westerners find intractable.

Top 10 Middle East Issues of 2007
It's not been a good year for the Middle East: continuing genocide in Sudan's Darfur region, another humanitarian crisis in Somalia, 4 million Iraqi refugees meandering inside and outside their country, martial law in Pakistan, violence and uncertainty again in Afghanistan, and on the list goes. There were glimmers of hope, too: Iran may not be going nuclear after all and Israelis and Palestinian…

Club Mid - The Middle East's Best Travel Spots
Seven of the New York Times' 53 "Best Places to Travel in 2008" are in the Middle East, and several of those are surprising choices: what axis of evil?

Iran's Nuclear Weapons Program: Ambition or Reality?
Iran has been aiming to become a nuclear power for more than two decades. The question has always been: for peaceful or offensive means? Iranian leaders themselves have been of two minds an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Ten Indispensable Books
A list of 10 of the most useful books on Middle Eastern history, society, religion and economy.

The Difference Between Sunnis and Shiites
The origins of the split between Islam's two major sects, where Sunnis and Shiites are located throughout the Middle East, and how contemporary Islam is struggling through the sectarianism.

Sixty Years of U.S.-Mideast Policy
US-Mideast policies from Harry Truman to George W. Bush: an administration-by-administration breakdown of a troubled history.

Al-Bab: An Open Door to the Arab World
A terrific portal to all things Arab--news, media links, culture, history--by the UK Guardian's Middle East editor.

George Galloway-Christopher Hitchens Debate Over the Middle East, 1
A lively, acerbic, always entertaining debate televised on C-Span between George Galloway, the British member of Parliament, and Christopher Hitchens, the journalist, over their widely differing views over the Iraq war, the war on terror and western interventionism in the Middle East. Part 1.

George Galloway-Christopher Hitchens Debate Over the Middle East, 2
A lively, acerbic, always entertaining debate televised on C-Span between George Galloway, the British member of Parliament, and Christopher Hitchens, the journalist, over their widely differing views over the Iraq war, the war on terror and western interventionism in the Middle East. Part 2.