Middle East Cultures and Religions
By Pierre Tristam, About.com Guide to Middle East Issues
Explore the vastness and diversity of Middle Eastern culture from its literatures to its arts to languages, media, religion and popular culture from Pakistan to the Maghreb. This page will help you better grasp the differences between Arabs and non-Arabs in the Middle East, between Islam's major and minor sects as well as appreciate the great wealth and variety of cultures in the Middle East.
- Religions of the Middle East
- Middle East Media
- People, Traditions, Customs, Repressions and Legacies
- The Middle East in Movies, Literature and the Arts
Religions of the Middle East
The Middle East is the cradle of civilizations. It's also the cradle of the world's three largest religions--Judaism, Christianity and Islam. But religions in the Mideast are by no means limited to the Big Three. The varieties of religious experiences in the region has often been (and continues to be) cause for conflict. But understanding religious identity in the Middle East is almost indispensable to understanding the region as a whole or in its particulars.
- The Difference Between Sunnis and Shiites
- The Muhammad Cartoons Controversy
- Does the Quran Require Women to Wear the Veil?
- The Muslim Veil and the Law in Europe, the United States and Canada
- Images and Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad: What Do the Quran and Islam Say?
- Review: "What Went Wrong," By Bernard Lewis: On islam's Decline
- Leila Sahin and Turkey's Battle Over the Islamic Head Scarf
- Go West, Young Imam: How Saudi Arabia Spreads the Islamic Word
- Malcolm X in Mecca: When Malcolm Converted to True Islam
- Al-Qaeda, Al Jazeera and the Muhammad Cartoons Controversy
- The False Seductions of Wafa Sultan
- Return of Religious Repression in Afghanistan
- How to Understand Islam: A Review Essay by Malise Ruthven
- Bible v. Quran: Superbowl of Publishing
- Beirut's Oldest Synagogue Will Not Be Destroyed
- Ramadan Jonesin' At KFC
- A Church Grows in Qatar
Middle East Media
Newspapers may be dying in the western world and other traditional media are wondering what place they'll have in a media landscape being remade every day by the Internet. Not in the Middle East, where an explosion of media old and new is all of a piece. These are exciting times for Middle East media, granting the world a window on a region slowly but unquestionably redefining itself and its place in the world.
- Oprah's Quiet Conquest of Arab Airwaves
- The United Arab Emirates' Rich, Controlled Media Landscape
- "Voices of the New Arab Public": Bradford PlumerInterview with Author Marc Lynch
People, Traditions, Customs, Repressions and Legacies
The cultures, histories and traditions separating or defining the lives of the the peoples of the people of the Middle East can be mind-boggling. The Middle East is a continent of cultures, a world of histories, a whirlwind of customs and traditions.
- Yemeni Girl, 8, Buys Her Way Out of Marriage
- Curtsey to Theocrats: Kuwait Bans Transvestites
- UAE Makes Arabic Its Official Language
- Saudi Arabia: Beheadings, Riots and Inmates' MTV
- Fabulist, Forbidding Yemen
- Teddy Muhammad: When a Teacher KLets a Teddy Bear Be Named Muhammad
- A Tale of Two Rapes
- Turkey's Armenian Genocide Problem, and the US'
- The Kurds: Where Is Their Country?
- Iraq: The Kurdish Question
The Middle East in Movies, Literature and the Arts
At various times in history, Baghdad, Cairo and Beirut were world-renown hubs of culture and the arts. That's not as true today, but the Middle East--from Rabat to Tel Aviv to Lahore--is still a vibrant and in many ways re-emerging world of literature and art. Repressive regimes like Syria and Iran have their activist artists and dissidents. Embattled places like the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan have their unique voices of conscience. And everything from popular arts to philosophy finds its place in regions as varied as Jerusalem, Cairo and Casablanca.
