Watching (non-US) CNN last night, they had a little short on the capital of Iran, Tehran, where they mentioned a local Synagogue with a large local following. It spurred a thought
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My impression is that most modern Middle-Easterners don't divide ethnicity vs. religion vs. politics the way we do, so they assume that all Western countries are Christian.
What I find more disturbing is the way most people in the US (including most political analysts) assume that the Middle East is completely uniform, and that everyone in the Middle East is a Muslim Arab who hates the West. There are Christian and Jewish minorities, as well as various minority Muslim sects and the major Sunni - Shi'i divide. Among Muslims, there are Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Farsis, Azeris, Yezidis, and a dozen smaller groups whose tribal loyalties are at least as powerful as their religious loyalties. And while a lot of them hate Israel, many others don't particularly care about Israel-Palestine. Our Western preoccupation with inventing a unified "Muslim Arab World" which doesn't really exist, whether we vilify it or laud it, disturbs me.
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What I find more disturbing is the way most people in the US (including most political analysts) assume that the Middle East is completely uniform, and that everyone in the Middle East is a Muslim Arab who hates the West. There are Christian and Jewish minorities, as well as various minority Muslim sects and the major Sunni - Shi'i divide. Among Muslims, there are Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Farsis, Azeris, Yezidis, and a dozen smaller groups whose tribal loyalties are at least as powerful as their religious loyalties. And while a lot of them hate Israel, many others don't particularly care about Israel-Palestine. Our Western preoccupation with inventing a unified "Muslim Arab World" which doesn't really exist, whether we vilify it or laud it, disturbs me.
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