Middles East History & Nationalism

both(prenominal) countries remained as colonies, including Italian Libya, French Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, and the protectorate of Kuwait. These countrys eventually gained their independence, but only after World War II ("Kuwait" 1).

In this way, warmness eastern states did non flummox forth from the Turkish empire in control of their come across destinies, but were divided by the French and the English. The inter landal community no longer advance overt colonialism, so the French and the English were able to have mandates under which the Western nations would help guide the Arab nations to self-rule. The English controlled Iraq, Jordan and paradise while the French controlled Lebanon and Syria. Saudi-Arabian Arabia was not partitioned in the aforesaid(prenominal) way although it was the most traditional of the Arab nations at the time. However, oil had not yet taken on the central importance that it would come to have following World War II ("Saudi Arabia" 1).

As the twentieth vitamin C progressed, constitutional and democratic governments failed to pass in the Middle East. Instead, Arabs were increasingly governed by totalitarian leadership whose governments were perceived as corrupt and controlled--directly or indirectly--by Western governments. The system of the state of Israel following World War II and the ripening importance of oil to the economies of the region reinforced that perception. Of

Datta, Amlan. "The Final Call." Asia-Africa Intelligence Wire (Mar 17, 2003).

This image of Egypt as a secular nation is flawed, however. Islam is the nation's official religion, and Egypt has used Islam over the past 100 long time to move from a nation that was proudly influenced by the British to a nation that more than closely identifies with its Middle Eastern neighbors. The Egyptian government over the course of the twentieth century sought to use Islam for its own purposes, encouraging rural populations to be content with their station in life, for example, and as a way to control the nationalism that has bewilder prevalent in the country (Starrett 73).

An otherwise reason that outsiders force consider Egypt a secular nation is that it has a high level of tolerance for Christians. Coptic Christians make up a large minority population within Egypt, and are grant exemptions from compulsory Islamic education in school (Starrett 49). Some Coptic government workers have also been able to take Christian holidays off even though the government itself was open. give the tolerance of Coptic Christianity compared to the perceived intolerance of non-Muslims in other Arab countries, non-Egyptians might well assume that Egypt is a secular nation more similar to Turkey than to other Middle Eastern Muslim countries.

After World War II, the creation of Israel greatly changed the politics and power structure in the Middle East. The unify States now had considerable power in the international arena, and was perceived as Israel's staunchest ally during the last part of the twentieth century by Arab nations. Although the United States sought open alliances with Arab nations, it succeeded only in gathering Iraq as a clear ally in the region. In fact, Egypt's Nasser made a show of remaining unaligned with any Western nations--at least openly--and encouraged other Arab states to do the same. chthonian Nasser, Egypt regained control of the Suez canal after more than 70 years of
Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.