Three lines of poetry plot the trajectory of Arab national...

Three lines of poetry plot the trajectory of Arab national consciousness. â€Å"Awake, O Arabs, and arise!† begins the famous ode of Ibrahim al-Yaziji, penned in 1868 in Lebanon. Around that time, but even today, we saw people who insisted on sovereign Arab states in the Middle East. They thus seem to assume that there is one universal Arab identity, but what does this entail, and can we even speak of an Arab identity, looking at the historical perspective of the region that we call the Middle East? These are questions I will try to address in this paper although this is extra difficult since there is no universal definition of which countries are in the Middle East and which are not (some even include Cyprus). Here, I will only focus on the†¦show more content†¦Apart from culture, another important aspect that determines an identity is religion, and many people often assume that the who region is Islamic. However, these assumptions do not do justice to the complex a nd often very modern realities of the region today. Even when we assume that the Middle East is indeed a Muslim dominated region, excluding Israel as a Jewish state and the significant Coptic Christian minorities, then we can still not speak of one universal identity that is Islamic. As in Christianity, Judaism and every other religion for that matter, you have different movements within Islam who all interpret their faith in a different way. Depicted in a very generalized way, you can divide these movements into the two most significant ones being Sunni’s (about 85%), and Shia(15%). For example, the Sunnis believe that Muhammad had not assigned anyone as his successor, and therefore the best qualified person should be selected or chosen, the caliph. Unlike Shiites, Sunnis believe that because of the fact that according to the Quran Muhammad was the last of the prophets, the caliph was to succeed him only as a political leader. They see the caliph as a defender of the faith, but impute no further religious status to him. Shiites , however, are convinced that the succession of Muhammad , and therefore the leadership of the Islamic community , is