The Near East is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region comprising Western Asia, Turkey, and Egypt. Despite having varying definitions within different academic circles, the term was originally applied to the maximum extent of the Ottoman Empire. The term has fallen into disuse in the English language and has been replaced by the terms Middle East, which includes Egypt, and Western Asia, which includes the South Caucasus.
From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab–Jewish Conflict over Palestine is a 1984 book by Joan Peters, published by Harper & Row, about the demographics of the Arab population of Palestine and of the Jewish population of the Arab world before and after the formation of the State of Israel.
The Middle East Forum (MEF) is an American conservative think tank founded in 1990 by Daniel Pipes, who serves as its president. MEF became an independent non-profit organization in 1994. It publishes a journal, the Middle East Quarterly.
The New World Order (NWO) is a conspiracy theory which hypothesizes a secretly emerging totalitarian world government.
Gisèle Littman, better known by her pen name Bat Ye'or is an Egyptian-born British author, best known for popularising the concept of Eurabia in her writings about modern Europe, in which she argues that Islam, anti-Americanism and antisemitism hold sway over European culture and politics as a result of collaboration between radical Arabs and Muslims on one hand, and fascists, socialists, Nazis, and antisemitic rulers of Europe on the other. Her writing focuses on the history of religious minorities in the Muslim world and modern European politics. Ye'or has popularized the concept of dhimmitude in her books about the history of Middle Eastern Christians and Jews living under Islamic governments. Ye'or describes dhimmitude as the "specific social condition that resulted from jihad," and as the "state of fear and insecurity" of "infidels" who are required to "accept a condition of humiliation." Ye'or's historical work is severely criticized by academic specialists in the field, though it has been praised by some authors writing for a popular audience. Ye'or's other books have also been a subject of controversy.
In current political-science and international-relations theory, a rentier state is a state which derives all or a substantial portion of its national revenues from the rent paid by foreign individuals, concerns or governments.
Efraim Karsh is an Israeli–British historian, the founding director and emeritus professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London. Since 2013, he serves as professor of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University. He is also a principal research fellow and former director of the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank. He is a vocal critic of the New Historians, a group of Israeli scholars who have questioned the traditional Israeli narrative of the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Middle Eastern studies is a name given to a number of academic programs associated with the study of the history, culture, politics, economies, and geography of the Middle East, an area that is generally interpreted to cover a range of nations including Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen. It is considered a form of area studies, taking an overtly interdisciplinary approach to the study of a region. In this sense Middle Eastern studies is a far broader and less traditional field than classical Islamic studies.
Image and Reality of the Israel–Palestine Conflict is a 1995 book about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by Norman G. Finkelstein. Finkelstein examines and scrutinizes popular historical versions of the conflict by authors such as Joan Peters, Benny Morris, Anita Shapira and Abba Eban. The text draws upon Finkelstein's doctoral political science work. The 2003 revised edition offers an additional appendix devoted to criticism of Michael Oren's 2002 bestseller Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East.
"The Geographical Pivot of History" is an article submitted by Halford John Mackinder in 1904 to the Royal Geographical Society that advances his heartland theory. In this article, Mackinder extended the scope of geopolitical analysis to encompass the entire globe.
Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women (1994) is a non-fiction book by Australian journalist Geraldine Brooks, based on her experiences among Muslim women of the Middle East. It was an international bestseller, translated into 17 languages.
Middle East Quarterly (MEQ) is a quarterly journal, a publication of the think tank Middle East Forum (MEF) founded by Daniel Pipes in 1994. It is devoted to subjects relating to the Middle East and Islam, and analyzes the region "explicitly from the viewpoint of American interests". From its inception, content in MEQ was not peer-reviewed because its editors felt that most experts in the field were insufficiently devoted to advancing American interests. In 2009, the editors of MEQ stated that it would institute peer review, utilizing expert reviewers whom the editors deemed "not hostile to the United States and its allies".
The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine, published eight times per year, focuses on "news and analysis from and about the Middle East and U.S. policy in that region". The New York Times has characterized it as "critical of United States policies in the Middle East". In 2005, USA Today called it "a non-partisan publication that has been critical of Bush's policies". Representatives of pro-Israel organizations have criticized the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs as being aligned with the Arab lobby and as "anti-Israel".
The Iranian Revolution of 1979, in which Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was overthrown and replaced by an Islamist government led by Ruhollah Khomeini, has been the subject of conspiracy theories alleging Western involvement, in particular that the United States and the United Kingdom secretly opposed the Shah because his White Revolution was unfavorable to their interests in Iranian petroleum.
William B. Quandt is an American scholar, author, professor emeritus in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. He previously served as senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and as a member on the National Security Council in the Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter administrations. He was actively involved in the negotiations that led to the Camp David Accords and the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty. His areas of expertise include Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, and U.S. foreign policy.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is a non-profit research group founded by Steven Emerson in 1995. IPT has been called a prominent part of the "Islamophobia network" within the United States and a "leading source of anti-Muslim racism" and noted for its record of selective reporting and poor scholarship.
Conspiracy theories are a prevalent feature of Arab culture and politics. Prof. Matthew Gray writes they "are a common and popular phenomenon." "Conspiracism is an important phenomenon in understanding Arab Middle Eastern politics ..." Variants include conspiracies involving colonialism, Zionism, superpowers, oil, and the war on terrorism, which may be referred to as a War against Islam. Roger Cohen theorizes that the popularity of conspiracy theories in the Arab world is "the ultimate refuge of the powerless", and Al-Mumin Said noted the danger of such theories in that they "keep us not only from the truth but also from confronting our faults and problems..."
William Dudley Collard (1907-1963) was a British barrister and writer on law in the Soviet Union. Collard was a member of the Anglo-Soviet Law Association, and represented the Communist Party of Great Britain as a lawyer. His affiliation with communism led to the intelligence services keeping a file on him.
Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From is a 1997 book by historian Daniel Pipes.
Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East is a controversial 2014 Yale University Press book by German historian Wolfgang G. Schwanitz and Israeli historian Barry Rubin. The authors argue that there is a high degree of similarity in the ideologies of Nazism, radical Arab nationalism, and Islamism. The book received a mixed reception with some historians criticizing the authors' methodology and conclusions.
