Hope and Despair

Reviewed by: Anis Ahmad, Riphah International University, Pakistan

Published by: London: Hurst, 2024, 312pp. ISBN: 978-1911723196.

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What we call the Middle East today is a social construct of the Eurocentric minds of Sykes and Picot who drew the so-called new map of the region on the eve of the disintegration of the Ottoman dynasty, which ruled over a major portion of Europe and Asia for over five centuries.

The Middle East for the Eurocentric mind simply means the Middle East as understood in London or Paris, just as the Far East means the Far East as understood again in London or Paris, subsumed to be civilizational centres of the world. Since then, the altering map of the region has become dependent on the like or dislike of the so-called representatives of global imperialism. Therefore, the term New Middle East is actually not new. Perhaps a more appropriate nomenclature could be post-Gaza genocide Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. Historically, at one time, these territories were not independent entities but part of one single Ottoman empire.