ABSTRACT
It may be tempting to think of the Middle East as uniformly Arab and Muslim, but as the following essay makes clear, the Middle East comprises a great cultural diversity of ethnic groups, which are further fragmented by differences of language and religion. About half the population of the Middle East is not Arab, including notably the Turks of Turkey, the Jews of Israel, the Persians of Iran, and the Kurds, who have no nation of their own but who live in so-called Kurdistan, at the mountainous intersections of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Likewise, though over half the population of the Middle East speaks Arabic, and though Arabic is the national language of most countries in the region, large numbers of Middle Easterners speak Turkish, Farsi, or Kurdish instead of Arabic. The Middle East is more Muslim than Arab: over 90 percent of Middle Easterners practice Islam. However, a fundamental and often rancorous division between Sunni and Shiite Muslims complicates any apparent regional unity on the basis of religion. Furthermore, it should not be overlooked that a great many followers of Islam do not reside in the Middle East at all. In fact, the four nations of the world with the largest Muslim populations are (in descending order) Indonesia in Southeast Asia and Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh in South Asia.
