Identity Crossfire

A Guide to Ethnic and Religious Diversity in the Middle East

von Dragan Stojkovski

198 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

The Middle East is more than its conflicts. To understand the region, you first have to understand its people.Who are the Kurds? How do Arab, Persian, Turkish, and Jewish identities differ? What distinguishes Assyrians from other Christian communities? How can the Druze be understood as both a religious community and a people with a distinct ethnic identity? And why do borders drawn on maps often fail to reflect the identities of the people living within them?Identity Crossfire: A Guide to Ethnic and Religious Diversity in the Middle East is an accessible guide to the communities, identities, religions, and historical forces that have shaped one of the world's most complex regions.Rather than viewing the Middle East only through wars, political movements, and current events, this book examines the people and identities behind them.It explores the region's major ethnic communities, including: Arabs, Persians, Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Jews, Assyrians, Azerbaijanis, Circassians, and Druze, along with important internal divisions and regional variations.It also examines the region's extraordinary religious diversity, including: Sunni and Shia Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Alawism, Yazidism, the Bahá'í Faith, Zoroastrianism, and the Druze religious tradition.At the heart of the book is a simple but important idea: identity is rarely singular.A person may simultaneously identify through ethnicity, religion, language, nationality, family history, place of origin, and cultural tradition. These identities can overlap, reinforce one another, or sometimes exist in tension.The book therefore places today's identities within their historical context, examining the Persian empires, Arab conquests, the spread of Islam, the expansion of Turkic powers, the Ottoman era, European intervention, the creation of modern states, and the formation of Israel and its consequences for the region's demographic and political landscape.It also examines how ethnicity, religion, nationalism, borders, political power, foreign intervention, economic interests, and historical memory interact to shape the modern Middle East.Identity Crossfire is not an attempt to reduce the region to one explanation-or to present a single narrative as the answer to every conflict.Instead, it provides readers with the background needed to recognize the distinctions that are often lost in simplified accounts of the Middle East.Whether you are a student, traveler, journalist, educator, researcher, or simply a reader trying to make better sense of the region, this book offers a structured introduction to the communities and identities that have shaped its past and continue to shape its present.Go beyond the headlines.Understand the identities.See the Middle East in greater context.

• Reihe: Independently published
• ISBN: 9798176456370
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 22.09.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: Independently published