How to do really terrible Middle East analysis

Take a more belligerent posture on Iran and give up on Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Those are the two policy prescriptions Ephraim Karsh gives us in a New York Times op-ed today called “Muslims won’t play together.” I’m not going to take the time to argue with his policy prescriptions (I argued here for continued engagement with Iran, and I believe the US has a fundamental role to play in promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace). I do think the way in which Karsh arrived at his conclusions, though, gives us a great introduction to how to do bad Middle East analysis. Here are a few lessons drawn from his piece:

1. Talk about the essential nature of Muslims and/or Arabs and rely on events from the 7th century and the crusades to make your point. Karsh writes: “It took a mere 24 years after the Prophet’s death for the head of the universal Islamic community, the caliph Uthman, to be murdered by political rivals. This opened the floodgates to incessant infighting within the House of Islam, which has never ceased.” This is a popular tactic in bad Middle East analysis: trying to understand today’s politics and and prescribe policy based on tracing the essential nature of Arabs or Muslims back to the birth of Islam. This is like trying to understand EU by politics only by reading histories of the Middle Ages. Later, Karsh repeats the error by using Muslim actions in the crusades as support for his policy prescriptions of today.
2. Make the actions of Arabs or other Middle Eastern people sound strange or different, even when people all around the globe exhibit the same behavior. When explaining why there are divisions within the broader Muslim community, Karsh writes: “not only do Arabs consider themselves superior to all other Muslims, but inhabitants of Hijaz, the northwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula and Islam’s birthplace, regard themselves the only true Arabs, and tend to be highly disparaging of all other Arabic-speaking communities.” So, there aren’t ethnic or religious groups in the US that consider themselves to be superior to others? Does Karsh not remember growing up in Israel and seeing how Ashkenazi Jews spoke disparagingly of Sephardic Jews? I’m not saying that the facts in this quote are wrong, but Karsh makes it sound as if this case is special to the Arabs, which is patently false.
3. Make broad generalizations about Muslim or Arab worldviews. Karsh wants us to believe that all Muslims view the West through a single lens, writing: “Nor, for that matter, has the House of Islam ever formed a unified front vis-à-vis the House of War (as Muslims call the rest of the world).” Political and religious leaders sometimes use “House of War” in their rhetoric, but Karsh’s sentence makes it sound like Muslims across the Middle East don’t know the words United States, America, Europe, etc. This just isn’t the case.
4. Throw in a few Arabic words to build your credibility, even if they don’t add to your point. At one point, Karsh translates “worldwide Muslim community” as “umma,” even though he doesn’t refer to the umma at any other point in the piece. The translation was correct, but unnecessary. It seemed like he was just throwing it in there to sound more credible on Arab issues to a lay reader.

These are just a few ways to do really bad Middle East analysis. Any others come to mind? Share them in the comments.

Image: Ali Mansuri