Decolonizing Arab History

Decolonization of the Middle East has been one of the most debated issues of the recent historical studies both in the west and east. Prof. Ussama Makdisi of Rice University argues, pointing out to the existing western dominance in the region including recent US’ invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, that decolonization of the Middle East and Muslim World, in wider context, continues because full emancipation of people and politics from unequal imperial relations has not been realized.

He argues that the vast majority of the professional study of the Arab world remains located outside the Arab world, and more speciacally within Western academic and policy centers which typically answer to Western concerns, questions and agendas, not Arab or Middle Eastern ones. He advises scholars and historians of the Middle East to study and write their own decolonization history free from western imperial dominance.