Listening to an Iranian official describe his region as “West Asia” got me wondering if the word “Middle East” is on the outs and why. I suspect Middle East is eurocentric for some reason, but West Asia also preserves Europe as a continent, which is Eurocentric in its own way because Europe is not a continent and never was. If we’re calling anything West Asia, it should be Spain and Portugal.
Middle East is meaningless, officially. East of what, middle of where? It’s a cultural designation rather than one that is strictly defined by geography. In the Obama administration, we tended to refer to it as “The Middle East and North Africa.”
It’s East of the prime meridian and it’s in the middle of the Eastern hemisphere. It is strictly defined by geography.
Yes, but if we’re going to avoid cultural designations, we’d also have to avoid granting Europe continent status and calling the ME “West Asia” implicitly does that.
What was the logic in throwing North Africa in there?
North Africa is mostly Arab Muslims just like the Middle East, so for many purposes it makes some sense to talk about those regions as a group.