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.
Then call it what people in the region call it themselves.
Not stuck at all. A unified continent wouldn’t be called “Asia.” The region called “Asia” (which itself is ambiguously defined) would still be called “Asia” (and still be ambiguously defined) and thus “West Asia” would be the region on the west side of “Asia” which would decidedly not be Europe.
The fact of the matter is that what we call ourselves and others is all political and a great deal of it is imperialism. We need terms to refer to areas and groups so people know what we’re talking about. If those groups aren’t like us there’s a great many terms we can use which just end up being dog whistles.
Is there any big difference in referring to “The Middle East and North Africa” vs “The Arab speaking world?” No, not really. Would people understand what you’re talking about either way? Yeah, probably. Would people understand what you mean by “West Asia?” So long as they aren’t being imperialist pedants, yes.
As an aside, it’s not the ‘Arab speaking world’. You could try ‘Arab World’ or ‘Arabic Speaking World’. Neither of which is technically correct, since Iranians, for example, neither speak Arabic nor consider themselves to be Arabs. ‘Muslim World’ might be better, if half-Christian Lebanon doesn’t object …
Where would this sub be without pedantry?
I like your answer the best–call it what people there want to be called.
But your solution raises a problem if there’s a disagreement in that region. Turkey can decide to call itself Türkiye, but a region with separate countries might have a disagreement on what to call their shared region. I bet Turkey would love to be in the region called, “The Former Ottoman Empire”, but Greece might not care for it.