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.
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 …